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Pro-democracy protester in Tahrir Square, February 3, 2011 returns from surviving an attack by pro-Mubarak thugs. (from a photo by Al Jazeera English on Flickr)
With Thursday’s news that the Egyptian military has said that it will support the anti-Mubarak protesters and the movement of the military to stand between the anti-Mubarak protesters and the pro-Mubarak thugs who attacked them on Wednesday, we see once again what the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. described as the “powerful moral force” of nonviolence in achieving social and political change, in direct contrast to the neocons’ blather that democracy could be imposed from outside a society at the end of a gun.
CNN describes the movement of the military to separate the pro-Mubarak thugs from the protesters:
Meanwhile, the military — which had largely remained still in the area of Tahrir Square during violent clashes between supporters and foes of President Hosni Mubarak — took position between the clashing groups Thursday. Rocks flew back and forth in an empty construction area in front of a metal barricade that anti-Mubarak protesters set up overnight.
The military has even gone so far as to announce that they now support the anti-Mubarak protesters, as reported by BBC:
The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo cites a retired general who has been speaking to tank crews on the square as saying the army is losing patience, and if firing continues from pro-government supporters, it is willing to fire on them.
Those attacking them appear to be either police who have taken off their uniforms or plain-clothes “thugs”, our correspondent says.
But appended to the very top of that story is this snippet, which appears to be an update:
The BBC’s Jon Leyne: “The army is now willing to support the anti-Mubarak protesters”
In just a few days, massive nonviolent protests by Egyptian citizens have led to President Hosni Mubarak announcing that he will not stand for re-election in September. Further, with the strong condemnation heaped on Mubarak and his supporters for Wednesday’s violence unleashed on the anti-government protesters, we now have Mubarak asking his Prime Minister to investigate who is behind the attacks (from the CNN article cited above):
Egypt’s prime minister apologized Thursday for the violent attacks on protesters yesterday and said the country’s president has asked him to investigate the security chaos.
“This is a fatal error, and when investigations reveal who is behind this crime and who allowed it to happen, I promise they will be held accountable and will be punished for what they did,” Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said on state-owned TV.
These huge advances by Egyptian citizens standing up peacefully to ask for basic freedoms provide confirmation of the moving words spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
The way in which the peaceful assembly in Tahrir Square has inspired love and brotherhood has been manifested in many unexpected ways. One of the most striking to me came in the coverage by Al Jazeera English on Wednesday. In the midst of the extensive coverage of events in the square as they happened, the calm, professional delivery of information was interrupted only rarely, but at one point, an anchor interrupted a reporter to note that each individual gunshot heard in the background was potentially fatal. Despite a responsibility to deliver news in a detached manner, the anchor clearly was experiencing the brotherhood which Dr. King was setting as a primary goal of civilization, and paused to reflect on the humanity of each potential victim.
What more refutation do we need for those who would achieve “democracy” at the end of a gun? Why distort Dr. King’s message in an obscene attempt to say he would approve of the atrocities the US has committed in Iraq? Why dishonor the nonviolent action of the Tahrir Square protesters by saying that it has anything at all to do with the neocons’ war-mongering lust for “democracy” through war in the Middle East?
Just as the peaceful fall of governments in the old Soviet bloc, also achieved through nonviolent actions by the citizens, was a refutation of the weapons-based Cold War mentality, the developing pan-Arab uprising will be achieved through nonviolent citizen action rather than outside intervention with weapons. The natural rights of citizens are stronger than any weapon. And that is why doctors among the anti-Mubarak protesters came to the aid of pro-Mubarak protesters. The caption Al Jazeera English provided in their Flickr upload of the photo below reads “A protester (R) who was working as a doctor inside the square attends to a pro-Mubarak prisoner who had fainted inside the makeshift Sadat metro prison.”
134 Comments
I hope you’re right, we (“Guides”) have members in Egypt their reports are that the Ikhwanis amongst other groups are ready to respond with violence if the regime escalates.
Sounds about right to me.
Thanks, Mark. That is why the apparent movement of the military to separate the sides is so encouraging to me. Nothing is sadder than fellow citizens killing one another.
Sadly you don’t have to tell somebody whose home has been Irak for rather more than a decade that.
Civil wars (ask the Irish and the Spanish) leave a legacy of bitterness and yes hatred that spans generations.
It remains to be seen how this pans out. Worst case scenario is the Algerian one, that’s not an unlikely outcome here I fear,
mfi
You do violence to the facts by describing this revolution as a manifestation of “nonviolence”. While the revolutionaries have avoided gratuitous violence, and have engaged in peaceful, orderly protest at times when it appeared that that would be likely to achieve their goals, they have consistently met force with force – throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, fighting with police, setting fires, overturning police vehicles – whenever it became necessary to do so in order to prevent Mubarak’s police and thugs from snuffing out the revolution.
