last message, Friday morning, and just before my new computer arrived.
Installation has taken a full weekend, so far, while conundrums perservere.
Egypt, Hal and I all hope for better days. Huzzah!
Ed
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02112011.html
CounterPunch Diary
Ain't That Good News!
By Aexander Cockburn
Counterpunch: February 11 - 13, 2011
"Ain't that good news,
Yeah, ain't that news."
-- Sam Cooke.
We need good news. When was the last time we had some, here in this country?
The Seattle riots against the WTO? That was back in 1999. Around the world?
Hard to remember - it's been a long dry spell. It reminds me of the old
Jacobin shivering in the chill night of Bourbon restoration, and crying out,
"Oh, sun of '93, when shall I feel thy warmth again!"
We raise our glass to the Egyptian people. In the end Mubarak propelled them
to irresistible fury with his dotty broadcast on Thursday. It seems that for
some years now he's been drifting in and out of senile dementia, same way
Reagan did in his second term. The plan had been to run his son Gamal in the
last elections, but that turned out to be a non-starter so they rolled the
semi-gaga Hosni out one more time and fixed the results, ringingly endorsed
by the US. On Thursday morning Mubarak probably told Suleiman and the US
that he was going to quit, then forgot and, braced by a supportive call from
the Israelis and a pledge by the Saudis to give him $1.4 billion if the US
withheld it, announced that he would be around till September.
The talk about the US calling all the shots, including a final peremptory
injunction to the Army chiefs to dump Mubarak is surely off the mark, part
of a tendency to deprecate any notion that the Empire has hit a bump in the
road and is in total control. Most of the time the current executives of
Empire have been panting along, trying to stay abreast of events.
Obama's call for "clarity" on the part of Mubarak on Thursday didn't do it.
Phone calls from the Defense Department and Langley and the National
Security Council didn't do it.
The brave Egyptian demonstrators did it. Conscripts ready to mutiny if
ordered to fire on the crowds did it. Immensely courageous Egyptian union
organizers active for years did it. Look at the numbers of striking workers
enumerated by Esam al-Amin on this site today. This was close to a general
strike. It reminds me of France, its economy paralysed in the uprising in
the spring of 1968. That was when President de Gaulle, displaying a good
deal more energy and sang-froid that Mubarak, flew to meetings with senor
French military commanders to get pledges of loyalty and received requisite
assurance.
And next for Egypt? These chapters are unwritten, but the world is bracingly
different this week than what it was a month ago. The rulers of Yemen,
Jordan and Algeria know that. Rulers and tyrants everywhere know that. They
know bad news when they see it, same way we know good news when we hear its
welcome knock on the door of history.
***
http://www.counterpunch.org/nawal02112011.html
A View from Tahrir Square
The Egyptian Revolution Unfolds
By Nawal El Sadaawi
Counterpunch: February 11 - 13, 2011
I have lived to witness and participate in the Egyptian Revolution from Jan
25, 2011 until the moment of writing this essay in the morning of Sunday,
Feb 6, 2011. Millions of Egyptians, men and women, Muslims and Christians,
from all doctrines and beliefs, are united against the current oppressive
and corrupt regime, against its revered top pharaoh who "still holds on to
his throne even if shedding his people's blood", against its corrupt
government and the ruling party which hire mercenaries to kill the youths,
against its cheating and fake parliament whose members represent illegal
properties, women, drugs, and bribes, against its elites who are called 'the
educated elites' who sold their conscience and pens , destroyed education,
public and private morals and culture, and misled the public and individual
opinion to gain temporary interests and ruling positions, be small or big
ones.
Young men and children, men and women have spontaneously gone out of their
houses, led and protected by themselves , after the security and policemen
have failed and the controlling elites of culture and media have crumpled
down. After the collapse of the rich and powerful and the self-interested
party leaders who have explicitly and implicitly supported the regimes of
corrupt dictatorships for about 50 years, opportunism and double-standard
and deceiving moral values have fallen down; such values have corrupted both
the family and the individuals, spreading chaos under the name of safety,
dictatorship under the name of democracy, poverty and unemployment under the
name of improvement and prosperity, prostitution and marriage betrayal under
the name of morals and freedom of choice, humiliation by and submission to
the American and Israeli colonization under the name of aids, partnership,
friendship and peace process.such a regime which has jailed those with
sincere and creative pens inside cells to separate them and taint their
reputation, or send them in to exile inside or outside the country.
Millions of Egyptian, men and women, went out in the streets in all
provinces, cities and villages, in Aswan, Alexandria, Suez, Bour Said, and
all parts of the homeland. In Cairo, the capital, we have encamped in Meidan
al-Tahrir for 11 days, day and night till now. Meidan al-Tahrir has become
our land and our camp. We settle on its asphalt and inside tents as a solid
entity of men and women.we will never leave our place even though the
police, disguised in civilian clothes, attack us and even if al-Meidan is
attacked (like what happened on Feb 2) by mercenaries hired by the regime.
