"Moral Force of Non-Violence" - Not Really! Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

So, when violently attacked, as they were on February 2, 2011, by undercover police and goons of the ruling party wielding guns, knives, Molotov cocktails and more, the insurgents held their ground and fought back, holding Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. In the process, they extended their grassroots self-organization. As reporters for the Washington Post noted, the rebels of Tahrir Square created popular prisons to hold undercover security forces, and people’s clinics to care for the wounded: Refusing to end their 10-day old demonstration, protesters set up makeshift hospitals in alleyways off the square to treat their wounded, and fashioned a holding cell in a nearby travel office to detain those they suspected of inciting the violence. Organizers said they had captured more than 350 ‘thugs of the government’ among the pro-government demonstrators, some carrying police identification cards, and turned them over to the Egyptian army. -David McNally, “Mubarak's Folly: The Rising of Egypt's Workers,” February 11, 2011 Violence forced the Egyptian people onto the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and Mahalla. Police bullets pierced skin, ripped through vital organs, and they stilled beating hearts. Batons cracked skulls and bones. How many protesters for democracy were detained and tortured? From Barack Obama’s mouth comes a coating of capitalist manipulation of reality:“It was the moral force of non-violence that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” Injustice, a systemic practice of violence, forced the 18-day revolution that challenged the U.S. Empire. Hosni Mubarak’s loyalty to the Empire demanded that he maintain the iron heel on the necks of the Egyptian people. Obama: The U.S. supports human rights in Egypt… …But in reality, Obama “slashed funding for Egyptian human rights groups that could have empowered democracy activists” American Thinker Blog, February 14, 2010. Neither Obama nor Hilary Clinton ever called for Mubarak to step down - not in those 18 days or in any one of those 30 years. Mubarak’s agenda in Egypt served the interests of the Empire and Israel. Obama: Omar Suleiman! And on cue, Mubarak turns to Suleiman and pushes The Torturer par excellence before the people. In Washington, the regime thought the trick would work. “Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington,” writes Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, January 29, 2011. [S]ince 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man inEgypt for renditions - the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances. Every rendition was greenlighted at the highest levels of both the U.S. and Egyptian intelligence agencies. But the Egyptian people asked themselves: What is peaceful, what is non-violent about Suleiman’s and the U.S.’s Black sites in Egypt? Washington’s trick did not work! It is capitalism struggling to survive! Capitalism is not moral or non-violent or just! To challenge capitalism is to awaken the most voracious brand of violence! Unarmed protesters Egyptians took to the streets but non-violence did not! Violence greeted the people in the form of weapons made in the U.S.A., in the form of U.S. - funded hooded thugs, and in the form of bold-faced lies from the Empire, “It was the moral force of non-violence that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” What revolution has ever experienced non-violence? What profound and fundamental change has ever come about as a result of non-violent protest? General Custer and the U.S. Calvary, local police and the FBI, lynch mobs, Bull Connors, silent citizens and legislation, for example, guaranteed the non-existence of non-violent resistance to tyranny. Revolution, profound and fundamental change is the uprising of a people in the midst of staggering poverty and unemployment, repression and imprisonment, brutality and murder - and what is non-violent about these living conditions? As I write this article, the newly-selected corporate Governor / Overseer Scott Walker in the state of Wisconsin orders the National Guard to stand by. Why? The capitalist want peace! Walker’s position is contingent upon continuing the war against workers, targeting the collective bargaining rights for state employers, and daring the workers to take to the streets in protest! The police whose unions are exempt from the bill will greet them, too. Accept tyranny as the norm, the result of corporate finagling with sub-prime mortgaging, derivatives, and multi-million dollar CEO bonuses. While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, (sic) and the politicians dance. -Bob Herbert in “When Democracy Weakens” It does not matter what the people want. Peace is the spread of corporate domination and repressive police states everywhere and the obedience of the people. “We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.” Where is peace, democracy? With over 800 military bases around the globe, with CIA operatives, 9-11 security and surveillance apparatuses everywhere, with U.S. corporate “humanitarian” or soft warfare campaigns in every hovel of the Earth - where is peace, where is democracy, rule of the people? U.S. nuclear subs underwater are on the ready