[This post originally appeared at Asia Times Online on August 22, 2013 as "Denial Is Not Just a River in Egypt".  I've expanded and clarified the original piece considerably, especially in material pertaining to Golden Shield and the Great Firewall, with the additions shown in red.  This piece may be reposted if ATOl is credited... Read More

Recent events in Egypt provide significant food for thought for China policy idealists and realists. The liberal West’s chosen panacea for China—millions of young people taking to the streets and voicing democratic slogans—produced an embarrassing military coup and an appalling massacre in Egypt. If news reports can be trusted, there is a distinct lack of... Read More

Egypt’s US-financed armed forces have gone to war against Egypt’s people. Arab spring has become Arab winter. So far, army and security police have scored brilliant battlefield victories against unarmed men, women and children, killing and wounding thousands who were demanding a return to democratic government. The latest Cairo protests by supporters of the elected... Read More

I have argued that what has just happened in Egypt is a bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by a military junta responsible for a coup that is not a coup, under the guise of an Egyptian "war on terror". Yet this newspeak gambit - which easily could have been written at the White... Read More

There are interesting parallels between the liberal disgruntlement with Edward Snowden (typified by  Melissa Harris-Perry’s anti-Snowden screed on MSNBC) and the right’s beatdown of Al Gore’s physique and carbon footprint on the global warming issue. The argument seems to be, unless the bearer of unwelcome tidings can demonstrate 100% plaster sainthood to his or her... Read More

The real story behind the military coup in Cairo led by General al-Sissi is much more complex than the western media is reporting. Far from a spontaneous uprising by Egyptians, – aka “a people’s revolution” – what really happened was a putsch orchestrated by Egypt’s “deep government” and outside powers – the latest phase of... Read More

A year ago, I was mixing with demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square calling for an end to Mubarak’s dictatorship and democracy for Egypt’s 84 million people. Being a natural-born firebrand, I find most revolutions intoxicating – if almost inevitably disappointing or even ghastly. What a difference a year makes. Tahrir Square is now packed with... Read More

You'd better not mess with Muslim Brother Morsi. Straight out of "communist" China - where he secured a red carpet welcome from President Hu Jintao and vice-president Xi Jinping - the Egyptian president lands in "evil" Iran as a true Arab world leader. [1] Imagine conducting a poll in Tampa, Florida, among delegates at the... Read More

The recent killing of 16 Egyptian military police by militants in Sinai, part of an unsuccessful attempted penetration of the nearby Israeli border using a captured armored personnel carrier, appears to have been carried out by jihadi groups from the north of the peninsula along with Palestinians infiltrated from Gaza. But is the accepted narrative... Read More

The whole Arab world, and the whole world for that matter, was eager to know what the newly elected president of Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood (MB) cadre Mohammed Morsi, had to say about foreign policy in his victory speech. Talk about an anti-climax. He briefly mentioned Egypt would respect its "international agreements" - code for the... Read More

Remember the euphoria early last year when long-established police states across the Arab world were tumbling down. Facile comparisons were made with the fall of communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989. Commentators spoke glibly of irrepressible political change in the age of the internet, social media and satellite television. Regime change from Tunisia to... Read More

The second, decisive round of Egypt’s presidential election will be held 16 and 17 June. If former general and Mubarak regime stalwart Ahmad Shafiq somehow wins, it’s almost certain the vote was manipulated. A huge popular explosion in Egypt will very likely ensue. Egyptians are already furious their first democratic election of a president was... Read More

Rudyard Kipling's caustic verses denouncing the corruption of state officials sound as sharp and relevant today as they did in 1886. He drew examples from ancient Egypt, though his experience was in British-ruled India where things were supposedly better run. But Egyptians today should see nothing much to complain of in his picture of Egypt,... Read More

Cairo It is a gun battle people in the Shubra district in central Cairo still talk about six months after it happened. In a dispute over a piece of land he had seized amid the small shops and densely crowded streets, Mohammed Shaban, who had escaped from prison during the revolution, challenged the police to... Read More

Cairo The death of Pope Shenouda, who led Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church for 40 years, has increased fears among Copts that they will face persecution and discrimination as Islamic parties become more powerful. Hundreds of thousands of mourners, many crying, packed the streets around St Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo Tuesday as they waited to file... Read More

The staff of US democracy promotion NGOs, including the son of Transportation Secretary Lahood, are currently experiencing legal travails in Egypt. The Egyptian junta is well aware that democratic agitation abetted by the National Endowment for Democracy, the IRI, and the NDI is often employed to install new regimes when local strongmen running quasi-democracies (featuring... Read More

Last Monday, Egyptians celebrated the first anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the 30-year Mubarak regime. By contrast, America’s reaction this historic event was tellingly muted. Egypt contains a quarter of the Arab world’s people. In Egypt, the US had a golden opportunity to encourage genuine democracy. Instead, it long opposed demands by Egyptians for... Read More

CAIRO – Tahrir Square, epicenter of the earthquake that ousted Egypt’s western-backed dictator, Husni Mubarak, is quiet – for the moment. There are banner-wavers, speakers, and youngsters milling about. But the by now world-famous square has a forlorn, leftover look, with more street people than revolutionaries. Violence crackles like static electricity. Heavily armed riot and... Read More

CAIRO – Standing at Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt’s revolution, is exciting and intimidating. The explosive anger, pent-up frustrations, and yearning for revenge of tens of thousands of demonstrators and onlookers breaks like waves across this vast, unsightly plaza. This is the raw material of all revolutions. The whiff of near-toxic riot gas supplied... Read More

Cairo Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip last week in a radical move that upends the 30-year-old alliance between the US, Israel and Egypt under the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian foreign minister described the blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza as “disgusting”. Soon Egypt will reopen diplomatic links with... Read More

Egypt has opened to the public the tombs of leading retainers of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun at Saqqara, south of Cairo, in a desperate bid to lure back tourists who have avoided the country since the revolt in February that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Unemployed guides at Saqqara, one of the great archaeological sites of the... Read More

The former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is to be tried for conspiring to kill demonstrators whose protests brought an end to his 30-year rule. The move by the military government is seen as an attempt to satisfy growing popular anger in Egypt at its failure, since taking over from 83-year-old Mubarak on February 11, to... Read More

Cairo "I shouldn't have told them I am a Copt," says Hani Armanius Agib, recalling how his admission, as he tried to join a Coptic demonstration, that he is a Christian to a crowd of Muslims led to him being beaten up and his wallet and mobile phone stolen. Taken to hospital, he was arrested... Read More