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Sheik al-Torture

The protests continue in Egypt. All too sadly the US is again backing the wrong horse.

"The Egyptian revolution is being dissolved right in front of the world's eyes by an optical illusion.

The protesters who have been on the streets for two weeks still want President Hosni Mubarak out. Now. Yet United States President Barack Obama is firmly in not-so-fast mode, glad that "Egypt is making progress". Obama has not mentioned even once the capital words "free elections".

Washington's "orderly transition" road map - fully supported by Tel Aviv and European capitals - is a facelift. Mubarak stepping down has become an afterthought; the already anointed successor is

Sheik al-Torture already behaves as a president - while the actual president is still inhabiting his palace, but as a ghost. The regime, a brutal military dictatorship, remains an immovable subject - even while being denounced by the protesters as illegitimate from A to Z, from the executive to the legislative. The key point is that acting president Suleiman is the regime. If French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was alive, he would say this revolution never took place - except on the world's television screens."

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