Tweeting for Egypt
Tweeted after having dropped everything else to assist Egyptians tweeting for help on January 24, 2011. Am still at it. Americans need to know about this thoroughly, and if they think they don't, they're already a part of the enormous problem the Egyptians are facing down for themselves now.
Morning, January 31, 2011
Last night as I shut down, a switch in my head also turned to "off." It felt as though the die is cast.
...as though all subsequent events in Egypt will flow from these past 3 days, Friday Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps for years.
I looked through the "tinfoil hat" news, you know, where likely stories go alongside those such as we're controlled by lizards from outer space.
Of course it's most probable our CIA has been involved, but I'd forgotten to consider Britain's MI5, since it's already been there 100 years.
And lest we forget the interference of the French government. Did ANY of these "former" colonists not want another penny? Left scot-free?
And of course, the open and furtive meddlings of religious and political idealogues, people so removed from reality they hate those who aren't.
Tarpley mischaracterized the Egyptian (and Arab) youth as "Nihilists." That is like saying he is fat because it's his ideology.
I very much remember what being a "nihilist" feels like. It's an older "secret conspiracy" than any other. It is where youth feels great.
..and feels great, endless possibilities for his life. Yet everywhere he goes, he is met by one institutionalized blockade or another.
All these calm reasoned old men attempt to enforce the law of gravity upon him. They are compromised and crusty with torture and "realism."
Youth can not help but see this "realism" is itself a perpetuation of insanity, a long, slow death of the inner possibilities he knows.
The feelings radiating out his very brain and into the world are far from nihilistic. But in a sort of inner sonar, what is reflected back?
Reflected back is nihilism. Wrinkled, crusty elites who think they know what is real, enforcing it so that even his poor family suffers.
They own armies and police, where the young must go if they even want to eat. They are ordered to do things their hearts know are insane.
Those youths who have gone insane, gravitate to groups, usually religious, with a legend to follow that they're going to die anyway.
"My life has no meaning while I am alive, so let it make a statement in death!"
The thoughts I've just sketched out can't be told by some ideologue. They can be mimicked by propagandists, hoping to misguide.
But the meanings behind them, which fuel the words, can never be distorted. That meaning has fueled every motion in Egypt. Go, youth.
Thoughts to a group of scholars, mostly Islamic, Wednesday February 9 2011:
Gentlemen,
I've wearied myself keeping up with "on the ground" tweeters in Egypt, along with my agency chores, which are often like Bartleby the Scrivener's in the first place. I hope I can write a few brief sensible things with eyes open.
Watching all this is part of a very grand personal experiment for me. Are any of you familiar with the 1965 movie, "The Flight of the Phoenix"? An airplane crashes in the desert. The survivors are hopeless, except for an engineer who says they can make a new plane from pieces of the old one. They agree. As the plane nears completion the engineer confesses that he is a toymaker, not an aviation engineer. He is nearly lynched. But as the survivors have no other hope, they board the plane anyhow, and it works. They succeed.
That's how I feel in this voluntary endeavor, but more miniscule. I'm one of many millions, all of whom are shouting, and even ephemeral funnymen merely promoting their careers with dopey jokes get far more attention than what I have to say does. Still, over a period of years, in small counties in two different states, "the people" and I succeeded in ridding those counties of the entire board of leaders and their vested outside interests, old ruling families, and so on, just as the Egyptians now mean to do. As though in a toy model of these events now involving many millions, the elements are the same -- including a little violence and high potentates from "outside." Incidentally, we had spies too.
I kept in touch with friends in both counties -- in New York and California -- for years. The achievements the people made stayed. The "ruling families" and cronies no longer had places in local government. Honest participatory democracy did indeed replace them.
You all largely agree that this Egyptian event has been rigged from the outside to a great extent. This has so many historical precedents, it's ludicrous to pretend there are no such things. Many have been duped, many are decades-long recipients of both bribery and extortion, many are members of longtime international organizations of cracked ideologies, profane false mysticisms and so on.
For all we know, the idealistic young Ghonim may in thirty years be a fat, overindulged, cruel and arrogant despot as is the one the Egyptian people now mean to eject from their government -- even though no one has any true verification of Mubarak's present whereabouts.
Yet no uprising in any country can be manipulated into existence without first the people's spontaneous impulses -- where, as Jefferson termed it, their "inalienable rights endowed by their Creator" have been smothered by egotisms, coercions, taken on voluntarily for fear of reprisals or duped into oppression by the submissive and habitual superstitions of their own societies. The rebels tend to be young because the vigorous, untested intuition of youth, well-meant and altruistic, does attempt to cast off these oppressions. They may do so on behalf of their parents, whom they've seen so unhappy from their first cognitions of childhood. In that way many may attempt to "atone for the sins of their fathers."
