3arabawy

“The N-Word”

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:17:13 +0000

My feature in Al-Masry Al-Youm on the Tanta Flax and Oil Company strike…
A political taboo for two decades, nationalization is a recurrent demand in the latest wave of labour strikes in privatized textile firms. Hossam el-Hamalawy reports
The Nile Delta village of Mit Hebeish, 10 minute drive from the southern entrance of the city of Tanta on the Cairo-Alexandria Agricultural Road, is usually a quite place, whose peace briefly gets disturbed every now and then by a microbus driver honking or a tok-tok acrobating its way across the nearby railway lines. Over the past month, however, the town saw Central Security Forces troops clashing with workers several times, amid a militant strike by one thousand workers in Tanta Flax and Oil Company.
Machines in the flax processing plant came to halt on 31 May, with strikers’ demands including: their 7% annual bonus unpaid from July 2008, raising their daily food allowance from LE32 to LE90 (as decreed by the government following the September 2007 strike in Mahalla) and the reinstatement of nine sacked workers including two trade unionists. For 33 days now the workers have been sleeping in the factory, sometimes bringing their families.
A marble signpost on the entrance of the factory once proudly declared the premise to be nationalized and re-inaugurated by Egypt’s former president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s. The signpost today is fractured, stained with paint, and missing chunks of marble that fell over the years. It is telling of the factory’s conditions.
“The company was privatized four years ago,” said 43-year-old Akkad Tantawi who is among the nine sacked workers. “They sold it to a Saudi investor who has turned our lives into hell. This is the fourth strike we stage in four years. Every year there is one strike.”
From roughly 2,500 workers constituting the factory’s labor force prior to privatization, the number fell down to 1,000 today, due to policies by the management to liquidate the firm, says the workers.
“The company’s ten factories are located on 74 feddans,” said striker Safwat Michel. “The investor wants to sell the plant as real estate. He’ll make a fortune out of this. Do you know how much land is worth in the Nile Delta?” Michel angrily pointed at the rusting machines in the light wood production factory in the plant, “These used to bring wealth. Now they do nothing. The investor promised to modernize the machinery when the company was privatized. We saw nothing of that.”
The accusation of liquidating businesses in the Nile Delta to be sold as real estate is regularly made by other strikers. For example, the Mansoura-Espana Garments Company workers, involved in a series of industrial actions since 2006, accused the owning United Bank of trying to sell the factory to a local businessman as land property. Mahalla workers made similar accusations against their state-owned company in 2007.
The machines in Tanta Flax and Oil Company factories are aging, and so is the labor force. The company, says the workers, deliberately stopped hiring new recruits, a policy which the state-run management was slowly enforcing a decade earlier with the restructuring of the textile sector. The average age of strikers, observed Al-Masry Al-Youm during a field visit, was well above 35 years. Most workers came from peasant backgrounds and did not necessarily receive elementary schooling. Striker Safwat Michel estimated 60% of the labor force depended on extra sources of income like farming the land. Labor experts usually contrast this “traditional” working class, with the “new” working class in cities like the 6th of October, Obour, 10th of Ramadan and Port Said, who are usually younger with higher rates of literacy.
Most production workers interviewed by Al-Masry Al-Youm received on average LE500 a month each, including bonuses, after an average 15 years of service. Around 200 workers are either on temporary contracts or without contracts at all, receiving LE8 a day, like Nagui Halim As’ad, 46, has been working as production worker for nine years.
As’ad, wearing a peasant hat, joined passionately his colleagues in chanting: “No Saudi, No Japanese! Tanta Flax is returning!”… returning to Egyptian state owners-that’s what As’ad and workers interviewed in the factory felt strongly for. “The company should be nationalized,” said Mostafa Ali el-Sawy, 37, who was sacked two years ago after taking part in strike. His colleagues roared in support.
