This picture of soldiers beating and dragging this nwoman whose blue bra and belly have been exposed, has already become an icon of the way SCAF deals with its fellow Egyptians. Egypftian novelist Ahdaf Soueif wrote a beautiful piece about it in The Guardian.

Two versions have emerged of what has been happening these last days to the sit-in in front of the Cabinet building and on and around Tahrir Square in Cairo. One version was spread by the state media, the government and SCAF itself. It began with Prime Minister Kammal al-Ganzouri who on Saturday during a press conference denied that that the army used violence or live amunnition and called what was “happening not a revolution, but [rather] an assault on the revolution”.

Next was the state media that described the protesters in the street as thugs, street kids, drug addicts and forces from outside Egypt. State television even broadcasted interviews with people who said that they were protesters who had been paid by liberal groups to attack the military. It was, as the New York Times wrote, an echo of the propaganda from the last days of the Mubarak government.

After that SCAF repeated this story. There was the hair rising remark, by General Abdel Moneim Kato, an adviser to the military’s Morale Affairs Department, who talked to the private newspaper Al-Shorouk about the events and the violence used by the army. People had better worry about the country’s welfare, he said, in stead of being concerned about “some street bully who deserves to be thrown into Hitler’s ovens”.

Kato’s remarks were condemned by many. But on Monday afternoon a civilized version of what he said was presented during a press conference of General Adel Emara, one of the SCAF-leaders ‘The armed forces,’ Emara said, ‘does not use violence systematically. We exercise a level of self-restraint that others envy. We do not do that out of weakness but out of concern for national interests.”

On two sides walls built by the army of concrete blocs and in the middle the burnt out building of the Institute for the Advancement of Scientific Research. (Picture M Shestawy)

As reported by Al-Masry al-Youm of which the English section recently has been renamed Egypt Independent), the general said that violence erupted on Friday when demonstrators who had been holding a sit-in in outside the cabinet’s headquarters for the last three weeks attacked a military officer. Military personnel guarding the cabinet’s building came to the officer’s rescue, but they were subjected to “deliberate humiliation and provocation,” continued Emara, who affirmed later that the armed forces had no intention of dispersing the protest.

According to activists and eyewitnesses, however, the version of what happened during the past few days is completely the other way round. Military personnel picked a fight with protesters with the intention of dispersing the sit-in, whose main demands were the firing of the newly appointed Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri and the transfer of power from the military to civilians.

The military started to throw stones and office furniture at protesters from the roofs of nearby buildings. Soldiers in military uniforms were even photographed urinating on protesters from the rooftops. In the meantime, gunshots were heard. The next day more ugly scenes emerged of soldiers beating up demonstrators with sticks and dragging a woman through the street, stripping her naked and kicking her. Also 14 protesters died so far, most of them by gunshots

Emara didn’t challenge the authenticity of photos and videos showing the woman, which have gone viral in cyberspace and in the foreign media.Yet he argued that the footage didn’t prove that the military had resorted to excessive violence.“I say yes, this scene actually happened and we are investigating it,’ bu he added that the circumstances should be taking into account as well.

As Al Masry al-Youm/Egypt Independent wrote: The weekend’s violence brought back memories of earlier military brutality, including an attack on a Coptic-led protest in October and the dispersal of an anti-military rally in November. In the first incident, the military was held responsible for the killing of 27 people; in the second, both the armed forces and the police were blamed for the murder of at least 40. On both occasions, the military and the state-owned media invoked conspiracy theories, using the common refrain that “hidden” hands were fomenting chaos to ruin the state and thwart the transition to democracy.

The problem with the two versions, however, is that many ordinary Egyptians – indeed most Egyptians – tend to believe the version of the state media and the SCAF, in which the protesters are depicted as criminals and thugs, influenced by foreigners, who try to undermine the government and the army and in the process destroy Egyptian property.

That in itself is bad enough, as it clearly has the effect that the pro-revolution forces are marginalised. But it us not even the whole story. Al-Ahram Online reports that in the recent military raid on Tahrir Square, media personnel and cameras became a primary target. Men in military uniform, assisted by plainclothes men, confiscated cameras and smashed them.

Reporters and filmmakers on rooftops surrounding the square were not excluded from the attacks, Al-Ahram Online reports. Al-Jazeera English producer Adam Makary told the paper that 20 plain-clothed men stormed his hotel overlooking the square and smashed any camera they found.

Makary saw the men severely beating a French reporter and a female member of staff at the hotel, after which he hid in a closet and heard more people being beaten and equipment being smashed. According to Makary, the plain-clothed men who attacked the hotel – whilst protesters were being evicted from Tahrir – were “instructing each other and everything seemed very orchestrated.”

Filmmaker Cressida Trew, who was filming from a friend’s flat overlooking the square, was visited by a military officer, assisted by three others, who confiscated her cameras. According to Trew, she tried to negotiate with the officer to take her memory card and leave the camera but her proposal was refused. Two more media personnel accompanying Trew also had their cameras taken in addition to all their lenses.

This was not the first time the media had been targeted since military took power. Makary explained that this was the third time he had been attacked while doing his job. It had happened twice before in Alexandria.

Masry Al-Youm photographer Ahmed Abd El-Fattah lost his eye while covering clashes near the Ministry of Interior in Mohamed Mahmoud Street where 40 people were killed and over a thousand injured. Abd El-Fattah said police officers shot at his eyes. Although activists have also lost their eyes and even their lives, Abd El-Fattah said his injury was no coincidence as media were being targeted. “Five Masry Al-Youm reporters, in addition to ten working for other media institutions, were injured that day and they all had cameras,” he said. Moreover, Abd El-Fattah said media personnel often suffered accusations of spying while on the job. “People are affected by the military’s media and the military also has secret agents all around to stir such accusations,” he said.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

An 1840 portrait of Mehmet Ali

To understand why Egyptians rebelled in the early months of 2011 and then continued their uprising in November 2011 after the Mubarak regime was overthrown, one must examine not just the short-term causes (poverty, political corruption, authoritarian rule, etc.) of Arab Spring, but the history of this North African country from the era of Mehmet Ali the reformer (1801-1849) until Arab Spring 2011. Although a North Africa-Middle Eastern-wide mass movement, Arab Spring in Egypt is part of a historical process with very deep roots that date to the Ali era.

