Amerikansk veteran fra Fallujah: Vi var fjenden

Vi var angriberne, og det vi gjorde, var forkert og bygget på løgne, skriver U.S. Marine Ross Caputi i The Guardian:

It has been seven years since the end of the second siege of Fallujah – the US assault that left the city in ruins, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands more; the assault that poisoned a generation, plaguing the people who live there with cancers and their children with birth defects.

It has been seven years and the lies that justified the assault still perpetuate false beliefs about what we did.

I know, because I am one of those American veterans. In the eyes of many of the people I “served” with, the people of Fallujah remain dehumanised and their resistance fighters are still believed to be terrorists. But unlike most of my counterparts, I understand that I was the aggressor, and that the resistance fighters in Fallujah were defending their city.

It is also the seventh anniversary of the deaths of two close friends of mine, Travis Desiato and Bradley Faircloth, who were killed in the siege. Their deaths were not heroic or glorious. Their deaths were tragic, but not unjust.

How can I begrudge the resistance in Fallujah for killing my friends, when I know that I would have done the same thing if I were in their place? How can I blame them when we were the aggressors?

It could have been me instead of Travis or Brad. I carried a radio on my back that dropped the bombs that killed civilians and reduced Fallujah to rubble. If I were a Fallujan, I would have killed anyone like me. I would have had no choice. The fate of my city and my family would have depended on it. I would have killed the foreign invaders.

Travis and Brad are both victims and perpetrators. They were killed and they killed others because of a political agenda in which they were just pawns. They were the iron fist of American empire, and an expendable loss in the eyes of their leaders.

I do not see any contradiction in feeling sympathy for the dead US Marines and soldiers and at the same time feeling sympathy for the Fallujans who fell to their guns. The contradiction lies in believing that we were liberators, when in fact we oppressed the freedoms and wishes of Fallujans. The contradiction lies in believing that we were heroes, when the definition of “hero” bares no relation to our actions in Fallujah.

What we did to Fallujah cannot be undone, and I see no point in attacking the people in my former unit. What I want to attack are the lies and false beliefs. I want to destroy the prejudices that prevented us from putting ourselves in the other’s shoes and asking ourselves what we would have done if a foreign army invaded our country and laid siege to our city.

Læs endelig det hele.

Egypten: ‘We are in the shit. The Dark Days’

Sandmonkey, også kendt under sit rigtige navn Mahmoud Salem, er et af de mennesker, der bedst forstår dynamikken i det oprør, der har præget Egypten det sidste års tid. Han har blogget mod diktaturet i mere end et halvt årti, og har i samme periode været aktivt involveret i politisk modstandsarbejde, for ikke at tale om efterspurgt af Mubaraks hemmelige politi. Ved det nys overståede valg stillede han op til parlamentet, men tabte.

Sandmonkey er ikke optimist, i modsætning til Hossam Al-Hamalawy, som vi citerede forleden, og som er det på længere sigt. Mahmoud mener, at den egyptiske revolution er inde i en mørk, makaber fase, som kuldslår og lammer de aktivister, der kæmper for et bedre land. Folk har begået fejl, der er svindlet med valget, og militæret er ikke sene til at udnytte situationen:

My helplessness reached its peak when my friend S. came over two nights ago, and she was not alright. Fighting to release the thousands that are getting military tried over the months has been a draining crusade for her, and it only got worse the moment she got involved in trying to ensure that the death reports of those killed in Mohamed Mahmoud do not get forged, which meant she had to be at the Zeinhom morgue the night those bodies would come in, surrounded by wailing families and crying loved ones, seeing dead bodies after dead body come in, and almost getting arrested by the authorities that didn’t want her stopping the cover-up. She told me after wards that she now sees those dead bodies everywhere, and she can’t escape them. But that night, 2 nights ago, she had just come back from Tahrir, where a man , standing inches away from her, ended up getting set on fire due to an exploding Molotov cocktail. She could see the fire engulf him, the smell of burnt flesh and hair, his agonizing screams for help. She was silent. Very calm and silent. She was sitting next to me and I couldn’t reach her, and all I could do is hold her without being able to tell her that things will be alright. Because..how? How will they be alright exactly?

