John Pilger: Welcome to the Violent World of "Hope".

When Britain lost control of Egypt in 1956, the British Prime Minister Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser murdered. In 1951, Winston Churchill, the destroyer of the beautiful city of Dresden, referred to "insolent Arabs", and remarked that they should be driven into the gutter, from which they should never have emerged. Because there was no more room in Dresden for refugees from the East, my mother, grandmother, and I stood in front of a farmhouse on a hill near the doomed city, and watched Dresden, and her people die in hellish flames! Though the language of colonialism may have been modified, its spirit and hypocrisy have remained unchanged. A new "imperial phase" is unfolding in direct response to the Arab uprising that began in January, and has shocked Washington and Europe, causing an Eden-style panic. Though the loss of the Egyptian tyrant Mubarak was grievous, it was not irretrievable: There is an American-backed counter-revolution under way in Cairo, though seduced with new bribes and power-shifting from the street to political groups that did not initiate the revolution. As always, the "western" aim is to stop authentic democracy and reclaim control. Hence, the NATO attack on Libya, with the UN Security council assigned to mandate a bogus "no fly zone" to protect civilians! Having watched our US fighter planes near Trung Lap, Vietnam dropping their bombs, I am here to tell you that bombing is not an exact science!