Neither Washington nor Morsi...

Here's a letter from Tony Greenstein to The Independent:

The silence of western leaders in the face of the Egyptian massacres is deafening. It is proof, if any were needed, that western foreign policy uses “democracy” as a figleaf for the control of resources and other states.

If it were China or Zimbabwe under Mugabe which had murdered 2,000 unarmed demonstrators, firing machine guns to disperse protesters, Obama and his poodle Cameron would have been the first to wax lyrical about the benefits of western democracy.Instead Obama can’t decide whether or not a military overthrow of an elected government constitutes a coup!

Absurdly, General Sisi considers himself another Gamal Abdel Nasser, forgetting that Nasser took on British and French imperialism by nationalising the Suez Canal. Sisi’s regime murders its own citizens instead.

None of this is to exonerate the government of Mohammed Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood is a backward, reactionary party, which is opposed to freedom for women or workers. It sought to make Sharia law the law governing Egypt and Morsi an unaccountable dictator. However it was for the Egyptian people to remove the Brotherhood’s government, not the army.

Tony Greenstein, Brighton

There you go, neither Washington nor Morsi.

Tony Greenstein expands on his points on his own blog here.

Obama, Mubarak and the Brothers

I'm just trying to piece reports together here.  I said before that I think Obama will try to co-opt the Brotherhood.  Then I heard/saw on Channel 4 news that Obama is backing Mubarak though I couldn't find that report in so many words on the C4 news website.  And now Voice of America is saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is in talks with Mubarak's Vice-President:

Egypt's largest opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, says it will begin talks with with Egypt's Vice President Omar Suleiman on the public's right to protest safely and the possible exit of President Hosni Mubarak, who has held office for 30 years.

Suleiman has met with other opposition supporters, but this would be the first time the Muslim Brotherhood has taken part.

Could be something, could be nothing but I think it is something.

Will US collude with the Brotherhood in Egypt?

I was thinking that just recently.  The Muslim Brotherhood kept out of the Egyptian fray until the rising looked unstoppable.  Hamas wouldn't allow solidarity with Egypt demonstrations until the Brotherhood was on board.  Such opportunism ought to be grist to the American imperial mill.  I don't do punditry so I kept these thoughts to myself until I just read this Guardian article by Noam Chomsky:

A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).

So now I really am wondering whether the US will support the Muslim Brotherhood.