The Essential Rules Of Liberty

By Brandon Smith
July 08, 2011
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

There is nothing worse in this world than an enslaved man who naively believes himself free, except, perhaps, trying to explain to that same man his predicament. You can lay truth after truth before his feet. You can qualify your every position with cold hard irrefutable data. You can plead and scream and raise veritable hell, but before he will ever listen, he must first become aware of his own dire circumstances. As long as he views himself as “safe and secure”, as long as he imagines his chains to be wings, he will see no reason to question the validity of the world around him, and he will certainly never invest himself into changing his own deluded destiny.

Unfortunately, there are many such men crawling and scraping about here in what was once a land graced with a self sufficient and independently minded public majority. The great lie that has been perpetuated in this country over the past several decades is that we can defer our responsibilities of vigilance and place our well being and our futures into the hands of others for the sake of “collective efficiency”, or leisure. We have been conditioned to live in a state of constant indifference, a society which prizes compromise over principle and steadfast resolve. Those who refuse to compromise that which is honorable for the sake of ease and comfort are indicted as “extremist” or even criminal. The idea of personal revolution is treated with discomfort, and all we claim to stand for becomes muddled in a fog of inaction and cynicism. As Americans, we have forgotten what it means to earn and protect our own freedoms. We have forgotten that in liberty, there are standards that must be defended.

This, however, does not mean we cannot yet again remember ourselves. The desire for freedom is as inborn and natural as our own heartbeat, as our own breath. It is instinct. It cannot be erased from within, only oppressed from without. The tide has always been against tyranny, always, though we may find that hard to believe. If liberty was not ingrained into our very DNA, humanity would have succumbed to bondage and self destructed long ago. This is not the case. Stretching under the surface of our superficial force-fed mainstream culture are the roots of something real, and honest. Simmering beneath our so called “civilized” veneer, many Americans are finally rediscovering their wild and defiant origins. In the recent past we have been taught to feel ashamed of our rebelliousness. Now, we are learning to hold it quite dear.

For those of us who are awake, and for those who are on the verge of understanding, certain rules come into play that strengthen our stance and shield us from folly. Liberty is not a self perpetuating social condition. It requires guidelines, and effort, and sacrifice. Liberty will not survive without our willingness to maintain it. If you are not ready and willing to fight for your own independence, then you are not truly free.

Let’s examine some of the inherent laws and guidelines of free will and free action that will allow us to not only win back our self determination, but to keep it for generations to come. You want liberty? This is what it takes…

Rule #1: Never Take Anything For Granted

A lot of people today seem to have serious issues with expectation and assumption; what we in the alternative media often refer to as “normalcy bias”. We have grown used to the idea of abundance and relative safety. So much so, that we fail to notice when our abundance and safety begin to disappear. We assume that the condition of the world today will be the condition of the world tomorrow, and for all time. In the U.S., we have even come to expect not only that our prosperity and our freedom are inevitable, but that they will also increase exponentially with each passing generation. This is a relatively new and narrow cultural mindset likely caused by the explosion in industrial growth after WWII which seemed to erase all memory of the Great Depression in our society, leaving us with the belief that surely, our circumstances would never become so desperate again.

Those who are truly independent realize that nations, no matter how affluent, can self destruct at a moment’s notice, especially when they fail to recognize their own weaknesses and confront their own demons. Never suppose that that which is good and just will remain without your own initiative. Never wait for others to fix those problems which you could just as easily solve yourself. Never expect that freedoms won cannot also be easily lost. Always prepare for the worst outcome, and strive for the best outcome.

Rule #2: Educate Yourself

Never become a useful idiot, or a waste of oxygen. Being a part of the herd is nothing to be proud of. Strive for knowledge, and thirst for the truth every moment of every day. Many of the things we deem “important” in modern society are in the grand scheme hollow attempts to fill our lives with distraction, only wasting time until we finally bite the dust filled with regret. Pretending to further the depth of one’s life is not the same as actually doing so. I can’t think of anything more horrifying than becoming a man who rushes around frantically every waking moment, but ultimately accomplishes nothing.

