======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
http://www.swans.com/library/art17/desk104.html
Blips #104 From The Martian Desk
by Gilles d'Aymery
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where
ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society
is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither
persons nor property will be safe."
—Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
(Swans - February 14, 2011) THE END OF AN ERA in 56 words? "In the
name of God the merciful, the compassionate, citizens, during these very
difficult circumstances Egypt is going through, President Hosni Mubarak
has decided to step down from the office of president of the republic
and has charged the high council of the armed forces to administer the
affairs of the country. May God help everybody," announced the sober and
stern Egyptian vice president. It took 23 days for Ben Ali to fall in
Tunisia and only 18 for Mubarak. In both instances the military was
instrumental in the process of removing the two autocrats -- by their
refusal to shoot at and repress the peaceful insurgents. Why such a
quick and swift outcome in Egypt -- an internal military coup, no less?
LET'S GIVE CREDIT to the youth, but let's also remember that these
momentous events started with food riots. Yet the economic uprisings
turned into a political upheaval. The youth of Tahrir ("Liberation")
Square made little or no economic claims. In a commentary published in
The Guardian on February 10, 2011, Ahmed Salah wrote: "This revolution
is not for bread as much as for freedom. It was made principally by the
educated, rather than the crushed poorer classes. And it is getting more
and more popular as Egyptians balance values such as democracy, freedom,
justice, dignity and transparency on one hand, and despotism,
oppression, injustice, humiliation and corruption on the other." In a
live BBC update of the same day (at 17:12 GMT) Firas Al-Atraqchi in
Cairo tweeted: "Democracy! Liberty! Freedom of the Press! No Emergency
Laws! Respect for Human Rights! These are the goals." Wael Ghonim, the
presumably well-compensated marketing manager for Google in the Middle
East and North Africa, who became a powerful organizer and a symbol of
the uprising after having been jailed for 11 days, said that it was "the
revolution of the youth of the Internet, which then became the
revolution of the youth of Egypt. And now it's become the revolution of
all of Egypt." It was the Al Jazeera Revolution sweeping across Egypt;
that is, the revolt of the well to do -- doctors, professors, lawyers,
and other professionals. They were chanting about political reforms, not
socioeconomic changes. The regime expected that they would get tired
eventually and that the financial losses to the country, estimated at
about $300 million per day, were a bearable cost.
(clip)
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