Even Karl Marx (contrary to popular belief) thought it would likely be possible to achieve his revolutionary goals by peaceful, legal means in certain nations, including the United States, Britain, and possibly the Netherlands. That does not reduce his philosophy of social change to that of Gandhi. It is an intellectual and moral travesty to misrepresent the controlled and restrained violence of the Egyptian Revolution as nonviolence, and to claim that its success shows the moral power of nonviolence.
There was no violence until the pro-Mubarak thugs showed up.
That’s not what I was told Jim. What we’re getting from colleagues and friends is that there was very little violence, and that what there was quickly damped down by the protesters themselves (as looting). That’s not the same as none.
I know (because in two cases it was “Guides” members who were the subject of the attempted arrests) that at least in Alexandria that attempts at arresting both Islamic activists and Copts have been resisted very violently with plainclothes police being beaten severely before being allowed make their escape.
mfi
Thanks. I hadn’t heard those reports. Perhaps “primarily nonviolent” is a better description, but the movement certainly isn’t centered on violence as a means to an end.
That is consistent with what I said above, and is not the same as the nonviolence of Gandhi or King. Even Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution generally describes that revolution as starting with strikes and protests; no violence is described until after the Tsar’s police (inevitably) attempted to break up the protests with violence. Check out Volume 1, Chapter 7, “Five Days”. Without rereading the whole book – which I have not done recently – I cannot say that there were no incidents of initiation of violence by the protesters, but if there were, they certainly were not central or essential to the development of the revolution. Other aspects of the Egyptian Revolution have also mirrored the Russian Revolution – in particular, the sharp contrast in the revolutionary crowds’ attitudes toward the police (hostile) versus the army (friendly).
It can be taken for granted that a repressive regime will attempt to use violence to break up protests. The nonviolence of Gandhi and King would dictate the absence of a violent response even then. The Egyptian revolutionaries of 2011, like the Russian revolutionaries of 1917, chose differently. The moral credit for the success of the Egyptian Revolution goes to a philosophy of social change based on the controlled and restrained use of violence, and not to the philosophy of Gandhi and King.
Perhaps I’m nitpicking but I think “primarily nonviolent” is a better description. As to not hearing – Jim over the last few days there’ve been occasions when members in Irak, Jordan, and Syria have been giving information to members in Egypt about the doings and goings on in their own cities.
mfi
The overall point I’m trying to make though, is that what is transpiring in Egypt is a validation of the general concept of nonviolent protest even if the organizers are not motivated by emulating Ghandi and King or fully achieving how Ghandi or King would conduct the protests.
Yes, I agree with Sebastos and Mark. The idea of non- violent revolution is mostly a romantic notion. Non-violence is only effective against regimes that are essentially democratic, and is used by an oppressed minority that can shine the glare of bad publicity on the regime. This is exactly the story of MLK and Ghandi.
In authoritarian regimes the govt controls all the weapons and all the media, and is impervious to moral suasion, thus nullifying every lever that non violent protesters hope to employ. They almost always fail.
In the modern era, it is more difficult to contain the news, but not impossible. But what a dictatorship loses in the media can be made up with more technologically advanced methods of crowd control and surveillance. In 1776, a crowd of 500 could overwhelm a platoon of Redcoats who were armed with the guns of that era. A few martyrs would be lost, but the battle could go to the insurrectionists. Today a relatively small military group can wreak terrible damage on vast #’s of protesters and /or strike fear and confusion in the masses. An armed citizenry with the ability to mount an armed challenge to a tyrannical govt has always been the most formidable argument against gun control. And I am FOR gun control, curiously.
I have always believed that deep and fundamental change almost never occurs without at least the credible threat of force. And yes, in Cairo police cars were overturned and the ruling party’s headquarters was burned. At some point Mubarak must be worried for his neck. After all, a violent act, though perhaps not directed by him, is what brought him to power.
Oh and non-violence often fails even in democratic regimes. I’m sure Markfrom Ireland would agree that it wasn’t candlelight marches and peaceful prayer sit-ins that bought Ireland its measure of independence from the Brits. It was the willingness to crack heads. Sad, but true.
Mr. White, thanks for your update news (rcc’d) regarding the military taking a stand FOR the protesters . . . I see on AJ (I’m late today getting to the news) the military HAS cleared that bridge/overpass in Tahrir Sq, has tanks and other vehicles deployed, and seems to have more boots on the ground to separate the sides.
But a retired colonel talking to tank crews, despite his good news/intent, is a weak link to the assumption that the military has DECLARED to be on the side of the protesters.
Given my thought, is there more fully developed info anywhere to substantiate that BBC claim? Which to me is AWFULLY weak . . .
Thanks in advance . . .
You’re exactly right. It very obviously became necessary to defend against counterrevolutionary violence with violence. The revolutionaries met that challenge. This is no longer a non-violent revolution: that fantasy ended when the pro-Mubarak thugs attacked and were fended off with the only thing that would work, violence.
Thanks for this one, Jim!
I think there is a diconnect in the reporting from Cairo and Alexandria. We have focused a good deal on Cairo and have very little feed from Alexandria.
