Category: Communiqués

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Communiqués

The Henchman

A strange peculiarity about the Egyptian regime is its insistence on attempting to retain a veneer of legitimacy – even after 30 years of flagrantly falsified elections, torture, corruption and, most recently, an ill-advised Internet blackout that succeeded in making Egypt a trending topic on the instant messaging service.

It’s a habit they clearly find difficult to shake off. We woke up today to the news that thousands of “pro-Mubarak supporters” had gathered in the Mostafa Mahmoud Square, Cairo (incidentally the scene of the 2005 massacre of over 30 protesting Sudanese refugees by security bodies). I arrived at Tahrir Square around 3 p.m. The atmosphere in the area around the central grassy area was peaceful and positive, as it had been on Tuesday when tens of thousands congregated.

Down the road however in Abdel Meneim Reyad Square, next to the Cairo Museum, just beyond a couple of tanks stood a dense crowd of people, clearly separated from the Tahrir protestors. I stood on top of a building and watched as suddenly the “pro-Mubarak protestors” burst through the tanks and towards Tahrir Square. There was something incredibly unsettling about this assault, conducted as it was on camels, and on the short-tailed skinny horses tourists ride around the pyramids. The brutality of it all, as the terrified animals mowed down protestors and their riders hit out with their whips at anyone who crossed their path and people were crushed underfoot.

The use of hired thugs is classic Mubarak. The regime’s relationship with its people has always depended on intimidation and violence, which proved problematic with the wave of demonstrations and labour protests that have been a growing phenomenon since 2003. In 2005 elections young men were paid to sexually assault female protestors. Last year during the trial of two policemen accused of involvement in the death of Khaled Said a rowdy group of teenagers stood outside the courtroom and accused anti-torture protestors of being Israeli spies, before launching missiles at them. During the elections boys in matching t-shirts danced in front of polling stations while burly colleagues intimated voters on behalf of National Democratic Party candidates.

The idea is that these groups of men – who receive a modest daily stipend for their services – can execute the orders of the regime without their actions being directly attributable to them. In the current scenario we are meant to believe that after four days of absolute silence peaceful pro-Mubarak protestors so irrevocably moved by the president’s speech and promise not to stand for another term decided to organise mass counter protests. And attend these protests on camels and horses. And launch rocks and Molotov cocktails at camping Tahrir protestors whose only act of physical aggression has been against litter in the camp.

Purely coincidentally, the Internet was turned back on in Egypt on the day these millions of Mubarak “loyalists” decided to take to the streets, so the whole world can see the love and respect he commands.

They are a sad, troubled knot of poverty, miseducation and anger, these hired fists, some of them reportedly recruited today for LE 50 (according to activists speaking to thugs detained by anti-government protestors).

More than anything they are a reminder why, no matter what the cost to protestors and to Egyptians struggling to accept the interruption to daily life, the Tahrir occupation must continue. An NDP promise cannot be trusted, and if every last bit of the NDP is not removed Egypt will never heal.

Mubarak’s regime is a cancer that has metastasized and spread to every part of Egyptian society. It has stripped the act of earning a living of its nobility and cheapened the currency of dreams. On our way home we talked to a taxi driver who expressed support for Mubarak. We asked him how exactly he had benefited from Mubarak’s rule and he said “stability”- not opened up new horizons for his children, not given him the opportunity to consider a life of doing something other than taxi-driving. Mubarak has simply ensured that Egypt does not enter into conflict while declaring a war of never-ending grinding attrition on his own people.

Originally published on www.inanities.org

source: The Henchman | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=271

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Communiqués

The nomenclature of a protest

There’s now a lot of coverage (too much, too late) on the protests in Cairo and the subsequent ‘pretexts’ by state lackeys dressed up as pro-Mubarak supporters. Despite the general sentiment towards the protesters, however, there’s a problem of language that disguises the actual mechanisms of what’s happening on the ground. Particularly in the symmetrical usage of the term ‘violence’ to describe actions by both protesters and thugs. Doing this seems to level the playing field in a false and dangerous way, giving the impression of trading blows between pitched armies or perhaps even two groups equally culpable for their actions. Even the presumption that the same actions, throwing stones for instance, bear the same meaning when done by thugs as protesters seems intolerable in the face of the aggression, hostility and aura of death that the pro-Mubarak lackeys brought onto the camp on Wednesday.

The word ‘clashes’ is similarly abhorrent in the face of the siege raised against protestors and their attempts to barricade the very space they have peacefully occupied. This brings up another point about symmetry of rights, as one particularly apathetic army officer was overheard to say “why should i stop [the pro-Mubarak crowd], what gives you any greater right to be in this square than them?”.

To describe the attacks on protesters as clashes presumes some sort of ineffable, sectarian sort of sporadic violence, skirmishes on an already named front. What we saw today was a peaceful protest being borne down on by horses and camels, then later thousands of thugs armed with white weapons, rocks, Molotov cocktails and guns. Moreover the thugs had a plan, they came at the square like it was a castle or hilltop to be besieged and overtaken, amassing at all sides of the square and waging simultaneous assaults on people who had been, this whole time, checking their own to ensure there were no weapons in the camp. To describe these military tactics (and paramilitary weaponry) with the same words as the protesters’ attempts to resist the state’s violence shows either ignorance or callousness, or both.

