The Committee To Protect The Revolution.
El MAHALLA EL KUBRA - The revolt shaking Cairo didn't start in Cairo. It began in this city of textile mills and choking pollution set amid the cotton and vegetable fields of the Nile Delta.
Hamdi Hussein, 59, a gray-haired labor leader and avowed communist who has been arrested more times than he can remember, says that so far, the regime has chosen which groups it wants to talk with. But Hussein said that may change with the formation here of what is intended to be a nationwide "committee to protect the revolution." He described it as an attempt to make sure the interests of the poor are represented in any changes and also to target corrupt members of the ruling party, especially government-sponsored union leaders. Another role, he said, would be to counter the Muslim Brotherhood, a traditional enemy of the left but the largest single voice in the opposition.
Hamdi Hussein, 59, a gray-haired labor leader and avowed communist who has been arrested more times than he can remember, says that so far, the regime has chosen which groups it wants to talk with. But Hussein said that may change with the formation here of what is intended to be a nationwide "committee to protect the revolution." He described it as an attempt to make sure the interests of the poor are represented in any changes and also to target corrupt members of the ruling party, especially government-sponsored union leaders. Another role, he said, would be to counter the Muslim Brotherhood, a traditional enemy of the left but the largest single voice in the opposition.
"Do not be silenced," says the buddy in the clip below. "Whether you are a Christian, whether you are a Muslim, whether you are an atheist, you will demand your God-damned rights. We will not be silenced, and we will have our rights one way or the other. We will never be silenced. . ."
posted by Terry Glavin at 12:47 AM
2 Comments:
Watch the video - powerful stuff.
And like it says, please share this. The lyrics are really what the people are saying in it, and what they are doing; that's the real anthem. What the singer is saying, how the melody of the soundtrack sounds - it's far less powerful a song than what we are seeing and hearing from the people of Egypt... in their own voices, and with their own stones and blood.
I know my history very well, and what has happening in Cairo has never happened before, not of this scale, not of this kind. Anywhere. They aren't going to let their voices be coopted, not one bit, by any shuffling of chairs. What the US must really be worried about here is not another Islamist revolution, though that's what the western media is warning of as if in pretext to finding a half-solution to keep US interests in place, another extremist Islamist state - that's not what this is at all, what this revolution is, and it scares the willies out of the world corruption machine, the one that takes from the poor and gives the rich.
The Moslem Brotherhood can't win this either, and the people at large now it and they would be met by the same resistance we are seeing in that video: by a people who have fully thrown off the system of corruption billions of greenbacks supported for years, angered by hunger and torture and shame.
Now the army that money built has taken sides with the people - and the people themselves are risen, and not about to be coopted by any more repressive form of regime - Islamism - than that already endured under Mubarak - and under Sadat before him.
This isn't about Israel, it's not about US interests; it's about a sovereign people resisting military invention by their own government. This is bigger than the Berlin Wall coming down, and in some ways it's bigger than 9-11.
The world just changed.
Egypt is the birthplace of our civilization. It is doing that again; as it has times before - giving birth to new ideas and new movements. And new times, for better or worse.
Let's hope for the better. Which means that the people of Egypt will win this, and gives us a new kind of country, a new kind of government. Worse, well, it could get a lot worse, but these images tell a truth that no amount of blood will drown out.
RE: This is bigger than the Berlin Wall coming down, and in some ways it's bigger than 9-11. The world just changed.
Let's hope so. I take a different approach. The reason this revolution succeeded is because the Egyptian regime wasn't vicious enough to want to do the full-scale suppression that would be required to stifle the revolt. I can only hope the same thing will happen in regimes that don't have such qualms (i.e. China, Iran, Syria etc.) but I wouldn't hold my breath. Tunisia and Egypt were -- relatively speaking of course -- low hanging fruit.
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