Goodby to Gaddafi

EXTRACT: In Libya, the masses have exploded into life - and revolution - against colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his ‘Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, the latter word being a neologism first coined by Gaddafi in his screwball, three-volume The green book (1975) and literally meaning ‘state of the masses’. Well, as we can see daily on our TV and computer screens, the Libyan masses have risen up almost as one against the state and the ‘Guide of the First of September Great Revolution’ or ‘Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution’ - to repeat just two of Gaddafi’s official honorifics.
With events unfolding at lightning speed, changing by the hour, in Libya we are presented with a near textbook or classic revolutionary situation - where the masses refuse to be ruled in the old way, and the rulers are unable rule in the old way. Determined to overthrow Gaddafi’s cruel dictatorship, which has kept itself in power through terror and intimidation - like the regular showing of public executions on television - the masses initially revolted in Benghazi, Libya’s second city. Inevitably, though Benghazi is separated from Tripoli by hundreds of miles, the revolutionary uprising has yet to spread to the capital. When Tripoli falls, the Gaddafi regime is dead.
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These Are Not The Clones You Are Looking For

Welcome to Libya

Welcome to Egypt

Halt, Black Hole!

Cairo has come out in support of Wisconsin workers

Mubarak Has Gone But Mass Protests Continue

EXTRACT: Without the crowds demonstrating and protesting day after day, without the display of people power, then Hosni Mubarak would still be president today - have no doubt. His departure is a huge democratic gain that we celebrate along with the vast majority of Egyptians. Even more than that, communists regard recent events - and not just in Egypt - as an anticipation of the future, which will see further and greater democratic movements and revolutions in this region of the world. Just look at the protests now breaking out in Bahrain, with thousands setting up camp in the capital, Manama - making their own Tahrir Square and demanding basic democratic rights (some waving placards of Che Guevara), with King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa offering each family in the country a cash pay-out of £1,640 in a frantic attempt to buy off discontent. And now Libya too has caught the democratic bug, experiencing an uprising in the eastern city of Benghazi, hundreds clashing with the police to demand the release of a prominent democracy campaigner and Gaddafi critic. The Arab masses are hungry for democracy, like their Iranian counterparts - who, inspired by the ousting of Mubarak, have once again taken to the streets in the largest anti-government protests for more than a year.
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The Adventures of Middle-Man!

Revolution in Permanence

EXTRACT: The danger of an army coup has to be taken seriously. In the end either revolution or counterrevolution will triumph. What began with Twitter will be resolved with guns. Hence the police must be disarmed and sent packing, sections of the army won and a popular militia formed.
Albeit tentatively that has already begun to happen. The police are often nowhere to be seen, people have formed citizen guards in various neighbourhoods, including those based on strikes at big workplaces, and, of course, in Tahrir Square demonstrators have built barricades and exchanged blow for blow, stone for stone, with Mubarak's thugs. The rank and file soldiers have become openly friendly with the demonstrators. Doubtless partly as a result, soldiers refused to move their tanks into the middle of Tahrir Square when faced with spontaneously formed human walls.
But clearly things need to go further. Workers, peasants, the urban petty bourgeoisie must form a popular militia. To begin with they must arm themselves with whatever comes to hand - sticks, knives and revolvers (the latter taken from the police). There is also the possibility of persuading soldiers to hand over weapons on the quiet.
By doing this the masses increase their chances of winning over sections of the army to the revolution - which in turn decreases the likelihood of the generals launching a coup. To advocate any form of pacifism under such conditions is positively suicidal and can only invite more violence, not less.
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Mubarak Unleashes Thugs

Extract: Self-evidently, Mubarak and his regime are utterly despised by the overwhelming majority of Egyptians. The contrast with Abdel Nasser's Egypt could not be greater. Though Egypt under Nasser was hardly a democracy, let alone 'socialist' (more an authoritarian, state-capitalist bureaucracy, which crushed dissent to its left or right: eg, the Muslim Brotherhood) it still retained mass support through the perception that it was acting in the interest of the masses, whether it be nationalising the Suez Canal or standing up to Israel militarily (even if it did get creamed each time). But Mubarak's Egypt is the exact reverse, seen by the masses as a state for others - principally the US, Israel, France, the UK and a tiny sprinkling of home-grown neoliberal nouveaux riches. An everyday living insult, and humiliation, to ordinary Egyptians and the very idea of pan-Arabism in general. Therefore the explosion of anger and hatred, which had always been there, bubbling away underneath the surface of Egyptian society, just waiting for a spark to ignite a mass uprising. And, of course, that spark was Tunisia.
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