As part of a regional mass movement against the old authoritarian regime that includes the military and police as sentinels of the status quo, the Arab Spring revolts of 2011 certainly qualify as Pan-Islamic only in so far as they have religion in common as a catalyst for change against authoritarian governments. Unlike the Arab Spring bottom-up uprising, Egypt’s previous uprisings were nationalist, top-down that included the military as a catalyst to change.

The similarities between past and present include nationalism and Islam as ideological catalysts, although it must be stressed that domestic, regional, and global conditions are constantly changing and revolutions reflect such changes. While ‘Islamism’ and nationalism may be constants in Egypt’s revolts from the 19th century to the present, Islamism and nationalism have undergone changes to reflect domestic and global circumstances. Unlike, Europe that underwent a Renaissance, Commercial and Industrial Revolutions and Enlightenment, this is not the case in Egypt (nor Asia or Africa for that matter), thus religion plays a key role in revolution of a traditional society and shapes the anatomy of the revolution itself.

In the first half of the 19th century when northwest European were trying to expand their colonial empires after the Napoleonic Wars, Mehmet Ali managed to prevent his country from external dependence. This was at a time that the Ottoman Empire was divided into European spheres of influence. Ali carried out a nationalist revolution (the term ‘revolution’ means radical or systemic change) at a time that political revolutions were confined to Europe. However, his successor Abbas I (1848-1854 and Muhammad Said Pasha (1854-1863) prepared Egypt for colonization under England, thus undermining Ali’s reforms intended to achieve a modicum of national sovereignty.

The catalyst to colonization was the unraveling of the strong state structure that Mehmet Ali had built and the extraordinary foreign borrowing to the point that foreign creditors, especially British, paved the way for financial control over Egypt. By controlling Egypt and its precious canal, Britain enjoyed commercial and military control of much of Africa and the Middle East. Egyptian anti-colonial resistance from the late 19th century to the revolt of 1919 did not result in the elimination of British imperial rule.

In July 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers Movement took a page out of Mehmet Ali’s reformist nationalist movement in the 19th century and established a strong sovereign state for the next two decades. Nasser’s top-down revolution took place with the military as key player. The most significant achievement of Nasser was to eliminate British imperial rule and to provide Egypt with a sense of independence that it lacked since Ali.

Just as in the case of Ali, Nasser made mistakes of costly projects that did not yield the best results, exorbitant military spending made necessary owing to regional hostilities and the old War, and wasteful public enterprises. At the very least, the Nasser era afforded the people of Egypt a sense of pride that imperialism had denied them for more than a century.

The US and the West tried to isolate Nasser and portray him as a Communist sympathizer, merely because he opposed surrendering national sovereignty to the US and tried to strengthen Egypt and the Arab and pan-African movement. Nasser and Ali brought to Egypt a sense of respect by asserting national sovereignty and rejecting external dependence, but neither of them succeeded largely owing to pressures from the Great Powers.

Many in the West do not grasp the meaning of ‘national sovereignty’, because it appears as vague as the concept of ‘freedom’ to those who enjoy it and do not have to think about it. A Westerner thinks that ‘sovereignty’ is nebulous and meaningless because s/he lives in a country that enjoys national sovereignty. Why would Egyptians be fighting for this nebulous concept and not be content with a Wall Mart, a fast food restaurant, and a branch of an American or European bank in their city? Why aren’t Egyptians happy to have internet as a shopping mechanism, instead of using it to stir up a grass roots rebel movement?

The Arab Spring revolt is the third in the history of Egypt since Mehmet Ali to assert national sovereignty, not merely a struggle for jobs, higher income, less official corruption, a more efficient public sector and a modern private economy, one not based on the primary sector and tourism so heavily. Arab Spring for Egypt has deep historical roots and there are parallels between what took place in the 19th century before the building of the Suez Canal; what took place in the revolution (Egypt and Sudan) of 1919 official independence in 1922, while Britain remained hegemonic in essence; the successful revolution of 1952 when Nasser took the country to the non-aligned bloc; and what took place in 2011.

There are different interpretations on the causes of the original Arab Spring revolt in Egypt specifically, among them endemic poverty, corruption and external dependence, stronger commitment to Islam, etc. Many Western analysts, journalists and politicians insist that the revolt had absolutely nothing to do with the West, or any other external factors, and that the causes are purely domestic, factional rivalries of varying sorts. This argument assumes that Egypt exists on planet earth completely alone, cut off from the its Arab neighbors, from Israel, from sub-Sahara Africa, from Europe and from its long-time patron the US.

Those who have studied the history of colonial revolts dating back to the 19th century know that colonizers always attributed the causes of revolts to internal factors, rarely placing much weight on external ones. A closer examination of the influence of the US on Egypt in the last four decades reveals that the Arab Spring of 2011 is rooted in semi-colonial and extremely corrupt conditions under Sadat and Mubarak, as much as it is on domestic causes related to Islam that has always played a role in political rebellions.

In the 1980s, the public sector accounted for roughly half of industrial production and 90 percent of banking and insurance, occupying about 20 percent of the labor force; not at all unusual for an undeveloped or even a semi-developed economy. In the 1990s Egypt experienced a financial crisis when international banks refused to extend credit, largely because the state finances depended heavily on state enterprises; a position with which Western governments and IMF agreed. In the wave of neo-liberal policies that the US and IMF were promoting, Egypt agreed to go along the route of privatization.

In the early 1990s, the US government through the Agency of International Development funded to the tune of $10 million the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, a think tank that included the son of former president Mubarak intended to bring about structural change in the country. The US-funded think tank that was intended to reform Egypt in reality looted the country and its members are now in prison, others fled the country. Interested in privatizing as many public companies as possible, the think tank was to bring US-style neo-liberalism in Egypt.

The publicly-stated promise of the US and the West was that Egypt would be lifted from poverty, it would become democratic, it would modernize rapidly, and it would join the modern community of nations – a package called the “Washington Consensus”. That was two decades before Arab Spring, a promise never materialized, a promise that entailed greater poverty, less democracy, more external dependence, greater corruption, and a return to pre-1952 conditions. Working with a US law firm, Mubarak’s son undertook to implement the Washington Consensus in the name of progress. Specifically, the goal was to privatize 350 public companies worth more than $104 billion so that Egypt can join the 21st century.

