Published only 6 days ago, the YouTube version of this BBC Newsnight interview has already exceeded 8 million. Russell Brand certainly has his world view right! Uplifting!

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Viral Video: Russell Brand May Have Started a Revolution Last Night

http://youtu.be/3YR4CseY9pk

Forces Behind the Egyptian Revolution

Submitted by Michael Collins on Fri, 02/11/2011 - 04:57

 

(Washington, DC) Two critical forces behind the Egyptian Revolution are missing from the front pages, or any pages, of the corporate media.. They are the critical role of Egypt's union movement and the universal desire of all people to live in peace, freedom and dignity. The grievances of Egypt's workers and their struggle to unionize effectively receive no attention. The connection between that struggle and the right to assemble to change conditions, the demonstrations, has yet to enter the public dialog. It is as though this were some aberration rather than an expression of a fundamental human aspiration suppressed in Egypt for decades.

The Egyptian people were poised for a mass celebration following what they hoped was the farewell speech by former President Hosni Mubarak. For seventeen days, the people massed in Cairo's Tahrir Square and protested throughout Egypt, including the boomtown of Port Suez. No G-20 leader has provided unequivocal support for the peoples' demands for Mubarak and his entire regime leave immediately and for open and fair elections. Today, with signs of annoyance, President Barack Obama said Mubarak needed a, "credible, concrete and unequivocal path to democracy." He isn't quite there yet. What does a "path to democracy" look like? How long does it take to walk that path?

But the Egyptian military leaders may have acted already.

Like most insulated, pampered tyrants, Mubarak's contact with reality is extremely weak. He didn't get the message from the Egyptian military Supreme Council. Aljazeera reported that the leaders promised, "measures and arrangements … to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people." The news service concluded that the council's notice that it was in session indefinitely indicated that a military coup had already taken place.

When Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida premiered in Egypt in 1871, there were twelve elephants on stage for a scene showing the triumphal return of soldiers from battle. Nobody missed the elephants. But the two elephants in the living room of the Egyptian peoples' movement get little press. They are prime movers in the events leading up to the Egyptian revolution.

Egypt's Labor Movement

The Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) is a part of the Egyptian government since 1957. The anti-worker organization created problems for workers when many enterprises were state owned. Things got worse with the introduction of a "market economy."

Egypt began a series of reforms in the 1990's that stacked the deck against workers and farmers. The government sold off the large state enterprises. New owners had little incentive to keep people in jobs or jobs in Egypt. The government enacted new measures to protect large farmers, with peasant farmers left on their own.

When conservative Prime Minister, Ahmed Nazif, took power in 2004, the situation became desperate. With the help of a new law anti labor law, pressure mounted on Egypt's industrial workers. The ETUF had little to offer in support and frequently overruled the votes to strike of local chapters.

Two strikes drew the battle lines between workers and the government. In 2006, local union officials overturned a vote by 24,000 textile workers to strike in Ghazl al-Mahalla. When workers appealed to the EFTU, the official government union organization reminded workers that a 2003 labor reform law made it illegal to form unions independent of official government labor organization. The strike took place but was eventually broken.

The same labor movement that staged the 2006 strike and a follow up in 2007, called for a national strike on April 6, 2008 to raise the nation's minimum wage and protest high food prices. Mubarak's government sent in police who took over the factory in hopes of preventing the strike. Conflict broke out with violence on the part of police toward the union members calling for the strike. Police arrested workers. Trials, convictions and prison sentences handed out by special national security courts followed quickly. Other members continued to protest.

An Egyptian writer noted, "In the 6 April uprising, the demands of the workers and the general population overlapped. People called for lower food prices as workers called for a minimum wage."

In addition, the April 6 Youth Movement emerged as a key player advancing the aims of the national strike. This is the same organization that has been central to rallying crowds throughout the country.

Food was a critical issue in 2008. The solution to that issue would have addressed food and other problems of economic exploitation in Egypt, a national living wage.

We didn't hear about the 2008 strike, however. We did about the 2008 "food riots." CNN News reported, Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket, April 14, 2008. The words "strike" and "union" were never used, nor was there any reference to the basis for the strikes, a demand for a living wage. Huffington Post carried a lengthy article on the events, Egypt Grants Bonuses After Deadly Food Riots, April 8, 2008. The word "strike" was just once but the article failed to include anything mentioning a "union" or labor conflict.

