> 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 [...]
14 Feb
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> The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events. — Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution How good was that? Here we’ll let some Egyptian voices speak: First, a statement on Friday from the Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt: Glory to the martyrs! Victory to the revolution! [...]
09 Feb
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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 [...]
07 Feb
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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 [...]
03 Feb
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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 [...]
01 Feb
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> UPDATE: Now cross-posted at Overland Journal blog. Great to wake up this morning to see that the Egyptian army is publicly stating it won’t use force against the protesters. Of course this could just be part of buying time for the regime, but it goes to the scale of the crisis facing Mubarak and [...]
29 Jan
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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 [...]
11 Dec
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 [...]
16 Feb
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