Stephen Lendman

So far, weeks of regional protests achieved nothing. Despite ousting Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali, their regimes remain in place, offering nothing but unfulfilled promises.

On February 26, Egyptians again protested in Tahrir Square. This time, however, military forces confronted them, Reuters headlining, "Egypt military angers protesters with show of force," saying:

"Soldiers used force on Saturday to break up a protest demanding more political reform in Egypt, demonstrators said, in the toughest move yet against opposition activists who accused the country's military rulers of 'betraying the people.' "

New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, "Egyptian Military Cracks Down on New Protest," saying:

"Tens of thousands of protesters returned Friday to Tahrir Square....to keep up the pressure on Egypt's military-led transitional government."

Violence followed, including beatings, use of tasers, and live firing in the air, threatening perhaps harsher action if protests continue. Al Jazeera said:

"Protesters left the main (square) but many had gathered in surrounding streets....Witnesses said they saw several protesters fall to the ground, but it was not clear if they were wounded or how seriously."

Participant Ashraf Omar said:

"I am one of the thousands of people who stood their ground after the army started dispersing the protesters, shooting live bullets into the air to scare them."

He said soldiers wore black masks to avoid being identified. Military buses were used for those arrested. It's "a cat-and-mouse chase.There is no more unity between the people and the army."

In fact, there never was, only the illusion that unsympathetic generals were populists at heart. In fact, they've been regime hard-liners for decades, rewarded handsomely for backing state repression.

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PressTV
PressTV

“The objective of US intervention in Libya is to contain the revolutionary upsurge of the masses and have a forward base for introducing troops,” says political commentator Ralph Shoenman.

This also raises the question of whether the US and NATO are pushing for a civil war in Libya in order to justify a military intervention. Press TV seeks Mr. Shoenman's elaboration of his analysis.

Press TV: I'd like to ask you about an argument that is being made by the Libyan opposition movement saying that the US business lobby in fact helped prolong Gaddafi's reign?

Shoenman: Well of course everybody understands that for the past nearly a decade the Gaddafi regime has made a complete accommodation to US imperialism and indeed the major oil companies of western Europe and the US are once again in charge of Libyan oil production. Consequently, the previous anti-imperialist posture of Gaddafi, which gave rise to usual false flag provocations by the US as we've discussed before on Press TV: the false flag operation of the blowing up of the discotheque in Germany, the false flag operation of the blowing up of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, which was a CIA operation - these things were deployed to justify the US intervention in Libya. At the time, they bombed Libya, they killed Muammar Gaddafi's daughter. Subsequent to that Gaddafi made a complete accommodation and consequently this current posture of the US and with the UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon orchestrating it about major interventions on the part of NATO plan of establishing a blockade in Libya is a very very dangerous and sinister undertaking.

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Anon.

The WikiLeaks founder says the charges are baseless and if extradited, he believes he will not face a fair trial. Assange posed some interesting questions:

Why is it that I am subject, a non-profit free-speech activist, to a US$360,000 bail? Why is it that I am kept under electronic house arrest when I have not even been charged in any country?"

And he is not the only one asking those questions, particularly as the British government has a history of granting asylum to some fairly controversial characters, including Russian business tycoon Boris Berezovsky who has blood of many on his hands. Berezovsky later said he had been trying to overthrow the Russian government, using the UK as his base. "It shows here the hypocrisy of the British court. Berezovsky has quite clearly been involved in the mafia over the years. All sorts of very serious offences, which you may actually, quite literally, equate with terrorism, and yet he is not being extradited," says investigative journalist Tony Gosling. "And yet we see here, what appears to be anyway, a trumped-up charge of rape, which hasn't actually even come to charges in Sweden. Assange appears anyway being taken over to Sweden and there's going to be an appeal, so we will see, but there certainly does appear to show blatant political interference into the court system here in Britain and total hypocrisy from the British justice system."

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