Egypt and beyond

Solidarity with Egypt's workers and trade unions

2011-07-07T15:47:00.003+02:00

This letter of solidarity is being circulated among Swedish trade unionists,

parliamentarians and activists. If you want to sign it, send an e-mail to

egyptensolidaritet@gmail.com.

Solidarity with Egypt’s workers and free unions

On June 8, the Egyptian transitional government announced its
intention to enforce a ban on strikes and protests that “obstruct the
work of public institutions” or harm “national unity, societal peace
or public order”, penalizing those who participate in such actions
with a fine of 30.000 – 100.000 Egyptian pounds or a prison sentence
of no less than one year. On that same day riot police forcibly tried
to break up a peaceful sit-in outside the People’s Assembly in Cairo
and arrested at least 5 of the participating tenant farmers, according
to press reports and eyewitness accounts. A few days earlier, military
police arrested 5 petroleum workers following a sit-in outside the
Ministry of petroleum.

We are deeply concerned about these and numerous other reports of
repression against peaceful protests since the resignation of Hosni
Mubarak on February 11, and strongly urge the Egyptian authorities to
refrain from all forms of violence against demonstrators or striking
workers. We call upon the government to reconsider the decision to
impose the ban on strikes – a clear violation of international
conventions signed by Egypt. As the right to strike is a fundamental
human right under international law, imposing such a ban would amount
to nothing less than a betrayal of the revolution of the Egyptian
people, and its legitimate demands for a just and democratic society.

We also call upon the government of Egypt to uphold its promise to
guarantee the right of all Egyptian workers to form independent and
democratic unions, and extend our full support to the Egyptian
Federation of Independent Trade Unions and all the workers of Egypt in
their struggle to realize this demand. The emergence of free and
independent trade unions is an event of enormous significance for
Egypt and the entire region and is to be welcomed by trade unionists
and all democratic forces around the world.

Signed,

Björn A. Borg, Swedish Dockworkers Union
Hans Linde, Left Party of Sweden, Member of Swedish Parliament
Josefin Brink, Left Party of Sweden, Member of Swedish Parliament
Amineh Kakabaveh, Left Party of Sweden, Member of Swedish Parliament
Lotta Johnsson Fornarve, Left Party of Sweden, Member of the Party
Central Committee
Mussie Ephrem, Left Party of Sweden, Member of the Party Central Committee
Ann-Margarethe Livh, Chairman, Left International Forum
Jytte Guteland, President of Swedish Social Democratic Youth

A return to the past? Egypt's neoliberal counter-revolution

2011-06-08T22:08:00.008+02:00

In a harshly worded statement Egypt's "interim government" led by Essam Sharaf - a former member of the influential "higher policies secretariat" of the ruling party NDP - today vowed to begin enforcing the "anti-strike law" that was issued in April and bans any strikes or protests that disrupts the economy (in contradiction with international treaties signed by Egypt that confirm the right of workers to resort to peaceful strikes to press their demands on employers).

Shortly after the statement was issued on the governments web page, Central security forces and plain-clothes agents descended on tenant farmers that had been staging a peaceful sit-in outside the Cabinet, protesting years (or rather decades) of displacement and ill-treatment by the state. Several farmers were arrested and hauled into police vans, according to Nora Shalaby who was there and took these pictures:

These images are a dark reminder of the state of things before January 25, when central security forces in cooperation with plain-clothes agents and thugs routinely clamped down on peaceful demonstrations in Egypt, and comes days after the military arrested five Petrojet workers, who had been taking part in a two-week sit-in outside the petroleum ministry protesting the sacking of 1200 workers. It also comes after renewed accusations of police brutaliy, most notably in the case of a bus driver that was allegedly taken to the police station in Ezbekiyya and beaten to death last week after refusing to pay a bribe to a police officer - an event that sparked protests and riots in the area.

On the same day Samir Radwaan, new minister of finance after Youssef Boutrous Ghali (who fled Egypt before Mubaraks ouster and was handed a prison sentence of 30 years in absentia last week on charges of corruption and squandering of public wealth), promised that Egypt won't back away from the "economic reforms" and free-market polices pursued under Mubaraks decades-long rule. (He doesn't seem to understand that in a supposedly democratic Egypt, that should be up to the voters to decide). As elsewhere where the neoliberal doctrine has been applied since the 70's, these "reforms" (mainly privatization of public enterprises and tax-cuts for companies and the rich) resulted in exploding inequality, a rapid decline in the quality of public welfare and increasing poverty. They have proved disastrous for the majority of the population, to the extent that they may be identified as the single most important cause of the revolution.

In what was perhaps an unintended coincidence but still a very clear signal of the inclinations of Egypt's current rulers, a proposed capital gains tax of 10% was reportedly cancelled today, after pressure from investors and the head of the national stock exchange. So today's events can be summed up: at the same time as the government vows to use force against farmers and workers who insists on demanding a fairer share of Egypt's wealth after the revolution, demanding "patience" of poor families who can barely feed their children let alone send them to decent schools, they quickly bow to pressure from the privileged minority who benefited most of Mubarak's corrupt and neglectful rule. Disturbing, but hardly surprising.

Egypt, the Left and International Solidarity

2011-05-30T19:20:00.006+02:00

Note: As I was about to publish the post below, I read the news on twitter that Egyptian journalist and blogger Hossam al-Hamalawy has been summoned to a military prosecutor for questioning tomorrow, after talking about military tribunals against civilians and violations by the military police against peaceful protestors on a TV-show broadcast last thursday (the clip above). This futile - I'm sure - attempt to silence one of Egypt's most well-known radical voices, and one who has played a vital role in spreading news about Egypt's nascent labour movement and the wave of strikes and protests that lead to the revolution has to be condemned. More than anything it underlines the need for international solidarity with the democratic and progressive forces in Egypt as they struggle to create a just and democratic society. Protests in solidarity with Hossam and the other summoned journalists will be held tomorrow in Cairo and Alexandria.

Here it goes - another attempt to revive the blog which consumed so much of my time back in they days, when strikes and protests occured almost every day but a revolution stilled seemed like a distant possibility (a funny thing I learned about revolutions is that they always do, even as more and more people tell you it has become inevitable). I switched to blogging in Swedish after I was kicked out of Egypt back in 2009 and have been blogging intensely the past few months, as well as giving talks about Egypt around Sweden. However, there are very few resources in English about the Egyptian left and labour movement (Hossam al-Hamalawy’s blog remains one of the best place to go to find such news), which is one of the reasons I have decided to go back to writing in English - at least now and then. Being barred still from entering Egypt this is at least something I can do. Don't expect daily updates however - expect irregular postings, far-from-perfect-translations of news or articles, and an occasional commentary or rant.

Besides the labour movement and left in Egypt, another theme that I will try and highlight in this blog is that of international solidarity. Last week the Egyptian doctor and leftist Alaa Shukrallah and the women’s rights activist and author Azza Kamel visited Sweden to meet political activists, feminists and unionists, and to speak at a seminar at the Worker’s Educational Association (ABF) in Stockholm (watch part of Alaa's speech here). The subject was international solidarity, and if the importance of this wasn’t already apparent it became so the next day, when news reached us that Azza Kamel’s daughter had been arrested by military police while putting up posters ahead of the May 27 protest in Cairo (she was released later that same day).

While there is a great need for immediate solidarity work and campaigns against human rights abuses in post-Mubarak Egypt, both Alaa and Azza stressed the importance of another task for the left in Europe today: to raise awareness about the link between democracy and social justice in Egypt and the region. This involves exposing and resisting the failed neoliberal economic policies that caused increasing poverty and inequality and ultimately led to the revolution - but are still being promoted by the international financial institutions and European and US governments. An international campaign for debt cancellation would be very helpful, as the regime now uses the external debt and the threat of “bankruptcy” as a propaganda weapon against any demands for social reforms.

The international left should also work to expose the regional counter-revolutionary alliance with Saudiarabia as the driving force, and the hypocrisy of Western governments that still ally themselves with authoritarian regimes while claiming to “support democracy” in Egypt and Tunisia. (Another suggestion that came up during the meeting was for international activists to put together lists of companies from their countries that collaborated with Mubaraks regime, especially within the security field, or benefited from or contributed to corruption in Egypt.)

Both Alaa and Azza pointed out that the Egyptian people need support in hard times as well as good times. While some in the west (as well as within Egypt) may have had unrealistic expectations of what the revolution would achieve in the short term it is necessary to realize that the people of Egypt are only in the beginning of a long and difficult struggle – the outcome of which will not only decide the future of Egypt for decades to come but will influence the whole region and the world. Alaa stressed again and again that the left in Egypt doesn’t need or ask for financial support (something which foreign embassies and NGO:s has been all to eager to throw on Egyptian youth activists and bloggers) but practical solidarity and cooperation based on the notion that “our struggle is one”: “A democratic and just Egypt can only survive in a democratic and just region, which in turn can only be built in a democratic and just world”.

Video: Alaa Shukrallah on the Egyptian revolution - causes and prospects

2011-05-26T14:09:00.003+02:00

Watch Alaa Shukrallah from the Popular Socialist Alliance speak about the Egyptian revolution at a meeting in Stockholm on 25 may 2011 (filmed by Lennart Kjörling):

Appeal for solidarity from Bahrain

2011-02-17T20:47:00.000+02:00

Comrades at various leftist parties and organizations

Bahraini people went out on the streets on the Feb. 14 on the 10th Anniversary of the National Action Charter . The national reform document on which people have voted in a referendum with 98.4% for it in 2001. On this date, the people decided to demand the royal regime to start implement the political reforms it promised. The demands state that to start effective procedures towards reforming the political regime, combatting corruption, abolishing racist and sectarian discrimination in Bahrain, guaranteeing fair distribution of wealth. And these protests were faced with a crazy reaction from the Bahraini authorities, the number of casualties till now is 7 so far, and this repressive campaign continues to use live ammunition, blocking entrances to a number of villages and towns, raiding and attacking homes in addition to the spreading of armed military tanks in roads.

This repressive attack is considered abandonment from the government of the reform project which guaranteed to the people their right to protest as per the 2002 Bahraini constitution.

Henceforth, we call on all Arab and International organizations to begin a protesting campaign to expose these practices of Bahraini authorities and to protest in front of Bahraini Embassies and UN headquarters in their countries and to maintain contact with Rights organizations regarding this matter. We also call on them to send denunciation letters to those embassies or to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs against these policies. The Bahraini people awaits your courageous stance for its struggle to its legitimate right to live in freedom, justice and dignity.Our path you know is rough and filled with thorns, death on its sides... but we will march on.

Please send your solidarity appeal to:

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS (MMFF)

PO Box 547

Fix Line +973-17227555 +973-17227555

Fax +973-17212603

Fax +973-17210575

Fax +973-17225107

MINISTRY OF CABINET AFFAIRS (MMCC)

PO Box 1000, 26141

Fix Line +973-17223366

Fax +973-17211363

Blog resting for now...

2011-01-31T21:41:00.006+02:00

To all old and new readers that might have returned to this blog recently: The blog is resting and I'm currently blogging about Egypt (mainly) in Swedish here. Check out the blogroll to the left for some interesting blogs on Egypt in English...

Solidarity with Youssef Shaaban

2010-11-24T15:42:00.002+02:00

Activists will demontrate today in solidarity with journalist Youssef Shaaban who was detained while covering a demonstration on Friday:

Solidarity with Yucef Shabaan and all the detainees

The popular democratic movement for change (7ashd),

The Justice and Freedom Movement,

The Free Front for Peaceful Change

The 6^th of April movement

Invite you to join their open sit in

Wednesday at 7 p.m.

At Press Syndicate

Freedom for Yucef Shabaan

Freedom for all Detainees

Workers to protest privatization, demand minimum wage

2010-03-23T20:26:00.004+02:00

Here's a (very) quick translation of parts of a statement (via Hossam al-Hamalawy) being circulated by several workers' groups in Egypt, calling for a demonstration in downtown Cairo on April 3:

"We want to reach to poverty line

Stop the politics of privatization

Under these slogans, the labour and civil groups that have signed this statement will organize a protest meeting outside the cabinet, at 11 am on April 3, demanding a minimum monthly wage of no less than 1200 egyptian pounds, to be raised annually according to the rate of inflation, as well as an end to the waste of public funds through the politics of privatization."

(The statement goes on to criticize the national council of wages - consisting of representatives of the government, unions, and business organizations - for not fulfilling its role and making sure that wages keep pace with prices...)

"Down with the politics of making workers poor, destroying Egyptian industry, and sacrificing workers rights in order to attract foreign capital - that never comes because of corruption, political tyranny, the imposition of emergency laws and the absence of democracy.

What has the politics of selling and wasting public funds in the name of privatization brought except more destruction through kicking the workers out and halting production in order to sell the land of the companies and factories, after first using it as a security to obtain loans from the banks?

We call for all wage workers in Egypt to join the demonstration in order to defend our right to life.

Workers Preparatory Committee

The independent tax collectors union URETA

Postal workers committee

Mahalla Textile Workers League

The Egyptian center for economic and social rights

Journalists without rights

Sons of the earth

Tadamon

Al-Hilali foundation for freedom

Workers union of Suez

Railway Workers

Workers Solidarity Committee

Nasr Car Workers

The Workers preparatory committee in Alexandria"

The Regime is Responsible

2010-01-07T21:14:00.002+02:00

The legacy of Mohamed Hosni Mubarak: After decades of "emergency laws" the Egyptian state still can't prevent things like this from happening, because it is too busy maintaining a devastating siege on the Palestinians of Gaza. Tragic and disgusting.

Egyptian police arrest local journalists during Gaza protest

2009-12-28T22:38:00.002+02:00

Hossam el-Hamalawy reports that three journalists working for Al-Masry Al-Youm was arrested today while covering a pro-Palestine protest in front of the french embassy in Cairo. Follow Hossam on twitter for updates.

Free union celebrate anniversary, State unions withdraws from international federation

2009-12-21T20:18:00.005+02:00

Two days ago, members of the independent URETA-union for real estate tax collectors gathered to celebrate the opening of their headquarter and the one year anniversary of the founding of the first free union in Egypt since 1957. The celebration was attended by the regional secretary of the Public Services International, which accepted URETA as a member last spring and has criticized interference in the work of URETA by state-controlled union officials.

Apparently, this visit has now provoked three state-controlled unions in Egypt to withdraw from PSI in protest against recognition of the "illegal" URETA union. State union officials explain that they are not against the right of free association (of course) but only against "interference in the internal affairs of Egypt," something every "honorable Egyptian would reject."

Also, on December 26 the new general union for employees of tax- and customs authorities will be officially included in the Egyptian Trade Union Federation as the 24th general union in Egypt; a move that should be understood as part of the ongoing attempts by the ETUF to marginalize the free URETA union.

Egypt drowning? Yawn...

