Tag: egypt

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The Post-Revolutionary Road

After eighteen days of a peaceful, democratic, participatory Revolution, President Hosni Mubarak fled Cairo – and left us, the people of Egypt, to begin fixing our country. On Friday night – one month on from that first, astonishing Tuesday – the Army entered Tahrir square wearing balaclavas and wielding machine guns, batons and tasers.

The next few months will decide whether or not the Egyptian Revolution takes its place among the great, transformational moments in history. Or if it joins the list of ever heavier disappointments weighing down on the land. We made a city square powerful enough to remove a dictator. Now we must re-make a nation to lead others on the road to global equality and justice.

We showed ourselves, and the world, something no-one had ever seen before, and we need to use it. We have a responsibility, to those who died, to those now living with hope, to get this right.

Tahrir Square worked. It worked because it was inclusive – with every type of Egyptian represented equally. It worked because it was inventive – from the creation of electric and sanitation infrastructure to the daily arrival of new chants and banners.  It worked because it was open-source and participatory – so it was unkillable and incorruptible. It worked because it was modern – online communication baffled the government while allowing the revolutionaries to organize efficiently and quickly. It worked because it was peaceful – the first chant that went up when under attack, was always selmeyya! – peaceful!. It worked because it was just – not a single attacking paramilitary thug was killed, they were all arrested. It worked because it was communal – everyone in there, to a greater or lesser extent, was putting the good of the people before the individual. It worked because it was unified and focussed – Mubarak’s departure was an unbreakable bond. It worked because everyone believed in it.

Inclusive, inventive, open-source, modern, peaceful, just, communal, unified and focussed. A set of ideals on which to build a national politics. A set of ideals to hold on to.

But what exactly are we building?

The Army recently announced eight reforms to the Constitution. But how can you legitimately reform a Constitution when the Prime Minister was put in place by the deposed President, when Parliament is suspended? The Constitution is fast becoming a focal point of the transition, but the transition needs to be about so much more. The millions of people who filled Tahrir were not risking their lives to trying to fix a rotten system, they wanted to build a new country, and still do.

So before we race to build our new country in the shadow of out-dated and fallible Euro-American democratic systems, let us learn from Tahrir Square.

The Revolution is creative, and now we need to create the system that works best for us. We need to consider if political parties are the right tool for the rhythm of Egypt’s politics. Do we need political parties, when skilled individuals can clearly pull together for a collective cause? People are scrambling to try and put parties together. But putting together a political party with a national reach by September requires an incredible amount of resources, and so is both exclusive and a fortification of the economic structure of Old Egypt. A political party, by default, is full of politicians. But if we can take it as a given that the Minister of Defence will be appointed by the Army, can it not also be guaranteed that Ministers be experts in their field with proven track records? Why has being a party member, in some Western democracies, become sufficient qualification to oversee the needs of a nation?

Western party-politics turns on the right-wing/left-wing politico-economic line. In the West, it is the push and pull between Socialism and Capitalism, between tradition and modernity that sets the political rhythm, but those tensions are not as keenly felt in Egypt. In Egypt, global Capitalism arrived as a top-down phenomenon that has been disastrous for the majority of the population, with food prices and unemployment soaring over the last decade while the new ultra-rich built villas in the desert. A communalist socialism is the more natural mode of the country, while tradition and the push for modernity are woven together more comfortably – cross-communication between generations, time spent at home, with family, with one’s grandparents is a fixture in Egypt but an increasing irregularity in the West, where each generation seeks to actively break with its antecedent in the name of fashion and progress.

Egyptian politics does not turn along the same axes as the West’s. Egypt has its own tensions and frictions – but if allowed and encouraged to steer its own course, these issues will be worked out in a way that is right for Egypt and, ultimately, for the world.

The Egyptian Revolution is leaderless and open-source and inclusive, and we saw in Tahrir that if people feel involved in the running of their own lives, if their sphere of control is expanded beyond their own body, if they are empowered, then the country will reap dividends. To that end, we need to decentralize administration and decision-making. Cairo cannot continue as the suffocating home of 20m people and as the heart of all political decision-making. We need to localize and communalize politics wherever possible. Create smaller, community groups, organized within the 27 governorates; devolve as many decisions to as local a level as possible with access, accountability and transparency for the populace.