Do not assume that you already have a tangible grasp of the truth, especially if all your knowledge has been handed to you. Instead, research that knowledge for yourself. Put that which you have been taught to the test. Only in this way will you finally learn. Expand your horizons. Learn something useful. Remove unnecessary distractions for at least part of your day and focus on increasing your awareness of the environment you live in. There are very few things in this world more important than this, and self education should take precedence over everything else except your family. “Lack of time” is no excuse for ignorance. Make time! The ignorant are led. The knowledgeable lead themselves.

Rule #3: Don’t Be A Pansy

Liberty is not for the faint of heart. Emotional courage is paramount to freedom, and it can be expressed to incredible effect by even the most unlikely heroes. I’ve seen children with more courage and tenacity than some full grown men.

If one recognizes the gravity of the situation we face as a people, if one understands the considerable danger involved in the fall of a Republic to the depths of fear and autocracy, but still does nothing, that person has not only failed the world, he has also failed himself. “Making waves”, or drawing the ire of “authority”, is the least of our worries. If you have utilized an objective eye, and know you are right in your position, then there is no reason to fear criticism from anyone.

Sociopolitical action, nonconformity, noncompliance, and self defense, are unavoidable aspects of a society that wishes to maintain its freedoms. There is no way around it. If you are not willing to stick your neck out and expose yourself to risk, you remove all chance of possible gain. If you are a self proclaimed activist that refuses to sacrifice, that refuses to struggle, then you have failed before you even began. Talk must lead to balanced action. Never thumb your nose at the devil without being ready to trade punches as well, or all is lost.

Rule #4: Stop Waiting For Others To Tell You What To Do

Independent people not only consider and implement the solutions of others, they also work on their own. Complaints abound lately in the Liberty Movement;

“When is someone going to do something!? What are YOU going to do about our predicament!?”

This is the question of a slave, not a free man. A free man asks, “What am I going to do about this predicament? What is MY solution to the problem?” Therein is the key to liberty; decentralized leadership and movements based on fluidity and spontaneity of action, instead of a great mass of people standing around stiffly waiting for orders on high, or a self styled messiah to engineer their world view. As soon as you place your very initiative under the control of others, you have lost the fight. Always consider the solid strategies of intelligent people, and adopt them if they are useful, but do not remain idle because you are too frightened to exert the effort to solve problems bigger than yourself. Spectators only witness history, they do not make history.

Rule #5: Cast Off What Is Unnecessary, Keep What Is Effective

Yes, I stole this rule from Bruce Lee, but it is just as applicable to social movements and economic stability as it is to the martial arts. Invasive debt creation, for instance, is a tool for subversion, and no people forced to bear the burden of liabilities they can never repay is free. Therefore, exorbitant debt must be avoided, or cast off completely.

In our personal lives, how many useless goods do we accumulate on a daily basis, instead of useful items that we may one day desperately need? How much of our life is spent accumulating garbage in order to keep up with “socially acceptable” levels of consumer behavior? How many of us cling to careers we hate in order to service our needless consumption? The ability to prioritize must become a virtue once again, and, we all need to shut off the cable television…

This rule also applies to governments. If a government no longer fulfills its sworn duties to the people, and no longer serves the purposes to which it was originally intended, then it too must be cast off and replaced with one that does serve the people, or, it must be forced to return to its inherent foundations. Today, this kind of talk is often referred to as “extremism”, or insurgency, no matter how correct it might be, which brings us to our next rule…

Rule #6: Ignore Establishment Labels

Tactical name calling is only effective if we actually care what other people think of us. Labels like “homegrown terrorist”, “extremist”, “doomer”, or “conspiracy theorist”, are designed to shame people into self censorship. That is to say, they pigeonhole movements and their participants into categories of public shame, causing said movements to fear social reprisal. They are also meant to forcefully assign “outsider” or “fringe” status to particular political positions in order to marginalize and weaken the resolve of those who hold them. Never mind that almost every powerful and honorable cultural movement in history once started out as “fringe”.

Early in our lives, we are taught that it is far better to be accepted, and to avoid standing out, even at the expense of our individualism. Unfortunately, many adults never outgrow this childish belief, and thus become vulnerable to tactics as absurd as simple ridicule. At bottom, being slandered by a thieving bureaucracy infested with soulless parasites bent on centralization at the expense of innocent human life is a bit laughable (this goes for you too, SPLC). Globalists, along with their media cronies and their think-tank sock puppets, will say ANYTHING to get what they want. Empty words and false labels cannot stop the truth, or a movement driven by the truth.

