The Times, they are a changin', to borrow a Bob Dylan lyric. I'm betting this will result in a noticeable speed up in the military letting go of power.
From the old Gray Lady, aka
the New York Times:
Egypt Military Pledges Faster Handover to Civilian Rule
Moises Saman for The New York Times
A wounded man was carried away from clashes in Cairo on Tuesday.
More Photos »Published: November 22, 2011
CAIRO — The ruling military council agreed on Tuesday to speed up the transition to civilian rule in a deal made with Islamist groups but which seemed unlikely to satisfy the demands of liberal parties and the more than 100,000 protesters who gathered in the center of the capital to demand an immediate transfer of power.
Follow
@nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
The agreement came after the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces met with representatives of the
Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in a session that was boycotted by most other political parties. The deal called for a new constitution and a presidential election no later than next June, as well as a new civilian cabinet to be led by a technocrat prime minister rather than a politician.
Under the agreement, the first round of elections for a national assembly would go ahead as scheduled on Monday, a major goal of the Brotherhood, which stands to win a large share of the seats. But it would also leave the civilian government reporting to the military — effectively a continuation of what amounts to martial law in civilian clothes — until next June.
Shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties emerged from talks with the military to announce a deal for the generals’ full exit from power in June, the military’s top officer, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, gave a televised in which he declared that the army did not seek power.
“The armed forces, represented in its Supreme Council, do not covet power and they put the country’s best interest above all other considerations,” he said. “The armed forces are ready to give up power immediately if the people wanted that through a national referendum if it was necessary.”
The protesters in Tahrir Square in central Cairo jeered and booed the speech. On Tuesday they continued to battle with the police in nearby streets for the fourth straight day, braving an increasingly lethal crackdown in what seemed to be a leaderless expression of rage.
With the police crackdown galvanizing popular anger at the military council, not least of the problems with the deal announced Tuesday was whether any credible civilian leader would take the job of prime minister if the government remained subordinate to the military.
“No one is going to accept another civilian government micromanaged” by the military commanders, said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces by its initials, Islam Lotfy, a onetime leader of the Muslim Brotherhood youth movement, said: “The people will not be happy if the SCAF just give them some painkillers.” Mr. Lotfy was among the instigators of the revolution; he was later expelled from the Brotherhood for starting a more centrist breakaway political party with other young Brothers.
“It may be the solution will be the SCAF delegating responsibilities to a new cabinet with full authority to manage the country,” he said.
The brutal treatment of the protesters prompted the resignation of the first civilian cabinet, which the military council accepted on Tuesday.
Each day since Saturday the crowds have grown at Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egyptian resistance — first to the former president,
Hosni Mubarak, ousted in February and now to the military commanders who replaced him — and the violence has mounted as well.
Intense skirmishes continued on the main avenue leading to the Interior Ministry. Though the security forces could have reached the square from other streets and the protesters could have attacked the Interior Ministry from other directions as well, each side continued to hammer the other — protesters with rocks, the security forces with tear gas that wafted back through the square — along the same charred and pockmarked block.
Many of the protesters wore green face masks, of the type used by medics, to try to filter tear gas fired by security forces in the ebb and flow of the fighting along streets littered with debris. Both sides sought to reinforce makeshift barricades.
A reporter for Al Jazeera held up a spent tear-gas canister to a camera and said its markings said it was manufactured in the United States. But the words were not easily legible to viewers.
(Page 2 of 2)
By midday, the crowd in Tahrir Square had swelled to many tens of thousands — far larger than at the same time on previous days. A new banner across the center of the square declared, “This land is owned by the Egyptian people.” Tents and a field clinic to treat injured protesters were being set up nearby.
focuses on self-governance, sustainability, and 
