2011/02/13

The Winds of Change are blowing, and Egyptians lead the way!!

Just listen to that roar, urged a CNN correspondent in Egypt, as thousands of Egyptian protesters charged, fists pumped, against hundreds of armed Egyptian security forces. I can certainly sympathize with their sentiment, since I had that same spiritually uplifting feeling when I saw the Berlin wall fall to the anger of Germans only a few years ago. I was born in Germany, to be exact in Breslau, a city that is now in Poland. "The times are changing", and British MP George Galloway's comment about the Arab lion roaring again seems truer by the day. The Egyptians have revolted in style, and their revolution will go down in history books with such with such adjectives as "great", "noble" and "historic". Truth be told, Arabs have had their fair share of conjured "revolutions". Arab regimes have always been generous in how they ascribed the loaded term to their military coups or other stunts designed to impress or intimidate the masses: Any modern history of the Arab world will reveal an abundant number of "revolutions". The label has been useful for those who dared to criticize a regime, or demanded BASIC rights such as food, and who could then be dubbed "enemies" of whatever make-believe revolution the men in power championed. Innumerable Arab political prisoners were designated "enemies of the revolution", and they paid a heavy price for their "crimes". In Egypt alone, rough estimates put the number of political prisoners at 20,000. In other words: So what else is "new".

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