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

Friday, July 5, 2013

In Egypt, the real regime still has to fall

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution (Netherlands).
Egypt’s revolutionary process is a complicated convolution of people power and military co-optation. To succeed, it will have to take on the army anew.
The present revolutionary situation in Egypt could not be expressed more accurately and succinctly. The huge problem facing revolutionaries in Egypt is that the co-optation involves the most militarily powerful nation in history.