Since the government embarked on its Structural Adjustment Programme in the early ninties, nationalization has been considered passé. However, in past years, the textile sector has suffered with its labor force dwindling from almost half a million blue collar workers in 1991 to almost quarter a million in 2001. Which may explain why the “N-word” is now a popular demand in some of the privatized factory. Last March, for example, around 4000 workers in Shebeen el-Kom struck against their Indian management. Their factory was privatized in spring 2007, and since then it witnessed a record 76 strikes in 22 months, according to local press count, amid calls for re-nationalizing the firm.
From December 2006, Egypt has been going through its strongest and most sustained wave of strike action since 1946, when the working class and students staged mass strikes to end the British occupation. The center of militancy in the current wave is the textile sector, where Mahalla triggered on 7 December a Winter of Labor Discontent with its successful four day strike. The Nile Delta textile mills followed suit with wild cat strikes in the winter and spring of 2007, only to be followed by another strike in Mahalla that lasted more than a week in September 2007. The Mahalla textile workers continued spearheading class action, till an aborted strike on 6 April saw the town erupting in a two-day uprising over the prices of bread.
Faced with the strikes, the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions has reacted largely with hostility, with most of its officials denouncing or aborting protests by workers on the factory floor. The federation, founded in 1957, had never officially endorsed a strike except once in 1993 when the General Union of Mining, Construction and Carpentry lent its support to a brief national strike by the miners. The body is regularly denounced by independent activists as a “state arm.”
The General Union of Textile Workers, headed by National Democratic Party (NDP) member Said el-Gohary, has been under fire from the start of the strike wave. The local union branches stood against the strikes and tried to suspend them, only to be met with workers’ resistance. In January 2007, around 200 Mahalla workers descended on the General Union of Textile Workers’ headquarters in Cairo’s Shoubra el-Mazzallat district. In a stormy meeting with Gohary, they demanded the impeachment of their local union bureaucrats, and threatened to launch a parallel independent union. The local union head was later hospitalized by the strikers in September 2007 when he tried to suspend the strike. Gohary himself has been under attack, yet sandwiched between the workers’ pressures and the government’s desire to “put the situation under control.”
The success of Egypt’s property tax collectors in establishing the country’s first independent trade union in 51 years last December was an alarm bell for the state-backed federation that felt a wave of unionization was at the door step, which could be a silver bullet to the federation and its presence in the labor movement. Federation officials started adopting a more militant rhetoric vis a vis government ministers like the Finance Minister, and lent their nominal support for strikes. Gohary showed up in Shebeen el-Kom last March and denounced the Indian investors. The current strike in Tanta Flax and Oil Company is the second strike in the history of the federation to be endorsed officially by the union, after the 1993 miners’ strike.
But the workers’ patience is running out. Already under police siege, the workers stormed out of their factory gates twice last month, cutting the road in protest of the management’s refusal to negotiate. Another protest in front of the parliament in Cairo was also met with the police troops’ batons and sticks.
“We are staging a peaceful strike,” said Abdel Tawab Sheeha, 59, has been working in the company for 39 years. “The Egyptian governemnt doesn’t understand the culture of peaceful strikes however. They will force us to do other things, to do violence to be heard. They are the ones to blame. No one is hearing our voices out here.” Another worker shouted: “If the government wants a Mahalla, we’ll give them one.”
And while the strike continues, a court is expected to look into complaints by the nine sacked workers on 17 September. Attempts by Al-Masry Al-Youm to get a comment from the company’s management failed, as managers had evacuated the factory from the start of the strike and left behind only security personnel, and police agents. The latter assaulted on Tuesday a video journalist with Al-Masry Al-Youm, banning him from entering the factory to cover the strike.