…

I haven’t written in two months. Two months I have spent running for parliament, stopping my campaign to run around all the field hospitals in Mohamed Mahmoud and ensuring they are well supplied, to losing the election and heading to Suez to lead another one, one that I managed to “win”. The things I have seen, on the street, I do not wish on anyone. One day I will write about that experience, but not today. Today, allow me to take you into my fragmented mind a bit. I have been silent, I have been tied up by advisors over what you can and cannot say during an election. This is over. The elections, for me, are over.

…

One of the biggest mistakes of this revolution, and there are plenty to go around, was that we allowed its political aspects to overshadow the cultural and social aspects. We have unleashed a torrent of art, music and creativity, and we don’t celebrate or enjoy it, or even promote it. We have brought the people to a point where they were ready to change. To change who they are and how they act, and we ignored that and instead focused all of our energies in a mismanaged battle over the political direction of this country. We clashed with the military, and we forgot the people, and we let that small window that shows up maybe every 100 years where a nation is willing to change, to evolve, to go to waste.

…

The parliamentary elections are fraudulent. I am not saying this because I lost- I lost fair and square- but because it’s the truth. The fraud happened on the hands of the election workers and the Judges. People in my campaign were offered Ballot boxes, employees and judges in polling stations were instructing people who to vote for and giving unstamped ballots to Christians in polling stations where they are heavily present to invalidate their votes, and the Egyptian bloc has about half a ton of correct ballots- ones that showed people voting for them- found being thrown in the streets in Heliopolis, Ghamra, Shubra, Zaitoun, Alexandria, Suez and many other districts. The amount of reports of fraud and legal injunctions submitted against these elections are enough to bring it all down and have it done all over again. Hell, a simple request for a vote recount would be enough to expose the fraud, since the ballots were thrown in the street.

…

What you see as a campaign manager is very different than what you see as a candidate, especially when you are a campaign manager in Suez. To make a long story short, in the 10 days we were there, this is what went down: We had one of our campaign workers fall victim to a hit and run “accident”, a campaign operative getting arrested by the military police at a polling station for filming the army promoting the Salafi Nour Party (with a big banner carrying the Noor Party slogan being placed on the side of an Army Truck) and his film confiscated of course, our campaign headquarters got attacked with molotov cocktails by thugs sent by a “moderate” islamist centrist party (hint: It’s not ElAdl) , the hotel we were staying in got repeatedly attacked by thugs till 3 am, with the army platoon leader protecting the Hotel informing me that if I don’t resolve the situation, he will “deal violently” with those outside and inside the hotel, the Leader of the 3rd Egyptian Army calling us looking for me, the Chief of Security for Suez doing the same thing, Lawyers and thugs working for a semi-leftist party filed police reports against us claiming we hired them and owed them money when we didn’t, and the other campaign manager finally going to deal with the situation, ends up getting arrested, and the two campaign members that were with him were left outside under the mercy of groups of thugs, and we managed by the grace of god get them all out unharmed and we escape Suez while Trucks filled with guys with guns going around Suez looking for us.

…

Why would the military be “helping” the Salafi Noor Party get votes? Well, mainly because they invented them. It was a match made possible by State-Security, who probably alerted the military of how reliable were the salafis in their previous “cooperation” to scare the living shit out of the population into submission and supporting the regime. Remember the All Saints church attack, the one that happened this New Year? Remember the documents proving that our very own State Security had arranged it to take place to force the Coptic population to support Mubarak? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Only on a higher level.

Ovenstående er kun uddrag af en deprimerende fortælling om, hvor Egypten måske også er på vej hen. Som om nogen vidste det. Men læs endelig det hele, hvis du interesserer dig for udviklingen i Egypten (og dermed hele den arabiske verden) i disse år.