Dedicated, disciplined non-violence as a means of society-wide change has been tried so few times that I’m not sure we have much evidence to support a claim that it usually doesn’t work. Relatedly, Bob Altemeyer’s research suggests that non-violence is one of the few methods by which right wing authoritarian followers might be checked in their aggression against the “other.”
Ding.
One taxi ride with Pak driver in Manhattan, who, as usual, knew much more about world events than I do, I asked him why the Palestinians hadn’t tried nonviolent protests.
He pointed out that indeed they had (I forget when, either before the 1st or 2nd intifada). Went nowhere, except that maybe a few CAT bulldozers ran over some innocent Palestinians.
Do you have a read on how protests in Alexandria differ from those in Cairo?
For Android users, there is a legitimate Al Jazeera English Live app on the Android Marketplace :)
Works freaking great on Google G2.
That’s a GREAT point PP!
Cuz Alexandria is HOPPING hot, as AJ has been reporting on for days . . . thanks.
There is no need to investigate who ordered the violence – the answer is Mubarak and his regime.
And American Students
I don’t believe in initiating violence, but if I were threatened and attacked by thugs, damn right I would fight back. You can’t just march and lay down and hope you don’t get killed. If you stand up to bullies, they often go away. JMHO
dear goddess,please protect those brave people,i wish i was that brave
I’m just know hearing that the Presidential Palace was torched. I’m not sure if that is so, as there were no links to a source, but I can’t dismiss those claims of Alexandria.
Why has the Army shifted position? Did Obama threaten their aid money in Private it seems that yesterday they had switched sides and now they switch back again just what is going on?
just now. Sheesh. I’m watching the hollow earth, string, and binary language theory of Celestial beings.
Considering that over two million people were at Tahrir alone, the amount of violence the anti-Mubarak folk have committed is probably a lot less than Egypt’s average crime rate. If the anti-Mubarak forces were their own city, minus the armed and paid pro-Mubarak thugs, it would be among the most well-behaved cities on earth.
Doesn’t Suin bring us an update about this time in the evening?
Jim, thank you for the post. Have you anything on the Presidential Palace?
Google does not reveal any such news stories. Here’s the links http://www.google.com/search?q=presidential+palace+in+alexandria&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1RNFA_en___US374 that show up for ‘presidential palace in alexandria.’ All historic & tourist. No news stories.
My first impression from AJ is that there are not the repressive elements there as there are in Cairo.
I need more details . . . great question . . .
Indeed. That bit is the punchline of this affair.
Mubarak, looking out his window on the protests in the streets: “What the . . . ?! Shafiq, I need you to get to the bottom of whatever SOB is responsible for this who-dunnit toot-fucking-sweet. Heads are gonna roll!”
Top of the hour AJ has no mention . . . no mention at AJ in their last 15 minutes before the hour, either.
Where did you hear of the torching PP? What source?
The success of nonviolent protest depends on having someone with the influence to protect the nonviolent protesters. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement, that eventually was Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department (excepting J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI). In this case, it has been the reality that the conscripted Egyptian army is limited by the willingness of its conscripts to follow orders. The hired Department of Interior police had no such constraints nor did the members of the National Democratic Party. And there were folks in the square who had sufficient military experience and leadership to carry out a primarily nonviolent defense of Tahrir Square. And then there was the “whole world is watching” journalism of al Jazeera, who finally shamed other global media into showing up. Finally, there was the limited leverage that the US had not over Mubarak and his clique but over the military that benefits from US military aid. (I say “limited” because the Egyptian military’s response could very well be “Who are you going to get as an ally if we go away?” had the the US pushed too hard.) Mubarak was not reachable by this pressure, but that also made him dispensable.
The first of these constraints was absent from Tiananmen Square in 1989.
What has been impressive is the pro-democracy movement’s maturity, focus, and discipline. They have made sure that as much as possible agent provacteurs and thugs have not infiltrated into Tahrir Square and destroyed the moral authority of nonviolence that they have worked hard to keep. They have been very competent in creating distributed networks of communication and logistics that are difficult for the regime to disrupt. They have presented not identifiable leadership that could be co-opted or decapitated. There has not been one person at the microphone but many Twitters, Facebook entries and cellphone calls to the media. And suppression of the technology of communications did not disrupt their networks.
Finally, they have understood the myths by which Mubarak maintains power so well that they have undone each one in turn.
And we have glimpses from time to time that similar leadership is not quite as in charge of events in Alexandria (although the response to the first pro-Mubarak attacks there was disciplined) and Suez. And hidden from view have been al-Mansur, which surfaced today in a report of having a million people in the streets on Tuesday, Tanta, Aswan, and even Sharm al-Shaik. And nothing at all from Port Said or Luxor, which apparently were involved in the Day of Rage.
Trotsky also describes the “revolutionary moment” as that which occurs when the conscript soldier looks at the citizens that he is being ordered to shoot and realizes they are not the enemy.
Class consciousness is what Marx would call it.