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3arabawy BookMarx 07/04/2009 (a.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:30:21 +0000

International Socialism: Gandhi: the man behind the myths

tags: India, Gandhi
- In India and elsewhere Gandhi has been criticised for being “anti_modern”, a hardline traditionalist, a blackmailer who used fasting as a means of getting his way; on the left he is seen as the “mascot of the bourgeoisie” and anti working class. There are elements of truth to all these accusations but it is important to bear in mind that bourgeois nationalism is far from straightforward, much less pure, and fundamentally flawed. Indian nationalism was no exception.
- The vegetarian movement was part of a larger movement of radical reformers who were anti-urban and anti-industrial in their views and critical of the commercialisation of Victorian Britain. They were bourgeois and interested in change through individual effort and moral fibre. It was this individualism and the simplicity of their message that appealed to Gandhi.
- Yet Gandhi’s philosophy was imbued with paradoxes. He may have denounced modern conveniences but he made full use of the trappings of modern civilisation—for instance, press and media outlets were a constant feature of his campaigning, whether promoting his epic salt march of 1930 or the protests in South Africa. He was against industrialisation but he made alliances with Indian capitalists. His campaigns were made possible by drawing from the vast financial resources of the industrialist GD Birla. Birla has been described as a devotee of Gandhi but he benefited from the social and religious prestige which his association with Gandhi brought him. Additionally, Gandhi gave his blessing to Birla’s abundant wealth with his teaching on trusteeship, asserting the right of the rich to accumulate and maintain wealth as long as it was used to benefit society.
- His attitude to the masses was contradictory. He would champion peasants’ demands and organise them on condition that they remained peaceful, respectful of landowners and obedient to Gandhi’s tactics. If they had the temerity to demand the confiscation of private property, they were deemed to be ungrateful, unruly and unworthy. The orientation on simple farming and an apparent “equilibrium” of peasant life underestimated the degree of social and economic exploitation inherent in rural communities.
- Similarly, with workers and employers Gandhi’s tactics had all the hallmarks of compromise and conciliation. The notion of trusteeship was used to dissipate workers’ anger and prevent them from fighting as workers. The emphasis was on rights but also responsibilities. So although Gandhi could claim, “What the two hands of the labourer could achieve, the capitalist would never get with all his gold and silver”, he could also insist that “capitalists are amenable to conversion”.²⁸ Gandhi was enormously suspicious of socialists for their atheism and but also because he held communism to be “evil” and “unnatural” because it demanded abolition of private property. He once stated, “I can no more tolerate the yoke of Bolshevism than of capitalism.”
- It is for this reason that the British Indian Marxist Palme Dutt referred to Gandhi as the “mascot of the bourgeoisie” and the founder of the Communist Party of India, Manabendra Nath Roy, held Gandhism to be the most important ideology of class collaboration within the nationalist movement. In describing the movement’s contradictions Roy argued, “One need not be a sentimental humanitarian, nor a religious fanatic in order to denounce the present order of society in the countries where capitalism rules.” Roy understood that Gandhi identified the “latent discontent” of the masses but did not want it to “burst out in fatal physical revolt or revolution… This was the true inwardness of his campaign”.²⁹
- Tragically, the campaign was wound up after a few months due to pressure from the right wing of Congress, reflecting the hostility of middle caste and middle class Hindu interests. This section was totally opposed to any initiative that paid special attention to Muslims. Nehru was not prepared to challenge this right wing, fearing his own lack of authority and social weight inside Congress. And the Communist Party was not prepared to break from Nehru and challenge his “top-down” style of politics. Tied to the Comintern (the Communist International that was now dominated by Stalinism), which at this point was pushing for the formation of broad “popular fronts”, the Communists were incapable of launching a viable political alternative. The same political problems applied in the Quit India movement, where the Communist Party refused to support the insurgency, and again after the war when, under Stalin’s guidance, the party supported the notion of distinct nationalities in India, providing a left gloss for Jinnah’s view of a two-nation theory with separate Hindu and Muslim states.
- However, the role that Gandhi assigned for women was as “a true helpmate of man in the mission of service”.³² Service is the operative word. For Gandhi women symbolised the “honour” and “virtue” of the nation. He believed that men and women possessed distinct qualities as a result of biology. Men were naturally aggressive and selfish, and women were passive, self-sacrificing and pure. So women were more suited to the domestic sphere, particularly family life and motherhood. His models for women lay in the Hindu goddesses Sita and Draupadi, who epitomised courage and strength but also service to the community. In the non_cooperation and civil disobedience movements women’s activity was primarily confined to picketing wine shops and boycotting foreign cloth. And at major protests women were to nurse the male stayagrahis when they were struck down by police charges. He had nothing but contempt for the tactics of suffragettes in Britian, not only for the use of violence but because their activity entailed the questioning of traditional roles and the demand for complete equality. Gandhi’s views were embedded in a deep social conservatism that was underpinned by self_righteousness. He was not so much concerned with changing the material conditions for women’s emancipation as their “moral” condition.
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Canada’s Worst Foreign Minister

