It has long been axiomatic that revolutions occur when the ruling class cannot continue to rule in the old way and the masses refuse to live in the old way. Events currently taking place throughout the Arab world bear this out. At time of writing Hosni Mubarak’s regime is teetering on the brink, but no one should make the mistake of believing that this has come out of the blue.
On the contrary, what we are witnessing in Egypt is a process which began when Sadat first turned his back on the Arab masses and sold himself and Egypt to US imperialism back in 1977. This ushered in an era of autocracy and autocracy, as history tells us, is the sine qua non of US imperialism, its favoured method of government when it comes to its many satellite states. Indeed it is the only way in which those states are able to maintain themselves in power at the expense of their own people, creating contradictions which eventually and inevitably reach the point of combustion.
What we are seeing taking place in Egypt, what we have already seen take place in Tunisia, and what threatens to consume the entire Arab world, is exactly that. In other words, a part of the world whose destiny has for too long been controlled by Washington is experiencing the birth pangs of a new era.