Egypt

Egyptian workers and activists rose up in protest last week after Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Mursi attempted to force through measures designed to strengthen the Islamists’ grip on power. Mursi used the prestige gained from brokering the Gaza ceasefire to issue a six-part decree giving himself sweeping new powers. These include awarding himself blanket legal immunity, blocking judicial challenges to the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly and appointing a special prosecutor with powers to lock up activists for six months. Mursi has specifically targeted protestors who halt...

The Israeli government and Hamas, the Islamist party that rules in Gaza, are continuing talks over the implementation of the ceasefire deal that ended Israel’s recent assault on Gaza. Over 150 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israeli bombing. Six Israelis were killed by rocket fire from paramilitary Islamist groups within Gaza. 29 Israelis were also injured in a bus bombing in Tel Aviv. During the assault, Israel also stepped up its repression of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, killing two men and arresting over 200 people, many of whom were arrested during...

Mass protests in Portugal have forced the right-wing government to back off from one of its plans for meeting debt bail-out conditions. The government wanted to increase workers’ social security contributions by 7% and cut bosses’ contributions by 5.75%. The effect would be a 7% cut in net pay, mostly to the benefit of the bosses. On 24 September prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho said he would abandon the plan. South Africa The miners’ strike in Marikana has ended with striking workers accepting a 22% pay increase. The dispute – during which 34 miners were massacred by police – was a product...

Like many others, I watched The Innocence of Muslims thinking it must be some kind of satirist’s joke — that this couldn’t possibly be what all the fuss was about. It was too ludicrous, too obviously amateurish and awful, for anyone to take seriously. I had precisely the same experience reading articles by the International Socialist Group (Scotland) (which is linked to the English splinter from the SWP led by John Rees). Someone, I thought, has written a parody of playschool “anti-imperialism”. But no. David Jamieson, a student at Glasgow Caledonian University, writes: “Another day, another...

The violence of some of protests outside US and other embassies against the 'Innocence of Muslims' film will have horrified all democrats and socialists. So dismayed were secular-minded Libyans with the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi they organised counter-demonstrations. The protests were relatively small in most cities in the Arab world, Africa, and south-east Asia, but larger in some places (like Kabul, Monday 17 September). The Kabul protest will have been fuelled by resentment against the NATO forces, the corruption of the Afghan government, and much else. But the religious...

On 1 September, several secular opposition leaders in Egypt, including Mohammed al Baradei and Hamdeen Sabbahi, the Nasserist politician who came third in the presidential election, declared a new coalition to oppose the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice Party” [FJP] in new parliamentary elections. Those elections are currently planned to be held two months after a new constitution is approved by referendum. It is likely, of course, that the new constitution will reflect the Islamists’ current strength — which has been, from the outset, the fear of secular, liberal and leftist groups...

An old Labour council trick is to announce £30 million in cuts and then, a little later, declare they’ve managed to find a bit of money to reduce the cuts to a mere £19 million. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief; things aren’t as bad as were expected. Of course Meals on Wheels, Library and Children’s Services are still devastated. Activists who’ve seen it before suspect that £19 million was always the intended, real, figure. Perhaps the Egyptian military are playing a version of the same game. First, on 14 June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Islamist-dominated parliament, elected last year...

Last week AWL activists leafleted SWP meetings to try to engage SWP members over their organisations support for a vote for the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian presidential elections. Generally we found SWP members unwilling even to take our leaflet, never mind read it and discuss. If a debate had actually taken place it might have looked like this. SWP: Fundamentally you are sectarians. You intend to turn your backs on the mass of workers who are following the Muslim Brothers. The Brothers got 10 million votes in the parliamentary elections in December 2011. Yes, the leaders are well-off...

A court of judges appointed by Egypt’s disgraced former president Hosni Mubarak last week (June 13) dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament elected last year — in the first proper elections in Egypt’s recent history. Many oppositionists denounced the move as a coup d’etat, as it leaves the army — the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has ruled Egypt since Mubarak was deposed in February 2011 — in uncontested control of the country. June 16-17 saw the second round of Presidential elections. But without the Parliament, which was elected to oversee the drafting of a new...

At the start of June Egyptian activists rallied to remember Khaled Said, a young man killed two years ago by Mubarak’s police, sparking protests that eventually brought down the dictator. Click here to download text as pdf leaflet At Said’s grave, Laila Marzouk, his mother, said she could not bring herself to vote for either of the remaining candidates in Egypt’s presidential election: “I will not choose between the plague and cholera.” Those candidates are Ahmed Shafiq, a former prime minister and long-time ally of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak and Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim...