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I am grateful as ever to Richard Seymour's blog - Lenin's tomb. His post on the events in Egypt is short and it is difficult to give anything else because events are unfolding even now. He tells us ' the crown jewel of America's regional comprador oligarchy is in Cairo'. In this he is absolutely correct. If the Mubarak clique is overthrown then all bets are off. We will have a totally new game in the region and I suspect world wide. It is that significant. Debka.com is worth a quick visit at the moment. There is the feint towards schadenfreude as in sneering at the Arab dictators being in trouble. There is also a note on the role of the Muslim Brotherhood which has according to some reports criticised the mobilisations and according to others adapted a hands off approach. It is probably a good guess that the 'lousy" Brotherhood as the Angry Arab describes them has misread events and underestimated the capacity of what appears to be the secular opposition to mobilise against Mubarak. It is the opinion of debka.com that if the Brotherhood come out against Mubarak then he is in trouble. My own prejudices and hopes are that the secular Arabs can bring down the regime without the help of the Brotherhood. We must wait, of course, until the tear gas clears to get a better handle on the protests. Is this an uprising such as we have seen in Tunisia? At the very least it is unprecedented and puts to rest those who would have it that the people of Egypt are incapable of rising up and protesting. More is at stake in Egypt than is in Tunisia and so I do not expect Mubarak to get into a funk like Ben Ali and scramble onto the next plane to Saudi Arabia. But dictatorships are remarkably vulnerable to the "Emperor's New Clothes" phenomenon. The spectacle of Mubarak's image being ripped down has been captured on a thousand mobiles and posted everywhere. That will not be forgotten. Thousands of tear gas canisters and stun grenades and bullets and water cannon may have driven the people out of the centre of Cairo but a new chapter in the world revolution is being written by the brave people of Egypt. comradely Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
