Occupy Edinburgh in Pictures

Being White means never having to say you're sorry: on the Christian fundamentalist terror attack in Norway

       One of the chief characteristics of the capitalist ideological apparatus is, as Malcolm X said, to 'make the victim look like the criminal and the criminal look like the victim.' The organisers of the superb 'Slutwalks' are surely aware of this: as are the family of Alfie Meadows or the activists attacked on the Mavi Marmara. The seemingly puzzling response of most Anglophone media to the terrorist atrocities in Norway - atrocities that they refuse to identify as such, preferring to refer to 'violence' carried out by a 'lone extremist' - are explicable once we understand this. Richard has written an excellent post on the topic, to which I can only add these thoughts.

  One could be forgiven for thinking that the near one-hundred victims had, in the opinion of the broadcasters and once the necessary effusions were over, almost brought it on themselves by living in and defending a multi-cultural society, by being immigrants themselves or by some strange osmosis of 'jihadi mentality' into a previously pristine blond head. This Guardian opinion piece suggests that Breivik's violent politics 'may have been a response to the arrival of al-Qaida-inspired terrorism', while informing us that he had 'adopted the language of Muslim jihadists'. The only evidence offered in support of this claim is his use of the word 'crusade': I don't need to tell you what's wrong with the inference there. The BBC news anchor interviewing one of the survivors first summoned the bad taste to ask 'how many guns did he have? Did he stop to re-load?' Then followed up with a question to a previous Norwegian Prime Minister: 'Do you think not enough attention was paid to those who were unhappy with regard to immigration?' Surely, this reduces the normal pandering to racism to a horrific absurdity: yes, he's massacred one hundred children and set off a bomb in the middle of the capital but we have to acknowledge the legitimate concerns.

  It is as yet unknown whether Breivik acted alone. What is known is that mainstream commentators and news are unable - they cannot conceive- of drawing the conclusions they would had their original assumptions of Islamist responsibility proven true. Breivik was formerly a member of the 'Progressive Party', Norway's equivalent of the BNP: an admirer of the EDL and the European post-liberal Fascism on which I have written before, and a frequent contributor to the online discussions permeated with violent Islamophobia and threats against the left. His every word reeks of the wounded, lying pomposity of a comment on the BBC 'Have your say' website. The building blocks of his ideology are repeated daily by Fox News, Melanie Philips and every bore who winges on about how 'they're not integrating.' Were this an Islamist, we would soon have been reminded of how Al-Qa"ida is a network, a franchise, an ideology that inspires terror but must still be rooted out: most certainly not a lone crazy.

But Breivik must be a loner, or something else would come into question. We do not have here a clash of extremisms, of Jihadists (or 'Cultural Marxists') against right-wingers exploiting fears about immigration. The texture of Breivik's ideas, right down to the admiration of Hayek and the claim that 'the inability to create a competitive environment, the over-regulation of the economy, the bureaucratisation, it is going to lead to economic collapse' comes from the ruling class. The Norwegian leftist Aslak Sira Myhre  gets to the bottom of it:

' For at least 10 years we have been told that terror comes from the east. That an Arab is suspicious, that all Muslims are tainted. We regularly see people of colour being examined in private rooms in airport security; we have endless debates on the limits of "our" tolerance. As the Islamic world has become the Other, we have begun to think of that what differentiates "us" from "them" is the ability to slaughter civilians in cold blood.

This is what liberals misunderstand when they see in every niqab a threat to 'tolerance' and refuse to see the EDL and its allies as fascists because they like Israel and Sol Campbell. For them, there really are different 'races', between whom the best relations one can hope for are marjoritarian tolerance. But racism does not produce oppression: it is a product of it. Breivik's murderous Islamophobia is the noxious exhaust of a decade or more of Western wars expansion in Islamic lands, just as much as the ideology of biological racism reflected Europe's imperial heyday.

    There is one final, underplayed or ignored, aspect to the terrorist atrocity that places it firmly on the fascist spectrum. It was an attack on the left and the workers' movement. The murdered youth belonged to the Labour party youth wing and the bomb was directed at the PM's headquarters. Breivik's testament is of course full of denunciations of 'cultural Marxism' and 'Soviet style regulation of the economy in the name of gender equality' - perhaps to be expected from a man who seems almost a cut-out of the failed and resentful petit bourgeois. Where are the Breiviks in Britain, and what service are they likely to provide in the coming years of struggle over austerity? We have a fair idea - you can enter the service of an overt anti-terrorist operation in London on September the 3rd.

Slutwalk - my best pal Rose C Munro's blog

Slutwalk is happening in Edinburgh tomorrow. If you think people have the right not to be sexually assaulted and that the victims are not to blame come to it. It starts at 1:30 in the middle of the Royal Mile.

