Palestinian Pundit: The toxic residue of colonialism http://palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2011/02/toxic-residue-of-colonialism.html

'At least, overtly, there has been no talk from either Washington or Tel Aviv - the governments with most to lose as the Egyptian revolution unfolds - of military intervention. Such restraint is more expressive of geopolitical sanity than postcolonial morality, but still it enables some measure of change to take place that unsettles, temporarily at least, the established political order.

And yet, by means seen and unseen, external actors, especially the United States, with a distinct American blend of presumed imperial and paternal prerogatives are seeking to shape and limit the outcome of this extraordinary uprising of the Egyptian people, long held in subsidised bondage by the cruel and corrupt Mubarak dictatorship. What is the most defining feature of this American-led diplomacy-from-without is the seeming propriety of managing the turmoil, so that the regime survives and the demonstrators return to what is perversely being called 'normalcy'."