tags: Canada, Honduras, Pimplomacy
- Canada now (which speaks for the unannounced US foreign policy) defends the Honduran coup: ““The coup was certainly an affront to the region, but there is a context in which these events happened,” said Peter Kent, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, noting that Mr. Zelaya was a highly polarizing figure who clashed with the Supreme Court, Congress and army. “There has to be an appreciation of the events that led up to the coup.”"
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The rules of Amnesty International

tags: Amnesty, humanrights, Palestine
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The New York Times’ love affair with the Honduran Junta

tags: Honduras, NYT, Media
- “They removed him over fears that he was trying to undermine the Constitution and extend his tenure.”
Woman killed in courtroom bloodbath was pregnant – The Local

tags: Racism, Women, Germany, Murder, Egypt

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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3arabawy BookMarx 07/03/2009 (p.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:30:10 +0000

The Honduran coup d’etat – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Fantastic pictures!

tags: Honduras, Photography, Resistance, Military, Coup
Daily News Egypt – El-Badeel staff start sit-in as weekly edition axed

tags: El-Badeel, Egypt, Media, Left, Sit-in
Daily News Egypt – Muslim Brotherhood will not challenge succession

tags: Egypt, MuslimBrothers, Mubarak, تعريص
اليوم السابع | حفظ التحقيقات فى قضية قتلى ومصابى 6 أبريل

tags: Mahalla, April, Detainees, humanrights, Egypt, Police, Dictatorship
Israel sends subs through Suez Canal | Israel | Jerusalem Post

tags: Iran, Israeli, Mubarak, Egypt, Military, Suez, Canal, A7a
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Egypt: Hyper Military Society

tags: Egypt, Army, Military, Dictatorship
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Flash: Taiwan and Israel

tags: Honduras, Israel, Taiwan, dirtywar
Israeli sub sails Suez, signaling reach to Iran | Reuters

tags: Iran, Israel, Egypt, Military
Coup? Israelis in Honduras say they aren’t worried – Israel News, Ynetnews

tags: Israel, Honduras, dirtywar
Mossad Might Be Implicated in Honduras Military Coup

tags: Israel, Honduras, Military
- Venezuelan deputy Adel El Zabayar revealed Thursday the implication of Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) in the perpetrated coup d’Etat last Sunday against Honduran constitutional President Manuel Zelaya.
- Two weeks before the action Israeli diplomacy was active among representatives of the opposition in Honduras, mainly the sector represented by facto ruler, Roberto Micheletti, stated the Venezuelan deputy in an interview with Prensa Latina.
- “The Embassy of Israel was the scenario of intense diplomatic movement with important representatives of the opposition, including Micheletti,” he emphasized.
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: She will not be famous like Neda

tags: Iran, Palestine, Media
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The New York Times Continues to Justify the Honduran Coup

tags: Honduras, NYT, dirtywar
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Al-Masri Al-Yawm

tags: Egypt, Media, Gamal, Mubarak
Does the US back the Honduran coup? | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