2009-12-18T00:26:00.004+02:00

A UN analysis shows that emission cuts on the table in Copenhagen could raise the global average temperature by 3 degrees. Meanwhile, new studies show that even a more moderate warming could lead to a much bigger increase in sea levels than previously thought, drowning the Nile delta. Even so, the voice of Egypt can hardly be heard on this issue - tiny island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives are making a lot more noise. Is it because they are not busy building walls protecting against the dreaded palestinians in Gaza and cracking down on opposition movements ahead of coming elections? Or is it because Egypt's ruling elite believe they will be safe behind the walls of their luxury compounds with the consolation aid offered by Hillary Clinton when the flood hits? I just wonder.

Update: Egyptian blogger Zeinobia also shares her opinion on this subject here.

Copenhagen Mass Climate Protest in Pictures

2009-12-16T00:32:00.003+02:00

Click the photo above for a set on flickr from the massive "planet first, people first" demonstration in Copenhagen this Saturday. Around 100.000 people took part in the march, demanding "climate justice" and "system change, not climate change." The march was peaceful, but Danish police intervened and detained almost 1000 people on the pretext of arresting a few masked "black block" activists who threw one or two stones against a bank and the Danish foreign ministry. Stupid, but hardly "a riot", as Naomi Klein points out.

Tomorrow, protesters plans to 'reclaim power.' (Note that Tadzio Müller, one of the organizers of Wednesdays march, which have been authorized by Danish police, was arrested shortly after the press conference.)

Mahalla labour activist fired

2009-12-14T23:53:00.004+02:00

Tadamon reports that Mahalla Spinning and Weaving labour activist Mustapha Fouda has been fired following attempts by workers at the factory to organize a strike last Monday (January 6). Workers had presented five demands, including raising the minimum wage and improved housing and transports.

Pic above: Mustapha Fouda on someone's shoulders during an anti-privatization protest in Mahalla on October 30, 2008.

Latvian students and unions protest budget cuts

2009-12-04T22:47:00.005+02:00

I haven't been blogging much lately, mostly because I've been traveling and didn't have time to follow events in Egypt as closely as I would have liked to. A couple of days ago I came back from Latvia, the one country in the European Union that have been hardest hit by the global economic crisis. In one year Latvia has lost a around 18 percent of it's GDP and unemployment has more than tripled to 20 percent.

This week, hundreds of trade unionists (unions are very weak in Latvia and organize only around 15 percent of the workforce, mostly in the public sector) and thousands of students gathered outside Saeima, the Latvian parliament, to protest the new state budget which contains huge cuts on higher education and other public spending and a raise of the personal income tax from 23% to 26%. (Needless to say, these actions will reinforce the economic downturn, and are motivated largely by the decision of the Latvian government, strongly backed by the European Union and the Swedish government, to avoid a devaluation the local currency - a huge mistake according to many economists)

Latvians students shouted slogans like "put parliament in school and students in parliament" and "no education means no future" and jeered the education minister as she appeared on the stairs of the parliament briefly. I have to say that after three years in Egypt this was quite a refreshing experience; in the beginning I half expected police officers to try and confiscate my camera or start beating up protesters, which never happened of course... (Actually I can't imagine a crowd of demonstrators getting this close to a government building even in Sweden...)

Blog break

2009-11-24T12:04:00.003+02:00

The blog isn't dead, but I'm doing a lot of travelling these days so don't expect any updates for a few more weeks...

Kamal abu Eita defends RETA union against campaign in state-controlled meida

2009-11-13T08:49:00.004+02:00

According to a statement form the Center for Social and Economic Rights (via the Center for Socialist Studies and Hossam al-Hamalawy) the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees has been subject to a "smear campaign" by the state-owned papers al-Ahram and al-Gomhoriyya, claiming that there has been "mass resignations" from the free union. The head of the RETA union, Kamal abu Eita, has demanded the right to reply to these statements in a letter to the editors of both papers. In the letter, he states that in fact, the number of members of the free union continues to rise and has now reached 40.000, and that a new local union committee has just been formed in South Sinai. According to Kamal abu Eita, the free union now has a local presence in 29 governorates, whereas the state-controlled union only exists in 9.

Work Camps in The Negev?

2009-11-10T21:27:00.004+02:00

From Haaretz: "The government is considering establishing work camps in the south of the country, where illegal migrant workers will receive shelter, food and medical care, Army Radio reported Wednesday. In exchange, illegal migrants would perform manual labor outside the camps, but would not earn a salary. They would stay at the camp until their asylum claims are decided, which could take months or years. The proposal, part of the effort to address the problems posed by illegal migrants, would place asylum seekers at jobs in communities in the Negev and Arava. Their salaries would go to the state, in order to fund the camps."

Work camps where the state takes the salary? Am I the only one thinking "slave labour" here?

The Populist

2009-11-06T09:09:00.004+02:00

Here's a few videos of protestors getting beaten up in Teheran on November 4, nicely followed up by this interesting quote from a story where Ahmadinejad offers his view on social justice (via Ali Esbati):

The three economists listened attentively to Ahmadinejad as he lectured on the waste caused by current subsidization policies and the fact that because of artificial prices any investment was hardly justifiable. He told his audience that a free market was the "best distribution system to guarantee social justice."

It does add some perspective to the argument that the current political confrontation in Iran somehow pits political liberties against economic justice because Ahmadinejad promised to bring the oil wealth to the dinner tables in his election campaign. I'm not an expert on Iran in anyway, but perhaps this is a sign that Ahmadinejad, having failed to mobilize the poorer segments in support of his rule and realizing that the opposition has its strongest base among the urban middle class, decided to try and placate his opponents by posing as a neo-liberal?

Tanta Workers Continue Sit-In, Threaten Hunger Strike

2009-11-05T18:15:00.005+02:00

Tadamon reports: 9 workers at Tanta Flax & Oils, who were fired after a strike last year, moved their sit-in from the headquarters of the General Union of Textile Workers to the factory grounds in Tanta, where around 1000 workers has been on strike since May. Earlier this week, an agreement was reached between the union and the company management, giving the workers a raise in meal allowances and retroactive payment of a yearly raise since 2007 on condition that they resume work on November 10.

Workers fired during the strike has been offered early retirement with financial compensation of around 35,000 egyptian pounds. According to Tadamon, many workers are still refusing the terms of the agreement - the main reason being that it does not include re-hiring the 9 workers who were fired last year, despite previous court verdicts ordering the company to re-hire them.

The union initially supported the strike, but a majority of the workers refused to accept a previous agreement between the union and the management, and instead voted to continue their strike even as they were denied access to strike funds. The 9 workers are now threatening to start a hunger strike until their demands are met.

Update: As pointed out in the comments below, 50 workers who were fired during the strike had initially been promised 45,000 pounds each as compensation, but was suddenly told they would only get 35,000. Today, the two groups of workers (those fired during the previous strike and those during the last one) decided to join forces and occupied the factory, forcing security men and members of the management out while doing so, according to the center for socialist studies.

Swedes against Islamophobia

2009-11-04T09:31:00.003+02:00

As many Egyptians are becoming more cynical about facebook-activism, more than 200.000 Swedes (in a country of 9 million) has joined a facebook group protesting the right-wing party Sverigedemokraterna ("Swedish Democrats"), whose leader recently published an article describing islam and muslims as the gravest foreign threat against democracy in Sweden since the second world war. I don't think this is going to end islamophobia and racism in Sweden or prevent SD from reaching the parliament in the elections next year (polls show them hovering around the necessary 4 percent of the votes), but at least it's a way of giving inspiration and courage to all those who are prepared to take the fight.

Victory for Aisha

2009-10-28T14:00:00.003+02:00

The center for socialist studies reports that labour organizer Aisha abu Samada or "Hagga Aisha" has been returned to her work at Hennawy Tobaco in Damanhour today, after more than a year of struggle against the employer. Aisha was subject to a hostile campaign from the state-backed union and eventually fired after she led her mostly female colleagues in a campaign for better work conditions and salaries. I met Aisha in Damanhour last December - on the same day Israel launched the war on Gaza - and was deeply impressed with her strong personality and her courage to challenge the all-male union committee who refused to back the workers in their struggle.

Blog news - Egypt commentary in Swedish

2009-10-27T15:39:00.004+02:00

For all Swedish readers out there: Since I've been involuntarily reassigned to Sweden by Egyptian state security I've decided to start a new blog for news and commentary on Egypt in Swedish. I'll still keep updating this blog with mostly labour-related news in English as often as I can, and keep the new blog for occasional commentary, links to published articles, and so on - hopefully making a small contribution to the ongoing discussion of Middle East-related issues in Sweden and not least the growing (I hope) interest in the social movements of Egypt.

Egypt Labour Updates - October 26, 2009

2009-10-26T18:53:00.003+02:00

More links from the Egyptian Workers diigo group:

* Al-Youm Al-Sab'e reports that security forces laid siege to the HQ of the General Union of Textil Workers as workers from a self-managed factory in 10th of Ramadan City gathered there on Saturday morning to demand a meeting with the labour minister and the head of the union. Workers at the factory have been campaigning for the ministry of labour to pay their wages and help finance a restructuring of the company whose owner fled the country to escape a prison sentecne. (See earlier update.)

* Tadamon reports that security forces surrounded Tanta Flax and Oils on Sunday, to prevent the workers - who are on strike since the end of May - from leaving to stage a demonstration in front of the Cabinet in Cairo.

Egypt Labour Updates - October 22, 2009

2009-10-22T17:26:00.003+02:00

More links from Diigo and Hossam al-Hamalawy:

* Al-Masry Al-Youm reports (in English) that South Cairo Electrical Company workers threaten to strike over incentives and equal pay with workers that were recently transfered from the Rural Electricity company.

* Mohammed Maree posted pics and a report (in Arabic) as well as a short video from the fourth day of the sit-in of the Ghazl al-Mahalla cooperatives (see previous post). The Center for Socialist Studies reports that the sit-in was suspended as workers met with the head of general union of commercial workers on Tuesday. According to one local unionist, the general manager of Misr Spinning and Weaving in Mahalla first offered them a compromise deal of a 10 day bonus (instead of the one month bonus given to all workers within state-owned enterprises), then retracted this offer and accused the local union committee of slandering him in interviews with the press.

* Al-Youm Al-Sab'e reports that security forces intervened to abort a demonstration by workers at Nasr Glass and Crystal Company in Shubra on Wednesday morning. The workers protested mass layoffs before an expected privatization of the company.

* Al-Youm Al-Sab'e also reports that 300 teachers in Shuhadaa in Monofeyya went on strike today, protesting a decision to transfer them to other schools far from where they live.

* The Center for Socialist Studies reports that the General Union for Textile Workers is refusing to use strike funds to pay the salaries of workers at Tanta Flax and Oils, who have been on strike for close to five months. The union stopped supporting the strike two months ago, changed its mind only after workers demonstrated outside the Cabinet in downtown Cairo, and now abandoned the workers completely again. Negotiations between the Saudi owner of the factory and the workers are stuck in part because the owner refuses to re-employ strike leaders who were fired after a previous strike - despite a court verdict ordering him to do so.

Egypt Labour Updates - October 19, 2009

2009-10-19T07:04:00.003+02:00

Blogger arrested, beaten up by police in Tanta

2009-10-16T11:37:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, Egyptian blogger Demaghmak was arrested on the streets of Tanta along with his brother, and beaten by a police commander together with two plain-clothes men and six regular troopers. The commanding officer told them "I will make sure you motherfuckers kiss the feet of any policeman you see" (roughly translated...). They were thrown into a police jeep and released after a while, Demaghmak reports on his twitter page.

Egypt Labour updates - October 15, 2009

2009-10-15T18:46:00.006+02:00

A few updates from the Egyptian Workers diigo group:

* Tadamon reports that workers at the Abu Sebae textile factory in Mahalla returned to work on October 10 after two weeks of forced (unpaid) holiday ordered by the factory owner, blaming a drop in demand because of the global financial crisis. Workers at the factory still hadn't received their salaries for september 1-15, but was promised they would be paid this week. Workers at the factory, which is located in a QIZ-zone (where producers receive exemptions from US import-tariffs on condition they use a certain amount of Israeli raw materials) demonstrated in the streets of Mahalla last month, demanding their delayed salaries.

* On October 12, doctors from "Doctors without rights" and "Young Doctors of Egypt" staged a protest on the stairs of the Doctor's syndicate, protesting stagnating salaries.

* 1500 workers at Misr-Iran Spinning and Weaving resumed work this morning, following a meeting two days ago between the management and the local union committee. After a series of protests and sit-ins a number of their demands were met, including the resignation of the previous general manager and a promise by his successor to pay monthly bonuses and incentives.

* Workers at a self-managed textile factory in 10th of Ramadan industrial free zone has been on strike for three days, protesting the refusal of the Ministry of Labour to fulfill an earlier promise to pay their salaries from the emergency funds.

Egyptian frustrations

2009-10-14T17:02:00.002+02:00

Daily News Egypt reports: "The bulk of Egypt’s population is “frustrated, demoralized, desperate and indignant,” revealed a recent study by Ministry of State for Administrative Development. /---/ The negative attitude Egyptians have is due to the fact that they believe the state is biased towards “businessmen” and those in power. According to the study, the state protects them, allowing them to make profit and benefit at the expense of the lower segments of society. In addition, 50 percent of Egyptian citizens have no trust in the government."

Labour Photo of the Year

2009-10-13T14:07:00.004+02:00

Click this link to vote in Labourstart's competition "Labour Photo of the Year," featuring the above pic by Hossam al-Hamalawy of a Tanta Flax & Oils worker and other great shots... Despite being a fan of Hossam's work, I'm totally impartial, of course :)

"Boss-napping" ends peacefully

2009-10-13T11:07:00.004+02:00

Hisham Omar Abdel-Halim reports for al-Masry al-Youm: "Workers at the privatized Telephones Equipment Company, in Helwan, south of Cairo wrapped up a 12-day sit-in during which they held company board and syndicate members captive for ten hours. Security forces, which had quickly surrounded the area, failed to convince the company's roughly 1200 employees to release the captives. Frustrated workers only agreed to free the men after prominent MP Mustafa Bakri assured them they would receive unpaid salaries and bonuses by 18 October. Over the course of the negotiations, Bakri made a telephone call to Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel Hadi, putting the conversation on speakerphone for workers to hear. Abdel Hadi assured them over the phone that they would continue to receive their salaries for the next three months."

Trouble at the Airport

2009-10-12T22:54:00.002+02:00

The security agencies continues their policy of harassing Egyptian activists passing through Cairo Airport. Last week, CTUWS (Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services) Program Coordinator Rahma Refaat was stopped and her passport held for two hours when she was leaving to attend a meeting of the International Federation of Workers Education Associations, IFWEA. The previous month, CTUWS General Manager Kamal Abbas was subject to the same harassment while leaving for the AFL-CIO 26th Constitutional Convention, and released only just in time to barely reach his flight.

