© AP
"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday (as translated by the indispensable Sultan Sooud al Qassemi; bold ours).
Yeah - it gets harder and harder to maintain a moral high ground when videos like this and pictures like this are unavoidable. But American police haven't killed anyone! Indeed! That's definitely something worth bragging about: so far, cops here have only sent a single person to the hospital with brain damage. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Meanwhile, in Egypt, the protesters - mostly young liberal activists and Islamists - are engaging in "running street battles" with police after shutting down Cairo's busiest square. In particular, they're protesting the proposed principles for a new constitution - under which "the military [and its budget] would be exempted from civilian oversight."
Update: Just as we hit "publish" on this post, authorities launched a major assault on Tahrir Square in an attempt to evict it of protesters. Al-Jazeera has a live feed here.
[BBC, @SultanAlQassemi, Al Jazeera; image via AP]
The military played friendly earlier; now they aren't.
So did something in the military change? Or did they want a coup all along?
One difference: Ties between the military and local police are strong in many other countries. Soldiers may even actively engage in local policing. In the US it hasn't broken down that much yet.
We can more or less assume that when violence erupts anywhere on the planet (in a major public way) that the criminal interests are behind it. So we can interpret violence at protests to be attempts to stop or depower the peaceful freedom movements.
If the Egyptian military was not under the influence of the criminal groups before, it is now.
In some of the other countries the situation is less clear, as "rebel" groups seem to be attacking government positions.
Armed rebellion would tend to indicate a higher-level desire to replace the current government for some reason. "Revolution" is the perfect cover for such an operation. Higher-level powers may not be interested in using rebel personnel in the replacement government. So the rebels have to retain a "dirty" enough image to allow for them to be infiltrated in some sort of "clean up" operation.
We can never assume that armed revolution reflects true popular sentiment. The public in general tend to avoid armed violence. So it is more likely that any show of armed violence from any group has been instigated by the criminals for their own purposes.