roachboy

gee you'd think that this democracy via the domino theory idea would be welcomed by the united states...but of course no, because such things are just words and what really matters is that the mubarak government continue to play nice with the united states over it's degenerate and retrograde policies toward israel/palestine. so american-sponsored "freedom" is 30 years of martial law, corruption at an unimaginable scale, sclerosis at almost every level. people are rightly sick of it.

of course the government tries to pin things on the muslim brotherhood because they play well with the american line of trying to appear to support democratic movements while in fact being a straight-up neo-colonial imperial power and supporting any regime no matter how foul, so long as what is says can be squared with what the americans say in order to sell empire as if it were something else.

at this point, the muslim brotherhood is not significantly involved in the protests. more or less the entire leadership was arrested over night in any event.

i do not have a sense of el baradi's support more broadly.* i sometimes get the idea that he is a television figure, someone that appeals to news outlets because having a head to follow around makes things easier for tv viewers to follow.

this appears to be a very widespread popular revolt that's unfolding largely on generational lines. i don't see it as necessarily being about "the crazies"---i think that's the sort of thinking that the mubarak regime would like to see out there because it justifies what they;re doing right now as we speak.

protest becomes revolution when the regime caves in.
personally, i hope we see the end of hosni mubarak's 30 year state of emergency very soon.

meanwhile, the united states, those heros of democracy, continue to equivocate publicly.

but i wonder what the back channels are like.



*el baradi likely represents (and helps to coalesce) divisions within the egyptian socio-economic elites. and he's symbolically interesting. the intersections of this ore elite-driven dissent and the popular movements of this past week could be interesting, assuming that el baradi doesn't find himself being suicided out a window or some such.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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