and U.S. satellites spy from above. As long as the U.S. Empire is at war with the world’s men, women, and children, it cannot stand by idly and watch as populations seek peace and democracy. In Washington, Obama, while excising the bullets, batons, death, and detention of protesters in Egypt, continues the assault on citizens here in the U.S. His eyes on that “moral force of non-violence” in Egypt, obliges him to gear up for that day when American workers open their eyes! Until then, he has ordered his Justice Department to know more of what Americans are thinking. Know what they are up to! More surveillance! Obama’s regime has relayed as much - although secretly. Obama’s regime asserts that the FBI has the right to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. and the FBI can do so - “without any formal legal process or court oversight,” February 11, 2011. According to McClatchy’s report, critics argue that this assertion is “flawed” (“flawed! - when from the White House standpoint it is dripping with urgency or rather charm!) and could lead to “a repeat of FBI abuses that should have come to an end in 2006.” A “legacy of the Bush administration’s war on terror,” this assertion, the report continues, assumes “many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.” What in this assertion of the Emperor’s power reminds anyone of that “moral force of non-violence”? From Bush to Obama, the assertion of the Emperor’s power to maintain law and order among the people while clearing the pathways for Wall Street bankers and corporate war profiteers to help themselves to the world’s resources and wealth is the peaceful progression of fascism. McClatchy’s request for a copy of this secret (and redacted) memo from the Obama regime has yet to be honored. I am not sure why the McClatchy news agency believed the Obama regime would be less secretive or, as the report suggests, anymore “open than the Bush administration,” when Obama-the-presidential-candidate specifically referred to his desire to emulate proceeding leaders of Empire and further the peace - in American fashion - and even better! And there is the peaceful progression of the Patriot Act. From The Nation, John Nichols writes: “the Obama White House and Congressional leaders are rushing to extend… the Patriot Act’s authorities, due to expire at the end of the month.” While the GOP proposes an extension only until the end of 2011, the Obama regime envisions Patriot authorities conducting, as Nichols notes,“‘roving surveillance’ of communications,” collecting and examining “business records,” and targeting “individuals who are not tied to terrorist groups for surveillance” - at least until December 2013. (Would that be long enough to cover anticipated responses to Obama’s 2012 budget proposal?). Not a terrorist - but a protester, maybe? Here is where you are Egyptian, Tunisian, or Algerian - any so-called “Third World” citizen. Have a look at Obama’s 2012 budget proposal. More cuts to programs and services for the poor, workers or otherwise, while the Pentagon’s budget receives a “record” $553 billion, “a boost of $22 billion above the level enacted for 2010” (Reuters, February 14, 2011). Of the $671 billion the defense department will receive, $118 billion is designated for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, General Electric and the other corporations for which wars are the best business on the planet are delighted with the politicians inWashington. And for the American (so-called “First-World”) people - Cuts! Cuts! Cuts! The wealthiest Americans received tax cuts and the working poor, the elderly, the graduate student, and even the community-based organizations, cuts or the elimination of badly needed services. Over 200 programs will be cut! But not for the prison industrial complex! Spending for prisons will receive a raise from the government from $6.2 billion to $6.8 billion dollars! With 2.3 million in prisons - is the U.S. Empire anticipating housing more American citizens in prison cells? It does not matter what ordinary people want and need to survive - and that is not non-violent! The unemployment rate is at 9.3 percent here in the U.S., but the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, comfortable in his position, anticipates relief - way somewhere in eternity! What the hell! Bernanke is not losing sleep over it. “The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from,” Bob Herbert writes. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich” (“When Democracy Weakens”). This is more of the same waging of violence against the people! Only now, we are witnessing a more intensified war, with more rapid “wielding guns, knives, Molotov cocktails” from the ruling corporate powers striking the people since the man sitting at the desk in the Oval Office looks - colored, and as such, he is all-too willing to genuflect before his constituents and Masters - “the very rich.” Bush could only wish to be so assertive! And the capitalists on Wall Street, at the Pentagon, at the White House, in Congress, and state and local law enforcement agencies are not thinking about that “moral force of non-violence.” These folks know it is only a matter of time before the American people gather up their courage and surround the Bastille. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.