Egypt: The Ancien Regime Tries To Hoodwink the Working Class

Events since the fall of Hosni Mubarak have shown that the Egyptian revolution is only in its initial stages. With its series of communiqués issued over the weekend, the Egyptian military has made clear its response to the revolutionary struggles. Its aim is to divert and suppress the mass movement, while ensuring a tactical transfer of power to maintain the old regime in all but name.

The Egyptian army is highlighting its elimination of various legal fictions of the Mubarak regime— the rubber-stamp parliament and the dictator’s constitution. Far from leading a “democratic transition,” the army is trying to keep itself in power while granting none of the basic demands that are driving millions of Egyptians into the streets.

The country is now under the rule of a military junta, which is retaining all the emergency powers of the old regime, preserving the police, and attempting to rule through a network of old Mubarak cronies like Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq.

Deeply tied to Egypt’s business community, the officer corps is hostile to the wave of strikes that is shaking Egypt, and workers’ demands for improved wages and social conditions. While it does not yet feel strong enough to do so, the army is signaling its intention to move against strikers. In a statement denouncing “chaos and disorder,” the Higher Military Council said it would ban meetings by labor unions or professional syndicates, effectively making strikes illegal.

In the six months, and perhaps longer, the army plans to hold elections on the basis of a constitution drafted exclusively by itself, and without dissolving Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP). That is, it hopes to use the six-month period to wind down the protests and give a pseudo-democratic cover to a regime no less responsive to the demands of the population than the one controlled by the hated Mubarak.

This basic political fact is summed up in the person of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi — now officially the ruler of Egypt — as depicted in cables by US Ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone published by WikiLeaks.

Describing Tantawi in March 2008 as committed to the 1979 treaty with Israel and firmly “opposed [to] both economic and political reforms,” Ricciardone summed up Tantawi’s politics thus: “He and Mubarak are focused on regime stability and maintaining the status quo through the end of their time.”

The claim that this corresponds to protestors’ demands is a repugnant lie. The millions of people now participating in strikes and protests — and the thousands who were killed or tortured — were not struggling to preserve the old regime.

Egypt’s official “opposition” is nonetheless signaling its support for the army. After stressing the need for “law and order” Friday, Mohammed ElBaradei declared yesterday: “We trust the army and call upon people to give them the opportunity to implement what they promised.”

Mohamed el-Katatni, a leading official of the Muslim Brotherhood, said: “The main goal of the revolution has been achieved.”

These statements clearly demonstrate that no constituency for genuine democracy exists in the Egyptian capitalist class, or its backers in Washington, or in the capitals of the other imperialist powers. The basic demands of the workers and oppressed masses — for better wages and living conditions, for social equality, and for an end to imperialist domination — fill all sections of the political establishment with dread. Faced with a mass upsurge of the working class, threatening their basic class interests, the pro-capitalist “opposition” has reacted by backing the dictatorship.

US Wants Another Stooge As Mubarak’s Successor

The mass movement of Egyptian working people against the Mubarak dictatorship must oppose and reject the initiative by the American government to replace Mubarak with a military-dominated “transition” government. This maneuver is aimed at safeguarding the interests of imperialism and the Egyptian ruling elite, and aborting the Egyptian Revolution.

President Obama took the occasion of a joint press appearance Friday with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to make his most open call for Mubarak to “make the right decision” to resolve the crisis in Egypt.

Vice President Joseph Biden telephoned Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, the longtime boss of the intelligence services who is now favored by Washington as Mubarak’s immediate successor. According a White House statement, Biden urged Suleiman that “credible, inclusive negotiations begin immediately in order for Egypt to transition to a democratic government that addresses the aspirations of the Egyptian people.”

The Obama administration envisions a regime based on the military and headed by Suleiman, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the defense minister, and other top Mubarak aides, with the addition of representatives of the corrupt and venal Egyptian bourgeois opposition—figures such as Mohammed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear weapons inspection program, Amr Moussa, secretary of the Arab League, and big business spokesman like the Wafd Party.

