They are: The tyrant’s strategy seems clear. After 30 years of brutality, repression and feathering the nest of his globetrotting fellow elites, at the moment his regime is in peril he will act as the reasonable one. He will act to reverse the “chaos” and “anarchy” in the streets as gangs of violent thugs attack […]
03 Feb
Comments Off on The Egyptian revolution: Liberal democracy as the enemy of freedom
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 world […]
02 Feb
Comments Off on Not good enough. Try again
From the New York Times: CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not run for another term in elections scheduled for the fall, appearing on state television to promise an orderly transition but he would serve out his term. In comments translated by CNN, he swore that he would die in Egypt. Television cameras showed the vast […]
01 Feb
Comments Off on Egypt: Revolution, counter-revolution and Islamism
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 his allies: The presence of the […]
30 Jan
Comments Off on Interview with Egyptian journalist and blogger
The poor will want to push the revolution to a much more radical position, to push the radical redistribution of wealth and to fight corruption… In this linked article on Al Jazeera, Mark LeVine (Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of California, Irvine) interviews Egyptian journalist, blogger and socialist Hossam el-Hamalawy. He discusses the developing popular protests in Egypt and […]
29 Jan
Comments Off on Revolution not in the head but on the streets
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 […]
04 Feb
Comments Off on Who’s afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?