Thought I'd post an update on the situation in Egypt. The military government has placed Hosni Mubarak's sons and Mubarak himself (who was hospitalized briefly) under arrest and begun a series of investigations into corruption and torture.
Unfortunately, as many activists involved in the revolution point out, the actions of the government don't go far enough. Some of the old guard are being allowed to escape, some are being absorbed into the transition process.
Elections have been scheduled and opposition parties are organized. But many restrictions of the old constitution remain in place, and there are questions about how fair any election held under these conditions can be. The usual hoard of "international monitors" and "aid organizations" will be on hand during the voting...but we all know how objective they are, since many of them are tied closely to Western powers.
Also, the military action in neighboring Libya has had a slight dampening effect on Egypt. At the same time, it has renewed calls for more action from others. A group of army officers broke recently with the government and attempted to take over in order to abolish the old rules and work with more radical parts of the popular movement. They went to Tahrir Square, but the army charged in and arrested them.
Protests, strikes, and organizing continue despite attempts to outlaw and suppress them. Some people have been arrested, and the army's role in torture and imprisoning dissidents--especially on the left--is being questioned. Media supportive of the popular movement has sprung up and much of it remains unmolested. But there are still attempts to control populist speech, and official elements of the opposition have sometimes supported this.
All in all, a mixed bag.
Below I've included a video from al-Jazeera on the protest movement building up to Mubarak's departure. This offers a more complete picture of organizing efforts, the early role of labor actions, and puts social media organizing in a much broader, more complex context than reports by Western media...
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Sam Maggee
green_glass_buddha
Peter Breschard
jonqueally
skinnydave
Procopius
Salon.com
Comments
Do you think they might end up with something like the Latin American populist regimes?
Rated, & spread
I think the region will become like Latin America, but it might take 2 or 3 more "awakenings" to get there. Interesting that they went to Bosnia to learn non-violent tactics...
ROCK ON!!
-RATED-
I live a couple of miles from the construction site of the largest Coptic (Egyptian) Christian cathedral in North America.
Updates on the various countries...
A great video, my son. Harumph! Harumph! Amen.
uprisings are even messier, even less successful. there is no plan, may well be no administration, and this let's the sub-surface levels of the ancien regime continue in place for lack of a replacement. the overthrow of the shah was a giant leap toward freedom for the iranian people, but the next day the deputy director of 'savak' was hired to continue in his duties of torture and murder. presumably the ayatollah thought he had no choice, but it hasn't worked out well.
too soon to tell if any substantive improvement will result in the arab world, but while there is flux, one can hope. meanwhile, the smart money is on 'more of the same.'
Where there's oil or the oil of allies at stake, it's backed up through armed force or the threat of armed force. Otherwise, sanctions, finger-wagging, or toal abandonment. Yemen and Bahrain exemplify this last standard. Although one wonders about "al-Qaeda" in Yemen. Isn't it really a hundred guys in a building down the road from the government headquarters who are given some money and explosives every time the U.S. wants something "bad" to happen there?
Western media has been quick to describe and back up these distinctions, too, through the violent logic of "necessity." It's all right out in the open now...
Then there's the recent fixation on Syria. This is a hard sell against Hamas. The more violent Assad gets, the more precarious his situation, the more Hamas has to move in Fatah's direction. The recent announcement of the idea of a unity government with both of them involved is a measure of how the U.S. and Israel are trying to get as much as they can out of the chaos. But I don't think this bastard shotgun wedding is going to last long. It might even spawn splinter movements that spill over outside the territories.
Every action by outside powers, at this point, has a multifold and wildly unpredictable, mutational counter-reaction. Informative.
Rated.
tracy - i too would have liked to have heard more from workers in the video. as always.
davey - weren't the revolutionaries of the 1840's vindicated, too...in 1917? that's a complex statement, i know.
skinnydave - any time. and thanks.
scribble - one doubts your sources, and your agenda.
harold - yeah, i'll do the country by country update. later on.
al - keep trolling for gloom and doom, creepy "cia" dude.
boko - the hamas-fatah unity government deal is bullshit. it'll last about five minutes. perhaps it's time for a post on "chaosophy"? as a counter to regionalism, i mean...and much more.
