Category: revolution

16 Feb

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So you think you want a revolution?

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> Photo by Counterfire My latest piece on ABC’s The Drum Unleashed — “What Australia can learn from Egypt’s uprising” — dispelling the mythology around revolutions peddled by Western leaders and mainstream media: The word “revolution” comes loaded with many preconceptions, but the 18 days that brought down the Mubarak regime in Egypt have deeply challenged views [...]

Filed under: Egypt, revolution

09 Feb

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Beyond an impasse — Egypt’s masses surge forth again

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> From Al-Jazeera’s English-language website: The square has become a mini-utopia in central Cairo. Political opinions aired, gender and sectarian divisions nowhere to be found. People feed and clothe each other here. Medical areas have been set up by doctors joining in with the protesters. The crime and sexual harassment so prevalent in the country [...]

Filed under: class, Egypt, revolution

07 Feb

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The Egyptian revolution and the working class

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> Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy It’s worth reading in full an interview on Saturday night, Cairo time, with Egyptian blogger and journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy, on the excellent Occupied Cairo blog. But on the question of class polarisation and independent workers’ action he has this to say: The uprising up until now contained elements from all [...]

Filed under: class, Egypt, revolution

03 Feb

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The Egyptian revolution: Liberal democracy as the enemy of freedom

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> In February 2003 I was part of the 400,000-strong rally in Sydney opposing the impending US-British-Australian invasion of Iraq. It seemed for a moment that we were going to disrupt the plans of the self-styled Coalition Of The Willing by sheer force of numbers, part of probably the largest coordinated protest in Australian and [...]

29 Jan

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Revolution not in the head but on the streets

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11: Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach The events in Egypt flatly contradict the received wisdom on the Left that social progress comes through a process of slow, patient education to change attitudes and challenge reactionary ideas. In a [...]

Filed under: Egypt, Islamism, revolution

11 Dec

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Let me tell you a secret… WikiLeaks, the state and hegemony

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What is the nature of elite rule and how can it be challenged? This is the real question behind the political crisis caused by the WikiLeaks revelations. Compared with other leaks, the scale and breadth of the information being released makes it impossible not to reassess how state and citizens interact. Despite the attempts at [...]