Link: Underneath (via Beirut Spring)

Stjæl en Ged..

Glædelig Jul – ja fanme – den bitre venstreekstreme blogger er kommet i julehumør og glæder sig nu til at det bliver ferie og julefedtet begynder at sætte sig på sidebenene.

Her skal komme et ønske om at I alle får det I ønsker jer til jul. Hvis I på faldetrebet mangler en julegaveide, kan jeg anbefale at støtte de fattige på Afrikas Horn med en ged. Sultkatastrofen i Etiopen endte med at være noget mindre i Somalia pga. det forebyggende arbejde mange nødhjælpsorganisationer havde lavet med at give husdyr til de allerfattigste –

så lad os få et 2012 uden sultkatastrofer – give en ged til dine nærmeste og forebyg sult i Afrika.

Hvis du er blogger har du muligheden for at gøre endnu mere – stjæl billedet af geden og læg det på din blog – gerne med en opfordring til at støtte. Så kan du helt gratis få en god julesamvittighed.

Ps. Disclaimer – jeg arbejder med nødhjælp til daglig – så jeg får dobbelt op på glæde hvis du køber en ged.

Meanwhile, in Egypt

Militæret slår til på Tahrir-pladsen.

Advarsel: Stærke billeder af vold mod ubevæbnede demonstranter.

Via Beirut Spring, som skriver:

Egyptian soldiers beating up female protestor
- That’s not how you build a country -

People defending the violent action of the army in Egypt against protesters always ask us to look at the “big picture”. They ask for patience for the democratic process to take hold, and for a civilian authority to eventually reign in the soldiers.

But when I see videos like this (which I ask all of you to spread as wide as you can), in which soldiers so viciously hit demonstrators and defile their women, I see what the big picture really is: It’s about human dignity and the value of every single egyptian life. That was the whole point of the revolution and the Arab spring.

This is not about some long elaborate process in which eventually the rulers will learn to respect the civilians. This is about once and for all establishing the primacy of the citizen as the sole source of power and legitimacy in the country.

Tåregas og tortur i Bahrain

Nicholas Kristof, som jeg omtalte i mit sidste indlæg om anholdelsen af Zainab Alkhawaja, opsummerer situationen i Bahrain de seneste uger med to små billeder – det ene netop af Alkhawaja:

[Obama] should also  understand the systematic, violent repression here, the kind that apparently killed a 14-year-old boy, Ali al-Sheikh, and continues to torment his family.Ali grew up here in Sitra, a collection of poor villages far from the gleaming bank towers of Bahrain’s skyline. Almost every day pro-democracy protests still bubble up in Sitra, and even when they are completely peaceful they are crushed with a barrage of American-made tear gas.

People here admire much about America and welcomed me into their homes, but there is also anger that the tear gas shells that they sweep off the streets each morning are made by a Pennsylvania company, NonLethal Technologies. It is a private company that declined to comment, but the American government grants it a license for these exports — and every shell fired undermines our image.

In August, Ali joined one of the protests. A policeman fired a shell at Ali from less than 15 feet away, according to the account of the family and human-rights groups. The shell apparently hit the boy in the back of the neck, and he died almost immediately, a couple of minutes’ walk from his home.

The government claims that the bruise was “inconsistent” with a blow from a tear gas grenade. Frankly, I’ve seen the Bahrain authorities lie so much that I don’t credit their denial. (….)

The police have continued to persecute Ali’s family. For starters, riot policemen fired tear gas at the boy’s funeral, villagers say.The police summoned Jawad for interrogation, most recently this month. He fears he will be fired from his job in the Ministry of Electricity.

Mourners regularly leave flowers and photos of Ali on his grave, which is in a vacant lot near the home. Perhaps because some messages call him a martyr, the riot police come regularly and smash the pictures and throw away the flowers. The family has not purchased a headstone yet, for fear that the police will destroy it.

