Stephen Lendman

Cars moved through Tahrir Square in Cairo again on Sunday,
though protesters remained. (Ed Ou for The New York Times)

What's unfolding looks different than what protesters demand. World headlines partly reflect it, mostly outside America, especially on US television reporting an illusion of change, when, in fact, coup d'etat rule is in charge, headed by authoritarian generals used to giving, not taking orders.

On February 13, Al Jazeera's said, "Egypt army tries to clear Tahrir," adding:

Scuffles broke out "as soldiers tried to remove activists from the epicenter of Egypt's uprising...." Hundreds courageously remained, saying they won't leave until "more of their demands are met." [...] As a result, "(S)oldiers shoved pro-democracy protesters aside to force a path for traffic to start flowing through Tahrir Square for the first time in more than two weeks."

Tents were removed. Al Jazeera's James Bays reported "flashpoint" confrontations, saying:

"I think it reflects a bigger problem, that the military believes that now Mubarak is out, it's time for stability. But some of the protesters think not enough has been done yet. They don't want to clear that square until the army (is) handed over to a civilian government."

As a result, they threaten more rallies if Egypt's ruling Supreme Military Council ignores their demands. Protest leader Safwat Hegazi spoke for others saying:

"If the army does not fulfill (them), our uprising and its measures will return stronger."

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Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Vera Macht Reporting From Gaza

We in the West, we like to have the feeling that we have the Arab world under control. The states there are strategically important, full of oil, and the people strange, in what is for us a disturbing way. But they are hopefully largely under control by dictatorial regimes and the political or sometimes military interventions of the West. The Western discourse revolves around the question of whether Islam is at all compatible with democracy, and thus whether Arab Muslim immigrants can be integrated into European societies.

But now this through oppression installed stability has started to crumble in the Arab world. In Tunisia, the dictator has already fallen, in Egypt the 30 years old chair of Mubarak is broken, and other dictators in the Arab world have started to feel uneasy. But it is not the salvation and democracy bringing West which has brought this development to roll, no, it wasn’t even able to predict it, so that at first no Western politician was really sure how to react.

It was the people of those countries themselves who had enough of oppression, poverty and dictatorships. The millions of people who flocked to the streets are the same ones whose religion and mentality seemed contrary to the human and civil rights of a free political system. Millions of Egyptians have been persevering in liberation square for over two weeks, united in the fight for freedom, democracy and justice in their country. The only perhaps democracy compatible Arab Muslims risked their lives for a new democratic system, the revolution has cost hundreds of lives so far. Muslims form human chains for praying Christians to protect them as human shields from harassment.

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Joshua Holland
AlterNet

The ruins of the American economy represent a massive crime scene. Wall Street built a house of cards on fraud and misrepresentation, it crashed, and Americans' aggregate net worth is now more than $12 trillion off of its peak. Unemployment remains sky-high and the prospects for a robust recovery anytime soon are dim.

But as Naomi Klein artfully laid out in her book, The Shock Doctrine, a catastrophe for you and I usually presents an opportunity for the Titans of capital. And the grievous economic crisis affecting so many American families is no exception -- big business has found a number of ways to profit, directly, from Main Street's economic pain. Like vultures descending on a rotting corpse, they've come up with a variety of innovative methods to pull the last scraps of meat off the bones of America's middle-class.

Here are five ways these scavengers are making coin from our economic devastation.

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