Blame the Left

2009-10-12T21:45:00.004+02:00

Almost 30 years after the assasination of Sadat islamist theorist Nageh Ibrahim engage in left-bashing disguised as self-criticism: In one of a series of articles published on the website of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya on the occasion of the anniversary of the October war, he expresses nostalgia about the freedom enjoyed by "the whole spectrum" of Islamist movements in Egypt during the seventies. Unless the islamists had "blindly followed the left" in their hatred against Sadat, they would have remembered that he gave Egypt and Islam the great victory over Israel in the October war and forgiven his later "mistakes." (These include, one can only assume, arresting hundreds of socialists and trade union activists - Sadat encouraged the islamist movements in part to counter the growing strength of the left and opposition to his neoliberal economic policies.)

Guest among the outcasts

2009-10-09T09:12:00.002+02:00

For Swedish readers only: My column about my encounter with illegal immigrants from Ethiopia at Cairo airport.

Exile

2009-10-08T15:53:00.002+02:00

“Welcome to my exile.” With those words trade union activist Mohammed al-Attar greeted me when I went to see him in Alexandria a few months ago. He had been transfered there by the management of Misr Spinning and Weaving in Mahalla after an anti-privatization protest last October, and with almost no real work to do at the warehouse in the old cotton market he had a lot of time to think. He was remorseful, not for taking part in the protest - but for accepting a compromise deal and backing out of the declared strike on the 6th of April 2008.

I'm reminded of Mohammed al-Attar's fate now, when it seems like I'm the one being sent into “exile”, with a lot of time to think about my experiences in Egypt and my present situation.

It could definitely be worse, and a lot worse too. Despite the darkness and cold, the prospect of spending a winter in Sweden isn't all that bad. But over the past years I've come to regard Egypt as a second home - and trust me when I say that I've seen this as a huge privilege, especially in this region where millions of people would do anything to have just one proper country to call home.

As soon as the immigration officers at the airport pulled me aside and told me to wait “for a few minutes” I guessed what was about to happen, but I still didn't really believe it. I spent the next few hours in a limbo, with my immediate future in the hands of some anonymous, unknown power – the higher being that we call State Security. Gradually realizing what all this meant was like watching a curtain slowly being pulled down in front of my life.

After one hour – or maybe two, I soon lost track of time – I was taken to an office where two State Security officers interrogated me half-heartedly. They seemed annoyed by this disturbance in the middle of the night and clearly had no idea why my name was in the computer. They asked me only general questions like “is this your first visit to Egypt” and “why do you come here.” When I told them I was a journalist, one of them narrowed his eyes slightly and asked: “What do you write about - politics?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted, and he slowly nodded as if this confirmed some profound theory about the universe he had been contemplating. Then the other man asked me if I ever got into any trouble in Egypt.

“What kind of trouble?” I asked – since mashaakil of various sorts is a more or less unavoidable part of daily life in Egypt.

“Did you get into any fights? Did you make enemies here?” he said.

I paused to think. Should I mention being pulled, pushed and shoved around by plainclothes thugs or having the flash card of my camera confiscated while covering demonstrations? Being shot at by central security forces during food riots in Mahalla? Being ordered to “go to hell” after taking photos of police breaking up a tiny pro-palestinian demonstration in Tahrir Square? No, I concluded. Those people were not trying to pick a fight. It wasn't personal, they were just doing their job: upholding law and order and combating extremists and foreign elements fomenting dissent against the Egyptian government, which is - of course - democratically elected.

After this brief “interrogation,” I was told to wait for another five minutes, which quickly turned into an hour. Then I was finally told by a low-ranking airport guard that I was going to be deported. Why? Because State Security said so. “Illi amn al-dawla 'al yasaafir, yasaafir.”

At this point they had already taken my phone. I spent the next 48 hours isolated from the outside world, waiting for the next flight to Prague in a temporary-turned-permanent detention center. It consisted of a corridor, three small rooms with beds, and a barely functioning bathroom – all tucked in just behind the tax free shop of terminal one.

Technically, I wasn't a prisoner. At some point an officer asked if I wanted to buy a ticked on an earlier plane to Amsterdam. But could I have a phone call to transfer money to my VISA-account? No, was the firm reply - and I suddenly felt like being a character in a novel by Joseph Heller, trapped on a small island in the Mediterranean by an inextricable web of bureaucratic red tape.

At least I wasn't alone. To start with, my company consisted of fifteen Palestinians and one Nigerian student at al-Azhar. The former wanted to return to their homes in Gaza via Cairo after visiting other Arab countries to work or meet relatives, but had been detained at the airport for unknown “security reasons.” Some of them had been told they should pick another country to apply for a visa to - forget about the universal human right of leaving and returning to your own country and forget about homes and families again - but they were not allowed to leave the detention center. Another Catch 22.

The Nigerian student just made the terrible mistake of going to the airport to meet a friend, without bringing proper documentation of his right to reside in the country - and wearing a suspiciously long beard on top of that. He was promptly rounded up by security.

After a few hours a large group of thin and weary Africans where led in by soldiers in green uniforms. They turned out to be Ethiopians, about to be deported from Egypt after first being deported from Israel and imprisoned for four months in a Sinai jail. There, they were subject to all kinds of racist abuse and forced to survive on a 40 gram bar of halawa (some company in the 6h of October free zone must be making a fortune delivering those to the Egyptian prison system) and a couple of slices of bread every morning and night. But at least they weren't shot dead by Egyptian border guards.

Other people kept coming and going, and by nightfall we were around 50 people. With only 24 beds to share we were forced to sleep in shifts. I started out on the floor, and when the Palestinians got up for prayer at dawn I moved to one of the empty beds. Later I learned that the detention center in the other terminal doesn't have any beds at all, so I'm grateful for the few hours of proper sleep I got.

Despite all the time I had to think I didn't have any ready answers for all the journalists who later wanted to know why this happened. And I still don't. Given the number of foreign journalists in Egypt writing freely about the state of affairs in this country – something that cannot be said about our Egyptian colleagues - it's very unlikely that my deportation has anything to do with what I wrote on my little-read blog or for Swedish papers as such. To believe anything else would be tantamount to serious delusion of grandeur.

Considering the level of paranoia the egyptian security apparatus has shown recently when it comes to Gaza-related activism, the other theory floating around out there is a lot more compelling: that I was declared persona non grata because of my presence at a small and peaceful pro-Gaza march outside Cairo in February, when activist and filmmaker Philip Rizk was snatched and held incommunicado by state security for four days. Judging from the various statements by anonymous security sources, this is the explanation they want us to believe in – not least because it will effectively discourage other foreigners from getting involved in any kind of activism in Egypt - and for all I know it might be true.

Having said this, I also suspect that there are more than a few local security officers, company managers and officials of the state-controlled unions that are only too happy to have me out of the country. During my travels around Egypt, these people have often display outright hostility – in sharp contrast to the incessant hospitality of ordinary Egyptians in the poorest slums or remotest villages. I don't think they are bothered by what I write (or even aware about it) as much as by the presence of foreign media on the ground, reporting on labour conflicts and independent union activism and hence “giving encouragement” to the people involved - and in certain rare circumstances maybe offering some (temporary) protection from repression.

This is the case with all journalism of course – just consider the way Western media have encouraged the 6th of April movement or dissident blogging in Egypt – and doesn't make me an activist. I'm merely a journalist who believes that the fate of people of Mohammed al-Attar is as important as that of Ayman Nour. But don't get me wrong: I'm not on a crusade to establish my credibility as an “objective” journalist – I rarely give “equal time” to corporate bosses or government officials when writing features on social movements – and I don't really mind being called an activist. I just think it is unfair to real activists when that label get stuck on parasites like me who make a living in part by writing about them, without risking or sacrificing anything - except, perhaps, a future career in respectable mainstream media.

Then again, I never studied journalism properly and probably got it all wrong. Workers' strikes and other protests around economic demands rarely make the headlines. Unless they turn into riots and people get killed, they are simply not newsworthy. But traveling around Egypt to meet ordinary people involved in day-to-day struggles for decent conditions, reacting against a perceived injustice or fighting oppression, I always felt like I was watching real history.

During the last few years, the labour movement in Egypt has reached a level of struggle that probably hasn't been seen in the country since the 40's, and less than a year ago state employees founded the first independent union since 1957. This had led to increased persecution of union activists in the form of arbitrary transfers and dismissals as well as persistent threats from security agents – while the head of the free union has been under investigation for “damaging the reputation” of the official trade unions abroad.

If this isn't news, it's bigger than news. And no matter what the reasons are, not being allowed to be in Egypt and report on this developing social movement feels like a big personal loss.

Unwelcome People

2009-10-01T16:13:00.003+02:00

So I've been officially declared persona non grata and thrown out of Egypt. I'm too tired to write in detail about this bitter experience or speculate about the reasons behind it right now. But something has to be said about the other, less fortunate victims of the Egyptian security state that I encountered at the airport.

For 48 hours I shared a small space - tucked in somewhere behind the tax free shop in terminal 1 - with around 15 Palestinians from Gaza. They had all been stopped on their way back to Gaza after visiting other Arab countries, and are being held without explanation - a few of them for as long as three months - with no or little contact with their families. Several has not been allowed back to Gaza since the summer of 2007. One had not seen his wife and 4 year-old son in two years.

For me, as a westerner, being subject to arbitrary exercise of power in this way is an exception. For them, as a people under occupation, it is an ever-present aspect of life. Despite the sharp contrast between our expectations for the future - I knew I would be sent back to the freedom of my own country in a matter of days - they were the ones who kept cheering me up, making the complete isolation from the outer world bearable with their good spirits and generosity. This is something I will never forget.

"Historic verdict" in favour of Tanta labour leaders

2009-09-18T19:45:00.005+02:00

The Center for Socialist Studies reports that an appeals court in Tanta ruled yesterday that 7 labour leaders that were fired after a strike in 2007 must be returned to their work. Lawyers describe the verdict - which is final - as a big victory for the workers and the labour movement since it establishes that employers must take their case to an adjudication tribunal or labour court before firing any worker. There is no compulsory mechanism to force the owner to implement the verdict, but the workers believe it will strengthen their negotiating position. Previously, the Saudi investor that bought Tanta Flax and Oils Company from the state in 2005 has promised to return the workers to their jobs if the court ruled in their favor. Around 1000 workers at the company is currently on strike since the start of the summer.

QIZ workers take to the street in Mahalla

2009-09-17T18:33:00.006+02:00

Via Mohammed Maree and Hossam el-Hamalawy: A video showing textile workers from the Abou Sebae factory in the QIZ (Qualified Industrial Zone) in Mahalla demonstrating in front of factory owner Ismail Abul Sebae’s house demanding their delayed salaries. The clip shows workers chanting "left, right, we're coming to you Ismail" and "There is no God but God, Ismail is the enemy of God."

According to Mahalla blogger Mohammed Maree 3500 workers took part in the protest. They tried to take to the streets yesterday but were stoped by central security forces and state security officers who promised they would get their salaries in the afternoon. Instead, they entered the factory again only to find a notice that they were obliged to take 15 days unpaid vacation. Today they organized a demonstration that stopped for half an hour outside the factory owners house before continuing to the City Council, paralyzing traffic on the main street al-Bahr until security forces intervened to stop the protest.

Mohammed Maree also reports that a police officer tried to take his camera while he was covering the protest, and threatened to issue another arrest order against him (Mohammed was arrested after the demonstrations in Mahalla on 6 and 7 April 2008, and detained for three months).

Free union leader threatened with up to six months in prison

2009-09-09T10:04:00.003+02:00

Jano Charbel reports: "Labor activist Kamal Abu Eita, head of Egypt's only independent labor union, faces charges of disseminating false information and defaming the reputation of the country's state-controlled union leaders." Kamal Abu Eita told al-Masry al-Youm: "I do not wish to tarnish Egypt's image abroad, in fact we are attempting to improve its image abroad. Through our efforts we are proving to the world that Egypt is capable of genuine trade unionism. In this sense I am proud of improving Egypt's image."

"Blood Libel" vs Murder in Cold Blood

2009-09-08T22:55:00.007+02:00

After the apparently intentional tear-gassing of Al Jazeera correspondent Jackie Rowland by Israeli soldiers, a friend sent me this video as a reminder of the often lethal violence directed by the occupation troops against civilian Palestinians - a routine violence which, in contrast to one speculative article about possible organ theft by Israeli soldiers and the alleged anti-semitism of its author, has not been debated and condemned by Swedish pro-Israeli liberals recently:

"The man in the video, 29 year old Basem Abu Rahme, was evacuated to Ramallah hospital in critical condition, where he died of his injury. When he was shot, Basem was standing east of the Wall, facing the army who was positioned to the west. There was not more than 30 meters between them. The type of gas bomb that killed Basem has a range of 800 meters. It is not visible when it is fired or when it is in the air. At 300 – 400 meters, it explodes internally in order to add velocity. With a plastic or fiberglass head, the canisters resemble shells, not tear gas bombs, and are deadly when not fired into the air."

The crisis that never came...

2009-09-07T10:50:00.006+02:00

Take a moment and consider these words by American diplomat George Ball, writing in 1979:

"It is unrealistic to believe that Israel, which has maintained a military occupation over 1,200,000 Palestinians for the past 12 years, can continue that role indefinitely. With violence increasing and Arab strength expanding, the attempt to maintain the status quo offers only a sad an bloody future. Nor is it reasonable to believe that the American people will be prepared indefinitely to subsidize this Israeli brand of colonialism so far out of tune with present-day opinion."

So right, yet so wrong... The article, titled "The Coming Crisis Israeli-American Relations," deals with US-Israeli relations from 1948 to 1979 and also touches upon the growth of the pro-Israel lobby, and is still an interesting read 30 years later. Ball describes US-Israeli relations as characterized by "dependence without responsibility." Some excerpts:

"Over the last 30 years these relations have evolved to the point where Israel is more dependent on the United States than ever, and yet feels itself free to take hard-line positions at variance with American views without fear of anything worse than verbal admonition from Washington."

"/---/ Today Israel is able to continue on its present course only because of continued vast subsidies from the United States. Distasteful as it must be to Israelis, the nation has become a ward— a kind of welfare dependent—of America. The United States is providing annual subsidies out of the public sector that amount to the equivalent of $7,500 a year for every Jewish family..."

"/---/ Why should Israel not pursue its own course, when Israelis have been so long conditioned to expect that America will support their country, no matter how often it disregards American advice and protests and America's own interests, that both sides now accept this extraordinary ritual dancing as quite normal?"

30 years later, in the Obama era, the White House "regrets" the construction of new settlements on the West Bank. The dance continues...

Afghanistan Confusion

2009-09-06T18:00:00.004+02:00

When NATO and the Taliban are not busy fighting each other, they attack hospitals and tie up employees and family membes. Who were the good guys again?

Imposing unions from above to counter those built from below

2009-09-05T12:59:00.004+02:00

Al Shourouq reports: Hussein Megawer, head of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, has announced that a new general union - the 24th in Egypt - is being established for employees of tax and customs authorities who previously belonged to the union for bank and insurance employees. The new imposed-from-above-union will supposedly represent the employees of the real estate tax collectors, who founded their own independent union in december 2008. This decision comes as the leader of the free union had been summoned for interrogation by the North Giza prosecutor today after being accused by Megawer of the ETUF of "spreading information that has damaged the reputation of Egypt."

