Many pundits continue to compare the revolutionary process in Egypt today with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Juan Cole's Feb. 2 article about this comparison isn't a Marxist or other radical analysis about either Egypt or Iran, but it's worth a look, here.

Watch the full version (with English subtitles provided) of Google Exec Wael Ghonim's powerful TV interview, only moments after his release from an Egyptian prison where he was held, blindfolded, for twelve full days. This interview is being heralded as yet another galvanizing boost of inspiration to the brave and heroic protestors of Tahrir Square who are sacrificing everything they have to build a new Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of protestors are now filling Tahrir Square and the revolutionary movement looks to only be growing stronger with no signs of turning back.

"Clearly, the regime has a new strategy -- an attempt to try to overcome and bypass the protests," writes Ahmed Shawki from Cairo. Read his article here. The group Revolutionary Socialists Egypt has issued this statement.

Also, for a look at how the Egyptian revolution has been fueled not just by the country's undemocratic political regime but by capitalism, check out Nomi Prins's article.

This February 4th interview with socialist analyst Gilbert Achcar about the Egyptian regime's strategy and the Muslim Brotherhood and other forces in the opposition movement is well worth reading -- here.

"The situation as with any revolution is changing from hour to hour. Any evaluation will undoubtedly be overtaken by events within a few hours or days. But already we can say that the Tunisia and Egyptian people are writing the first pages of the revolutions of the 21st century." This fine sentence comes from a statement from the Fourth International, which is online here.

Al Jazeera's live stream remains a good news source about Egypt.

Richard Seymour writes today (Feb. 4), "The New York Times reports that the US is negotiating with the Egyptian military to force Mubarak, preserve the regime, and put the Vice President and former chief of military intelligence, Omar Suleiman, in charge as transitional president. The US trusts him, of course, because in addition to torturing Egyptians he helped run the CIA's kidnapping and torturing ring, known as 'rendition'." Read the rest of his article here.

Read the tweets from journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy and check out his photos here. A set of photos of women in the Egyptian Revolution are here.

Also, check this blog for updates.

If you're looking to understand the situation behind the headlines, this 17 minute interview with Bashir Abu-Manneh is worth a listen. Also, see this article here.

Egypt will rise. Mubarak must go!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickbygon/5412410519/

This is the Arabic translation of the item that appeared here on the 31st, "The First Pages...."

US socialist Ahmed Shawki is in Cairo and has written this article. Socialist Resistance in England have published Days of Rage, a 20-page pamphlet on events in Egypt and Tunisia.

An NGO reports that the Israeli state recently flew in planeloads of gas to be used by Egyptian forces to disperse crowds.

Falling Arab dictatorships and Israeli government panic
By Mordecai Briemberg
FEBRUARY 1, 2011

The walls are crumbling. The walls behind which dictators indulge in decadent opulence while "their" people are mired in wretched circumstance. The walls behind which "leaders" secretly sell -- for personal gain -- the rights of the people they claim to represent.

Across North Africa and the Middle East, across the Arab world, for decades dictatorship and deepening corruption, firmly supported by imperial powers, seemed beyond challenge. Today, once "stable" regimes are now facing a popular reckoning.

From the vantage point of Palestine, there are three new dynamics.

Within one month, the rebellion of the Tunisian people had sent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali scrambling for safety, neither the army nor police any longer ensuring his security. He hoped to land in France, one of his imperial patrons. After all, one French cabinet minister earlier had offered to send military support; but by the time of his flight from Tunisia, the Sarkozy government determined that Ben Ali had passed his "best-before date". So his plane landed, where Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's plane had landed, in Saudi Arabia.

The Tunisian people, in a tiny country nestled between Libya and Algeria, have rocked the throne of more than one dictator. Across North Africa, from Egypt to Mauritania, hope is supplanting popular cynicism about the possibility of creating a new order. And behind the walls where the dictators make their plans, a deepening anxiety has displaced confidence.

Israel's fate, too, is closely tied to the continuity of imperial-supported Arab reaction. Right after Ben Ali's flight from Tunisia, Netanyahu, on exiting a Cabinet meeting, revealed his anxieties when he called for "peace and security" to replace the "instability." With the mass uprising in Egypt, voices from Israel reveal even higher anxiety. A former Israeli ambassador to Egypt wrote in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, "The only people in Egypt who are committed to peace are the people in Mubarak's inner circle, and if the next president is not one of them, we are going to be in trouble."

Everyone in the Middle East knows what Israel means by "peace and security" (translation: "war and misery" for the Arab people) -- which brings us to the second new dynamic, "The Palestine Papers."

This is the heading Al Jazeera has given to "nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process... memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations - dat[ing] from 1999 to 2010." Al Jazeera says it has had "unhindered access" to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Confirmed in vivid detail, beyond supposition and speculation, are this: (a) In this game called the "peace process" it is Israel which rejects reaching any agreement, despite the most extensive concessions by the "Palestine Authority" negotiators, obviously preferring to complete unhindered its independent plans for the further colonization of the territories conquered in June 1967; (b) The "Palestine Authority" concessions are so extensive that they amount to betrayal of the internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people, ranging from abandoning the right of return of Palestinian refugees to abandoning the right to administer Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem. And beyond this abandonment, collaboration with Israel in killing Palestinians. More than concessions, even more than betrayal, many Palestinians are calling them treason; (c) The U.S. acts as Israel's lawyer, applying pressure -- both bribes and threats -- only on the Palestinians.

