What is not known about Egypt
Article working details the nature of the demonstrations that pose the greatest threat to the survival of the Egyptian dictatorship ..
Vicenç Navarro
professionals and university graduates, and their use of new communication technologies, ignoring the workers' mobilizations over Egyptian territory have been, in fact, have been crucial to the resignation of the dictator. The article details the nature of such movements that pose the greatest threat to the survival of the Egyptian dictatorship, which explains that one of the first measures taken by the military junta has been limited to the prohibition of strikes and meetings of trade unionists.
Mubarak the dictator's fall as a result of popular mobilization is a reason of joy for anyone with democratic sensibilities. But this sensitivity should democratic awareness that version of events that has appeared in the media world's most international (from Al Jazeera to The New York Times and CNN) is incomplete or biased, which responds to the interests that finance . Thus, the overall image promoted by those means is that this event is due to the mobilization of young people, mostly students and middle class professionals, who have very successfully used new techniques of communication (Facebook and Twitter, among others) organize and lead such a process, which began, incidentally, by the popular indignation against the death in custody as a result of torture, one of these young people. This explanation is highly incomplete. In fact, the supposed revolution began three weeks ago and was not initiated by students and young professionals. The recent past of Egypt is characterized by brutally repressed workers' struggles have increased in recent years. According to Egypt's Center of Economic and Labor Studies, in 2009 alone there were 478 strikes clearly political, not authorized, which caused the dismissal of 126,000 workers, 58 of whom committed suicide. As happened in Spain during the dictatorship, democratic workers' resistance infiltrated the official unions (Whose leaders were appointed by the ruling party, which surprisingly had been accepted within the Socialist International), playing a key role in those protests. Thousands and thousands of workers stopped work, including the powerful arms industry, owned by the Army. It also added the Suez Canal workers (6,000 workers) and, finally, employees of public administration, including physicians and nurses (who marched with their white uniforms) and state attorneys (who marched with their black robes) . One of the sectors that had the most impact on the mobilization was that of communications and postal workers, and public transport.
industrial centers of Asyut and Sohag, pharmaceutical facilities, power and gas, also stopped working. Companies in Sharm El-Sheikh, El-Mahalla Al Kubra, and Damanhour Dumyat centers, textiles, furniture and wood and food production also stopped. The high point of labor mobilization was when the clandestine leadership of the labor movement called a general strike. The international media focused on what happened in Tahrir Square in Cairo, not knowing that this concentration was the pinnacle of an iceberg spread throughout the country and focused on workplace-key for the continuation of economic activity-and in the streets of major cities of Egypt. The Army, which was and is, the Army of Mubarak, did not have them all along. In fact, besides the economic stagnation, had fear of internal rebellion, as most soldiers come from very poor families in neighborhoods whose residents were workers on the street. Army's middle managers also sympathized with the popular mobilization, and the dome of the Army (next to Mubarak) felt the need to leave him to save themselves. Moreover, Obama Administration, which initially had been against Mubarak's resignation, changed and pushed for this to go away. The federal government has subsidized with an amount of 1,300 million dollars a year the army of that country and this could not ignore what the U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, was demanding. Hence, the director of the CIA announced that Mubarak step down and, although delayed a few hours, Mubarak resigned. Needless to say, the young professionals who made use of new communication technologies (only 22% of the population has Internet access) played an important role, but it is wrong to present these demonstrations as a result of determinism technology that considers the use of technology as the determining factor. In fact, the demise of dictatorships in a relatively short period as a result of popular movements, there has been constant. Iran (with the fall of the Shah), the Berlin Wall, the collapse of dictatorships in Eastern Europe, among others, have fallen one after another, popular mobilization in the absence internet. The same happened in Tunisia, where, incidentally, the resistance of the working class also played a key role in the fall of the dictator, whose party was also surprisingly admitted to the Socialist International. The future, however, begins now. Army is unlikely to allow a democratic transition. Will establish a multiparty system, very limited and supervised by the Army, for which the number one enemy is not Islamic fundamentalism (although it presents, in order to secure support from the U.S. Federal Government and the European Union) but the working class and the Left, which alone would eliminate its privileges. Do not forget that the ruling classes of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan supporting the radical Muslim (with the support of the U.S. federal government and Saudi Arabia) as a way to stop the left. A the first steps taken by the military junta has been to prohibit strikes and union meetings. However, this mobilization working just appeared in major media.
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