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Egypt's New Military Rulers To Ban Unions, Strikes
CAIRO - Egypt's new military rulers will issue a warning on Monday against anyone who creates "chaos and disorder", an army source said.
Egyptian protesters stage a sit-in in Tahrir Square, rejecting army's appeal to leave. (John Moore/Getty Images) The Higher Military Council will also ban meetings by labor unions or professional syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes, and tell all Egyptians to get back to work after the unrest that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
The army will also say it acknowledges and protects the right of people to protest, the source said.
Protesters argued heatedly in Tahrir Square over whether to stay or comply with army orders to leave. "The people want the square cleared," one group chanted. "We will not leave, we will not leave," replied another.
Police officers, emboldened by Mubarak's downfall, gathered outside the Interior Ministry to demand higher pay. Warning shots were fired in the air. No one was hurt.
Workers from the health and culture ministries staged demonstrations as Egyptians began venting pent-up frustrations.
Thousands of workers have staged strikes, sit-ins and protests over pay and conditions at firms and government agencies in fields such as steel, textiles, telecoms, railways, post offices, banks and oil and pharmaceutical companies.
Egypt declared Monday a bank holiday after workers disrupted operations at the country's main state banks.
Protest organizers were forming a Council of Trustees to defend the revolution and urge swift reform from a military intent on restoring law and order during the transition.
Mahmoud Nassar, a youth movement leader, said: "The army has moved far along to meet the people's demands and we urge it to release all political prisoners who were taken before and after January 25 revolution. Only then will we call off the protests."
'Victory March'
Protesters have demanded the release of political prisoners, the lifting of a state of emergency, the abolition of military courts, fair elections and a swift handover to civilian rule.
The army has said it would lift emergency law, used to stifle dissent under Mubarak, when "current circumstances end". But it has not specified a timetable.
Despite Mubarak's resignation, some protesters have said they plan to stay in Tahrir Square to ensure the military keeps its promises on transition. They have urged Egyptians to turn out in their millions for a "victory march" on Friday.
The military's strategy has been to calm the nation and the world about its intentions and, in the short term, to try to enforce the law after the disgraced police melted away, having failed to crush protesters with teargas and batons.
On Saturday, the army said it would uphold Egypt's international obligations. These include a peace treaty with Israel, whose defence minister has been in touch with his Egyptian counterpart, who heads the military council.
How to handle policing has become a pressing issue.
Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy has said Egypt needs "the speedy return of the police to duty", saying 13 000 inmates who escaped from prison early in the uprising were still on the run.
Some traffic police were back on Cairo streets beside soldiers and tanks guarding intersections and key buildings. But the minister said the police force was only back at 35% of its pre-crisis strength, without giving numbers.
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41 Comments so far
Show AllI haven't minded not being able to post these past days; don't have all that much to say. But I would have liked to read comments on the past week's goings-on from Visiting Professor, Obedient Servant, SiouxRose, Homeless Bob, Two Americas, curiousteve, Whitewashed Cherokee, amacd, Birdbrain Alley, SaboCat, and others whose thoughts are always, at the very least . . . interesting.
What the people of Egypt will have to deal with now is that Mubarak wasn't the tyrant. He was the "boss face" of a whole entrenched system, a culture of tyranny and abuse of power. Big Mub may be gone; the question remains how many of the people of the culture of corruption that was built around him will remain, including Suleiman (the "Egypt isn't ready for democracy" guy) the extraordinary-rendition-friendly "Vice President" he appointed. They'll try to. They've been doing it so long they've come to believe they're entitled to it. They will connive to contrive ways to keep the party going. The U.S. government is only worried about having people in charge who will work with it to keep all ITS treaties and arrangements ongoing, many of them ghastly and clandestine even to Wikileaks.
Of course they won't keep it all going for long. Depending on how soon some of the other mid-eastern populations are inspired to follow suit, the economic ramifications of any rearrangement in that part of the world can zip quickly and disastrously through the global economy -- even to the still comfortable suburbs who haven't felt much of the pain yet.