Youth may take on new ideologies like so many fine new decorations. America's aging male population is still peppered with long hair, as it once stood for an ideal. We have pockets of aging, wrinkled "communists" and "socialists" and what have you, and a considerable population of what were called "Jesus Freaks." Every one of these poorly considered youthful ideals were highly imperfect expressions of Man's inalienable inclination toward "peace love and understanding."
Some have clung to their faulty intellectual decorations to the point they'll even try to torture the "evil" out of people to force these grand dogmas into universal acceptance. Such a man is Mubarak, such men are the CIA, the moneyed elites and whomever supposes he is qualified to establish a "World Order" and the like. This thinking is not exclusive to some veiled elite. It is universal among all who think evil overshadows good; where all good is achieved only by fitful struggles and only a few truly deserve "Good" in its fullest sense. To my knowledge that's a very considerable portion of the world's present population. Many believe this to the core, to the point of murderous and suicidal conviction.
The Egyptian tweeters who say their protests are a lesson for the world are correct. Some may not realize how right they are. They are in a pincers between foreign agencies filled with unscrupulous ideologues who've manipulated this situation over time and their own personal intuitions "endowed by their Creator." Whatever the outcome, the battle won't be stopping in Egypt by any means, nor in those Middle Eastern countries that have been set up for it by the "insan."
Tom
Tweeted just now, Friday Feb 18, 2011
Sorry I'm late. The tweet episode with the Egyptians has had me brooding more deeply than anything so far in my time spent on the internet from 1997 to now.
For one thing, I'm mulling in wonder at the selfishness of those who wouldn't help. I dropped each without a qualm.
There is a quiet little corner in each of us brooding thinkers, a single chair, a simple little table, an espresso in a cracked cup, and on the wall above, a doomsday clock.
It is not the movement of the hands toward or away from that dreaded hour that matter, so much as the enthusiasm that impels one to move them. The "I'm busy using twitter to advance myself" smell among those who would not help those asking for our help had me stand up and push that minute hand a little closer to midnight with gusto. That made my bitter little espresso a little richer.
Some of those tweeters never returned. I'll never know whether they're alive or dead.
For you who helped, we share an inner brotherhood. For you too busy with "the shitty little messes you call your lives," quote Mel Allen, may you always fret about how life isn't going where you demand. May it never.
And may that clock always seem to tick forward.
Morning, January 31, 2011
Last night as I shut down, a switch in my head also turned to "off." It felt as though the die is cast.
...as though all subsequent events in Egypt will flow from these past 3 days, Friday Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps for years.
I looked through the "tinfoil hat" news, you know, where likely stories go alongside those such as we're controlled by lizards from outer space.
Of course it's most probable our CIA has been involved, but I'd forgotten to consider Britain's MI5, since it's already been there 100 years.
And lest we forget the interference of the French government. Did ANY of these "former" colonists not want another penny? Left scot-free?
And of course, the open and furtive meddlings of religious and political idealogues, people so removed from reality they hate those who aren't.
Tarpley mischaracterized the Egyptian (and Arab) youth as "Nihilists." That is like saying he is fat because it's his ideology.
I very much remember what being a "nihilist" feels like. It's an older "secret conspiracy" than any other. It is where youth feels great.
..and feels great, endless possibilities for his life. Yet everywhere he goes, he is met by one institutionalized blockade or another.
All these calm reasoned old men attempt to enforce the law of gravity upon him. They are compromised and crusty with torture and "realism."
Youth can not help but see this "realism" is itself a perpetuation of insanity, a long, slow death of the inner possibilities he knows.
The feelings radiating out his very brain and into the world are far from nihilistic. But in a sort of inner sonar, what is reflected back?
Reflected back is nihilism. Wrinkled, crusty elites who think they know what is real, enforcing it so that even his poor family suffers.
They own armies and police, where the young must go if they even want to eat. They are ordered to do things their hearts know are insane.
Those youths who have gone insane, gravitate to groups, usually religious, with a legend to follow that they're going to die anyway.
"My life has no meaning while I am alive, so let it make a statement in death!"
The thoughts I've just sketched out can't be told by some ideologue. They can be mimicked by propagandists, hoping to misguide.
But the meanings behind them, which fuel the words, can never be distorted. That meaning has fueled every motion in Egypt. Go, youth.
Thoughts to a group of scholars, mostly Islamic, Wednesday February 9 2011:
Gentlemen,
I've wearied myself keeping up with "on the ground" tweeters in Egypt, along with my agency chores, which are often like Bartleby the Scrivener's in the first place. I hope I can write a few brief sensible things with eyes open.
