New shipments of teargas from the US to Egypt's dictatorship

Indications are growing that the US, with its current client dictatorship in Egypt and supported by the full spectrum of the US political class, from left to right, hopes to impose on Egypt a constrained democracy, where some issues are within the purview of elected bodies, but others, those of importance to the United States, which is mostly to say issues related to Israel, remain under the control of the pro-US dictator.

This is similar to the arrangement, qualified independence, that Imperial Great Britain offered Egypt as reform in 1922. It is also similar to the arrangements in Morocco and Kuwait, that Juan Cole approvingly cites Freedom House as calling "partly free". This arrangement is what Thomas Friedman or Charlie Rose are effectively advocating when they say that the Arab Spring "isn't about Israel".

What they mean, but won't say because of its implications, is that non-Jewish people in Israel's region don't deserve full local control of their governments' policies. They should be satisfied with a "partly free" government that can control issues of less importance to them. This is not a right-wing view, but is the position of the colonialist left, from Juan Cole and Barack Obama across to the colonialist right of George Bush and John McCain.

It is a bigoted position, a racist position. But Juan Cole, Barack Obama, George Bush and John McCain are bigots, racists. No more or less than Winston Churchill and Cecil Rhodes of previous colonial eras.

It is in this context that we look at the United States resupplying the Egyptian dictatorship with tear gas.

A group of employees at the Adabiya Seaport in Suez have confirmed, with the documents to prove it, that a three-stage shipment of in total 21 tons of tear gas canisters is on course for the port from the American port of Wilmington.

Employees say the container ship Danica, carrying seven tons of tear-gas canisters made by the American company Combined Systems, has already arrived at the port, with two similar shipments from the same company expected to arrive within the week.

And the dictatorship, now that the order has been exposed, is moving to receive the teargas.

A shipment of anti-riot material imported by the Interior Ministry from the United States was released upon orders, a senior official in Suez, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

He added that the employees were reluctant to release the shipment, in solidarity with the victims of last week’s violence in Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmoud Street.

This is the evil of our time. The colonialism that is necessary for Israel to be viable is to 2011 what slavery was to 1811. It can be argued that both are or were symptoms of larger phenomena but on their own each extracts too large a cost in human suffering, such as the deaths in Tahrir Square of Egyptians resisting pro-US dictatorships both back in January and last week.