My best mate and comrade Rose C Munro will be speaking at the event as a rape survivor. She says why on her blog SmorgasNog.

Lies taken for wonders: on gay girls, straight guys, Arab revolutions

Mimicry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be called an itself that is behind.

                         Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis

         

Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.  

                                         Washington Post Blog 13th of June 2011

I have never met Tom MacMaster, the Edinburgh-based fantasist behind 'Gay Girl from Damascus' although I assume we must have passed one another in the library or a cafe: unless, of course, 'MacMaster' is yet another alter-ego. He is, he says, sorry. He certainly should be. He took in some people, me included, but much more seriously has surely emboldened the Syrian regime in its efforts to portray the current uprising as a fake media war against the country and endangering real online gay activists in Syria who don't need him or anyone else to make things up on their behalf. This is before we get to the enormous assumption of entitlement behind this identity theft. Given the subject position from which I speak  and my own execrably scanty knowledge of post-colonial, gender and queer theory I don't think I can say much about that: but I eagerly await the thoughts of comrades and friends who,unlike me, know what they're talking about.

  There's still a lot to be said about this incident, the extraordinary richness of which can be summarised by the image of two middle-aged straight men flirting with each other in the guise of lesbians while neither knows the other is pretending to be a lesbian. This seems an almost-haiku like condensation of the ideological construction of the self. What I find especially interesting about the story lies in what it says about Western liberal response to the Arab revolutions and the analogy - certainly tenuous but I hope not offensive - between 'Amina' the online sock-puppet and that response.

 MacMaster's 'Amina' is an avatar of what Slavoj Zizek refers to as the ' cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism.' Far from overturning 'orientalist assumptions' as he seems to have believed he was doing, MacMaster's creation of Amina confirms them. Amina is a woman: this innoculates against the assumed misogyny of the Arab male, potentially unleashed if the dictatorships fall. Amina's support for the revolutions therefore functions to legitimate them against this danger, and in the process legitimating the original assumption. Arabs and Muslims are assumed to be homophobic: let's make Amina gay (without regard to the actual experiences or voices of gay people in the cultures in question) to perform the same function. The avatar Amina congratulates its own creator by legitimating the revolutions through an unimpeachable interlocutor. That there already exist campaigning (and anti-imperialist) LGBT organisations in the Middle East is irrelevant to the echo chamber.

MacMaster is not alone in this maneouvre, I think. The current Euro-American attempt to appropriate the Arab revolutions for a narrative of liberal progress towards market democracies reveals more than a dash of this sock-puppetry. When Barrack Obama speaks of how 'we must teach our children to be like Egypt's youth' is there not a hint of Amina? When the World Bank's Robert Zoellick tells a conference of other bankers and bigwigs that Mohammed Bouaziz set fire to himself for the sake of more free-market policies, is there not a flash of Tom MacMaster and Bill Graber flirting with each other in the mirror image of each other's delusion?

One establishes a mirror vision of the ideological image of oneself and then sets it up to be emulated. Here is what Egypt's youth - it's ragged, confused slum youth and the workers of Suez - had to do in the revolution  when they faced the riot police.

I think we do need our children to be like this: but I don't think Obama really does.

This brings us back to Amina. She stands in well for that group of online, Anglophone activists most accessible to and therefore favoured by the Western media - to the extent that her non-existence only became a problem when her inventor went on holiday. The real activists of this kind should not be disparaged: they are brave and important.But the desire of the Western liberal gaze to invest them with ownership of the revolutions should not be accepted. It is the feared Arab masses to whom these revolutions belong and who will determine their future. 

This film, for which I find it difficult to muster superlatives, demonstrates the emergence of such a collective subject. 

It also shows, I am perfectly sure, the largest assembly of LGBT people that Yemen has ever seen - simply because it is a cross-section of the population. Some of those will be wearing full niqabs; others beards; some may be undergoing the turmoil of a suppressed identity, others not. The women are separated from the men. But when they've come out onto the streets in this way, in these numbers and in the face of all the violence directed against demonstrations in Yemen for the past four months, is it so difficult to believe that they might march out, proud  and together one day?

Why Supporters of the Arab revolutions should oppose Western military intervention in Libya

The US led NATO  air attack on Libya, widely trailed for the past few weeks, raises an urgent demand for political clarity on the part of supporters of the Arab revolutions. Things are going to get much more complicated in the Middle East now as regimes which the US and its allies would be happy to see toppled, such as Syria, face off against potential revolutions. Difficult arguments are going to happen, and it is as well that we clarify them now.