TH, what’s the source for your last paragraph, I’d like to add that/them to my bookmarks . . . as I’ve heard NOTHING much about any of that you mentioned.
Thanks!
Jim,
Your overall point is sound. It is in fact a non-violent revolution. Ghandi never said stand there and allow yourself to be murdered. There is a gigantic difference from attacks from the outset and defending yourself. Clearly, there was no intention of hostile takeover by the protestors; they would have been slaughtered at the outset. Their strongest weapon was their morally superior position–something lacking in the US foreign policy and look at the result we are getting.
Thanks for going thru some of the factors that play into successes of peaceful protest. It is, or course, much more complicated than ‘it works’ or vice versa.
I’ve thought that Gandhi’s worked bc UK got a black eye internationally. But I really don’t know much about it. It could have been bc India had become a drag for econ or other reasons & UK had decided to deep-6 it for that reason, or any other of a thousand others that had nothing to do with Gandhi.
By the way TH, great analysis of revo process in your last comment, too . . . thanks!
There you are, Tarheel Dem!
I went back downstairs to ask you for a source.
Jim, you poor old romantic fool! Non-violence is a fool’s errand.
Here’s the sticking point, I think. Most folks would rather beat than get beaten in defense of their beliefs, freedoms or fellow human beings. This tendency was what King and others were on about in their advocacy of non-violence, as indicated in the quote you chose: “the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.” Beating is easy. Taking a beating ain’t. But by going the easy route, one risks becoming the very thing they originally sought to oppose.
See the update on the front page. The NYTimes tells us the Obama administration is discussing a plan for Mubarak to resign immediately.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/world/asia/04diplomacy.html
. “Non-violence is only effective against regimes that are essentially democratic,” See “People Power” or Yellow Revolution” in Philippines.
There’s this old joke about the physicists’ proof that 12 is evenly divisible by all integers less than 12. It goes like this: 1 goes into 12 evenly, 2 goes into 12 evenly, 3 goes into 12 evenly, 4 goes into 12 evenly. Let’s not get ridiculous.
WRT Gandhi, it’s: 1 goes into 12 evenly. Let’s not get ridiculous.
Dayam…! Mubarak unleashed a serious smear campaign…
Mubarak Switches On Smear Campaign…
Mubarak still owns the State organs…! *gah*
I meant to add a smiley face after that first sentence. Hope you got the sarcasm. :)
It is my understanding that the Egyptian Army has gone to Port Said and the canal. I don’t have the link handy at the moment.
AJ going to Tahrir NOW by audio . . .
I’ve been reading rumors that Israelis are involved with the pro-Mubarak group. No corroboration yet, but Press TV is reporting an Israeli “spy” has been arrested.
http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/163427.html
Damn. AJE is reporting that Obama is discussing a plan for Mubarek to step down and leave Suleiman in charge of a caretaker government. No surprise, but Suleiman the Torturer in charge. Hideous.
Wikileaks was telling us recently that Suleiman is our ‘go-to’ man…!
CT, if WE don’t buy the Mubie Line, what makes you think Egyptians buy that drivel?
*G*
I agree, hideous . . . but if this staves off a slaughter in the square? Or across Egypt?
I doubt the protesters will stop in full, but this WOULD stop what could happen before their next dawn . . . I’m torn on this one . . .
CT, yeah, wiki and many more . . . staving off any possible growing support for that damned former IAEA upstart El Bareidi . . . who gave BushCo such GRIEF over Irak and Iran . . .
Various AJ reports over the past week. The discipline of the protesters in the face of the goon squads is from the night of Mubarak’s speech that launched the thug attack. I watched the same video on AJ many times that night. The goons arrived around 1 am local time without warning, and an army tank fired warning shots in the air to separate the goons from the few hotheads who sprang into defense. But, the situation was stabilized by the cooperation of the military and the protesters who linked arms to protect the square; the goons were armed only with rocks and sticks.
This was the first attack on the protesters by Mubarak’s goon squads. Neighbors who called in said they were “neighborhood watch” folks who got too excited. But it is likely they were paid goons.
See you folks in an hour or so, gotta tend to home for a bit.
Ditto.
That just sounds so far flung that it’s hard to think that almost anyone would be fooled by it.
The Egyptian’s I’ve heard on AJ are so much more sophisticated about how their govt manipulates them than U.S.ians are.
I attribute that mainly to the fact that the Egyptians have not lived under the illusion of democracy for 30 years.
Whats for dinner Larue??
Gandhi worked because the UK has just fought a war against “Japanese imperialism” and for “democracy”. The immediate postwar period was a time in which national leaders could be shamed.
The UK most likely decided to ditch it because the funds that supported administration of its colonies were needed to rebuild the UK proper.
Foreign policy is always driven by domestic politics.
That would make sense, just from the likelihood that a collapsing regime might sabotage the nation and blame it on the protesters–allowing them to regain power in the future.
