The Unknown Revolutionary

http://ianmasters.com/content/unknown-revolutionary

Submitted by producer on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 21:35

Today I was privileged to speak with the man who has inspired the revolutions that are sweeping the Middle East with his tracts, texts and tactics.  A quiet American, unlike Graeme Greene’s hapless hero, he is largely unknown and unheralded in this country, and instead of wrecking the world for the empire, he’s wrecking the empire to save the world and America too.

But to young revolutionaries around the world he is known as the Godfather of nonviolent revolution. He is also very well known to the dictators and the secret police of regimes around the world, from Putin’s Russia where his books are banned; to Iran’s State TV which portrays him as the CIA mastermind behind the Green Movement, now back on the streets of Iranian cities getting beaten up by theocratic thugs as we speak.

Today I was joined by Dr. Gene Sharp who is the founder of and Senior Scholar at the Albert Einstein Institution and the intellectual force behind the theory and practice of recent revolutions in Serbia, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain and others to come. He is also the inspiration for the Burmese in their struggle against one of the world’s most repressive regimes and his prolific work has been translated into Burmese, Karin and countless other languages.

While Gene Sharp arguably does more good for America and its reputation around the world than the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon combined, he receives no support from the U.S. Government. 

But he is making history while the U.S. Government fumbles in confusion on the sidelines, trapped in George W. Bush’s fabulous misadventures, repeating the folly that Shelley’s poem evokes, “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!”

As Gene Sharp inspired young Arabs to topple their mummified regimes, we pour our treasure and most of our diplomatic, military and intelligence resources into the desert sands.

While we waste thousands of lives and uncounted billions on the lost war in Iraq and the losing war in Afghanistan, Gene Sharp operates on a shoestring and makes his work available for free on the Albert Einstein Institution’s website.  And countless young revolutionaries around the world are using his nonviolent methods to depose despots and dictators, theocrats and thugs, pretenders and potentates, colonels and criminals.  Toppling regimes like dominoes, many of which our government has long supported.

I hope you visit Gene Sharp’s website at aeinstein.org and offer your support and honor the work of this quiet American who is creating a storm abroad.  Get to know the contribution and legacy of this man who is unknown in his own country but is changing the world.  And who knows, maybe we can apply Gene Sharp’s strategies and tactics here at home and restore a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs