he Muslim Brotherhood were mobilized to control the polling stations, which made it impossible for the others to vote, to such an extent that the Egyptian judges who normally oversee the election were disgusted and withdrew their support for the election process. Despite that, the US Embassy and the Europe declared the election was perfect.
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 26 Dec 13
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Samir Amin on the Egyptian crisis, popular movements and the military | CODESRIA - 0 views
www.codesria.org/spip.php
social movements arab intervention multinational mncs egypt corporations mubarak labor al-sisi samir amin
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The Tomarod movement started a petition campaign calling for the removal of Morsi and for a new, real election. 26 million signatures were collected, which is the true figure. Morsi had not taken this campaign into account. So it was decided on 30 June — which is exactly one year after his inauguration — that there should be a demonstration. And the demonstration was gigantic, the largest in the whole history of Egypt: 33 million people moved into the streets of Cairo and all Egyptian towns, including small towns. When you say 33 million people out of the total population of 85 million people, it means everybody.
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The western media are continuously repeating the words of Morsi ‘we are moving to a civil war’, but it is not possible. Facing the situation, the army operated in a very wise, intelligent way.
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Since the death of Nasser 30 years ago, the top leadership of the army has been controlled by the US and corrupted by the money of the US and the Gulf countries; and they accepted the polices of submission of Mubarak and Morsi. But everybody should know that the Egyptian army is not just its top leaders but also thousands of officers who remain patriotic. They are not necessarily progressive, nor socialist, but they understand that the people don’t want Morsi. The new Prime Minister, Hazem Al Beblawi, I knew him personally. He was a brilliant student of economics. I don’t know what his mind is like today, but he’s a clever man, able to understand that continuing neoliberal policies would be a disaster.
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Hundreds of thousands who are organized. They are those who started Tamarod. These young people are politicized, they discuss politics continuously. They do not accept following parties; they have no confidence in bourgeois parties, democratic parties or even socialist parties.
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To have a movement getting together with a minimum common program is important: there are discussions among various partners, particularly with the organizations of the youth. There is a need for a common program which is to meet the immediate challenge; it is not a program for socialism, but a program to start moving out of the trap of neoliberalization by restoring the power of the state, and the other dimensions of starting to move out of the rut of the alliance with the US, Israel, and Gulf countries, and to open new relations with partners, particularly with China, with Russia, with India, with South Africa, so that we can start having independent policies and therefore reducing the influence of the US, of Israel, and of the Gulf countries.
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First is the task of social justice: it is not socialism. It is a set of good and important reforms of management of enterprises; the end of privatization; recapturing of the enterprises which have been given at very low prices to private companies; a new law of minimum wages; a new law for working conditions, a new law of labor rights – strikes and so on; a new law of participation of the working people with the management of the enterprises in which they would have a say.
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second task is to address the national question. It is a question of dignity. People want a government that represents Egypt with dignity and self-respect. It means a government which is independent, not one accepting the US’s orders, not standing with Israel’s repression of Palestinians. A government independent of the Gulf countries who are allies of the US, they can’t be anything else. In this context, China has a big responsibility. It would be great if some people in China say frankly : “we are with you and we are prepared, if you ask, to help you solve your economic problems.” Such a declaration would have a tremendous echo in Egypt. There are slogans on the streets of Cairo, “we don’t need US aid, we can also get it from other countries”. We don’t need US aid - which is associated with corruption and political submission. This is called a national independent policy, in order to be able to develop a sovereign Egyptian project.
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We should have a popular parliament, which is not an elected parliament. It is a parliament which consists of people sent by the organizations of the movement, by the trade unions, by the women organizations, by the youth organizations. This is the true parliament, more than a so-called elected parliament in which the distribution of party is so unequal and biased. You can call it not-a-socialist-program, but a national, democratic, sovereign, and progressive program.
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On one hand, we can say the US accepted and supported the army and the new government, but on the other hand, they tried to put pressure to bring back the old reactionary, which is not Muslim Brotherhood but the salafists. This is the plan of the US, which is not to help Egypt out of the crisis, but to use the crisis to destroy more.
