Ramah Casers is an Egyptian mother and graphic designer who lives in Cairo. On Tuesday, November 27 she was standing at the entrance to Tahrir Square holding a simple, hand-written sign that read, “I am an Egyptian citizen and I will not let my country become a dictatorship once again.” She had come to the plaza with her young daughter, who was proudly helping to hold the sign. “I was in this same Tahrir Square during the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak but I haven’t been back since then,” Ramah told me. “I didn’t think any of the mobilizations called during the last two years were that critical. But for this one, I had to be here. This is about the life or death of our revolution.”

Ramah was one of the hundreds of thousands of people filling Tahrir Square to protest the decree issued five days earlier by President Morsi giving himself power to make decisions that could not be challenged by the judiciary.

The decree came just one day after the November 22 Gaza ceasefire agreement between the Israeli government and Hamas, an agreement brokered by Morsi that sent his international prestige skyrocketing. Perhaps the president deemed this a good time to make a move. After all, the ...

Class of 2012, greetings! It’s a deceptively glorious day, even under this tent in the broiling heat of an August-style afternoon in mid-June on this northeastern campus.  Another local temperature record is being set: 98 degrees.  And yes, let’s admit it, the heat, the sun, the clearness of the azure blue sky stretching without a cloud to the horizon, the sense of summer descending with a passion, it’s not quite as reassuring as it might once have been, is it?  I suspect that few of you, readying yourselves to leave this campus, many mortgaged to your eyeballs (some for life no matter what you do), and heading into a country on edge, imagine personal clear skies to the horizon.

And while we’re admitting things, let’s admit something else about the heat today, as you bake under your graduation gowns: whether or not you have the figures at your fingertips, whether or not you know the details, who doesn’t sense that this planet is on edge, too?  I mean, here you are, the class of 2012, and like the classes of 2011, 2010, and so on, you are surely going to spend your first months out of college enduring one of history's top ten heat years.

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The failed effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is widely seen as a crisis for the labor movement, and a pivotal moment in the 2012 U.S. presidential-election season. Walker launched a controversial effort to roll back the power of Wisconsin’s public employee unions, and the unions pushed back, aided by strong, grass-roots solidarity from many sectors. This week, the unions lost. Central to Walker’s win was a massive infusion of campaign cash, saturating the Badger state with months of political advertising. His win signals less a loss for the unions than a loss for our democracy in this post-Citizens United era, when elections can be bought with the help of a few billionaires.

In February 2011, the newly elected Walker, a former Milwaukee county executive, rolled out a plan to strip public employees of their collective-bargaining rights, a platform he had not run on.  The backlash was historic. Tens of thousands marched on the Wisconsin Capitol, eventually occupying it. Walker threatened to call out the National Guard. The numbers grew. Despite Walker’s strategy to “divide and conquer” the unions (a phrase he was overheard saying in a recorded conversation with a billionaire donor), the police and firefighters unions, whose bargaining rights he had strategically left intact, came out in support of the occupation. Across the world, the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt was in full swing, with signs in English and Arabic expressing solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin.

The demands for workers rights were powerful and sustained. The momentum surged toward a demand to ...

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”

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Several army soldiers slapped, punched and kicked Mona Seif, hitting her with wooden batons while they dragged her inside the Cabinet Building shortly after they raided Tahrir Square. Minutes earlier she had been told to leave, but she refused unless they released a child she was protecting amid the violence.

"The army officer was infuriated when I told them to release the kid," said Seif, a 25-year-old activist who leads the No Military Trials for Civilians movement. "He ordered the soldiers to take me where they will take the child."

A young army officer in charge of the detention room continuously cursed at the female detainees.

"I am as old as your mother; have some respect for me," said Khadiga, a woman in her 60s who sat on the floor beside Seif.

"The officer exploded when she said that. He kept slapping her over and over until she apologized," said Seif. "I thought they distinguished between younger and older women. They don't."

"It's a planned strategy," she said. "... They want to scare off any girl thinking of joining a ...

During the protests in Tahrir Square in November 2011, Mohamed Ali, age 20, responded to a journalist's query as to why he was there: "We want social justice. Nothing more. That's the least that we deserve."

The first round of the movements took multiple forms across the world—the so-called Arab Spring, the Occupy movements beginning in the United States and then spreading to a large number of countries, Oxi in Greece and the indignados in Spain, the student protests in Chile, and many others.

They were a fantastic success. The degree of success may be measured by an extraordinary article written by Lawrence Summers in the Financial Times on November 21, with the title, "Inequality can no longer be held at bay by the usual ideas." ...

While sitting in a Cairo café just a couple blocks from Tahrir Square a couple months ago, I couldn't help but notice the television in the corner broadcasting the evening news. Traditionally, TV news in Egypt and other Arab countries has consisted of the president (or king) giving a speech, greeting a foreign visitor, visiting a factory, or engaging in some other official function. This evening, however, the news was about a labor strike in Alexandria, relatives of those killed during the February revolution protesting outside the Interior Ministry, and ongoing developments in the pro-democracy struggles in Yemen and Syria.

