“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” The disembowelment which prefaces Diderot’s notorious admonition seems to escape modern spiritualists who presume to advise revolutionaries. Do they think mankind has transcended rationalism? We haven’t even overcome feudalism.

First the Egyptian military brokered a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, where the Left candidate was pushed off and out of the runoff. The Muslim Brotherhood seemed to think that they were then going to be allowed to SHARE power with the US-made military monster that has ruled Egypt for decades, hiding the generals’ rule behind Mubarak, the now dying ex-dictator.

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This is the Revolutionary Movement the US, its ally Saudi Arabia, and the US corporate media do not want us to see or hear about… A huge rally in Bahrain. The US hates Iranian influence in the Middle East because it is anti US imperialist, and wants us all to forget about this Iranian supported Revolutionary Movement in Bahrain. The US ally for its anti Bahrainian people policy is the reactionary government of Saudi Arabia.

Camila Vallejo, Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright, Cynthia McKinney, Kathy Kelly, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Bernardine Dorhn …an exhaustive list of the dominance of women among activist leaders would go on and on, back to earlier waves of influential organizers, Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Hellen Keller, Emma Goldman, Harriet Tubman, Louise Michel.

I believe it, don’t you? No patronizing flattery here –but also IMO what’s behind the diversionary War On Women with its ready- made astroturf battle stations.

Some juxtaposition, don’t you think? Patrick Henry’s call to arms Give me liberty or give me death mashed up with the Goddamn Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It sure puts passivism into religious perspective. It’s the fog of the opiate of masses, with church as enforcer of nonviolence, keeping the people down in advance of the king’s Dragoons. What a mockery serenity makes of poor fools eager to feel self-respect for docile servitude. It calls to my mind the impoverished parents who cripple their young so to be more effective beggars. Or who sell their children into slavery. What cretinous vile beings. Their desperation to be pitied of course, but their fate to be repudiated, not accepted with whatever boat-non-rocking serenity.

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They’re reporting the mine collapse in China as being a failure of the Communist economic system, and just not pointing out that it’s CAPITALIST deregulation that caused it, just like the mine collapses in New Zealand, Chile, Peru, West Virginia…. and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf Oil spill Massive Petroleum Hemorrhage were caused by the POP principle. Profits Over People. The difference is that in China the Death Penalty applies to murder by Corporation.
The CEO of the Chinese mine is likely to become an unwilling organ donor. Don L Blankenship, the Retired CEO of Massey Energy, who created 29 job openings with one (predictable AND predicted) reaction to defiance of existing regulations, will continue to be a multi-millionaire and will continue to donate to Right Wing Causes like, loosening regulations even further… so he can KILL more miners, Oil workers, factory workers, construction workers, farm workers, unlike himself REAL workers, and feast on the proceeds of their life and death.
Those who like myself are merely crippled by their policies will be discarded, jailed, treated as psychotics and criminals and, if the plans of Blankenship and his allies, and their political appointees, to buy the entire governance of the world for their own profit, if those plans come to fruit then I and ever other like me will also die of our injuries.
It’s a big issue in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Main Street movement. The Chinese had an epiphany more than a century ago when the Emperor Pu Yi demonstrated his willingness to sell China to the same Corporate Interests who are running Wall Street and Washington DC and Denver and Colorado Springs today.
And FOX News celebrates and promotes Corporate Fascism and promotes Blankenship as a Hero.

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You wonder what Elizabethan era failed coup plotter Guy Fawkes means to Anonymous. Their now iconic mask is actually an image under license from the film V FOR VENDETTA. The mask’s smirk connotes an elusive rabble-rouser and perhaps mocks Guy’s namesake bonfire holiday in Britain, meant to commemorate the burning of the would-be king-killer but ambiguously may also celebrate his near success. Anonymous wants to project an indomitable rebellious spirit, omniscient and untouchable, but Guy Fawkes most certainly met the death of revolutionaries immemorial.

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For Tom, the guys at Occupy Colorado Springs, and everyone else:

So, if I sit here and carry on about how we can get out of this grief under which so many of us find ourselves buried by living cooperatively, and no one plays along, it’s like division by zero, an operation that produces no definable solution and the thought of which is so troublesome it caused philosopher George Berkeley to suspect all mathematicians could be devil-worshipers on the side. Seriously. A new friend I met at Acacia Park yesterday asked where the little hullabaloo about banks and bailouts and revolution and such was happening in Colorado Springs was asking the general milieu of rabble rousers where their revolution could be expected to go. (Hi, Tom). Some of the guys there, as one might expect, were so fed up with the obviously unsupportable state of current affairs that they were almost gleefully anticipating violence and war–civil war–right here in the U.S.A.. (Hi, Pat). I certainly can’t blame anyone for thinking that way, given that I hoped fervently for exactly the same outcome from around the 3rd grade til only recently, really.