tags: Honduras, USA, dirtywar, Military, Pimplomacy
- The first statement from the White House in response to the coup was weak and non-committal. It did not denounce the coup but rather called upon “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter”.
- Later in the day, as the response of other nations became clear, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton issued a stronger statement that condemned the coup – without calling it a coup. But it still didn’t say anything about Zelaya returning to the presidency.
- The strong stances from the south brought statements from anonymous state department officials that were more supportive of Zelaya’s return. And by Monday afternoon President Barack Obama finally said: “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.“
- But at a press conference later that day, Clinton was asked whether “restoring the constitutional order” in Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself. She would not say yes.
- By contrast, one reason for Clinton’s reluctance to call the coup a coup is because the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits funds going to governments where the head of state has been deposed by a military coup.
- Unconditional is also a key word here: the Obama administration may want to extract concessions from Zelaya as part of a deal for his return to office. But this is not how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his political opponents after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the right to extract political concession from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun.
- Many press reports have contrasted the Obama administration’s rejection of the Honduran coup with the Bush administration’s initial support for the 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. But actually there are more similarities than differences between the US response to these two events.
- Within a day, the Bush administration reversed its official position on the Venezuelan coup, because the rest of the hemisphere had announced that it would not recognise the coup government. Similarly, in this case, the Obama administration is following the rest of the hemisphere, trying not to be the odd man out but at the same time not really sharing their commitment to democracy.
- It was not until some months after the Venezuelan coup that the state department admitted that it had given financial and other support “to individuals and organisations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chávez government.”
- In this case, Washington has a very close relationship with the Honduran military, which goes back decades. During the 1980s, the US used bases in Honduras to train and arm the Contras, Nicaraguan paramilitaries who became known for their atrocities in their war against the Sandinista government in neighbouring Nicaragua.
- So Clinton will probably not have that much room to manoeuvre. Still, the administration’s ambivalence will be noticed in Honduras and can very likely encourage the de facto government there to try and hang on to power. That could be very damaging.
Twittered out of trouble | The Arabist

tags: Twitter, Activism, Egypt
بوبيسكو يعترف : كنت مرشدا للحكومة! – بوابة الشروق

شوبير رومانيا؟

tags: Romania, Police, Dictatorship, Sports
Islamic Superheroes: will they be banned in France? « Bikya Masr

tags: Comics, Islam
State Department Grant for News Website Targeting Iran | Between the Lines

tags: Iran, USA, Imperialism
BM News: Egyptian woman stabbed to death in Germany as a result of veil « Bikya Masr

tags: Egypt, Germany, Veil, Islam, Racism, Murder
SHE2I2: Egyptian Court Upholds Comic Book Ban

tags: Egypt, Comics, Censorship
Egypt: See no strikes, hear no strikes, report no strikes | Menassat

tags: Workers, Egypt, Tanta, Flax, Strikes, Media, Police, Pigs

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Israeli sub sails Suez, signaling reach to Iran

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:05:05 +0000

From Reuters via @MohamedWaked…

An Israeli submarine sailed the Suez Canal to the Red Sea as part of a naval drill last month, defense sources said on Friday, describing the unusual maneuver as a show of strategic reach in the face of Iran.
Israel long kept its three Dolphin-class submarines, which are widely assumed to carry nuclear missiles, away from Suez so as not to expose them to the gaze of Egyptian harbormasters.
It was unclear when last month the vessel left the Mediterranean. One source said the voyage was planned for months and so was not related to unrest after the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom the Israelis see as promoting the pursuit of nuclear weapons to threaten them.
Sailing to the Gulf without using Suez would oblige the diesel-fueled Israeli submarines, normally based in the Mediterranean, to circumnavigate Africa — a weeks-long voyage. That would have limited use in signaling Israel’s readiness to retaliate should it ever come under an Iranian nuclear attack.
Shorter-term, the submarines’ conventional missiles could also be deployed in any Israeli strikes on Iran’s atomic sites, which Tehran insists have only civilian energy purposes.
A defense source said the Israeli navy held an exercise off Eilat last month and that a Dolphin took part, having traveled to the Red Sea port though Suez. Israel has a naval base at Eilat, a 10-km (6-mile) strip of coast between Egypt and Jordan, but officials say it has no submarine dock there.
“This was definitely a departure from policy,” said the source, who declined to give further details on the drill or say whether the Dolphin had undergone Egyptian inspections in the canal, through which the submarine sailed unsubmerged.
A military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the voyage, first reported on Friday by the Jerusalem Post.
EGYPTIAN POSITION
Egyptian officials at Suez said they would neither confirm nor deny reports regarding military movements. One official said that if there was such a passage by Israelis in the canal, it would not be problematic as Egypt and Israel are not at war.

This comes as the Egyptian regime is beefing up its military, not to confront Israel, but to contain Iran!

