dagblog - Comments for "We are all Egyptians now"

They were interviewing

Donal — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:14:16 +0000

In reply to Some CNN talking heads are

They were interviewing Kristof on The Takeaway this morning, and he sounded puzzled, almost disappointed, that there had not been violence so far.

Humanity is one, the agenda

David Seaton — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 07:15:53 +0000

In reply to You can go on agreeing with

Humanity is one, the agenda is one... bread and justice.

In a globalized economy all societies are facing the same pressures and challenges. Some of them are stronger and better able to resist than others and the discontent simmers. In other, more vulnerable populations it explodes. There are lessons in Egypt for everyone... He who hath ears etc.

You can go on agreeing with

artappraiser — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:28:21 +0000

In reply to We are all Egyptians now

You can go on agreeing with Thomas Friedman's the earth is flat blather if you like and quoting sclerotic theories about the French Revolution that have been "revisionized" umpteen times over over the past half century.

You don't have to call it freedom if you wish, call it whatever you like.

But the revolution in Egypt, it's about the police state (just like with Bouazizi in Tunisia.)

Here again, evidence: It's not about the income inequality thing (as of yet, of course, it may be later), nor the "I'm educated but I can't get a decent job" thing.

It's just like the protesters keep saying, which you dismiss and dis as not knowing what they mean or want,

even among the working class,

it's about the police state, the police state they want gone (you know, those words you don't think they don't understand, freedom from fear.):

....First, the passion of workers that began this uprising does not stem from their marginalisation and poverty; rather, it stems from their centrality to new development processes and dynamics. In the very recent past, Egypt has reemerged as a manufacturing country, although under the most stressful and dynamic of conditions. Egypt's workers are mobilised because new factories are being built in the context of a flurry of contentious global investment. Several Russian free-trade zones and manufacturing settlements have opened up, and China has invested in all parts of the Egyptian economy.

Brazil, Turkey, the Central Asian Republics and the Gulf Emirates are diversifying their investments. They are moving out of the oil sector and real estate and into manufacturing, piece-goods, informatics, infrastructure etc. Factories all over Egypt have been dusted off and reopened, or new ones built. And all those shopping malls, gated cities, highways and resorts have to be built and staffed by someone. In the Gulf, developers use Bangladeshi, Philippine and other expatriate labour. But Egypt usually uses its own workers. And many of the workers in Egypt's revived textile industries and piece-work shops are women.

If you stroll up the staircases into the large working-class apartment buildings in the margins of Cairo or the cement-block constructions of the villages, you’ll see workshops full of women, making purses and shoes - and putting together toys and computer circuitboards for sale in Europe, the Middle East and the Gulf. These shop workers joined with factory workers to found the April 6 movement in 2008. They were the ones who began the organisation and mobilisation process that led to this uprising in 2011, whose eruption was triggered by Asmaa Mahfouz circulating a passionate YouTube video and tens of thousands of leaflets by hand in slum areas of Cairo on January 24, 2011. Ms Mahfouz, a political organiser with an MBA from Cairo University, called people to protest the next day. And the rest is history.

The economic gender and class landscape of Egypt’s micro-businesses has been politicised and mobilised in very dynamic ways, again with important gender and sexual dimensions. Since the early 1990s, Egypt has cut back welfare and social services to working-class and lower-middle-class Egyptians. In place of food subsidies and jobs they have offered debt. Micro-credit loans were given, with the IMF and World Bank's enthusiastic blessing, to stimulate entrepreneurship and self-reliance. These loans were often specifically targeted toward women and youth.

Since economically disadvantaged applicants have no collateral to guarantee these loans, payback is enforced by criminal law rather than civil law. This means that your body is your collateral. The police extract pain and humiliation if you do not pay your bill. Thus the micro-enterprise system has become a massive set of police rackets and "loan shark" operations. Police sexualised brutalisation of youth and women became central to the "regulation" of the massive small-business economy.