The impact of the public, documented confirmation of the foregoing propositions is profound, and the ramifications rapidly unfolding. This weekend we saw the desperate head of the "Palestine Authority", Mahmoud Abbas, send a message of support to Mubarak -- at the very moment Mubarak too has passed his "best before date." One sinking stone clinging to another. For more insight into the response of Palestinians in Palestine to Mahmoud Abbas, see the excellent article by Jonathan Cook: "Can the Palestinian Authority Survive?"

Then the third dynamic, this within the Palestinian rights support movement. For a long time the mantra among most activists was to accept the partition of a single historic Palestine into two-states, the same mantra that has dominated the Orwellian-named "peace process." But as Israeli colonization of territories conquered in 1967 continued unhindered, the realization that a "Palestinian state" could be no more than a set of tiny fragmented "Bantustans" became increasingly clear to activists. And the realization that the 1967 conquest was indeed a continuation of the 1948 ethnic cleansing emerged from the shadows into daylight.

The growing recognition of these realities, along with the more and more extensive and open affirmations of racist bigotry against Palestinians, within and outside the 1967 occupied territories, the more profound the moral indignation and disgust with Israel's policies and practices.
Solidarity activists are shifting away from following the parallel track of a non-existent peace process, moving toward the basics: denunciation of classic colonization, ethnic cleansing, and racist apartheid. Increasingly the tactic of boycott, divestment and sanctions is being pursued as appropriate, with the goal of a single state structure in all of historic Palestine, founded on legal equality for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity and religion, as the only way to realize justice and peace.

This third dynamic is the one solidarity activists in Canada can and should directly contribute to building. And as we do this, the other two dynamics will continue to shape the wider possibilities for success.

For 40 years the dominant narrative of Israel was flattering. A country of refuge for persecuted Jews, a land without a people for a people without a land, a model new society ever on the alert to defend itself from enemies driven by hate and jealousy.

Here in Canada there were hardly any voices to challenge this narrative. No need for campaigns to silence the critics.

Beginning with the first intifada in December 1987 and with gathering momentum, in irregular bursts, reports brought to light the existence of a Palestinian people, inhabitants of the land on which Israel was founded in 1948. Increasingly Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people raised questions and criticism.

The dominant narrative began to lose its capacity to gain reflexive approval. As discussions ensued, the voice of critics became increasingly present and credible.

The advocates of Israeli policies and practices make efforts to "re-brand" Israel, as they put it, to regain the old reflexive approval. But with diminished success they now put their emphasis on silencing, punishing, stigmatizing and criminalizing the voices of the critics -- fundamentally attacking freedom of speech.

Active defence of this right therefore is and needs to remain an integral part of the efforts for justice and peace in historic Palestine.

Mordecai Briemberg is a founding member of Canada Palestine Support Network, and is a regular contributor to rabble.ca

http://www.rabble.ca/news/2011/02/falling-arab-dictatorships-and-israeli-government-panic

A remarkable video from Egypt here.

According to a Jan. 30 press release, "representatives of... the independent Egyptian trade unions of workers... agreed to hold a press conference at 3:30pm this afternoon in Tahrir Square next to Omar Effendi Company store in downtown Cairo to announce the organization of the new Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions and to announce the formation of committees in all factories and enterprises to protect, defend them and to set a date for a general strike. And to emphasize that the labor movement is in the heart and soul of the Egyptian Peoples’ revolution." Read the press release here (also contains link to the new federation's website).

Read an interview with the author of the recently-published book Imperialist Canada here.

A fine interview from Al Jazeera with Egyptian journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy, which should serve as a useful companion piece to the previous blog post on the revolution occuring at present in Tunisia. These two interviews, read together, offer very thoughtful insight into the deep-seeded political, economic, and social grievances underlying these concurrent Middle East uprisings as weill as identifying key linkages between them. Let the dominoes fall!

On January 14, 2011, Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator, was forced to flee the country as a result of the revolutionary mobilizations of an entire people.

No sooner had Ben Ali fled than all the reactionary forces -- both inside Tunisia and on a world scale -- rushed to form a government of national unity structured around Ben Ali's party, the RDC, but also incorporating liberal "opponents" to the old regime. Key to this attempt to put a halt to the revolution under way in Tunisia, and to rescue the old regime, was the effort to co-opt the leadership of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) trade union federation into joining the government of national unity.

Initially the UGTT accepted this proposal from Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi. But as soon as it was announced that three representatives of the UGTT had joined the government, a revolt took place at all levels of the UGTT federation against this decision. The UGTT had been a backbone of the revolution; its local and regional leaders and activists were central leaders of the revolution, its headquarters had been used widely as the organizing centers and launching pads for the mass mobilizations.