The Revolution is unified and focussed. Though power and decision-making should be de-centralized, there is also now a need for unity of national cause and ambition. Egypt has always rallied around great national projects, from the Pyramids to the High Dam. It is time to utilize that which we have most of – the sun.

Inclusive, inventive, open-source, modern, peaceful, just, communal, unified and focussed. The Revolution is many things, and it is clearly far from over. Through continued peaceful protest, through the brave insistence of the women and men still sleeping in Tahrir Square the people are insisting on pushing through not just reform, but on building a new country.

There are not many governments in the world that wanted this to happen. But if we use what we all taught each other over those 18 days, if Tahrir is kept alive, then surely nothing can stop us.

 

source: The Post-Revolutionary Road | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=365

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Communiqués

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Students Occupy

75 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM) students are currently occupying the Peck School of the Arts Theater Building.

Milwaukee, WI March 2, 2011  — There are currently about 75 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee students occupying the Peck School of the Arts Theater Building. The occupiers adopted this solidarity statement: “We stand in solidarity with the workers and students striking and occupying the Wisconsin State Capitol building.  We demand immunity for all occupiers and strikers involved in these actions.”

“Students and workers across Wisconsin are fighting back against Governor Walker’s attacks on education, public services, and underrepresented groups. UWM students are occupying in solidarity with students and workers from Egypt to Madison,” said Jacob Flom.

Contacts:

Jenna Pope
608-751-4527
Jacob Flom
262-573-7185
UWMoccupied.wordpress.com
UWMoccupied@yahoo.com
###

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Communiqués

The Two ‘Youths’ of the Revolution

Shebab

The Arabic word shabab, meaning ‘youth’, has been used quite a lot since January 25th. It’s an important lens for understanding many of the events that have taken place thus far in the revolution just as it seems to be an integrated part of the rhetoric of the counterrevolution.

When protesters took to the streets on January 25th, it is no doubt true that many of them were youths, particularly on that first day. Not exclusively, but to a large degree these people were younger, many of them unemployed – even those with advanced degrees – and alienated from the political destiny of their country. Egypt had produced a ‘lost generation,’ with those in their teens, twenties and early thirties coming into a world still controlled by the violent clutches of an older generation whose few opportunities for work (not to think of advancement even) were held on to by those already connected, older or entrenched in the politics of the past. However, thinking about the course taken and plotted by these power elites, there seems little doubt that this was less a lost generation than the first generation of a future lost or pre-emptively destroyed in toto by the ruthless desire of those in power to maintain their status unto death.

In either case or for any other of myriad possible reasons, it seemed at least fitting that youth would come out to protest in numbers. Among the chants by protesters throughout the first weeks of occupations, you were likely to hear “Neither Brotherhood, Nor [Political] Parties, Our revolution is a revolution of youth” or similar calls asserting the presence of shabab atthawra, “the youth of the revolution.” Indeed, people both inside and outside the square would talk excitedly about these youth, thanking them for their role in organizing and demonstrating, a role which they did have a significant hand in through hard work and commitment – not just social networking sites and other tech-booster-fodder.

As we know or at least should know by now, however, this revolution captured literally every aspect of Egyptian society across age, class, gender, religious, labor and other lines. It is thus all the more striking how the emphasis has remained so squarely on shabab atthawra (or worse, even, shabab facebook). Particularly out of the state media, even in its newly “reformed” trappings, one might be under the impression that this revolution took place only at the hands of a few middle class kids with grievances and not the whole of Egyptian society. This seeming exuberance and thanks must absolutely be seen as a tactic to infantilize, diminish and patronize the revolution and the many goals of the varied, diverse revolutionaries involved in it.

By relegating this revolution to a youth movement in the abstract, the state media and other counterrevolutionary organs have sought to silence claims not arising directly out of those youth movements, particularly the demands of labor, the poor and the marginalized. They have thus attempted to regain control over political decision making power, arguing that the reform process is better placed in the hands of those with experience. The most recent message of the High Council of Armed Forces, no. 24, begins its first sentence with the phrase “The HCAF assures its children, the youth of the January 25th revolution…” Now, if ever one needed proof of a paternalistic and belittling rhetoric here one has it, both possessive and diminutive. By naming this as a revolution simply of youth, there rests the implication that they lack the experience, the organization or the competencies ostensibly required to change the system, that such reforms are beyond young people. Even if this were simply a youth revolution, the young protesters and revolutionaries in Tahrir have proven themselves better able to understand, manage and transform the political than a thousand “wise men’s councils.”