Yes, he did. Quoted from Gandhi’s Non-Violence in Peace and War, in his Wikipedia article, as advice to the British facing potential Nazi invasion in 1940 (emphasis added):
To associate the actual behavior of the Egyptian revolutionaries in any way with nonviolence is a serious distortion of the facts. Nonviolence is a very extreme viewpoint. It has nothing to do with whether one initiates violence or waits for the other to respond. Nor does it have anything to do with whether violence is restrained and controlled, or wild and abandoned. Nonviolence condemns the practice of violence, period.
Would be kinda surprising if Israel weren’t up to its hair roots in Egypt.
Will give you a shout if anything impt happens, Larue.
“Non-violence is only effective against regimes that are essentially democratic”
What about the Danish resistance to the NAZIs or the undoing of apartheid in South Africa?
IPS is a very credible org., M’dear…! But, ironically, the best rumor/smear is a partial truth… Even Haaretz reported that Mossad was ramping up it’s Egyptian activities, what the extent of it was left unsaid…
My answer is that I think the report conflates the Presidential Palace with the National Democratic Party headquarters (sometimes on maps as “Town Hall”) which is the building between the National Museum and the Nile.
We would never know if such a thing would stop slaughter, would we? Also if Suleiman consolidates power (with some special help I would expect), things might be grow even worse for the Egyptian people.
Jim, CC and Sebatos (reply link didn’t show up below),
Non-violence is an issue of freedom. It is an existential question. Who are we going to be? How are we going to act? Are we going to be like the cops and soldiers—those instruments of oppressive control and punishment—or are we going to be something else?
For Ghandi, it wasn’t just non-violence. It was also non-participation. Cops and soldiers understand violence. But if a critical mass of citizens not only refuses to physically resist, but also refuses to participate in the game rigged and dominated by an oppressor, all the guns and prisons at the oppressor’s disposal won’t get it what it wants.
“Nonviolence condemns the practice of violence, period.” Yup!
Quiet for the moment in Tahrir Square. 3 or 4am there.
Rachel is giving another blistering diatribe on Mubarak’s thuggish tactics…! 8-)
4 am. morning prayers will be in about an hour.
Rachel just bolstered IPS’s take…!
National Guard, Kent State, class conscience?
Anderson Cooper on CNN Piers Morgan…they are in hiding…they were attacked again today. There is no camera feed from the square. Kristof (NYT) and Cooper both say they are extremely fearful of what is planned by Murbarakco as the day progresses. Kristof says he has a sick feeling in his stomach about it.
What’s IPS? What’s their take?
There is apparently a “new” plan by the Admin. for Muby Dick to cede power to Suleiman to lead, with the blessing of top two army people and some other minister and that it would take place immediately.
Gee that’s swell…
See my comment above at 5:25 pm
The political equivalent of curing tuberculosis by substituting emphysema. Some “cure”—just as bad as the disease.
Oh dear. Rachel has the WORD from Madeline Albright. How irrelevant is that.
Inter-Press Service, gw…! ;-)
thanks.
The thing about non-violence that we were taught at the start of the Civil Rights Movement in 1960 is that it takes enormous self-discipline to carry off, even when as in the United States, the legal context is comparatively benign. You can’t begin to imagine the number of training sessions we went through before we actually sat in.
The other thing is that where the situation is not benign, you need really huge numbers of people among whom a certain proportion will be killed or maimed by the opposing force. This is what has happened in Egypt. It is extremely hard to pull off demonstrations that large without some violent acts occurring unless there are monitors. The largest peaceful demonstration I ever witnessed that did not turn violent was the million-person march in Hong Kong the day after the Tien an Am massacres in 1989. It was the day after a cyclone, and all of us were huddled in our appartments waiting out the storm. The next day, a million people marched. I saw just the end of the parade down town. It extended all the way to the race track two or three miles away. There were monitors everywhere to ensure order.
There are photos of young (allegedly) hot-headed youth throwing rocks, and being exhorted by their elders to stop. I agree with your ‘predominantly non-violent’ qualifier. that’s pretty damned fine in itself.
Exactly. Excellent statement.
The failure of a lot of Western protests in the last two decade is insufficient training and an absence of effective marshals. One broken window can destroy a non-violent campaign in the media.
zbignew Bridginininski said that all of this will be fine…la de da..don’t get excited about it..so what if Muby is around a few more weeks or months..no big deal..don’t worry…blah, blah, blah…
Eyes rolling backward in my head….oy.
Papa, I know . . . not to mention what repression and torture comes AFTER Sulie will take the throne, peacefully OR violently . . . still . . . the night is at hand and I’d hope for those in the square, they are safe now, and tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, etc.
The fight for freedom is not a cheap one, though . . . LeSigh.
Back! Um, curried rice with teri sauce, ginger n garlic. Spinach, black beans, celery root, carrots, some celery, onions, roasted garlic with cubed chicken to go on the rice . . . a lil water, chicken base and dark curry for the sauce.
Oh, and half hour with weights in the hands on the treadmill at the gym, before that . . .
*G* Now to catch up . . .