State Department spokesmen have also suggested a role for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist bourgeois party that has long been outlawed in Egypt, but whose candidates, running as independents, won 20 percent of the seats in the 2005 legislative elections. After years of using the “threat” of the Islamic fundamentalists to justify support for the Mubarak dictatorship, Washington has decided to cultivate the Islamists as a bulwark against the main danger—social revolution.

In an analysis published in November 2007, the New York Times foreshadowed this type of manipulation of the succession to Mubarak. The article noted: “Mr. Mubarak has not always been the perfect ally, but American officials say that he is invaluable for his historical perspective and the importance he places on the relationship with the United States and peace with Israel. An American official here said the hope was that Mr. Mubarak’s ultimate replacement would be someone who maintains the same historical appreciation for peace and relations with Washington.” In other words, Mubarak’s successor must be, like him, an American stooge.

A Suleiman government would have an out-and-out criminal at its head. The Egyptian vice president—appointed to that post only last week by Mubarak—is better known as the chief of Egypt’s notoriously brutal security apparatus. He is directly responsible for the torture of thousands of political prisoners, a role for which he was especially prized by the CIA, which regularly shipped prisoners to Egypt for treatment that could not be administered in Guantanamo Bay or the agency’s own network of secret prisons.

Journalist Robert Fisk described Suleiman acidly as Mubarak’s “chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit.” It was under his direction that Gaza has been systematically blockaded and starved for the past four years, since the coming to power of Hamas in that territory. Suleiman is a confidante of the Israeli regime, the most highly regarded Egyptian in the eyes of Mossad and the Israeli military.

Suleiman and the military would have a civilian fig leaf in the form of individuals like ElBaradei, who are equally hostile to the revolutionary movement in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and other cities. ElBaradei has argued for delaying elections even further than the September date set by Mubarak. He is proposing instead a three-member ruling council (presumably himself, Suleiman and a top military officer) to hold power for at least a year while the electoral system was “reformed.”

The major task of such a “transition” regime would be to delude the popular movement against Mubarak with illusions of reform, and then disperse the mass demonstrations, including the physical suppression of all those who rightly refuse to accept such a US-brokered transition as a genuine democratic development.

In that context, Obama’s words Friday have an ominous ring. He reiterated previous statements that the US government opposes the use of violence either by the government or the protesters—as though there were an equivalence between a brutal military dictatorship, armed to the teeth, and with a long record of torture and murder, and the Egyptian masses, who successfully defended themselves in Tahrir Square with their bare hands and sheer force of numbers.

If Mubarak is replaced by a caretaker regime based on the military, both the Obama administration and the American media will swing behind the new rulers, vilifying all popular opposition as “terrorism” and endorsing the bloodiest measures of state repression.

Far from representing a concession to the democratic demands of the masses, such a regime would represent a carefully constructed roadblock. It would cement the role of the Egyptian government as a servant of US imperialism, collaborator with Israel, and enemy of the Palestinian people and the oppressed masses of Egypt itself.

The Mubarak regime is not simply the product of a criminal dictator and his coterie of thugs. It is, rather, the instrument of the ruling class in Egypt and its imperialist patrons. The regime arises from the incapacity of the Egyptian bourgeoisie to address the social needs of the masses and carry out the basic tasks of the democratic revolution. This involves, not merely electoral formalities—which Egypt has in abundance—but freeing the country from the grip of imperialism, the Egyptian stooges of foreign capital and the rule of semi-feudal landlords who still dominate the countryside.

From WSWS

Mohamed ElBaradei: US Fifth Columnist in the Egyptian Revolt

The revolt in Egypt is an organically driven people-power movement to oust a dictator, restore universal freedoms, and wrestle the country free from the clutches of the US military-industrial complex, but the man now being positioned to form a new government is a pied piper working for the very same globalists and NGO’s that autocrat leader Hosni Mubarak has dutifully served for nearly 30 years.