 Anyone seeking a understanding of the Western liberal fetish for armed intervention - and have you noticed how the TV is now filled with 'strategic expert' types visibly glistening at the thought of a cruise missile rather than heroic young revolutionaries ? - should of course turn to Richard Seymour's book The Liberal Defence of Murder. While you find it on your bookshelf, consider the arguments of Gilbert Achcar, the Lebanese leftist. Gilbert argues, in a vein with which many will agree, that the No-fly zone, and therefore the bombing required to enforce it, should be supported because:

if Gaddafi were permitted to continue his military offensive and take Benghazi, there would be a major massacre. Here is a case where a population is truly in danger, and where there is no plausible alternative that could protect it. The attack by Gaddafi's forces was hours or at most days away. You can't in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians. In the same way, even though we know well the nature and double standards of cops in the bourgeois state, you can't in the name of anti-capitalist principles blame anybody for calling them when someone is on the point of being raped and there is no alternative way of stopping the rapists.

Now, aside from the implicit acceptance of the liberal imperialist vision of Western military power as global police , this argument is simply that something must be done and that NATO are the only people who can do it - 'there is no alternative way of stopping the rapists.'

Is this right? Why believe that Western military intervention would, as an unintended consequence of the duplicitous imperialist intentions that such an experienced observer of the scene as Achcar must recognise, prevent Gaddafi's overcoming and killing the opposition? Is there an example of where a no-fly zone has done this and then led to the desired outcome of the fall of the regime?

No-fly zones were enforced on northern and southern in 1992, ostensibly to prevent Saddam's further repression of the Shi"a rebellion in the South and the Kurds in the north. The Kurds did succeed in fighting off Saddam's forces only then to fall into vicious civil war amongst various externally backed factions themselves. Incidentally, the Kurdish autonomous region has seen some of the most violent suppression of the recent mass demonstrations in Iraq that form a little known part of the current popular upsurge. In the South, where the rebellion had been defeated before the no-fly zone was announced, Saddam carried out some of his worst acts of repression - summary executions of civilians picked at random, the destruction of city blocks by tank shelling, the draining of the marshlands to drive out their inhabitants - under the no-fly zone. They did not lead to the ousting of Hussein but eventually to the 2003 invasion. We all know how that turned out.

 Neither the Bosnian no-fly zone nor the Kosovo war led to the toppling of Milosevic - although most refugees fled Kosovo after the Western bombing began. It took mass demonstrations and strikes to get rid of him.

But hasn't such a movement risen in Libya and now faces extinction, which can only be prevented by Western military intervention? The desire to prevent a massacre, and the wish of the Benghazi government to have air support is understandable. But the dynamics of revolution are fundamentally political - it seems that the initial momentum of the revolution politically winning people to its side was lost as the Gaddafi's patronage networks functioned effectively in the centre of the country, forming a block to the revolutionary advance on Tripoli. The attack by foreign planes is going to exacerbate, not alleviate that political problem. This leaves the door open at best to a semi-partition of the country, of the kind that prevailed in Iraq between 1991 and 2003.

 Second, this process is not confined to Libya. It is not mere rhetoric to contrast the military intervention in Libya with the silent support for the vicious represssion in Yemen and Bahrain, now invaded by Saudi troops. Each case of revolution has been boosted by previous popular victories - but the NATO bombing gives unneccesary credence to the regimes' claim that the popular movements are foreign stooges. Yes, the Arab league has called for this no-fly zone, perhaps as a quid pro quo for the invasion of Bahrain. But the very fact that this assembly of despots supports it should make us think twice about the effects of this policy on the revolutionary process. Nor will these public pronouncements make any difference to the mukhabarat and official propaganda who will use the Libyan example to the hilt to discredit the movements.

  This does not - absolutely does not - mean support for Gaddafi. This is not the case of the Lebanese war of 2006. If you want to support the revolutions and not the hypocrisy of the Western powers, I suggest the following demands:

Release the Gaddafi regime funds to the revolutionaries and allow them to buy weapons

Condemn the Saudi (GCC) invasion of Bahrain, cut ties with both regimes and with Yemen's Ali Abdallah Saleh - removing also the military aid to his regime. Cancel all military contracts with them.

Allow Benghazi to become an open port for Arab -or other - revolutionary volunteers to join the fight.

The Arab Revolution and the Coming Insurrection:Multitudinous or Permanent? A response to Hardt, Negri and Newsnight

History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now. Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incarnate. It evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes of the past. Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger’s leap into what has gone before. 