Under huge pressure from the members and officers of the union federation, the National Administrative Council of the UGTT convened an emergency meeting 12 hours after its initial decision and voted a resolution announcing that it was withdrawing its representatives from the national unity government and from all elected positions on a national, regional level and local level.

This opened a new chapter in the unfolding Tunisian Revolution.

We are publishing below an interview with Hacine El Abassi, Deputy Secretary General of the UGTT. it is reprinted from the Jan. 26, 2011, issue of Informations Ouvrieres, the weekly newspaper of the Independent Workers Party (POI) of France. The interview was conducted on January 24 by the Informations Ouvrieres correspondent in Tunisia. -- Alan Benjamin

* * * * *

INTERVIEW with Hacine El Abassi, Deputy Secretary General of the UGTT:

"If there is no other way to get the Ghannouchi government to step down, we will call a general strike."

Question: What is the position of the UGTT in the current political situation?

Response: I remind you that on January 18, the UGTT adopted a resolution that states:

"Considering that the coalition government does not correspond to our ideas, that it does not express the demands we have put forward and that it does not represent the aspirations of the people and workers, [the UGTT] decides to withdraw our representatives from the coalition government; to have our elected union officials resign from the National Assembly, from the Assembly of the Council, and from the local councils; and to suspend the participation of the UGTT in the Economic and Social Council."

The UGTT also demanded, "[t]he dissolution of the RCD ... and the rejection of any foreign intervention in the internal affairs of our people, as they were the ones who overthrew a president that repress[ed] the people; the people therefore should be the ones to determine their destiny without outside interference."

The trade union federation also called for the "nationalization" of the Ben Ali clan's property, that is, the takeover by the Republic of Tunisia of a large portion of the economy. In this vein, the UGTT called for a "Constituent Assembly through free and fair elections that reflect the will of the people."

It is in this sense that the Secretary General of the UGTT and three members of the National Executive Committee, of which I am one, will meet tomorrow [Tuesday, Jan. 25 -- Ed.] with the political forces that want to end the RCD regime and its government. The goal is to discuss with them the conditions for the formation of a Government of Public Salvation, as per the January 18 resolution adopted by the UGTT's National Administrative Council.

The UGTT will play its role as a catalyst until a solution is found that is consistent with the interests of the people and their revolution. It will help ensure that opposition political parties will become part of the Government of National Public Salvation, constituting thereby a transitional political alternative to the RCD government, which has been rejected by the Tunisian people.

The only goal we pursue is the fulfillment of the goals of our revolution.

The UGTT will play its role to help gather and unite all opposition political forces in this direction. On this basis, we will be an obstacle to all internal and external enemies, who are able to weave their webs only to the extent that they are in our midst and are still willing to collaborate with our enemies.

Question: What are the objectives of the Tunisian revolution?

Response: Economic development, democracy, social justice, and a constitution. The first spark that will indicate that our country has changed course is the development of the interior regions, regions that have been totally abandoned by the RCD regime.

During 2010, we had undertaken an economic study of the Sidi Bouzid region and had warned the government of the risk of social explosion because of the alarming unemployment rate and the total lack of economic projects and job prospects. Development projects were implemented only along the coast.

Numerous studies show that the Ben Ali government's policy of privatization since he came to power has been responsible for the destruction of the economy.

They did not even know how to administer their own privatization policies. Workers in many privatized sectors are now demanding the nationalization of their companies. I cite, as an example, the public transport company, Tunis Air -- and there are many others.

In the face of the failure of the privatization policies, we had demanded a halt to the process to see if the privatized enterprises were functioning or not. We have always demanded a halt to privatization and the conservation of our companies as public enterprises.

Today, we ask that all of our companies are restored to the State because they must serve the objective of development and employment in our country. More specifically, we are calling for the the restoration of all privatized public enterprises into the hands of the State. This is imperative.

The French people have suffered for many years from this damaging privatization policy, dictated by the European Union (unemployment, the dismantling of public enterprises, the blows to social rights, etc.)

We are aware of this situation and know the harmful social effects that privatizations are causing in Europe as well. In each of our union battles against privatization, the government told us: "Even Europe is compelled to privatize."

The union federation in basic education has called today [January 24] for an indefinite strike. The strike has been followed massively, according to the reports we have received. But faced with the deafness of Ghannouchi and the RCD government, what can be done?

For our part, we will use all legal means to ensure that the demands of the Tunisian people are carried out -- for the departure of the Ghannouchi government and the dissolution of the RCD. Strikes are taking place in many sectors, as are marches and demonstrations.

If there is no other way to get the Ghannouchi government to step down, we will call a general strike. But we believe that the pressure of the street and that of workers in their workplaces, schools, etc. is in the process of making the government tremble.

"Tunisia Fever is a new epidemic sweeping rapidly across North Africa and West Asia. The symptoms include a severe loss of appetite for the lies of the corrupt regime, violent reactions to state security forces, a sharp hunger for freedom, and massive outbreaks of insurgence in the streets drawing in new political forces." Read the "warning" document posted below as an attachment.

Attachments:

Department of Political Health.pdf

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