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These groups are coming from Libya. Since Libya has been destroyed by the western military operation, Libya has become the base for all kinds of Jihadists. There are Jihadists with strong arms including missiles coming from the desert, this is the real danger. Also in the Egyptian peninsula of Sinai small Jidahist groups supported by Israel and the Gulf countries are carrying out terrorist actions.
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China urges creativity in Iran nuclear negotiations - 0 views
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 21 Aug 13
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The Globalization of Militarism » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - 0 views
www.counterpunch.org/...-globalization-of-militarism-2
social movements arab multinational mncs corporations intervention egypt
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Can the individual survive, grow, expand, within an international system in which national self-interest trumps human needs and legitimates repression as the means to achieving hierarchically imposed goals?
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Whether authoritarianism is a vehicle for capitalism, or capitalism, for authoritarianism, we see that advanced capitalist-industrial states, perhaps integral to their mature stage of development, require the total rationalization of the productive system and the human counterpart to that system–a purposely dry formulation of Max Weber’s rational-legal framework in his Theory of Social and Economic Organization in order to suggest (beyond Weber in this one respect) that human beings necessitate the same degree of control and predictability, which is what we mean by rationalization, as the productive order itself.
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Egypt, admittedly, seems a dot on the political-economic-ideological hegemonic landscape; actually, it is more—although circumstances have thrust it forward for purposes of analysis. Possibly another hot spot would have dramatized as well the aforementioned dynamics of the world situation, yet the nakedness of the repression provides, given Egypt’s geographic location, a good departure point.
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What now emerges, because of the Israeli public-relations campaign through its embassies and consulates in world capitals on behalf of the Egyptian military (atrocities and all), known to analysts anyway, is the close ties between the two military commands.
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the Pacific-first strategy draws upon the entire arsenal of military resources, now pivoted to Asia, naval power to the front, for the purpose of cordoning off China so to prevent its military-economic challenge to American dominance. This already appears futile, for without resorting to intervention or war, China has successfully gained entrance into world markets, has an investment record, as in Africa, second to none, and has undertaken massive projects in infrastructure, obviously at home, but also throughout the Third World.
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The Egyptian military, however, on its part must earn the respect of Washington, more rather than less bloodletting, as in the summary execution of protesters in government hands, or the skyrocketing rate of casualties who are themselves unarmed.
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The US wraps Sisi’s knuckles, but refuses to cut aid. Israel, per your report, is leading a campaign in world opinion on behalf of the Egyptian massacres, exposing itself for what it has become: a pariah state because of its disregard for social decency and the rights of others.
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Egypt is not even a civil war, in which case one might choose sides and read into the situation matters of principle and ideology. In this case, massive force confronts an essentially unarmed populace, raising issues which transcend mere side-taking and reflect instead the elemental question,
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Feb 11
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What Role Have Multinationals Played in Egypt's Communication Shutdown? | Business Ethics - 0 views
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it's hard to tell how widespread and successful the crackdown has been. There was at least one report of BlackBerry users finding a way around the blocks. One Internet service provider reportedly held out for days before shutting down by Monday. And while cell service had supposedly resumed after the weekend, CNN reports the government has shut it again temporarily.
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It's also unclear whether the Egyptian government had a legal basis for its actions, as Vodafone claimed. But Wong said that if even if there were some law that allowed the crackdown, it would run counter to international human-rights principles. "There are a set of human-rights norms around when governments can restrict free flow of information," she said. "I would say this is pretty close to a violation."
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Did they have any choice? "We don't know," said Cynthia Wong, of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Certainly it shows how much leverage governments have over mobile phone companies in particular."
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Perhaps because it is talking about a Western ally, this article is quite mealy mouthed. "We don't know" if Vodafone Egypt was telling the truth when they said they were legally obligated. "It's hard to tell" how widespread the crackdown was. However, the article does make clear that no other dictatorship (including Iran or China) has shut down the Internet so completely. This demonstrates that MNC-led governments can be the most dictatorial in the world (outside, perhaps, Burma or North Korea).
