EXCERPT:
London School of Economics professor Fawaz Gerges has pointed out all this "goes beyond Mubarak. The barrier of fear has been removed. It is really the beginning of the end of the status quo in the region." It is in fact bigger; it's a graphic example of grassroots, organic political activism.
Or, in the elite speak of US foreign policy guru Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, this is his dreaded "global political awakening" in action - the Generation Y across the developing world, angry, restless, outraged, emotionally shattered, mostly unemployed, stripped of their dignity, acting out their revolutionary potential and turning the status quo upside down (even with the Pharaoh promoting the biggest Internet blackout in history).
As much as Kefaya was the spark, this was also a Facebook revolution - now renamed in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez as Sawrabook ("the book of the revolution"). The RASD ("monitoring", in Arabic) network was launched at the very first day of the protests, last Tuesday, configured as a sort of "observatory of the revolution".
It's crucial to note that at the time - less than a long week ago - al-Jazeera was not even on the scene and Egyptian state TV was showing, as usual, faded black and white movies. In only three days, RASD networked 400,000 people in Egypt and abroad. When the Pharaoh regime woke up it was already too late - Internet shutdown and all.
It's this spirit of solidarity in action that has spilled over to the streets in the form of young activists operating landline phones, documenting injuries or setting up impromptu clinics. Or in the form of average Cairo residents boarding up their homes and setting up neighborhood watches to protect themselves from looters and thugs - widely reported by bloggers to be carrying security services IDs and Mubarak regime-issued weapons.
As alarmed as the rarified global elites may be by now - one just has to follow the labyrinth of ambiguities oozing from Washington and European capitals - at least Brzezinski has been wired enough to catch the drift, as in "major world powers, new and old ... face a novel reality: while the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low."
The new order is dying, but the new has not yet been born. The Age of Rage in the arc from Northern Africa to the Middle East may be on - but still no one knows what the next geopolitical configuration will be. Will people have a say - or will it all be corralled and controlled by the powers that be?
Egypt won't become a working democracy because of lack of political infrastructure. But it has to restart from scratch, with most of the opposition almost as reviled as the regime. The younger generation - empowered by the feeling of being on the right side of history - will be crucial.
They won't accept an optical illusion of regime change that ensures continuous "stability". They won't accept being hijacked by the US and Europe and presented with a new puppet. What they want is the shock of the new; a truly sovereign government, no more neo-liberalism, and a new Middle East political order. Expect the counter-revolution to be fierce. And extending way beyond a few bunkers in Cairo.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
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