                  From Walter Benjamin's 14th Thesis on the Concept of History

      One of the first aspects of the Arab revolutions to strike the observer - and still more, one expects, the participant - is the return of words and concepts widely thought to be the oldest of hat. Who, apart from those of us who have been anticipating these events with far less certainty than we would now admit, could use the word 'counter-revolutionary' six months ago and expect the listener to find a common referent? Yet now, there are tangible counter-revolutionaries and with them the necessity for the defence of the revolution.  Battalions of citizens are formed: palaces marched upon: mercenary phalanxes await with long-prepared chains. Revolutionary time is  a time 'blasted out of the continuum of history'. It is 'a random time, open at any moment to the unforseeable irruption of the new' but equally infused with shards of the messianic moments of the past.

    Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are both right and wrong, then to argue that 'even calling these struggles "revolutions" seems to mislead commentators who assume the progression of events must obey the logic of 1789 or 1917, or some other past European rebellion against kings and czars.' 

This is, of course, true. Revolution is when millions of people make history and for that reason it is an unpredictable process. The interesting discussion for those who aspire to the victory of the revolution (how joyful to be able to write those words without irony or condescension) concerns the circumstances in which history is now being made. 

  Hardt and Negri are no mere facebook boosters. Yet their conception of what is going on in the Arab Revolutions is only a partial truth. They write that the protests resemble 'what we have seen for more than a decade in other parts of the world' in the form of a horizontal network that has no single central leader. Traditional opposition bodies can participate in this network but cannot direct it'. Paul Mason, a man whose attentiveness to the possibilities of rhizomatic rebellion contrasts happily with his job as economics editor of Newsnight, agrees.




This is right. The revolutions are spontaneous, they are "horizontal" and they are not led by latecoming aspirants such as Mohammed el Baradei, Rashid Al Ghanoushi or the Muslim Brotherhood. But this is a mark of continuity with previous revolutions, not a break. Indeed, that's why they were revolutions.  It would be wrong to say that there was no leadership - in the simple, tautological sense of people who give a lead - behind the Egyptian revolution at the very least. The January 25th demonstrations were called by a network of socialist, liberal and Muslim Brotherhood youth activists. They saw the rupture in the normal way of doing things opened up by Tunisia and took a 'tiger's leap into what had gone before'. It took a long time before the millions of revolutionaries, having given Mubarak three more chances than he deserved, moved on the palace at Heliopolis and the state TV building. Arguments went on about what to do next in what a BBC journalist called the 'gigantic open air debating chamber' of Tahrir Square and some people made and won an argument to act. This is a different kind of leadership to Mohammed El Baradei turning up and annoucing he is ready to take any mantle offered to him - but the dichotomy drawn by Hardt and Negri between complete spontatneity and utter obedience misses it.


  Hardt and Negri's perspective follows on from a particular political economy, claiming correctly that 'the Arab revolts ignited around the issue of unemployment and at their centre have been highly educated youth with frustrated ambitions - a population that has much in common with protesting students in London or Rome'. Paul Mason draws the same conclusion  - 'at the heart of it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future', living  'in a virtual undergrowth online and through digital comms networks.'

   The global spread of 'frustrated ambitions' is certainly visible, and a product of the ongoing crisis of capitalism. Youth unemployment, amongst both graduates and non-graduates (such as Mohammed Bouaziz) is very high in the Arab states and beyond. The khobzistes and the shabab, at best in informal employment or an insecure aspiration to petty bourgeois status, have played a most visible role in the street risings of the contemporary scene. Where we find a shard of the old-new, a renewal of the 'secret agreement between past generations and the present one' is the participation of workers - the employed proletarian sort rather than the diffusely multitudinous sort - in the Arab Revolutions. Indeed, taking the spectacle of a mixed-up time in which twitter feeds announce 'Newsnight special on spreading revolution as our warrant, perhaps it is time to revive the concept of permanent revolution?

      What are the grounds for this dusting off of a historical subject, usually considered at best a 'stage army to be marched on and off the scene of history' ? Consider the Egyptian Revolution. Its origins lie in the strike wave that passed through the country between 2006 and 2008 and most especially in the mill town of Mahalla. More than 1.7 million workers took part in more than 1,900 strikes and other protests (in the absence of free unions) between 2004 and 2008 (Joel Beinin  Workers' Rights in Egypt 2010:49). It was this strike wave that began to weaken the barrier of fear - but also more concretely led to the networks that supported the January 25th demonstrations. One of the groups calling those demonstrations, the April 6th youth movement, although disparate, is linked to this struggle in its very name: it refers to the call for a general strike in support of the worker's uprising that took control of Mahalla on that day in 2008. As Wikileaks has revealed, State Department officials recognised that 'in Mahalla a new organic opposition force bubbled to the surface, defying current political labels...This may require the government to change its script.' Not spear carriers, but authors.