Watching all this is part of a very grand personal experiment for me. Are any of you familiar with the 1965 movie, "The Flight of the Phoenix"? An airplane crashes in the desert. The survivors are hopeless, except for an engineer who says they can make a new plane from pieces of the old one. They agree. As the plane nears completion the engineer confesses that he is a toymaker, not an aviation engineer. He is nearly lynched. But as the survivors have no other hope, they board the plane anyhow, and it works. They succeed.
That's how I feel in this voluntary endeavor, but more miniscule. I'm one of many millions, all of whom are shouting, and even ephemeral funnymen merely promoting their careers with dopey jokes get far more attention than what I have to say does. Still, over a period of years, in small counties in two different states, "the people" and I succeeded in ridding those counties of the entire board of leaders and their vested outside interests, old ruling families, and so on, just as the Egyptians now mean to do. As though in a toy model of these events now involving many millions, the elements are the same -- including a little violence and high potentates from "outside." Incidentally, we had spies too.
I kept in touch with friends in both counties -- in New York and California -- for years. The achievements the people made stayed. The "ruling families" and cronies no longer had places in local government. Honest participatory democracy did indeed replace them.
You all largely agree that this Egyptian event has been rigged from the outside to a great extent. This has so many historical precedents, it's ludicrous to pretend there are no such things. Many have been duped, many are decades-long recipients of both bribery and extortion, many are members of longtime international organizations of cracked ideologies, profane false mysticisms and so on.
For all we know, the idealistic young Ghonim may in thirty years be a fat, overindulged, cruel and arrogant despot as is the one the Egyptian people now mean to eject from their government -- even though no one has any true verification of Mubarak's present whereabouts.
Yet no uprising in any country can be manipulated into existence without first the people's spontaneous impulses -- where, as Jefferson termed it, their "inalienable rights endowed by their Creator" have been smothered by egotisms, coercions, taken on voluntarily for fear of reprisals or duped into oppression by the submissive and habitual superstitions of their own societies. The rebels tend to be young because the vigorous, untested intuition of youth, well-meant and altruistic, does attempt to cast off these oppressions. They may do so on behalf of their parents, whom they've seen so unhappy from their first cognitions of childhood. In that way many may attempt to "atone for the sins of their fathers."
Youth may take on new ideologies like so many fine new decorations. America's aging male population is still peppered with long hair, as it once stood for an ideal. We have pockets of aging, wrinkled "communists" and "socialists" and what have you, and a considerable population of what were called "Jesus Freaks." Every one of these poorly considered youthful ideals were highly imperfect expressions of Man's inalienable inclination toward "peace love and understanding."
Some have clung to their faulty intellectual decorations to the point they'll even try to torture the "evil" out of people to force these grand dogmas into universal acceptance. Such a man is Mubarak, such men are the CIA, the moneyed elites and whomever supposes he is qualified to establish a "World Order" and the like. This thinking is not exclusive to some veiled elite. It is universal among all who think evil overshadows good; where all good is achieved only by fitful struggles and only a few truly deserve "Good" in its fullest sense. To my knowledge that's a very considerable portion of the world's present population. Many believe this to the core, to the point of murderous and suicidal conviction.
The Egyptian tweeters who say their protests are a lesson for the world are correct. Some may not realize how right they are. They are in a pincers between foreign agencies filled with unscrupulous ideologues who've manipulated this situation over time and their own personal intuitions "endowed by their Creator." Whatever the outcome, the battle won't be stopping in Egypt by any means, nor in those Middle Eastern countries that have been set up for it by the "insan."
Tom
Tweeted just now, Friday Feb 18, 2011
Sorry I'm late. The tweet episode with the Egyptians has had me brooding more deeply than anything so far in my time spent on the internet from 1997 to now.
For one thing, I'm mulling in wonder at the selfishness of those who wouldn't help. I dropped each without a qualm.
There is a quiet little corner in each of us brooding thinkers, a single chair, a simple little table, an espresso in a cracked cup, and on the wall above, a doomsday clock.
It is not the movement of the hands toward or away from that dreaded hour that matter, so much as the enthusiasm that impels one to move them. The "I'm busy using twitter to advance myself" smell among those who would not help those asking for our help had me stand up and push that minute hand a little closer to midnight with gusto. That made my bitter little espresso a little richer.
Some of those tweeters never returned. I'll never know whether they're alive or dead.
For you who helped, we share an inner brotherhood. For you too busy with "the shitty little messes you call your lives," quote Mel Allen, may you always fret about how life isn't going where you demand. May it never.
And may that clock always seem to tick forward.
posted by Tom Dark at 10:49 AM
3 Comments:
thank you tom.
ksa/egy
Out of the loop, Tom. Catch me up.
There's still a buncha people tweeting from Cairo. Just join Twitter, pick somebody like @Leaf115 and that'll take you to others.
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