Rule #7: Cynicism Is The Path To Defeat

It is good to be critical, but not to the point of nihilism. America’s past is riddled with mistakes, bad judgments, horrible crimes, and downright stupidity; that doesn’t mean that the principles on which this country was founded are any less vital. We hear often from cynics that humanity has become too stupid and complacent to do what is right. However, stupidity and complacency are not inherent qualities. That’s an elitist fantasy with no basis in fact. Stupidity and complacency are learned behaviors, and they can be unlearned. 

What IS inherent is our ability to choose what path we will take. For adherents of liberty, we need only remind people that they have this choice. We can whine and cry all day long about how nobody pays attention and how there is no hope, or, we can exhaust all options before throwing in the proverbial towel. We don’t need to “like” society the way it is, but we do need to recognize the underlying potential of all people to become something much more than what they currently are (I can’t stand blind ignorance either, but I’m certainly not ready to accept it as a fact of American life). Remember, no fight is over until it is over.

Rule #8: True Authority Is Derived From Respect That Is Earned, Not Bought, Or Taken

A corrupt politician is just a criminal conman in a nice suit. A law enforcement officer who refuses to follow Constitutional Law is just a petty little tyrant in a black uniform. An economist who knowingly skews data to fit his own political bias or to serve the political biases of men above him is just a liar or an inept buffoon with an embossed piece of paper from an expensive university. A lab scientist or doctor who flubs experimentation to support the interests of the corporate world rather than the needs of the public is just a quack in a white coat. All too often, though, we find ourselves taking these cretins seriously all because they talk the talk and wear the costume. They are just people, and if they cannot do their jobs honestly, then they are useless people, who deserve our disdain, not our respect. We should never allow such men to wield positions of authority over us.

Rule #9: Take It Personally

When someone tries to steal from you, hurt you, or enslave you, unless you are some kind of nut, you take it pretty personally, right? Why should it be any different when a government commits the same grievances? 

Americans should be furious over the destruction of their economy, their currency, their infrastructure, and their Constitutional freedoms! They should be enraged over the endless wars overseas that are bankrupting the nation. They should be bellowing to the rooftops over the cooption of their political system by a slimy brood of corporate bankers. Is this “extremist” behavior? Who cares!? If your anger is not visible then it is not worth a damn. Don’t just get active, get emotional! This is about your life, and the lives of those you love. That’s not to say that we should take out our frustrations randomly and haphazardly, but if we can’t at least make known our anger over the misdeeds of government, then what the hell is the point of calling ourselves free?

Rule #10: You Are The First And Last Line Of Defense

Like it our not, this is our job. We have inherited a country on the verge of disaster, and we are tasked with cleaning it up, otherwise, there will be little left to pass on. We do not get to bask in illusory prosperity for the rest of our days. We do not get to feed off the entitlement program trough until we are fat and contented. We are not going to retain our rights without blood, sweat, and tears. We will not be building magical floating cities in the clouds or skyscrapers on Mars. We will NOT be remembered fondly as members of some fantastical “golden era”.

We have been thrust into the muck and the mire. We are being molded as the lost children of an age better forgotten. We have been slapped in the face with a dilemma so volatile and so incredible it may one day be called the greatest crisis of all time. We have drawn the short straw.

This could be viewed as some terrible doom. It could be held as a star crossed act of ferocious fate. We could fall to our knees and lament with despair, overcome with woe at our unbearable lot. But, this would be in violation of rule #3, and nobody wants to be a sobbing pansy. On the contrary, every “bad luck generation” is only so if they refuse to see the great fortune at their fingertips; if they refuse to seize the moment and conquer the giants of their day. The greater the hardship, the greater the enemy, the greater the heroes. We are faced with possibly the most unrelenting antagonists and the most treacherous obstacles in recent memory, or even distant memory. In the same spark of confrontation, we are also presented with unparalleled opportunity to change the course of the world forever. Whether or not we succeed, is entirely up to us. 

