Intifada Palestine

by BBC’s Helena Merriman
The BBC’s Helena Merriman says police were beating protesters – “about 20 or 30 of them I saw, covered in blood”

Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
it was in the 1970-80s that many of the Arab states born in the aftermath of the First World War were transformed into police states, run by autocratic rulers who enriched themselves at the expense of the common good. Now, the Tunisian and Egyptian movements have overthrown two such rulers, and the Arabs as a people have asserted their humanity and regained their dignity.

Suleiman, long the powerful chief of Egypt’s intelligence services, has served — perhaps even more so than Mubarak — as the guarantor of Egypt’s regional role in maintaining the American- and Israeli-dominated order. As author Jane Mayer has documented, Suleiman played a key role in the US “rendition” program, working closely with the CIA which kidnapped “terror suspects” from around the world and delivered them into Suleiman’s hands for interrogation, and almost certainly torture.