The USAID-funded think tank, which Mubarak’s son and the US law firm headed, sold public assets worth $100 billion for a mere $10 billion, or $2 billion more than the foreign aid that the US provided between 1991 and 2011, on condition that Egypt must privatize as much of its public sector as possible. The members of the think tank and others linked to the former regime pocketed a great deal of money not only from the sale of public assets, but also from US aid.

After Mubarak fell, U.S. officials began asking questions about $70 billion of US taxpayer money going to Egypt for aid in past six decades and about a handful of people pocketing the money. However, because the US was itself behind the schemes to ‘privatize and reform’, it could not go public with what had taken place in Egypt under Mubarak, especially given that the regime was making just aboput every political and military concession to the US and to a lesser degree to Israel.

Some of the details of these scandalous exchanges were made public by Wikileaks on which the Washington Post then pursued its own investigation. Internal State Department memos (2006) indicate that the US was well aware that its own privatization program was the cause for even greater corruption in Egypt, but USAID continued the program without pause.

The fall of Mubarak was a celebrated event, even by the US, at least publicly, while privately, the US was demanding that the military must guarantee all treaties and obligations. In essence this entailed that Egypt can change faces but not policies, it can have elections but it cannot permit any change in the status quo ante. The military remained behind after Mubarak to make sure that the country stayed a dependency of the West, a nation of poor people with a hand full of millionaires linked to the state, a Muslim country with cordial relations to Israel and US.

Arab Spring for Egypt was not merely part of a regional – North Africa-Middle East – awakening, but it had its own historical causes, and it was more a continuation of the two-century long struggle of Egypt to achieve national sovereignty among nations.Whereas Ali and Nasser used the military to carry out their reforms and strengthen the state structure against foreign intervention, the rebels of Arab Spring are fighting against the military that has evolved into status quo guardian of domestic elites and foreign interests.

As we approach the end of 2011, unless a new regime takes power that genuinely represents the spirit of national sovereignty in the manner of Mehmet Ali and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt will not have lasting social harmony. Trying to forge alliances with the various interest groups in Egypt, groups that have disparate interests will not be easy, but the catalyst to unity will be a strong commitment to national sovereignty and social justice.

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

Coptic mass funeral (Al-Masry al-oum)

The question marks over what exactly caused the bloodbath during the Coptic demonstration in Cairo on Sunday, will surely remain in place for quite some time. One may hope that the commission of inquiry, that the government installed in the meantime, will shed some light on how it was possible that the army reacted in the outrageous way it did, running over unarmed protesters with heavy armoured vehicles. Also should be examined how it was possible that it did not keep mobs from attacking the marching Copts in Shubra in the first place, as that, accoing to many reports, seems to have ignited the riots.

It seems quite obvious that something is completely wrong with the way the army handles security matters in Egypt. Although prejudices against the Copts, which are widespread in salafist circles as well as in the predominantly Muslim army, certainly seem to have played a big role, one should also remember that it is not the first time that attempts by the army to handle security matters went completely out off hand. One has only to remember the utter chaos that broke out on 9 September when protesters went from Tahrir to the Israeli embassy and took apart the wall that had been erected in front of it. (see also here, in Dutch). That day ended aslo with several dead and no less than over the 1000 wounded.

This time, however, it seems that not only the army was to blame. Also the Egyptian state television came severely under fire. Al-Ahram Online reports that the TV is heavily criticized because it not only failed to calm matters, but actually played a role in aggravating the situation. Broadcasters on state television at one point called on the Egyptian public to head en masse to Maspero to defend Egyptian soldiers from what they described as ‘angry Christian protesters’.

It seems that these calls were heeded as indeed later in the night vigilante mobs with swords and machetes attacked demonstrators who fled the scenes where the army was using bullets and tear gas. Call-ins to state TV from viewers, meanwhile, where not very helpful either. ‘Armed Christians clashed with and killed military police,’ one call-in viewer claimed. State television also aired footage of injured military police officers, but failed to carry images of flattened corpses of killed demonstrators which were circulating virally over internet sites.

In this context it is noteworthy that Egyptian state television is one of those media where the staf still lagely consists of the old guard from the days of Mubarak, because only a handful leading figures were replaced. One cannot help but ask one self to what extend the remaining staff might still be familiar with the habits of the former government, which used so frequently to turn the Copts into scapegoats.

In the meantime it became clear that some 21 protesters, mainly Copts, were killed as army tanks ran over several people and shot rubber, and live bullets. Three other death fell among the military police, the army said. The Egyptian ministry of health confirmed that at least 329 people were injured.

Meanwhile on Monday the Egyptian authorities executed a man who was sentenced to death for the killing of five Copts and a Muslim watchman in January of last year in Naga Hammadi in Qena Governorate. The murder by Mohamed Ahmed Hussein, who was better known by his nickname al-Kammouny, was considered to be one of the worst sectarian killings in recent years in Egypt.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

As thousands of workers continue to strike in the Upper Egyptian sugar refineries over pay, work conditions, as well as purging the management from the remnants of Mubarak’s regime. The strikers, seen in the videos, also accuse the management of clientalism to the US and Israel, and chant for “open strikes till the fall of the regime.” The workers also use the same slogans as those of Tahrir: “We will leave. He’s the one who should leave,” but referring to the mini-Mubarak they have in their firm.

The current mass strikes are political in essence, not just economic. While activists are mobilizing thousands in Tahrir to denounce the military tribunals, the workers in the hundreds of thousands are in effect breaking the anti-strike law which refers strikes to military courts. The common denominator between all the strikes, though they still lack a centralized command or coordinating body, is the purging of the company management from corrupt, regime affiliated figures. The strikers are even raising questions about global politics, anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, during their industrial actions.

The strike wave constitutes the only hope for the Egyptian revolution…

AUTHOR: Hossam el-Hamalawy
URL: http://www.arabawy.org
E-MAIL: hossam [at] arabawy.org

Egyptian military trials (Carlos Latuff)

Human Rights Watch has done its arithmics. As Egypt’s military has arrested almost 12,000 civilians and brought them before military tribunals since SCAF took over in february 2011, HRW concluded that this is more than the total number of civilians who faced military trials during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.  “Nearly 12,000 prosecutions since February is astounding and shows how Egypt’s military rulers are undermining the transition to democracy,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The military can end these trials today – all it takes is one order to end this travesty of justice.”