The repression is ubiquitous. Consider Zainab al-Khawaja, 28, whose husband and father are both in prison and have been tortured for pro-democracy activities, according to human rights reports. Police officers have threatened to cut off Khawaja’s tongue, she told me, and they broke her father’s heart by falsely telling him that she had been shipped to Saudi Arabia to be raped and tortured. She braved the risks by talking to me about this last week — before she was arrested too.

Khawaja earned her college degree in Wisconsin. She was sitting peacefully protesting in a traffic circle when the police attacked her. First they fired tear gas grenades next to her, and then handcuffed her and dragged her away — sometimes slapping and hitting her as video cameras rolled. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights says that she was beaten more at the police station.

Khawaja is tough as nails, and when we walked alongside demonstrations together, she seemed unbothered by tear gas that left me blinded and coughing. But she worried about her 2-year-old daughter, Jude. And one time as we were driving back from visiting a family whose baby had just died, possibly because so much tear gas had been fired in the neighborhood, Khawaja began crying. “I think I’m losing it,” she said. “It all just gets to me.”

Mine fremhævelser. Mahmood Al-Yousif har et længere blogindlæg, hvor han gør opmærksom på, at myndighederne i Bahrain fortsat torterer og myrder ganske ustraffet, som Kristofs historie om Ali desværrre siger alt om:

Maybe if you have a few atoms of humanity left in you, it might help you remove that veil off your conscience and see things for what they are:

This incident – amongst hundreds of others currently being meted out to the majority of villages in this country – should be independently investigated and the officers implicated and their masters who are doing nothing to stop this must be made to account for their actions and be punished. The government who oversees this situation should be summarily dismissed of course and with haste. Nothing else would do if that illusive “new page” is to become a reality.

Hvorfor greb man ind med bombning af Libyen for at standse overgrebene, mens for eksempel den amerikanske regering ikke lægger det mindste pres på Bahrain? Vel, en af forskellene er, at undertrykkelsen i Bahrain set i forhold til landets indbyggertal er værre end i Libyen. En anden er, at vestmagterne i stedet valgte at sætte kiggerten for det blinde øjne, da Bahrains kongefamilie diskret indkaldte forstærkninger i form af nogle tusinde soldater fra Saudi-Arabien, der kunne bistå i opgøret med de fredelige demonstranter. Money talks.

Dansk aktivist anholdt i Bahrain

Zainab Alkhawaja

Update, 21/12: Zainab er løsladt!

Update 2 – note to Boing Boing readers: Thank you for your interest in Zainab Alkhawaja and the human rights crisis in Bahrain. This is a Danish-language blog specializing in politics, tech (notably GNU/Linux and free software), culture and civil rights and a special interest in bottom-up movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab revolutions. Read this blog for info in English on Danish politics.

OK, overskriften på dette indlæg er måske en tilsnigelse. Der er nok ikke så meget dansk ved Zainab Alkhawaja. Ganske vist er hendes far, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja ud over at være menneskeretsaktivist også dansk statsborger, hvilket også vil sige, at hun er vokset op her i landet. Og faktisk er hun selv dansk statsborger og har alle de rettigheder, der følger med dén status. Men egentlig er hun jo fra Bahrain, og der er mange ting ved hende, der er helt og aldeles udanske.

For eksempel er hun kompromisløs, ukuelig og åbenbart totalt frygtløs. Selv efter, at hendes far blev fængslet, torteret, dømt til fængsel på livstid og tilsyneladende udsat for seksuelle overgreb i kølvandet på myndighedernes modreaktion på oprøret i Bahran; netop, mens de læger og sygeplejersker, som under demonstrationerne i februar og marts behandlede dødeligt sårede demonstranter, dømmes ved latterlige skueprocesser, deltog Zainab Alkhawja fortsat i demonstrationer mod de groteske menneskeretskrænkelser i det lille land, hvis “konge” stadig er dekoreret med én af Danmarks fornemste ordener.

