Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Is the revolution being co-opted?

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times


"......The role of the Egyptian army so far has been ambiguous - to say the least; and that includes documented cases of torture by military intelligence. Not to mention their latest - banning national and foreign media from broadcasting from Tahrir Square. Moreover al-Arabiyyah TV - a mouthpiece of the House of Saud - reported that they have offered the Ministry of Information to Imad Ad-Din Adib, someone who helped launch former president Hosni Mubarak's last presidential campaign and who is also close to the House of Saud.

It's too early to tell whether the military junta now in power will really deliver on this new local remix of the Washington mantra - "orderly transition" - or will run rings around the street and perpetuate itself in power by wearing better suits, dividing the opposition and receiving lavish "gifts" from the usual suspects, Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh.


As Dr Aida Seif El-Dawla, from the Nadeem Center for Victims of Torture in Cairo has told the US-based Institute for Public Accuracy, "We still have the same cabinet appointed by Mubarak. The emergency state is still enforced. Old detainees are still in detention and new ones since the 25th of January remain missing. There is no public apology for the killings."

Everyone should be on maximum alert. Otherwise one of these days even Nosferatu - Omar "Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman - may rise again from the dead. "

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