In a September 5 news conference Gen. Adel Morsy of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) said that between January 28 and August 29, military tribunals tried 11,879 civilians. The tribunals convicted 8,071, including 1,836 suspended sentences; a further 1,225 convictions are awaiting ratification by the military.

Under the Mubarak government, such trials were reserved for high-profile political cases, such as the 2008 conviction of the former deputy guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shatir, and 24 others; cases in which the defendants had been arrested in a military zone such as the Sinai; or bloggers who criticized the military.

Human Rights Watch said that the proceedings before miliary courts do not protect basic due process rights and do not satisfy the requirements of independence and impartiality of courts of law. Defendants in Egyptian military courts usually do not have access to counsel of their own choosing and judges do not respect the rights of defense. Judges in the military justice system are military officers subject to a chain of command and therefore do not enjoy the independence to ignore instructions by superiors.

Morsy also said the referral of civilians to trial before military courts for violations of the Egyptian penal code would end as soon as the state of emergency is lifted. SCAF generals previously have said that the Code of Military Justice gives them the jurisdictional grounds to bring civilians before tribunals. This law provides overly broad jurisdiction to the military justice system in articles 5-6, which allow for civilians to be brought before military tribunals for crimes under the penal code if the crime takes place in an area controlled by the military or if one of the parties involved is a military officer. Since taking over the government, the military appears to consider the whole country “controlled by the military” and therefore everyone is potentially subject to military trials.

“The military should end the state of emergency immediately, but even that will not be enough to end military trials of civilians,” Stork said. “The Egyptian authorities should amend the Code of Military Justice in line with its obligations under international law to limit military jurisdiction to military offenses.”

International human rights bodies over the last 15 years have determined that trials of civilians before military tribunals violate the due process guarantees in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which affirms that everyone has the right to be tried by a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal. Egyptian human rights lawyers have filed two cases before Egypt’s administrative court, the Council of State, appealing against SCAF’s administrative decision to bring civilians before military tribunals, which the court will hear in September.

Military courts have acquitted only 795 of the nearly 12,000 cases they have tried, a conviction rate of 93 percent, Human Rights Watch said.

In July, the SCAF issued statement number 68 in which it announced that it was limiting the use of military tribunals to three categories of crimes: “thuggery,” rape, and assault against police officers, a limitation of little practical relevance since these categories cover the vast majority of cases before tribunals over the past months. The vast majority of those sentenced by military tribunals are not political cases but involve individuals arrested in connection with alleged regular criminal activities. Those sentenced included a 16-year-old child, Islam Harby Raga, currently in Tora prison serving a seven-year sentence after a military trial in February in which he was convicted on charges of assaulting a public official.

Blogger Maikel Nabil, currently on hunger strike, is serving a three-year prison sentence for “insulting the military establishment” and “spreading false information” – in fact, for peaceful expression of his views on his blog and on Facebook. Nabil’s lawyers have appealed his sentence and another military court will hear his appeal on November 1. On September 5, Morsy insisted that there were no cases regarding freedom of expression before the military courts, saying that Nabil was a case of “insulting the armed forces.”

In response to growing public calls for an end to military trials of civilians, the military has chosen instead to criticize the media for its coverage of the trials. In a news release on September 7, Morsy warned the media to stop commenting on military trials and spreading “false” information about proceedings.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

Postal workers on strike. They carry a banner witn the name of their union: The Independent Union of the Workers of the Egyptian Post.

It looks as if  the ruling military council in Egypt (SCAF) is running out of wisdom. AhramOnline reports that the SCAF and the government-Sharaf met on Wednesday to discuss what a cabinet spokesperson described as a “deteriorating security situation’ and took some very restrcitive measures.

The meeting came at the end of a tumultuous week. Thousands of workers have begun a series of economic strikes, others are planning to join the strike wave at the beginning of next week. Revolutionary youth groups like the 6 of April Movement continue to mobilize for a massive rally to take place in Tahrir square today, Friday, to challenge the continuing processes of civilians by military courts and çorrct teh path of the revolution’. Annd then there was the clash, last Tuesday, of fans of the country’s largest football team, Ahly, with the police that left 133 people wounded.

As a consequnece, the SCAF issued six directives for Sharaf to follow immediately.

1. The cabinet will use all legal means to prosecute what the council described as all and any acts of thuggery.
2. The cabinet will support all police efforts to maintain peace.
3. The cabinet will intervene to halt all strike actions, and it will enforce a law it passed last spring, which criminalizes certain strikes that disrupt public life.
4. Sharaf will not negotiate with strikers over any demands until workers halt their workplace actions.
5. Sharaf will suspend issuing new licenses to Satellite television stations.
6. The cabinet will start legal procedures to review licenses it issued to any Satellite television network that incites violence and protests.

The minister of information, Osama Haikal, said at the end of the joint meeting that the military council remains committed to freedom of expression and media. But unfortunately the measures against strikes and tv-channels tells otherwise.

The SCAF and the government alike don’t seem to know very well how to deal with the growing discontent, like the anger over the military processes, the general dissatisfatcion about the course of the revolution, the increasing number of strikes, an the growing criticism by different media like the new tv-channel Tahrir for istance. Of these particularly the strikes should bother them.  Since the end of the month of Ramadan a new wave of labour strikes and protests in the public sector have spread across Egypt. In dispute after dispute, workers focus on two main issues: raising wages, and purging different government-owned factories and institutions of corrupt officials from the Mubarak era.

The recent action seems to reflect a sense that many workers in the public sector have run out of patience with Sharaf’s government, which made a number of promises when it first took office last March, but has not adequately delivered. For example, Sharaf’s cabinet refused to honour a three-year-old court order that mandated that the government raise the national minimum wage for workers to LE1,200 per month. Instead, Sharaf told workers that his government could only commit to raise wages for everyone to LE700, and promised to do so by July, but failed to deliver even on this much lower figure. Moreover, Sharaf’s cabinet has also failed so far to put a cap on the excessive salaries it pays to top officials in the public sector, a widely popular demand among public sector workers. To add insult to injury, many workers think that Sharaf has, for the most part, treated Mubarak-era officials with kid gloves, and dismissed only a handful from high positions.