-Franketienne, Haitian writer
Brave souls, all.
rate
a bahraini military court sentenced 4 young protestors to death in a show trial, complete with forced confessions, false testimony, and the arrest of one of their main lawyers. 3 others were sentenced to life in prison. this didn't stop tens of thousands from protesting in the capital and around the country and there were calls for more large scale protests in the coming days. more than a thousand public employees were also arrested recently for participating in protests and strikes, in a sign that the government is having an increasingly difficult time containing the uprising...arrests were also expanded to include women and sports figures, along with any other public official or cultural figure who participates...but this includes almost everyone now...
a new report out from the Asian Development Bank puts the increase in world food prices from June 2010 to February 2011 at 40%. staples increased most sharply: sugar, 85% increase; cereals, 67%; vegetable and other edible oils, 65%. the report estimates that if food prices rise only 10% more this year, another 64 million people will fall below the poverty line (which the report sets at $1.25 per day!), in addition to the hundreds of millions who have fallen there since the global economic crisis began...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/righ-a29.shtml
...betcha they wish they had that one back.
Also...
some early reports that one of gaddafi's sons was killed by an airstrike: he's the youngest of the clan, 29 years old and was educated in europe. also, some of his grandchildren may have been killed. gaddafi has been making noises recently that he'd like to settle up and go away on vacation someplace...no dice, yet...
***
also, i added a video on the boat of refugees from Libya that was allowed to sink by NATO/US forces even tho they were contacted repeatedly by the craft for help...here's the reality of the "humanitarian mission" in Libya. it's a resource protection operation, as everyone in the region knows, and not some kind of helping hand for "freedom." yeah.
hmmm.....?
in addition to the people who went into the sea from the sinking of this boat, the video mentions more than 60 people who starved and died of thirst on another craft. also, the treatment of refugees from the Libyan war is an endemic problem: thousands remain trapped in concentration camps created for them along the borders of the country, and both the rebels and the regime do nothing for them--the former see them as cowards who don't want to fight, the latter as traitors for the same reason. many of them are very young, or very old, expendable, according to the logic of the true state: capital. the u.s. has made some noise about this, and done absolutely nothing. same with NATO. quite frankly, expecting anything different is naive. this is a brutal regime of global-capitalist power that has to be toppled...
a new series of riots and protests has broken out in Tunisia...& the interim government has imposed a curfew. a rumor that the military would take over if an Islamist party win in the scheduled elections, partly fueled the new protests. however people on the ground and the net say that the situation is much more basic--food and fuel are rare, the interim government is largely distrusted, and the collapse of the transportation and telephone systems in the face of wildcat strikes has created a tense, eery atmosphere. the populist furor is not over, though, and a new uprising appears to be building...perhaps this time they'll get rid of more of the rich thugs that run things...
pressure is building in the country to get out of the Eurozone and tell the IMF to fuck off. media reports that the government is considering the move had to be denied by the PM, who then did his soft-shoe act for capital, saying that it wasn't true. but the situation is desperate in the streets, new strikes have broken out, there's a general action planned soon, and the government has slid into obscurity in many polls. whether or not talk of throwing over the Euro is just that or more is hard to say...but the idea has great popular support, and might just become the rallying point for a new surge from the left...
"Fuck the Euro. Fuck the IMF. Fuck Capital."
hah!
it always was. that's how it works, folks....yeah.
six people were killed in Yemen in the city of Taiz when protestors were fired upon with live ammunition by government authorities. people were attacked and shot by government forces in other cities as well. protestors say that hundreds have been "disappeared" since the uprising began. president Saleh still refuses to step down unless he has assurances that he can oversee the transition, while the opposition, especially the young, are refusing to join in any deal with him, knowing that it would de-legitimize their movement with the people and help the ruling party to maintain control...
CNN report on the protests and murder of protestors:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/09/yemen.protesters.killed/
...it's getting very little attention in the West even though Yemen is probably the next most viable candidate for a successful movement to push a leader from power in the Middle East right now. the media prefer to talk about Syria.
reports from good sources inside Yemen, including Nicke Turse, a fellow at Harvard's Ratcliffe Instittue, cite the use of U.S. military aid in the government's confronting and murdering protesters there. Turse has seen military gunships provided by the U.S., including the Bell UH-1H helicopter, being used to help government snipers spot and target demonstration leaders...Bell trains the Yemeni pilots in Texas.
more than a thousand workers went on strike at the Nexen oil facility in Yemen, stopping production there and forcing the company's stock to take a tumble. the Masila Labor Union said they would stay on strike until basic conditions are improved and basic demands met...
Dozens wounded, at least six murdered today by Yemen "security forces" and hired thugs in the streets; crowds surround ruling party headquarters in Sanaa, snipers fire live ammo at them from the roof; protests the last few days in every major city in the country, not just Sanaa and Taiz as reported in Western media; still no real coverage of the regime's use of U.S. weapons, including helicopters, against the crowds; opposition still resisting cutting a deal with Saleh that would include leaving him in power during a transition; young people and workers have rejected the deal borkered by surrounding Gulf States as false and not reflecting the wishes of the Yemeni people; "official" opposition continues to make noises about concessions to the regime, but the folks in the streets aren't have any of it, yeah...