The Revolt in Egypt Is Coming Home
Thursday 10 February 2011
by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Thousands of Egyptian anti-government protesters gather in Tahrir Square to demonstrate against the current regime in Cairo on February 8, 2011. (Photo: Ed Ou / The New York Times)
The uprising in Egypt is our theater of the possible. It is what people across the world have struggled for and their thought controllers have feared. Western commentators invariably misuse the words "we" and "us" to speak on behalf of those with power who see the rest of humanity as useful or expendable. The "we" and "us" are universal now. Tunisia came first, but the spectacle always promised to be Egyptian.
As a reporter, I have felt this over the years. In Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square in 1970, the coffin of the great nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser bobbed on an ocean of people who, under him, had glimpsed freedom. One of them, a teacher, described the disgraced past as "grown men chasing cricket balls for the British at the Cairo Club." The parable was for all Arabs and much of the world. Three years later, the Egyptian Third Army crossed the Suez Canal and overran Israel's fortresses in Sinai. Returning from this battlefield to Cairo, I joined a million others in Liberation Square. Their restored respect was like a presence - until the United States rearmed the Israelis and beckoned an Egyptian defeat.
Thereafter, President Anwar Sadat became America's man through the usual billion-dollar bribery and, for this, he was assassinated in 1980. Under his successor, Hosni Mubarak, dissenters came to Liberation Square at their peril. Enriched by Washington's bag men, Mubarak latest American-Israeli project is the building of an underground wall behind which the Palestinians of Gaza are to be imprisoned forever.
Today, the problem for the people in Liberation Square lies not in Egypt. On 6 February, The New York Times reported: "The Obama administration formally threw its weight behind a gradual transition in Egypt, backing attempts by the country's vice president, General Omar Sulieman, to broker a compromise with opposition groups ... Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was important to support Mr. Sulieman as he seeks to defuse street protests ..."
Having rescued him from would-be assassins, Sulieman is, in effect, Mubarak's bodyguard,. His other distinction, documented in Jane Mayer's investigative book, "The Dark Side," is as supervisor of American "rendition flights" to Egypt where people are tortured on demand of the CIA. He is also, as WikiLeaks reveals, a favorite in Tel Aviv. When President Obama was asked in 2009 if he regarded Mubarak as authoritarian, his swift reply was "no." He called him a peacemaker, echoing that other great liberal tribune, Tony Blair, to whom Mubarak is "a force for good."
The grisly Sulieman is now the peacemaker and the force for good, the man of "compromise" who will oversee the "gradual transition" and "defuse the protests." This attempt to suffocate the Egyptian revolt will call on the fact that a substantial proportion of the population, from businessmen to journalists to petty officials, have provided its apparatus. In one sense, they reflect those in the Western liberal class who backed Obama's "change you can believe in" and Blair's equally bogus "political Cinemascope" (Henry Porter in the Guardian, 1995). No matter how different they appear and postulate, both groups are the domesticated backers and beneficiaries of the status quo.
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In Britain, the BBC's "Today" program is their voice. Here, serious diversions from the status quo are known as "Lord knows what." On 28 January, the Washington correspondent Paul Adams declared, "The Americans are in a very difficult situation. They do want to see some kind of democratic reform but they are also conscious that they need strong leaders capable of making decisions. They regard President Mubarak as an absolute bulwark, a key strategic ally in the region. Egypt is the country along with Israel on which American Middle East diplomacy absolutely hinges. They don't want to see anything that smacks of a chaotic handover to frankly Lord knows what."
Fear of "Lord knows what" requires that the historical truth of American and British "diplomacy" as largely responsible for the suffering in the Middle East is suppressed or reversed. Forget the Balfour Declaration that led to the imposition of expansionist Israel. Forget secret Anglo-American sponsorship of Islamic jihadists as a "bulwark" against the democratic control of oil. Forget the overthrow of democracy in Iran and the installation of the tyrant Shah and the slaughter and destruction in Iraq. Forget the American fighter jets, cluster bombs, white phosphorous and depleted uranium that are performance tested on children in Gaza. And now, in the cause of preventing "chaos," forget the denial of almost every basic civil liberty in Omar Sulieman's contrite "new" regime in Cairo.
The uprising in Egypt has discredited every Western media stereotype about the Arabs. The courage, determination, eloquence and grace of those in Liberation Square contrast with "our" specious fear mongering with its al-Qaeda and Iran bogeys and iron-clad assumptions, bereft of irony, of the "moral leadership of the West." It is not surprising that the recent source of truth about the imperial abuse of the Middle East, WikiLeaks, is itself subjected to craven, petty abuse in those self-congratulating newspapers that set the limits of elite, liberal debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps they are worried. Across the world, public awareness is rising and bypassing them. In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To their victims, the resistance in Cairo's Liberation Square must seem an inspiration. "We won't stop," said the young Egyptian woman on TV, "we won't go home." Try kettling* a million people in the center of London, bent on civil disobedience and try imagining it could not happen.