You can contact Brandon Smith at:  brandon@alt-market.com

Egypt and Iran After Mubarak

By Brian Downing
Posted by Michael Collins
February 20th, 2011
Courtesy Of "The People's Voice"

The remarkable rising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has roused interest throughout the world. Interest is especially keen in Iran, where official statements and propaganda have been aimed at the so-called Arab Street for many years now. Egyptians did not need a foreign agit-prop campaign to know Mubarak was brutal and corrupt, that he had acquiesced to various US and Israeli policies, and that their futures were not bright. Nonetheless, Iran will seek to take advantage of the new situation, and interaction between the two countries will be critical for years to come.

The Conflict With Sunni-Arab States

For decades now, there has been a low-level conflict between Iran and several Sunni-Arab states. The origin of the conflict goes back centuries and involves both sectarian and geopolitical elements. Its more immediate cause was Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for Islamic revolution in 1979 and Iraq’s invasion the following year, which was backed by many Sunni Arab states.

Today the conflict centers on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, with Egypt sidling with the strange bedfellows of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US. Their diplomatic, trade, and intelligence operations seek to effect regime change in Iran and convince any new government to abandon the weapons program. Iran will try to persuade Egypt to withdraw from the anti-Iran bloc and to exert diplomatic and financial pressure on Israel – perhaps even military pressure.

Iran may seek to use the Shia of Egypt in this effort but their numbers are small, even though Cairo was once the capital of the Shia Fatimids. In any case Shia around the world have only rarely cared for Iran’s urgings. Iran’s economy is struggling and the US-led embargo has worsened matters, but money can and will be found to donate to the new Egyptian government. Few such aid programs are without prior understandings and expectations.

Similar encouragements may come from Iran’s ally China. It is one of the few states to stand behind Iran – an important source of Chinese energy, of course. China has made important business inroads in Africa, including just to the south in the oil fields of Sudan, and will seek to continue its navalist policies by gaining port facilities along the Red Sea, near the Suez Canal.

Curiously, Iranian naval vessels are on a tour of the region – one scheduled well before the recent events in Egypt. 

The ships are presently in the Red Sea and will soon transit the Suez Canal for the Mediterranean.

The Reform Movement In Iran

Iran’s propaganda campaign is coming back to haunt it. Iranians themselves may be more attentive than Egyptians are to President Ahmadinejad’s praise for the uprising and to the Iranian parliament’s call for investigations into Mubarak’s crimes.

Iran’s official remonstrances evoke thoughts of galling hypocrisy among the urban middle classes who demonstrated against the regime’s electoral fraud in 2009. They are returning to the streets of Tehran this week. 

The Iranian government has expressed opposition to such gatherings, setting the stage for a test of wills – and of repressive capacity.

Comparison of demonstrations in Tehran two years ago and recent ones in Cairo offer important differences. The opposition to Mubarak was widespread, reaching across the country and throughout the social system. Iranian reformists, on the other hand, were primarily urban and middle class. Support in Iran’s working class and in rural areas is not strong, though recent rises in the costs of food, energy, and cooking oil – critical triggers in uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt – have brought discontent throughout Iran as the government has removed many subsidies.

Iran’s repressive capacity probably remains high. Its security forces and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are strong. Unlike the Egyptian army, the IRGC is not based on conscripts and so is far more reliable for internal repression. From its special forces down to the Basij militia, the IRGC is ideologically indoctrinated and highly antagonistic toward privileged strata, whom they deem in league with foreign powers.

The IRGC

Iran’s military elite will seek to exploit events in Egypt to advance national interests, but it has institutional interests as well. There are sufficient similarities between the IRGC and the Egyptian army that make the former intent on watching events in Egypt.

Over the years, each has placed its retired personnel throughout the state machinery and corporate world, and each stands atop business enterprises involved in matters wholly unrelated to defense industries, expansive as that term has become over the years. Each is determined to retain those sinecures and privileges – if not expand them.

The IRGC is asking, why did repressive measures – shows of force, mounted forays into crowds, hired toughs – fail to disperse the crowds and maintain order? Have their own forces become disaffected over price hikes and developed sympathies with reformists? Could it happen here?

Looking longer-term, beyond domestic events of the next week or so, the IRGC will seek to learn how to turn any uprising to its advantage. The Egyptian army has skillfully won over a sizable portion of the popular movement. It has posed itself – with an uncertain degree of sincerity – as protectors of the demonstrators and then as the decisive force that ousted the old regime, which in any case was no longer sustainable or even useful.