As this continues, one is heartened by the sympathies of the international media towards the Egyptian people standing against the mess that government tactics have thrown them into. Nonetheless, it should be considered imperative that we be watchful of the languages used to describe these events, and ensure that our vocabulary suits our politics.

source: The nomenclature of a protest | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=261

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Communiqués

Building a Powerful Left in the U.S: Show #5

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Guests: Norman Solomon, Ralph Nader, Cornel West, and Noam Chomsky

We end the week with our biggest show yet.  It begins with Norman Solomon, a leading progressive voice who just may be Congressman Solomon in the near future – hear why he’s working within a Democratic Party that seems so adrift.

Ralph Nader brings to bear the wisdom of six decades of fighting the good fight as he summarizes strategies and policies he feels can revitalize American society.

Cornel West reflects on how the spark of social justice can set a society aflame so long as we keep making the case – calling out injustice and building momentum.

Noam Chomsky reminds us that it can be done; though the powerful few aren’t going to make it easy – but with perseverance and organizing there’s a world to win.

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Communiqués

Building a Powerful Left in the U.S: Show #4

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Today’s show branches off from the mainstream of the progressive left.

First, in an aesthetic manner, with comic Jimmy Dore.  Whatever one makes of the recent massive Rally to Restore Sanity brought  to you by Jon Stewart and Comrade Steven Colbert – which was criticized by rival comic Bill Maher as the “Million Meh March” since it seemed, ultimately, so non-commital – it certainly showed that political comedy has moved front and center in American political discourse.

I don’t think anyone will mistake Mr. Dore’s contribution to this series as non-commital; and he is representative of a powerful community of left, progressive comedians across the country.

Then Mark Ames of exiledonline.com and the author of “Going Postal” pulls no punches.  Mark Ames, in many respects, has picked up the mantel of Hunter S Thompson.  The left is often seen in the United States as having no backbone – this is not true of Mr. Ames.  We’ll hear his ideas on how he believes the left should speak, along with what he thinks they should be saying.

Then we hear from two revolutionaries.  In the weeks leading up to this series, talking to people about it, I was surprised how often people simply said, “we need a revolution.”  Considered off-the-charts in mainstream American political discourse, the idea is not forgotten by people in the general society.  We’ll hear from Sunsara Taylor and then Brian Becker, two people committed to bringing socialist revolution to the United States.  And, as you’ll see, their vision of a post-revolutionary society matches up with the wishes of many who would see themselves as more conventional, non-revolutionary progressives.

Up next is Vijay Prishad, a radical critic of U S foreign policy.  We’ll hear how he thinks a powerful left could be built and what it would mean to peoples around the world.

Then it’s Jay Walljasper and the notion of the commons.  Mr. Walljasper explains why he  feels a commitment to the commons should be one of the central organizing principles of a revitalized left.

Finally , Joseph Huff-Hannon of the Yes Men echoes Emma Goldman’s famous line “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.”  The left has to reclaim exuberance, the joy of rebellion.

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Communiqués

Building a Powerful Left in the U.S: Show #3

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source: http://buildingapowerfulleft.org

This show is debuting on a day, February 2nd, 2011, when a historic uprising is taking place in Egypt and across North Africa, as people are rising up against autocratic regimes in the region – regimes, it is important to note, that have been supported by the dominant global superpower, the United States.

But what sparked these uprisings at this time?  In large part, it’s been the increase in economic insecurity that stemmed from a global economic crisis, itself sparked by the collapse of the housing market in the United States and the attendant financial crisis.  But even more fundamentally, the bubble that was the US housing market of the last decade was propping up an economic system in deep trouble – unable to deliver a standard of living for American households and many around the world, on the order of the prosperity that was established in the United States and elsewhere in the post-World War II economic boom.  In recent decades, the only way that even the appearance of such prosperity could be maintained was through the generation of bubbles like the US housing market.

From the late 1970s onward, the  economic regime promoted most memorably by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was the “TINA” model.  “TINA” stands for “There Is No Alternative” – but to organize the economy around so-called “free markets,” and clearly to the benefit of private capital and the wealthy. It is a model that around the world has been called the Washington Consensus, or Neoliberalism.  But now, in the United States and across the globe, this economic regime is in clear crisis, seemingly unable to deliver even the illusion of prosperity any more.

On today’s show, we hone in on the economic crisis.  In obvious ways, the fact of the crisis provides ample opportunity and opening for the revival of the Left here in the United States and across the world – and yet, this has not the case.  And in particular,  there seems to be a dearth of ideas being put forward by the Left as how to respond to the economic crisis.

Is this so? Is there really such a dearth?  Or is it that they simply aren’t getting a hearing in the mainstream media?

Today we’ll hear from economists Robert Brenner, L. Randall Ray, Richard Wolff, and Dean Baker.

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