Those were given bribes (50 EGP and a chick for a soldier, and the bigger
one's rank the bigger the bribe is).They stormed into al-Meidan riding
horses and camels, armed with various weapons (red, yellow, and white ones).
One of the horses was about to trample on me while I was standing in
al-Meidan with the young men. They carried me away from this primitive
attack; I saw them with my own eyes moving around in al-Meidan, shooting
everywhere. Amid the dust and smoke which surrounded al-Meidan and its
surrounding buildings, I saw firing flames flying in the sky, young men
falling, and blood shedding. A semi-military war broke out between the
regime's henchmen and the peaceful Egyptian people who were calling for
freedom, dignity and justice. But the defense committee of the revolutionary
young men managed to fight back those mercenaries and captured some horses
and camels and 100 mercenaries with their IDs, among them were state
security officers, central security officers, policemen, and some of them
were jobless and criminals who were released from prisons. Some of them
confessed that they were bribed with 200 EGP and promised with 5000 EGP if
they managed to scatter the youths in al-Meidan by using their swords and
sharp weapons. They described the youths who led this revolution as "the
kids who made the disturbance" using the language of Mubarak's big heads who
gave orders and money.
The young men built their tents in the square to get some rest. Women with
their infants lied down on the ground in the cold and rain. Hundreds of
ladies and girls, never harassed by anyone, walked proudly feeling freedom,
dignity, and equality among their fellows. Christians are participating in
the revolution side by side with Muslims. I was surrounded by some young men
from Muslims Brotherhood: they said to me "We disagree with some of your
opinions in your writings but we like and respect you because you have not
acted hypocritically with any regime or force inside or outside the
country." During my walk in the square, people were coming to me, men and
women, from different directions, embracing and hugging me saying "Dr.
Nawal, we are the new generations who have read your books and inspired by
your creativity, rebellion and revolution" I swallowed my tears and said
"This is a happy occasion for all of us, a celebration of freedom, dignity,
equality, creativity, rebellion, and revolution."
A young woman, named Rania, "We ask for a new constitution, a civil one,
which does not segregate between races, gender, and religion." Another
young man, a Christian named Butrus Dawood, said "We want a civil personal
statute which does not segregate between people in terms of doctrine, gender
or religion." A young man named Tariq al-Dimiri declared, "The young men
made the revolution and we have to select our interim government and a
national committee to change the constitution." A young man, Mohamed Amin,
said "We want to open the People's Assembly and Shura Council and proceed
with honest elections to choose a new president and new popular councils." A
young man named Ahmed Galal said, "We are a popular revolution that puts a
new social contract, not just demands, slogan of our revolution."
Free equality, and social justice, who makes revolution is one who puts the
new government rules, chooses the transitional government, selects National
Committee which changes the constitution, establishes a committee of
governors of the revolution so that opportunists (the owners of wealth and
power) are not imposed on us. Committees of governors did not participate
with us in the revolution, but comes now to us by plane from Europe or
America. Among the Egyptians who lived their lives outside or inside the
country now come to become leaders of the revolution. We say: "Who did the
revolution are the ones who are leading the revolution. Among us governors
from young people of thirty years, forty or fifty years of age. We have
competencies in all scientific political and economic fields. We are the
ones who form a committee of our governors and our government in transition,
and the National Committee to change the constitution and laws. A young
Mohamed Said said "I feel proud for the first time in my life because I am
Egyptian. Despair and depression were gone and defeat was turned into
victory. We paid the price of freedom with the blood of our martyrs. There
is no power to bring us back.
Al-Meidan turned to an entire city with its facilities, and in the hospital
thereabout sleep injured and wounded, doctors and nurses from the masses of
young people volunteered, residents volunteered with blankets, medicines,
cotton and gauze, food and water, something like a dream and fantasy, I am
living with the young men and women day and night. Committees were formed
among these young men and women to handle all chores from sweeping the
Meidan to transporting the injured to hospital, providing food and
medicines, taking over the defense of the Meidan and responding to the lies
of the system in the media to nominate the names of the Transitional
Government and the Committee of governors, and others. Walls for the houses,
institutions and taboos that distinguish between citizens, women and men,
Muslim and Christians or others faded. We become one nation, no divisions on
the basis of sex, religion or other, all demanding the departure of Mubarak
and his trial and his men in the party and the government, the bloodshed on
Wednesday, 2 February and all days since 25 January, corruption and tyranny
over thirty years of rule, and the rest of the interview.
Nawal el Saadawi, at age 80, has been in Tahrir Square in solidarity with
her countryfolk since the beginning of the revolution that has today ended
the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Her many books include: Women and
Sex, Woman at Point Zero, The Fall of the Imam, Memoirs From the Women's
Prison and A Daughter of Isis.
Translated By Dr. Rabia Redouane, Dept of Modern Languages, Montclair State
University
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