Afterward, as popular engagement wanes but the perhaps naive gratitude persists, the army can present itself as the only institution that can maintain order and shepherd the nation to a new political system – one with the unified general staff in prominence and various democratic forces playing secondary roles at best.

©2011 Brian M Downing

Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.

American Zionism Against The Egyptian Pro-Democracy Movement

By Prof James Petras
February 20, 2011
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

One of the least analyzed aspects of the Egyptian pro-democracy movement and US policy toward it, is the role of the influential Zionist power configuration (ZPC) including the leading umbrella organization – the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO) – Congressional Middle East committee members, officials occupying strategic positions in the Obama Administration’s Middle East bureaus, as well as prominent editors, publicists and journalists who play a major role in the prestigious newspapers and popular weekly magazines. This essay is based on a survey of every issue of the Daily Alert (propaganda bulletin of the CPMAJO), the NY Times and the Washington Post between January 25 – February 17, 2011.

From the very beginning of the Egyptian pro-democracy movement, the ZPC, called into question the legitimacy of the anti-dictatorial demands by focusing on the “Islamic threat”. In particular the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Alert harped on the “threat” of a “Islamic takeover” by the Muslim Brotherhood even as the overwhelming number of non-Zionist experts and reporters in Egypt demonstrated that the vast majority of protestors were not members of any Islamic political movement, but largely advocates of a secular democratic republic (see the Financial Times 1/26/11-2/17/11).

Once their initial propaganda ploy failed, the ZPC developed several new propaganda lines: the most prominent of which was a sustained defense of the Mubarak dictatorship as a bulwark of Israel’s ‘security’ and guardian of the so-called “Peace Accord” of 1979. In other words the ZPC pressured the US administration, via Congressional hearings, the press and AIPAC to support Mubarak as a key guarantor and collaborator of Israel’s supremacy in the Middle East; although it meant that the Obama regime would have to openly oppose the million-member Egyptian freedom movement. Israeli journalists, officials and their US Zionist counterparts willingly admitted that although the Mubarak regime was a bloody, corrupt tyranny, he should be supported because a democratic government in Cairo might end Egypt’s decades-old collaboration with the brutal Israeli colonization of Palestine.

Once it became clear that uncritical support for Mubarak was no longer a viable position and the Obama Administration was appealing to the democratic movement to “dialogue” and negotiate with the dictator, the ZPC demanded caution in backing a “dialogue” and assurance that the dialogue did not lead to any abrupt changes in the Mubarak-Israeli treaty. The ZPC and its scribes in the Washington Post presented Mubarak’s hand picked “Vice President” Omar Suleiman, a notorious torturer and long-term collaborator of Israel’s Mossad, as the legitimate interlocutor for the dialogue - even as he was unanimously rejected by the entire pro-democracy movement.

As the demonstrators grew in number and engulfed the major public squares throughout the country and extended beyond the first week, Israel and the ZPC promoted a possible alternative solution, which would keep Mubarak in power, during a nine month ‘transition’ period. Caught off guard by the rapid growth of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement, Israel’s willing accomplices in the US administration and media conceded that an end to the dictatorship would be a good thing… if it was managed appropriately; namely, if it excluded or minimized the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and maximized the role of the pro-Israel military high command and intelligence services as overseers of the “transition”. The ZPC contemptuously rejected Egypt’s independent pro-democracy movement and its leaders and sought to undermine the Egyptian people’s movement by inflating the role of the “best organized” Islamic Brotherhood and warned of a future Islamist “seizure of power”.

The leading Zionist official in the Obama Administration and AIPAC point man, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg traveled to Israel to assure the Netanyahu/Lieberman regime that the US was in contact with the Egyptian military high command and sectors of the civilian opposition (ElBaradei) and that Washington’s support of the democracy movement was conditioned by their assurance that the Israeli-Egyptian Treaty would remain unchanged.

