It's Not About Religion, It's About Bread & Dignity

The Global Revolution : Egyptians Show How To Fight Back



By Darryl Mason

For 7 days, tens of thousands of Egyptians with nothing left to lose have refused to end their protests and go back to their homes. Tonight they once again occupy Cairo's famous Tahir Square. They know now, this is it. President Mubarak refuses to quit, the country is falling into chaos, suffering massive financial losses in business & tourism, and world leaders refuse to echo protesters demands for Mubarak to get the fuck out in fear that they too may soon face the fury of the masses they've been fucking over, on behalf of the mega-wealthy. For the protesters, there's no going back. The food shortages and unemployment and poverty that drove so many Egyptians into the streets only one week ago are not going away, either.

What happens next? Will the crowds give up and go home?

It hardly seems likely. Go home to what? A nervous wait for a midnight knock on the door from Mubarak's newly invigorated police torture squads?

On Tuesday, a few hours from now, a One Million Men march is set to sweep through Cairo. Perhaps when only a few hundred thousand show up, momentum will be lost. That will certainly be the New Narrative from most of the Western media, echoing Mubarak's propaganda state news.

And after Tuesday's march? Will Mubarak will be allowed to clear the streets his way? Who will protect the people from Mubarak's police and the 'hired help' now rumoured to be flowing into Egypt? Will it be the Army Vs The Police? How many of these soon to labeled "terrorists" and "Islamists" and "extremists" will Mubarak be allowed to kill before President Obama or Prime Minister Cameron says "Enough"?

With so many foreign corporations so heavily invested in Egypt, and with the Suez Canal so close to the ever spreading uprising, it seems only a matter of time before American, British, French, Israel military arrive to protect their "national interests". First covertly, now, then publicly, a show of force against those who "choose violence over peaceful calls for democratic reform."

Cars and marketplaces exploding seem a grim inevitability, considering the stakes, the lost business, the international financial disruption that threatens other economies now, and soon even global economic stability, or what remains of it.

Madness & chaos will rule Egypt for days, if not months to come.

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The footage pouring out of Egypt, regardless of internet shutdowns & cell phone network closures, is breathtaking, historic, sad, but also inspiring.

Two examples follow.

Despite the shields, helmets and batons, a furious Egyptian man shows that a well placed shove, with some real momentum behind it, can knock even the most well armed state police off balance :



Next Egyptian protesters show how hundreds of police, and their armoured vehicles, can be driven back from a key city bridge by the furious, fearless, faithful many.

And remember, these mega-fail crowd dispersing strategies were drilled into Egyptian police by American terror-industrial corporations like Blackwater.

The Battle Of Nile Bridge. These protesters are trying to march from wealthy districts of Cairo to Tahir Square, to join the rest of the protesters. The battle lasted for more than two hours. This is urban warfare. Find 10 minutes and watch it all :



Tear gas canisters, made in the United States, were supposed to disperse that crowd, but the wind blows the gas back into police lines, and protesters douse the canisters that land amongst them quickly with bottles of water, or pick them up with protected hands and throw them into the Nile, or back at the police. They flushed their eyes quickly with Coca-Cola or vinegar & water and kept running at their oppressors, their torturers.

Those shots of protesters stopping to pray, continuing to pray even while being blasted with water cannons is instantly iconic.

There are many, many governments around the world watching how Egyptian protesters are being dealt with, and they are seeing so many of the established strategies, concocted by Western military psy-op units and Blackwater types, failing monumentally to drive the people out of the streets. Failing to restore order.

'Holy fucking shit, they're not religious extremists, that's the Egyptian middle class out there protesting and fighting police. If it can happen in Egypt, it can happen here.' Many nervous governments are thinking such things right now.

A Global Revolution?

Why not?

So many poor are even poorer, and so many recently happily middle class people have lost everything and face no brighter future than debt slavery.

And this is the new reality for hundreds of millions of well-educated, capitalist-minded people across England, Ireland, across Europe, the Middle East, the United States.

The monumentally greedy 5% have stolen the modest wealth of too many this time. They took away their jobs, their homes, their dignity. They left them with nothing left to lose.

"We did The Right Thing," the humiliated middle class say, we believed The Dream, we worked hard, we bought what you told us and we did as you told us, we made you richer than ever.

"And still you fucked us."

2011. The year of ongoing monumental natural disasters in a world of fast-spreading poverty and revolutionary chaos?

Hang on tight.


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An Essential Timeline Of The Egypt Revolt

"The Israel Foreign Ministry Issued A Directive To Key Embassies....Ambassadors Were Told To Stress To Their Host Countries The Importance Of Egypt's Stability. They Were Told To Get This Word Out As Soon As Possible"

Saudi Prince Warns Saudi Royal Family To Step Down, Flee Before Military Coup Or Popular Uprising

Wikileaks : Mubarak Arrested, Harassed Bloggers, Poets, Novelists, Journalists

Egypt Explodes

It's been a long time coming, and now it's going to be all but impossible to turn it back to the way it was. Protesters are prepared to give their lives for this fight, the Mubarak 'government' and police are not so willing.