Food is critical. But the desire to earn a living wage to afford food is more fundamental to the Egyptian people. They don't want a handout form their leaders, they want the right to determine their own future by organizing an independent labor movement. That desire flowed into the streets of Egypt in a movement larger than the union effort but the history of worker struggles is a key part of the history of this revolution. On January 30, 2010, workers in Tahrir Square formed the Egyptian Federation for Independent Unions. The organization is separate from the official union and in full defiance of current labor law adopted by the Mubarak regime.

Why Fundamental Rights Matter

The Egyptian people didn't require any special training to know what they deserved. The ability to assemble, plan, organize, and attempt to effect change in a civilized fashion emerged before conditions became intolerable.

The workers in Mahalla didn't need a year at the Harvard School of Government to learn their rights.

The desire was fundamental. No study Maslow's hierarchy of needs was required to tell them that there was more than just survival at stake. They knew that meeting the basic needs required an exercise of the more fundamental rights of freedom of association and action in a society that respected their rights as citizens.

Finishing the Work

There are great powers and commercial interests lurking at the edges of the this remarkable peoples' movement. The call for an "orderly transition" is just another form of paternalism. What is orderly? Time enough for Mubarak or his proxy to stay long enough to rig another election? Time enough for things to cool down enough to walk just a few steps forward rather than a revolution? Time enough for U.S. and European Union leaders to install a new leader to deliver what Mubarak did so well for 30 years?

The fundamental rights and the exercise of those rights by a sovereign people should be inviolable, particularly in a part of the world where the West claims that it is promoting democracy. The Egyptian revolution has at it's core, the demand for the elimination of a massively corrupt government and the opportunity create an honest one in its place. That is a goal of people everywhere, a goal that will be met if those few obsessed with control for their own purposes would just step aside.

END

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EVEN THE LIBERAL MEDIA SEEMS TO HAVE ITS LIMITS WHEN IT COMES TO CALLING OUT THE CRIMES OF OUR CRIMINAL GOVERNMENT

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I Will Not Participate In the Journalism of Appeasement

Posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 3:13 pm

By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus

Here’s a brief summation of my recent reporting:

If we continue to let our politicians and wealthy members of society live in comfort, free from the consequences of their actions, we are complicit in our own demise.

Our country is so overrun with corruption, we cannot remain passive and expect things to get any better.

The economy is propped up by smoke and mirrors and will inevitably collapse. Without immediately breaking up the banks and holding the thieves accountable, we will continue on our downward spiral with increasingly severe and devastating consequences.

These are extremely unpleasant truths that we are now forced to confront. We have to act now. If you are not calling for revolution or organizing, you are either unaware of what’s happening around you, horribly naïve or a fascist sympathizer.

In response to statements like those above, I’ve been exchanging emails with colleagues (journalists and news editors) who have become “uncomfortable” with my reporting style and been saying some variation of the following: “You’re being too radical. This is too extreme for us to publish.”

While I appreciate their opinions, I want to make something 100% clear. I am fully aware that these words are harsh, and may turn off some people. However, in extreme times, telling the truth will make you sound extreme. Ultimately, I don’t mind if you think I sound “too extreme,” I don’t care if I make people “uncomfortable,” or if, in your opinion, I’ve become “too radical.” Try telling that to the 52 million Americans who are now living in poverty. Tell that to the millions of American families who have lost their homes and jobs. Tell that to the 59 million people who can’t afford health insurance. Tell that to the overwhelming majority of the population who are stressed out, living paycheck to paycheck, buried in debt they will never get out of and desperately struggling to make ends meet.

Try telling that to all the people who have emailed me explaining their dire situations due to this economic crisis. Tell that to all the people I personally know who have taken major pay cuts.

I will not participate in the journalism of appeasement.

What has to happen for you to stop being a status quo supporting naïve journalist and realize that we are in the middle of a war? More accurately, it is a slaughter. An all-time record-breaking slaughter.

I refuse to “normalize the unthinkable.”

Here’s a list of stats that I am sure you are already extremely sick of hearing, what we have already passively accepted as “the new normal,” some new ALL-TIME RECORDS for you:

3 million families foreclosed upon;

30 million people in need of employment;

43 million people on food stamps;

52 million people in poverty;

59 million people without healthcare;

239 million living paycheck to paycheck;

$144 billion in Wall Street bonuses;

$13 Trillion in investible wealth within 1% of US population.

Ask yourself this question: How sick and depraved of a society do you have to live in to get an outcome like this?