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It might stretch credulity that the US Bureau of Engraving encrypted prophetic images of the Pentagon –and the not yet built WTC twin towers– in their iconic Reichstag Fire infamy, unto dollar bills folded just so. But who knows, they might have chosen to encode Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted but unheeded chiding to the American people: “Every generation needs a new revolution.” And don’t we especially want to ignore this one? “When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”

It begins: “Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires.” You see the hole they’ve dug for themselves… For your reading enjoyment, here’s the entire of the Metta Center’s nonviolence page, unedited, gross assumptions, emphasized.

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So much has been happening lately I’m afraid this will be a big confused mess, but what th’ hey, right?
 
The world is in a Meltdown. Hell that’s the reason I have time for this crap, ya know? This is NOT a surprise. We’ve all known it’s been coming for a looong time now, though it’s hard to nail down that specific moment when we knew. Maybe we always did. I’ll get to how I think we’ve known, and how we didn’t know we’ve know a different time. For now, a somewhat more imminent thought. Here’s one place to find a buncha bone-chilling stats http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/index.php . The numbers are everywhere. This is only one source, and far more officious, (don’t mess with me, I used that word on purpose), sources are available. YOU look ‘em up. Anyone wanting to look fuckin’ stupid can tapdance around them til–well, til the Apocalypse–and they’re not gonna change, cause tapdancin’ won’t change it. If it was gonna, it woulda! I already put it more or less in a nutshell: WE’RE FUCK-ED!!

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“American Fall” would be a pun, yes. A pan-Arabian-like Spring causing the US anti-democracy to tumble, being the objective. The English riots have put a dark spin on what might be Middle America’s reception to popular uprising, but mark the dates, because the brass ring nears whether you have the courage or not, and you won’t have the stomach for the alternative.
 
You’ve probably already sensed the buzz about #SEPT17, campus groups across the country have been bypassing the conventional chaperones to coordinate OCCUPY WALL STREET. Can they do it? Not without your help, and that doesn’t mean switching your phone service or knocking on doors to Get Out The Vote.

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I love this graphic, it’s clever, it’s instructional, sort of. It offers at least the illusion of parity in a big fish eats little fish world. Because you know, it’s not going to work unless one of the little fishies is packing a spear gun.

–And to really mix my malaprops, she sings for them that bought her. If there was one variable which got away from the underdogs of Egypt’s Jan25 Revolution, it was who would referee the endgame. While Hosni Mubarak’s stunning defiance Thursday night looked like a Hail Mary pass hoping to provoke the protesters to mayhem, as a defensive strategy he was moving the goalposts. Anticipating a capitulation, the Tahrir Square demonstrators made clear it was the entire regime which needed ousting, no Suleiman, no Emergency Law, an inviolate list of demands. Mubarak’s insulting buffoonery focused the great beast’s wrath like a rodeo clown. When the announcement came he was stepping down, who could not help but raise a cheer, drowning out the earlier precautions. Mubarak played Egypt like a fiddle, as he burned it, while the fat lady of state media called the game over.

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For a few interminable minutes there, okay– days –and bloody, millions of Egyptians had taken to the streets rejecting the legitimacy of Egypt’s authoritarian regime. The despotic Mubarak refused to budge and experts deemed the outcome a “stalemate.” Really? A preponderance of citizens greater than most voter turnouts, versus an unmovable leader, and commentators want to call it a draw? Worse is overlooking the obvious about the leaderless opposition forces. Jan25 came together to demand freedom, which the West equates with Democracy. But the Egyptian activists accomplished it through Anarchism. The West fears the Muslim Brotherhood, but the real banned party is the anti-globalist youth movement whose name must not be spoken. When President Obama pretends the US will shepherd Egypt through its “transition” he is sidestepping the real epiphany of Tahrir Square, a people united by idealism, minus a government. “Anti-government” protesters, precisely.

After Hosni Mubarak did his best last night to bite his thumb at his gaping-mouthed subjects, the heart of humanity aches in anticipation of the potential of angry bloodshed Friday in the streets of Cairo. Egypt’s JAN25 organizers have so far held steady to a winning strategy of nonviolent protest, in spite of the tremendous state repression, and as yet it’s only moved them forward. But Mubarak has proved that the success of demonstrations is not judged by public opinion. Revolutions very traditionally involve an overthrow. Despotic torturers rarely capitulate to appeals to their conscience. Before the revolutionaries can ensure the universal support of the Egyptian people, they will have to commandeer the state’s propaganda machine. Hopefully sympathetic employees will turn it over without forcing the demonstrators to compel its silence. While it might be prudent to guard against provocateurs inciting mayhem, public audacity wanes without momentum. Let’s not discount the gains which the brave youth of Jan25 have won with violence. Tahrir Square would not have been gained without wave after wave of assaults against the ranks of riot police. Returning the thrown stones was the only action which kept Mubarak’s goons from overtaking Tahrir and slitting everyone’s throats. Whether Egypt’s freedom-seekers this Friday take the high road or the low, under fire from Mubarak’s security goons, we must support them.