In fact, most Egyptian workers across the country come to work every morning, seven months after they played a key role in toppling the former dictator, to be greeted by the same old bureaucrats and authoritarian figures from the Mubarak years. A case in poit are the workers at the Egyptian Postal Services Authority. Thousands of low-paid postal workers are now on strike for the second week. They demand that Sharaf purge the publicly owned Postal Services of dozens of corrupt managers and over-paid consultants. Also they want a 7 per cent annual pay increase to keep up with inflation and a 200 per cent bonus for meeting annual production goals.

The recently-formed independent unions of postal employees called for the strike.Hisham Abdel-Latif, the president of the Cairo branch of the independent union, told Ahram Online that postal workers feel bitter due to the astronomical differences between their meagre salaries and out-of-control compensation packages that top officials in the services receive. For example, Abdel-Latif said that the salary of an employee after 15 years does not exceed LE 1500, whereas the director of the Postal Services pays 26 of his top consultants an average of LE25,000 per month. These consultants are mostly retired police and army generals who are friends of the director and do not contribute anything, but simply drain the resources. Three of the Postal Authority’s director’s four top deputies get even the sum of LE168,000 per month. Abdel-Latif said, whereas the slaray of the Authority’s director himself remains a total secret.

Last winter, in the weeks immediately after the ousting of former president Mubarak, postal workers organised several strikes and protests in order to pressure the ruling military council into dismissing top officials in the Postal Authority who were part of Mubarak’s entourage, as well as dismissing some external consultants. In response, the SCAF sent army soldiers to break a number of strikes, but also promised that it would take note of workers’ demands. However, as months went by, Sharaf’s government dragged its feet on the issue of meeting postal workers’ wage demands.

For years now, according to Abdel-Latif, postal workers have felt that they have created a massively successful operation that brings in billions to the government, without seeing any of the fruits of their labour.In fact, the Egyptian government generates a considerable amount of cash from its Postal Authority.he Authority not only uses post offices to deliver regular mail services to the public; it also runs savings accounts for millions of citizens and handles the distribution of pension cheques to millions of retirees.

“The Postal Authority is not only a solvent entity, it is actually quite profitable. Their savings accounts operation brings in LE62 billion annually, which the authority invests in banks,” Abdel-Latif told Ahram Online. “They can easily afford to improve the living standards of their hard working employees.”

Other workers are theatening to follow the same course as the postal workers. Among the 22,000 workers at the country’s largest textile factory in Mahalla, in the Nile Delta, the Egypt Weaving and Textile Company.  Doctors, teachers and university professors are also preparing actions. The employees of Cairo Airport ar already striking, and the list is far from complete.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

Tunisian Protestors

With the war in Libya reaching its conclusion, it now looks as if Colonel Gaddafi will be the next authoritarian leader in North Africa to fall as a result the remarkable events dubbed the Arab Spring or Jasmine Revolutions. As I noted back in March many both within Asia and beyond have asked whether such ‘blossoming’ of dissent and revolt could occur in the authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes of Northeast, Southeast and Central Asia. This week the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville will host a workshop that will explore precisely that question. Entitled “The Jasmine Revolution and the ‘Bamboo’ Firewall: The impact of the Internet and new social media on political change in East Asia.”, the workshop will host 13 scholars from prestigious academic institutions and non-profit organizations around the country to participate and explore the potential impact of technology on democracy in Asia. Next week I hope to share some of the workshop’s findings with you, but for this week I am reposting the original blog entry from March… (with a few very minor amendments).

Over the past few months the international community has witnessed unprecedented political opposition and revolutions in the Middle East. Already this so called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ or ‘Arab Spring’ has overturned two of the countries long-standing political regimes, the Ben-Ali regime in Tunisia and more surprisingly the 30 year rule of strongman Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In Libya it resulted in the descent to near Civil War between Muammar Qaddafi and pro-democracy rebels while its demonstration effects have incited and continue to incite protest in countries from Bahrain to Oman, and from Jordan to Morocco and Syria. Much of this caught everyone by surprise, be they academics, diplomats, journalists or policy advisors. Nevertheless this outburst of popular discontent reflects a number of long-term trends, most specifically a demographic explosion in the 1970s and 1980s means that an estimated 65 per cent of the region’s population is under 30. While significant sums of money have been poured into education, both secondary and tertiary, youth unemployment is a major socio-economic problem with an estimated one in four unemployed. Such high levels of unemployment combined with pervasive levels of corruption, authoritarian political systems with extensive security surveillance and harassment, and the huge growth in the number of users of social network sites (Egypt has for example over 5 millon Facebook users of whom 58% are under 25) provided a potent combination the repercussions of which are still playing out as we speak.

Malaysian Prime Minister

This begs the question as to whether such a popular uprising could happen in that other bastion of authoritarian and quasi-democratic regimes, Southeast Asia. Could the demonstration effects spread to countries as diverse as Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, among others? Leaders in these countries are clearly worried. Inn February the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib issued a stark warning saying “Don’t think what is happening in Tunisia and Egypt will also happen in Malaysia.. We will not allow it to happen here”. Former deputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim however had a different take remarking that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt should be a warning signal to other autocracies “whether in the Middle East, Pakistan or Southeast Asia”. Anwar continued noting that the demise of regimes where corruption and nepotism flourished, should remind Malaysians that governments built on the suppression of citizens are always temporary.

Cambodian Prime Minister

In Cambodia, strongman Hun Sen, who has dominated national politics since 1989 and been Prime Minister since 1998, was even starker in his warnings stating on January 20th, in response to comments on a Radio Free Asia report that a Tunisian-like protest could occur in Cambodia. Hun Sen lashed out stating “I have to send a message to people who want to inspire a riot (like) in Tunisia … I will close the door and beat the dog,” Again in contrast the embattled long-standing anti-corruption opposition figure Sam Rainsy echoed Anwar’s views stated on February 2nd, the day pro-Mubarak forces attacked anti-Mubarak supporters in Tahir square, that “I see that it is not long … that there would be such a situation in Cambodia that is the same as Egypt and Tunisia, where people have ousted leaders from power.” 


In Vietnam the government have already ratcheted up a crackdown on dissidents but this has not stopped growing online calls for pro-democracy protests in the country. On February 21st one of Vietnam’s leading dissidents Dr Nguyen Dan Que, 69, launched an appeal in Ho Chi Minh City asking people to take to the streets to save the country. His appeal was taken up by a Vietnamese website urging supporters of political change to meet each Sunday in Hanoi and HCMC. Another dissident group, Bloc 8406, which issued a manifesto on democratization on April 8th 2006, issued an online statement in which it urged Vietnamese to follow the example of North Africa and demand greater democracy and human rights.

