The bloggers and rights activists scored a new victory. Judge Murad’s case to block 51 blogs and website, including mine, has has been thrown away. The Prosecutor’s interrogation of Blogger Amr Gharbeia has also been suspended.
Category: Blog
Hamas’ victory in Gaza is a blow to Bush’s plans
The stunning military victory by the Palestinian Hamas movement over the rival Fatah organization in the Gaza Strip last week was a strike against imperialism in the Middle East.
The US and its allies have described the Islamist group Hamas’s driving out of Fatah from Gaza as a “military coup” aimed at creating a “mini Taliban state”.
It is nothing of the sort. Hamas is the democratically elected Palestinian government. Its victory last week stopped an attempted military takeover sponsored by the US and its Israeli and Egyptian allies.
George Bush rushed to embrace the “Fatah moderates” in “the battle with extremism”.
Yet it is Bush who has worked hardest to strip Fatah of any credibility among the Palestinians by failing to deliver even the smallest concession in return for its recognition of Israel.
The showdown came last week after the attempted assassination of Hamas prime minister Ismail Hanaiya.
Angry Hamas fighters moved to crush what they considered to be the beginning of an Egyptian-inspired coup. Abandoned by its supporters, Fatah crumbled.
Hundreds of its fighters surrendered or walked away from the battle. Others fled across the border into Egypt.
Mahalla updates
I finally received a copy of the statements distributed in the Ghazl el-Mahalla last Tuesday and Wednesday.
Both statements are agitating for a sit-in on 21 July if demands related to work conditions and housing are not met. The first is signed by “The 7th of December Movement- Workers For Change,” in reference to 7 December 2006, when a 27,000-strong strike brought the factory to halt causing an upturn in industrial militancy. The statement starts by affirming that this previously unknown entity is not affiliated with any political or religious group, refuses to recognize the corrupt Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions (EGFTU) officials, and then blasts the “ruling regime” for “selling Egypt with the lowest price,” for corruption, rigging elections, and repression.
And below is the second statement, calling for a sit-in, and demanding the impeachment of the company’s CEO:
What is interesting is the name this previously unknown group has picked for itself. “Workers For Change” was Kefaya’s not-that-successful attempt to link the anti-Mubarak campaign with working class struggle championed by the radical left. Its representatives did not perform well during the labor union elections in fall 2006, and not necessarily because of the security interventions. But the wave of strikes instigated by Ghazl el-Mahalla’s truimphant industrial action last December, produced some political impact… whether it’s the demand to impeach the corrupt, state-sponsored trade unionists and the threats to launch an independent national labor union parallel to Mubarak’s EGFTU by the most advanced sections in the movement, or the “Workers For Change” statements we are receiving from places like Kafr el-Dawar and now Ghazl el-Mahalla that is slowly adopting the lingo of the radical left even if it is not necessarily affiliated organizationally with the current operating leftist groups.