Events move quickly on the other side of the globe, but it appears that the protesters in Egypt have reached a point that the Iranian opposition failed to get to last summer. And it is having reverberations around the region.
I mentioned Jordan yesterday. Today’s paper brings word of Yemen, where
the longtime president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced a series of concessions on Wednesday that included suspending his campaign for constitutional changes that would allow him to remain president for life and pledging that his son would not seek to be his successor.
“No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock,” Mr. Saleh said Wednesday during a legislative session that was boycotted by the opposition. “I present these concessions in the interests of the country. The interests of the country come before our personal interests.”
He ordered the creation of a fund to employ university graduates and to extend social security coverage, increased wages and lowered income taxes and offered to resume a political dialogue that collapsed last October over elections. In answer to opposition complaints that voter records are rife with fraud, he said he would delay April parliamentary elections until better records could be compiled.
Yemen, which is a U.S. ally, is home to a significant al Qaeda presence.
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Hank Kalet 
The US Chamber of Commerce has been in bed with Mubarak for decades and it fully supports his cruel and sadistic repression of the Egyptian people because it's good for their bottom line. True democracy would be bad for the USCC.From thinkprogress:\”However, there is at least one powerful, multinational entity that has continually stood by Mubarak and the Egyptian elite and has continually fought efforts to democratize the country. As ThinkProgress previously reported, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce maintains a network of foreign affiliates known as Amchams, “which are foreign chambers of the Chamber composed of American and foreign companies.” In Egypt, this foreign affiliate is known as the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, known in short as AmCham Egypt.AmCham Egypt’s relation to the Mubarak dictatorship stretches back decades. In fact, the Egyptian dictator even personally intervened to create the organization. In 1981, Mubarak issued an order to allow for the creation of the AmCham by giving it an exemption from Egypt’s strict NGO laws — which help limit the influence human rights and democracy promotion organizations. Since then, the chamber has grown to have hundreds of members. While roughly 75 percent of the organization’s members are Egyptian businesses, many of them are also large Western multinational corporations, like Coca Cola and BP. The Chamber’s member companies account for nearly 20 percent of Egypt’s GDP.\”