It’s an open air prison, a police state where all opposition voices are arrested. Our press is reporting the arrest of foreign journalist, what about the murder or disappearance of the #Jan25 organizers. On Thursday after a leadership consultation with Mohamed ElBaradei, the internet coordinators of the Tahrir Square uprising were arrested as they left ElBaradei’s house, with four further members of the April 6 Youth, a list of missing which now includes: Amr Salah, Shady El Ghazaly Harb, Naser Abdel Hamid, Ahmed Doma, Amr Ezz, Mostafa Shawky, Mohamed Arafat, Amal Sharaf.

Al Jazeera has reasserted live footage in Cairo today, for the Friday demonstration billed as “Day of Departure” meant to depose dictator Mubarak. Already gone are the US major network talking heads, fleeing in advance the predicted mayhem as if to dot the exclamation point of their Chaos in Egypt meme. Alas, they won’t be here to offer color commentary on the hundreds of dozens of demonstrators of indeterminate religious-political orientation massing for Egyptian on Egyptian rioting. For the rest of us, this is a veritable revolution before our eyes. Perhaps the monumental event of our lifetime. Regardless the outcome, most of us are probably so estranged from reality to recognize it. This is what Democracy looks like.

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Point of no return in Egypt. Mubarak is overseeing crimes from which he will not be able to walk away. Pro-Democracy demonstrators cannot leave Al Tahrir Square. Not because it is barricaded and besieged by plain-clothed “Pro-Mubarak protesters” but because activists who go home face immediate arrest by the secret police. Even as thugs harass the protesters, unhindered by the Egyptian army, Human Rights Watch expresses most concern for the protest organizers who are vulnerable to infiltrators facilitating their abduction or assassination by sniper. Here’s an illuminating first hand account from an activist who writes as Sandmonkey:
 
UPDATE 3/3 AM: Colleagues report Sandmonkey apprehended ferrying medical supplies to Al Tahrir Square. First an inspiration, now his statement is prophetic. UPDATE 3/3 tweets: “I am ok. I got out. I was ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated, my car ripped apart & supplies taken” and “Please don’t respond to my phone or BBM. This isn’t me. My phone was confiscated by a thug of an officer who insults those who call.”

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At least Hosni Mubarak knew better than to deploy US military hardware against the pro-democracy demonstrators of Al Tahrir Square. The thug astride this camel was pulled off his mount, but nonviolent organizers intervened before the victims of his whip could exact retribution. The protesters released their captives to the Egyptian Army, to what fate it is unknown. The army showed its hand I believe when it did not act against the Mubarak thugs who hurled stones and heavy objects from the otherwise-guarded rooftops surrounding the square, hurling Molotov cocktails into the midst of the peaceful mass, even some aimed at the national museum.

Besieged Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak refuses to step down. He told the 2 1/2 million strong demonstration in Tahrir Square that he intends to die in Egypt. If the protesters likewise promised to accede only over their dead bodies, I’m certain the Western press would report it as a provocation and in the interest of stability Mubarak would dutifully comply. So what’s a peaceful flash-mob to do? The spontaneously united Egyptian public may not see themselves as revolutionary avengers, but Mubarak seems resolved to play the doomed despot. First the shameful digital blackout, then unleashing his plain-clothed thugs –not counting his 30-year reign of torture and corruption– the more than a hundred peaceful petitioners killed outright this past week may already warrant calls for his head.

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Western pyramid-gawkers since Napoleon have denigrated modern Egypt for the backwater it had become, its great civilization long extinguished. But it was a US dictator-imposed facade, with contemporary Egyptians dismissed as oil-less lackeys of the Euro-Zionist enterprise. How does the past week of Days of Rage in Hahrir Square, a measured, peaceful uprising redubbed by Fahmi Huweidi as “the Noble Anger,” reflect the immense dignity shown by a people who know they represent the heart of the Arab world?

The struggle in Egypt between spontaneous uprising and desperate measures taken by Mubarak has become complicated by covert intelligence action. Looters have been unmasked as security agents, the police withdrew from the streets only to reappear as thugs unleashed on the vulnerable public. As the popular revolution appears irreversible, world bankers and investors are threatening to destabilize Egypt with the usual market sanctions.

Yes it was Emma Goldman who said “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
It was no mere quip. The turn of the last century activist was a fierce advocate of every social reform and was ultimately exiled to Europe for challenging forced conscription. Do you wonder what else Goldman had to say, about political violence, prisons, patriotism, puritanism, the traffic of women, suffrage, poverty, birth control, and the struggle of minorities? Far from being a cynic, Goldman offered an alternative to the false hope of the ballot box.

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