Head of Free Union under Attack

2009-09-04T12:10:00.004+02:00

Via the Center for Socialist Studies: The head of the independent RETA-union, Kamal abu Eita, will be questioned tomorrow Saturday on charges by Hussein Megawer, head of the official trade union federation, that he has been spreading "false information" that has hurt the reputation of Egypt and its official trade union system. Kamal abu Eita in turn accuses Megawer of acting as a "union police" after failing to control the labour movement, and says that the attacks on him is a sign of weakness.

More links on the free union here and here.

Pic above: Kamal abu Eita during a demonstration outside the trade union federation HQ, november 2007.

Importing Efficiency While Neglecting Education

2009-09-03T18:39:00.004+02:00

I find this headline, "Egypt keen for Indian expertise to increase labour efficiency," slightly ironic considering the recent labour unrest in some QIZ areas and the Indian-owned Shebeen el-Kom spinning mill. It is also very revealing of the economic thinking that prevails within the Egyptian government.

In recent years there has been significant Indian investments in the Egyptian ready-made garments industry, especially in the QIZ areas. There, as in Shebeen al-Kom, workers from South Asia are often employed as supervisors and technicians, for several reasons. One is that although these foreign sub-managers and technicians earn way more than the unskilled workers in the production line, they often make less than Egyptian workers with equivalent skills. Another is that their loyalty is easier to guarantee, especially when they enter the country on a work-visa tied to a specific company. To some extent it might also be because creating ethnic divisions in the labour force is a good way to prevent unionizing (but in some cases it may also trigger labour unrest by creating a sense of being discriminated among the lower paid Egyptian workers - this happened in Shebeen el-Kom).

As this article points out, Egypt is wasting a lot of value and potential for industrial development by exporting high-quality cotton as a raw material while its textile industry is mostly focused on low-end products made from lower quality cotton. And this report argues that one of the major obstacles to shifting to higher-value production and increasing labour productivity in general is the lack of an educated workforce.

So what to do about this? Bring in more foreign experts and supervisors - hoping their skills will somehow "trickle down" to illiterate Egyptian workers that work for a pittance - or dealing with the root of the problem and investing in the education of your own people?

The same report identifies another important obstacle to low labour efficiency in the textile sector: poor working conditions, which can lead to "a number of productivity problems, such as worker injuries, production errors, poor quality products, absenteeism, lack of machine maintenance, haphazard inventory systems, and lack of respect and loyalty to the enterprise..."

This is a major factor in the Egyptian ready-made garments sector, where the turnover of the workforce is 8-15 percent per month, which is not surprising considering that wages often range from 150 to 200 pounds a month. Absenteeism amounts to 10-12 percent on a daily basis, equivalent to 100-120 out of 1000 workers in a given factory not showing up to work on any given day. This could be for several legitimate reasons: they may be sick or injured, or they may find occasional employment on the side that offers better pay (as we all know, it's very common for Egyptians to have two jobs).

Conclusion: if you want to improve labour efficiency, you should improve basic education and work conditions. But of course, unless you are a neoliberal or market fundamentalist, those seem like pretty desirable aims in their own right...

Pic above: "inefficient" non-unionized and expendable workers in a QIZ-zone ready garments factory.

Norwegian pension fund drops Israeli company

2009-09-03T16:16:00.005+02:00

Norway's finance minister announced today that the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd has been dropped from the national oil fund due to ethical concerns - namely the company's involvement the construction of the Wall on the West Bank. The minister told the press: "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law."

Selling shares in a company isn't exactly a strong economic sanction, but this is still a pretty powerful statement coming from a European government official. I eagerly await the response from Avigdor Lieberman and all those pundits who has been making claims like this recently: "behind the humanitarian mask that has been has been assiduously nurtured by the Nordic and Scandinavian countries, are a group of society elites, leftist journalists, clergy, employees of non-governmental agencies (NGOs), and politicans, particularly in Sweden and Norway, who have been regularly demonizing Israel and Jews, using classic themes of antisemitism, which have morphed into anti-Israel motifs."

Those who make those claims rarely (correction: never) bother to provide any proof, of course, and I strongly suspect most of them could hardly even point out Sweden or Norway on a world map.

Update: (via Ali Esbati): The decision to disinvest in Elbit was apparently taken already on June 30 this year, but made public only today, which should kill all speculation that this is somehow a revenge for Israel's criticism last month of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of novelist Knut Hamsun - a celebrated novelist who won the Nobel prize in the 20's but later became infamous and widely condemned for his Nazi sympathies.

Ben-Gurion and Sinai

2009-09-02T11:10:00.003+02:00

I'm currently working (or should be working) on a piece on the Suez Crisis/Tripartite Aggression, which - as Israeli historian Avi Shlaim points out - is not only one of the most famous but also the "best-documented war plot in modern history." The deceit and lies and bizarre worldview that led up to the war is a truly fascinating (and horrifying) piece of history that makes present-day neocon warmongers like Dick Cheney look like amateurs.

The highlights are provided by David Ben-Gurion - prime minister and defense minister of Israel. At the secret conference that produced the Protocol of Sèvres, Ben-Gurion was at his expansionist best. First he floated a proposal to re-organize the entire Middle East, giving the east bank of the Jordan river (Jordan, that is) to Iraq, annexing southern Lebanon to Israel in order to help establish a Maronite Christian state in the rest of the country, and toppling Nasser and replacing him with a pro-western leader that would also be prepared to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Later, in a private conversation with his french counterpart, he suggested "tearing" Sinai from Egypt. On 25 October 1956, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary: "I told him (the french minister) about the discovery of oil in southern and western Sinai, and that it would be good to tear this peninsula from Egypt, because it did not belong to her, rather it was the English who stole it from the Turks when they believed that Egypt was in their pocket. I suggested laying down a pipeline from Sinai to Haifa to refine the oil..."

Much can be said about Ben-Gurion, but at least he was a man of vision...

Shebeen el-Kom workers on hunger strike after being fired

2009-08-31T11:56:00.003+02:00

Tadamon reports that five workers at Indorama Shebeen el-Kom went on hungerstrike yesterday morning, after being fired by the company. After an 11-day strike in the factory in March, four strike leaders were transferred to the company's warehouse in Alexandria - two of whom are now among the workers who were fired.

The "blood-libel" row from a Swedish horizon

2009-08-24T20:39:00.014+02:00

I've been following the Sweden-Israel organ theft / blood-libel row in disbelief for the past week. I resisted commenting on it so far because I just found the whole affair too ridiculous and blown out of proportion by media - in Israel, Sweden and elsewhere. I mean, who even cares what Avigdor Lieberman says? And who, except hardcore zionists, is not an anti-semite according to his world view?

Still, as a Swedish journalist I've been receiving a lot of questions about this from foreign friends, so I might as well share a few thoughts on the matter.

As for the controversial article itself, I found it unconvincing at best, sensationalist and irresponsible at worst - but definitely not anti-semitic. First of all it's important to remember that it is not strictly a news report, but more like an opinion piece. The author doesn't explicitly claim he actually knows organ theft took place, but recounts things he saw and stories he heard on the occupied Palestinian territories in the early 90's, makes a link to a recent organ trade scandal involving the US and Israel, and calls for an investigation.

Nevertheless, I partially agree with Matthew Cassel at The Electronic Intifada who objects to the article because it gives Israel an opportunity to undermine well-founded reports about serious human rights violations. Here's an excerpt of his article (read it all here):

"Unlike Bostrom's reporting, when most Palestinian human rights organizations or other journalists have uncovered Israeli violations, they are sure to provide well-documented evidence to prove beyond a doubt that such violations were in fact committed. Even though Israel has made it very difficult for both Palestinian and international journalists and human rights workers to practice inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many have risked their lives to see that evidence of Israel's crimes is uncovered and reported.

/---/ The fact that Bostrom did not offer evidence for his organ theft claims has given Israel an enormous propaganda gift. Because he offered nothing more than conjecture and hearsay, Israel has launched a major campaign casting itself as an aggrieved victim of "blood libel." This allows Israel to distract attention from the mountains of evidence of well-documented war crimes, and even to discredit real evidence."

I'm not sure, though, that this will actually turn out as a propaganda victory for Israel in the end. The campaign against the Swedish government and Aftonbladet, the Swedish daily that published the article, looks too much like a farce to be taken seriously. It is obviously part of a desperate campaign by the right wing, ultra-nationalistic Israeli government to use any possible opportunity to distract from its own conduct on the occupied territories (especially the continuing criticism against the recent war on Gaza and expansion of settlements) and to appear strong in front of its own constituencies.

It is extremely unlikely that the Swedish government would apologize for or condemn the article - to give in for such Israeli demands after refusing to do the same after the publication of the controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed would be suicide, PR-wise. The Israeli government is fully aware of this, of course, but Avigdor Lieberman doesn't want an apology - being regarded as pariah more or less everywhere, he simply wants to flex his muscles.

The Swedish government, in turn, probably isn't very concerned that this affair might hurt diplomatic relations between the two countries. Israel won't suddenly expel the Swedish military attaché from Tel Aviv, for example (if they ever did it would be extremely ironic, since withdrawal of the military attaché and an end to all military cooperation between the two countries has long been a major demand of leftist and pro-Palestinian groups in Sweden) or cancel trade deals with the European Union.

In fact, the Swedish right-wing government may come out as a winner of this affair since it is currently seen as "standing up" against unreasonable Israeli demands, playing along with the public opinion which grew more critical of Israel during the war on Gaza, while presenting no real criticism of the continuing Israeli politics of apartheid and occupation.

In the end, I believe this affair will only hurt the image of Israel in Sweden further. I strongly suspect that a vast majority of Swedes (regardless of what they think of the Aftonbladet-article, if they even read it) view the Israeli demands as unreasonable and unworthy of a supposedly democratic state, are sick and tired of having to put up with Avigdor Liebermans Swede-bashing on TV night after night, and of Israel-supporters branding all their opponents as anti-semites (a strategy that has always carried a risk of causing a serious backlash - ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?)

In an ironic twist, some Israelis are now calling for a boycott of Swedish products. I'm tempted to say: Go ahead, and why don't you start with the Volvo-bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes in the occupied territories... And if even Israelis themselves accept boycott as a legitimate way of putting political pressure on countries whose policies we dislike, this should give a boost to the international BDS-movement and the international boycott of Israeli products.

International unions criticize Egypt's government

2009-08-24T14:09:00.006+02:00

Via the CTUWS website: The Public Services International, PSI, sent a protest letter directed to the Prime Minister of Egypt against the pressures on the Real Estate Tax Collectors union. An excerpt: "PSI urges your government to take swift measures to ensure that RETA can freely exercise its role as an independent trade union organisation; to condemn all acts of intimidation and harassment against the leadership and members of RETA and to condemn all external interference in RETA’s activities."

PSI is a global trade union federation representing more than 20 million men and women working with public services around the world. URETA was accepted as a member in April, as the first Egyptian union outside the state-controlled trade union federation. While this kind of criticism may not affect the government of Egypt very much, it is certainly embarrassing for the state-affiliated unions - two of which are also members of PSI - who are increasingly seen outside of Egypt as the pro-regime tools of social control they have long been.

Tax Collectors Repeat Historical Sit-in

2009-08-11T14:42:00.005+03:00

Egypt's real estate tax collectors have begun a strike in defense of their independent union. Hossam el-Hamalawy is twittering from their sit-in in Hussein Hegazy street outside the cabinet, where hundreds are chanting against the state-controlled unions - just like they did for 11 days some 20 months ago.

This reminds me of a remark made by Kamal Abu Eita, the head of the free union, during a conference organized by Tadamon just before I left Egypt in June: "Everyone is saying that we created the first independent union in Egypt since 1957. But every union is independent, and controlled by it's members - if it isn't, it's not a union. So we have in fact established the first union in Egypt since the 50'

Given the extent of state manipulation and control of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation I believe this statement was correct. When security intervenes to purge "radical" workers from even the lowest levels of the union hierarchy, which often happened in the last union elections in 2006, unions cease to be unions and turn into branches of the state.

This is why this is probably going to be an intense confrontation, where more is at stake than the fight over who is going to control the social fund - the final outcome this struggle may determine the viability of the future existence of the only real union in Egypt.

UPDATE: Hossam uploaded some pics here, and will post continuous updates and links (English and Arabic) here.

Egypt's State-Controlled Unions Under Pressure

2009-08-10T17:02:00.008+03:00

The state-controlled trade union federation has been coming under increasing pressure lately, as the wave of wildcat strikes continues - especially in the textile sector - and different groups of workers and state employees attempt to organize independently. The isolation of the state-controlled unions is underlined by two important developments, unfolding as I'm writing this (check out Hossam Al-Hamalawy's blogg for updates): First, the threat by the tax collectors' independent union to go on national strike on Tuesday to defend their union, secondly the refusal of the workers at Tanta Flax and Oils to suspend their strike (which just entered its third month) despite orders to do so from the state-controlled union.

Since I'm not in Egypt I can't report on these events directly, but perhaps some (very brief) history would be in place - for those not familiar with the background of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) and its relation to the state.

As Egypt emerged from the post-WWII economic crisis, strike wave and struggle for national liberation, a vibrant trade union movement had developed. In the early 50's experienced unionists and political activists on the left sought to establish a national federation of trade unions - but their founding conference was banned by the Free Officers after the coup of July 1952. Instead, the federation was founded only in 1957 under the tutelage of the new regime.

During the Nasser era, workers were granted a number of benefits, with one of the most important probably being the strenghtening of employment security, but faced new restrictions on the right to strike and organize independently. This "social contract," as some social scientists would call it, was broken - or made irrelavant - in the 70's. As the neo-liberal wave hit Egypt and Sadat introduced his "intifah" policies, the rapidly increasing gulf between working people and more affluent classes led to an upsurge of the left and a new wave of wildcat strikes around the years 1974 and 1975.

One of the results of this upsurge of the left and the workers movement was that more than 4000 "leftists" - including both socialists or communists and Nasserists - were elected to positions within the unions in 1976. Many of them were dedicated to strenghtening the independence of the trade union federation, but more importantly they - and many non-ideological unionists - were hard opponents of the politics of liberalization and privatization, which was then only starting to take shape. (I recommend Marsha Pripstein Posusney's Labour and the State in Egypt for a detailed analysis of this period).

The regime responded to this upsurge of workers' militancy and leftist politics in two ways. First, Sadat encouraged islamic movements on the universities (some of which would later turn into militant jihadist groups) to counter the left. Second, the regime cracked down on the radical elements of the trade union movement. The bread riots in January 1977, a spontaneous revolt led by workers and the urban poor against an IMF-sponsored decision to cut bread subsidies, was used as a pretext to arrest hundreds of leftists and radical workers.