January 25 :




January 26 :

Obama Praises Tunisian Uprising, But Falls Silent On Egypt

Keep in mind that US President Barack Obama only began praising the remarkable events in Tunisia after the US-friendly ruling family had already fled the country.

Now Egypt is on the brink of a revolution. Massive protests fill the streets, the Mubarak regime responds by cracking skulls and shutting down access to Twitter, YouTube & Facebook.

Surely Obama would support people power against a state that has used never-ending 'Emergency Rule' powers to suppress dissent and legimate opposition for decades?

Surely?

Surely not :

On Tuesday, Obama called Mubarak; according to a White House "readout," they discussed "a broad range of issues, to include the New Year's attack on a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, developments in Tunisia and Lebanon, and how best to advance Middle East peace."

According to both the statement and my own sources, here is what the two did not discuss: the need for change of any kind in Egypt. This in spite of the fact that Mubarak just staged a rigged parliamentary election in which his opposition was systematically and sometimes brutally suppressed and has scheduled a similar presidential "election" for later this year that would extend his term in office -- and Egypt's political stasis -- for another six years.

By failing to mention reform, Obama effectively placed a public U.S. bet on Mubarak's ability to prevent any spread of Tunisia's unrest. According to the White House statement, the president "shared with President Mubarak that the United States is calling for calm and an end to violence..."

...observers in Egypt and across the Middle East were quick to get the message: Obama's support for "free and fair elections" does not extend to Egypt.

Wikileaks = Death To Dictators & America's Puppet Arab Leaders?

It's all but impossible to deny that the Tunisian CableGate revelations about the corruption of that country's ruling family did not add fuel and fire to the remarkable events that exploded into a peoples' revolution and saw 'The Family' flee for their lives this month.

From PBS :

Some of the memos, which first appeared in November, were widely available in Tunisia after the WikiLeaks document dump, according to regional experts. They were translated and disseminated through private websites and social networking sites.

One overarching theme of the cables: corruption. Many refer to Ben Ali's family as "The Family," which stood above the law and ruled the country without any control or restraint from the outside. Nepotism extended to the family of Ben Ali's wife, Leila, whose numerous siblings occupied critical government position or were the owners of media, airlines, assembly plants and distribution rights, according to one cable sent to Washington from Tunis in 2008.

A U.S. Embassy cable from 2008 stated that Ben Ali's "quasi-mafia" family lived in opulence, indulging in excessive consumption and authoritarian tactics to rule the country.

"There were a lot of specific details in the cables that the public had not been exposed to before the release. There is no question that WikiLeaks added substantial evidence to the story that people already knew," said Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland.

"The WikiLeaks revelations confirmed that people surrounding president Ben Ali were corrupt and spent a lot of money. They lived in mansions and had their food delivered to them directly from France. It was happening at a time when ordinary Tunisians were struggling to find jobs and feed their families. It's a bit of Marie Antoinette-like disconnect between the people and the top," said North Africa and Mideast expert Mary-Jane Deeb.

This disconnect is what angered the many Tunisians that took to the streets in the final days of Ben Ali's presidency, she said. For days they demanded jobs and free speech and the removal of Ben Ali, who had been in office for 23 years.

Analysts agree that Tunisians in general were aware of the rampant corruption and plutocracy of Ben Ali's family, but the U.S. cables from Tunis added definition to the problems.

Read The Full Story Here

Mute the sound on this video, taken during the Southeast Queensland floods last week, before you watch it. The music destroys the atmosphere, there should be silence, the only sound that of water lapping.

Hey Gun Massacre Guy! We're Gonna Make You Famous! Just Like You Wanted!

By Darryl Mason

It was once forbidden in newspaper journalism to write that someone had committed suicide, even if they were famous, a prime minister, a movie star. The fear, based in what has long seemed to be pretty solid evidence, is that reports of suicides, particularly famous suicides, inspires more suicides. The Copy Cat Effect.

It was also once believed that killing sprees, particularly gun massacres, in the news inspired yet more gun massacres, especially so if the news media coverage went ballistic.

Overkill = More Kills.

From Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, only last year :



You have to wonder if other news media, besides CNN, know this is true and go hard and heavy on pumping up The Name & Fame of mass killers, not only because American gun massacres can be ratings blitzkriegs, but because such heavy rotation notorious-making killporn will keep those gun massacres coming, if only for a short while.

What other explanation could there be for what we've seen across the news media spectrum after the Arizona assassinations?

Think of those warnings from the forensic psychologist above as you watch the evening news tonight on the Arizona assassinations, and tomorrow night, the night after, when another American gun massacre will probably have killed many more if that psychologist's predictions turn out to be all too true.

Who should be blamed then? Politicians? Bloggers? Or the hypersterical news media?

A close friend of the alleged Arizona assassin :

"I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that."

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There's so much to say about this wonderful, brilliant lecture by Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy author Douglas Adams, but I'm not going to spoil any of it. Just get through the first 10 minutes or so and you'll find it almost impossible to stop listening. I had to tear myself away from it at 3am, and the first thing I did on rising at 7am was go straight back to it. As soon as work is done, I'm watching it again.

Enjoy fellow twig enthusiasts!

Extraordinary.