When Mubarak was finally forces to resign, handing power to a military junta, the ZPC congratulated the coup-makers, supported its demobilization of the movement and more important, celebrated the Egyptian generals’ endorsement of the “Peace Agreement of 1979”. Now the Israeli propaganda machine began to harshly criticize Mubarak and portrayed the military coup as a positive step toward an “orderly and peaceful transition”. By ‘orderly’ the Zionist think tankers meant a ‘regime change’ that did nothing to change the blockade of Gaza, the regular shipment of fuel to Israel, or the hotline of collaboration between Tel Aviv and Cairo. Israeli and American Zionists rejected early elections and promoted a prolonged process in which the Egyptian military, the US Administration and the ZPC could handpick members of the ‘transitional constitutional and electoral commissions’ committed to continuing Mubarak’s policy of unconditional submission to Israel. By “peaceful” the pro-Israel diplomats in the Obama Administration meant clearing the streets of the masses of pro-democracy activists and demonstrators so that decisions could be controlled by the small circle of Mubarak military and civilian holdovers behind closed doors. By “transition”, the circles of Zionists propagandists, US Israeli policy makers and Egyptian generals meant that nothing would change but the face of Mubarak.

While Israel and the bulk of Zionist scribes and propagandists in the US opposed or questioned the pro-democracy movements against pro-Israeli rulers in the Middle East, they embraced and publicized the social movements opposing the Iranian regime. In every print and electronic outlet, the pro-Israel journalists emphasized the repressive, brutal nature of the Iranian regime, called for regime change and raised the specter of a military confrontation if Iranian warships traversed the Suez Canal, Iran’s right by international maritime law. Israeli security, the threat of ‘radical Islam’ and Iran were cited to place narrow limits on all discussions and debates over US policy regarding the enormous and growing mass pro-democracy movements throughout the Arab world.

The same prominent US Zionist scribes who, at first, defended US support for the dictatorial Mubarak regime and then supported the military takeover in Cairo, have now become born-again backers of anti-regime democrats in Iran. This is not inconsistent: the issue for US Zionists is how might pro-democracy movements affect Israel’s colonial policies in Palestine and Israel’s expanding power in the Middle East? In other words, the ZPC in Congress and the White House are not concerned about promoting democracy through American foreign policy, but only about harnessing US diplomacy and military leverage to serve Israel.

What is striking about Obama’s twist and turns in policy toward the mass popular struggles in Egypt is how closely it repeats and implements the policy positions of the US Zionist power configuration clearly presented in the ‘52 organizations’ propaganda organ, the Daily Alert.

James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research.   Global Research Articles by James Petras

Egypt Revolt Becomes Global Case Study

AP – Pro-Mubarak demonstrators stand under a poster of the former president in the Mohandessin neighborhood …


By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA,
Associated Press
Sat Feb 19, 2:20 pm ET
Courtesy Of "Yahoo News"

CAIRO – It seems naive to hope the fallout from cataclysmic events in the Middle East and North Africa can spill beyond the region and stir distant, repressed populations with no cultural or historical affinity. Yet successful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have captivated dissidents and activists around the world who have campaigned in vain for radical change, in some cases for decades.

This week, South Korean activists even hoisted helium balloons into the air and watched them drift into North Korea with a message attached: discard your leaders, just as the Egyptians did.

"The Egyptian people rose up in a revolution to topple a 30-year dictatorship," said one of the leaflets coasting over the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. "The North Koreans too must revolt against a 60-year-old dictatorship."

The strain of poverty and inefficient government in North Korea, which has been targeted by international sanctions, matches or exceeds that of Arab autocracies currently buffeted by street protests. Its humanrights record, along with those of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, is routinely condemned in international forums.

But there are no clear signs that these countries will face the same kind of upheaval sweeping Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.

"Everything depends on local conditions," said Charles Ries, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based RAND Corp. who recently oversaw economic issues while stationed at the American Embassy in Baghdad.

North Korea, after all, has a cult-like leadership rooted in its World War II-era separation from the south;Myanmar brutally stamped out revolts in 1988 and 2007; and Zimbabwe has a shaky coalition government and plans elections later this year.

Dissidents and authoritarian governments on other continents are undoubtedly reviewing the playbook of their counterparts in the Middle East — social media networking for the protesters, and hasty reform pledges and thugs in civilian clothes for the leaders. Unrest even spread to Djibouti, a city-state across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, where protesters reportedly clashed with security forces on Friday.