There are so many different ways this could all play out: will the Wahhasbi schools/Al-Qaida form of Islam play a major role or fade off into history? What will be the affect on worldwide oil distribution, and who will bear the brunt of any shortages? What will become of the nuclear armed Israeli Jews, the Palestinians, the Iranians, the Kurds? So many possibilities, not all of them restful to contemplate.
I know I'm a grumpy grouch, but I don't think the cheering in the streets will go on all that long.
Paranoid Pessimist, thanks for your supportive words for some of us among CD's active posters.
Thanks also for your own insightful comment that "Mubarak wasn't the tyrant. He was the 'boss face' of a whole entrenched system, a culture of tyranny and abuse of power."
Yes, the "Big Mug", as you call him, was the type of old-style thinly-veiled hard totalitarian front-man that could survive 30 years in a territory of the Empire --- a region of the Empire where some fairly harsh oppression was still possible on territorial subjects, and metered out by a old patriotic general as political figure-head.
But that model has passed --- even in the territories of the global Empire, which is centered in the US. Now an effective "faux-democracy" (as Hillary rightly calls it) must attempt to more closely match the uniquely successful model of "Inverted Totalitarianism" (Wolin) used in the US itself to provide a very sophisticated charade of democracy using perhaps even the US patented Two-Party "Vichy" facade of faux-democracy that we enjoy right in the belly of the corporate/financial/militarist Empire.
The best articles I have seen regarding the Egyptian military's early attempts to maintain softer control appear in WSWS, naturally:
The military is trying to maintain order "without dissolving Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP). That is, it hopes to use the six-month period to wind down the protests and give a 'pseudo-democratic cover' to a regime no less responsive to the demands of the population than the one controlled by the hated Mubarak."
full articles:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/pers-f14.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/mili-f14.shtml
But what Egyptian rule will really need is to up-grade its 'propaganda of democracy'.
Instead of merely reusing Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) in hopes to give a pseudo-democratic cover to a supposedly 'new', 'hopeful', and 'changed' regime, Egypt's territorial Empire-satellite (or puppet state) would be better putting something like the retiring DLC in place as 'a new third way' --- and following the proven path that the guileful ruling elite successfully used for the last 31 years in the US and other first world empire centers.
This approach, in which the US centered empire could coach and enable lesser countries to follow a path ultimately toward the type of highly veiled and 'soft' "Inverted Totalitarianism" would be helpful not only to third-world territories of the global Empire, but might also allow the US to benefit by selling its 'last generation' political ploys, just as it now sells its aging weapons systems, to laggards.
Hell, the US deficit and debt that the Republican fascist party is so worried about might be wiped out if, like arms sales, we could grab 70% of the global market for "faux democracy" export sales --- and, best of all, it's a high wage consulting and 'services' business, not just weapons 'manufacturing' jobs.
Best,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Democracy over Empire" party headquarters
Oh I don't know. I kind of enjoyed the temporary respite from conspiracy theory,astrology, stalking, and bile.
Looks like the people of Egypt aren't even close to done yet. Gonna have to stay out there in the streets; they've simply traded one dictator for another - the military is about as dictatorial as you can get, but with the ammo and weapons to back themselves up.
Back to square one, Egypt.
the never got off square one
now the repression will come at them and slaughter them in numbers because the nwo does not cotton to or abide either freedom or democracy
its no surprise that in all of the coverage of the events of the last few weeks no one has talked about the amerikans as controllers of the region and how they were/are mubarak
diktators don't command - they follow orders
now we have the murderous torturer suleiman lining up to line his pockets and kill his countrymen in the name of zion, amerika and the all mighty swiss bank acount
amerika lives for another day........
I wonder, Paranoid ... I wonder if a people who will brave the attacks of mounted thugs wielding whips and batons and guns and stay in the streets to successfully demand the ouster of a savage despot, even if he was only a hood ornament, will stand for anything less than self-determination.
Democracy ... real democracy ... is dangerous. When people determine their own fate for themselves they are likely to make choices that are in THEIR best interest whether they are in "our" interests or not.
