Some of the labor leaders will take part in the noon protest planned on that day in front the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions building, and some of them will bring “symbolic” delegations from their factories.

Meaning, there is no general strike…

Re: The Muslim Brotherhood’s “endorsement” of the strike:
The group’s brief statement was even vaguer and weaker than the ones they issued last year on the 6th of April and 4th of May. At least three MB sources I spoke with confirmed the group is NOT taking to the streets–something that comes as no surprise for any observer of the group’s continuous retreat vis a vis the regime since the start of the 2006 crackdown.

Yet, the group’s leadership is coming under strong pressure from their youth “to do something.” Last week a young MB media activist visited me in my home coz he wanted some help with some Web2.0 stuff. Our meeting was interrupted by a phone call he received from a journalist who wanted to interview him. While I couldn’t hear what the questions were, I sat there for at least 15 minutes listening to the young MB hammering on the phone the group’s Guidance Bureau with severe criticism, demanding they state clearly a position vis a vis Mubarak, to mobilize “more strongly” against the regime, to campaign more militantly about this or that, to engage the current strike wave and, and, and, and… This criticism is not limited to my young friend, and the divisions are public and have been the subject of sensationalist coverage by the local press and blogs.

In all cases, and contrary to what some might think, I believe the group has never been in that shaky position with its internal rifts and security crackdowns since the mid 1990s, if not the mid 1960s. And the cliche about the MBs being an iron-fist, highly disciplined organization with its Supreme Guide assuming a quasi-holy status is very much untrue..

Faced with the 6th of April “strike call”, the MB leadership has decided to play it safe again. They issued a vague “endorsement” statement to appease their base cadres, will allow their students to demonstrate on the campuses, while refraining from any agitation in the streets or the workplaces…

I forgot to mention also that Adel el-Badri’s Free Union of Egypt’s Workers has endorsed the “general strike”… The Union will be mobilizing that day with its full force, i.e.: Adel el-Badri and his fax machine.

So to sum up… Let’s not get driven by virtual reality again, and remain on the ground… The 6th of April will NOT be a general strike… It will be a day of protests, a day of rage.. There will be protests in Cairo, Helwan and other universities, downtown Cairo and events organized by the political parties in the provinces… Let’s try to make it a successful day…

Egyptians largely ignored a call by online activists for a general strike Sunday to protest against the government on President Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday.
Analysts said the failure showed the limited influence of activists organizing on social networking site Facebook after their successful strike last month generated enthusiasm that a new form of political protest was emerging in the Arab world’s largest nation.
Veteran political analyst Mohammed Sayyed Said sees the networking sites as excellent tools for political discussion. But he said the “total failure” of this strike showed their inability to connect with the common people here.
“The advantages were very clear,” he told The Associated Press. “Several thousand people were debating an issue, which is extraordinary by any standards. … But when it comes to touching cause with the public, it’s a different story,” said Said, who is also editor of the independent Badeel newspaper.
Only 8 percent of Egyptians use the Internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union.
Egypt’s so-called “Facebook party” burst onto the political scene in March when a group set up on the site called for a nationwide strike April 6 in solidarity with nation’s dissatisfied workers. It quickly garnered 60,000 members.
The lack of traffic and nearly empty schools and universities on that day suggested that the online advocacy had convinced many Egyptians to express their dissatisfaction over low wages and rising prices.
But the response may have had more to do with the fact that workers at the country’s largest textile factory in Mahalla el-Kobra had already decided to strike that day and they had popular sympathy.
Still a flurry of local and international media reports hailed what they said was a new method of political opposition to subvert heavy state restrictions on dissent.
Buoyed by their success, the Facebook group called a second strike for Sunday to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday. They are demanding legislation to raise wages, control prices and battle corruption.
“Everybody is suffering, if not from corruption, then from prices hike,” said Ahmad Maher, a construction engineer who helped set up the Facebook group. “All want a change to take place in Egypt.”
Inflation in Egypt reached 14.4 percent annually in March, making life even more difficult for the 20 percent of the country’s 76.5 million people who live below the poverty line of about US$2 per day. In the last two months, eleven people have died in clashes while standing in line to buy subsidized bread, according to police.
Activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, a left-wing blogger with close ties to the labor movement, dismissed their efforts ahead of the strike in what proved to be prophetic criticism about the limitations of the group.
“A few bloggers sipping coffee … in downtown Cairo cannot bring about this general strike,” he wrote on April 27.
El-Hamalawy argued that only groups with deep links to the people, such as some of the labor organizations in Egypt’s vast public sector factories, can pull off a successful strike and pressure the government.
“A group of ‘Facebook activists’ cannot also mobilize for it,” he wrote on this blog. “Neither are the current opposition groups all together.”
In the capital Cairo on Sunday, it was business as usual with snarled traffic and busy commuters filling the streets despite the strike call.

