The Other Shoe Dropped
by C. L. Cook
It can't be a surprise. After the largest peaceful public mobilization in Egypt's history, the Satrap dictatorship currently headed by former war hero, Hosni Mubarak, has answered the people's call for justice and democracy with extreme violence.

 

On the seventh day of the citizen occupation of Cairo's Tahrir Square, emboldened by the tepid statements of American president Obama and his "international community," Mubarak sent armed goons intent on terrorizing their countryfolk into submission into what had become the symbol of an entire nation's yearning to be finally rid of fear, corruption, and despotism, "Liberation" Square.

In the wee hours, following a speech by Mubarak, the military, who had ringed the square with concrete barriers and armoured vehicles, protecting the demonstration from "thugs", that is policemen out of uniform determined to do mischief and violence to their compatriots, stood down, allowing those thugs enter armed into the fold.

 

Until this moment, a sense of community had grown in the square, where traffic, sanitation, and mutual assistance for the children and elderly, those basic social needs the Egyptian government had neglected in favour of fascism these past thirty years, had been taken on by volunteers.

This spontaneous manifestation of social responsibility, more than the angry chants for the ousting of the tyranny, is the real threat to the Status Quo here. Once the state is discovered to be largely unnecessary, what can the Mubaraks of the world do? Where would their millions of dollars in baksheesh bribes, their kickback military deals, and nepotistic crony networks of parasites be?

Of course, this is not a uniquely Egyptian reality, it is the real issue in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and across the so-called Arc of Instability, that great swath of misery exploited by said same international community for decades, and most ruthlessly since the "day that changed everything," September 11, 2001 greatly accelerated the process.

 

The fact is, despite American vice-president, Joe Biden's assertion to the contrary, Mubarak is indeed a dictator, though following largely the diktats of foreign masters; but he did not become one last week. Mubarak is merely another in the long line of carbon copy, stereotypical strongmen servicing the interests of a corporate/militarist nexus (read: fascist) whose sole interest is profiting from the resources and labours of those they control.

Today, in Tahrir Square, their methods, and the lengths to which they are willing to go in the name of "stability" are glaringly obvious, and serves as stark warning to the rest of us who are fortunate enough for now to only suffer the milder forms of repression along the violence continuum of the fascist paradigm.

 

And, that warning is explicit.

Hours before the thugs were allowed to do the dirty work of their domestic and foreign directors, word of a resumption of internet service in the country came out of Egypt. For the past week, telephone and internet services were shut down, electronic communications coming out only intermittently, as a determined technical attack and counterattack cyber battle raged.

 

The government relenting in the service denial game shortly before the attacks on the ground suggest Mubarak and his masters wished all Egyptians, and all of the rest of the world, be given a clear indication of what the true order of things is.

The Other Shoe

Last year, Hosni Mubarak, rumoured to be ill, but certainly, past his eightieth year, not far from death, attempted to secure a dynasty, suggesting his son take over his thirty year reign, (that proposition perhaps being the straw bowing the camel's back to the brink of breaking on January 25th, 2011). That prospect done, Mubarak, in a nationally televised ceremony Saturday elevated his secret police chief, Omar Suleiman to the newly created position of vice-president, fueling speculation that the secret police chief, the man responsible for the imprisoning and torture of so many Egyptians, is now being tapped as tyrant-in-waiting.

 

Far from alarming the defenders of the faith in democracy, justice, and all that among the international community, the elevation of Suleiman is being received by those international worthies as an acceptable form of "peaceful transition" for Egypt.

The western press took up the narrative, subtly and slyly typifying the demonstrators as barriers to "stability," one step short along the Mediaspeak spectrum from recalcitrant "end of dayers." It was this media acquiescence that as much as anything else made the death and bloodshed in Tahrir Square, and from so far unreported other locales in Egypt, inevitable. And, it ensures there will be much more blood to flow in the days to come.

 

It also serves as marching orders for the despots in other countries, and regions, whose own underclasses watched the Egyptian uprising hopefully, how to contain their local malcontents.

An overused to the point of cliche phrase uttered by a former American president famous for his oratory, John F. Kennedy comes to mind. He who had experienced so much political violence in his own life said almost fifty years ago, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

 

That peaceful revolution may have suffered a terminal set-back today. In the next days, depending on the vaunted opinions and actions of those who call themselves a community internationale, we will see if peace will have another chance, or if the inevitable JFK invoked will be the model for change in Egypt and all those other lands suffering too long beneath the boot of Empire and its tyrants.