New laws passsed during this period introduced hard labour as punishment for striking workers and imposed hard restrictions on who could enter trade union elections - anyone considered a member of a group that opposed the "divine laws" of the state was banned. As a consequence, only a little more than a hundred "leftists" won positions in the unions in the 1979 elections - and many of them were jailed in the continued crackdown on the left and labour movement in the following years. In this way, the unions were purged from virtually anyone considered a radical - from communists to non-ideological but comitted unionists - paving the way for the continued push towards economic restructuring along neo-liberal free market-principles.

It should be noted that during the repression of the left during the 70's, some "leftists" decided to break with their past to avoid arrest and save their careers. While some did this out of fear, the more opportunistic ones even joined the NDP. Among the latter we find Aisha abdel Hady, a former member of the socialist Tagammu party that "switched sides" in order to climb through the trade union structure and eventually become minister of manpower - a position she has recently used to denounce strikes as being "incited by the Muslim Brootherhood" and attack the independent press for giving them coverage...

This is something to bear in mind whenever anyone says that Egyptian workers are only raising economic demands and don't care about politics. With the authoritarian state excerting such efforts to manipulate and control the unions - by suspending all resemblance of internal democracy - the line between economic and political demands grows very thin. Any worker raising his or her voice against bad working conditions of low salaries is also engaging in a political act. And when workers feel betrayed by their unions, their anger is quickly directed against the state - since the difference between them is almost non-existent anyway. And when they eventually try and form their own unions that truly represent them, they do so fully aware that the regime will perceive this a serious political challenge that has to be crushed.

Court overturns transfer decree of Mahalla labour blogger

2009-07-29T19:58:00.005+03:00

Kareem el-Beheiry reports on his blog that a court in Mahalla has overturned the transfer decree issued against him by the manager of Misr Spinning and Weaving in Mahalla after a anti-privatization protest at the factory in October 2008 - just like it did months ago with the transfers of several labour activists in the factory (as far as I know these court verdicts has not been implemented, however). Lawyers describe this decision as an important victory as they are also fighting to get Kareem reinstated at work after he was fired in May... (Btw, here are some pics taken by Kareem at the Tanta Flax and Oils strike a few days ago.)

Reuters take on the strike wave

2009-07-15T12:24:00.007+03:00

Alistair Sharp reports on the strike wave in Egypt for Reuters, drawing this conclusion: "Striking Egyptian workers are unlikely to escalate demands for better conditions into a political challenge to the government, but stoppages will make state assets less attractive to investors." Some comments are in place.

Socialist journalist Hossam al-Hamalawy and Mahalla union activist Gihad Taman are both quoted in support of the idea that workers are not influenced or controlled by any opposition groups. But I'm not sure they would agree with the more far-reaching conclusion that workers won't "escalate demands" into a "political challenge"...

First of all, the fact that workers dismiss the currently existing opposition movements and political parties doesn't mean they will always stay out of the political sphere. Ironically, Gihad Taman who was interviewed in this article, happens to be a strong supporter of the idea of an independent worker's party. (Update: For Hossams view on this issue, see this post from 2007 that takes on the view that Egypt's strikers doesn't care about politics).

Secondly, strikes and sit-ins always constitute a political challenge of some sort in an authoritarian state even when workers don't chant "down with Mubarak." If the tolerance of industrial action has increased slightly in recent years it is only because workers fought and won this right by challenging a ban that was previously upheld with force (and still is in many cases). The state-controlled textile worker's union didn't suddenly call for a strike in Tanta because they have the legal right to do so (they always had) but because they and the government is desperate to control and contain the workers' demands, directing them away from dangerous ideas like re-nationalization of privatized factories. Such demands - while on the surface dealing only with economic policies - would amount to a serious political challenge to a regime with privatization and economic liberalization as primary ideology.

The article also contains the obligatory analysis by liberal economic analysts, which in this case does contain some truth: Of course the strikes will reduce the appeal of state-owned assets to foreign investors. This is another reason why they constitute a political threat. We are talking about a challenge against the heart of the government's strategy of economic development: attracting foreign investment by selling out state assets (this is why much of the numbers and statistics on FDI in Egypt is dubious - it's not about creating something new but taking over already existing plants, it's not about creating employment but more often about mass layoffs - when it's not simply about buying land in the desert or along the coast to build luxury villa compounds of course).

I think this article would also have benefited from a little more research on the economic circumstances of the workers. The only number that is presented is the claim by a spokesman of Misr Spinning and Weaving in Mahalla that the average annual salary of workers there increased to 15,000 pounds in 2007-2008 compared to 8,500 pound five years earlier. Even if the numbers are correct (which can't be taken for granted given the tendency of some officials to lie journalists straight in the face since they know that most of them won't check the numbers) it's the real wages, with inflation taken into account, that matter for the workers. Even more important in this case is the distribution of the salaries. How big was the raise for this company spokesman during this period, compared to shop-floor workers, for example? Does it matter that the average salary is 15,000 if a typical worker makes half that sum a year, while top managers make that sum every month?

"Like a kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them."

2009-07-15T11:16:00.003+03:00

The Israeli organization "Breaking the Silence" today published a report with testimonies of soldiers who participated in "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza six months ago, documenting the total disregard for civilian life during the war:

Among the 54 testimonies are stories revealing the use of "accepted practices," the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military purpose, the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas, the killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private property, and most of all, a permissive atmosphere in the command structure that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions. The booklet compiles the testimonies of about 30 reserve and regular combat soldiers from various units that participated in the fighting. The testimonies demonstrate that the soldiers were not given directives stating the goal of the operation and, as one soldier testifies, "there was not much said about the issue of innocent civilians."

Many soldiers said that they fought without seeing "the enemy before their eyes." "You feel like an infantile little kid with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them," one of the soldiers testified that "a 20-year-old kid should not have to do these kinds of things to other people."

A convenient distraction?

2009-07-07T11:13:00.004+03:00

It is very easy to understand the anger that the murder of Marwa el-Sherbini in Germany has provoked in Egypt. As usual, there is a lot to be said about western media bias (imagine, as many bloggers suggest, what a story it would be if some fanatic stabbed a German citizen to death in Cairo). And even if we can never understand or explain every single act of violence completely, I believe the general climate of intolerance and islamophobia that exists in Europe today must be at least part of the explanation.

Nevertheless, I think Mostafa Hussein has a good point when he compares the public reaction to the murder with that against another murder that took place in Egypt last year: "Marwa was also a pregnant Egyptian mother and her son witnessed her death. Mervat, however, was never called a martyr. Mervat's death is not an isolated incident. Every couple of months we know of a death by the hands of our police, with great impunity by the ministry of interior, prosecution and judiciary. Let alone torture which happens daily."

Did Sheikh Tantawy call for the capital punishment against any of those police torturers? And did any government officials attend the funerals of their victims? I don't think so. Islamophobia is a real problem for many muslims in Europe - but for regimes like the one in Egypt it is often a convenient distraction: Point to the crimes of others to hide your own.

Police repression of journalists in Tanta

2009-07-01T13:19:00.005+03:00

Joseph Mayton reports on police violence and harrasment against journalists who tried to cover the Tanta Flax & Oil Co. strike: "This is when they started pushing me harder and harder back from the gate. I felt a punch land on my side, but thought little of it as I continued to stand my ground. Finally, a uniformed officer interceded and began talking to me. He was cordial, introducing himself as Ibrahim (24-years-old and straight of the academy). There was no going any further he said and promised to go and talk to the state security chief present. With my six or so-man escort, we made it back to the large, obese man sitting and talking to the American writer who had accompanied on the trip. I said that I was going to walk on the 'public street' and look inside the factory to see what was going on and then I would leave. Every step I would take was followed by at least two, often three or four, men jumping front, fists clenched and ready to pounce. I said that I had a job to do and that I must look into the factory. One of the men said that if I tried again that I would be arrested and driven to the Tanta police station. He looked serious." Read it all.

A clear example of how the strict limits on labour activism (as well as freedom of the press) in Egypt is still in place. The union of textile workers apparently got a green light to support the strike in Tanta, as a token evidence that such actions are tolerated in Egypt. But security agencies still wants to restrict media access to the workers and isolate them in order to break their morale as well as preventing industrial action from spreading.

"Journalist ya basha? Come write about our troubles!"

2009-06-30T19:07:00.004+03:00

Mahalla blogger and former detainee Mohamed Mar'ee reports (with pics) on cleaning workers on the streets of Tanta. He saw them working amidst the garbage without any protective clothing, and stoped to take some pics. But, he writes, "as soon as I took my camera out they stoped working and called at me: Journalist ya basha? Why don't you come and take pictures of us and write about our problems? We make 3 pounds a day!" The workers told him they are 280 workers all working on temporary contracts, with no job security, and a total monthly salary of 156(!) pounds. They also said they have attempted to strike to achieve permanent employment contracts and a raise but were threatened with loosing their jobs.

The narrative of the workers are familiar, but also the story surrounding it. It reminds me of when I first came to Egypt in 2006, believing that it would be hard to get ordinary people to talk openly about politics or criticize the government. Instead, as soon as I learnt a little of the Egyptian dialect I found that wherever I went people would be eager to tell their stories - usually about not being able to make a living anymore - and it would usually end with a tirade against the useless and corrupt "government of thieves" and surprisingly often against Mubarak himself. And that was before either the "global food crisis" or the "global financial crisis" hit.

Hypocrisy Beyond all Imagination

2009-06-30T00:49:00.005+03:00

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.

MB - Turning the other cheek?

2009-06-29T10:03:00.005+03:00

There was a new crackdown on high-ranking MB leaders on Saturday morning, including Dr Abdel-Monein Aboul Fotouh - sometimes described as a leader of the "reformist" trend within the movement and respected by many outside its ranks. The Arabist speculates that this has something to do with Gaza: "Considering all of these people were involved in the fundraising drive and aid effort to Gaza, and the Egyptian government has just reopened the border, one wonders whether there’s any connection."

On the other hand, blogger Mahmoud Abdel-Monein sees the crackdown as part of the ongoing attempt to weaken the movement ahead of the coming transfer of the presidential post from Mubarak to his son. He goes on to criticize the weak response of the movement to recent crackdowns, pointing out that even when high leaders received harsh prison sentences in military tribunals last year, the movement left the campaigning on their behalf to their female relatives and younger bloggers. "Why did the movement decide to turn the other cheek to receive another slap?" he asks.

Abdel-Monein doesn't try to answer this question. But one of the commentators on his blog suggest that it is because of weakness: It is clear the Ikwhan doesn't have a million active members as many use to claim. "Most of them are behind bars." Even if this is an exaggeration, it would surprise me if the passivity in the face of the governments repression didn't cause considerable damage to the movement's appeal among the younger generation.

Homophobic Unions?

2009-06-28T14:00:00.003+03:00

This strange piece of news was published in Al-Shourouq yesterday: The Egyptian Trade Union Federation refused a proposal by the ILO at its 98th session in Geneva to "give the right to homosexuals to enter the organizations" as well as the "migration of workers with HIV/AIDS between member states" which could "threaten the health" of other workers. These practices is against Islam, a representative of the state-controlled federation explained. The article also states that representatives of Arab and Muslim states suspended their participation in the conference because they regarded the calls of ILO to protect human rights "regardless of sexual orientation" as a "call to spread homosexuality in the world and give it official recognition."

Besides being a completely ignorant standpoint to start with, it is not clear exactly what proposals the article referes to. One of the items on the agenda of the conference was "to adopt an international labour standard on HIV/AIDS in order to increase the attention devoted to the subject at the national and international level, to promote united action among the key actors on HIV/AIDS and to increase the impact of the ILO code of practice on HIV/AIDS and the world of work, adopted in 2001." And just before the conference, the ILO released a report on discrimination and stigmatization of workers living with HIV and Aids, calling for the end of such practices.

It seems like the state-controlled unions are desperate to find any way to score cheap points - even by playing on and reinforcing prejudice, ignorance and homophobia - since they are unable and/or unwilling to take the fight for workers rights, even as they are challenged by growing calls for free unions in Egypt. Pathetic.

New wave of repression against free union

2009-06-27T12:54:00.003+03:00

The state-backed union has launched a new wave of attacks on the independent Union of Real Estate Tax Authority Employees, according to the Center for socialist studies. These includes a physical assault by a representative of the state union on a free unionist in Gharbeyya. In Qaliubeyya several unionists has been subject to disciplinary measures for collecting membership fees for the free union, while local ministry officials has been threatened with punishment if they cooperate with the independent union. A representative of the union says that these attacks are a sign of weakness, not strenght, since the state union fears becoming irrelevant and loosing all its influence on the labour movement.

Pic above: tax collectors celebrate the founding of the first free union in Egypt at the Press Syndicat, December 20 last year.

Tanta strikers block street after worker was refused treatment

2009-06-27T11:07:00.004+03:00

Tadamon reports: Striking workers from Tanta Linen Co. blocked a street on Thursday in protest after one of their collegaues, who had collapsed inside the company, was refused treatment at the American Hospital. The workers were told that the owner of the company had cancelled the contract with the hospital for treatment of its workers. The worker was admitted into the hospital for treatment only after police intervened, in order to calm the workers down and clear the street.

As the strike has now been going on for close to a month, Tadamon also reports that workers are increasingly voicing demands for the company to be re-nationalized.

What suddenly changed?

2009-06-26T19:39:00.006+03:00

Western media often have a funny way of refusing to speak in a straightforward manner about the most simple things - calling colonies "settlements", or occupied territory "disputed" for example. This applies especially to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, and Swedish media is usually no different from other Western media in this regard. So I was positively surprised by this article about Netanyahus trip to Europe this week, and the resistance he met there against his demand that Israel should be allowed to "continue colonize the West Bank." Further on, the journalist uses the (very correct and straightforward) phrase "extensive jewish colonization" of the West Bank to describe Israel's settlement policy. Surely this would have been almost unthinkable in a mainstream daily newspaper not so long ago?

I haven't been following Swedish media coverage of the conflict closely during my stay in Egypt, so I can't tell for sure, but this might be a small indication that a broader change in attitudes towards Israeli colonialism and apartheid is taking place. I think the public outcry against the war on Gaza might have played a role in this, as well as the new focus of the Obama-administration on the issue of settlements (even if he is wrong to focus narrowly on settlement expansion - the Arabist blog has a good discussion about this issue over here.) But of course, it might also be simply because it is easier for journalists to write critically about a right-wing Israeli government including blatant racists like Lieberman.

Pic above: Jewish colony Har Homa in eastern Jerusalem in the background, a demolished Palestinian home in front.

Tanta Linen Co. strike continues despite pressure from government and state security

2009-06-24T12:49:00.003+03:00

The Tanta Linen / Flax and Oils Co. strike continues, now on its fourth week, Al-Masry Al-Youm reports. Said Gowhary, head of the general union of textile workers, claims the union will continue to support the workers - "whatever happens" - in spite of pressures from the Ministry of Manpower, the governor of Gharbeya, and state security to end the strike. The Saudi investor who owns the company has so far refused any negotiations. The workers are demanding that their bonuses and incentives are calculated based on the current salary (as stipulated in the law) rather than the salary when the company was privatized, as well as the reinstatement of 9 workers - including 2 unionists - that were fired after a strike in July last year.