Fear of bloody retaliation, sharp curbs on information, tactical decisions to avoid a showdown and the lack of a trigger — severe food shortages or a fuel price hike, for example — are deterrents to popular revolt in repressive systems.

Protesters in Egypt and the region used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize, and benefited from pan-Arab media outlets such as Al-Jazeera television that spread word of the uprisings.

But there is no sign of an organized opposition in North Korea, where most people do not have access to outside TV and radio, or the Internet. The leadership had long-standing ties to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On Jan. 23, two days before protests broke out in Egypt, ruler Kim Jong Il, who rarely meets foreigners, hosted the head of Cairo-based Orascom Telecom, which built a 3G telephone service network in North Korea.

Dissidents in military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, want to know more about what happened in Egypt despite a state media blackout.

"Everyone is trying to find out information and is interested," said Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK, which is based in London. Dissidents are "talking about whether they can learn anything from this, and what examples there are," he said.

However, Farmaner said there no signs that anti-government groups want to try a revolt similar to the 18-day uprising in Egypt, where a military council took power and promised to oversee a democratic transition. The military sided with protesters in pushing out Mubarak.

In Myanmar, "the army has always been prepared to shoot when it's ordered to," Farmaner said. "There's no separation of president and military in any way."

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for dialogue with Myanmar's leaders, reflecting concern that a popular upheaval that could end in bloodshed.

"We are interested in the parallels in Egypt and the parallels with Burma but the institutions are not exactly the same. I think protests are one way of bringing about change but not necessarily the best way," she told the BBC in early February, before Mubarak was ousted.

There are plenty of precedents for politically potent ideas taking flight across continents. Ries, the former U.S. diplomat, said European thinkers provided some intellectual backbone for the American Revolution, which did the same for the French Revolution, which in turn inspired Haitian slaves in their revolt against French colonizers, all in the space of a few decades in the late 18th century.

"You look at other places where there are huge numbers of people who have little to lose by banding together and applying these new techniques," Ries said of today's uprisings. "It also exposes, in a sense, the impotence of repression against huge numbers."

Some Arab countries, however, have not yielded to protests, responding instead with deadly force. Prof. Hurst Hannum, an international law expert at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, cautioned against predictions of a worldwide "outbreak of 'democracy.'"

In an e-mail, he recalled the "rather premature" thesis of Francis Fukuyama, a U.S. academic whose 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man," declared that Western-style democracy would prevail over other systems in the wake of communism's fall.

On Feb. 3, state-run radio in Zimbabwe accused Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a former opposition leader, of trying to spark anti-government uprisings similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt. Tsvangirai said before he joined the governing coalition that he would not lead his followers into danger and that he stood for peaceful change.

State radio is controlled by loyalists of President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power for three decades.

Political scientist John Makumbe wrote an essay titled "Is Egypt possible in Zimbabwe?" in which he speculated that the military would crack down on any revolt, but he drew inspiration from the uprisings to the north.

"Thank you, Tunisia and Egypt, for making us realize what is possible with people power," he wrote on the website of Nehanda Radio, an independent station.

The North Korean system, which survived a famine in the 1990s, has long defied predictions of collapse. Kim Jong Il, who inherited power from his father, has tightened his grip with perks for the military and a propaganda machine that seeks to rouse national pride by demonizing declared enemies.

North Korean state media have not reported events in Egypt, and it is doubtful that the leaflets of the South Korean activists, who also send short-wave radio broadcasts to the north, will reach or convince many people. But they draw a clear dynastic parallel — some images show Mubarak and his son, Gamal, once thought to be his successor, and Kim Jong Il and his third son and heir, Kim Jong Un.

Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the Sejong Institute research center near Seoul, speculated that top government and trade leaders in North Korea were "definitely aware" of what is happening in Egypt. But a similar uprising is unlikely, he said.

"There are so many differences in terms of ideology, in terms of power structure, in terms of domestic and external relationships," Paik said. "North Korea is basically an isolated, socialist regime, protected by a most reliable and most supportive big power, China."

China itself portrayed the protests as the kind of chaos that comes with Western-style democracy, underscoring how wary it is of any potential source of unrest that might threaten its power. As Mubarak's hold slipped, Chinese censors blocked the ability to search the term "Egypt" on microblogging sites, and user comments that drew parallels to China were deleted from Internet forums.

