Egyptian military junta carries out deadly crackdown on protesters

international | anti-capitalism | other press

Tuesday November 22, 2011 13:25

by pat c

Johannes Stern writes on how the US client Military Junta in Egypt has carried out a murderous attack on protesters. Interestingly: State TV cited US police actions against Occupy Wall Street protests to justify the repression of protests on Tahrir Square. Tellingly, many of the tear gas canisters used against Egyptian protesters were made in the US. Full text at link.

The US views the military as the backbone of the Egyptian bourgeois state, defending capitalist rule and the interests of Western imperialism in the Middle East. Ever since the mass uprising that led to the ouster of Mubarak on February 11, the Obama administration has worked closely with SCAF to try to end strikes and protests by Egyptian workers demanding social equality and democratic rights. It has sought at all costs to prevent a second revolution.

Screen shot from video of crowds in Cairo.

This fear of an independent movement of the Egyptian working class is shared by the entire Egyptian ruling elite. After the fall of Mubarak, all official and semi-official political forces—be they Islamist, liberal or petty-bourgeois “left”—lent support to the military junta and claimed that Mubarak’s generals would organize a “democratic transition.”

2nd Screen shot from video of crowds in Cairo.