Billedet (som er taget af Mazen Mahdi) viser den 28-årige Zainab, kort før hun blev arresteret. Den 15., da det skete, var det en stor historie i de internationale medier, og New York Times-journalisten Nick Kristof skrev på Twitter:

I suggest that Bahrain officials avoid torturing and imprisoning @AngryArabiya. Some day she could be their president.

I går var nyheden så nået frem til svensk presse, hvor man bl.a. kunne læse, at “danska medborgaren Zainab al-Khawaja, mer känd under smeknamnet “Angry Arabiya”, greps i Bahrain på torsdagen under en stillsam protest”. Som nogle af de sidste medier i verden tog de danske aviser så tråden op, og Politiken bragte en artikel om Zainabs anholdelse, der mest af alt handlede om hendes far.

Hvor er oprøret, vreden over at folk med tilknytning til Danmark behandles på den måde? Så langt væk Bahrain end ligger, har Zainab og hendes familie givetvis mere tilknytning til Danmark, end Wilson Kipketer og Viggo Mortensen nogensinde har haft. Hvor er Villy Søvndal og truslerne om diplomatiske repressalier? Hvor er interessen, når en person med så stor tilknytning til Danmark er helt i front og risikerer alt i kampen for menneskerettigheder og demokrati i et af de mest undertrykkende diktaturer i den arabiske verden? Er det, fordi hun er frygtløs og kompromisløs og vi ikke er det? Fordi hun risikerer alt for at gøre en forskel, hvilket vi aldrig selv ville?

Vi ser på vore hænder, skammer os og er helst fri for at høre mere. Jeg er klar over, at det selvfølgelig er noget sludder at tale om “danskerne” som et sådant abstrakt “vi”, men jeg har svært ved at se andre motiver for mediernes behandling af denne historie. Zainab Alkhawaja og kampen for et frit og demokratisk Bahrain fortjener vores støtte.

Du kan se anholdelsen af Zainab Alkhawaja her:

“Europagtens” nyttesløse, neoliberale chokterapi

Angela Merkels meget opreklamerede “europagt”, som Storbritannien nu har sagt nej til og Sverige tilsyneladende også er ved at sige nej til, er simpelt hen en juridisk grundfæstelse af den neoliberale politik, som under økonomen Milton Friedmans ledelse led et fuldstændigt nederlag i 1970ernes Chile, skriver Claus Elholm Andersen:

I, hvad der bedst kan betegnes som et ideologisk korstog, har Merkel vist, at hun sætter sine liberalistiske grundsætninger over EU-samarbejdets overlevelse. Og hun har afsløret, at gældskrisen for hende først og fremmest er en undskyldning for, at presse sin politiske dagsorden igennem, koste hvad det koste vil.Man skulle næsen tro, at der var tale om en skoleeksempel på det, som neoliberalismens fader, Milton Friedman, i sin tid kaldte ‘chokterapi’. Termen referer til, at enhver krise skal udnyttes til at få gennemtrumfet en neoliberalistisk økonomisk politik, hvor privatiseringer og kolossale offentlige nedskæringer netop skal indføres så pludseligt, at det kommer som et chok.

Det var under et besøg i Chile i 1975, at Milton Friedman første gang talte om chokterapi offentligt. Han var blevet inviteret til landet af diktatoren Augusto Pinochet, der havde korresponderet med Friedman i et par år og fulgt hans råd om økonomiske reformer.

Men chokterapien havde ikke virket efter hensigten. Afviklingen af det tætteste, noget sydamerikansk land nogensinde har været på en velfærdsstat, havde ført til en inflation på hele 375%, og det var derfor, at den amerikanske økonom, hvis anvisninger Pinochet havde fult til punkt og prikke, blev tilkaldt. Og Friedmans kur var klar: chokterapi, mere chokterapi og så mere endnu.

