I was unaware, but I'm afraid it really doesn't matter that much for the sake of my argument. Particularly since I was speaking of the regime at the moment the revolt began, rather than war crimes committed during the war, because otherwise comparing to Egypt now is rather difficult. I'm not saying the Americans didn't have legitimate grievances justifying their revolt, or that ugly things didn't happen during the resulting Revolutionary War, but let's not pretend the situation was even remotely comparable to the one in Egypt now, or most other dictatorial regimes throughout history. There was the Boston Massacre of course, but there was no systematic policy of repression and imprisoning or murder of dissenters. Which is why Joel's talk of "redress of grievances" is absurd. It's great if you can do a revolution in the rather civilized and dignified way the American Founding Fathers did it, but it's ridiculous to pretend that that's possible in all cases. It certainly isn't here.