Here’s what happened last night in Egypt (late last night in U.S.):
And with that, Egypt effectively “vanished from the Internet” yesterday as the uprising against a repressive, U.S. backed regime began to take full bloom and, as of this hour, continues to rage.
Meanwhile, back in these United States, folks like Sen. Joe Lieberman are pushing a bill, the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset” act, to make provisions for a U.S. government “Internet Kill Switch” to allow them to do the same. Now why would folks like Lieberman want that?
The latest revision of this bill, according to FastCompany, “bans judicial review over executive decrees” to take down all, or portions of, the Internet.
On a very related note… Thanks to the Internet, you can watch the uprising in Egypt going on as we speak, via Al Jazeera English’s streaming live coverage here, just in case you find that CNN and the others are still offering wall-to-wall coverage of Charlie Sheen. You can also follow ongoing Twitter reports on Egypt via the #Jan25 and #Egypt hashtags.
And on another very related note… The recent uprising, revolution and new government in Tunisia was triggered, in no small part, thanks to a U.S. diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks detailing the corruption of the ruling family. That revolution helped spark the one going on right now in Egypt, where the people have taken to the streets to challenge the thirty-year, iron-fisted rule of Hosni Mubarik, a long-time U.S. ally.
WikiLeaks has now released U.S. cables describing “routine and pervasive” use of police brutality and widespread torture by the Egyptian state, our allies, against “criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers,” as The Guardian describes the leaked cables today.
In Yemen, another ally of the U.S., citizen protests inspired by Tunisia and Egypt are also reportedly underway. And this morning, rumors of unrest in Syria were also spreading via Twitter.
With very real democratic revolutions happening in the Middle East — one of the purported excuses once given for the U.S. invasion and mass murders in Iraq — coming about through peaceful uprisings (but for governmental aggression in response) there, thanks in no small part to WikiLeaks, wouldn’t folks like Joe Biden be wise to reconsider his recent, offensive assessment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a “high-tech terrorist”?
Perhaps not. Perhaps the Vice President has good reason to stand by that astonishing incitement of violence against a private Australian citizen and an organization neither charged with, nor convicted of, any crimes against the U.S.. After all, we have, for decades, been propping up the repressive Egyptian regime with billions of dollars in funding and armaments. And, by way of reminder, it is being reported that the tear gas canisters being hurled against Egyptian citizen demonstrators right now are clearly and proudly marked as “Made in the U.S.A.”
But, of course, “they hate us for our freedoms.” So remind us again, Mr. Vice President, who are the terrorists — high-tech or low-tech — here?
Typically, a real democratic revolution threatens the bottom line of the U.S.-based corporate empire.
As Professor Juan Cole observed today on Democracy Now:
JUAN COLE: Well, I think the U.S. aid is nice for the Egyptian elite to have. I don’t think it’s essential to them. It should be remembered that the U.S. aid is a little bit of a shell game, because Congress typically directs that all of the matériel come from the United States. So it’s actually aid to U.S. corporations, and then the Egyptians get some of it in the form of goods and so forth, military weaponry, which they mostly don’t need.
Cole’s assessment tracks that of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Oh my gods! You nailed it! I watched live on Al Jazeera Friday morning, watching history unfold on my tv. Then when there was a lull in the action I thought “I wonder how the morning shows on the networks are covering this.” So I flipped through the channels – first one, Charlie Sheen. Really? OK. Next. Charlie Sheen?! You’ve got to be shitting me. Next. It’s a doctor. She is talking about…Charlie Sheen! All three of the morning shows at the same time were talking about Charlie Sheen!
I just did a search for Charlie Sheen on the Al Jazeera website – 4 hits over the last 4 years. And none of the articles were actually about Charlie Sheen. (for the record – 2 were about the 2010 election, 1 was about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and one was an interview with Oliver Stone.)
Hah, so true! I saw Charlie Sheen as well 😀
I didn’t know what it was all about, and now I know I am not the only one who was perplexed.
One question though: how come Egyptians do not need the US weaponry?
Julie