In case you were wondering what that silliness was yesterday with the horses, camels and whips, this is what it was all about:

Images like this one were all over the corporate media yesterday. Images that depicted the protesters, who only the day before were jubilant, peaceful, even responsible as they cleaned up the trash on the streets, as dangerous and violent.
I was pretty stumped when I saw a camel riding through the Tahrir Square yesterday. Aside from the absurdity of it, I knew there was something to it. But I didn't get it until I watched the ABC and NBC nightly news broadcasts. And then I thought, oh my God.
I had realized what Mubarak and his handlers needed: footage of dangerous protesters getting violent. They needed to provoke the crowd enough to broadcast to the world the idea that, far from being peaceful citizens, these were violent radicals who will destabilize the Middle East if they ever get within a mile of the Heliopolis Palace.
To those of us who are in the know, this may sound like a foolish idea that will never work. Everyone will see through this charade and it will back fire. At least that's what I would have thought. Until I watched the "news".
On network after network, ABC, NBC, CNN, and I won't even mention Fox, talking heads accommodated the Mubarak gambit by being deliberately ambiguous about who was "clashing" with who. And while there were certainly some exceptions of news commentators making it quite clear that these were Mubarak's men causing the violence, the overall coverage has been incredibly misleading.
Headline after headline referred to the events yesterday as clashes between two sides, as though there were equal factions on both sides. One particularly egregious example was a story on CNN's site that, even as Anderson Cooper's video of him explaining how "pro-Mubarak" thugs beat him in the head was still rolling, referred to said thugs as "protesters."
Slowly it became clear to me that this was a massive PR job. Someone actually sat around and gamed out the whole horses and whips stunt. Provoke the violence, and then turn the internet back on. 'We'll show the world a different view of these demonstrators.
Again, all of this may seem desperate and foolish amongst the well informed here. Build on some narrative of Mubarak as a victim against violent radicals, who must be part of Al Qaeda? What purpose could this scheme possibly serve? No one's going to buy it, right?
It wasn't until I watched the evening news that I got it. They, Mubarak's handlers, who I doubt are even Egyptian, were setting up a rationalization for what Mubarak and his henchmen were about to do. And the only thing that would require such a setup was a violent assault on those men, women and children gathered in Tahrir Square and elsewhere across the country. And while we may be looking right through such a stunt for what it really is, those millions of network news viewers, local paper readers, and other victims of the complete corporate media disinformation complex will buy it. It's just like Iraq WMDs. We were having our heads explode by the BS coming out of the Washington establishment. But the poor bastards out in tvland believed that Saddam Hussein was the most dangerous man on Earth.
Like most of us, I have pinned a lot of hopes on this peaceful revolution. Success in Egypt could be a powerful catalyst for dramatic change throughout the world as peoples everywhere repudiate and reject neoliberalism, militarism, and anti-democratic oppression. I mean, let's face it, this is a Wall Street-Davos revolution too. I want these people to succeed on so many levels...
I have also begun to personally identify with these courageous, heroic people who have put everything on the line for this movement. It's easy to forget how dangerous it was showing up on Jan. 25th. It took a willingness to die, or worse, be brutally tortured as so many before them had been.
But for the first time in a week, I am truly scared for these people. I don't know what's about to happen. Maybe someone or some event will intervene. But I have absolutely no doubt that the stunt we witnessed Wednesday was a setup for a violent escalation. A way to create a justification to bring out the cannons. Whether it comes to that is unknowable. But the pieces have, and are being moved into position.
I only hope that the demonstrators don't take the bait. As Gandhi knew well, if they fight fire with fire, they will most likely lose.
UPDATE: I just saw on Al Jazeera English that there is machine gun fire this morning in Tahrir Square. Military allowing shooters on roofs of buildings.
UPDATE 2: Reports of over 600 injured.
I'm afraid this diary may be coming true. Today will determine everything I fear.
Reports of dead and injured.