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How We Can Learn From The Egyptian Revolution

December 17, 2011 by TheTaoOfD Leave a Comment

The Egyptian Revolution is one of the most beautiful and symbolic revolutions in history. Egypt is where the protest movement that is happening throughout the world all began. A lot can be learned from it:

Voicing your opinion can bring change. If you voice your opinion loud enough, people will hear it. If people like what they hear, they will listen. The Egyptian revolution started on the internet and spread like a wild fire. The people of Egypt had had enough of President Mubark and all agreed he had to go.
The people will adapt. In Tahrir square the government forces started to shoot and kill protesters. It started off with tear gas, sprays, and rubber bullets. Than the snipers came in and started killing people. The protesters started making improvised tools and equipment to counter the attacks from their own government. Just because the protestors (in any revolution) lack the weapons and other high-tech equipment that their government would, it does not mean they will not win.
Showing fear will get you nowhere. To all my #OSW-ers! If the protesters at Tahrir square packed it in when the snipers started picking people off 1 by 1, the revolution would have been squashed immediately. The Egyptian government tried to intimidate the protesters but they did not back down. Instead, they countered the governments moves and as peacefully as possible, won their freedom.
Anything is possible. I remember watching the chaos happening in Egypt on my t.v when all of this was going on. Seeing crowds of people being ran over by pick-up trucks and peaceful protesters get sniped, I had very little hope for the Egyptian people. I felt bad for them because I knew all they wanted was freedom but instead were going to be met with tank blasts, tear gas, and sniper fire. To imagine the people from the poor economy of Egypt would overthrow a wealthy corrupt leader seemed crazy. Today, Hosni Mubarak is no longer the president of Egypt. He was forced to resign from all the pressure being put on him from the people of Egypt and the military of Egypt, which was taking the peoples side after months of sticking with Mubarak. Egypt is on their way to freedom. There might be a few bumps in the road but lets hope the hardest part is out of the way.
If the revolution isn’t televised, it will be communicated through social networking. The media in Egypt under Mubarak was all censored, people were kept in the dark about everything. People were persecuted for speaking out against Mubarak’s rule, many were imprisoned and some even went missing. Social networking made it easier for the Egyptian people to communicate with each other. In many cases it was their only way to communicate. The revolution in Egypt was sparked and gained steam through a Facebook group. Tweeters and bloggers were also key factors to spreading the movement.

Filed under Culture + Politics Tagged with attain, culture, Egypt, Freedom, gain, how can, knowledge, learn, Mubarak, Politics, revolution, the people, we

Maps of Hidden Places

December 11, 2011 by TheTaoOfD 9 Comments

This is the Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any kind, that was made at Constantinople in AD 1513. The lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula.

The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map “agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.”

This means that the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.

“We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.” -Harold Ohlmeyer Lt Colonel, USAF, after evaluating features of the Pirir Reis World Map.

The best recent evidence suggests that Queens Maud Land, and the neighboring regions shown on the map, passed through a long ice-free period which may not have come completely to an end until about six thousand years ago.

Piri Reis could not have acquired his information through explorers of his time because Antarctica remained undiscovered until 1818, more than 300 years after he drew the map.

Piri Reis himself said he based the map on even older maps.

Map making is a complex and civilized activity.He argued that some of the source maps used, in particular those said to date back to the fourth century BC, had themselves been based on even earlier sources.

Many of these maps that Piri Reis used as his sources, along with many other historical evidence were burned to ash when the great library of Alexandria in Egypt was burned to the ground by the Romans.

The ice free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map has remained one of the biggest mysteries to geologists because evidence confirms that the latest date it could have been surveyed and charted in an ice free condition is 4000 BC.

There has yet to be an explanation for who or what could have had the knowledge and technology to make an accurate map six thousand years ago, well before the development of the first true civilizations recognized by historians.