Message from WSF 2011 “Neoliberal” globalization, thoroughly bankrupt, is now indeed on the defensive. It has no legitimacy. And people in revolt illustrate that. In Latin America and Nepal, today in Egypt and Tunisia, and tomorrow elsewhere in the South, gigantic popular upsurges are felling regimes that were once at its service. Autocratic regimes are […]
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Counter-Revolution Field Manual
In a speech attacking ‘multiculturalism’ Prime Minister David Cameron argued for a “muscular liberalism” that would actively confront “extremist” ideologies — principally radical Islamism — that fail to conform to “Western values”. The problem is not with Islam per se, he argued, but with those “distortion[s]” of Islam that reject “democracy, the rule of law, […]
#Jan25 Egypt
The only question is: who’s next? Omar Offendum (MC #1), ; The Narcicyst (MC #2), ; Freeway (MC #3), ; Amir Sulaiman (MC #4) ; Ayah (R&B Vocalist), ; Sami Matar (Producer), ; Artwork by Ridwan Adhami . Download link: . Cf. Interview with Omar Offendum (Al Jazeera, 8 February 2011): . | Print
The Sound of the Revolution
Ramy Essam is a singer and composer from Mansoura, Egypt. For more information about Essam, visit <www.facebook.com/RamyEssamOfficial>. This song, composed of slogans of the Egyptian Revolution, was performed at Tahrir Square in Egypt on the “Day of Departure” (4 February 2011). | Print
The Dystopia Files
The 1999 WTO protests in Seattle marked a turning point both for political protest and for the ways in which the state attempts to control it. Protesters developed new models of organizing (e.g. affinity groups and spokescouncils) and new tactics of direct action. Governments, in turn, heightened security measures by denying protest permits, surveilling […]
Tunisia’s Future: Opposition Says It Feels Threatened
Moncef Marzouki: We got rid of the dictator, but the dictatorship is still there. I mean the secret police is still there, the party of the dictatorship is still there. Nazanine Moshiri: . . . Rachid Ghannouchi was also exiled under Ben Ali. With many members of his Islamic al-Nahda movement imprisoned or tortured, […]
In Search of Method in the Age of Transition
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 […]
Egypt: Which Way Is the Way Forward? Interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy
Saturday, February 5th, 8 pm (Egyptian time) What are some of the hurdles the protest movement is facing? Are there divisions emerging while trying to find common ground? Yesterday the square was completely packed with more than one million protestors and Alexandria witnessed similar protests as well as the other provinces. But there are […]
Documenting Mubarak’s Attacks on the Press
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
Democracy in Egypt
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
Rallies throughout Occupied Palestine in Solidarity with Egypt and Tunisia
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 […]
Tunisia, Egypt, and Beyond: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad
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 […]
Muslims and Christians, United for Egypt, against Mubarak
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. Cf. As’ad AbuKhalil, “Egyptian Slogans” (Angry Arab News Service, 27 January 2011). | Print
What Happens to Pent-up Anger? Interview with Michael D. Yates
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 […]
Mubarak’s Scales
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
The Great Recession and Its Aftermath: Causes vs. Symptoms
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 […]
Unemployment Rate Drops Another 0.4 Percentage Points, Despite Weak Job Growth
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 […]
Plan B for a Post-Mubarak Egypt?
“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 Right to Housing for Internally Displaced Haitians
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 […]
Egyptian Protests, Grounded in Decades of Struggle, Portend Regional Transformation
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 […]