On the other hand, however, there is something essential to this revolution that has to do with youth, with a generation that up until January 25th had no economic future, was feared and harassed by its government and fellow citizens, and increasingly found itself in the clutches of a culture and society it had no control over, left only to dream of emulating the saccharine consumerist lifestyles of Hollywood characters and the idle rich. The conditions of everyday life for so many Egyptian youth, rich and poor, had become oppressive if not intolerable, as things as simple as love and laughter were either unavailable or had to be undertaken in hushed tones and in secret.

In the spatial occupations of Tahrir, Egyptian youth found a moment and a space where they could congregate, shout, make jokes, play games and interact in ways that were neither those of the surveilled and policed spaces of the older generations nor shallow imitations of “Western” behaviors. January 25th may then be called a youth revolution insofar as it created these spaces, radically free but still notably Egyptian, and which it seeks to perpetuate in order to form a political destiny that is completely serious though not altogether removed from having fun, experimenting with the material of everyday life and defining an identity not governed by the past.

source: The Two ‘Youths’ of the Revolution | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=360

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Communiqués

The Army and the Police are one

The sad events of tonight will hopefully bury that relatively misguided phrase “the people and the army are one hand” and reveal that the true nature of the situation in Egypt is better “the army and the police are one hand.” A group of several hundred peaceful protestors, attempting to stay the night in Tahrir square and in front of the People’s Assembly to protest continued military rule and the persistence of the old regime’s illegitimate presence in government, were violently attacked and driven away by Military Police, Army officers and commandos wearing balaclavas and wielding sub-machine guns. One protestor, taken inside of the People’s Assembly building by army officers and beaten, was told bluntly “don’t fuck with the army.”

The victims of this assault were the committed remnants of an earlier protest of thousands in front of the square, whose numbers were perhaps artificially low since the army had kettled those already camped out and prevented others from joining them. These would-be demonstrators were quickly and unflinchingly attacked by military police and army soldiers using nightsticks and cattle prods, beating and shocking them until they were forced to scatter. Many people were abducted, including Shady al Ghazali Harb and one ‘foreign’ journalist who was taken away early (whereabouts currently unkown). Many more people were injured to varying degrees, some quite seriously, including several people passing out from the voltage of the stun batons; some of the injured required treatment at hospital.

The putative excuse for this assault was that protestors were in violation of curfew; aside from a curfew violation not justifying extreme physical violence without warning, this is effectively the same curfew that was flaunted without consequence throughout the entire initial sequence of this revoultion. The army, since taking control over the executive, has been increasingly strict (read: arbitrary, violent) in its enforcement of the curfew, seemingly in order to prevent sit-ins and other nighttime demonstrations. We saw no property damage or other violence during curfew hours in previous weeks (except that perpetrated by government-hired thugs), and so the presumption that this is “for our own protection” is a farce that hardly warrants discussion. Collective punishment, an air of anxiety, and the disruption of continued control and presence of key protest sites are the only observable motives of this curfew.

The greater point, however, which comes as no surprise to most involved in this revolution, is that the army is no friend of the people. This institution is as much a part of the regime as any other, representing not just the same entrenched military-political elite that have ruled Egypt for 60 years, but also enormous and substantial business interests that benefit from preferential treatment and systemic corruption. There has been little doubt in anyone’s mind that the army’s preference would be to maintain most of the country’s infrastructure (police and political) just as it was before, while placating the people telling them that it was their ally and guardian. And yet, and yet, we see the same violence directed at citizens here that we have seen in the hands of police (and only a day after a police officer shot a microbus driver during a verbal argument in the street). The army has shown its bloody hand, and the only hope is that the news of this will spread fast enough that people can realize their complicity and duplicity before any more blood need be spilled.

This remains a regime and a system which has been trained and taught to regard people as a threat to their continued privilege and prosperity, who in the name of stability create chaos, pain and anxiety for anyone who would seek to be present in public, to voice an opinion or seek after their long-lost rights. Whatever expectations the Egyptian people may have had from the army, and whatever the army may have done by way of protecting civilians during the early weeks of protest (as they did somewhat, but not enough) should be meaningless now. Now in the seat of power, they display the same callous paternalism and heavy hand that the old figureheads of the regime did, and whether this is their desire or this is simply the machine controlling its operator, serious structural and institutional change is the only possible acceptable outcome.