Knap var Friedman rejst, før Pinochet skrev til ham og fortalte, at Friedmans økonomisk plan “i dette øjeblik er ved at blive ført ud i livet.” I konkrete termer betød det en 27% nedskæring i alle offentlige udgifter fra den ene dag til den anden, samt yderligere privatiseringer og afvikling af toldmure. Men stik mod Friedmans forudsigelse, førte denne chokterapi ikke til masser af nye jobs i den private sektor, men tværtimod til øget arbejdsløshed og armod i en befolkning, som ikke kunne gøre indsigelse, fordi de blev holdt i jerngreb af diktatoren selv.

Den dag i dag forsøger de fleste neoliberalister at glemme, at Chile under Pinochet er det tætteste på en opfyldelse af deres ideologi, som verden nogensinde har set. Og det er ingen hemmelighed, at der går en direkte forbindelse fra Pinochet, og udlevelsen af den neoliberalistiske utopi, til den konservativisme, der personificeret i Margaret Thatcher, ramte Europa i begyndelsen af 1980′erne.

Det var ikke blot den samme ideologi som Pinochet, som Thatcher abonnerede på. Som Pinochet korresponderede også Thatcher med en af neoliberalismens koryfæer, Friedrich Hayek, der fortalte hende om nødvendigheden af chokterapi og opfordrede hende til bruge Chile som model økonomiske reformer, hvis hun ville gøre op den økonomiske politik, der i en engelsk sammenhæng i årtier havde baseret sig på økonomen John Maynard Keynes’ tanker.

Og Thatcher lod sig skam inspirere af Chile. Hun talte om “den imponerende succes med den chilenske økonomi,” som et “lysende eksempel på økonomisk reform, som vi kan lære meget af.” Ja, hendes beundring for Chile og den chilenske økonomi udviklede sig til et venskab med Pinochet, som jævnligt besøgte hende i London, mens hun forsvarede ham og krævede ham løsladt, og endda besøgte ham flere gange, da den tidligere diktator i slutningen af 1990′erne sad i husarrest i London.

Præcis, som der går en linje fra Pinochet til Thatcher, går der også en lige linje fra Thatchers opgør med keynesianismen og frem til det, som vi ser i EU i disse dage. For med Merkels påbud om strengere krav til, hvor stort de forskellige landes underskud må være, er der helt i Milton Friedmans ånd tale om opgør med et central element i Keynes økonomiske teori: At den bedste måde at komme igennem en lavkonjunktur er via offentlige investering, der kan sætte gang i hjulene igen.

Læs endelig det hele.

Egypten: Revolutionen fortsætter, men kommer til at vare længe

Den egyptiske journalist og revolutionære socialist Hossam El-Hamalawy forklarer i dette interview, hvorfor han stadig er optimistisk med hensyn til udsigten til at få afsat det diktatoriske regime. Han siger blandt andet, at det er forventeligt, at det hele ikke falder på plads på én gang, og at det uanset udfaldet af det seneste valg let kan tage tre til seks før der sker nogen mærkbar bedring af situationen:

Has this affected the legitimacy of the elections? Of course, it did. I had already taken the position even before the current uprising of boycotting the coming elections because they are happening while the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is still in power. You cannot have clean elections while Mubarak’s generals are still running the show or when the army, together with the police, had just massacred people in Tahrir, and Maspero. They were not even held accountable, and now they are the ones supposedly in charge of supervising the whole process?

More importantly, it’s not about who you vote into this inept parliament. My argument was that even if you elect one hundred percent Revolutionary Socialists in parliament – forget about the Salafis or the Ikhwan – still you will not be able to achieve the goals of the revolution. If you bring a prophet or a saint to be the prime minister today in Egypt, he will still remain a puppet in the hands of SCAF. If you elect a president today, while the situation is still as it is, he will also be a puppet in the hands of SCAF. SCAF are opting for a model which is like the old Turkish model where you get the people enjoying elections, electing civilian politicians in suits, and having civilian cabinets, but with specific red lines that cannot be crossed, and once they are crossed you will get a phone call from the army – or you will get a coup.

