Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dead men walking, with license to kill


A GOOD PIECE

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"So Pharaoh Mubarak had to prove once again he's a real superstar of the "war on terror". Old habits die hard. He's now unleashing terror against his own people.....

Egypt's counter-revolution is on
. And if President Hosni Mubarak is a "dead man walking", as opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei has coined it, what about his zombie army of machete-wielding thugs paid by his cronies? Masked goon squads encircling protesters in Cairo represent the ugly face of Mubarakism and, with the army and police eerily gone, the ominous sign of state terror unleashed....

The regime put on quite a production. Rent-a-mobs; organized convoys in pick-up trucks; bused-in machete-wielding gangs; agent provocateurs throwing Molotov cocktails from rooftops around the Egyptian Museum; thugs invading Tahrir Square to beat up people, some on horseback and even - a cheap Orientalist trick worthy of a Z-movie - riding camels and brandishing whips......

Real democracy can only be a dynamic grassroots process, from the bottom to the top. It's not a fixed formula, it's constantly reshaping itself. That's bound to scare Western global elites - from "liberals" to the fear/warmonger set - because real democracy implies a huge loss of privilege for the "stable", developing world comprador classes that are slaves to these haughty Western elites. No wonder they're all as scared - and scary - as dead men walking. "

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