  In the three weeks of demonstrations that led to Muabarak's fall, Egyptian workers showed some of the 'awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode'. At first workers participated in demonstrations called by the networks that emerged to support them two years previously and in atmosphere changed by their own struggles. As Mubark proved a more stubborn rhinoceros than many had expected, it was the participation of workers as workers that pushed finally pushed him out. A general strike (remember in a country where there were no free unions until a week beforehand) called on Wednesday the 9th of February spread quickly amongst transport workers, steel workers, Suez canal support workers and eventually so many workplaces that even twitter could not keep up. They are still there and the question is not whether they are organised, but how they can be organised and generalised into an alternative political power.

 In Tunisia, the uprising did begin in the poor, marginalised and semi-employed sectors. What spread it and unified these protests however, were the efforts of trade unionist even against their own leadership, comprised by long years of corporatist compact with Ben Ali. One should not forget the 2008 miners strike: background to key point in the revolution, the storming of the UGTT offices in Gfasa by militants in support of the protests (Olivier Piot, 'Tunisia: Diary of a Revolution', Le Monde Diplomatique 1102). Piot is worth quoting at length here

    'Fearing student protest, Ben Ali closed all educational establishments. A few hours later, the UGTT finally reacted. Its leadership authorised the regional sections in Sfax, Kairouan and Tozeur to organize a general strike the next day and then in Tunis on 14 January. "Those cities were going to go it alone away" said a member of Ettjadid ["Renewal", a party that emerged form the old Tunisian Communist party]. That evening riots broke out in working class areas of Tunis. This was a turning point.'

 What of elsewhere? On Libya, where the revolution has now taken on the aspect of civil war against a dictator mad, bad and lucrative to know, any comment would be speculation . In Bahrain, inheritor of a long trade union tradition the threat of a general strike one week ago seems to have been what brought the Khalifas to offer reforms - much as the decision to call off that strike is surely open to criticism. Iran provides a negative example of where the Green Movement in 2009, but hopefully not now, proved unable to mobilize workers.

   Two points where Hardt and Negri are conclusively right is when they (unconsciously?) echo an earlier revolutionary :

a radical constitutional response must invent a common plan to manage natural resources and social production. This is a threshold through which neoliberalism cannot pass and capitalism is put to question. And Islamic rule is completely inadequate to meet these needs. Here insurrection touches on not only the equilibriums of north Africa and the Middle East but also the global system of economic governance.

The revolutionary state of exception contains within it both the intimations of a future (and a past) that is kind, human and self-organised and on the other the determined effort of the enemy to remain victorious. In both Tunisia and Egypt the military structure remains and is now - as in the most recent attacks on Tahrir square demonstrated - readying itself. As Comrade Hossam rightly argues the only way to prevent retreat is to continue the attack using the fiercest of weapons, the worker's economic power. As Negri and Hardt understand, this is incompatible with capitlalist economic governance.

   And what of that global system? One has but to watch the workers of Wisconsin and the American Midwest - in which the flashes of Tahrir have been both conscious and unconscious - to realise that something is certainly up.

We may wonder where the centre of the world system now lies. The 'global imbalances' of which The Economist have warned for years refer to the dislocation between a Euro-Atlantic (with the exception of Germany) importing zone and a China centred exporting zone, with the oil resources of the Gulf thrown in. Workers have now begun to strike and protest in Saudi Arabia and the monarchy is flailing for some way to buy its way out of the Arab revolutionary wave. Sympathy protests in China so far have been very small but as Paul Mason points out, the social make up of much of the country (what I would like to call the experience of uneven and combined development) is not too far away from the Arab world. Chinese workers have also begun to rediscover traditions of collective action in recent years. Might we believe - is it too soon to hope - that the 21st century has begun?

Statements from the Egyptian left

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt
Glory to the martyrs! Victory to the revolution!

What is happening today is the largest popular revolution in the history of our country... and of the entire Arab world. The sacrifice of our martyrs has built our revolution and we have broken through all the barriers of fear. We will not back down until the criminal 'leaders' and their criminal system is destroyed.



Call to Egyptian workers. Statement from the Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt:
The demonstrations and protests have played a key role in igniting and continuing our revolution. Now we need the workers. They can seal the fate of the regime. Not only by participating in the demonstrations, but by organising a general strike in all the vital.industries and large corporations...

The regime can afford to wait out the sit-ins and demonstrations for days and weeks, but it cannot last beyond a few hours if workers use strikes as a weapon. Strike on the railways, on public transport, the airports and large industrial companies…! Egyptian Workers! On behalf of the rebellious youth, and on behalf of the blood of our martyrs, join the ranks of the revolution, use your power and victory will be ours!

Form revolutionary councils urgently.