Israelis fear loosing their favourite enemy

2009-06-23T11:33:00.005+03:00

With their usual twisted logic, some Israelis analysts now say they prefer Ahmadinejad as president of Iran as he "will be easier to isolate than reformist leader Mr. Mousavi," the Christian Science Monitor reports. (One might add that the Israeli defense and political establishment invested considerable support in building up Ahmadinejad as a boogeyman to keep their own population in a state of constant fear - with Mousavi they would have to start all over again). Maybe that's why Israeli president Shimon Peres came out as a strong supporter of Mousavi on Sunday, calling for regime change in Iran - because he knows such support will do more harm than good for the Iranian opposition...

Political Liberties vs. Economic Justice in Iran?

2009-06-18T18:59:00.007+03:00

(Here's a link to a demotix story with a few good shots of today's mass rally in Teheran. And here's a slideshow from The Guardian.)

Continuing on a theme from my previous post, I'm having some doubts about the "class analysis" of the Iranian elections put forward by a few commentators. For example, Ron Jacobs writes: "Ahmadinejad’s support comes from those who need bread while Moussavi’s comes from those with plenty of bread and now want more civil liberties. While it is arguably true that Ahmadinejad’s policies have caused as many economic policies [problems?] as they have solved, the fact remains that his supporters believe in his 2005 campaign call to bring the oil profits to the dinner table."

This is certainly true to some extent, even though I think it's over-simplified - but I don't think Jabobs is right to draw the conclusion that the struggle for "political liberties" and "economic justice" is currently "at odds" in Iran. First of all, to argue this would seem to imply that in at least some instances, only an authoritarian regime can bring economic justice. Secondly, it is not clear that Mousavi would bring political liberties to Iran any more than Ahmadinejad is going to bring any significant economic justice. But if Mousavi (or rather the mass protests currently under way in Teheran since I don't think Mousavi should take credit for this) did in fact bring more political liberties or even the fall of the Islamic regime, wouldn't Iranian workers and poor be the biggest winners in the long run - even if Mousavi and his allies are in favour of slightly more neo-liberal economic polices than Ahmadinejad?

Iran is not Venezuala, and Ahmadinejad is not Hugo Chavez. If he really was this populist - if slightly authoritarian - leader advocating economic justice and staunch anti-imperialism that he is sometimes portrayed as, then why doesn't the urban poor of Teheran, who surely outnumber the upper middle-class by at least 5 to 1, come out in support of him? Maybe if he had in fact brought the "oil profits to the dinner table" during his last period in power, they would have.

Solidarity statement with Tanta workers

2009-06-18T17:06:00.005+03:00

An encouraing example of solidarity among Egyptian workers and civil servants: "The committé for solidarity with Tanta Linen Co. Workers" - including Mahalla textile workers, The real estate tax collectors union in addition to political activists and rights groups - released a statement in support of the demands of the Tanta workers who have been on strike for three weeks. The statement also criticizes the government for refusing to protect the worker's rights and demands that the privatization of the company, that was sold to a Saudi investor in 2005, is cancelled.

Iranian frustrations

2009-06-18T11:13:00.009+03:00

It's easy to get frustrated with the media coverage of the mass protests following the election in Iran. It is often shallow and fragmented, it doesn't give a voice to the full range of Iranian society (with non farsi-speaking reporters relying mostly on english-speaking upper middle class Iranians or even Iranians in exile) and often overstates the role of internet and social media networks like twitter.

But to be honest, it's also increasingly frustrating to follow some of the commentaries in the left-wing blogosphere (please see clarification below), where many dismiss the mass protests in Iran because Mousavi is a CIA-agent and/or a member of the ruling establishment, while the protests are led by students and affluent Iranians, not the poor masses who are often (dubiously) portrayed as supporting Ahmadinejad.

I think this is unfair, perhaps not to Mousavi but certainly to most of his "supporters." As far as I understand, there is at least two struggles going on in Iran right now. One is taking place between different wings of the power elite, and here it is easy to dismiss Mousavi as just another member of the ruling establishment that temporarily stepped into the role of "democratic opposition leader" to gain power.

But before dismissing the protests and echoing the regime's accusations of "US meddling" in the internal affairs of Iran, it is important to acknowledge that the people in the streets are not simply "Mousavi-supporters." They may have voted for Mousavi in the election - that may or may not have been rigged - but (according to most Iranians I spoke to recently) they don't see him as their "leader" or the ideal president. Instead, they voted for him as the only available symbol of opposition to the current system in Iran today.

It's a mistake to assume that Iranians are taking to the streets and risking their lives simply for Mousavi to gain power - even if this is one possible outcome of their actions. Instead, they frame their protest as a desperate revolt against the political system itself. This is the other struggle currently taking place in Iran. One sign that this is a popular movement that isn't strictly controlled from the top is that many took to the streets even as Mousavi called for his supporters to stay at home to "avoid a bloodshed." So while the revolt in Iran certainly isn't a "revolution" - yet - this is not a reason to dismiss it out of hand.

Most importantly, it should not be assumed that the protests, even if they were started by students, cannot spread to include other segments of the population. Yes the Shah was overthrown by a massive general strike, but islamist students played an important role in triggering the wave of mass protests that culminated in the revolution of 1979. Despite the support for Ahmadinejad in poor rural and urban areas, it would be extremely naive to describe him as some kind of champion of social justice, considering - for example - the routine oppression of union activists in Iran.

Iran is not a democracy, after all, and support for Ahmadinejad in the polls is not easily translated into support in the streets (if it was, and he actually won the election, why didn't his supporters take control of Teheran already?) This is why the media wars and blackouts are so important to the regime: If more Iranians come to regard the protests less as part of a power struggle between the ruling elite, and more as a popular revolt against the oppressive political system, anything can happen.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: I really hate generalizations and regret using the term "left-wing blogosphere" (a term that is broad enough to include this blog) without providing links to specific posts or blogs. I have tried to correct this, and might as well add that I'm not accusing anyone of endorsing the crackdown on protests in Iran, just questioning the way some people jump from a legitimate criticism of Mousavi or Western media bias to an outright dismissal of the street protests or even endorsement of the Iranian regime as the "elected government."

Labour updates

2009-06-15T11:47:00.004+03:00

The activists at Tadamon is continuing their great work in covering the labour movement. Some updates from the last few days:

* 6 labour leaders at Misr-Iran Spinning and Weaving (in Suez) has been fired.

* 250 workers at Fayyoum Sugar Co. staged a sit-in that lasted three days, demanding that the company's budget be revealed so that workers can know their proper bonuses, the payment of overtime, as well as the reinstatement of a labour activist that had been fired. The last demand is accordance with a court verdict on 27 May (companies regularly ignore to implement verdicts like this, with impunity it seems.) The sit-in was suspended on Saturday evening, after the management had agreed to some demands (including a substantial raise of the food allowance from 2 to 10 pounds/day) and promised to discuss others in a meeting on 25 June.

* Meanwhile, the Tanta Flax and Oils Co strike is now on its third week...

Pigs gone, virus still around

2009-06-11T17:24:00.005+03:00

Temporarily left Egypt, and just in time to avoid the H1N1-"swine flu" outbreak it seems. The appearance of the virus in Cairo in recent days only highlights the wisdom of the Egyptian government's mass-slaughter of pigs, I guess... At least now they won't catch the flu.

Egyptian small farmers under siege

2009-06-08T13:11:00.004+03:00

Click the pic above for a set on Flickr of farmers in Meet Shehaala, Monofiyya governorate, which I visited yesterday. Large parts of the lands of this village and neighboring Kamshish were once part of the giant estate of the Fiqqi family, but was confiscated and divided during the land reforms of the 60's. Since the early 70's there has been a trend towards reversal of these reforms. New laws have been passed, making it possible in some cases for heirs of old "feudalists" to claim back parts of their land.

Often, farmers have resisted these attempts and violent confrontations have taken place in many parts of the delta since the mid 90's. In 2004, armed thugs attacked farmers in Meet Shehaala to gain control of a warehouse and a water pump station that once belonged to the local land reform cooperative. The villagers managed to capture one of the thugs and delivered him and his unlicensed firearm to the police. In the end, however, it was 6 of the farmers who were sentenced to jail by the local court - a sentence which was appealed by human rights lawyers and anulled by a higher court.

Today, the situation is one of a stalemate, with the farmers in constant fear of the old landlords returning to reclaim their land with force. Meanwhile, they face serious economic pressures, as the reduced subsidies on seeds, fertilizers and other necessary equipments means that small-scale farming is increasingly unprofitable. Famers who used to be able to support their families now fear being forced to leave their lands to join the ever growing pool of unemployed.

"Obama should listen to us"

2009-06-06T14:50:00.008+03:00

So Obama came, talked, and left - and it's business as usual in Cairo again. I'm not going to analyze the speech here, but will restrict myself to this one comment: While Obama may still believe that he was speeking at Cairo University - this "source of Egypt's advancement" (never mind the routine repression of cultural and political life on campus) - in reality he never did. For what is a university, after all, without students? Once emptied of its true owners, an institution like this is reduced to nothing more than a dead monument. It's no longer an institution of learning and progress but merely a stage - which is exactly what Obama was looking for when he came to Egypt of course. I don't know about Egyptian students, but I would for sure have been deeply insulted if I'd been thrown out of my university for a visit like this. In that respect - and despite all the nice words about friendship and peace and equality - it was a truly colonial moment, indicating that Egypt still doesn't fully belong to the Egyptians but to the ruling clique and its foreign patrons. Was this really the proper way to start a "new beginning" between the United States and the muslim world?

At the end of the day, the ordinary Egyptians I spoke to about the visit and the speech was mostly indifferent. While some where clearly impressed by Obama' charisma and his positive remarks about Islam ("He is a hundred times better than Bush"), almost no one expressed any hope that real change in US policy is actually waiting around the corner. One of the best comments was uttered by a taxi driver last night. As the speech was mentioned on the radio, I asked him for his opionion. His response was: "I didn't hear it and I don't want to hear it. I heard it was a nice speech, but who cares? I'll listen to President Obama when he starts listening to us. Learn how to listen first, then you can talk."

Crisis continues

2009-06-05T12:05:00.004+03:00

The Center for Trade Union and Workers Services released a third monthly report about the effects of the global financial crisis in Egyptian workers. It documents continued layoffs during May, especially in the tourism and textile sector, and warns that some companies are using the crisis as an excuse to cut back on worker's rights, while criticizing the government for not acting to protect the interests of workers.

Meanwhile, the state-controlled General Union for Textile Workers decided to extend the strike at the Tanta Flax and Oils Company for another week. This company was sold to a Saudi investor in 2005, who immediately cut back on a number of worker's benefits. Between 2006 and 2008 three wildcat strikes occured at the factory. After the last one in july 2008 nine workers were fired, including two unionists. Yet it was not untill recently that the state-controlled union decided to invervene - after coming under pressure from increased labour unrest because of the global recession, intensifying attempts to organize independently, as well as criticism from ILO regarding Egypt's violations of internationell labour conventions.

The effects of throwing someone from a fourth floor balcony

2009-05-26T09:36:00.003+03:00

"Fracture of the right leg, hip and shoulder, three pelvic fractures, fracture nose, facial injuries, fracture of three vertebrae, blood accumulation in the stomach and around the liver, post concussion syndrome and difficulty breathing to upward pressure of abdominal blood collections."

According to El-Nadeem Center for Treatment of Victims of Torture this is the injuries suffered by Muslim Brotherhood member Fares Barak when he was thrown from a balcony on the fourth floor by state security investigators, who broke into his flat as the family was celebrating the 7th birthday of their daughter, on May 17.

EDC owners accused of "oppressing" Chinese workers

2009-05-25T15:22:00.003+03:00

Despite the reputation of Scandinavian countries as progressive, just and socially advanced, our capitalists are just like any others, it seems... especially when operating in "third world" countries like Egypt or China. I was just sent this link to an article about A.P. Moller-Maersk, the Danish company that owns 45% of the Egyptian Drilling Company (EDC), which was recently accused of laying off employees on fixed contracts while hiring new workers on temporary contracts. The report in Danish daily Politiken recounts accusations concerning a container factory in Dongguan in southern China, owned by Maersk, where workers are said to suffer from health hazards, corruption within the management, and humiliating work rules - including a ban on strikes (with no basis in Chinese law according to an expert interviewed in the article) imposed in June 2008 after a series of strikes and protests for better work conditions. A number of reports and statements in Danish and English are available at the Hong Kong-based Globalization Monitor.

Statement: "Egyptian Postal Workers Struggling Alone"

2009-05-25T11:39:00.004+03:00

The Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services issued a statement on the struggling postal workers, denouncing the detention of Mamdouh Faza'e - a postal worker from Ismailiya who was arrested by state security on charges of inciting a strike threatening the national economy - and calling for international solidarity:

"Center for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS) emphasizes on the equity of the workers’ demands, and denounces Mamdouh Faza'e’s detention and his trial. CTUWS considers this action as a dangerous curve in the relation between workers and Government, especially the right to strike is guaranteed by international treaties that Egyptian government signed on. CTUWS calls upon international federations and trade unions to support Egyptian postal workers for their just demands. - CTUWS, 24 May 2009."

Workers' protest broken up by riot police

2009-05-24T18:54:00.001+03:00

The protest by striking textile workers outside the People's Assembly has been broken up by force by the police, Hossam al-Hamalawy reports on Twitter: "Police waited till we left and staged their assault. Workers were assaulted by batons and sticks."

A couple of pics I took at the demo earlier today:

"We want to live"

2009-05-24T14:56:00.006+03:00

A couple of hundred workers from the Nile Cotton Ginning Co. gathered outside the People's Assembly in downtown Cairo today, protesting cut's in their salaries that started in November last year and was followed by new cuts last month. The workers have been on strike since April 29. Some of the company's factories in Miniya has been closed, and workers are accusing the Egyptian owner (the company was privatized by the state in the late 90's) of trying to make a quick profit by selling off equipment and land, despite the fact that the company is making profits (workers base this claim on a financial report they say was published on March 31).

"We are victims of privatization," one worker called Mustapha told me. "We are not demanding any raise or anything, just our salaries. We are creating a profit, so where is our rights? We are not going to give up. We want to live!"

Update: More background is provided in a report by Sarah Carr from August last year.

More updates from Twitter: Sarah Carr says: "Nile Cotton worker says that security are trying to break up the protest on the pretext that they are not allowed to stay there overnight," while 3arabawy reports that "police is harassing photographers.i fear they might confiscate my camera."

Latest update from Sarah Carr: Workers forced to break up protest outside PA. Worker told me that Fatma Ramadan was manhandled by the police.

State union v.s. foreign capital

2009-05-23T20:03:00.007+03:00

Workers at the Tanta Flax and Oil Company (sometimes confusingly referred to as Tanta Linen Co.) are coming under pressure from the management in an attempt to abort a strike that has been announced for May 31, Tadamon reports. The head of the local union has been forced to take a month's "vacation" without salary and is being accused of assaulting another worker.

