I woke up this morning anxious for the people of Egypt as they braced for clashes with Hosni Mubarak's security forces. He dissolved the government and retained his machine-gun toting retinue of soldiers who are ready to quell the voices of the people. With a complete shutdown of internet and cell phone services, we can only imagine the fate of Egypt's pro-Democracy activists, families, labourers, teachers, writers, mothers, fathers. And their children. Obama apparently made a call to Mubarak asking him to "promise" not to use force against the demonstrators and to uphold the liberalizing policies that were supposed to have been initiated. Hold on. What liberalizing policies? Are you talking about the ones that serve the needs of the US military stationed in Egypt? Hmm...guess so.
Mubarak has yet to lift the country out of a state of emergency that was imposed when he had assumed his role as the country's leader soon after Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Quite frankly, the people are tired of Mubarak's 30 year reign and are calling for the formation of a new government based on democratic principles. Mubarak's response is to force his cabinet ministers into early retirement and call in his comrades in arms to control the ensuing chaos. Mubarak is no stranger to the military having served as an officer/commander for the Egyptian Air Force. It's no wonder he rules the country with an iron fist.
My heart goes out to the people of Egypt. It's been a long and tragic struggle for them to maintain their freedom under this dictatorship. The Egyptian police have been particularly brutal against free-thinking dissenters and many have been jailed, tortured and brutally killed. Their struggle is the world's struggle against all forms of dictatorship and control. We're all connected. The foreign policy decisions our governments make and that we give our support to or in most cases, show our apathy towards (because you know, we're all too busy chasing our own dreams to give a shit about what's happening halfway across the world) can seriously impact countries like Egypt, and they have. I wonder how having the US presence on Egyptian soil influences Mubarak's decisions on how to handle "his" people. I'm sure there's a lot more to this uprising than we're getting from the western media. A western media that makes no apologies for feeding us bullshit news carefully manipulated and distorted to make it "newsworthy". News is reality TV and every news anchorperson is competing to be the next big TV anchor star. Is it real?
It's the people at the bottom of the heap who suffer from all this illusory fakery, from all the greedy "grabbing hands", the senseless violence against their right to free expression, and the denial of their livelihoods and well-being.
How will it all end? Maybe it won't end. It'll continue well into 2012 and 2011 is only just beginning. 2012. Egyptian voices. Tunisian voices. And then maybe all the world will lend a voice. Lend a hand. And lend a fist to help crush the despotic governmental systems that have enslaved and blinded the world's people since the time money and the pursuit of strategic power became the Gods of humankind.
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