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Showing posts with the label egypt

How ‘Europe’ is Profiting at the Expense of Egypt's Poor

It is not Europe but some of Europe. “In essence, the EU and major member states have thrown their lot in with one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in the Middle East, standing firmly against the democratic aspirations of Egyptians. This policy has garnered mass profits for European corporations and states , at the expense of the Egyptian poor and middle classes.” Related A window into Egyptian general’s past

Middle East: ‘Saudis and Emiratis Now Call the Shots’

"Beyond the grandiose tirades and pontificating final statements, each ‘urgent’ meeting ratifies only the league’s inaction. It is too tempting to picture this assembly (excellencies, corpulencies, marshal-presidents, rebels-turned-honourables, men elected in dubious landslides or by the slimmest of margins) at its large round table, conversing with furrowed brows before condemning Israel’s depiction of the war as ‘self-defence’ and demanding, of course, that the country ‘immediately abolish these brutal and inhumane measures’ (11 November 2023). And what else? Threats of a military response? Calls for international sanctions on Israel like those Russia faced after invading Ukraine? A motion supporting South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stop Israel’s ethnic cleansing or even genocide in Gaza? A radical re-examination of the normalisation process and – why not? – severing of diplomatic ties? Cutting Gulf sovereign wealth fund investment in the US

Hugh Roberts: Western Powers Manipulated Risings

Outside interference, ostensibly on behalf of these 'revolutions', reduced Libya to anarchy and condemned Syria to a devastating proxy war now in its twelfth year. In Egypt, the Free Officers' state was re-booted in its most brutal ever form. The Americans and Europeans did not vainly try to help the Egyptians or anyone else escape from authoritarian rule. Instead, they contrived to seal them up in it. The long oppression of these societies, Kipling’s 'loved Egyptian night', is not going to be ended by the Western powers; these days it is guaranteed by them. Hugh Roberts 's new book political history of the risings in Egypt, Libya and Syria explains how the Western powers manipulated them all .

Is Sudan Still a State?

“Far from being caused by personal rivalry, this conflict is rooted in the long history of the region and Sudan’s never-ending economic and social crisis. The conflict between the North and the South claimed between half a million and a million lives from 1955 to 2002. And herein lies the cause of the fighting tearing Sudan apart. To understand it requires going back to 2011. The secession of South Sudan and the rise of guerrilla movements within the North’s Muslim populations had weakened President Omar al-Bashir’s authority. His increasingly unpopular Islamist regime had been in power since the coup of June 1989 and was rotten with corruption. The regime sent the Janjaweed to fight in Yemen on behalf of the Saudis – who paid handsomely – and then tasked them with repressing the northern guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), first in Darfur and then throughout the country. From the day after the coup, there were obvious tensions between the two forces, e

Télk Qadiyya

In ‘Egyptian Arabic’ with English subtitles. The original lyrics can be read here .

Egypt: The Founding Social Contract of Sisi’s New Republic

A good summary by Hossam el-Hamalawy . I think though that the MEE restricted how much Hossam could write and elaborate. “[Unlike his predecessor Mubarak,] Sisi does not manage dissent; he eradicates it. Rabaa was not just a massacre. It was the founding social contract of Sisi’s new republic.” As of the ‘Western’ support of the Egyptian regime revolves around 1. Israel. 2. We supported Morsi and ‘a democratic process’, but the Muslim Brotherhood was unable to guarantee stability. So, we support whoever can guarantee stability and protect our interests.  More importantly, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in Egypt had already led the counterrevolution at a very early stage. The Muslim Brotherhood merely accepted the ‘new’ framework, including Morsi’s immediate submission to the American’s imperialism . As Adam Hanieh wrote  in 2012 : “ Many commentators portrayed Morsi’s victory as a significant challenge to SCAF’s domination and an electoral rejection of the Mubarak regime with

14 August 2013 Ra’baa Massacre

  “…the numbers typically attributed to the Tiananmen massacre or the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan were, say, 400 to 800. Here, Human Rights Watch has the names of 817 victims in Rabaa Square, and we say that the likely total count number is above a thousand.” — Kenneth Roth ,  executive director of Human Rights Watch. Documentary on Egypt’s Ra’baa crackdown premiers at Bafta

Egypt’s Cop27: Greenwashing a Police State

A disappointing piece by Naomi Klein , I think. Klein, the critic of ‘neoliberal’ capitalism, fails in a long piece to include a couple of paragraphs analysing the political economy of Egypt in the broader regional and global capitalist relations. Instead, ‘human rights’, ‘civil society’ and the authoritarian regime occupy her analysis. The piece should have been ‘In solidarity with Alaa’.  The interactions of geopolitical powers and capitalist interests are completely absent. There is only a passing mention of ‘anti-capitalist politics’, but not the functioning of capital in Egypt, Israel, the UAE, the US, France, the UK, etc. Klein, who in  No Logo  ushered in a new generational critique of commodity culture, and who in  The Shock Doctrine  established herself as perhaps the most prominent North American critic of neoliberal disaster capitalism , signals that she has now, in  William Morris 's famous metaphor, crossed "the river of fire" to become a  critic of capitalis