We now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in the history of the United States. We have witnessed an economic shock and awe campaign, acts of financial terrorism have impoverished tens of millions of people and put our future prospects in an urgently dire situation. We know who is responsible for it, yet nothing is done to hold them accountable, and most astounding of all, the people responsible for this (a financial terrorism network) are still in power!

This is the largest criminal racket in world history. We need prosecutions under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, right now!

Another important point in response to emails that I get: when I write that Obama is a puppet, some people still get upset with me. Are you kidding me? What kind of president allows this to happen without holding people accountable? What kind of president allows our tax dollars to be taken and handed out as all-time record-breaking bonuses while we have an all-time record-breaking number of people living in poverty?
What kind of president puts career-long preeminent economic imperialists Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in charge of our economy, and supports Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation as Fed Chairman? This is all absurd and inexcusable! These three people would be in prison if we lived in a nation ruled by law. Obama is a bullshit artist - Period, Full Stop.

This is a quintessential banana republic ruled by a puppet president. If that truth is too much for you to handle, stop reading this right now and go retreat into your “reality TV” world while you still can.

Let me defer to Senator Bernie Sanders. He recently said what I’ve been screaming about and gave us one of those very rare moments when truth was actually spoken on the Senate floor:

“There is a war going on in this county and I’m not referring to the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. I’m talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country.

The reality is that many of the nation’s billionaires are on the war path. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end, and apparently there is very little concern for our country or for the people of this country if it gets in the way of the accumulation of more and more wealth, and more and more power….

Today… the crooks on Wall Street… the people whose actions, illegal actions, reckless actions, have resulted in millions of Americans losing their jobs, their homes, their savings… After we bailed them out, the CEOs today are now earning more money than they did before the bailout…. While the middle class of this country collapses and the rich become much richer… the United States now has, by far, the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth.

When we were in school, we used to read the text books which talked about the banana republics in Latin America… about countries in which a handful of people owned and controlled most of the wealth in those countries. Well, guess what? That is exactly what is happening in the United States today.”

What will it take to make you understand this? Don’t you get it? This is a war! This is a mass slaughter carried out by economic policy. This is the elimination of the existence of a middle class. These are financial terrorists committing crimes against humanity. Our country is being attacked! My family is under attack! My child is under attack! I am under attack!

We are under attack!

I know that TV news propaganda confuses people, but on a basic and profound level, whether people want to admit it or not, the overwhelming majority of the population knows that our nation has been taken over by a global banking cartel. We know that our future has gone up in flames. We know that both political parties have been paid off and don’t represent us. If the politicians don’t drastically change course and start representing the people, we have a duty, a Constitutional commitment and obligation to launch a revolution.

If you are not calling for revolution or organizing, you are either unaware of what’s happening around you, horribly naïve or a fascist sympathizer. If we continue to let our politicians and wealthy members of society live in comfort, free from the consequences of their actions, we are complicit in our own demise.

Our country is so overrun with corruption, we cannot remain passive and expect things to get any better. The economy is now propped up by smoke and mirrors and will inevitably collapse. Without immediately breaking up the banks and holding the thieves accountable, we will continue on our downward spiral with increasingly severe and devastating consequences. These are extremely unpleasant truths that we are now forced to confront. We have to act now.

People who still delude themselves into apathy by clinging to the belief that giving trillions of dollars to the banks had to be done, are buying into a baseless propaganda line. Use your commonsense. What kind of fool would think that the best way to solve the economic crisis would be to give trillions of dollars to the people who are most responsible for causing it. That is absurd! Instead of holding them accountable for the crimes they committed, they were given trillions in taxpayer funds which they used to further consolidate power and give themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses - and they deliberately impoverished tens of millions of people in the process. People are either confused as to what happened or they are in denial and afraid to confront the colossal crime committed. Whatever the case may be, there is no escaping the consequences. The implications are staggering. If you think it’s been bad over the past two years, get ready, you haven’t seen anything yet.

So are we going to start fighting back, or should I just move my family to another country? Most everyone who understands our economic and political situation are having this debate now and contemplating moving outside the country. Is that what we should do? Should we just leave the country and let it collapse?

Those who are aware have reached the point where our survival instinct is kicking in. Fight or flight?

I’m ready to fight, but I’m not ready to fight a losing battle. We all need to do what is best for our family.

Are you with me? Or should I start packing now?

– David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com. He is the author of The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States. His new book is The Road Through 2012.