These people have just succeeded in chasing out a dictator who has been supported by the 800 pound gorilla across the ocean for nearly three decades. They are feeling their power.
It's going to be "interesting" to see what plays out.
I'm still here, although some won't be here. Involuntarily.
Getting rid of the hood ornament was easy, but challenging the driver at the wheel of the economic machine will be a much more difficult task for the Egyptians. It is interesting but very predictable that crushing organized labor would be the first thing on the Egyptian junta's (and their boss's 7 time zones to the west) mind.
Banning unions and strikes? Where does that even begin to match a definition of Democracy?
Um, Galen, do you really believe the Military is an example of Democracy? The people of Egypt still have a long way to go. They are to be admired and supported. I don't think they will buy into the Military's attempts at despotic rule.
In no way do I even come close to subscribing to the belief that a US backed and supplied military will EVER allow Democracy(tm) to break out in a strategic region vital to US Corporate trade and oil interests.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Washington DC, United States of America.
Say hello to the new Boss same as the old Boss.
Doh! You beat me to it!
.
== Take a Haiku ==
Armed forces and Yank
Mubarak's last whoremasters
Spurt golden shekels...
Gypped of a Nation
Too hurried Jubilation
Theft and Denial
.
It looks like we're back in business.
I had originally thought after Mubarak had finally stepped down that my soon-to-arrive Free Egypt button was going to be obsolete. But since Egypt's military appears to be just as repressive as Mubarak and Sulemain, then I will wear it in the hope that the Egyptian people will soon be able to have a democratic government that can truly represent the voice of the people.
No peaceful revolution has ever worked. The French Revolution was successful in its objective of throwing out the monarchy because, and only because, heads rolled. I'm not advocating violence, just pointing out reality.
Britain left India because it simply gave up on the country, Gandhi had nothing to do with it. Britain was bankrupt and exhausted after WW2 and had absolutely no mandate at home or abroad to continue the occupation. Still, anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people did die on all sides of the new borders of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. There was indeed, despite Gandhi, a lot of violence and bloodshed.
I was very suspicious of Mubarak changing his mind so abruptly in less than 24 hours and resigning. It looked like another calculated State Department move to send protesters home. Nothing has really changed, the US still controls the flow of oil through the Suez Canal, Israel's still blocking Gaza and stealing Palestinian land. The US is still controlling the Middle East.
Under Mubarak, Egyptians could strike and form unions. Not anymore. They should read history books on the Fall of the Bastille and learn how a real revolution works.
Wouldn't it be nice to see our fat pigs hanging by their legs?
I keep hoping (long shot, to be sure) that a way can be found for nonviolent change to work. What the Egyptians did only seems to have worked despite all the celebrating. The same gang of thugs and thieves who enabled Big Mub to stay as long as he did are now in charge of the "transition" to this new kinder, gentler government. Who will watch them to ensure they're doing the right thing?
Delia_Darrow is quite correct about how real revolutions have gone down so far. Hitting the streets like the Egyptians did might force a figurehead dictator or two to step aside, but real wealth and power will remain unaffected and in place.
Some people who post on this site don't like to hear stuff like that, believing that sufficient enthusiasm can drive out the evil spirits who run things. I don't believe that, but prove me wrong and I'll apologize profusely.
exactly, and it's revealing that creeps like Obama and Hillary always stress first and foremost a "peaceful" transition "without violence", not because they give a rat's ass about the lives of the rabble, but because they know that the single most effective way to bring about radical change is the historically proven path of violence.
And radical change is the last thing representatives of the ruling elite Obama and Hillary want.
The Black Panthers advocated violence for this very reason, and the government was so scared of them that they started COINTELPRO to discredit and undermine them. Perhaps time to dig out their philosophies?
Probably not, in view of what happened to the Black Panthers. The Egyptian demonstrators held and retained the moral high ground by committing to non-violence-this, despite government attempts to incite it. If the demonstrations had turned violent, the government would have used this as an excuse for a bloody crackdown, and since the preponderance of force was on the government side, they would probably have succeeded in squashing the Revolution. The domonstators were too smart to fall into this trap, and played their relative weakness brilliantly.