This revolution has surpassed our greatest expectations. Nobody expected to see these numbers. Nobody expected that Egyptians would be this brave in the face of the police. Nobody can say that we did not force the dictator to retreat. No...body can say that a transformation did not happen in Middan el Tahrir.

What we need right now is to push for the socio-economic demands as part of our demands, so that the person sitting in his home knows that we fighting for their rights... We need to organize ourselves into popular committees which elects its higher councils democratically, and from below. These councils must form a higher council which includes delegates of all the tendencies. We must elect a higher council of people who represent us, and in whom we trust. We call for the formation of popular councils in Middan Tahrir, and in all the cities of Egypt.

Statement of the Revolutionary Socialists, Egypt, on the role of the army:

Everyone asks: Is the Army with the people or against them?

The army is not a single block. The interests of soldiers and junior officers are the same as the interests of the masses. But the senior officers are Mubarak's men, chosen carefully to protect his regime of... corruption, wealth and tyranny. It is an integral part of the system...

This army is no longer the people's army. This army is not the one which defeated the Zionist enemy in October 73. This army is closely associated with America and Israel. It's role is to protect Israel, not the people... Yes we want to win the soldiers of the revolution. But we must not be fooled by slogans that 'the army on our side'. The army will either suppress the demonstrations directly, or by restructuring the police to play this role.

عربي

ما يحدث اليوم هو أكبر ثورة شعبية في تاريخ البلاد.. بل في تاريخ المنطقة العربية كلها.. ثورة تزداد اشتعالا واتساعا كلما سقط الشهداء.. لقد اجتزنا كل حواجز الخوف ولن نتراجع حتى نسقط هذا النظام العفن بكل رموزه وقياداته وسياساته الإجرامية.

رحيل مبارك هو الخطوة الأولى وليس الخطوة الأخيرة للثورة
تسليم السلطة الديكتاتورية لعمر سليمان وأحمد شفيق وغيرهم من حاشية مبارك هو استمرار لنفس النظام. فعمر سليمات هو رجل اسرائيل وأمريكا في مصر، يقضي أغلب وقته بين واشنطن وتل أبيب خادما وفيا لمصالحهم. وأحمد شفيق هو الصديق المقرب لمبارك وزميله في الاستبداد والقمع ونهب الشعب المصري.

ثروات البلاد ملك للشعب ولابد أن تعود إليه
على مدى العقود الثلاث الماضية حول هذا النظام المستبد الفاسد البلاد الى عزبة كبرى تملكها حفنة صغيرة من كبار رجال الأعمال والشركات الأجنبية.. 100 أسرة تمتلك أكثر من 90% من ثروات البلاد.. هؤلاء يحتكرون ثروات الشعب المصري من خلال سياسات الخصخصة والنهب وتحالف السلطة مع رأس المال.. هؤلاء حولوا غالبية الشعب المصري الى فقراء معدمين وعاطلين عن العمل.

المصانع التي خربوها وباعوها برخص التراب يجب ان تعود الى الشعب..
علينا تأميم الشركات والأراضي والعقارات التي نهبتها هذه الحفنة.. فطالما ظلوا يملكون ثرواتنا لن يكتمل التخلص من هذا النظام. فالاستبداد الاقتصادي هو الوجه الآخر للاستبداد السياسي. لن نتمكن من مواجهة البطالة وتحقيق أجور عادلة وحد أدنى لائق للأجور بدون استعادة ثروة الشعب من تلك العصابة.

لن نقبل بعد اليوم أن نكون كلاب حراسة لأمريكا واسرائيل
هذا النظام لا يقف وحده.. فالديكتاتور مبارك خادم أمين وعميل مباشر لمصالح أمريكا واسرائيل.. حول مصر الى مستعمرة أمريكية وشارك بشكل مباشر في حصار الشعب الفلسطيني وجعل قناة السويس والمجال الجوي المصري مرتعا للسفن الحربية والمقاتلات التي دمرت وقتلت الشعب العراقي، وصدر الغاز المصري لاسرائيل برخص التراب في حين يخنق الشعب المصري بالارتفاع اليومي للاسعار. ثورتنا يجب ان تعيد لمصر استقلالها وكرامتها ودورها القيادي في المنطقة.

ثورتنا ثورة شعبية
ليست ثورة نخبة أو أحزاب سياسية أو جماعات دينية. ان شباب مصر من طلاب وعمال وفقراء هم أصحاب هذه الثورة. وقد بدأت في الأيام الأخيرة الكثير من النخب والأحزاب ومن يسمون أنفسهم بالرموز في محاولة ركوب الموجة وسرقة الثورة من أصحابها الحقيقيين. رموز ثورتنا هم شهدائها وشبابنا الصامد في الميادين. لن نسمح لهؤلاء البهوات أن يستولوا على ثورتنا وأن يدعوا أنهم يمثلوننا. نحن سنختار من يمثلنا ويمثل الشهداء الذين استشهدوا ودفعوا دماءهم ثمنا للخلاص من النظام.