In Myanmar, many people with access to satellite dishes followed the historic events in Egypt, quietly wishing for the same thing.

"Tears welled in my eyes when I watched the Egyptians, overjoyed after Mubarak left. I want to tell them that your fight has paid off but we don't know where our future lies," said a 53-year-old private tutor in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city. The tutor spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the authorities.

Muslims and Christians Together In A New Egypt

Online Initiative - Launched By Preacher Amr Khaled – Seeks Harmony Between Muslims and Christians In Egypt.

By Yasser Khalil – CAIRO
First Published: 2011-02-16
Courtesy Of "Middle-East-Online"

'An Internet Free of Sectarian Strife' The recent protests in Egypt that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, and their political ramifications, have been covered extensively in the media. But stories of Christian-Muslim solidarity have not been broadcast as widely, and they deserve to be. During the protests, Christians stood in a circle around Muslims during their Friday prayers to protect them from police. And last Monday, Muslims stood around Christians in Tahrir Square as they conducted mass, and joined them in prayer for those who were injured or died in the protests. Prior to the demonstrations, there was a growing fear in Egypt that tensions between Muslims and Christians would escalate and culminate in violence, especially in light of recent attacks that targeted Christians in the region, the latest of which was the bombing of a church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve that killed 23 people. To prevent such violence from reoccurring, Egyptians began to mobilise through a new online initiative called “An Internet Free of Sectarian Strife”, launched by Amr Khaled, who is described by The New York Times as “the world's most famous and influential Muslim television preacher.” He began the initiative in January after he saw how the Internet was being used to disseminate rumors and agitate tensions between Muslims and Christians in the country. Word of the initiative spread quickly, and it has proven very popular among Egyptian youth primarily because of Khaled’s huge following in the country. The roots of this initiative began with his lectures in 1998, after years of terrorist incidents claimed the lives of innocent people and religious bigotry began spreading among groups that were adopting extremist interpretations of Islam. Many have found messages of balance and harmony in the young, dynamic preacher’s rhetoric, which are all too rare in other speakers’ lectures. Between 2000 and 2002, his lectures – mainly about tolerance in Islam – were being attended by audiences of 35,000. Today, his Facebook page has around two million friends and his lectures are watched by millions across the Muslim world. It is clear that youth are playing a key role in the initiative’s implementation and development. The “Internet Free of Sectarian Strife” initiative features prominently on Khaled’s website (amrkhaled.net), which receives around two million visitors every month. Many Egyptian youth have replaced their Facebook profile photo with the initiative’s logo, a cross within a crescent. Other websites and forums from around the region have also included the logo on their websites to promote the campaign. The initiative’s main partners are influential media outlets in Egypt and the Arab world, including the Egyptian OTV television station and the news outlet Seventh Day, both owned by a leading Copt businessman, Naguib Sawiris; the United Copts website, which is managed by a group of Copts living in the United States and has an influential presence in Egypt; and the OnIslam.net website, which is managed by IslamOnline.net, a well-known Islam-focused outlet; as well as many youth-oriented Egyptian websites. These partners identified ten basic items that they hope will become “rules for internet users and a code of honour for Internet media outlets to abide by.” The rules are to not use the following:  blanket generalisations, foul language; rumours without credible sources, sarcasm, videos that could enflame tensions and violent or hateful fatwas (non-binding legal opinions). The rules also encourage words of peace and compassion, respect for others’ faith and disagreement with ideas, but respect for individuals. Finally, partners have agreed that users should never post their opinions while angry. This initiative is promising and could lead to improved Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt.  However, the core solution lies in addressing the problems that create such tension in the first place. Some solutions that can be enacted on the national level include: allowing all citizens the right to build houses of worship, amending school curricula to promote religious freedom, ensuring that authorities handle conflicts between members of different religions according to the law as opposed to bias based on political alliances and ensuring equal opportunity in the workplace regardless of a person’s religious beliefs. Khaled’s positive initiative is an important first step to address the core causes of extremism that lead to sectarian tension. The solidarity amongst Muslims and Christians during the recent protests shows that both groups can overcome divisions, and offers new hope that coexistence and religious equality can be the foundation of a new Egypt. Yasser Khalil is an Egyptian researcher and journalist. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).