According to workers at the company, the management also sent a letter to the General Union of Textile Workers asking it to dismiss the local union representatives (who are supposedly elected by the workers) and withdraw its backing for the strike. Two workers I spoke to yesterday welcomed the support of the union, while remaining cynical about the motives behind it: "They are afraid of independent unions, that's why they are acting now," one of them said.

Just like in Sheeben el-Kom, this company was sold to a foreign investor a few years ago (in this case a Saudi sheikh), which may be one of the reasons why the state-controlled union has chosen to intervene in this particular case. Feeling the pressure from intensifying attempts to organize workers independently, the union is trying to regain som legitimacy by backing workers against foreign capital, in a way they are still not prepared to do when it comes to companies owned by the state or Egyptian investors.

More background can be found in this report by Sarah Carr: State-run union backs textile workers’ strike.

Humanitarian workers continue hunger strike at Rafah border crossing

2009-05-22T13:50:00.003+03:00

I just spoke to a British doctor from a group of medics and aid workers who went on hunger stike at the Rafah border crossing 4 days ago, protesting the refusal of the Egyptian authorities to let them cross into Gaza after almost three weeks of waiting. Some of the hungerstrikers are from another group of medics that has been waiting at the border for 50 days. According to Dr. Omar Mangoush, police has prevented any foreigners from crossing the last checkpoints between el-Arish and Rafah since the hungerstrike started, and detained at least one Egyptian journalist for talking to the doctors "without permission."

Postal worker detained for "inciting to strike"

2009-05-18T19:23:00.003+03:00

More repression: As Hossam al-Hamalawy reported, a postal worker from Ismailiya has been detained on charges of "inciting a strike threatening the national economy". According to a statement published by the Center for Socialist Studies, Mamdouh Faza'e was arrested by state security after sending a fax to his bosses in Cairo in which he threatened with a strike unless temporary workers was employed on permanent contracts. The prosecutor has ordered his detention for 15 days for during the investigation, while labour lawyers maintain that Faza'e didn't break any law, that going on strike is a constitutional right, and that threatening to strike cannot be considered "incitement."

More on the postal workers:

* On Sunday, postal workers in Kafr el-Sheikh called for a national strike - starting Monday. This call came after the manager of the Egyptian Post Authority refused to meet a delegation of postal workers from several governorates despite the fact that "he himself had fixed the time for the meeting."

* Apparently, one of the grievances of the postal workers is that employees of the telecommunications authority earns 3 times as much, even though they belong to the same ministry. Another long-running dispute concerns the refusal of the management to give fixed contracts to workers employed after 2001.

* Today, "hundreds" of postal workers started an "open-ended" sit in in Kafr el-Sheikh. According to Al-Youm Al-Sabi'a the General Union of Postal Workers tried to convince the workers to cancel the protest.

The global crisis - an opportunity for reform?

2009-05-17T15:57:00.004+03:00

With unemployment rapidly on the rise and millions worrying about their livelihoods, some are agonizing over the fact that the global economic crisis is threatening the pace of economic reform in Egypt. The minister of trade and industry, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, complains that the global financial crisis - triggered partly by financial de-regulation - has strenghtened opponents of further financial de-regulation and privatization of state-owned banks (big surprise?). Supporters of free-market reform need not worry though, because Rachid also says that the current crisis could be used by the government to take "extraordinary measures" to speed up reform. Some shock therapy ahead..?

Statement on persecution of Mahalla unionists

2009-05-17T14:46:00.003+03:00

The "coordinating commitee for the defense of the rights and freedoms of unions and workers" released a statement (published on the Center for Socialist Studies website) denouncing measures taken by the Ghazl al-Mahalla management against union activists.

Last week, the management fired blogger Kareem el-Beheiry. As the statement points out "this is not the first time al-Beheiry and his fellow workers has been subject to arbitrary measures, as el-Beheiry and Kamal Fayoumi and Tarek Al-Sinousy was arrested after the events of 6th April 2008" - and jailed without trial for almost two months.

In November Kareem and four other workers were transfered to other branches of the company, while several others was refused the yearly "social raise", after workers at the factory staged a demonstration against alleged corruption within the management and plans to privatize the factory. The CEO also filed a court case against union activists and several journalists for publishing "lies" about the company.

The statement criticizes the Ministry of Manpower and the Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions (EFTU) for ignoring the plight of the workers, who repeatedly sent complaints and staged sit-ins at the union headquarters asking for an intervention on their behalf. The ministry and the state-controlled union did not intervene even when the management refused to implement a court verdict to revoke the arbitrary transfers and return the workers to their previous positions, thereby "showing clearly that the union is representing the interests of the employers against the workers."

Censorship strikes again

2009-05-17T09:28:00.003+03:00

Once again Egyptian censors are steping in to protect the people from dangerous influences. Al-Jazeera reports that they are refusing the director Khaled Youssef permission to screen his latest movie Dukkan Shahata ("Shahata's shop") unless he removes a scene in the end that is apparently "warning Egyptians of total chaos and clashes between the people and the police" in the coming few years, unless something is done about the country's social ills. Dangerous thoughts indeed.

Report: Impact of global crisis on Egyptian workers

2009-05-14T20:09:00.004+03:00

The Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services released its second monthly report about the impact of the global economic crisis on Egyptian workers. It's downloadable in English on their website. Some excerpts from the introduction:

* The monitoring team affirms that tens of labor sites in many of Egypt's governorates were affected, particularly in new industrial areas which lack any protection for workers"

* The global financial crisis uncovers the black labor market, for private sector workers in general and new industrial city workers in particular. It also uncovers the absence of any official union organization role in these industrial cities as the number of union committees in a city like Sadat city does not exceed 10 despite the presence of over 2,000 industrial establishments."

* The government still lacks a clear work plan to face this crisis. It continues to be silent in the face of the employers who laid off workers and reduced their salaries and incentives. The government discourse continues to ignore workers and their rights while focusing only on measures to support businessmen.

For March and April CTUWS observers recorded layoffs affecting a total of almost 12.000 workers in the textile sector, but it should be noted that most layoffs in this sector probably occured in the previous period, between november and february.

Pic above: Oil workers protesting layoffs outside the Ministry of Manpower, Monday 11 May.

Torture and "personal disputes"

2009-05-12T21:13:00.007+03:00

A member of the royal family in UAE has been "detained" after a chocking video revealed his active involvement in brutal torture, HRW reports:

UAE officials told American diplomats that the sheikh was put under "house arrest" this week and prevented from leaving the country as the ministry of Justice conducts a criminal investigation of the incidents on the videotape, ABC News reported today. /---/ The United Arab Emirates announced on April 29 that the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department would conduct an expeditious and
"comprehensive review" of the torture incident. /---/ Previously, the Ministry of Interior had characterized the abuse as an assault that the parties subsequently settled "privately".

The torture victim is reported to have owed the sheikh some money for a missing shipment of grain. This reminds me of another recent example, where an Egyptian police major was sentenced to one year in jail for forging police and medical reports to cover up the fact that he and his friend - a member of the NDP - poured gasoline over a carpenter and set him on fire, causing death (as I understand it the trial for the actual murder has not yet started). As in the UAE royal torture case, the poor man apparently owed one of the perpetrators some money.

In fact, this seem to be the standard cause of much of the torture and abuse going around nowadays - it's mostly not about "suspected terrorists" or even political opponents, but just ordinary people unfortunate enough to enter business deals with or borrowing money from the wrong crowd (in some countries it's the mafia you should avoid, in this region this piece of advice seem to apply also to members of the ruling party or the royal family.)

It's probably not a coincidence, by the way, that the few exceptional cases that becomes public like this tend to involve "personal disputes" or ordinary police torturing ordinary citizens. State security officers tormenting political prisoners remain beyond the reach of the law, of course.

Want to fight pirates? Go to London!

2009-05-12T19:14:00.003+03:00

Educational humor from the Hong Kong Standard:

"Q: Daddy, what's a pirate?
A: Pirates are strong people who attack weaker people and steal their things.
Q: You mean like the way big international trawlers have been stealing fish from Somali waters, putting local fisherman out of business?
A: Exactly.
Q: Like the European companies that commandeered the Somalia coastal shelf and dumped toxic nuclear waste there?
A: Yes, all these people can be defined as pirates.
Q: So, the people on the international ships entering Somali waters are actually the bad guys?
A: Exactly. Somalis have been complaining for years about the way the international community has cheated and poisoned them, but no one paid attention except charities and church groups.
/.../
Q: Why do the TV news channels describe the Somalis as pirates, when they're the victims?
A: Somalis are small brown people who don't wear the right labels."

Of course, reality is slightly more nuanced. For example, some of the illegal fishing in Somalia is apparently done by poor Egyptian fishermen, not rich and powerful international companies, and far from all foreign ships hi-jacked outside Somalia was involved in plundering the country's resources. But I think particularly the last lines of the dialouge above captures one of the main issues involved here: The double standards of the Western Great Powers that seem to reach new heights every day.

I recently wrote an article in Swedish about the background to the pirate phenomenon outside Somalia: How the uncontrolled and illegal plundering of valuable fish species in Somalian waters by Asian and European fishing fleets forced local communities to form a form of self-organized "coast guard" to scare the pirate fishers away or collect "taxes" from them. With time some of these turned to piracy, and today it seems most of the attacks that draw international attention are carried out by well-organized and well-armed gangs, often controlled and financed from cities in the West - including London as The Guardian reported yesterday. If sending NATO warships to battling pirates was questionable to start with, it looks even more like an excuse to gain a military foothold in the Indian Ocean if the real base of many of those piracy operations - just like the illegal fishing industry - is London and other western cities.

Oil workers protest layoffs

2009-05-11T15:37:00.007+03:00

Workers from the Egyptian Drilling Company, EDC (despite the name apparently 45% owned by a Danish company - the A.P Moller-Maersk Group) gathered outside to ministry of manpower in Nasr city today to protest being fired. The said the EDC stopped the operation of several wells and laid off hundreds of workers since January. While this might seem like a natural response to the declining oil price (but not exactly fair since these companies hardly shared their huge profits during last year's record peak in the oil price but are now asking the workers to pay the price of the recession), the workers also claimed that the EDC has been hiring new workers at lower wages and on temporary contracts during the same period. They demanded to be returned to work or receive just compensation.

As the workers were still gathering outside the gates, the minister - Aisha abdel Hadi - suddenly left the building in a car, which made some of them furious. "We came to talk to the minister and you smuggle her out in front of our eyes?" one man yelled to the security guards. Later, a ministry official (possible security) came out to talk to the workers, refusing to say his name. He told them that the situation was beyond the control of the government since this is a global crisis and "even in America 5 million workers has been laid off".

It's ironic how government officials will deny the impact of the global crisis on Egypt one day, while at the same time using it as an excuse to escape all responsibility to help workers who are losing their jobs because of it...

These workers feel betrayed by the employer, the union, and the government after spending 10-25 years working for this company "12 hours a day 6 days a week" and then suddenly being left with no income whatsoever. One of the workers, a 50 year old man named Hafez, showed a wound on his leg and an older scar on his shoulder that he said was from work injuries. He complained bitterly: "The company stole 18 years of my life, and now they are throwing me into the street."

UPDATE: Sarah Carr reports: "EDC petrol comp. management makes u-turn and agrees to pay compensation and renew contracts of dismissed workers." And a more detailed report by Sarah Carr can be found here).

In the court of Mubarak

2009-05-11T14:47:00.006+03:00

Good news for Egypt's ruling elite this week: China wants further military cooperation, the European Union desperately wants help to cut its dependence on Russian gas, and Obama picks Cairo for his speech to the "muslim word," while promising continued unconditional aid. The line of great powers seeking an audience in the court of Mubarak never seems to end...

MB: "Confrontation with the regime a red line we won't cross"

2009-05-11T09:37:00.004+03:00

Shourouq ran a long article on Saturday where prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures Mohamed Habib and Essam El-Erian among others discussed the future of the movement - should it become a political party, or retreat from politics and focus on propaganda and social work, and so on. The usual questions, and the headline sums it up pretty well: "Al-Ikhwan: Confrontation with the regime is a red line we won't cross."

Habib and El-Erian both mentions threats from government officials that it would respond like a "bulldozer" or put "tanks in the street" if the banned opposition group tried to form a political party or grabbed too many seats in parliament - which is actually not impossible to believe, especially after the new Obama administration made clear that there will be no more conditions on aid to Egypt.

The efforts put into defending the current careful strategy of the movement clearly shows that the MB leaders feel the pressure from within its ranks and from other opposition groups to push harder for internal reform in Egypt. And the article ends with El-Erian dismissing some of this pressure as intended to push the MB and the NDP into a deadly confrontation which would annihilate them both: "Some opposition figures said: 'I wish I could close my eyes and open them again and there would be no Brotherhood and no NDP.'"

Labour minister denies impact of crisis on Egypt

2009-05-10T21:27:00.003+03:00

This is reassuring for the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers that have lost their jobs in the textile industry and other sectors since November (i personally visited factories that laid off more than half of their workforce): Aisha abd el-Hady, minister of manpower, assures us that Egypt has not been affected by the international economic crisis, thanks to the "wise policies" of Hosni Mubarak! She also said (during a speech at the Workers' University in Nasr City this morning) that strikes are a legitimate response of workers after negotiations failed - but urged workers not to be impatient, since "collective bargaining" is the way to social peace in Egypt. Makes me wonder what she means by collective bargaining: Does she refer to workers talking to state security about their economic demands - or perhaps they should rather negotiate with state-appointed union officials? Or should they actually be allowed to form their own unions to act as their true representatives in talks with employers?

Tadamon: New strike in Shebeen el-Kom after management punish workers

2009-05-05T15:47:00.007+03:00

The Indo Drama in Shebeen el-Kom continues... I received a report that workers at the Indorama textile factory are on strike since 11 am today after four of their colleagues was transfered to the company branch in Alexandria, probably as a punishment after the previous 11-day strike that ended with a victory for the workers on March 16.

Update: Here's a report in arabic from Tadamon, saying that the strike begun after negotiations between of the local union and the management failed. The company has refused to cancel the transfer decision so far.

Mahalla blogger threatened by dismissal

2009-05-03T18:22:00.006+03:00

Kareem el-Beheiry, who runs the blog "Workers of Egypt," reports that he is being threatened by dismissal (once again...) by the general manager of Misr Spinnng and Weaving in Mahalla for repeated absence from work. Kareem writes that he was in fact repeatedly prevented to enter the company offices in Cairo (to which he was transfered in November after taking part in a anti-privatization protest at the factory - a decision that has been challenged in court by labour lawyers) on the grounds that he came a few minutes late. The first time Beheiry was fired was back in 2007, after he started reporting about labour activism and corruption within the management on his blog - that time he was returned to his work only after some workers threatened to organize protests and strikes in solidarity with him.

Pic above: Kareem in sunglasses talking to striking real estate tax collectors during their 11-day sit in in december 2007.

