[image: chart shows contributions from military members to presidential candidates, with Ron Paul at nearl $300,000, Barack Obama under $150,000 and Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum all under $50,000].
Chart: Contributions from military members to presidential candidates.
Not quite what you expected, eh? Full story here.
As a keen political thinker and an eyewitness to the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell’s insights are a very good way to understand anarchist military in practice. Orwell had briefly served as acting-lieutenant in charge of thirty soldiers, and “never had the slightest difficulty in getting an order obeyed” under the system. “It was understood that orders had to be obeyed,” he writes in his war diaries Homage to Catalonia, “but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior.”
[image: a long-haired person in army uniform behind a fence, sandbags and shipping containers in background].
Invisible Women: The Military’s Not-So-Secret Gender Problem
Yesterday, we posted a link to a jarring GOOD magazine infographic with the title “Female soldiers more likely to be raped by their own troops than killed by enemy fire.” The response was huge…and it got us thinking.
Egyptian Army: Maintaining security means showing restraint in the use of force, but also in taking appropriate action against those who are using violence. Restraint does not mean failing to protect when there are violent attacks against peaceful protestors - or allowing in men on horses and camels.
Heba Morayef is Human Rights Watch’s Egypt researcher, who has been reporting an audio diary of her experience in Cairo’s Tahrir Square over the past few days. It is of vital importance to know the experience of someone on the ground, and this is a diary devoid of the agenda of the mainstream media. It is intensely focused on reporting the Egyptian situation.
“It’s very secure because the military is checking IDs at the entrance to the square. I asked one of them why and he said it’s to stop the police coming in,” she says. “People really feel they can completely express themselves on the street in Egypt.” Such scenes reflect those captured in these images, and really cast some elements of the situation in a positive light.
The military protect the protest from convicted criminals and the corrupt police’s pro-Mubarak agenda, Christians protect Muslims as they pray and, as Heba Morayef puts it, “they’ve also created a separate entrance for the women so that women so that women are protected from harassment.” Which, she adds, “is a very big concern in any place in Egypt.”
On Day 9 of her diary, Heba notices that NDP members are being mobbed and handed over to the military. When she asked how they were known to be members of Mubarak’s ruling party, she was told that they had been going around telling people not to protest and to go home. “These are tactics that are employed around elections,” she explains. “A man was offering 50 [Egyptian] pounds for people to go and say that protesters should go home.”
These are the desperate and deceptive tactics Mubarak’s party appear to have been employing on the streets of Egypt. Eyewitnesses have told the German Press Agency that molotov cocktails and teargas were being used by the pro-Mubarak side, while plain-clothed officers are known to be shooting protesters. As in the opening quote, Heba is also concerned that the military is showing too much restraint, failing to prevent violence against the protesters.
Despite the violence and corruption that surrounds the protest, Heba remains optimistic:
I keep talking about the safe space, and how exciting and how empowering it was to be just there, in the midst of all these happy people, who have hope that for once they can change the country, change the way things are and have their demands listened to.
This is certainly a frightening period for Egypt, but one where even the bereaved remain fearless in fighting for their rights.
Source: hrw.org
I want this to be a place of neurodiversity. I'm not an expert, but I welcome questions, thoughts and experiences from others. I want to respect all neurodivergences and that means refusing to reinforce ableism.
I don't use functioning language. Nor do I insult people on the basis of their intelligence, or equate intelligence with worth.
Outside of ableism, I also reblog posts about cissexism, heterosexism, racism, sexism, sizism and any other -isms that are taking place.
As a white cisgender guy I hold a lot of privileges, so I welcome call-outs when I get any of this wrong.
My personal posts tend to be in the actuallyautistic tag.
I can also be found at FY Stimming.
![[image: chart shows contributions from military members to presidential candidates, with Ron Paul at nearl $300,000, Barack Obama under $150,000 and Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum all under $50,000].
motherjones:
Chart: Contributions from military members to presidential candidates.
Not quite what you expected, eh? Full story here.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzwqc4qix81qat9xfo1_500.png)
![[image: a long-haired person in army uniform behind a fence, sandbags and shipping containers in background].
motherjones:
Invisible Women: The Military’s Not-So-Secret Gender Problem
Yesterday, we posted a link to a jarring GOOD magazine infographic with the title “Female soldiers more likely to be raped by their own troops than killed by enemy fire.” The response was huge…and it got us thinking.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnxeh2yZOj1qat9xfo1_1280.jpg)
![Egyptian Army: Maintaining security means showing restraint in the use of force, but also in taking appropriate action against those who are using violence. Restraint does not mean failing to protect when there are violent attacks against peaceful protestors - or allowing in men on horses and camels.
Heba Morayef is Human Rights Watch’s Egypt researcher, who has been reporting an audio diary of her experience in Cairo’s Tahrir Square over the past few days. It is of vital importance to know the experience of someone on the ground, and this is a diary devoid of the agenda of the mainstream media. It is intensely focused on reporting the Egyptian situation.
“It’s very secure because the military is checking IDs at the entrance to the square. I asked one of them why and he said it’s to stop the police coming in,” she says. “People really feel they can completely express themselves on the street in Egypt.” Such scenes reflect those captured in these images, and really cast some elements of the situation in a positive light.
The military protect the protest from convicted criminals and the corrupt police’s pro-Mubarak agenda, Christians protect Muslims as they pray and, as Heba Morayef puts it, “they’ve also created a separate entrance for the women so that women so that women are protected from harassment.” Which, she adds, “is a very big concern in any place in Egypt.”
On Day 9 of her diary, Heba notices that NDP members are being mobbed and handed over to the military. When she asked how they were known to be members of Mubarak’s ruling party, she was told that they had been going around telling people not to protest and to go home. “These are tactics that are employed around elections,” she explains. “A man was offering 50 [Egyptian] pounds for people to go and say that protesters should go home.”
These are the desperate and deceptive tactics Mubarak’s party appear to have been employing on the streets of Egypt. Eyewitnesses have told the German Press Agency that molotov cocktails and teargas were being used by the pro-Mubarak side, while plain-clothed officers are known to be shooting protesters. As in the opening quote, Heba is also concerned that the military is showing too much restraint, failing to prevent violence against the protesters.
Despite the violence and corruption that surrounds the protest, Heba remains optimistic:
I keep talking about the safe space, and how exciting and how empowering it was to be just there, in the midst of all these happy people, who have hope that for once they can change the country, change the way things are and have their demands listened to.
This is certainly a frightening period for Egypt, but one where even the bereaved remain fearless in fighting for their rights.
LISTEN TO HEBA’S AUDIO DIARY HERE.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lg2j66P0eI1qa9ndho1_r1_500.jpg)