In this context, the micro-business economy is a tough place to operate - but it does shape women and youth into tough survivors who see themselves as an organised force opposed to the police state. No one waxes on about the blessings of the market's invisible hand. Thus the economic interests of this mass class of micro-entrepreneurs are the basis for the huge and passionate anti-police brutality movement. It is no coincidence that the movement became a national force two years ago with the brutal police murder of a youth, Khalid Said, who was typing away in a small internet cafe that he partially owned. Police demanded ID and a bribe from him; he refused - and the police beat him to death, crushing his skull to pieces while the whole community watched in horror.

Police demanding bribes, harassing micro-businesses - and beating those who refuse to submit - became standard practise in Egypt. Internet cafes, small workshops, call-centres, video-game cafes, microbuses, washing/ironing shops and small gyms constitute the landscape of micro-enterprises that are the jobs base and social world of Egypt's lower middle classes. The so-called "Facebook revolution" is not about people mobilising in virtual space; it is about Egyptian internet cafes and the youth and women they represent, in real social spaces and communities, utilising the cyberspace bases they have built and developed to serve their revolt.....
excerpt from:
Why Egypt's progressives win
Suleiman considers the business fraternity friendly, but it is the nation's women and youth who are driving the unrest.
Paul Amar, Al-Jazeera Opinion, 10 Feb 2011 12:30 GMT
(Amar is author of Cairo Cosmopolitan; The New Racial Missions of Policing; Global South to the Rescue; and the forthcoming Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics and the End of Neoliberalism)

To claim that it's the same suffering or the same fight as the poor of the U.S. or the unemployed over educated youth of Italy or Spain or whatever is to dishonor their specific fight.

And that's why it really sort of bugs me to see you twist their fight to your ideological agenda on that topic.

Because it's an amazing thing what Bouazizi followers did in Tunisia standing up to a police state, and an amazing thing that the Egyptians are doing now. It's something that very few have tried all through history. And of those who did, many were crushed like worthless insects.

That's not something to minimize to the benefit of some other agenda.

Art imitating life imitating

cmaukonen — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:33:11 +0000

In reply to They are not stupid fools,

Art imitating life imitating art. The surreal American landscape on mushrooms.

Some CNN talking heads are

acanuck — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:40:10 +0000

In reply to From the BBC:2156: Robert

Some CNN talking heads are speculating that the regime is actually hoping to provoke violent clashes tomorrow, as a pretext for ordering a long-delayed military crackdown. Given how delusional Mubarak and Suleiman have shown themselves to be, it's actually plausible that is their plan.

Maybe if Mubarek puts more

NCD — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:10:05 +0000

In reply to I think tomorrow will be an

Maybe if Mubarek puts more giant posters of himself around the country the people will revere his eminence and his heroism, and recall the 'greatest moment in his life' planting the Egyptian flag in the Sinai 30 years ago. Are all Arab leaders such self-loving inflated fools, or does $70 billion in the bank and 30 years in power do that to anyone, heck, look what our own pompous buffoon and sociopath George W. did to the nation, and the world, in just his first 4.

They are not stupid fools,

David Seaton — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:07:43 +0000

In reply to I don't know where you get

They are not stupid fools, they know exactly what they don't want... what exactly they want is more nebulous because no people have ever actually been free (whatever that is) anywhere before. As to Hollywood, the closer you are to it the more intoxicating it is. Americans are much more stupefied by Hollywood than the Egyptians are.

From the BBC:2156: Robert

David Seaton — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:59:29 +0000

In reply to We are all Egyptians now

From the BBC:

2156: Robert Danin from the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington tells the BBC World Service: "It seems to me that behind the scenes there must be some sort of power play taking place between the military and the president. It's really quite bizarre that the president would stand up, especially on a Thursday night, and essentially antagonise the crowd on the eve of a Friday, traditionally the most volatile day for protests in the Arab world. So tomorrow's going to be quite a day I expect."

I think tomorrow will be an

David Seaton — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:55:02 +0000

In reply to Suleiman's on TV now, showing

I think tomorrow will be an unforgettable day... I hope the blood is minimal.

Suleiman's on TV now, showing

acanuck — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:39:18 +0000

In reply to Just listened to Mubarak's

Suleiman's on TV now, showing himself to be equally tone-deaf. On CNN, Fareed Zakaria just called Mubarak's speech "delusional." Yup.