The fierce level of confrontations with the police has definitely been unprecedented since January. You can draw parallels between them in terms of police brutality triggering the uprising, in terms of the tactic of occupying the square, in terms of even repeating the same battles on Mohamad Mahmoud Street that were very reminiscent of the 29th of January – the day after the ‘Friday of Anger’ there was a massacre on that street. But there are differences, of course. Not all sections of the population took part in the uprising, unlike January where there was a higher level of participation.

The other qualitative difference is that you were then revolting against Mubarak; now you are revolting against his own army generals. This is a plus, meaning we’ve come a long way. In February or March if you would have chanted against the army generals in a protest you could have been lynched by the people themselves – not by the military police – I mean by the people. Many people believed the lies and the propaganda of the army at the time about them protecting the revolution, or that it’s Tahrir that’s causing all of the instability, but ten months later when you get this full scale uprising basically against the military and a strong occupation that lasted for a few days with the one demand of putting the army generals in jail then you know you’ve come a long way in terms of the consciousness of the people

The uprising didn’t succeed, obviously; we still have the army generals running the country. But it’s not going to be the last uprising, and we have, at least, I would say, from 3 to 6 years of ebbs and flows, of battles to be won and others to be lost. But in general I’m optimistic. I’m not pessimistic about it.

En vigtig konklusion er, at den optimistiske forestilling om, at Mubarak ville gå af, og så får vi et overgangsstyre og en hurtig overgang til et frit og demokratisk samfund, trods alt er alt for optimistisk i et land, hvor militæret så at sige har ejet så stor en del af samfundets aktier (modsat Tunesien, hvor det trods problemer er gået noget bedre).

En vigtig detalje er også, at oprøret i januar og februar selvfølgelig ikke kun var det på Tahrir-pladsen – Tahrir har været vigtig, men Mubarak var aldrig blevet væltet, hvis ikke der var udbrudt demonstrationer og strejker over hele landet; og et endegyldigt opgør med militæriktaturet kræver tilsvarende, at oprøret generaliseres og kommer helt ud på arbejdspladserne:

According to a labour organizer friend of mine, you witnessed at least 1,500 industrial actions in February alone, which is the total amount of all industrial actions in 2010. Now, these actions continued in February through March, and went down a little bit in April, May, and June. But then you had September, which was probably the month that had the biggest hit in terms of strikes, where roughly three quarters of a million Egyptians took part in a strike; they were mainly in the public transport sector, the teachers, the doctors, and the sugar refineries. Here we are only mentioning the major blocs, but you opened up the newspaper at the time and all these wildcat strikes were happening everywhere.

We did not witness any strike actions in solidarity with Tahrir in this uprising; it is true that the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, and some independent unions, supported Tahrir and they had their banners there and a symbolic presence there, but they didn’t mobilize full scale. My explanation for this is that, on the one hand, the Independent Federation is still not rooted enough so as to be able to put together a general strike; and number two, the working class is usually the last class to move – it’s very easy for the youth and the radicals to just leave their family or university for a month to go to Tahrir and set up a camp. If you’re a worker and you have four kids and you’re working a 9 to 5, and sometimes even a 9 to 7 job, to put together a strike action is a completely different story. They are usually the last to move, but when they move it’s game over.

The general strike is coming. I have no doubt about this; what you don’t know is what’s going to be the outcome of the general strike. But the ball is in our court – can we push it left or right, that’s what we’ll see. At the moment there are several important protests taking place, mainly in Alexandria. Tomorrow in Cairo there will be a protest in front of the State Council in Dokki on Giza Street – it’s called Magles Al-Dawla – where workers from two privatized factories are going to show up for a court case to demand the re-nationalization of their companies – which they already won, by the way. That’s the other problem: even when you have a strike that reaches victory it never means that the government is going to fulfill its promises. Just pick and choose the name of any company that’s right now on strike and I will tell you that they have been on strike since 2009, or even 2007!