Nothing could better illustrate the profound change in the Arab world over the past year: It is no longer simply the leaders who were the newsmakers. It is Arab peoples themselves.

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Egypt's ruling military council has reportedly asked a former prime minister, Kamal al-Ganzouri, to form a new cabinet. But there are no signs of a let-up in the anti-military demonstrations.
 

Ganzouri headed the government from 1996 to 1999, under the deposed president, Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011). 
 

The state newspaper Al-Ahram said on its website, quoting sources close to Ganzouri, that he had agreed in principle to lead a national government after his meeting with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). 
 

The military council earlier accepted the resignation of caretaker prime minister Essam Sharaf's cabinet, amid continued unrest in Cairo and other major cities. 
 

After the popular uprisings earlier this year, Ganzouri distanced himself from Mubarak in a television interview, prompting several Facebook pages to recommend him as a future presidential candidate. 
 

Born in 1933, Ganzuri served as minister of planning and international co-operation before his first tenure as prime minister. He then made a name for himself by working to strengthen ties between Egypt and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. 

 

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Tens of thousands of anti-military protesters streamed into downtown Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Tuesday as the nation waited anxiously for the head of the embattled ruling military council to break his silence on unrest that threatens to derail next week’s elections.

Clashes continued along the narrow streets leading to the square, the nerve center of the uprising that brought down authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak and which has now been reenergized with calls for the council to step aside and let an interim civilian authority handle the rocky transitional period.

Caretaker Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, who handed in his resignation Monday along with the rest of the Cabinet, told reporters outside the Cabinet building that political actors must put national interests ahead of their individual priorities. The military council hasn’t formally accepted the resignations, and the ministers have agreed to stay on until their replacements are named.

“We are very close to our most important goal, which is holding elections on the scheduled date,” Sharaf said. “This is the first step in the transfer of power and to democratic rule, and I call on everyone to act with restraint.”

Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi was expected to give his first address since the crisis began over the weekend with security forces attacking unarmed protesters who were staging a sit-in against military rule.

Other demonstrators came to their aid and the clashes snowballed into an uprising that’s nearly identical to the one that brought down Mubarak in February. The council rolled out what it billed as concessions, but protesters – outraged by the heavy casualties of the past few days – said they’ll reject any offer short of Tantawi’s resignation and the transfer of power to an interim civilian body.

“If the supreme council needs to save this country, they should ...

Egypt plunged deeper into political crisis a week before elections with security forces attacking protesters and torching their tents Sunday amid unrest that appears to be heading toward a second uprising, this time against Egypt’s military rulers.

Thousands of young Egyptians battled security forces for a second day in the warren-like streets surrounding the iconic Tahrir Square, the nerve center of the revolt that brought down President Hosni Mubarak and left the military in charge of Egypt. Clashes and civil disobedience continued in Alexandria, Suez and other big cities as protesters expressed their solidarity with the capital.

By nightfall, 11 people were reported dead, hundreds were wounded, fires burned in the square, and Egyptians worried that the violence would force a delay in parliamentary elections and leave the ruling military council in power even longer.

The military council expressed "deep regret" over the violence and said the interim government would take unspecified "urgent measures" to restore calm before elections begin, according to communique No. 81, which was posted on the council's official Facebook page. The statement did not respond to protesters' demands for a speedy transfer of power or a revised timetable for presidential elections, but denied that it was trying to cling to power.

"The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces reaffirms its unchanging principles, which it has expressed since it first took responsibility, that it does not seek to prolong the transitional period and will not allow any front to hinder the democratic transition and nation-building process," the statement said.

Earlier, Caretaker Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and the military council met for crisis talks, and one of the senior generals said there would be no delay of elections set to begin Nov. 28.

“We won’t accept any calls to postpone elections and we affirm that ...

Anger at Egypt’s ruling military council exploded into hours of fierce clashes in downtown Cairo and other cities Saturday that left two protesters dead and 750 wounded in violence that threatens the landmark elections scheduled to begin in nine days.

The battle for the iconic Tahrir Square began mid-morning when security services forcibly cleared the area of activists who tried to camp there in protest of the military council, which critics say is trying to expand its powers and delay the transfer of power to a civilian authority. The protesters had lingered from the previous day, when tens of thousands of Egyptians flooded the square in a peaceful anti-military rally that was dominated by Islamist factions.

On Saturday, some Islamist leaders and youth movements sent reinforcements to defend the mostly liberal and leftist protesters after live TV footage showed security personnel firing on them with birdshot and tear-gas canisters.

Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf pleaded with protesters to leave the square, but by late Saturday night, the riots were metastasizing as thousands of revolutionaries in Alexandria, Suez and other big cities took to the streets in solidarity.