Berit, the other way to scare the shit out of the looting elite is to tax them for all negative externality cost dumping on society!
That way we can figuratively "hang them with their own rope" (economics), without needing to literally hang them.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alan_mac_070324__22with_their_own_rope.htm
Best,
Alan
Actually, the Panthers never advocated viiolenced, only self-defense, ii was the police and FBI that were violent.
An underground movement has to be started in order to strike back at the military in case they decide to kill 3,000 or 30,000 Egyptians instead of the more than 300 hundred who died at the hands of the military during the 18 days that the people took to the streets. If someone does not organize an Egyptian resistance then the military will have carte blanche to carry out their reign of terror against the Egyptian people.
You're only partly right.The February Revolution of 1917 which deposed the Czar, and set up the first of several interim governments, was largely bloodless. The Bolshevik coup which took place in October was also pretty tame. Things started to get nasty when the Bolsheviks shut down the Constituent Assembly in early 1918, thereby denying the legitimate aspirations of the Russian people, and instituting a dictatorship of the Bolsheivik elite, hiding behind the mask of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Will there be a Egyptian Constituent Assembly? Who are todays Bolsheviks? Stay tuned.
Egypt’s military dictatorship has merely succeded itself, so it is a great mistake for the Revolutionaries to demobilize. Mubarak was merely the most visible head of a Hydra feeding on the vitality of Egyptian society, the Hydra being Egypt’s Military Industrial Complex. For Egypt to prosper as a democracy, the Hyrda must be destroyed.
I've noticed the AmeriKKKan corporate-owned media editorializes about how those involved in Egypt's unrest are mostly well-educated young people, who cannot find meaningful work. Yet, they seem to make no connection with the jobless, well-educated youth in AmeriKKKa, who suffer under the same plight.
The corporate fat-cats have no clue about what could happen to them if the giant beast that sleeps should ever awaken.
Hmm, the first thing they go after is labor! Interesting..
"Egypt's New Military Rulers To Ban Unions, Strikes"
Sounds to me like the people of Egypt have just trade one set of tyrants, for another?
Revolutions once they take place are never over. They are an on going process.
Yes, It is interesting that the unions are attacked right away, no pun intended. What many people don't know is that union meetings are held to run the union, not just to organize strikes. So, basically, the army is not allowing the unions to conduct their normal business of being part of the democratic fabric of any civilized nation or so-called 'democracy'. The bosses all have their benevolent organizations and chambers of commerce but heaven forbid that the workers should also be so well organized. I hope the people of Egypt will stand up to this last gasp of the neo-liberal agenda in their country.
"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of."
(Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, B1, Ch8 "On the Wages of Labour")
Damn I love WoN. Yeah, it's old, so of course Smith couldn't be aware of every danger of capitalism, but he was pretty insightful. These warnings (and often with worse language hehe) reappear every ten pages or so, but of course the single throwaway mention of the "invisible hand" is what everyone who never read the book knows about it.
the good ol "trade unionism" is firmly part of the capitalist system of two classes, nothing revolutionary, in the frame of which the egyptian policemen are shouting for pay raise.
why would the army let the traditionalists to go back to their "normal business", when the mandate from the people is REVOLUTION as in BREAK from the past?
the only way forward for the revolutionary egyptions is this:
1) the revolutionary-minded rank-and-file conscripts and the officers who are also sympathetic to the people's demand of radical departure from the past
need to kick their military leadership, including the supreme council, and
form a new military care-taker council consisting of leaders with no stake in the old system and no ties with DC and Tel Aviv.
2) the new council, then, secure, say for 6 months, the political freedom with which the egyptians can develop their political ideas and organize their political forces, leading up to a free and fair election, under some basic common sense law that will be replaced by the new laws drawn by the first legit parliament.
already, the rank-and-file of many banks have kicked out their rotten useless bosses. the military needs the same.
