Others have had their own popular uprisings this past week - Yemen, Algeria, Jordan - but none on the scale and magnitude of this behemoth of the Arab world.
I knew it was going to be Egypt.
After all...
- The repression of the Tunisian people is the quintessential 'picnic in the park' compared to the repression that the Egyptian people have suffered for decades now.
- Hosni Mubarak is the dictator of all dictators in the Arab world. His secret police are not reviled as being amongst the most horrific torturers in the world for nothing.
- Few other countries in the world, let alone the highly volatile Middle East, are as much in the pocket of the United States' warped and surreal foreign policy as Egypt is - and has been for decades now.
- Egypt has one of the highest youth and overall unemployment rates in the Middle East - and that means millions of disaffected and hungry people.
- Egypt has supposedly had 'high growth rates' in recent years, yet the rich get even more stinking rich and the vast swathe of poor stay the same or even get poorer. Sound familiar of late?
An oppressed people, widespread allegations of state torture, rising unemployment, rising food costs, rising fuel costs, the gulf between rich and poor getting even wider - and yet the Mubarak regime is somehow 'caught by surprise'?
Who the hell are these leaders to be so out of touch with the needs, aspirations and frustrations of so many of their citizens?!
Mubarak is a dictator, and a brutal one at that. His time has come. The man must get the hell out. Just like Ben Ali of Tunisia, he must be run out of the country.
The people of Egypt must not give up. They owe it to themselves. They owe it to every repressed person in Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Libya - the list is endless. In fact, they owe it to every one of us.
Do you get my point?
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