Swine Flu Origins and Slum Scare

2009-05-03T00:15:00.007+03:00

I promise, I won't do any more posts about the pig/swine/H1N1-flu after this one. But I just can't help noting the irony in this: The origin of the new virus strain that has nearly caused a global panic might be (although this is not confirmed) an large-scale industrial pig farm close to the village of La Gloria in Mexico. This puts some perspective on all the fuss about the unsanitary pig farms in Cairo's garbage collector communities, doesn't it?

I'm not an expert, but I can't help but wonder if there is actually any kind of solid scientific base for assuming that the zabaleen settlements would be more likely to breed new strains of mortal viruses than those large scale industrial monstrosities? Just pointing out that they smell bad won't do, I'm afraid.

Remember the "mad cow" disease? That one is believed to have originated in large scale industrial farms in Europe where cattle was being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal, causing the epidemic to spread. Besides, those large scale pig farms apparently have their own disturbing ecological implications: "a single Smithfield plant in Utah, housing a half million animals, generates more fecal waste per year than the 1.5 million people in Manhattan." (Now that single fact should be enough to make anyone go vegetarian).

Half a million pigs together - and remember the total number of pigs in Egypt is between 300.000-500.000 - to me that sounds like the perfect breeding ground for all kinds of new viruses and other unknown life forms. Perhaps this is a larger potential threat than the pig farms on the outskirts of Cairo? After all, people have lived in close contact with animals for ages, and they will continue to do so even after the last pig in Egypt has been slaughtered.

I think some of the most virulent attacks on Cairo's pigs must be placed in the context of the great "slum scare." In this emerging discourse, the informal communities housing an ever larger section of the world's poor is portrayed as a ticking time bomb, likely to breed not only uncontrollable crime and terrorism but new forms of plague and other disastrous pandemics...

Don't get me wrong: It's not that it's not a serious problem that in some parts of Cairo hundreds of thousands of people are packed together on a few square kilometers, often without functioning sewage systems or clean drinking water. But this constant focus on the health risks stemming from the poorest of the poor tend to obscure the health hazards associated with the life-style of the upper segments of the population. Kind of like someone sitting in his SUV in a traffic jam on the mehwar from 6th of October City, complaining about the smell from those filthy pigs, while happily contributing to the pollution that is slowly killing every living creature in Greater Cairo...

"An Interview With the Bird Flu Virus"

2009-05-02T12:39:00.005+03:00

The swine flu hysteria reminded me about this satirical text that my arabic tutor gave me about a year ago. It's a fake (of course) interview with the H5-N1 or "bird flu" virus. Unfortunately I don't know who wrote it or where it was originally published, so I'm translating part of it here without permission:

Q: Welcome Mr. Virus!
A: Thank you.
Q: Please, would you like to introduce yourself to the readers?
A: My name on the ID is H5, but my artistic name is Bird Flu Virus.
Q: Where do you live?
A: Here and there... I love travelling.
Q: Where were you born?
A: I was born in South-east Asia. Let's say China.
Q: Tell us about yourself.
A: I'm just a virus like any other virus. It's just that I'm a new face, and you know how the media love everything new.
Q: What is new about you?
A: Maybe that I like birds, like chickens, ducks, or swans, and I have a broad appetite.
Q: So what brought you to Egypt, mr H5?
A: I realized that everything here comes from China, and you just love it. So I told myself I'll go there and they will welcome me as well!
Q: Welcome you? Why whould we welcome you when you come to destroy us?
A: Hey, doesn't the Chinese products destroy you, and still you love them? So why couldn't you love me?
Q: I don't understand.
A: Look, isn't the Chinese products destroying your industry and economy?
Q: It happens.
A: And I'm coming here to destroy your chickens and economy, so what's the difference?
Q: Seems like you are an educated virus.. But let's leave the politics so people don't get bored.
A: As you like.
/---/
Q: What do you intend to do here in Egypt?
A: I work with the ducks and swans and chickens and those funny birds.
Q: So you don't intend to enter humans?
A: Of course not.
Q: Why?
A: Look, we viruses might be corrupt, but we don't like to take each others work. I tried to enter the body of the Egyptian citizen, but when I entered I found too many of my colleagues: Hepatatis mixed with tuberculosis and cancer. There was too many people, and we had some disputes.
Q: So what happened?
A: We agreed that I'm not from here, and let's all stick to our own. I'll stay in the chickens and birds...

The point is not the downplay the danger of bird flu and other new strains of flu, but to highlight how those new dangers and threats can be (and often are) used to distract people from other just as serious problems. So every new possible victim of the bird flu in Egypt is reported in media, but how about all the people that die every day in diseases that could be easily prevented or cured given the right resources?

Here's a video from Mike Booth on the same theme:

Also read what Sarah Carr writes on her blog:

"Every new crisis, every new tragedy in Egypt is a reprieve, a fresh start, another chance to put things right. It's never taken. Things are always and inevitably ballsed up, and back we are dragged to zero. Kids go on wiping windscreens at traffic lights, pensioners beg for your loose change and everywhere there is the sigh of failure and defeat. This is what is really obscene."

Lazy workers and neo-colonial managers

2009-05-02T12:00:00.005+03:00

I've heard this so many times in recent months: foreign managers or factory owners complaing about the (lack of) "culture" or laziness of Egyptian workers, who for some reason just don't want to work. Not to mention that they are ungrateful - after receiving training and skills they often leave to look for better opportunities elsewhere, as the manager of a Turkish company complains in Al-Youm Al-Sabi3 (but isn't that just a natural consequence of the "free labour market?").

To me it sounds a lot like the racist attitudes to the "natives" that were often expressed by foreign managers and colonial officials during the late 19th and early 20th century. For example, Brigadier General Macauley, as head of Egyptian State Railways, complained in 1919 that there was a peculiar "oriental" attitude toward work and wages:

"The native way of looking at such matters differs entirely from the European: the native considers that he is entitled to pay in proportion to his expenses, whatever these latter may happen to be; and the European expects to give and receive pay according to his skill and efficiency." (quoted from Beinin & Lockman's Workers on The Nile)

In other words, the railway workers' demands to receive a living wage was dismissed as an expression of an irrational oriental attitude to work. Personally, I think that if you pay your workers 150-300 Egyptian pounds per month (which won't bring them and their families above the poverty limit) you shouldn't be surprised if they will do anything to escape work or leave as soon as they find another opportunity.

Kamal abu Eita: How we built the free union

2009-04-30T18:14:00.004+03:00

On the occasion of Labour Day I've attempted to do a rough translation of the first half of an article by Kamal abu Eita (shown in the picture above during one of the protests held by the real estate tax collectors back in november 2007), head of the RETA union, that was published in The Socialist.

I left out some parts and simplified orthers, and the translation probably contains mistakes (bear in mind that besides the many pitfalls of the arabic language, I'm also translating into another foreign language). I'm sure someone will produce a better translation of the entire article at some point, but meanwhile I hope this will still give non-arabic speaking readers access to an important piece of the background to the creation of Egypt's first independent union since 1957.

I think this article is significant because it illustrates the final abandonment of the dream of reforming the state-controlled union confederation by low-level unionists. In this article, Kamal abu Eita is expressing an attitude that is becoming more and more widespread as privatization and liberalization of the economy makes the state controlled union less and less relevant.

By the way, I also recommend reading the posting by Baheyya from january last year about Kamal abu Eita and the tax collectors strike.

The free union - how did we build it?
Kamal abu Eita

15 April 2009

Published in: "The Socialist"

The first time i participated in a discussion about independent unions, and about the idea of pluralism, was at a conference organized by the Al-Tagammu party - back in the days when Al-Tagammu was really "united" - when one of the veteran unionists, Atiyah Al-Sirafi, explanined the idea. This was almost 25 years ago, and I wasn't convinced by the idea since by that time I was influenced by the idea of a single unified trade union federation - an idea connected with socialist thought in general, and Nasserism in particular.

/---/

In the middle of the seventies we lived in a dream that was impossible to realize: To transform the Socialist Union from within and stopping the advance of the right within it, as the right was advancing towards control over the sites of power and resources in Egypt, with the support of the regime of Anwar Al-Sadat who laid the first brick to the wall of corruption when he issued Law 43 of 1974, the law of foreign investment. This was the beginning of the economic Infitah ("opening") which brough Egypt to this state of corruption, tyrrany and organized plundering.

The discussion which started a quarter of a century ago never stopped. 'Atiyah Al-Sirafi continued his calls for a conference of Egyptian workers to form a union independent from the state, which continued to withdraw from it's historical role to protect the interests of working people and left them to be plundered by the forces of the market.

/---/

The influence of working people on decision making was reduced, as was their representation in the political organizations, and on the company boards. Against this background I started to believe in the idea of Atiyah Al-Sirafi. The discussion about his idea moved from the circles of the Tagammu party to the "national committé to support the rights of workers," led by Ahmed Sharaf al-Din, where the idea took root.

In this way my position changed from defense of a single union federation into defending the freedom to organize. And I was pushed in this direction by the happiness i felt during my union work, within the official union, that had withdrawn completely from it's role in protecting it's members and become devoted to writing thank you telegrams to officials and employers. It neglected the workers completely, and had become and organization swarming with half-men, half-women, the worst of whom were the eunuch leaders who weren't much much better than any part of the state bureaucracy - but rather the opposite: within the state bureaucracy i encountered women who were a thousand times more honorable than the union leaders.

The union federation became a foundation of corruption, devoted to corruption, defending it and propagating it. At the successive general assemblies I heard more speeches justifying privatization than I heard from the businessmen. And those benefiting from the privatization was selling the resources of the Egyptian people for close to nothing in front of the eyes of the official unions. So the workers left the factories to join the ranks of the unemployed or to sell brushed or combs in the streets or on the buses. The regime succeeded, with encouragement from the official unions, in turning the labour force into homeless vagrants, or in the best case vendors of trivial goods.

I remember how I and the union activist Faiz al-Kartah, when we were writing the program of the Karama party in 1997, insisted on including the principle of the freedom to form labour unions and professional syndicates - and I admitt that many of our brothers didn't realize then how important this step was.

But this line written in the program of the Karama party couldn't be realized simply being written down. I spent 20 years with my colleagues working within the official union, being elected as head of my union committé. I was trying, by working within the official union, to realize the demands of my colleagues within the real estate tax authority - but always in vain.

In 1999 we tried, through the general union, to pressure for an incentive that had been decided by the prime minister. The head of the union took our demands and wrote a letter to the officials, who replied by saying we didn't have any right to that incentive. So what could the union head do, other than writing on the cover of the union magazine - that was being published for our membership fees - a headline that repeated that we didn't have this right? That's all the effort he did.

/---/

After that me and my colleagues from the local union committees gathered and decided to hold a meeting at the general union. Faruq Shehata, the head of the union, called security and threw us out. But we continued our struggle, untill one day we held a protest outside the People's Assembly and a delegation from us met a delegation from the speaker. Then we went to Mohi el-Din el-Gharib, who was finance minister at that time, and he gave in to our demands.

This victory demonstrated the failure of the official union, who had betrayed us and was defending the employers. But after this we relaxed, and remained sleeping for almost ten years without cutting our relations the official union.

Then came the new movements that brought life back to Egypt, and the strike in Mahalla, and the new wave of price increases, which all reminded us of our old victory. We started calling each other and meeting in cafés, homes and workplaces. We became organized, so the union attacked us with a flood of statements and lies, pressuring the workers not to have anything to do with the "professional agitators and troublemakers," as they called us, in addition to informing security about us.

----

If I can find the time I'll post more later. But the rest, as they say, is history: from the 11-day strike and sit in outside the cabinet, to the official establishment of Egypt's first independent union on 20 December 2008 and the acceptance of the RETA union into the international federation of public servants.

Crisis management, Egypt style

2009-04-30T13:51:00.004+03:00

Much can be said about the row about the pig flu and mass slaughter of pigs. I just want to say this: it is a prime example of how important decisions are taken and implemented in Egypt, amidst a disastrous interaction of authoritarian rule and sensationalist media.

As I approached the garbage-collectors settlement and pig farms in Ezbet el-Nakhl yesterday, I encountered a police checkpoint where I was stopped by an officer in plain clothes, who called a superior before finally allowing me to pass (but with strict orders not to take pictures of the pigs - uhm, sorry... police). While the officer was busy checking my papers, a group of journalists and photographers took the opportunity to simply walk by, after apparently being held up for some time at the check point. Very efficient.

In one of the small streets a crowd had assembled, chanting angry slogans in front of a TV-crew. The cameramen didn't chose the location randomly however. Instead, they directed the crowd so as to be able to capture the small church in the background, thus emphasizing the religious identity of the pig farmers - as if this wasn't obvious enough to everyone anyway.

Actually, no one I spoke to brought up this issue or portrayed the decision to slaughter the pigs as an attack on christians as a religious group. Instead, one of them offered another theory concerning the motives: "This is nothing new. Some people have been propagating against the pig farms for a long time. The reason is that there is influential people who want our land, to build expensive appartments. They take this opportunity to get rid of us once and for all."

One of the farmers even refered to the UN to support his view that there was no need for slaughtering his pigs. Another pointed out that this measure had not been taken even in countries were people died because of the virus.

I'm not a health expert, but two things seems clear to me: 1) it's not totally unreasonable to regard the pig farms and the sanitary conditions in these settlements as a long-term threat to public health - but as such it's just one among many others that Egyptian citizens are exposed to. 2) there is absolutely no connection between the mass slaughter of pigs and preventing the on-going spread of the "pig flu." Conclusion: whatever measures are taken they should be based on a careful consideration of facts and long term sustainability.

This, however, is something that just won't happen in Egypt. Instead, whoever who screams loudest will win in the end. The zabaleen and pig farmers in Ezbet el-Nakhl are fully aware of this, which is why the willingly take part in those "spontaneous" protests in front of the TV-crews, that end as soon as the cameras are turned off. It's easy to be cynical and say they are being used by sensationalist media - but they are in fact acting rationally, since this is their only way of communicating with the people in power.

Finally: During a "health crisis" like this, you would except officials from the health ministry to actually be present on the ground and talk to the affected people. Instead, the only representatives of the state most of them have met recently is members of the security bodies. As they tried to go on their usual garbage-collecting rounds yesterday morning, many were stopped by police who simply said it was mamnou3, forbidden.

I do not condone incitement of hatred towards pigs... :)

2009-04-30T12:08:00.005+03:00

This pig hysteria is really getting out of control. I usually try my best not do get involved in debates in the blogosphere, but I don't know how to feel about this: Egyptian blogger Zeinobia (whose postings I often find interesting) used one of my pics to illustrate her incitement of hatred towards Egypt's pigs. I just have one comment to her posting: The ultimate source of that "awfull smell" you feel when you drive on the mehwar to the 6th of October city in your AC-equipped car is not the pigs, but your garbage... The pig farms surely aren't sanitary and in the long run something should be done about this, but they are also performing an essential service for many of the more affluent inhabitants of Cairo. In my humble opinion, what is needed is sustainable solutions to a broad range of interconnected health- and sanitary issues, not stupid slogans like "Kill 'em all" that doesn't really solve anything.