Thich Quang Duc's

Of greater concern for the Vietnamese are reports (picked up and broadcast online on CNN) that on February 17th an engineer called Pham Thanh Son set himself on fire to protest at the confiscation of his family’s property by local authorities. Although the authorities claim his death was accidental, caused by the gas tank of his motorcycle exploding, such an incident echoes the self-immolation of Mohamed Buoazizi in Tunisia, whose protest and death sparked the beginning of the unrest in Tunisia. More symbolically both acts echo the infamous self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in Saigon in 1963 whose sacrifice led to the downfall of President Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam.

Poster from Burmese

Even in the region’s most brutal and repressive regime, Burma, where a military Junta has presided over the country since 1988, a Facebook group entitled ‘Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship’ was set up at the end of February denouncing Burmese military chief Senior-General Than Shwe, and as in Egypt urging the army to join with the people. The group has prompted the distribution of anti-government materials in a number of cities across the country and while it only had 1,374 ‘friends’ when this piece was written, Facebook has become the second most popular website in Burma with over 400,000 members.

Obviously there are clear differences between these regimes and their counterparts in North Africa. In the case of Vietnam political power no longer resides in the figure of a single authoritarian leader but instead the succession problem has largely been resolved, as in China, by the retirement and promotion of successive generations of party apparatchiks. In addition in Cambodia and Vietnam government censorship and the security and intelligence forces are both more pervasive, heavy-handed and to date proven more pro-active in anticipating political unrest and acting quickly and decisively to ‘nip-it-in –the-bud’ before such unrest can appeal to wider constituencies.

High youth unemployment

Nevertheless the median age in Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam is like Tunisia and Egypt under 30 years old.  In Malaysia unemployment levels are very low in comparison to international averages, less than 4 per cent of the total work force were unemployed as of 2008. However youth unemployment was almost three times this figure at 10.7 per cent.  Similar disparities exist in Cambodia where according to International Labor Organization figures for youth unemployment are expected to rise to 14.8 per cent against a total unemployment figure of 3.5 per cent.

Likewise allegations of corruption and cronyism are widespread across the region with Transparency International rating Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam respectively as 176th, 154th, 56th and 116th in their 2010 Corruption Perceptions ranking (out of 178 countries). While Malaysia’s figure does not appear bad in comparison it should be noted that over the past decade Malaysia has steadily fallen down T.I.’s ranking from a high of 33 in 2002. Indeed the spread of corruption and the retrenchment in civil liberties since 2008 led the Wall Street Journal to remark, in an article today (March 4th), that Malaysia, “once regarded as one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies.. has soured”.

One of the most talked about features of the recent wave of pro-democracy demonstrations and uprisings occurring across the Arab world, has been the role played by information communication technology and social networking software. Of the latter much has been made of the fact that protests were ‘advertised’ as forthcoming events on Facebook while Twitter has become an instant source of information as it happens on the ground. Indeed in response to an anonymous posting on Twitter calling for protests in Chinese towns and cities on February 20th authorities swiftly arrested a number of online activists, deployed a heavy security presence on the date in question and began a crackdown on foreign journalists. While few anticipated or expected the demonstration effects from North Africa to have any significant effect in China clearly the events dubbed the ‘Jasmine Revolution’ reveal the deep insecurity of the regime despite its booming economic growth. And yet all this begs the question how important social networking really is as a tool for social organization and political protest. Will the revolution really be ‘tweeted’ or is the impact of ICTs greatly exaggerated?

Use of cellphones was ubiquitous in

The impact of new information communication technologies on political mobilization is not new. The use of cellphone text messaging by demonstrators to coordinate protests was first witnessed during the revolution that brought down General Suharto in Indonesia in 1999, during the ESDA II protests in The Philippines in 2001 that led to the resignation of Joseph Estrada in The Philippines and during the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005. Similarly Facebook was used prominently during the uprising by Buddhist monks in Burma in 2007, while Twitter, a microblogging tool that limits users to 140 characters, gained prominence during the failed Green Revolution in Iran in 2009. Likewise conventional blogging has become a common feature of politics in Southeast Asia particularly in Malaysia where prominent anti-government bloggers have risen to prominence and notoriety.

Nevertheless what is new is the integration of these disparate technologies into the latest generation of cellphones (dubbed smart phones) that allow the user to take photographs, record video, access the Internet and communicate instantly via text messaging and social networking. The result is according to Philip Howard, professor of communication at the University of Washington, that “savvy opposition campaigners [have] turned social media applications like Facebook from minor pop culture fads into a major tool of political communication” (2011, p.4).

In many countries worldwide, including Southeast Asia, governments have traditionally relied on their control of the mainstream media to silence or limit opposition voices while restricting access to alternative media sources, including foreign media. Traditional media was a unidirectional structure in which the state could monopolize the production of content. The new media by contrast is fundamentally challenging this. On the one hand the nature of the new media is such that users are both consumers and producers of content. Individual users can post their own stories and become citizen journalists which in turn can be shared and evade even the harshest censorship controls and repressive regimes. In Burma in 2007 citizen journalists equipped with handheld camcorders, provided by the Norwegian based Democratic Voice of Burma, were able to record and broadcast footage of the Buddhist monk uprising and its repression (as documented in the award-winning documentary Burma VJ). Similarly during the Green revolution in Iran hundreds of videos were uploaded daily on YouTube. On the other hand these technologies now allows ordinary citizen to effectively conduct surveillance and monitor the state, documenting human rights abuses and improving the capacity of civil society.

Critics of the ‘leveling and enabling thesis’ advance a number of arguments of which the most often heard are firstly that all technology is neutral — even the new information communication technologies can be manipulated to expand the reach of the state rather than to minimize it, and that secondly the impact of the new media is exaggerated because significant digital divides continue to exist. Thus the spread and penetration of Internet access remains limited to a small largely urban middle class elite and is not a widespread social phenomenon.