جيش الشعب هو الجيش الذي يحمي الثورة
الجميع يتساءل: هل يقف الجيش مع الشعب أم ضده؟ لابد أن ننتبه الى ان الجيش ليس كتلة واحدة. فمصالح الجنود وصغار الضباط هي نفس مصالح الجماهير المنتفضة.. أما كبار الضباط فهم رجال مبارك، اختارهم بدقة ليحموا نظامه وتربطهم نفس علاقات الفساد والثروة والاستبداد. هم جزء لا يتجزأ من النظام. يجب ألا ننسى ان هذا الجيش لم يعد جيش الشعب. هذا الجيش ليس هو الجيش الذي حارب العدو الصهيوني وانتصر في أكتوبر 73. هذا الجيش هو الجيش الذي ارتبط بشكل وثيق بأمريكا واسرائيل وأصبح دوره هو حماية اسرائيل وليس حماية الشعب المصري. نعم نريد كسب الجنود الى الثورة. لكن لا يجب ان ننخدع بالشعارات حول وقوف الجيش الى جانبنا. وسوف يقوم الجيش في نهاية المطاف إما بقمع المظاهرات بشكل مباشر أو بإعادة تشكيل الشرطة لتلعب هذا الدور.

يا عمال مصر انضموا الى صفوف الثورة
لقد لعبت المظاهرات والاحتجاجات دورا أساسيا في إشعال واستمرار ثورتنا. لكننا نحتاج الى دعم العمال لحسم سقوط النظام. ليس فقط بالمشاركة في المظاهرات بل في تنظيم الاضراب العام في كافة المصالح الحيوية والشركات الكبرى. فالنظام يستطيع ان يتحمل اعتصامات ومظاهرات الميادين أياما وأسابيع، لكنه لن يستطيع البقاء لساعات إذا استخدم العمال سلاح الاضراب فأوقفوا السكك الحديدة والنقل العام والمطارات والشركات الصناعية الكبرى..
باسم شباب مصر الثائر وباسم دماء شهدائنا نتوجه الى عمال مصر بنداء أن ينضموا الى صفوف الثورة وان يحسموا انتصارها.


المجــــد للشـــــــهـداء
يسقط النظــــــام
النصر للثــــــــــــورة

الاشتراكيون الثوريون
ميدان التحرير 1 فبراير 2011





Then, somewhat less worker-focused than IS statement. Shows perhaps debates that are going on. This is my translation so apologies for any mistakes

English

Statement No.1 of the union of the forces of the Egyptian left
The people want the fall of the regime.
 After more than 30 years of suffering, in which was practiced all sorts of subjugation, repression, tyranny and the impoverishment of the Egyptian people, on the 25th of January the heroic Egyptian people launched a completely popular revolution in the face of the Mubarak regime, demanding with the struggle of the youth with a heroism unprecedented in the modern history of the people and with continuing steadfastness this great revolution has one main demand and that is the fall of the corrupt regime of Mubarak the tyrant. The Egyptian left, under the banner of the union of the forces of the Egyptian left declares the following.
The Egyptian left expresses itself as one part of the great popular Egyptian revolution and holds fast to its main demand:
1 the departure of Mubarak from the government and the continuing fall of the corrupt tyrannical regime which the revolution has already achieved with the fall of most its leaders and the removal of its legitimacy which was built on forgery, tyranny and subjugation.
2.Dissolution of the chamber of deputies, which does not represent the wishes of the Egyptian people, as a prologue to the holding of free and fair elections under a new democratic constitution under the supervision of local and international observers.
3.Formation of a national non-party government comprised of national personalities and representatives of the struggle guarding the interests of the nation in the transition period.
4.Formation of a constituent assembly of legal and political figures [original has ‘men of law and politics’] to draw up a new democratic constitution for the country.
5.The presentation to the high court of those responsible for the crimes and killings of the Egyptians before and after January 25th especially Habib Al Adly the former minister of the interior and his accomplices in the use of violence against the Egyptian citizenry and of the figures of the regime and the businessmen connected to it and the building of a civil police force, the placement of police departments and judicial apparatus under the control of elected popular councils, the abolition of the state security, the central security, the presidential guard and of conscription to the army and appointment of a civilian minister of the interior.
6. Immediate end to the state of emergency and abolition of the so-called ‘Committee of Party Affairs’: freedom of association for the Egyptian people of different parties, people’s associations and organisations.
7. Immediate measures to be taken to alleviate the suffering of the poor, the distribution of social support to the poor and unemployed, the provision of basic goods at affordable prices, with work to adopting a plan of real development for the country based on the development of the productive sectors in agriculture, manufacture and distribution with equitable development based on progressive taxation
8. The return of the Egyptian army to its natural role of defending the nation to distance itself from participation in the internal political affairs of the nation and leave Egyptian politics completely to civil society.
Long live the revolution of 25th January
Long live the Egyptian popular revolutionary struggle.
1 ،اتحاد قوي اليسار المصري بيان رقم


