Tag: Activism

On the importance of leadership, warts and all

Two posts I put up recently featuring opposition figures — Iran’s Akbar Ganji and Syria’s Maamoun al-Homsi — generated an interesting response: attacks on these activists as being cowardly, formerly close to the regime, or having some other negative side. It could be that these criticisms are fair — I really don’t know that much about Ganji, although his credentials seem impeccable, and even less about al-Homsi (but am fully aware the journalist who interviewed him, an acquaintance, is a Lebanese with clear political biases who works for the pro-Hariri newspaper al-Mustaqal, although he is mostly a cultural journalist and a poet).

The tendency to nitpick at the credentials of opposition figures — which is fair enough considering there are plenty of self-serving opportunists out there and the world is still reeling from Ahmed Chalabi‘s manipulations — is something that increasingly bothers me about political discourse in this region. I was guilty of it myself in 2005 regarding Ayman Nour, a politician whose career I was familiar with long before he became the poster boy for the “Cairo Spring.” I’d always recognized that Nour was a talented populist but saw him as ultimately second-rate and unlikely to appeal to Egypt’s elite. Looking back, I regret not giving him more credit and that especially the Arabic media (not just the state-controlled part) did not give him more of a chance. He may have been far from perfect, but he had the courage of his convictions (or maybe ambitions, but does it matter?) and I look back and believe he achieved something quite unique: he campaigned against a practically all-powerful president and tried to challenge him as an equal. In essence, he called the bluff of Mubarak’s pretense to open up the political scene and presidential race, and put all his effort in it. The 7% score he got in the elections, while perhaps apparently small, was actually quite an achievement. I think the regime knows this, hence the five-year sentence and horrible treatment he is receiving in prison.

The Middle East will not be able to have credible alternatives to the existing regimes unless we start putting some faith — some suspension of disbelief — in the leaders who try to emerge against them. If we go along with the press attacks on these figures, the campaigns of disinformation, and wait for a knight on a shining armor — well, we might be waiting for a long time.

Blogging Egypt’s Factory Strikes

Blogging Egypt’s Factory Strikes:

Whether or not this is picked up in the American press shouldn’t matter. It’s a story to pay attention to, however you can.

The textile factory at Ghazl el-Mahalla in the Nile Delta is Egypt’s largest, with over 27,000 workers. Nearly all of the factory’s workers went on strike last December to demand their yearly bonuses, which had been withheld and which provide most of their annual salary.

On Sunday, some 10,000 of those factory workers went on strike again, demanding 150-day shares of annual profits, improved industrial safety, and a raise in their monthly bonuses.

Within a few hours the number swelled to 15,000 as Egyptian police surrounded the factory.

The Egyptian government quickly declared the strike “illegal.”

“The numbers of strikers are expected to rise in the coming few hours…the factory is under police siege,” according to posts today by Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy. His blog, 3arabawy, is one of Egypt’s most widely read in English. Along with Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger who gained international attention last year by posting (and continuing to post) videos of police brutality, el-Hamalawy is a go-to source on the rumblings of a wide scale labor movement in Egypt.

Keep track of Hossam’s frequent updates to follow news of the strike. And come on, American journalists in Cairo, make the effort to do a different kind of story and head over to Mahalla al-Kubra. They make the best taamiya in Egypt.

Update: AP has a report on the arrest of labor leaders.

Major strike at Nile Delta factory

Hossam is writing a lot today about a massive strike taking place at Ghazl el-Mahalla, apparently the biggest such strike at a major textile factory since the beginning of the year. He has videos and complains the issue is not getting international press coverage. From an activist’s account:

After the first day of the strike and sit-in, the picture inside the factory is really amazing. 10,000 people breaking the fast together in Tala’at Harb Sq, located inside the company compound. It’s a scene, which I find no words to describe it with….

The government has started to present some compromises via the head of the Factory Union Committee Seddiq Siyam, in exchange for disbanding the strike. But the stupid forgot he was asking this (strike suspension) while the workers’ emotions and zeal are running at the highest peak you can imagine.. The inevitable happened.. the dude was screwed. The workers almost killed him, seriously I’m not joking. But he was saved at the last moment by the strike leaders.

Al-Masri al-Youm has coverage of the strike, saying there are 27,000 workers partaking (which might make it the biggest strike ever) who are protesting the non-payment of performance-related bonuses. They have made eight demands, including one of political significance such as the removal of the company’s chairman and the withdrawing confidence from their representatives in the official (state-controlled) union — a step that would encourage the formation of independent, parallel union structures. No wonder considering the official union said the strike was illegal and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition political movements was behind the strike.

One might ask whether this is going to be different than any previous strike, where generally the government made major concessions fairly quickly. Perhaps not, but it strikes me [no pun intended] that every time you have this kind of situation you have the potential for things to get out of hand and escalate unpredictably…

Update: Hossam has some more thoughts on making the link between economic demands and political change.

Wael Abbas wins award

Not having internet at home, being very busy and feeling a little bit under the weather means blogging is light, but I could not pass up the great news that the pride of the Egyptian blogosphere, Wael Abbas, won a Knight International Journalism Award for his website MisrDigital. I am especially happy as I wrote a letter to the Knight Foundation recommending him for the award!

