Pepe Escobar: The Brotherhood factor

[unhappycamper]

The Brotherhood factor
By Pepe Escobar
Feb 2, 2011

A million marching in the streets of Cairo this Tuesday, a million more marching towards the Egyptian presidential palace in Heliopolis in the upcoming "Friday of Departure". The top graffiti - also scrawled on khaki-colored US Abrams tanks - as well as the top slogan, remains "the people want the system to fall". The army seems to have chosen its side, tacitly affirming it "will not resort to use of force against our great people".

With Brent crude oil futures smashing the barrier of US$100 a barrel for the first time since September 2008; mounting fears for the oil flow through the Suez Canal; banks, schools and the stock market closed; people's committees running security; some police burning their uniforms and joining the protests; and rows of activists, protesters and bloggers tapping furiously at banks and banks of laptops to send the word (before the President Hosni Mubarak system "bravely" shut down the last functioning Internet service provider), the Egyptian revolution might be approaching the end game.

The Pharaoh and his "successor" Omar "the suave torturer" Suleiman's strategy to use the army to intimidate, and then reclaim, the street could only work if the Nile turned blood red this week. That seems unlikely. Still this ruthless military dictatorship will do whatever it takes to cling to power.

As the multiform Egyptian street sees it, the point is not, as the Wall Street Journal so quaintly put it, "maybe the new phase is a happy one for Washington". Those masses at Tahrir Square (Liberation Square) protesting with their lives couldn't care less - as they couldn't care less for the security of oil supplies to the West or the security of Israel. This is about Egypt, not America.

On Sunday, US President Barack Obama urged a meek "shift in Egypt's administration" - while the streets are yelling "out with the dictator". Al-Jazeera had to come out with an editorial reminding everyone that Obama's definition of "reform" simply cannot mean the same corrupt/repressive regime with a facelift.

[xchrom]

1. egypt for egyptians. nt