Out with the army, out with the police, out with the old regime. All one hand, all working together to drive the Egyptian people into despair, subjection and quiescence. We, however, have had a taste of the immediacy of freedom and will neither be placated by the gifts of the state nor cowed by its criminal, unacceptable violence

source: The Army and the Police are one | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=355

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Communiqués

Regimented

 

The fury and violence of the Libyan uprising has been making me reflect on the Egyptian revolution, and the (still not ancien) regime’s modus operandi.

Extricating that mad bastard in the toctoc will inevitably be bloody. Reported deaths have already outstripped deaths during Egypt’s revolution, in less than a week. Gaddafi has bombed his people from the skies, used mercenaries, and subjected them to hallucinogenic broadcasts of defiance involving hunting caps and umbrellas. One of his sons, the insipid and stupid Seif, has also been enlisted to the media war effort.

I keep thinking back to Mubarak’s last speeches, imagining what the response would have been if, adorned in swathes of linen and a hunting cap, he’d stepped out of a toctoc and mumbled “I’m still in Cairo, you dogs!” But then our Hosny would never do that, obviously. He is a reasonable man who wears suits.

I often lament that if Egypt had to be burdened with a man with dictator tendencies he could have at least displayed a few colourful peccadilloes, like the rest of the world’s crackpots. A collection of high heel shoes, for example, or a penchant for making parliamentary speeches in spandex.

No such luck. Mubarak’s repression was low key in every way except for its cruelty. It was also insidious and self-maintaining, through an extensive network or nepotism, hand greasing and intimidation. For thirty years in Mubarak’s Egypt having the right connections and keeping to the approved script ensured better treatment from cradle to the grave.

Mubarak is no longer the official president, but nothing in the system has changed because the regime’s influence is so deeply entrenched throughout state (and some non-state) institutions, and the revolution has only had a tokenistic stab at some of the National Democratic Party’s upper echelons.

Seeing former NDP bigwig Ahmed Ezz in prison (elegant as always in his aristocratic ‘just been on the yacht’ up-turned polo shirt collar) may be gratifying but why is Mubarak enjoying the sun in Sharm? Why are his loyalists, Fathy Sorour, Safwat El-Sherif etc at large?

A mystery, as by the way, is the question of why Ahmed Shafiq never wears ties (is he secretly Iranian?? Could we encourage state media to propagate this? Maybe that will push him out.)

Today a police officer had a traffic altercation with a minibus driver. The police officer pulled out his gun and shot the man. An angry protest ensued. On Wednesday morning the army knocked down a wall built to protect a monastery in Wady Natrun. Guns were fired during the operation. An angry protest ensued.

Blind use of force followed by public anger is the regime’s trademark. The Interior Ministry has been chastened but there is nothing to indicate that any kind of major structural reform has taken place. Significantly, the state of emergency remains in place and state security investigations, the much feared and reviled apparatus accused of systematic torture has not been disbanded. The Supreme Military Council meanwhile insists that these are matters that require time, study and examination while at the same time it is in a mad rush to hold elections – in six months time. Mohamed ElBaradei and others have suggested the transitional period last a year.

Mubarak’s regime was never a Them and Us situation. Repression and patronage were carefully modulated to ensure a wide base of beneficiaries and loyalists. The status quo suits many, and this will take years to change. But some immediate changes are doable and essential. The most pressing is to rid the transitional government of any regime figures – such as Shafiq.

Secondly, the emergency law must be abolished.  As I understand it the emergency law has in any case been suspended because we are living under military law. The difference between the two is getting fucked over by a policeman and getting fucked over by a soldier, but ending the state of emergency in force since 1981 would demonstrate good will.

The critical change concerns the Interior Ministry, which must be completely restructured. The Interior Minister must be a civilian, not police. The police must be properly trained. Some kind of independent complaints committee must be established with the power to hold to account police who violate the law. State security investigations must be disbanded and alas its officers integrated into society (that is if we are not allowed to dump them all in Guantanamo).

The single most important thing the army or the transitional government or whoever is bloody in charge must do now is hold to account members of the regime for their actions, including police and state security officers.

On January 25 they were sent a message that people had had enough. But the mood has now changed; the army is appealing for a return to normalcy, the police are slowly reappearing on the streets after their disappearance, the euphoria of “victory” still exists but people have returned to the routine of everyday life. And the regime is everywhere in everyday life.

Originally published on inanities.org

source: Regimented | http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=349