The Egyptian revolution has been highjacked

Back when Hosni Mubarak was in power, he would always try to play himself off as the brave secularist standing in the way of the Islamic radicals who may or may not have been trying to nudge their way into power and shit on everything. That's how he scared the people into submission, that's why they couldn't have democracy. So the two main political forces in Egypt for the last few decades has been Mubarak the secularist dictator, and right wing Islamists (whose parties were banned by the state). Egyptians are voting today. And it doesn't look like this political makeup has changed at all. That's very unfortunate, because that means it's lose-lose.

Out of the 13 candidates on the ballot, there are five major ones who come out on top. Two of them are former Mubarak Ministers. Two more are rival Islamists. There's only one secular leftist, and he probably doesn't have much of a chance. The leftists -- the heroes and martyrs who got the revolution rolling, whose actions are why this election is happening at all -- have been shunted. Last fall, the Islamist parties altogether took about 70% of Parliament, and with the help of the military junta completely shut the leftists out. Mohamed ElBaradei, considered a hero to the revolutionaries, stepped down from his position and vowed not to run for president because he didn't feel the revolution had been won. There's actually a huge split among Egyptian leftists on whether they should boycott this election.

But good news! It doesn't matter who "wins" at all! Nobody knows what powers the president is actually going to have, as nobody bothered to write up a constitution! So it's almost certain that whoever wins is going to be taking orders from the military junta. ElBaradei was right. The revolution was never concluded. There are too many Mubarak men still in power. And going to the realm of speculation, I'd bet a good deal of money that the United States has a large hand in this. Mubarak was our ally, we're not just going to let Egypt go to decide its own fate. American fascists were screaming their heads off all those months ago about Obama "losing Egypt," as if it was ever "our" country in the first place. Joe Biden said: "Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator." Cool! I like how absolutely none of those things excludes him from being a dictator.

Mubarak and the Egyptian military have always been exceptionally close to the U.S. The Obama administration gave $1.5 billion in aid to the Egyptian military junta, bypassing congressional requirements for democracy. The west is doing everything its power to retain as much of the Mubarak regime as is possible, and it's working. Thanks entirely to intervention from the major powers, it looks like Tunisia is going to be the only country in the Arab Spring to win something close to freedom.

Here's a great interview on Democracy Now from this morning breaking down the election.