Archive | February, 2011

István Mészáros.  Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, Volume I: The Social Determination of Method.  Monthly Review Press, 2010.  463 pp. It is always infuriating to read in any mainstream publication the typical smug commentary on some erstwhile left-academic who had come to reject the ‘determinism’ of Marx’s theory of history.  It is one of […]

  Listen to the interview with Michael D. Yates: I know there’s a lot of pent-up anger.  If you take a country like Egypt, where people are suppressed, when they get an opportunity, a real opportunity, like what happened in the wake of the revolt in Tunisia, they will do things, they will take to […]

  5 February 2011 More than two thousand people rallied today in the center of Ramallah at Al-Manara Square in solidarity with the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, calling for freedom, social justice, democracy, and human rights.  Parallel rallies took place in Bethlehem and Nazareth.  Previous rallies have been held by Palestinian activists in […]

There is much confusion about the current economic situation, among left media and organizations as well as in the mainstream media.  This is certainly understandable given its complexity.  But what many are referring to as causes are symptoms of a deeper underlying problem — in other words, sparks that produced the Great Recession by igniting […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. As’ad AbuKhalil, “Egyptian Slogans” (Angry Arab News Service, 27 January 2011).   | Print

  Mubarak weighs Egypt and himself and concludes: I am weightier than Egypt. This photograph was taken on 1 February 2011.  Visit the blog Egyptian Chronicles at <egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com>. | Print  

Aijaz Ahmad: The dictatorship is gone but the regime is still there [in Tunisia], tottering, hopefully on its last legs.  This is the last card that the old regime is playing, which is trying to keep the government under the control of the RCD, the ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally.  Actually most of the […]

For the second consecutive month, the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage points, despite the weak job growth reported in the establishment survey.  The establishment survey showed a gain of just 36,000 jobs in January, following a revised gain of 121,000 jobs in December.  The big gainers in January were white men, who saw their […]

“Freedom lies behind a door closed shut,” the great Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi wrote in the last century.  “It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist.”  More than that is bleeding in the Arab world at the moment. The uprisings we are witnessing in Egypt have been a rude awakening for all those […]

The West has financed dictatorships in the Middle East and Arab World for more than a century. The pro-democracy protests against Western-backed dictatorships in the Arab world have shown, once again, the immense hypocrisy of our rulers.  Which side are the Western governments on — the side of protesters or the side of dictators?  The […]

“This is an American shell, an American shell.  Mubarak is a collaborator funded by foreigners.  Mubarak is a spy.  We don’t want’ him.  Enough.  The people are suffocating.  The people are hungry.” Jasmina Metwaly is a Polish artist of Egyptian origin.  Philip Rizk is a German-Egyptian filmmaker.  Read Rizk’s blog Tabula Gaza at <tabulagaza.blogspot.com>.   Follow […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.   | Print

3 February 2011 In the battles of yesterday and today, fought bravely by the Egyptian revolutionaries against the militias of the regime, many martyrs fell by the bullets of the thugs.  Now it is clear to all that the regime is maneuvering, on the one hand offering concessions (declaring that Gamal Mubarak will not run, […]

  While the eyes of the world are on Haiti’s illegitimate elections and the return of the deposed dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, about 1.5 million displaced earthquake survivors continue to live in sub-human conditions.  In the absence of large-scale or systemic responses by the government, international community, or aid organizations, progressive civil society organizations are evolving […]

Egypt is throbbing with resistance.  Cairo is cloven between the forces of revolution and those of counterrevolution.  Hundreds of thousands of people — on Tuesday, February 1, well over a million — have been streaming each day into Tahrir Square, the largest plaza in the Arab world, located in the heart of downtown Cairo.  Army […]

  Protests sweeping Egypt have done more than raise hopes of democratic change.  Egypt’s women are hoping this might mark the start of a new era for them as well.  Women have been on the frontlines of the demonstrations, braving tear gas and gunfire, to call for the unseating of President Hosni Mubarak.  They helped […]

  Because we can’t go.  We’ve lost a lot of people and we lost them for a cause.  The cause is that we want Mubarak to be out.  We owe it to them to stick it to the end.  We have many injured people; it will be very hard to move them. . . .  […]

2 February 2011 Every revolution, sooner or later, has to stand on the barricades and fight a counter-revolution.  The scenes today at the Tahrir Square are nothing short of a scene that we imagine from the French revolution: the people holding ground against hordes of militiamen of a dying regime.  Young and old, women and […]

  What explains the diametrically opposed stances of the imperialist powers and corporate media: promoting regime change in Iran while endeavoring to preserve the fundamentals of the regimes, with or without modification, in Egypt and Tunisia?  In part, the increasingly anachronistic legacy of the policy and ideology about Israel developed in the wake of the […]

“No trusting the army for their security anymore, protesters started putting up barricades around Tahrir Square and started forming security committees to protect their occupation from attacks by Mubarak’s thugs.” — Hossam el-Hamalawy “Tahrir is regaining its strength.  It’s getting lively again after yesterday’s brutal assault.” — Sharif Kouddous Graffiti sprayed on an army tank: […]