Monday, December 19, 2011

It's not easy being The Protester (Egypt video)

(, Dec. 18, 2011)

It's not easy being Time's "Person of the Year"
I. Rony (Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)
The blog-o-sphere is all a twitter, facing and booking it to the moral high ground. What are the crybabies crying about? Some police state forces were just doing their job -- subduing and stripping a female protester in Egypt. Former LAPD Police Chief Bratton is now a private contractor advising world governments on how to deal with "rioters." Could he have a hand in this?

The Arab Spring means mass death and destruction in Syria, Yemen, Iran (in secret strikes they cannot protect themselves against and dare not admit for fear of seeming vulnerable), Sudan (Mogadishu), Iraq (now in private contractor uniforms rather than soldiers' fatigues), Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere all thanks to America's super rich MIC (military-industrial complex).

Paramilitary police have continued attacking protesters in Egypt's Tahrir Square withdrawing "freedoms" they recently thought they had won. The clashes, which have lasted more than three days now, have left 10 people dead and hundreds brutally injured.

One video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday is particularly graphic and is being widely enjoyed in police stations around the US. It reveals the extreme cruelty of the Egypt's enforcers during the crackdown. They might consider following the US police state strategy of staging peaceful anti-Occupy Movement "clearings" then tormenting detainees in legally hard-to-prove ways.

  • The same happened in Burma during its Saffron Revolution when soldiers beat and killed Buddhist monks.
  • The same happened in Thailand when Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts brought the country to a standstill to weed out political corruption until the military police began the bloodletting.
  • It is happening in Tibet, as China brutally oppresses Tibetan monastics and displaced citizens.
  • It may happen in Russia if Putin is forced to demonstrate that he came out of the KGB not the civilian world.
  • One can only guess who trained Syrian forces to contain its popular uprising. Munitions do not always say "Made in USA" because Pennsylvania is not the only manufacturer of poison gas and futuristic weapons systems.

The Egyptian army soldiers glorious in their protective riot gear may have gotten a little carried away savagely beating a seemingly unconscious female protester with big sticks (truncheons), kicking her unconscious, and stomping on her chest probably in an effort to resuscitate her to make sure she was okay and could be beat some more. No one can prove it was outside of policy just by looking at a video.

While the camera does not lie, government lawyers do, and all that is needed is "reasonable doubt" because the officers say they felt in danger so each strike was within department policy. Just look at Rodney King's video. It happens all the time, mostly without those pesky cameras. While videotaping is not illegal, it will get one beaten if police observe that they are being recorded in an unflattering way. Then one can try to prove they did not have probable cause to feel endangered by the arrested party who was further beaten in custody. It is that troublemaker's word against the fine, upstanding police officer's word. Who would you believe?

If you answered the police, please remember your civic duty by responding to your jury duty summons. If you answered anything else, hah, you know how easy it is to shirk those things? People shirk them all the time. C'mon, who needs your liberal voice? The courts are just fine with high school grads raised on "CSI" and "Judge Judy."

Police state "security" forces lashed out ruthlessly but effectively on unarmed civilians (who may have been carrying spit or rocks or urine or even bamboo; police can never be too safe). Police burned down tents that had been put up by activists outside the parliament building to occupy a camp in protest against the military rule. You see, they are trying to antagonize armed soldiers with thin polyester mesh.

Maybe we got a little carried away. But in our defense, we didn't
know we were being filmed! Swear to God, we didn't know.

The Internet community therefore questions the methods of a military regime that took over and continued the authoritarian power of ousted ex-Pharoah Hosni Mubarak in February. After all, the US was never against Mubarak's tactics. It just got sick of him and let his own people depose him, while undermining him on the world stage, just as a series of leaders unfriendly to the US have been, are, and will be before this is over. Welcome to Bush-Obama's Brave New World Order.

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