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Tanta Flax and Oil Co workers on STRIKE! عمال طنطا للكتان مستمرون في إضرابهم

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:47:14 +0000

Tanta Flax and Oil Company workers on strike since May 31st, Mit Hebeish, Gharbeia Province…

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3arabawy BookMarx 07/02/2009 (p.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:30:11 +0000

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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3arabawy BookMarx 07/02/2009 (a.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:30:27 +0000

Unions on Twitter | Creative Unions

tags: Twitter, Unions, Workers, Activism, Media
- 1) Set up your website to receive incoming RSS feeds from the picket lines or other major events like conferences.
  2) Labor leaders can twitter their daily activities to keep members apprised of what leadership is working on and fighting for.
  3) If you don’t have time or staff to write quality blog posts, use twitter to keep the community up to date on the issues and concerns of your union.
  4) Set up a bogus Twitter account using the name of a hated CEO or manager. Post entertaining items like “Don’t know why our workers are so upset at my salary. Don’t think they realize all the maintenance needed on 100 foot yachts.”
  5) Post up the minute bargaining updates to the website right from the bargaining table.
حوار مع المناضل الاشتراكي أليكس كالينيكوس مدير مركز الدراسات الأوروبية بالكلية الملكية في لندن | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

tags: Left, trotskyism, SWP, Socialists
إطلاق اسم جمال مبارك على ميدان بقرية الزرابي بأسيوط – بوابة الشروق

يعني مش عارف أعيط ولا أضحك.. إيه التعريص العلني ده؟

tags: تعريص, A7a, Gamal, Mubarak, Egypt, NDP
عمال البريد.. معركة جديدة من أجل التغيير | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

tags: Egypt, Postal, Workers, FreeUnion, Strikes
البريد المصري ونظام السخرة | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

tags: Egypt, Postal, Workers, Strikes

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Egypt’s Strike Wave Continues وتستمر الإضرابات

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:14:12 +0000

Egypt’s strike wave continues…

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3arabawy BookMarx 07/01/2009 (p.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:30:13 +0000

قيادات عمالية تشكل اللجنة التحضيرية للعمال | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

tags: Egypt, Workers, التحضيرية, اللجنة
عمال طنطا للكتان يطالبون بتأميم الشركة | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

tags: Workers, Strikes, Egypt, Tanta, Flax, Oil
Daily News Egypt – More than 300 Shia Egyptians arrested

tags: Egypt, Shiites, Detainees, HumanRights, Pigs, Police
Daily News Egypt – Journalist prevented from covering Tanta factory strike

tags: Egypt, Media, Tanta, Flax, Workers, Strikes, HumanRights, police, pigs
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The New York Times Makes the case Against Zelaya

tags: Honduras, Media, NYT
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Al-Masri Al-Yawm

tags: Media, Egypt
Esam Al-Amin: Iran and Washington’s Hidden Hand

tags: Iran, USA, Imperialism
- The following day, Khazali was prominently interviewed and hailed by the Voice of America’s Persian language broadcast. The VOA claims that its broadcast reaches 15 million Iranians. Other Iranian opposition groups complained that the VOA had adopted a policy of supporting the reformist candidates, and had disregarded those who called for a boycott of the elections to deny the regime legitimacy.
- According to Saeed Behbahani, a fierce critic of the current Iranian regime, and founder of Mihan TV outside Washington D.C., the American administration exchanged messages with the campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi in early June. He claims that, at that time, an unidentified Iranian-American businessman, who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai.
- The overt involvement of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other U.S. Government-funded NGOs in supporting many of the groups and dissidents that led the colored and flowering “revolutions,” is also well documented. The Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia), Tulip (Kyrgyzstan), Cedar (Lebanon), Saffron (Burma) and now Green (Iran) “revolutions” have involved mostly pro-Western groups or Western-favored individuals against nationalists.
- Part of the CIA program, as reported by ABC News and the Daily Telegraph, was “supplying money and weapons, to the militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan.” Since 2007, Iranian officials have announced the capture of dozens of members of violent groups, allegedly tied to the CIA, that carried out bombings around the nation including one that killed 20 people only two weeks prior to the recent elections, on May 30, 2009. The following day, another bombing took place at a campaign office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
- On May 24, 2007, Brian Ross, ABC News’s Chief Investigative Correspondent broke a story about the elements of soft power utilized by the CIA and authorized by Bush. “Current and former intelligence officials told ABC News that the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount what is known as a black or covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime, and it is underway,” he reported. He then added, “Those officials describe the Iranian plan as non-lethal involving a campaign of coordinated propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative newspaper articles, the manipulation of Iran’s currency and international banking transactions.” The ABC correspondent stated, “Propaganda was one of the most important tools utilized by the CIA.”
- Between 2005-2009, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $400 million for State Department programs designed to “promote democracy,” among other means of employing soft power in Iran. This was implemented, in part, by funding the activities of Iranian dissident groups. By 2008, Congress included money in the budget that would specifically “go to software programmers to develop programs that thwart internet firewalls erected by the government of Iran, ” and for a program to “provide anti-censorship tools and services for the advancement of information freedom in closed societies.”
الأخبار - جولة الصحافة - ثورة تويتر.. أحلام أميركا في إيران