Overall, I expect a total mowing down of all leftist secular forces, and thus, in the longer term, a victory for a more fundamentalist religious group, if there's going to be any self-determination in Egypt. I mean, this is usually what happens in the Middle East: the West, in practice and not words, clearly sees the left as a bigger enemy than any kind of religious fundamentalism, so we destroy civilised and sophisticated but fragile systems like trade unions and other popular systems and turn every institution of democracy into something people can only despise and hate.
We don't want to give way to "communism" (or even a limited version of social democracy) so we push countries towards despair so great that only fundamentalist religion can offer an actual solution. It seems to be happening differently in Latin America of course, so I might be wrong, but this is kind of how I picture what will happen: leftist and secular forces will be suppressed and destroyed, and Egypt will either be back to its previous status completely, or there will be some time with apparent peace but boiling rage below the surface but that the situation will explode again and turn towards religious fundamentalism. Maybe I'm wrong, but these are my expectations. Maybe people will stay and there will be a more direct confrontation with the army soon.
i agree that
1) the battle is between the left and the right, though spinned as one between religions, races, or nations, and
2) the global capitalist elites and their thugs will make their best concerted efforts and pull every stop, to put out the brush fire of popular uprising against the criminal order of the day.
but syndicalism / trade-unionism won't be the way to counter the elites, as it is only the other side of the capitalist coin. logically, centuries of trade unionism has utterly failed the working class, and the people shouldn't be expected to make the same mistake.
It's just way too strong to say that "centuries of unionism utterly failed the working class", and this summary judgment also devalues the actual work people have put into them, and of course their achievements - which may be small but far from unimportant. The existence of trade unions has helped people accept left wing values in general, although this had to be counteracted (partly) with a huge propaganda campaign (which started a hundred or so years ago and is still ongoing, with more or less force). And I'm pretty sure that actually banning them is worse than whatever they could do :-)
Anyway, what I wanted to say was that we're actually pushing these countries away from this kind of thinking. By destroying traditional left wing structures, even if they aren't that effective, we're pushing these countries towards more primitive (and overall much worse) alternatives. Religion is always there and it can't be banned - which can be both a good thing and a bad thing, but while I can understand and even like private religion, I have no fucking sympathy for any public organisation based on it, as religion is inherently and arbitrarily exclusionist (despite all the ecumenical "let's not understand each other very well but pretend to be nice" bullshit).
Maybe trade unions and parliamentary democracy don't work - but they're on the right track. Religion and its structures aren't. They aren't based on reality but a wish for a particular type of reality. That's not a good foundation for a society.
OT: every type of institution can be taken over and hijacked. There are way too many examples for this, from regulatory institutions to trade unions to political parties, or even worse, the entire institutional structure of parliamentary democracy, judicial systems etc. It's a natural process: structures that should have a regulatory/governing function (in the engineering sense) are slowly transformed into structures that are used to centralise control. Structures that should just "work", from which decisions should emerge "by themselves", that should basically be a way to summarise the judgment, opinion and material wants of a large number of people, like markets, electoral politics or journalism, have become tools of control. They used to be (errrr...not really, but should be) "sensors", ways to answer unanswerable questions like "what do people want", ways to dig information out of "the masses" (and of course also inform them) in different ways, but they are nothing like that at all. Instead of being "passive", in the sense of accomodating and reflecting the external reality, these systems try to change that reality - or at least people's opinions on it, because of course reality itself is not that easy to alter.
But of course this kind of manipulation is at this time pretty fucking primitive. The malevolence, the predatory intent, the "winner takes all and cheating is allowed for me" mentality behind it is obvious, and the problem is with this mentality. I mean, it's like we're living in a world where everyone wants every other person to fail so they can use that failure for their own advantage, and this seems to be how everything works now. Maybe this is how things have to work too, I don't know, although I don't believe that this is efficient in terms of "survival" and "progress", and I also don't believe that it's inherently impossible for humans to emerge from this crap.
the fact that the rank-and-file workers of many egyptian banks have already kicked out their rotten useless bosses is clearly indicative of what the egyptian people meant by "revolution".
this should be repeated by all institutions, from the military to municipalities, from factories to retail outfits, around the globe, from cairo to mumbai, from seoul to lima.