We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Bloodbath in Egypt: the authoritarian state lingers

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.
The horrifying bloodshed following the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood reveals that Egypt’s true oppressors have never truly been removed from power.
Some Egyptians understand this, but many still do not. The revolution in Egypt depends on the battle of perceptions and ideas. The revolutionary process continues. 

Meanwhile in this recent attack on demonstrators by the Egyptian army, there are many questions.
While there is still a major dispute over how the violence started, and whether or not armed Brotherhood supporters initiated the attacks by firing at security forces, independent witness accounts and international media reports seem to indicate that most gunfire ended up being directed towards a sit-in of peaceful protesters. No state officials are reported to have been killed in the clashes, which lasted for 8 hours and continued all night.
There have been numerous reports surfacing which allege sitings of snipers being used against Muslim Brotherhood protestors (see this, this, and this).  

Over the past several years I've been noticing reports of unknown snipers being spotted in many other troubled areas of the world. I recall Mahdi Nazemroaya, a Canadian journalist, who reported about snipers while trapped in a hotel in Libya in August 2011.  (See first video regarding a video phone interview with Nazemroaya in article that I posted on August 22nd at segments 0:55 - 1:18 and 4:55 - 6:55m.) See also this and this.

It seems that this is a standard destabilization tactic used against targeted countries by agents of the Empire. In Egypt I think it is likely being used to terrorize the Muslim Brotherhood into submission or to incite a civil war, and to cause the rest of the population to turn to the Army to secure peace regardless of the policies of the latter. This Empire terrorist strategy is known as the Salvador Option.

The US has a criminal record of training and sponsoring terrorists through its School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia. Graduate from these schools have gone on to promote death squads in many countries in Latin America and other places.