Yesterday I attended a meeting followed by discussion at the Center for Socialist Studies, on independent unions and the Egyptian revolution. Below are some of the pix I took…
Comrade Doaa Bassyouni introducing the speakers…
Wael Habib, Ghazl el-Mahalla worker…
Kamal el-Fayoumi, Ghazl el-Mahalla worker…
Khaled Ali, labor lawyer and director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights…
Mostafa Bassyouni, revolutionary socialist and journalist…
Historic victory for Egypt’s working class… The government has finally agreed to dissolve the board of the corrupt, state-run general federation of trade unions, the federation of thugs, the federation of thieves, the federation of government agents who sabotaged strikes and cracked down on any dissent in the workplace.
Historic victory by all means. I’ll write more this weekend on our next move and what the government has in mind, but let’s remember the Mahalla workers who started in January 2007 this fight against that corrupt federation…
This is a music track I put together in 2008 following the April Mahalla uprising, where I mixed Yann Tiersen’s “Summer ’78″ piano piece with anti-Mubarak chants I had recorded previously during Kefaya protests.
Kamal el-Fayoumi, Mahalla textile worker and one of the founders of the Democratic Workers Party, in Talaat Harb Square, Cairo, as trade unionists and labor activists gathered to march on Tahrir.
Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawy, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has endorsed the 2011/2012 state budget after it was amended and approved by the cabinet.
The total budget expenditure was amended from LE515 billion to LE491 billion, of which 54 percent would be directed to social projects.
The minimum wage was reduced from LE700 to LE684 per month as of July, with an annual total of LE9 billion to be paid in wages for two million government employees.
Expenditure on education decreased from LE55 billion to LE 52 billion, health from LE24 billion to LE23.8 billion, and housing from LE21 billion to LE16.7 billion.
To follow up on this posting, Ahram Online has a good report by Salma el-Wardani, where she reports on how telecommunications companies were not surprised by Mubarak’s orders to shut down services, as they first practiced shutdowns at the request of government officials during the 2008 Mahalla uprising.
Police snipers who killed protesters during the uprising were using ambulance cars in moving between different locations on 28 and 29 January. None of them of them have been prosecuted, according to a testimony by a doctor in the video above.
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