Interesting item below by American libertarian Lew Rockwell, supporting the revolutionaries in Egypt. All well and good. Generally speaking, however, I believe that both the American Left and the anti-war Right employ this word "empire" too much. Especially on the Left, it is overused to convey some sort of blanket moral superiority. For my part, I look back upon the empires of Rome and Britain and even France and Spain with a sense of nostalgia and romanticism. I recognize their limitations, failures and crimes of course. But the blowup of Egypt is not a question of empire. It is a question of common sense and honesty. 

Unlike the empires of old, America's empire of today--since the end of the Second World War--is not formalized. Washington is just out there, supposedly looking after its own interests by interfering in the affairs of other countries. It amounts to imperialism and a quasi empire for sure. Moreover, its conduct is in direct contradiction to the Founding Fathers of the United States, who revolted against the British Empire to create a Republic. The hypocrisy of modern American foreign policy is atrocious and stinks to high heaven, aside from other considerations. 

Curiously, the citizens of the U.S. have little to say about the foreign policy of their own government. They seem to have little interest in it except as a spectator sport. They follow their leaders and swallow whatever the PR line is. The President makes policy. FDR is a good example. The country did not want war; he did. We got war.

In the Middle East, the policy in the aftermath of the Second World War is determined almost exclusively by the Jewish vote and the Israel Lobby, and not by the true or best interests of the country as a whole. The same can be said about U.S. foreign policy with respect to Cuba. It has been determined by the anti-Castro refugees from Cuba, not by any sense of rationality. In these two instances, policy is dictated by pressure groups, voting blocs and campaign contributions.

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Update: “Enter the 'baltagiya': Egypt's repression spills out of the torture chambers” /  France24.com, February 9th, 2011

Update: “The Arab World’s ‘1989’?” by Gwynne Dyer, The Japan Times, Saturday, February 5th, 2011

Update: “Yes, We Can!” / Salama A. Salama, Al-Ahram,

February 10th, 2011

Update: “No to neo-Mubarakism” / Al-Ahram, February 17th, 2011.

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A people's uprising against Empire 

Al Jazeera English

February 6th, 2011

Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of Soviet-bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable state edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding freedom, peace, and justice.

There is surely no greater event than this. To see it instills in us a sense of hope that the longing for freedom that beats in the heart of every human being can be realised in our time.

This is why all young people should pay close attention to what is happening in Egypt, to the protests against the regime of Hosni Mubarak as well as the pathetic response coming from his imperial partner, the US, which has given him $60 billion in military and secret police aid to keep him in power.

The US is in much the same situation today as the Soviet Union was in 1989, as a series of socialist dominoes toppled. Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia all experienced dramatic meltdowns, while the Soviet regime, supportive of these systems since the end of the Second World War, sat by helplessly and watched. Leaders made vague statements about the need for peaceful transitions and elections, while the people on the ground completely ignored them.

Roots of a revolution

What has sparked the uprising? There are economic considerations, of course. A good rate of inflation in Egypt is considered to be 10%, and currency depreciation works as a massive punishment against savings and capital accumulation. Unemployment is high, about the same rate as the US, but is even higher for young people who are worried about the future.

Economic growth has been much better in the last decades thanks to economic reforms, but this tendency (as in the old Soviet bloc) has only worked to create rising expectations and more demands for freedom. It remains a fact that nearly half the population lives in terrifying poverty.

The core of the problem, it appears, relates to civil liberties and the very old-fashioned conviction that the country is ruled by a tyrant who must go. Mubarak tolerates no challenges to his martial-law rule. There are tens of thousands of political prisoners in the country, and it is easy to get arrested and tortured simply by calling the dictator names. The press is censored, opposition groups are suppressed, and corruption runs rampant. Mubarak's will to power has known no bounds: he chooses all the country's elites based solely on personal loyalty to himself.

Mubarak has ruled for 30 years and yes there have been elections every six years, but these are widely seen as for show only. Opposition candidates end up prosecuted for a variety of invented crimes. Democracy in Egypt is merely a slogan for one-party rule. And this is striking: the main excuse for his martial law is one that is all-too-familiar to Americans: the war on terror (and never mind the terror dispensed by the warriors themselves).

Probably a more substantive issue concerns the digital revolution and the opening up of the entire world through the internet - a species of the very thing that the US cited as the reason for the anti-Soviet uprisings of the late eighties and early nineties. Many young people in Egypt are as connected to the world through social media as American teenagers, and enjoy access to the sights and sounds of the modernity that the regime so opposes.

To understand what is driving the protests, consider the date that they began: National Police Day on January 25. This is the holiday created by Mubarak only in 2009. Talk about misjudging the situation! And sure enough, the government's response was to jam nearly all internet communications and shut down all cell-phone service on the day of the planned protest. But it didn't work: Thanks to what is now being called "hacktivism", the revolution is being broadcast around the world through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, even as Wikipedia is being updated minute by minute. And the Al Jazeera English live feed has, as usual, put biased US media to shame.

The core of power

Meanwhile, official government voices in the US have been pathetically behind the times. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have been refusing to describe Mubarak as a dictator, while lamely urging a transition to an election - run by and ruled over by the Mubarak regime. The protest leadership immediately saw that line for what it was, and rejected it outright. It is unbearably obvious that the US is nearly alone in more-or-less supporting Mubarak, but that is exactly what you would expect of the imperial backer of the despot.

What are the protesters' demands? It is not complicated. As in 1989, the one demand is that the dictator go. This makes complete sense and is the only solution that accords with what is right and just. This and only this will establish the basis for a transition to anything. What follows after that is really something that has to be worked out by the Egyptian people, who have had their voices muzzled for far too long, and not by the CIA.

What the uprisings underscore is a fundamental reality that the world too often forgets. It gets to the core of the relationship between any government and any people, in all times and all places. The people far outnumber the government, and for that reason, and even when the government is heavily armed, every government must depend on some degree of consent to continue its rule. If the whole of a people rise up and say no, the bureaucrats and even the police are powerless. This is the great secret of government that is mostly ignored until revolution day arrives.

More than the anti-Soviet protests of the late 1980s, the Egyptian uprisings reveal what might eventually come home to the empire itself. Under the right conditions, and at the right time, there might come a time when the consciousness will dawn right here at home. It could happen here for the same reason it could happen anywhere.

Government knows this, and hence its accumulation of weaponry and relentless propaganda. The difficulty for the state comes when its will to power generates what Thomas Jefferson called "a long train of abuses" that create a burning desire within people to rise up and demand freedom, since, after all, it is the right of a people, is it not, to alter and abolish the form of government under which they are forced to live.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr, former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.