You can continue reading Paul Schemm’s and Maggie Michael’s AP report here. And here’s also a report by Sarah Carr on the downtown Cairo protest:

Protesters gathered outside the Lawyers’ Syndicate yesterday and called for an end to the rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, on his 80th birthday.
Around 40 people took part in the demonstration on the steps of the Syndicate, the only protest in the capital on a day when activists on Facebook had called for a general strike throughout Egypt.
The call was made last month, a few days after another general strike called for by opposition groups on April 6 in solidarity with textile workers at Ghazl El Mahalla who had announced their intention to strike.

Ahmad has some pix too of the Kefaya students’ demo at Assiut University.

Again, let’s get back to organizing on the ground. The general strike is coming, but will come from below, not from above and certainly not from the cyberspace. I urge you all to read this classic by Rosa Luxembourg: “The Mass Strike” [available in Arabic here]. Be patient as you decipher names and events that took place a century or two ago. The politics and dynamics of the mass strikes are still the bloody same.

And please also take time to read the Center for Socialist Studies statement re the April events and Comrade Yehya’s article in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar.

We should be grateful we have today all these technological resources that didn’t exist for the 19th and 20th Century revolutionaries. But this technology should be complimentary and a logistical support for whatever we do ON THE GROUND. I’m neither depressed nor demoralized about yesterday. I never believed it’s gonna work. I hope others do not get demoralized either. This enthusiasm among the youth for strikes and bringing the country to halt as a means of toppling the dictator is a positive phenomenon, yet should be channeled into reaching out to those workers in the factories in the Nile Delta as well as the urban poor in the slums. These workers and urban poor are NOT on Facebook, and I’m afraid I don’t expect them to be on it anytime soon. They will only listen to and liaise with bloggers and activists they see in person. So, Let’s focus on reality and not virtual reality.

Down with Mubarak… Down with the Ministry of Torture… Power to the Egyptian Workers…

More worryingly has been the detention decrees issued against labor organizers in the factory, including some of the Textile Workers’ League activists, using the provisions of the emergency law (which the regime always claims that it’s only used against “terrorists” and “drug dealers.”) Continuous updates on the situation of the detainees are provided by the HMLC and Tadamon blogs.

ON VIOLENCE:
According to all eyewitness accounts, the violence started following the police assaults on the marchers. Prior to that, the demonstrations were peaceful. It is also clear that the demonstrations, especially on the 7th of April, were largely from the urban poor and the young unemployed youth, not necessarily from the blue collar workers in the town. Most of the arson attacks that took place were, according to at least three journalists I know who witnessed the events as well as Socialist activists in the town, were carried out by the urban poor youth.
I blogged before about the urban poor and violence in the 1977 Bread Intifada as well as riots in general, and I urge you dear readers to check those two postings when you have the time. And just like in the case of 1977, the targets of the rioters were not that “random” but held significance or links to the symbols of power and wealth in society. Journalist Jano Charbel, who photographed a burnt down van, was told by the rioters for example that it was a “government van.” The restaurants burnt down in Mahalla belonged to NDP businessmen who refused to close down shop on April 6th, according to James Buck who wrote me: “protesters ravaged the restaurant to protest NDP. In other words, not random looting.”
In other incidents, we can also suspect some police provocation. Our pigs are known for their dirty history of provocation and fabrication, from the Kafr el-Dawar massacre in 1952 (that witnessed the execution of two Communist workers Khamees and el-Baqari by Nasser’s new “Revolutionary” regime) to the Victorious Sect… Eyewitness accounts are emerging accusing the police and the NDP thugs of facilitating the looting of Taha Hussein school, which was torched and looted in Mahalla, as well as their involvement in other attacks on property.

