EGYPT AND CHANGE

The world is about to change, or has changed. The protests in the streets of Egypt are that significant. We will more fully understand there success of failure in at least six months, or a year or ten years time.

As Paul Woodward observes at War in Context:

Democracy is not the United State’s gift to the world and it will not be acquired under American tutelage. Real democrats don’t bankroll dictatorships.

The repressive power of the Egyptian state is still considerable no doubt but the pervasive sense of fear has now gone and it seems that people are spontaneously participating in the uprising. There were reports that Twitter was was taken down. The problem for the power elite in Egypt now is that the more people they kill, the more they imprison, the more the uprising will be empowered.

If so, the United States and its allies in the Middle East have been caught on the wrong side of history. One imagines that Saudi Arabia will remain as the shinning light on the hill and that Riyahd will be the sanctuary of scoundrels – for where else are they to go, since Afghanistan and Yemen are not now as inviting as they once might have been? The fall of Egypt – if that is the outcome – means the end of the blockade of Gaza.

The wars to supposedly contain terrorism continue with their cruel, inhuman impact in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and where ever the barbarous technology of war can extend.And yet such war, and the warfare state that underpins it costs a package. And so the democratic revolution may blowback – which seems highly unlikely.

Still the conjunction of place, time and events knows no bounds, and the likelihood that events anywhere on the planet influence one another in unexpected ways.

Suppose the forces of repression win. What then? The truth of the power relationships of domination and control, despite the happy talk of democracy will be clear for anyone with eyes to see.

UPDATE:

The BBC reports that protesters have taken to the streets for the fourth day. Irony upon ironies the warfare system is faced with a democratic revolution that seems to spontaneously spreading throughout the Arab World, from Algeria to Yemen.

We are not hearing the refrain – although given the media world idiocy can hardly be kept in check for too much longer – “they hate us for our liberties (which we used to have).

The situation is unfolding in real time. The army has been introduced into Suez and Alexandria, greeted by cheering protesters, and indicating that the Mubarak repressive agencies have lost control. The headquarters of the Democratic Union is on fire in Cairo. There must be stages in the development of a revolution, and this is one of them. Do we see Napoleon step forward, or an eventual democratic government in control.