John Pilger: Welcome to the Violent World of Mr. Hopey Changey!

When Britain lost control of Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser "destroyed or murdered" At the time, he didn't give a damn if there might be anarchy and chaos in Egypt. Another mealymouthed politician, Winston Churchill, whose work I saw first hand, when I watched the destruction of Dresden from a nearby hill, spoke of "insolent Arabs, which should be driven into the gutter, from which they should never have emerged". The language of colonialism may have been modified, but its spirit and hypocrisy are 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. The loss of Egypt's Mubarak was grievous, though not irretrievable - an American-backed counter-revolution is under way, as the military regime in Cairo is seduced with new bribes and power-shifting from the street to political groups that did not initiate the revolution. The western aim, as ever, is to stop authentic democracy and reclaim control: Libya is the immediate opportunity. The NATO attack on Libya, with the UN Security Council assigned to mandate a bogus "no fly zone" to "protect civilians", is strikingly similar to the final destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999. There was no UN cover for the bombing of Serbia and the rescue of Kosovo, yet that propaganda still echoes today! Like Slobodan Milosevic, Muammar Gaddafi is the "new Hitler", plotting genocide against his people, but wait: NATO is doing that for him!