Make no mistake about it, under the current regime Egypt is a vassal state for the new world order. Under Mubarak, the country receives some $2 billion in aid every year from the United States, second only to Israel. In addition, Egypt pays out $1.1 million annually to the Podesta Group, an organization closely tied with the Obama administration, to act as "foreign agents" for Mubarak’s regime.

Mubarak’s loyalty to the US empire was reciprocated this week when Vice-President Joe Biden ludicrously asserted that Mubarak’s unbroken 30 year reign did not represent a dictatorship and that he was a close ally of the west.

"Egypt under Mubarak uses its billions in U.S. military aid to detain, beat and torture dissenters, opposition politicians and journalists; many have died in custody,"writes Mark Zepezauer. "Thousands of political prisoners and pro-democracy activists are held in overcrowded, disease-ridden prisons, without charges or trials. Press restrictions, including newspaper shutdowns, are widespread."

Which is why it makes no sense whatsoever for the CIA to be involved in contriving a series of riots that would destabilize and threaten to topple a regime loyal to them. This is not the type of staged "color revolution" that we’ve witnessed before in places like Georgia, the Ukraine or Yugoslavia – orchestrated events disguised as spontaneous uprisings intended to remove rogue leaders hostile to the global elite’s agenda for world government.

This is a grass roots movement being carried out by impoverished young Egyptians finally standing up in unison to a regime that toadies to the west yet allows its people none of the freedoms associated with living in a modern and prosperous nation. But that doesn’t mean the revolution we currently see unfolding on the streets of Alexandria, Cairo, Suez and cannot be co-opted by the very same globalist forces who have been pulling Mubarak’s strings for the past three decades.

The US military-industrial complex has known for at least three years that Egypt was teetering on the verge of regime change, and they certainly were not going to let anyone outside parties take control after Mubarak’s fall. That’s why the American Embassy trained rebel leaders to infiltrate opposition groups from the very beginning, as the Telegraph reveals today.

Enter former top UN official and staunch Mubarak adversary Mohamed ElBaradei, who recently returned to Cairo in a bid to lead the protest movement.

ElBaradei serves on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, who today issued a press release protesting the decision on behalf of Egyptian authorities to place ElBaradei under house arrest.

International Crisis Group is a shadowy NGO (non-governmental organization) that enjoys an annual budget of over $15 million and is bankrolled by the likes of Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Soros himself serves as a member of the organization’s Executive Committee. In other words, this is a major geopolitical steering group for the global elite.

The fact that their man ElBaradei is being primed to head up the post-Mubarak government should set alarm bells ringing in the ears of every demonstrator who is protesting in the name of trying to wrestle Egypt away from the clutches of new world order control.

Indeed, even Mubarak himself is now seemingly catching on to the understanding that his usefulness to the global power elite has run its course, remarking during a national address Saturday that the protests were "part of a bigger plot to shake the stability and destroy the legitimacy" of the political system.

Even more ironic is the fact that another powerful globalist who sits on the board of International Crisis Group, Zbigniew Brzezinski, warned last year that the international hierarchy of which he is a key component was under threat from a "global awakening" that would be led by young radicals in third world countries. Having accurately predicted the wave of revolt now spreading like wildfire across the globe, Brzezinski and his fellow globalists are preparing to pick up the pieces in order to continue business as usual, while the people who risked their lives for real change will be the victims of a monumental deception. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

If the Egyptians are successful in toppling Mubarak, only to replace him with ElBaradei, they will have achieved nothing, and the eventual outcome will merely see Egypt remain as a subservient client state of the US military-industrial complex.

Paul Joseph Watson

US Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt

Mass demonstrations of workers and youth throughout Egypt shook the regime of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak on Friday. Hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to demand the president’s resignation, denouncing mass unemployment and poverty, clashing with police, and burning down the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party.