Courtesy of Slate magazine, http://tinyurl.com/63ttddf

While it is certainly true that some regimes have proven to be incredibly sophisticated in controlling the Internet there remains sufficient cause to be optimistic that the decentralized, diffused and non-hierarchical character of the Internet mitigates even the strictest controls. Much is made for example of ‘The Great Firewall of China’ that enables Beijing to deny access to certain Internet IP addresses (thereby blocking access to certain websites, e.g Voice of American and BBC News) as well as the ability to scan the URL and packet transmissions for certain censored keywords (such as Tiananmen or more recently even the word Jasmine). Nevertheless for all its sophistication Beijing’s surveillance system largely relies on self-censorship, in other words the fear that a user will be caught and punished severely for accessing banned websites. Internet users and content providers have become ever more sophisticated at circumventing such controls. The use of proxy servers outside China, virtual private networks, mirror sites, and onion routing (the development of software to allow anonymous encrypted communication) means that there is constant competition between regulators and has become an ongoing cyber war. In addition countries like China limit the number of nodes that connect the ‘national’ information infrastructure to the ‘global’ worldwide web in order to enable them to operate their firewalls effectively. Ironically this can make such regimes information infrastructure vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks against the limited number of servers and ISPs that are required to operate strong filtering technologies effectively.

In terms of the diffusion of ICTs and the question of digital divides, the diffusion of mobile phones has far-outstripped the penetration of personal computers and fixed landlines in the developing world. Cambodia became the first country in the world where cellphone ownership surpassed landlines and that was as early as 1993. Consequently, it is estimated that within 5 years mobile Internet access will exceed PC Internet usage. Already 20 per cent of cellphones worldwide are 3G with sales of the iPhone and Android driving this figure ever higher. In addition as Howard notes it is largely irrelevant whether cellphone and social networking users are largely urban and middle class since these groups invariably form the social elites upon which regime legitimacy effectively rests in authoritarian countries. In addition internet penetration rates are often an inaccurate measure of the number of people who have access to the internet since it is difficult to measure the number of people who access the Net via cybercafés. In addition computers and cellphones are often shared among families.

While social networking and the diffusion of ICTs does not substitute for traditional political activism “in times of crisis banal tools for wasting time.. become the supporting infrastructure of social movements” (Howard, 2001, p. 12). While it may be true, as the detractors argue, that cellphones, Facebook and Twitter of themselves are not a substitute for traditional forms of social organization, protest and collective action; it is safe to say that it is now inconceivable that such technologies will not be a critical feature of all future collective action. As Howard concludes, “it is clear that increasingly the route to democratization is a digital one” (p. 201). The revolution in other words will be tweeted.

Reference: Howard, N. (2011) The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press.

AUTHOR: Dr. Jason Abbott
URL: http://profjabbott.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jason.abbott [at] louisville.edu

SS Officers

The site 25 Leaks has published a 2008 State Security Police document, detailing some of the new departments established within the now dissolved apparatus. Tons of names are listed and I invite you to check them out and come forward with any more information you have about them. These officers who ran Mubarak’s gestapo should be held accountable and treated as the bosses of a criminal syndicate.

Among the names on that list is SS General Rushdi el-Qamari who’s been profiled previously in the Piggipedia. It turned out that the man, who served and still serves as the interior ministry’s representative on the NTRA board and who oversaw the telecommunications shut down during the January uprising, was the director of a department in SS called “The General Information Department,” serving as the head of the “Telecommunications and Coding Group”.

AUTHOR: Hossam el-Hamalawy
URL: http://www.arabawy.org
E-MAIL: hossam [at] arabawy.org

The article below is a translation from the newspaper al-Masry al-Youm, of June 5th, 2011. Writer Alaa al-Aswani (photo) in it paints a dark picture of what the revolution in Egypt so far achieved and – more importantly – did not achieve. In doing so he makes a strong case for the need of the new, big demonstration which will be held on Friday 8 July at Tahrir in Cairo (and also demonstrations in other cities) in order to push a process that according to him is only halfway, on to the next stage.
(Translated by dr Noha Radwan, University of California Davis).

The problem here is not only these ministers’ amazing ability to defend one thing and its opposite with equal enthusiasm in order to save their positions. The problem is that the revolution has ousted President Mubarak but not his regime. The Generals of the Egyptian Police, who helped Habib al-Adly humiliate the Egyptians and torture them, still hold their positions. The media officials, who misinformed the public and fraudulently praised the dictator and justified his crimes, still hold theirs. The judges, who oversaw the rigging of the elections, are still active. Even the State Security officers who committed atrocious crimes have not lost their jobs, and some were even appointed governors. What can we expect from all those officials? Certainly, they will fail to understand the logic of the revolution, and probably they will conspire against it. The conspiracy against the Egyptian revolution has become quite obvious and its main characteristics can be summed as follows:

First: Slow trials of some for the icons of the former regime in order to gradually absorb the anger of the Egyptians until they forget about the matter as they return to their daily concerns and affairs. Why has Mubarak not been tried yet? And what is the secret behind all the conflicting reports about his health. Why isn’t he treated like a normal prisoner? Where are Gamal and Alaa Mubarak and why do we not see photographs of them in prison? Why are formerly high officials receiving exceptional treatment in Tura prison? Who allowed Hussein Salem to escape (to Spain, TP). Why were Zakariyya Azmy, Fathy Sorour, and Safwat el-Sherif 1) only arrested two months after the revolution, a period long enough for them to sort their affairs, hide what might incriminate them and smuggle their embezzlements abroad? Why have those who were injured or killed in the revolution not received any attention from the government? How was the martyr Muhamad Qutb left in Nasser Hospital till his injuries worsened and insects ran in and out of his mouth while Sharm el-Shaykh hospital was evacuated for Suzanne Mubarak to receive dental care? Why does the Egyptian government put its best foot forward only to provide German specialists to check on Mubarak’s precious health? The questions are many and there is a single answer, known and upsetting.

Second: Causing a continuous state of insecurity and instability along with a failure of the police to carry out their duties, in order to terrorize the Egyptians and stall tourism and foreign investment so that the revolution appears to have ushered in our doom. This is going on along with a representation of the revolutionaries as thugs and the police officers as heroes who were defending their police stations. Additionally, the trails of the police officials until the defendants (who are still in the service) can pressure the victims to change their testimonies and allow them to remain unpunished.