Elf mabrouk ya Wael!

USS Liberty demo

The Arab American News:

Washington — Americans will gather in Washington on June 8th at 4:00 p.m. at the Navy Memorial Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue to honor U.S.S. Liberty veterans on the 40th anniversary of Israel’s unprovoked attack on their ship.

The American intelligence ship sustained 70 percent casualties but remained afloat due to the heroic actions of its crew after Israel’s two-hour attack. Thirty-four sailors and marines were killed and 172 wounded in the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II.

According to the Department of the Navy, the only official American government investigation of the event was a 1967 Navy Court of Inquiry that found the attack to be a case of “mistaken identity.” That hastily conducted investigation has since been discredited by its chief attorney, Captain Ward Boston, as a cover-up ordered by the Johnson White House.

“It was a political thing. We were ordered to ‘put a lid on it.’ The facts were clear. Israel knew it was an American ship and tried to sink it and murder the entire crew. The outrageous claims by Israel’s apologists who continue to claim the attack was a mistake pushed me to speak out. The official record is not the one I certified,” said Boston, a former FBI agent. “My initials are not on it.”

According to senior naval officers, Johnson personally ordered the Navy to recall its aircraft and cancel its rescue mission while the Liberty was still under attack by Israeli forces before ordering the cover-up (www.ussliberty.org).

هـي آه… بـلدنا لا

Egyptian bloggers will hold a “wedding party” in Talaat Harb Sq., Friday 4 May, 6pm, to celebrate the marriage of our future president Gamal Mubarak to the lovely Khadiga, which will be held simultaneously in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The bloggers’ protest party will be held under the slogan: “Heyya ah! Baladna La!” (basically: Go and marry her, but don’t marry our country!”

Click on the banner below to read more details in Arabic.

وتكون آخر الأ�را�

Mabrouk lil 3aroussein.

Labor strikes could turn into opposition?

At last some Western coverage of Egypt’s labor strikes — Labor movement possible future for Egypt opposition:

For every single strike over the past few months, government agencies have been quick to negotiate with the workers and grant their demands, which have generally been for unpaid bonuses, benefits, and salaries.

“The government has the money to pay it because the price of oil is high and they’ve sold off a bunch more public sector enterprises,” explained Joel Beinin, the head of the Middle East Studies department at the American University in Cairo and a long time observer of Egypt’s labor scene.

“This is the biggest, longest strike wave at least since the fall of 1951,” he added. “Just in terms of the size of what we are talking about, it is substantially different from what we’ve had before.”

In his writings, Beinin has described the strikes as “the most substantial and broad-based kind of resistance to the regime.”

In 2006 alone, the independent daily Al Masri Al Youm counted 222 instances of labor unrest, including a weeklong strike at the massive spinning and weaving complex at Mahalla Al Kobra north of Cairo involving some 20,000 workers.

The trend has continued in 2007 with daily reports of strikes.

There are indications, however, that the government has become fed up with these protests and sit-ins, and labor minister Aisha Abdel Hadi has suggested that rabble rousers are behind the wave.

“This situation has gone on long enough – we are working to solve the problems of the workers, but there are those who want to ignite a revolution,” she said on television mid-April.

Government ire has recently focused on labor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Center for Trade Union and Worker Studies (CTUWS), which they have publicly accused of fomenting the strikes.

In April, the organization’s offices were closed down in the southern town of Nag Hammadi, the northern industrial complex of Mahalla, and Wednesday police dragged activists out of their headquarters in Cairo’s gritty industrial suburb of Helwan.

“Closing the offices of a labor rights group won’t end labor unrest,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director of the Human Rights Watch. “The government should be upholding legal commitments to Egypt’s workers instead of seeking a scapegoat.”

Don’t forget to read our own Arabawy for obsessive coverage of Egypt’s labor movements!

It’s Islamofascism Awareness Day

Oh yes it is:

The campus project was planned by conservative writer and activist David Horowitz as a response to attempts last year by officials at Pace University to prevent a Jewish student group from hosting a screening of “Obsession” on the university’s West-chester, N.Y., campus.

Mr. Horowitz, whose Terrorism Awareness Project is sponsoring tomorrow’s events, said the use of the term “Islamofascism” is part of the educational mission of the “teach-ins” planned around the film showings.

“The most important thing is to make people recognize who the enemy is. People cringe when we use the word ‘Islamofascism’ because they haven’t been prepared for it,” he said in a telephone interview, adding that there are real similarities between Islamic extremism and the fascism of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “It’s not for nothing that the Iranian army goose-steps.”

“Obsession” won best feature-film honors at the 2005 Liberty Film Festival. It has been widely praised by conservatives and broadcast on the Fox News Channel.

The movie made headlines when members of the Pace chapter of Hillel, a collegiate Jewish organization, said they were “intimidated” by university administrators after a campus Muslim group complained of Hillel’s plan to show the documentary in November as part of Judaism Awareness Week.

Can’t wait for Christianofascism and Judeofascism (better known as Zionism) Awareness days. Come to think of it, how about Shintofascism and Hindufascism Awareness?

[Thanks, E.]