Thursday, May 24, 2012

Egypt's revolution won't end with the presidential election

Beyond Tahrir Square Egypt's uprising is one that intersects with grassroots struggles in Europe: that's what the elites fear most

Jack Shenker
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 May 2012

"....Contrary to popular perception, Egypt has been a nucleus of radical dissent throughout its history, and certainly long before the anti-Mubarak uprising exploded. Just ask the residents of Kafr el-Dawwar, site of a barely reported insurgency in 1984; or the farmers of Sarandu, who in 2005 fought armed thugs and riot police attempting to seize their plots in accordance with a new Mubarak-promulgated "liberalising" land law. The difference now is that those agitating for transformation know that the winds of revolution are behind them, transforming what could otherwise be purely "local" or "parochial" concerns into a sustained and collective assault on the status quo.....

But is this month's vote the all-encompassing final product to be spat out at the end of the creaking revolutionary factory line, now that the "Tahrir youth" have been supposedly muted? That's what the revolution's enemies are hoping. They are likely to be proved wrong."

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