“The whole city is paralyzed, protests are blocking main streets. The army is standing aside and there is no police at all,” said Mahmoud el Anani, a shop owner in Suez who was interviewed by phone from the canal city. “It’s turning into chaos…if ...

From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended.  The massive popular protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.   

Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting.  They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas, and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere.  They are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted futures, and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as the matrix of human ethics and life.

Pasha the Tiger

In the “glorious thirty years” after World War II, North America and Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range of benefits for workers, students, and retirees.  From roughly 1980 on, however, the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire ...

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country. They formed in 2008 to demonstrate solidarity with workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, Egypt. Then, in December 2010, a young man in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the frustration of a generation. His death sparked the uprising in Tunisia that toppled the long-reigning dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Similar acts of protest spread to Egypt, where at least four men attempted self-immolation. One, Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed of Alexandria, died. Asmaa Mahfouz was outraged and posted a video online, staring directly into the camera, her head covered, but not her face. She identified herself and called for people to join her on Jan. 25 in Tahrir Square. She said (translated from Arabic): “I’m making this video to give you one simple message: We want to go down to Tahrir Square on January 25. If we still have honor and want to live in dignity on this land, we have to go down on January 25. We’ll go down and demand our rights, our fundamental human rights. … I won’t even talk about any political rights. We just want our human rights and nothing else. This entire government is corrupt—a corrupt president and a corrupt security force. These self-immolators were not afraid of death but were afraid of security forces. Can you imagine that?”

Nine months later, Asmaa Mahfouz was giving a teach-in at Occupy Wall Street. Standing on steps above the crowd Monday night, she had a huge smile on her face as she ...

Pledge: “I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day or the days immediately following, for as long as I can, with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine by occupying Freedom Plaza to demand that America's resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning.”

Egyptians watched with rapt attention as deposed president Hosni Mubarak was hauled before court on live television to answer charges of corruption and murder. The move appears to have restored public confidence in Egypt's ruling military council, which has governed the country since Mubarak's February ouster.

Since the first week of July, protesters had returned en masse to Cairo's Tahrir Square to register their displeasure with the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) and its slow implementation of revolutionary demands. Along with the prosecution of Mubarak and his associates, demonstrators demanded a "purge" of all remnants of the former regime from state institutions and an immediate halt to the practice of referring civilian protesters to military tribunals.

In a worrying precedent on Aug. 1, military police and Central Security personnel forcibly broke up the protests in scenes reminiscent of the Tahrir uprising. Over the next few days - with the square cordoned off by armoured vehicles - all remaining demonstrators were forcibly cleared from the area.

"The Mubarak trial has done much to restore protesters' faith in the SCAF," Abdel Rahman Abu Zaid, founding member of the leftist-oriented Egyptian People's Party (as yet unlicensed), told IPS. "But the use of force against peaceful protesters is absolutely unacceptable in post-revolutionary Egypt."

Many protesters contend that the long-awaited trial never would have materialised without the intense popular pressure that manifested itself in Tahrir Square.

"Mubarak's debut in court is directly attributable to the million-man demonstration on Jul. 8 and the open-ended sit-in that followed it," Moustafa Abdel Moneim, general coordinator of the youth-oriented Bediya ('Beginning') revolutionary movement, told IPS.

"The court appearance was a historical achievement," Abdel Ghani Hindi, ...

People watching the news over the past week might have thought that Congress was the only place where battles for our future were being won and lost. That's wrong. There are other battles, better battles, battles far from the glare of the Beltway spotlights. And more are on their way.

So forget Washington for a minute. (If you feel like I do right now, that'll be a pleasure.) If you want to see where the next wave of corporate-sponsored political attacks is being launched, look to New Orleans. And if you want a shot of optimism, a ray of light, a sign that battles can be won against overwhelming odds, turn your eyes toward Wisconsin.

That's where the action is.

On Wisconsin

Al Gore said this week that we need an "American Spring." It would be a stroke of Carl Sandburg-ish poetry if we were to someday look back and see that the first signs of our spring appeared in Midwestern farm country. And if that image is too corny for your taste, remember: The corn harvest starts around now. I'm just getting an early start.

The Wisconsin uprising began when Gov. Scott Walker and the Republicans in the legislature began their ruthless attempt to strip unions of their rights in that state. They had every right to believe it would be easy. The Democrats had just been routed in their state and across the country, as voters discouraged by the lack of jobs and growth took their revenue on the ruling party. Walker and his colleagues thought they had found their "Shock Doctrine" moment in that state's budget crisis, and used it to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights because they claimed the state "couldn't afford" to pay their wages and benefits.

The unions offered Walker virtually all the concessions he wanted, which took the financial argument off the table, but he moved forward anyway. And then a miracle happened ... Voters who had accepted one injustice ...