tags: Iran, Twitter, Media, Elections
Egypt and beyond: Police repression of journalists in Tanta

tags: Tanta, Flax, Workers, Strikes, Police, Pigs, HumanRights, Media

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…

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:24:47 +0000

Apocalyptica…

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Radical Tweets

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:36:45 +0000

Follow comrade @mohamedwaked on Twitter…

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Honduras: A return to the Dirty War?

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:15:48 +0000

Honduras, A return to the Dirty War?

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3arabawy BookMarx 07/01/2009 (a.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:28:02 +0000

نقل قيادات رابطة المراقبين الجويين لمطارات نائية لإجهاض الوقفة الاحتجاجية – بوابة الشروق

tags: Egypt, Workers, Air, traffic, Controllers, Demonstrations
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Obama and Honduras

tags: Obama, Honduras, dirtywar
- The statements by Obama on Honduras leads to think that 1) either he is lying and there is a long history of American lies about foreign policy and coups and foreign intervention especially in Latin America; 2) he may be telling the truth and that an arm of the US government is acting on its own and that would not be the first time. I am inclined to believe the former theory.
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: The New York Times has spoken…on behalf of the people of Honduras

tags: NYT, Honduras, dirtywar
- “Although the coup has popular support in Honduras.” That is quite a scoop, in fact. Only hours after the coup, this writer in the New York Times was able to quickly and swiftly conduct an opinion survey among all the people of Honduras.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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3arabawy BookMarx 06/30/2009 (p.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:27:51 +0000

BM News: Tanta, police violence and workers’ strike « Bikya Masr

tags: Egypt, Workers, Twitter, Tanta, Flax, Oil, Strikes, Media, police, pigs
bitlyFF :: Add-ons for Firefox

Useful FireFox Add-on for shortening links. It’s very helpful with Tweeting.

tags: Firefox, Add-on, Plug-ins
“التحضيرية للعمال”.. تنظم فاعليات للمطالبة برفع الحد الأدنى للأجور | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية – مصر

tags: Workers, التحضيرية, اللجنة, Minimum, Wage, Egypt, Postal, Tanta, Flax, taxcollectors, Unions

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Police ban journalists entry to Tanta Flax and Oil Co

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:26:02 +0000

Police banned Al-Masry Al-Youm (E) journalist Joseph Mayton today from entering the Tanta Flax and Oil Company to cover the ongoing strike. Police agents stopped the traffic in front of the factory’s compound in Mit Hebeish and shoved Joey and the other journalist into a microbus that dropped them off in the city of Tanta later.

I received a phone call however shortly after 3pm from one of the workers saying the microbus driver was detained, and that the police is freaking out about the sudden media attention to the 31-day-old strike, and is now searching for Joey and his colleague.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog posting by Joseph on what happened today…

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…

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:55:50 +0000

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Strike for your free unions لا سبيل سوى الإضرابات لننتزع نقاباتنا المستقلة

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:49:35 +0000

President of the Independent Union of Real Estate Tax Collectors, Kamal Abu Eita, slams the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions, calling on workers to strike for free unions, during a public meeting at the Press Syndicate…

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3arabawy BookMarx 06/30/2009 (a.m.)