The protests came just two weeks after demonstrations forced another US-backed dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, to flee. Significant demonstrations have spread to other countries in the region, including Yemen, Jordan and Algeria.

Like all revolutionary upheavals, the developments in Egypt are serving to clear away hoary myths and lies, including the American ruling elite’s pretensions of support for democracy around the world. These events are exposing the role of the US government as the lynchpin of reaction throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

From the beginning of the unrest, the Obama administration has made clear its support for Mubarak and the Egyptian regime, a critical US ally.

President Obama devoted his remarks Friday evening to defending Mubarak in the face of the mass popular revolt. On a day in which Mubarak’s police killed at least a dozen people, injured hundreds more and arrested an untold number of demonstrators, Obama cynically proclaimed that the US was “calling upon Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters.”

Obama spoke as if he were an innocent observer. But the truncheons, guns, tear gas canisters, water cannons and tanks used by the Egyptian government to suppress the people all bear the stamp, in some cases literally, “Made in the USA.” The US provides Egypt with $1.5 billion a year to finance its apparatus of repression, making it the second largest beneficiary of US aid after Israel.

Obama lectured Mubarak about respecting human rights on the very day that WikiLeaks posted US State Department cables showing that his administration was aware of and complicit in Mubarak’s use of torture and assassination against his political opponents.

Obama reiterated the position expressed by other US officials that “those protesting in the streets have a responsibility to express themselves peacefully,” as if there could be any comparison between the state violence meted out by Mubarak and the attempts by workers and youth to defend themselves.

The main aim of Obama’s remarks was to make clear the administration’s continued backing for Mubarak. Obama spoke shortly after the Egyptian president appeared on television to declare that he would not step down and warn that he would enforce “security” against “chaos.” Mubarak’s announcement that a new cabinet would be formed and his empty promises to make democratic reforms and expand economic opportunity only increased the popular outrage, spurring more people to pour out into the streets in defiance of the military-imposed curfew.

The real attitude of the US to the events in Egypt was revealed in Obama’s statement: “The United States has a close partnership with Egypt, and we have cooperated with each other on many issues.”

In other words, the United States views the Egyptian government, despised by its population, as a key strategic ally. These remarks echo those of Vice President Joseph Biden, who said on Thursday, as Mubarak moved to shut off the Internet and deploy special operations forces, that the president “has been very responsible… relative to (US) geopolitical interests in the region.”

By “geopolitical interests,” the administration means the determination of the United States to maintain its hegemony over the Middle East and North Africa, including the region’s vast oil and gas reserves. With military aid and training, the US has propped up corrupt and dictatorial regimes from Egypt to the sheikhdoms in Saudi Arabia and other oil producing Gulf States.

Through covert and overt military operations, the US has worked systematically to undermine any government that posed a potential challenge to its interests. Over the past ten years alone the United States has launched bloody colonialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Egypt has played a critical role in the maintaining US domination, particularly since Anwar Sadat, Mubarak’s predecessor, signed the Camp David accords with Israel in 1978. In 1979, the US lost a key ally with the downfall of the Shah in Iran. Since that time, the Egyptian military and intelligence apparatus has worked closely with both the US and Israel in the suppression of the masses throughout the region.

The entire approach of the American government to the events in Egypt is guided by its immense fear that the resurgence of the class struggle in the region will deal a major blow to its geo-strategic interests.

While the administration may be considering whether it can do without Mubarak, replacing him directly by the military or by one or another of the “opposition” figures, it also knows that the fall of Mubarak, coming after the flight of Tunisia’s Ben Ali, threatens to unleash a wave of popular revolt that could sweep through the entire region.

Workers in the Middle East and the Maghreb have demonstrated immense courage and heroism. The struggle, however, is still in its initial stages. The critical question facing the working class is the development of a new revolutionary leadership and program. Absent this, the ruling elite of the region, in alliance with US imperialism, will regroup either to maintain the existing tyrants or impose new governments equally committed to the defense of the existing political order.

From WSWS