What is now happening in Egypt is a reminiscence of the 1989 Romanian Revolution that overthrew Romania's president for life Nicolae Ceausescu. He had kept his country under the same social conditions as Mubarak today: poverty; corruption; brutal police and internal intelligence apparatuses to stifle any dissent; a backward economy because all the resources of the economy were allocated to preserve a police state in power, and total disregard for the suffering and desperation of the Romanian population. Egypt is today what Romania was in 1989 when a similar revolution swept Ceausescu away - and into a firing squad.

But Mubarak is harder to unseat than Nicolae Ceausescu because the U.S. is pulling all the stops to keep Mubarak in power. Regardless the hypocritical statements of Obama that the
"future of Egypt belongs to the Egyptian people," the U.S. is working behind the scenes to preserve Mubarak in power. And the fact that Mubarak appointed as VP the Egyptian Intelligence Chief, Omar Suleiman, who has extensive cooperation with the CIA, has lived and trained in the U.S., and has traveled repeatedly to the U.S. to coordinated suppression of Egyptian dissent, proves that the U.S. is actively trying to stifle the Egyptian Revolution by appointing its own lackeys at the top to shore up Mubarak. And now news from Egypt report that military helicopters and aircraft flying low and buzzing the demonstrators to stifle them into submission. Plus, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Sunday's TV shows today that she wants Mubarak to make amends, while the Egyptians want "Mubarak out." And a republican lawmaker said that Mubarak should [stay in power] and hold new elections! Both U.S. positions are insult-to-injury to the Egyptian people, and the blood they have shed so far - about 100 dead and thousands of injuries according to various reports, although no one knows the real numbers. Mubarak had elections about two months ago and he was elected with a landslide, because his party controls and stuff the ballot boxes. No matter what vote goes into the boxes, only the Mubarak name comes out!

I have no doubt that the U.S. will plot to keep Mubarak in power at any cost, especially now that the king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia came out with a strong support for Mubarak. King Abdullah pushed the U.S. "to bomb Iran, and cut the head of the snake," according to Wikileaks. I have no doubt that he is pushing the U.S. now to stifle the Egyptian revolt before it spreads to his kingdom, as I have no doubt that he tells the U.S. "bomb those bastards," the Egyptian demonstrators. The fact that military aircrafts and helicopters buzzed the Egyptian demonstrators is reminiscent of a show of force attempted in the last hours of the 1979 Iranian revolution by the Shah's henchman Shapour Bahtiar to save the Shah Reza Pahlevi.
And I believe it was orchestrated by the new Mubarak henchman, Omar Suleiman, to save Mubarak! But that desperate attempt also tell us that the Mubarak's regime is playing its last cards before it is chased out of the country. The latest reports claims that Mubarak's and his top officials families left the country overnight.

The Egyptian people have been slaves of monarchs and kings for thousands of years. Gamal Abdel Nasser ended that slavery in 1952. But then, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia - along with Israel, found a corrupt politician, Hosni Mubarak, after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, with a dream to become a monarch and pass the monarchy on to his heirs -with his son Gamal already in line to take over from his father. Demonstrators in Cairo, however, are determined to end Mubaraks tenure and impose "presidential term limits" which is a nightmare for the U.S. And they showed reporters tear gas canisters and rubber bullets stamped "Made in USA" and shouted: "This is what the U.S. is doing to us." And those tools of internal repression of the people are called "U.S. Aid to Egypt!" It is like giving a criminal rope to hang his victims, and call that "aid" to the people who are hanged!

I, and millions of other Americans who follow hourly the drama unfolded in Egypt now, are ashamed by what our government has been doing in Egypt for 30 years, as well as what it does now to preserve in power a brutal regime against the poor people of Egypt. When a few hundreds Iranians demonstrated after the Iranian elections, the U.S. called for the overthrow of the Iranian regime. Now that millions across Egypt call for the ouster of a corrupt American Puppet, Hosni Mubarak, and demand that he should get out of the country, the U.S. tells them "he is okay, and he will mend his ways!" Then it orchestrates a show of military force with Mubarak to suffocate the will of the Egyptian people. Shame on us, America! Nikos Retsos, retired professor

Ultimately what is at stake is the citizen's of the mid east ability to garner some economic prosperity and mobility and quash the oppressive divide that has worked to date to engender US and entrenched mid east's interests. But from the US's point of view what is really at stake is their ability to retain US hegemony and the sale of a McDonald's sponsored cheese burger at some future date. How the US reacts to EGYPT will be unconditionally tempered by this fact.