FWIW,
The time difference between Alexanderia and Cairo and the:
West coast of the US is 10 hrs. Midnight on the west coast is 10AM in Egypt
East coast of the US is 7 hrs. Midnight in Washington DC is 7 AM in Egypt
The following site gives the weather report in Alexandria for the next 48 hrs
Looks like rain till the evening. Could slow things down, giving folk a much needed chance for some rest.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=426
i see it as self defense. How many Ghandis and Kings have we seen in our life time. and you can bet there are many among the peaceful protesters and non among the M thugs.
i tend to agree – non violence does not resort to violence even under intense provocation and that’s not the case in egypt although the protesters are unarmed and there was little violence until the pro mubarak goons showed up, the story changed dramatically once they did
ok, it was restrained reactive violence but not non violence
gandhi did not advocate non violence as a member of a minority in a democracy
non violence is a refusal to fight physically but does not exclude non cooeration or non compliance that paralyses the machinery of the state when it is the oppressor
that assumes that britain was subsidising its colonies – it was the other way round – the colonies subsidised britain and particularly its war effort – there were crop failures in the north east in the early 1940s but the harvests were comandeered under wartime regulations and almost 6m people died in the infamous bengal famine
also, the issue of indian independence was already agreed upon by the time was declared in 1939 but the indian cogress agreed to defer that eventuality until after the war was over and quid pro quo for that agreement was indian army presence in the far east after the fall of singapore
“What about the Danish resistance to the NAZIs or the undoing of apartheid in South Africa?”
Oh come on. Think. How effective would the Danish resistance have been, ultimately, without the MASSIVE violence inflicted against Nazi Germany by the allies?
And, as onerous as apartheid South Africa was, I still say it would have to be classified as a democracy, with a working press and mostly open to the scrutiny of the outside world.
These are too easy. Next.
Read this, and see how very far the reality is from “nonviolence”, despite the mercy shown by some (not all) of the revolutionaries toward captured Mubarak thugs:
Some samples:
Amen.
Thanks for fleshing out some aspects that have been rolling around in my mind the last few days. The Egyptian resistance so far has taught the world some valuable lessons.
One thing at a time. Once Mubarak is gone, they can then work on excluding Suleiman and the other cronies. It may take a while – Tunisia is still not finished with this process – but I believe they definitely made the right decision to personalize it at the outset, and worry about the others after Ben Ali was on the plane out of there.
You should ask my daughter-in-law about the Danish resistance, her grandfather was one of them and wound up in a concentration camp. If you walk around Copenhagen you’ll see plenty of plaques on buildings to resistance fighters who were killed fighting the Nazis.
South Africa: you’ve never heard of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”)?
They were the armed and active wing of the ANC. Formed in 1961 after the Sharpseville massacre.
Someday, you may have the chance to find out if you are.
Yeah, I got yer sarcasm.
“But by going the easy route, one risks becoming the very thing they originally sought to oppose.”
Better to risk that than be plowed into a mass grave with a million other pacifists.
Don’t you understand why so many young European Jews eschewed pacifism and embraced militarism after WW2? Because everyone in their family was dead. Do you condemn the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto for the Uprising? Are they to be condemned for “taking the easy route.” I wonder what they would call suggestions for purely non violent resistance to the Nazis? I think “romantic” would be rather tame.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
It was the willingness to use violence. My grandfather fought in our War of Independence his descriptions of what it was like to fight the British soldiers and the various “special forces” such as the “black and tans” are part of my childhood memories.
Similarly in Northern Ireland the “Good Friday Agreement”, the present power-sharing government there, the commitment that once a majority of Ulster’s population vote for unity with the Republic that the British will honour that and leave are a direct result of a long and brutal campaign by the Provisional IRA.
Another example(s) are Hezbollah kicking the Israelis out of South Lebabnon.
Non-violence does not work against an opponent or opponents who have no qualms about using whatever level of violence they choose to repress you.
Ask the Palestinians who tried it before, during, and after the first intifada.
Ask the students who were in Tianamen square.
Ask the Burmese.
Ask the Irakis.
markfromireland
Absolutely
mfi
Absolutely.
Heh-heh, Indeed. People that live under authoritarian regimes seem to usually understand that what the govt spews out is just rank propaganda. More background noise.
It’s ‘Mercans who tend to follow the gov’t bullshit hook, line and sinker. “Illusion of democracy” for sure.
Please provide the Al Jazeera links you have in mind, if you can find them. I would like to include some of them in the next version of my annotated bibliography on the Jasmine Revolutions. I can fill out the links to full annotated bibliographic references on my own. I’m looking at AJ myself, of course, but there’s no way one person can notice everything worthwhile.
Interesting. Were you working in Hong Kong?
But anyway, largest most disciplined . . .- it still ultimately failed, right?
Your assertion is not supported by the quote you give for Gandhi.
In that quote he is saying better to be slaughtered than to owe allegiance to a beligerant.
Gandhi and King both never advocated willful self destruction and both allowed for defensive survival.