Photos also appeared on the blogs where Central Security Forces conscripts themselves (not the protesters) are destroying their own trucks:

While those who fought the police during the Mahalla uprising were mainly the urban poor, because of the “Combined and Uneven” fashion capitalism has evolved in Egypt, class structures are sometimes elusive, and this couldn’t be more true in the case of the Nile Delta (in comparison, for example, to the new industrial urban centers like those in the 6th of October, 10th of Ramadan, etc..) This means that in one family you can have one industrial worker, his brother may be working in the informal sector, and their third brother could be the owner of a small plot of land that he farms with his wife and kids. So if the rioting was done mainly by the poor they will have relatives in the factories all over Mahalla and they are all angry.

But again, what’s next for Mahalla?
The socialist labor organizers in Ghazl el-Mahalla factory, who haven’t been arrested (yet), highlighted two things:
1- There’s so much tension in the factory over the detentions. This creating both fear among some and rage among others. The management cronies assure the workers every now and then that the detained organizers will be released soon. Muhammad el-Attar and the CTUWS activists who helped sabotage the 6th of April Strike in collaboration with the regime, on the other hand have “disappeared, and we don’t see them around that much. And when they show up, they keep talking about ‘how dangerous the communists in the factory are‘”
2- More importantly, all eyes are focused on the 30th of April, when Hosni makes his annual May Day speech, one day before the country marks it. There is a wait-and-see mood among the factory floor in Ghazl el-Mahalla. “The people are waiting to hear what he has to say about the national minimum wage and the other economic demands we made. Those in the factory understand what Nazif did was a bribe to calm down everyone and make sure the workers do not join the demonstrations outside the factory. And that worked for some. But this one month bonus decreed evaporates in few days because of the rising prices. Also the 20% increase announced by the govt is much less than what we want… Things can go on fire, and we find it difficult at the moment to predict what will the reaction be. Let’s hear what the guy (Hosni) has to say, as any mobilization prior to that and under the current conditions will be suicidal.”

ON GENERAL STRIKES, INTERNET ACTIVISM & CYBER-FANTASIES:
A general strike is when the workers bring the entire country to halt by stopping work. That’s the simple definition.. That’s it! Bring the bloody country to halt! How can this happen?
1) The action can happen spontaneously, without the direct intervention of political groups, just like the case of the Jan ’77 Bread Uprising… But in that case, expect the events (especially under the current conditions) to achieve minor gains, since it’ll be like a boiling water evaporating in the air without a valve that can direct all the energy in a certain direction. In the case of the Jan’77 uprising for example, the people managed to force Sadat into reversing the economic decrees, but didn’t overthrow the Sadat regime (which was very very very feasible to happen) who continued to rule till the dictator’s assassination in 1981.
2) A general strike can be called for by a political group(s)… BUT IN THAT CASE, WHOEVER CALLS FOR THE GENERAL STRIKE MUST HAVE THE ABILITY TO EXECUTE IT!!! A few bloggers sipping coffee in the Boursa Cafe in downtown Cairo cannot bring about this general strike… A group of “Facebook activists” cannot also mobilize for it, neither are the current opposition groups all together… You gotta have your cadres in the workplaces who will distribute leaflets in support of the strike, debate with their colleagues who may be skeptic about the action and its fruits, to be in touch with other workplaces who will simultaneously go on strike, organize smartly against the expected police assaults or management witch-hunt… A general strike is not a fucking joke! This is serious business people!
I expressed previously huge reservations, which I and my comrades in the Socialist movement had re the April 6th Strike call, and we made it clear for everyone that the Socialists are NOT endorsing the call, but will be mobilizing solely in Mahalla, the campuses and in some of the industrial centers where the movement has presence ON THE FREAKIN GROUND NOT THE CYBERSPACE!
And let’s face it: The country was not brought to halt on the 6th. Yes, traffic was very light in Cairo, and attendance in some universities was low.. But the trains kept on going, so did the buses and virtually all other main govt and business facilities… The factories that were brought to a halt or semi halt where the cement and grain mills… PLACES WHERE THE SOCIALISTS EITHER HAVE PRESENCE OR SYMPATHIZERS ON THE GROUND… ON THE GROUND PEOPLE.

