There is no room for compromise. Either the entire Mubarak edifice falls, or the uprising is betrayed

Slavoj Žižek
guardian.co.uk
Thursday 10 February 2011

The most sublime moment occurred when Muslims and Coptic Christians engaged in common prayer on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, chanting “We are one!” – providing the best answer to the sectarian religious violence. Those neocons who criticise multiculturalism on behalf of the universal values of freedom and democracy are now confronting their moment of truth: you want universal freedom and democracy? This is what people demand in Egypt, so why are the neocons uneasy? Is it because the protesters in Egypt mention freedom and dignity in the same breath as social and economic justice?

Click here to read “For Egypt, this is the miracle of Tahrir Square” by Slavoj Žižek.

By Niranjan Ramakrishnan

11 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org

“Simhasan Khali Karo, Janta aati hai”
(Vacate the throne, the people are coming)
–Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, Hindi poet

News has just come of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

The people of Egypt have just raised a political monument that will rank alongside their mightiest stone and mortar wonders of antiquity. They have shown the world a model exercise of peaceful, determined, and dignified people-power.

Three hundred or more are said to have died in the struggle of the last eighteen days. All of them were protesters, not one a representative of the hated regime. They met assaults by horse and camel borne thugs with even more resolve, thousands more pouring into Tahrir Square in response.

Click here to continue reading “Gandhi On The Nile” by Niranjan Ramakrishnan.

Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 10 February 2011

What remains of a plastics factory after it was bombed by Israel earlier this week. Photo by Rami Almeghari

“I still cannot believe my eyes as I see the machines of our new factory, scattered to all corners,” said Rabah al-Hatto as he surveyed the rubble of his recently-established plastic water tank factory in northeast Gaza, which was bombed by Israeli warplanes early yesterday. “What have I and the twenty workers here done to find ourselves jobless?” al-Hatto told The Electronic Intifada.

Click here to continue reading “New Gaza factory, jobs destroyed in Israeli attack” by Rami Almeghari.

By Khalid Amayreh

Seeking desperately to cling to power in the face of mounting street pressure, the Egyptian regime of Husni Mubarak reportedly deployed thousands of paid thugs in an effort to assault thousands of demonstrators fed up with the Mubarak regime’s tyranny and demanding his ouster.

The thugs, known in Arabic as Baltajiya, threw rocks at protesters, hoping to get them to flee. Others carried daggers, swords and other sharp objects with which they either stabbed or sought to intimidate resilient demonstrators at the Tahrir square in the heart of Cairo. Some of the thugs appeared mounting horses and even camels and attempting to trample on demonstrators. Fire bombs were heavily used by the Baltajiya stationed at neighboring rooftops against the protesters. Eventually, live bullets were fired into the huge crowd, with several people getting killed and hundreds injured.

The baltajiya (plural of Baltaji) are young, uneducated, unemployed and violence-prone young men recruited by the regime or the ruling National Party for the purpose of intimidating and terrorizing political opponents, falsifying elections and holding “show demonstrations” in support of the regime whenever the need arises.

The baltajiya played a pivotal role in rigging and falsifying recent elections in Egypt which were nearly completely “won” by Mubarak’s al-Hizbel Watani.

Click here to continue reading “The Thuggish Arab Regimes” By Khalid Amayreh.

Don McCanne
Quote of the Day
5 February 2011

Well here we are. Super Bowl weekend! Hurrah! What could be more American than this? Billions of dollars and the nation’s full attention directed to a couple dozen men playing a game. And this is no sandlot game. No. This is our nation at its finest – honoring in unparalleled splendor those great Americans who prevail and are declared winners of this historic rough-and-tumble fracas. And what more could our nation be than about winners?

Let me digress for a moment. I have a little story to tell.

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