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shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Dec 12
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Tariq Ramadan interviewed post-Arab spring | openDemocracy - 0 views
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in that polarisation, Islam was avoiding the main questions. The nature of the state is one thing, but there are other major challenges - what it will take to tackle the issues of social corruption, for example, social justice, and the economic system – and what are the future challenges when it comes to equality between the citizens, in particular in the field of the job market and equal opportunity for men and for women? This is at the centre of the question that is the Arab Awakening
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Since the beginning of the 1920’s, Islamism was very close in positioning in some respects to ‘liberation theology’. But that is no longer the case. Now the most important example of the last fifteen years is the move from Erbakan to Erdoğan, creating the Turkish model that has been highly successful in economic terms, but only in fact by buying into and succeeding in being integrated into the global economic system.
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Don’t they talk about the need for redistribution? One gets the impressions that the Salafi argument is often more concerned about looking after the poor? TR: Yes, but within the system. You can be a very charitable capitalist. Like Sarkozy was saying, we have to ‘moralise capitalism’, which for me is a contradiction in terms.
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'The Turkish road is not my model because I am critical of the way you are dealing with freedom of expression, of how you are dealing with the treatment of minorities, and your economic vision.’ But at the same time, I say, I’m watching what you are trying to do and I think there are things that are interesting in the Turkish approach, which for the first time in the last decade has started to shift towards the south and the east, opening almost fifty embassies in Africa, and having a new relationship with China. That is just huge.
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Now the problem is that you have two trends that are in fact objective allies in destablising the whole process of this discussion: on the one side the very secularist elite that is doing everything to paint a picture that they are in danger from ‘the other side’ and on the other hand, the Salafis, who are constantly putting Ennahda on the spot by questioning their religious credentials – ‘who are you? What are you doing? You are just compromising everything.’ And the secularists are saying about Ennahda, ‘they are not clear because they want to please us and they want to please them.’
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If you read the Rand Corporation on who supported the Salafis in Egypt, what you learn is that up to 80 million dollars’ worth of support was poured into Egypt before the elections by organisations that are not state, they are very precise on this, but Qatari and Saudi organisations.
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Remember – the Taliban in Afghanistan were not at all politicised in the beginning. They were just on about education. And then they were pushed by the Saudi and the Americans to be against the Russian colonisation, and as a result they came to be politicised. (They are not exactly like the Salafi because the Salafi think that they need to be re-educated, Islamically-speaking, convinced that they have to follow the prophet in a very literalist way.)
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Is the dialogue across national borders also important, between Muslims in Europe and in the Middle East, for example? TR: Yes, there are ongoing discussions about this too. The problem with what we call the ‘Arab spring’ is that these are very nationalistic experiences. Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on. But still I have been invited I don’t know how many times to Turkey, where Turkey has been following very quickly in the footsteps of what is sometimes referred to as the movement of cyber-dissidents.
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So you can see the connections beginning to form. If in the very near future Anwar Ibrahim succeeds in Malaysia, he is positioned as very close to the Turkish experience, and many in the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda have a similar perspective. So there are important relationships across national boundaries.
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Yes, the drafting of the constitutions is interesting and the discussions around them revealing in many ways. I take it as a discussion of very important symbols revealing many different problems. My take at the beginning was to warn that Tunisia might be the only successful country, the only one to justify us in talking about the spring, while all the other countries were less successful, if not failing. Now the point is that even in Tunisia it is not going to be easy, and this is where we have a problem.
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They were trying to find a way to confront the Turkish army with their own contradictions – “you are talking about a secular state but then you want a secular military state, and we want a secular state which is in tune with the requirements of the EU.” So they simultaneously use the EU against the army and meanwhile, they shift towards the south and the east. That’s interesting.
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But I do think they are trying to find a new space in the multi-polar world, and this is what I am advocating. I don’t think that Muslims have an alternative model. An ‘Islamic economy’ or ‘Islamic finance’ doesn’t mean anything to me. But I do think that in the multi-polar world, it is time to find new partners, to find a new balance in the economic order. And this could help you to find an alternative way forward.