I think the distinction you are missing is in the definition of violence. To save your self is not practicing violence against your attacker. To pursue your attacker after you are safe and kill him in his bed, that’s violence.
See my remarks above regarding definition of violence. Self defense is not violence against your attacker.
Your description of revolutionary strategy is impressive. Notice, however, that none of this – including the moral authority – depends in any way on strict nonviolence. Controlled and restrained use of violence at critical points – as we are seeing in practice – can be even more effective, since it can avoid premature dispersal of crowds by police action. The defeat of the riot police in the first couple of days of the revolution was critically important.
It remains true that reacting reflexively, with impulsive violence, to every provocation would be disastrous. I, too, from my very different perspective, have been impressed by the discipline and astuteness of the Egyptian revolutionaries.
Would love to hear your grandfather’s stories.
To pursue your attacker after you are safe and ensure that the retribution you exact ensures that they never ever do that again is also violence and can often be justified.
markfromireland
Yes it is violence if I defend myself violently then I am engaging in violence.
You are confusing the thing – violence, with justifications for it. Stop it please you’re tying yourself up in knots.
markfromireland
No you wouldn’t – trust me on this – you wouldn’t.
mfi
Are any Dems objecting to that idea?
And that one broken window can be easily arranged by one well placed agent provocateur.
The Israeli has now been identified by name. He is an intelligence officer who resides in Jerusalem. He was returned to Israel after 24 hours of detention.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4023837,00.html
The irony of all this for me is that we probably still have our intelligence people investigating Quakers, who also promote the notion of non-violence, and in fact, have a Peace Testimony.
Respectfully disagree as explained above. Violence toward another by definition requires wishing to do them harm. Defending yourself against an attacker does not require that component–their is not necessarily an evil intent.
And then please when it comes to tying in knots, what is the larger point that you are making? That the Egyptian people’s revolution is wrong. That they are the evil ones in the situation? I am not there and either are you but I absolutely support what they are doing and condemn the actions of Mubarak and the inaction of the “civilized” nations of the world.
To parse the nature of the conflict as absolutely pure for non-violence to satisfy your reading philosophy is insulting to the people of Egypt.
They are indeed too easy if one has already drawn conclusions that dismiss non-violence as foolish romanticism or not considered non-participation as part of the equation. Mine was not a rhetorical question.
Apartheid South Africa was a democracy? I suppose it depends on one’s definition of that term.
My comments do not stem from a lack of understanding or personal experience. Nor do they imply condemnation–I condemn no one. My last sentance regarding the risk inherent in “becoming the very thing they originally sought to oppose” involves weighing the costs and benefits of one’s actions, both individually and collectively. It appears that you may have reached a blanket conclusion regarding the value and efficacy of non-violence. I have not.
Sebastos, your objection seems to me a deflection from the point of Jim’s post. For more than a week the demonstrators in the square have been nonviolent, and at considerable risk to themselves, to their cause. They had no way of knowing that the army would not fire upon them once those tanks started rolling in, and they faced down watercannons and tear gas being launched against them by the initial reaction of the police. They put themselves on record by remaining in the square, even bringing in their children, in the manner of the great nonviolent movements. They faced quite overwhelming odds at risk of life and limb and they did not bring weapons with them when they did this.
For such huge numbers of people the overwhelming message was nonviolence as far as it was possible for human beings to maintain this attitude. And the army did not attack them. Had it done so, assuredly violence would have spread. Bravo to the army that they stood by their word and did not attack the brave, beseiged masses.
Perfection in an instance such as this, in the face of a third group intent on fostering violence in order to disrupt the peaceful protest, is something in my mind impossible to insist upon. The Egyptians know well their enemy, better than we know that enemy. And nonviolence served the purpose of distinguishing for us whom to support. As I think it has done for the army as well.
These brave folk stood as a group against tanks and rifles. They did not loot; they did not instigate violence. They were attacked and they were not wiped out. More have joined them, witnessing their bravery.
When there is a seige against nonviolent protestors all bets are off. They must defend the weak amongst them, they must get
medical supplies to the injured. They must protect themselves.
These are peaceful people, and if you want to coin a new term for what they have done, do so, but not in a negative way. The great overarching promise of nonviolence shines upon them like a rainbow.
I’m repeating here in full my response above to ConradCelledge, which is just as relevant to your comments. This is not a matter of perfection versus imperfection, but of rewriting history and misappropriating the moral credit due to the Egyptian revolutionaries, assigning it to a philosophy not reflected at all in their behavior. Nonviolence is an extremist viewpoint, one which in my opinion ought to be consigned to the lunatic fringe, and which has absolutely nothing to do with the admirable control and restraint in the use of violence exhibited by the Egyptian revolutionaries:
Yes, he did. Quoted from Gandhi’s Non-Violence in Peace and War, in his Wikipedia article, as advice to the British facing potential Nazi invasion in 1940 (emphasis added):
To associate the actual behavior of the Egyptian revolutionaries in any way with nonviolence is a serious distortion of the facts. Nonviolence is a very extreme viewpoint. It has nothing to do with whether one initiates violence or waits for the other to respond. Nor does it have anything to do with whether violence is restrained and controlled, or wild and abandoned. Nonviolence condemns the practice of violence, period.
