So the repressive and undemocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak is under threat from those whose lives it has made unbearable. But you can't find out about it via the Internet. CNN at least had some footage from Alexandria where there correspondent reported crowds heavily outnumbering an apparently fairly lightly armed police force. So if you can afford satellite links you can still get information out of Egypt.

The thing is, in America the media are by and large complicit with the established political parties in shaping the news so that certain kinds of change become difficult or impossible. Since the media is dominated by large corporations they want to encourage corporate benefits that they can profit from, and this means a conflict of interest which in any ethical and educated world would have them laughed out of credibility.

There seems to be "something wrong with the state of Denmark" if people are looking to Comedy Central for more informed political comment than they can get from most major networks.

Also consider the ready compliance of the telephone companies with W's administration when it requested access to information that amounted to illegal spying on US citizens. The administration as good as admitted that when it persuaded Congress to grant the telcos legal immunity (legislation supported by candidate Obama, who apparently wasn't in favor of the kind of change that meant bringing corporate and executive lawbreakers to justice). Yet the public still acquiesced to the convenient fantasy that democratic elections give the people freedom.

One might almost say "horseshit".

Freedoms must be exercised to be maintained, and my personal experience of the last decade and a half in the USA is that erosion of civil liberties should be expected from both "sides" of the political spectrum. It is almost as though George Orwell's vision of Animal Farm has come true, and the pigs have turned into farmers.

Nobody holds out any hope to the downtrodden: it's all about middle class property values, and the underclasses can be ignored because of their lack of political power (illegal immigrants are great when you want people to keep their mouths closed, because they are naturally averse to any authority and want to give as little information as possible). Look at the economic exploitation that takes place and it really is not so different from the tenets of slavery.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And when did we last have a government that was on the side of the poor?