Third: Polarizing the forces of the revolution and fueling the conflict between the Liberals and the Islamists, along with representing the country as if it has fallen into the hands of the fundamentalists. Don’t we still remember how al-Ahram newspaper carried on its front page a picture of a man with his ear chopped off with a headline about the Salafis having chopped off a Copt’s ear? Maybe we also still remember how the media celebrated Abud al-Zumur as if he were a national hero? Perhaps this would help us understand why churches and Copts are attacked almost on weekly basis without any police intervention. In effect it continuously discredits the Islamists and ruins the image of the Egyptian Revolution locally and abroad.

Fourth: Exaggerating the severity of the economic crises and continuously claiming that Egypt is close to bankruptcy because of the revolution. The misinformation in this account is doublefold . It is Mubarak who has left the country in despicable economic conditions.: 40% of Egyptians live below the poverty line, the rate of unemployment is unprecedented and one of every three residents of Cairo lives in vernacular housing slums. Mubarak’s regime, and not the revolution, is responsible for the misery of Egyptians. The revolution has not yet governed. If there are post-revolution crises, then they are the responsibility of the military council that has taken over the president’s responsibilities and the government that it has formed.

What happened in Tahrir Square last week has multiple implications. Thugs were given a free rein to create chaos and attack the ministry of interior in order to give the police a pretext for attacking the protesters. At that point it became clear how much rancor high-ranking police officers feel towards the revolution. For what else compels a police officer to carry a megaphone and ride around in his van swearing at the protestors and their mothers? What prompts the Intelligence officer in Abdin Police Station to insult the mother of Ahmad Zayn al-Abedin, who lost his life in the revolution, kick her in the stomach, assault her son and arrest him so that he faces a military tribunal. These shameful attacks by the police against the families of the revolution’s martyrs were accompanied by an old style defaming campaign by a number of journalists and media officials who still take their orders from the State Security, whose name has now changed into National Security. As for Mr. Mansour Eisawi, I believe that the conspirators against the revolution could not hope for a better minister of interior, for he believes that he should defend his officers no matter what they do. What happened in Tahrir last week was the dress rehearsal for a major conspiracy to completely abort the revolution.

The question here is: Has the Egyptian revolution gone wrong?
Yes, the revolution went wrong on February 11, when Mubarak was forced to step down and the Egyptians celebrated in their millions then went home. The revolution should have continued in the square and selected spokespeople to negotiate with the military council until its demands were met in full. Instead of announcing the annulment of Mubarak’s constitution and calling for drafting a new constitution, the military council preferred to accept Mubarak’s proposition to amend a few articles in the old constitution. A referendum was held for people to vote on a few amendments and after the results of the referendum were announced, the military council completely bypassed it and announced the activation of a transitional constitution of 63 articles. This useless referendum only divided the revolutionaries into two groups, Liberals and Islamists. The two groups entered into a long debate with liberals calling for a new constitution before the next elections and Islamists calling for the elections first. The two groups dedicated themselves to attacking each other. The two groups forgot that the regime that the revolution aimed to topple has not yet fallen. What good would new elections be if they are overseen by a ministry of interior staffed by Habib al-Adly’s assistants and disciples and by the same judges who participated in rigging previous elections and still hold their positions? And what good would a constitution be if it were written by legal experts who have repeatedly put their expertise in the service of a corrupt dictatorship?

The Egyptian revolution is now going through a critical moment, a real fork in the road. It can either win and accomplish its goals or (heavens forbid), it can also lose, leaving the old regime to return in a slightly different form. What is to done now? We have to remember Husni Mubarak and the enormous support he enjoyed, from Israel and from most Western states and Arab states. No one could imagine that he could be ousted. Yet the Egyptian people did it. Only those who made the revolution can protect it. This is why the demonstrations that have been called for next Friday are important. They have to correct what went wrong with the revolution. We should forget about our ideological differences and return to how we were during the revolution: Copts, Salafis, and Muslim Brothers together, and veiled next to non-veiled women. We will call for neither the elections nor the constitution. We will ask for purging the current government of the remnants of the old regime. We will demand fair and speedy trials for the killers of our martyrs. We will demand that civilians not have to face military tribunals under any circumstances. We will go to the square on Friday ready to pay the price of freedom. We will be like we were during the revolution, ready to die at any moment. Our lives cannot be more precious than the lives of those who were killed, who gave their lives for a better future for Egypt and a life with dignity for the Egyptians.

1) Hussein Salem is a businessman with ties to the family Mubarak who has been accused of embezzlement and has been arrested in Spain; Zakariyya Azmi was chief of Mubarak’s office; Safwar el-Sherif was the chairman of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, and Fathi Sorour was the chaiman of the Maglis as Shaab (the lower house of parliament).

2) The events on Tahrir grew out of clashes between the families of the martyrs of the revolution and the security forces. The families had been camping for several days at the radio- and television building at Maspero demanding justice and compensation. On the evening of Tuesday 28 June there was a ceremony at the Balloon Theatre in Aguza in the honor of the martyrs, but the families appeared not to be welcome.That resulted in clashes which lasted for two days on Tahrir and in front of the ministry of the interrior. A semi official commission of inquiry established on Tuesday 5 July that the clashes most probably had been triggered by thugs and contra revolutionary forces.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

The attacks on the pipelines will continue, till the govt yields to the people’s demand of severing all sorts of economic and diplomatic ties with the Zionist state.

The relations vis a vis the Arab Gulf dictatorships are even more worrying. The money flooding in to Sharaf’s cabinet from those corrupt monarchs aim at nothing but “keep[ing] Egypt in their orbit.” And as I’m reading today’s newspapers, I’m sickened to find Sharaf “praising the wisdom of the Bahraini king” on his visit to Manama, and asserting that the Bahraini “national security” is organically linked to Egypt’s. In other words, our revolutionary prime minister stands hand in hand with the Bahraini tyrant, whose hands are soaked with his people’s blood–his people who’ve been defamed by the media (and Sheikh Qaradawi) as some sectarian Shiites whose loyalty went to Iran.

A revolutionary Egypt must have a revolutionary foreign policy, that seeks actively to export Tahrir and support the fight for freedom in the region and the world. We will not be able to build a democratic Egypt, while we are still surrounded by an ocean of Arab dictatorships, an apartheid regime and US military bases. What is regional is local and what’s local is regional.`

AUTHOR: Hossam el-Hamalawy
URL: http://www.arabawy.org
E-MAIL: hossam [at] arabawy.org