*Corralling many protesters into an improvised enclosure, where they may be kept for hours, is known as kettling.
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Comments
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GREAT
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 16:42 — cheyennebode (not verified)GREAT ARTICLE...JOHN..AMERICA ISN'T TOO FAR AWAY FROM GETTING ITS COMMUNIQUE NUMBER 1...THE MESSAGE THE EGYPTIAN ARMY GAVE TO MUBARAK...TO STEP DOWN...AMERICAS LEADERSHIP IS AS OUT OF STEP WITH REALITY AS IS THE MID EAST THIEVES BEING RUN OUT OF OFFICE..PUTIN TOOK CARE OF OLIGARCHS THAT WERE TRYING TO RUN THE COUNTRY..AMERICA NEEDS TO APPLY THE SAME MEDICINE TO THE BUSINESS FOLKS...THAT RUINED SO MANY GOOD AMERICANS LIVELIHOODS...
John Pilger tells it like it
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 17:38 — Cap'n Canard! (not verified)John Pilger tells it like it is... When the Egyptian Uprising started I mentioned to someone that it could happen here in boucolic middle America, and of course they couldn't imagine such a picture. But I do not trust in this illusion to maintain the status quo. I hope that things stay safe, but time will tell.
"The uprising in Egypt has
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 17:41 — Anonarcmous (not verified)"The uprising in Egypt has discredited every Western media stereotype of the Arab.." +DISCREDITED EVERY STEREOTYPE OF THE 'DEMOCRATIC' WESTERN MAN/LEADERS--who wish "NOT WELL" to his egyptian counterpart!! "O-electVP-Omar-"Sham"-Suleiman/Cheney is an absolute shame and sellout to his brothers Muslim. +Saud family of SaudiArabia.They want to NOT share their land, wealth, and oil with their muslim brothers. Israel has no oil land.Unbelievable, is not the hard negotiations between Israel and Palestine--BUT THE SELLOUT OF THEIR OWN MUSLIM brothers.The negotiations are not ugly, the secrecy is ugly. If SecStClinton says Mubarak is a friend of the family--then what company do they keep?? There is your answer. Americans are of no value to international corporatists, as we see.
they were saying that the
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 18:35 — Anonymous (not verified)they were saying that the Egyptians have finally had it because the government marginalizes its citizens, the growing disparity between the rich and poor, and the youth are angry because there are no jobs. I honestly thought they were talking about the US.
The plutocrats that are
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 18:36 — Anonymous (not verified)The plutocrats that are turning the people of the USA into little more than serfs should watch what is happening in Egypt. Egypt has 80 million people and they are only armed with stones. There are over 300 million serfs in the USA and there are almost that many guns.
Nonviolent beautiful
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 20:30 — Garrett Connelly (not verified)Nonviolent beautiful revolution is being taught to the world by Egypt. When it comes here, and it will, soon, guns cannot be aimed at our own children in uniform. Anyone who fires a gun aimed at their neighbor's child soldier will forever be marked with the same criminal brand as those who brainwash and train our beautiful children to put on a uniform and beat or kill innocents at home and abroad.
18:36 Imagine if Glenn Beck
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 22:01 — Anonymous (not verified)18:36
Imagine if Glenn Beck or any conservative mentioned that there are many unhappy people with guns. Every liberal in the country would be accusing them of incitement. A liberal says it and it's no big deal.
Truth does not speak to
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 22:27 — Myo Nyunt (not verified)Truth does not speak to power, it acts at a certain moment to remove power. The capitalists-corporate power structure in the US-EU-China etc speaks to truth since the end of the second World War 1945.
Because most "Americans"
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 23:08 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Because most "Americans" believe the lying propaganda of the mainstream media, coming from the Egyptian dictatorship itself, from "al-CIA-duh"/NSA/Pentagon/State Department/U.S. government as a whole, and from the propaganda arm of the U.S. government, most of the mainstream media in the U.S. and throughout the world, most of those "Americans" believe the lies that the protests in Egypt are "wrong", that they are violent (not realizing that the vast majority of the protesters are non-violent, and that the Egyptian government is fomenting what violence there is by inserting fake "protesters" and agents provocateur to discredit the majority of peaceful protesters---just as the U.S. government and its propaganda arm, the mainstream U.S. media discredits the mostly peaceful and non-violent protesters in the U.S., and has done for many decades since, in particular, the 1960s), and that those Egyptian protests are "madness" and the protesters themselves "madmen", "terrorists", "communists", "Islamo-fascists" and other of usual coterie of completely false labels for those people who are only non-violently and peacefully fighting for what is right, and against all that is blatantly wrong such as the dictatorship that has gone on in Egypt for fifty years now; with, of course, U.S. government support, including tens of billions of dollars in U.S. aid to that dictatorship (as well as many others)...
