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

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Best articles I could find on the Egyptian crisis

Below I am posting the best articles I could find this morning on the ongoing Egyptian political crisis. 

It seems to me what we are seeing in this crisis is another example of factional or tribal organizing. In this case the Muslim Brotherhood, who suffered many years of suppression by the Mubarak regime, won a narrow victory in the recent elections. This apparently was due to the fact that they maintained a highly organized structure whereas most of the rest of Egyptian society was unorganized. But, given a narrow sectarian outlook and having attained power, they now wish to impose their views and interests on the rest of Egyptian society. With political power as a self-reinforcing dynamic, they then went for more power by securing the backing of the US Empire and its leading financial weapon, the IMF.

So long as people organize around factional, sectarian, or tribal interests, they will always end up fighting other such interests; and worse, they will be encouraged in this inter-factional conflict by agents of the Empire who love to use the old tried and true method of divide and conquer. Thus, the basic lesson that 99 Percent humanity needs in order to survive and prevent the descent into barbarism is to learn how to organize on a completely inclusive and universal basis.