Make sure you read Comrade Yehia Fekri’s article in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, as well as the following statement issued by the Center for Socialist Studies.

The media hype around the bloggers and “Facebook activism” meant that the credit for the Mahalla events more or less went to the cyberspace! This was presented in the independent and foreign media as largely an effort mobilized by Israa and her peers on the Facebook strike group. The state-owned (and the Al-Masry Youm) media outlets did not miss out on the party either, and went on bashing the “internet activists) and of course they had slip in something about Israel too in the reports, and how the Israelis are now exploiting the Egyptian Facebook groups to learn more information about Egypt! Ya7’i A7a! Israel is waiting for our Facebook to know about Egyptian politics!!!?? Whatever Israel wants to know about Egypt, believe me they’ll get it from Omar Suleiman’s mouth itself! Stop this Ra’afat el-Haggan bullshit. These days are over. The Egyptian regime and the Israelis are sleeping in the same American bed.

But to make the problem worse, some bloggers and Facebook activists actually believed what the media said, and they think now they are the ones who hold the keys to street dissent. Others like the Islamist-leaning Labor Party went as far as founding a “provisional government” on facebook!! Well, good luck! And now the internet activists are calling for another “general strike” on May 4th to coincide with the dictator’s birthday.. What we are doing is making fools out of ourselves, destroy our credibility, confirm stereotype about bloggers being “IT nerds who sit in front of their computer screens and live in virtual reality’ remote from what goes on in the street… and cause demoralization among our supporters… Already I can read on my Twitter feeds some bloggers who were enthusiastic for the 6th of April strike are now feeling demoralized— especially when Ghad Party member Israa, who was presented in the media as the “leader” of the strike being the facebook group administrator and in the cyberspace she turned into some national champ with some even going as far as naming her the new “Baheyya” of Egypt, came out from prison to shower praise on the regime and express her “regret” over her initiative to launch this facebook strike group, and said she “repented” in prison and “would never do this again”…!

This does NOT mean we shouldn’t stage actions on that day… Let’s mobilize in solidarity with the detainees in Mahalla and elsewhere who are still in prison, thanks to the detention decrees by Mubarak’s Torturer-in-Chief General Habib el-Adly.

More later… But I wanted to make my position from early on clear coz I keep getting queries from fellow activists about my stand towards this and why haven’t I publicized for the strike…

I’m afraid this will NOT happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I think anyone who follows this blog knows well I see no other way to overthrow the Mubarak’s dictatorship but a general strike. But what we have here is something different.

What is confirmed up till now is that Ghazl el-Mahalla, the biggest textile mill in the ME with its 27,000-strong labor force, is going on strike 6 April. There will be series of protests and solidarity actions planned in some industrial centers as well as protests by political activists in Cairo and other provinces…

But the call for general strike has another story… The opposition groups got together to discuss how to support the Mahalla strikers in April.. and that’s when Magdi Hussein, of the Islamist-leaning Labor Party, made this quixotic call for a general strike, and Abdel Halim Qandeel of Kefaya followed suit.. Hussein and his group, which has tiny presence in the political arena, have been known for such quixotic and highly sensationalist calls for general strikes (that never happened) since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. This is adventurism that even borders on political opportunism.

General strikes cannot be organized by basically issuing a call via emails, facebook messages and blog postings.. General strikes are organized when you have grassroots activists in the workplaces part of a national network that can push for such general strike from below.. not by some call dropping from the sky via an email from elitist groups. We neither have a mass revolutionary party rooted in the workplaces that can execute such general strike, nor do we have yet the national labor union that parallels the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions and can push for such national action (like what happened in South Korea, Poland and elsewhere).

We have to focus comrades, and we cannot utter calls for actions that we are incapable of achieving on the ground.. coz the price of such quixotic actions will be high, in terms of demoralizing activists and supporters whose hopes are skyrocketing for a general strike and we can risk losing our credibility in the eyes of the public.

So again, let’s focus. Mahalla is confirmed to go on strike, so let’s channel our energies around this event which will have huge impact, if it succeeds, on the political arena in Egypt and the region.