...Of course the Egyptians
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 23:09 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)...Of course the Egyptians are only rightly fed-up with that dictatorship, the complete lack of any true human rights, liberty(ies) and freedom(s), and of what they have had to suffer as a people at the hands of that extremely brutal, U.S.-government-backed dictatorship! Nobody in their right, truly objective, independent, non-brainwashed mind(s), and/or armed with the true facts, could blame the Egyptian people for finally, again, getting mad as hell, and for ceasing to be willing to take it anymore! Now, if only the same would happen in the U.S., we might actually be able to save the U.S. republic from "dem(on)ocracy", capitalism and the elitist "dictatorship-of-many-tin-pot-dictators" that has taken it over and is making it, and much of the rest of the world, worse and worse!
What has happened in Tunisia
Thu, 02/10/2011 - 23:59 — Daniel J. Lavigne (not verified)What has happened in Tunisia and is now spreading throughout the Arab world shall soon happen in America.
It must as the rich are determined to end all government help for the poor; and the poor shall not accept such without a fight to the finish.
In my February 9/02 letter to Canada's Prime Minister I warned him of the collapse of all oil dependent economies by 2012. That prediction, woe, shall prove correct. (Indeed! It IS proving correct!)
There is but one way the world can avoid the subsequent greed driven use of all nuclear and other weapons of mass murder, followed by a war of "All Against All".
That hoped for outcome requires that ALL set aside an hour, everyday, and actually THINK about where we are and where we are, otherwise, headed; and to then discuss among neighbors possible / various solutions that have not yet appeared. To prod such I offer the following:
******************************
Maintain The Rage!
Add your voice to reason's call.
Join the Tax Refusal.
******************************
http://www.TaxRefusal.com
******************************
And the related effort to wake the world:
STOP YOUR ENGINES !
http://www.StopYourEngines.com
*************************************
Power to the (ALL) people.
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 00:50 — Anonymous (not verified)Power to the (ALL) people. Its OUR time.
"Because most "Americans"
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 03:44 — Anonymous (not verified)"Because most "Americans" believe the lying propaganda of the mainstream media, "
Only those americans who have not felt the sting of amoral corporate malfeasance, or been denied their life's ambition through special interest legislation and/or destruction of competition by "one-size-fits-all" corporate incumbents. (this fraction of the population is shrinking with every passing day)
Increasing numbers of americans, even in the white-washed cubicles of the few offices which still employ US citizens, are quietly voicing their concern about the disconnect between their reality and what is claimed in the media. We're not just talking fox news either, every major organization is being quietly and ever more widely dismissed as irrelevant and specious.
As the disconnect grows between the government and it's people, we approach levels of respect for the rule of law previously seen in the prohibition era. Back then, the US was saved from revolution by a congress which (gasp) conceded it's mistakes and repealed them. I don't see the government in this era doing this, do you?
22:01 - And why do you
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 12:32 — Anonymous (not verified)22:01 - And why do you assume the "anonymous" person posted the 18:36 message about guns is a liberal? Just as likely s/he's a libertarian. Not only does this reveal your own rightwing bias, I don't know many liberals or socialists who are OK with inciting armed revolution.
Politically-incorrect
Fri, 02/11/2011 - 22:49 — S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Politically-incorrect "correctors": It could be, too, that "Anonymous @ 18:36" is a liberal who is not inciting but simply stating a fact.
No, "Anonymous @ 3:44, I don't see the (U.S.) government, EVER AGAIN, doing what you speak of. I believe, as I've previously stated, that the presently-constituted U.S. government, run my a mob of corporate-fascists, THE "Fourth Reich" gaggle of corporate-fascists, and/or run by a gaggle of corporate-fascist, international banking, elitist, globalist mobsters and/or monsters, needs to be COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY "thrown off" and "abolished" as the "Declaration of Independence clause of the U.S. Constitution (under the Supremacy Clause thereof)" demands and gives us the DUTY as "We, the People" to do. Short of that, the U.S. government is well beyond the point of no return, is irredeemable and/or unrepairable, and is literally and entirely hopeless.
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