[Peace-discuss] It's a fresh wind that blows against the Empire.

[E.Wayne Johnson]

A People's Uprising Against the Empire
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of 
Soviet-bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be 
living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable State 
edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding freedom, 
peace, and justice.
There is surely no greater event than this. To see it instills in us a sense 
of hope that the longing for freedom that beats in the heart of every human 
being can be realized in our time.
This is why all young people should pay close attention to what is happening 
in Egypt, to the protests against the regime of Hosni Mubarak as well as the 
pathetic response coming from his imperial partner, the US, which has given 
him many billions in military and secret police aid to keep him in power.
The US is in much the same situation today as the Soviet Union was in 1989, 
as a series of socialist dominoes toppled. Poland, Romania, Hungary, East 
Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia all experienced dramatic meltdowns, 
while the Soviet regime, supportive of these systems since the end of the 
Second World War, sat by helplessly and watched. Leaders made vague 
statements about the need for peaceful transitions and elections, while the 
people on the ground completely ignored them.
What has sparked the uprising? There are economic considerations, of course. 
A good rate of inflation in Egypt is considered to be 10%, and currency 
depreciation works as a massive punishment against savings and capital 
accumulation. Unemployment is high, about the same rate as the US, but is 
even higher for young people who are worried about the future.
Economic growth has been much better in the last decades thanks to economic 
reforms, but this tendency (as in the old Soviet bloc) has only worked to 
create rising expectations and more demands for freedom. It remains a fact 
that nearly half the population lives in terrifying poverty.
The core of the problem, it appears, relates to civil liberties and the very 
old-fashioned conviction that the country is ruled by a tyrant who must go. 
Mubarak tolerates no challenges to his martial-law rule. There are tens of 
thousands of political prisoners in the country, and it is easy to get 
arrested and tortured simply by calling the dictator names. The press is 
censored, opposition groups are suppressed, and corruption runs rampant. 
Mubarak's will to power has known no bounds: he chooses all the country's 
elites based solely on personal loyalty to himself.
Mubarak has ruled for 30 years and yes there have been elections every six 
years, but these are widely seen as for show only. Opposition candidates end 
up prosecuted for a variety of invented crimes. Democracy in Egypt is merely 
a slogan for one-party rule. And this is striking: the main excuse for his 
martial law is one that is all-too-familiar to Americans: the war on terror 
(and never mind the terror dispensed by the warriors themselves).
Probably a more substantive issue concerns the digital revolution and the 
opening up of the entire world through the Internet - a species of the very 
thing that the US cited as the reason for the anti-Soviet uprisings of the 
late eighties and early nineties. Many young people in Egypt are as 
connected to the world through social media as American teenagers, and enjoy 
access to the sights and sounds of the modernity that the regime so opposes.
To understand what is driving the protests, consider the date that they 
began: National Police Day on January 25. This is the holiday created by 
Mubarak only in 2009. Talk about misjudging the situation! And sure enough, 
the government's response was to jam nearly all Internet communications and 
shut down all cell-phone service on the day of the planned protest. But it 
didn't work: Thanks to what is now being called "hacktivism," the revolution 
is being broadcast around the world through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, even 
as Wikipedia is being updated minute by minute. And the Al Jazeera English 
live feed has, as usual, put biased US media to shame.
Meanwhile, official government voices in the US have been pathetically 
behind the times. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have been refusing to 
describe Mubarak as a dictator, while lamely urging a transition to an 
election - run by and ruled over by the Mubarak regime. The protest 
leadership immediately saw that line for what it was, and rejected it 
outright. It is unbearably obvious that the US is nearly alone in 
more-or-less supporting Mubarak, but that is exactly what you would expect 
of the imperial backer of the despot.
What are the protesters' demands? It is not complicated. As in 1989, the one 
demand is that the dictator go. This makes complete sense and is the only 
solution that accords with what is right and just. This and only this will 
establish the basis for a transition to anything. What follows after that is 
really something that has to be worked out by the Egyptian people, who have 
had their voices muzzled for far too long, and not by the CIA.
What the uprisings underscore is a fundamental reality that the world too 
often forgets. It gets to the core of the relationship between any 
government and any people, in all times and all places. The people far 
outnumber the government, and for that reason, and even when the government 
is heavily armed, every government must depend on some degree of consent to 
continue its rule. If the whole of a people rise up and say no, the 
bureaucrats and even the police are powerless. This is the great secret of 
government that is mostly ignored until revolution day arrives.
More than the anti-Soviet protests of the late 1980s, the Egyptian uprisings 
reveal what might eventually come home to the empire itself. Under the right 
conditions, and at the right time, there might come a time when the 
consciousness will dawn right here at home. It could happen here for the 
same reason it could happen anywhere.
Government knows this, and hence its accumulation of weaponry and relentless 
propaganda. The difficulty for the State comes when its will to power 
generates what Thomas Jefferson called "a long train of abuses" that create 
a burning desire within people to rise up and demand freedom, since, after 
all, it is the right of a people, is it not, to alter and abolish the form 
of government under which they are forced to live.
February 1, 2011