الشعب يريد اسقاط النظام
بعد معاناة دامت أكثر من 30 عاما ،مورست فيها كافة صنوف القهر والقمع والاستبداد
والإفقار للشعب المصرى، انطلقت في مواجهة نظام مبارك ثورة شعبية كاملة الأركان
أطلقها شباب مصر البطل فى الخامس والعشرين من يناير 2011، قدم فيها الشعب المصري،
بكافة فئاته، ملحمة من البطولة غير المسبوقة في تاريخ الشعوب الحديثة، ومع استمرار
صمود هذه الثورة العظيمة وثباتها علي مطلبها الرئيسي، وهو اسقاط نظام مبارك الفاسد
المستبد, يعلن اليسار المصري المنضوي تحت راية اتحاد قوي اليسار ما يلي: 

<span>أولا:</span>اذ يعتبر اليسار المصري نفسه جزء من قوي ثورة الشعب المصري
العظيمة، يعلن تمسكه بمطلبها الرئيسي وهو رحيل مبارك عن سدة الحكم والاستمرار في
اسقاط النظام المستبد الفاسد الذي نجحت الثورة بالفعل في اسقاط الكثير من اركانه
ونزعت عنه شرعيته التي بناها على التزوير والقهر والاستبداد.
<span>ثانيا:</span>حل المجالس النيابية المزورة التي لا تعبرعن ارادة الشعب
المصري، تمهيدا لاجراء انتخابات حرة نزيهة في ظل دستور جديد وقوانين ديموقراطية
جديدة وتحت أشراف ورقابة دولية ومحلية.
<span>ثالثا:</span>تشكيل حكومة مدنية غير حزبية  موسعة من شخصيات ورموز وطنية
مشهود لها بالكفاءة والامانة والحرص علي مصالح الوطن والشعب المصري لتسيير أمور
البلاد خلال المرحلة الانتقالية.
<span>رابعا:</span>تشكيل جمعية تأسيسية من رجال القانون والسياسة لاعداد دستور
ديموقراطي جديد للبلاد.
<span>خامسا:</span> تقديم المسئولين عن جرائم قتل و ترويع المصريين قبل و أثناء و
بعد 25 يناير 2011 وعلى رأسهم حبيب العادلى وزير الداخلية السابق ومساعديه
المتورطين فى استخدام العنف ضد المواطنين المصريين، وكافة رموز النظام البائد ورجال
الأعمال المرتبطين به الي محاكمة فورية علنية عاجلة، واعادة بناء جهاز الشرطة كهيئة
نظامية مدنية، وإخضاع الشرطة وأقسامها للرقابة القضائية ورقابة المجالس الشعبية
المنتخبة، وإلغاء الأمن المركزي ومباحث أمن الدولة وقصر التجنيد الإجباري على الجيش
دون الشرطة، وتعيين وزير مدني للداخلية.
<span>سادسا:</span>ضرورة الانهاء الفوري لحالة الطوارئ والغاء ما يسمي بلجنة شئون
الاحزاب واطلاق حرية التنظيم للشعب المصري من أحزاب، نقابات، جمعيات أهلية ومنظمات
حقوقية علي ان يتم ذلك بالاخطار فقط للجهات الادارية المسئولة.
<span>سابعا:</span>اتخاذ اجراءات عاجلة لتخفيف المعاناة عن الحماهير تتضمن اقرار
حد أدنى وآخر أعلى للجور وتقديم اعانة بطالة للعاطلين عن العمل واعانات اجتماعية
للفقراء وتوفير للسلع الأساسية بأسعار مناسبة، مع العمل على اعتماد خطة تنمية
حقيقية للبلاد تقوم على تطوير القطاعات الانتاجية في الزراعة والصناعة والتوزيع
العادل لناتج التنمية وفرض ضرائب تصاعدية

<span> ثامنا:</span>: ضرورة عودة الجيش المصرى إلى ممارسة دوره الطبيعى فى حماية
الوطن من أعدائهالخارجيين لكي ينأى بنفسه عن الاشتراك فى العملية السياسية الداخلية
و يتركها بالكامل  للمجتمع المدنى السياسى المصرى .
عاشت ثورة 25 يناير
عاش كفاح الشعب المصرى ال