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:28:02 +0000

U.S. treads carefully with Honduras crisis – Los Angeles Times

tags: Honduras, dirtywar, USA, Military
- The administration’s approach appeared designed to avoid damaging Washington’s ties either to U.S.-allied backers of the coup that forcibly removed President Manuel Zelaya or the regional powers that have universally condemned it.
- But while condemning the overthrow, U.S. officials did not demand the reinstatement of Zelaya. The administration left its ambassador to Honduras in place, while several governments in the region recalled theirs.
- And the U.S. military has strong ties to the Honduran military, which sent troops to Iraq in a sign of support for the U.S. effort there. About 600 U.S. military personnel are stationed at the Soto Cano Air Base, about 60 miles northwest of the capital city, Tegucigalpa.
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Deputy Israeli chief propagandist at the New York Times

tags: Isabel, Kershner, Israel, Media, NYT
The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: When are they heroes? And when are they not?

tags: Iran, Media, Honduras, NYT
- A demonstrator confront a tank of the anti-democratic coup soldiers in Honduras. Why are those demonstrators not heroic? Can you imagine if this tank were Iranian or Syrian or Cuban? And notice that in the New York Times, the pro-democracy demonstrators become mere supporters of the ousted president.
Breaking BM News: ISM member abused by Egyptian police at Rafah border « Bikya Masr

tags: ISM, Egypt, Police, Palestine, Rafah, HumanRights
- Natalie Abou Shakra, a member of ISM and the International Movement to Open the Rafah Border Crossing, was physically assaulted by Egyptian border guards on Monday night, she said in a text message sent to a Bikya Masr contributor. According to initial reports from the area, she attempted to cross into Gaza via the Rafah Border Crossing on Monday after she had been given the appropriate credentials required to enter the Palestinian territory.
- “They dragged us on the floor out of the crossing. We resisted.. They continued to drag us on the floor outside. The man in the crossing told me “You are not going to cross. Who will sue me??” read the message.
Military Coup in Honduras by ~Latuff2 on deviantART

tags: Honduras, dirtywar, Cartoons, Latuff
بالصور اضراب عمال شركة طنطا للكتان والزيوت فى اليوم الثلاثين TANTA FLAX&OIL STRIKE

tags: Egypt, Tanta, Strikes, Flax, Oil, Photos, Bloggers
يانظيف يانظيف المحافظ مش نضيف #egyworkers 30th day,Tanta flax & oil co. strike

tags: Egypt, Tanta, Strikes, Flax, Oil, Photos, Bloggers
أجر عامل النظافة فى طنطا 96 جنية

tags: Tanta, Workers, HumanRights, Egypt
Egypt and beyond: Hypocrisy Beyond all Imagination

tags: Iran, Elections, Media, Egypt, Dictatorship, hypocrisy
- Interesting from the LA Times: “The Egyptian state-managed Al Ahram newspaper has published a number of articles that represented the government’s position [on Iran]. Most of those articles asked the international community in general and Western countries in particular not to stand and watch the Iranian regime’s oppressive tactics against demonstrators.”
- This from a government that bans all protests and tortures its own people, while routinely accusing opposition activists, independent journalists or critical bloggers of being “foreign agents”? That’s priceless.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Blogger harrassed at Cairo Airport

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:56:11 +0000

Blogger Wael Abbas is currently staging a sit-in at the Cairo International Airport. Wael was heading back from Sweden where he was attending a social media conference. His plane arrived around 3am in Cairo. His passport was taken by State Security Police for four hours, and was only returned to him after he staged a sit in with a banner. Now the customs agents have taken his laptop and said they won’t be returning it except after investigating it.

Wael is still at the airport. Follow his updates on Twitter…

UPDATE: Wael left the airport after retrieving his bag, however authorities have confiscated his laptop for “inspection.”

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No Victimization of Strikers! لا لتشريد العمال

Hossam el-Hamalawy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:58:22 +0000

Mostafa, a 37-year-old Tanta Falx and Oil Co worker, shouting he was unlawfully sacked two years ago after taking part in a strike. The reinstatement of nine sacked workers, including Mostafa, is one of the demands of the ongoing strike.

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