You miss my point completely, Sebastos. But perhaps I miss yours, so we are even.
The ideal of nonviolence is an important ideal to attempt to live up to, and the Egyptian protesters made that attempt. That to some degree they failed only points to the imperfection of human activity, not to the importance of making the attempt, of establishing clearly the thrust of one’s desire for a peaceful establishment of order.
But that is all I will say to you. The Egyptians are to be admired and encouraged. There is no distortion in what they have done, only a barrage of counterargument attempting to confuse the issue.
I am not missing your point. The facts do not support your claim that the Egyptian protesters attempted to live up to any ideal of nonviolence. They attempted to avoid violence to the extent that that was possible without allowing police and thugs to snuff out their revolution, but that absolutely nothing to do with any philosophy of nonviolence, such as that of Gandhi.
Also, the use of force to prevent Mubarak’s plainclothes police and thugs from snuffing out the revolution was not in any way a failure (although some of the excesses described by Robert Fisk may have been); it was a necessary change of tactics in response to a changing situation. The revolutionaries did not fail to live up to the ideal of nonviolence, because they never attempted to live up to any such ideal in the first place.
Very good points, Mark; thank you for pointing these things out. I had heard of Umkhonto we Sizwe, but had hesitated to bring it up because I do not have in-depth familiarity with South Africa (and this is a topic where such familiarity might be important). It was also my understanding that the “crime” that apartheid South Africa imprisoned Mandela for was precisely his refusal to renounce even the potential necessity for the use of violence as a tactic. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this.
Sebastos February 4th, 2011 at 11:34 am
I think you are absolutely right, Sebastos.
When small groups gathered in the morning to demand the self removal of their government, many Ahmeds among them said: ‘but guys, lets lock arms together and really try to make it peaceful”, to which the rest replied: ” hear, hear! — and then we fight”
Yes, I can support trying to make it peaceful. There can even be special cases where there are sound reasons to believe that an entirely peaceful approach can work, and thus where it is reasonable to fix on such an approach as a systematic strategy. Maybe that’s what Martin Luther King was up to in practice, however he thought of what he was doing. But such situations are best viewed as a specialized limiting case, and need not in any way define the underlying philosophy. Gandhi’s “nonviolence”, by contrast, is a blanket condemnation of violent tactics under any and all circumstances, however extreme.
MLK took one tack; Nelson Mandela spent years in prison for taking another. Neither lost even the slightest trace of moral authority by taking the tack they did.
Representing the actual behavior of the Egyptian revolutionaries as “nonviolent” is a distortion of the facts. And even hinting that the moral authority of their cause depends in any way on adherence to a philosophy of “nonviolence” is a moral obscenity.
In my mind there is no difference between being willing to die for a given outcome (my way otherwise known as war) or because you refused to be controlled by someone threatening harm. Except for the fact, that when you refuse fear and are willing to die for peace, no one, no one can control you.
This is why we still talk about Jesus, Mahatma, and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s power…but an inverted kind.
As to this discussion…the meta-analysis for me…is recognition that the dialectic between violence and non violence often results in heated emotional discussion. People are attached to one end of this polar or another. We must be seeking the synthesis of the two polars on this issue.
There are negatives and positives to each side and it would behoove us all, to be clear about these.
positives to violence are that it can be used to stop someone from harming you.
Sometimes a use of force nullifies someones attempt to over power you. Sometimes it does not.
Positives are that you can use it to change something you strongly feel should be changed.
Negatives regarding violence…we must invalidate a life, or another human being when we use it. That is we determine that this other person is less than we are in that moment. Which may or may not be true…but we must decide this.
Negatives…there are long term consequences on the social system, the human brain and the phyical body related to violence and trauma. We do not know all of these consequences but we do not some of them.
You may have to be willing to die or be harmed.
Negatives regarding violence. Violence often creates more violence, and escalates.
positives of peace when we choose non violence there is no shame in determing that another life is less than my own.
Sometimes refusing to be changed by threat of violence nullifies the change and the threat. Sometimes it does not.
positives of peace: peace escalates…the same way violence does.
There are no long term negative consequences to mind or body associated with peace.
There are some positive consequences to mind and body associated with peace such as being able to focus energy and resources on something other than violence.
negatives of peace: you may have to be willing to die or be harmed.
There are more …but a discussion like this is much more likely to help us see what we need to see, and is far less contentious. We do not need to choose a “side” yet…we can look at the advantages and disadvantages and make decisions based on these truths and the context…what is actually going on in the here and now…and what the long term consequences might be.
“Non-violence does not work against an opponent or opponents who have no qualms about using whatever level of violence they choose to repress you.”
True.
Wasn’t the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 an example of a success of non-violence?