'Era of naked force' - frontline video from Egypt

 "WE HAVE now entered the era of naked force".

That was the view expressed by former New York Times correspondent  Chris Hedges, as this video was released showing a week of rebellion and repression on the front line in Egypt, with police clearly seen shooting at protesters against the neoliberal-backed SCAF military regime.

Hedges wrote in an article called This is What Revolution Looks Like: "The historian Crane Brinton in his book 'Anatomy of a Revolution' laid out the common route to revolution.

"The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis.

"Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power.

"The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

"I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force.

"The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us."

Today, Friday, was expected to see massive crowds turn out to call for the immediate end to SCAF rule.

Updates at EA World View.

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