Chris Hedges: US & Israel policies inMiddle East

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt


truthdig Posted on Jan 30, 2011

By Chris Hedges

The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.

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Chris Hedges, standing to the right of Daniel Ellsberg at the demonstration that didn't happen. Probably the most important news in recent times, because it  involved people, who were once in government, the CIA, and the media. They were here at the White House to give us a message and it was not to be found in the main stream media, not even in the NY Times, where Hedges was once the Middle East bureau chief. In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism, and was a  foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

This was reported in OpEdNews

Dec 16, 2010 ... Today, 131 rebels were arrested for civil disobedience at the snow covered ... Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Margaret Flowers, Coleen Rowley.