Tahrir Square is for sure the symbol of this revolution but we will not fall into the trap of taking Tahrir as a barometer for how the revolution is progressing or regressing. That’s what we’ve been saying to activists for the past months who have been demoralized. For example, you call for a ‘Million Man Protest’ in Tahrir to denounce military tribunals and only a few hundred show up, so you get demoralized. But at the same time, within the same month, you have 750,000 Egyptians going on strike and, in effect, destroying the emergency law. Even if they didn’t show up at your own protest in Tahrir Square, they effectively broke the emergency law.

Der er mere – meget mere, så læs endelig det hele. El-Hamalawy taler også om den amerikanske og efterhånden internationale Occupy-bevægelse og mener analogt til, hvad der er brug for i Egypten, at bevægelsen kan få stor betydning – men at den er nødt til at nu ud over og væk fra de pladser, de er begyndt med at besætte:

If your movement remains confined to the square than you’re not going to succeed. You have to take this movement from the square to the workplaces and the university campuses. We did not topple Mubarak in Tahrir. Yes, Tahrir was a heroic battle, a heroic sit-in, and a heroic occupation, which will definitely go down in history as one of the most fantastic struggles that happened this century, but at the same time, the regime could have held out; Mubarak could have stayed in power for a much longer time if it wasn’t for the labour strikes that broke out. So, I’m very proud of our colleagues and brothers and sisters who have taken part in the Occupy movement everywhere, but they have to link their struggle to the workplaces. If they don’t bring in the working class – which is a big challenge, and I’m not saying it’s something easy – then this movement is going to die.

Og det kan de, der gerne vil se et vellykket oprør mod de økonomiske kræfter, der i disse år insisterer på at frede bankerne og samfundets rigeste, mens almindelige mennesker får lov at betale prisen, så få lov at tænke over.  A big challenge, and I’m not saying it’s something easy.

Link: The Egyptian Revolution Continues – an Interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy.

Trolexgate

Georg Metz rammer som ofte før hovedet på sømmet:

Hvordan kan nogen få den idé, at Venstre ikke ville gøre, hvad det skulle være for at forhindre Helle Thorning i at blive statsminister? Tror nogen, at Hjort, Pind, Jensen, Christensen og Løkke, m.fl. i selskab med deres presserådgivere dydsiret afstod fra at drøfte skattesagen, vurdere dens lovende muligheder, og hvad man kunne gøre for ikke at gøre dem mindre lovende? Tror nogen, at disse overskuelige karakterer, der aldrig mentalt kom ud over bøllestadiet i VU, at disse selvbenovede slagsbrødre ikke ville gå endog vidt for, at historien kunne komme til at spille en rolle i valgkampen? Tror nogen, at moral er afgørende parameter for folk, der kommer cigaretter og øller og naturfilm på offentlige bilag og i øvrigt er kendt for at bevæge sig hjemmevant i grænselandet mellem halve og hele usandheder?

Hvordan det kan være, at en tidligere statsminister og dreven politiker oven i købet med vind i meningsmålingerne op til skandalens udbrud kløjs i et selvindkaldt pressemøde? Men et forhold er frem for noget den afgørende blamage i denne historie og kan hænde en del af forklaringen på Løkkes lamslåede optræden forleden.Sagens ubønhørlige forfatningsmæssige alvor må være gået op for ham, og at han ikke kommer igennem uden så alvorlige skrammer, at hans omdømme tager varig skade.

Forsøget på med beskidte og/eller ulovlige midler at diskreditere en politisk modstander i det hele taget og med den åbenbare hensigt en uge før valget at påvirke et valgresultat, som det her utvivlsomt er sket, kan man uden at lade sig gribe af hysteri opfatte som et langsomt maskeret statskup. Det blev ganske vist ved forsøget, men ’sagen’ kostede Socialdemokraterne mandater og afgjorde magtforholdene i den nye regering. Ordet kup er brugt bevidst. Det er, hvad det dybest set var.

Læs blot det hele på Information.dk.