Ve městě Port Said se odehrává bezprecedentní situace – kompletní samospráva, odmítnutí všeho, co představuje autoritu. To je stav, který se hlavní aktéři současných egyptských bojů – pracující – snaží reprodukovat rovněž v jiných městech.
Port Said je nyní úplně v rukou lidu. U vstupu do města, na místě starých policejních zátarasů, se nachází kontrolní stanoviště, jehož posádku tvoří místní obyvatelé, povětšinou stávkující dělníci, kteří si říkají „lidová policie“. Totéž platí pro dopravu – již zde nejsou dopravní fízlové, ale mladí muži, studenti a dělníci, [Italiano] ... read full story / add a comment

An unprecedented situation is taking place in the city of Port Said - complete self-management, a rejection of everything that authority represents. It is a situation that the main actors in the Egyptian struggle at this time - the workers - are trying to reproduce in other cities too. [ ... read full story / add a comment

Exploiting the latest spillover from the two previous interventions in Libya and Mali, which are a product of AFRICOM intelligence and military assistance, they are making rapid gains in their North Africa advance. For what? One begins to ask, before continuing understanding how profitable chaos is, is crucial to answering the question. The ensuing chaos within Mali, expanding to Algeria and set to encompass North Africa leaves scope for a state of permanent low level war. This low level war is nothing new, it’s taking place as you read this over nearly all of the globalised world claiming millions of lives: described by John Pilger as the Third World War. This expanding theatre of the ‘war on terror’, which I will later explore, provides ample opportunity within its vast marketplace for hordes of corporations to destroy, ravage, rebuild and beautify entire nations. ... read full story / add a comment

An estimated 7,000 detainees being held, including women, children and black Africans tortured for skin colour. ... read full story / add a comment

Nato claimed it would protect civilians in Libya, but delivered far more killing. It's a warning to the Arab world and Africa
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A woman and her family were shot by Libyan rebel fighters in a deadly attack because their last name was Gaddafi, it has been reported.

Mother-of-three Afaf Gaddafi was attempting to flee the war-torn country with her children and other family members over fears that their surname would land them in trouble. Mistaken for Gaddafi loyalists, rebel fighters opened fire at them near an airport - killing the couple’s two daughters Yam, 20 months, and Aden, three weeks, as well as Afaf’s mother and sister.
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Obviously the UN had already plans for Libya, without much of an interest in whatever the African Union or Libyan themselves have to say. ... read full story / add a comment

Mission accomplished! As Libyan rebels took Tripoli last week, liberals practically draped that banner across the nation's op-ed pages. Now was the time for all good men to come together and praise a famous victory.
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A military court on 29 June handed down suspended sentences of one year in prison to five workers, who had been sacked by the Egyptian oil company Petrojet. The sentencing marked the first enforcement of Law 34/2011, announced by the military in March, which criminalizes protests and strikes that hinder production in any workplace. ... read full story / add a comment

The blog 3arabawy posted a statement from the Egyptian Independent Union Federation, drafted last week, that affirms solidarity with the Palestinian people and upholds their commitment to “reject any form of normal relations” with Israel, including gas supply agreements that have been in place since Mubarak was empowered. [Italiano] ... read full story / add a comment

We said on 18 January in our article “The Arab Spring of Democracy” that all Arab states share the same characteristics, and from this deduction that the same conditions will produce the same results. On 25 January, following the Tunisian revolution, the Egyptian uprising began. Since then, popular uprisings are spreading like wildfire in the Arab world. It is the Arab Spring of democracy. It is a new era full of hope and aspirations that will change the balance of forces in the Middle East, and maybe the world. No Arab country will be spared. ... read full story / add a comment

The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo ante. [Italiano] ... read full story / add a comment

New evidence of spying and torture by an Egyptian security agency has piled pressure on military rulers to abolish a hated and feared symbol of Hosni Mubarak's era. ... read full story / add a comment

In different ways in different places (including most dramatically some places that until very recently were often taken for granted as among the most "docile" and "stable" countries around), people all over the world are rediscovering a principle at work in every revolutionary sequence: if we are willing to act in sufficient numbers and with sufficient determination, we already have all the power we need to devise and impose our own alternative. If we are determined to pursue it, we now have an opportunity to help change the world. ... read full story / add a comment

In 1961 Frantz Fanon wrote, from Tunisia, “The colonial world is a world cut into two....The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not how or where.” Fifty years later cities are still divided into separate zones for those who count and those who don't count. ... read full story / add a comment

Since yesterday, and actually earlier, middle-class activists have been urging Egyptians to suspend the protests and return to work, in the name of patriotism, singing some of the most ridiculous lullabies about "let's build new Egypt," "let's work harder than even before," etc. In case you didn't know, actually Egyptians are among the hardest working people in the globe already. Those activists want us to trust Mubarak's generals with the transition to democracy -- the same junta that has provided the backbone of his dictatorship over the past 30 years. And while I believe the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, who receive $1.3 billion annually from the US, will eventually engineer the transition to a "civilian" government, I have no doubt it will be a government that will guarantee the continuation of a system that will never touch the army's privileges, keep the armed forces as the institution that will have the final say in politics (as for example in Turkey), guarantee Egypt will continue to follow the US foreign policy, whether it's the undesired peace with the Apartheid State of Israel, safe passage for the US Navy in the Suez Canal, the continuation of the Gaza siege, or exports of natural gas to Israel at subsidized rates. A civilian government is not about cabinet members who do not wear military uniforms. A civilian government means a government that fully represents the Egyptian people's demands and desires without any intervention from the brass. And I see this as hard to be allowed, let alone accomplished, by the junta. ... read full story / add a comment

As I watched last night Hosni Mubarak make his (hopefully last) speech, I was very much reminded of the last speech of the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines, Bin Ali of Tunisia. They all claimed after so many years of torturing their own people that they now want to "reform". The US funded and supported the brutal Mubarak regime for over 30 years even as plenty of evidence from human rights organizations documented its abuse of its own citizens... ... read full story / add a comment

The new Ghanouchi government, formed the evening of January 27, following the visit of US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman to Tunis, has started its project for a vast and brutal repression of the leading forces of the Tunisian Revolution. ... read full story / add a comment

At the moment it is abundantly easy to sense everywhere in the Arab World elation at what appears to be one of greatest events in modern Arab history. A genuine popular revolution, spontaneous and apparently leaderless, yet sustained and remarkably determined, overthrew a system that by all accounts had been the most entrenched and secure in the whole region. The wider implications beyond Tunisia are hard to miss. Just as in the case of the Iranian revolution more than three decades ago, what is now happening in Tunisia is watched by all in the Arab world--as either a likely model of the transformation to come in their respective countries, or at least as a badly needed source of revolutionary inspiration. ... read full story / add a comment

Not a day goes by in Egypt without demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins and clashes between workers and the police.

Textile workers have been at the forefront of the struggles, as factory bosses are seeking to cut wages and pressure workers to leave. The most serious was the strike last month in Mahalla over low pay and rising prices. Three people were killed during the protests, 80 were injured and about 400 arrested.
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