New Egypt Constitution - draft translated
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021914955

Article 14 - minimum wage that would guarantee decent living standards .. maximum wage in civil serv
Article 26 - Social justice is the foundation of taxation and other public finance duties.
Article 52 - The freedom to form syndicates, unions and cooperatives is a right guaranteed by law.
Article 63 - Work is a right, duty and honor for every citizen, guaranteed by the State on the basis
Article 69 - All individuals have the right to a healthy environment. The State shall safeguard the

It is the constitution supported by the majority of voters (who bothered to vote).

It has its good provisions and its not-so-good ones. It is the latest political expression of a 5,000-year-old culture.

Political struggle will continue.

There was a cadre of people in the streets who were deliriously hopeful back then, too. They're living in London, TX, Los Angeles, and NYC now...

It's not a question of the place "becoming Berkeley." It's a question of ensuring VERY basic rights for female citizens and religious minorities, as well as ensuring that the "beatings will not resume" with impunity. It's just not cool to 'trade away' the rights of half of the citizenry in exchange for...what? A pig in a poke? A surfeit of happiness for fundamentalists who like to control and abuse women and limit their freedoms?

The assaults against women have been happening ever since they put Hosni in the pokey--and I predict it will get worse, not better. I'm not alone, either. BTDT, bought the tee shirt--it sucks to see half a population repressed like that, using religion as a cudgel.

CIVIL RIGHTS
A slap in the face for Egypt's women

If you aren't male, conservative, Islamic in appearance (i.e. a sufficiency of facial hair and dressed 'devoutly'--no tight tee shirts or other clothing, short sleeves, shorts, etc.) you potentially have a Real Problem with the "authorities."

The Pharaonic Culture in Egypt has always been the tie that binds--it's an historical point of pride shared by all. This MB approach shatters that bond and, if not checked, will result in an exodus of brains and talent from Egypt faster than anyone can say "This sucks!"

We already know that he would never have allowed democracy...just as the Shah would never have allowed it...just as Somoza would never have allowed it...just as Thieu and Ky would never have allowed it...and just as the Tsar would never have allowed it...and in each case, it would have been impossible to preserve a leader that virtually everyone in said leader's jurisdiction wanted overthrown).

Our country needs to learn from this...and, for the first time, to base the work of creating global stability on allying ourselves with the poor and the dispossessed, not always limiting our choices to backing either the rottenest of the Romanovs or the Kerenskiest of the Kerenskys.

That's why people still keep bringing up 1979 and Iran.

The argument that they're making is that these situations prove that it would have been better to keep the old tyrants in power.

The truth is, these countries moved in this direction because the people wanted something else...and that the only thing WE can do is to find some way to work with them and make the situation as humane and open as possible.

I left Iran in 1979, in a hurry, too.

The people wanted something else than was delivered--women marched in the streets of Teheran actually thinking they'd get MORE rights with Shah gone--instead they got servitude and slavery. Gays, who were sneered at under Shah, were hanged in the town square under Khomeini. Armenians and Jews, Zoroastrians and Copts, citizens of that land since it was called Persia, and respected as "People of the Book" and protected as religious/ethnic minorities (and who owned the shops where you went for booze, bacon and Xmas trees) were hounded, hectored, insulted and run out of the country. THEIR country. THEIR homeland--for centuries. But hey, "they" were minorities, "others," so "they" just didn't count.

I don't think any of these "people" "wanted" to "move in this direction." I know full well the women who get flogged in the streets for a poorly adjusted rusari or a 'too tight' bulky raincoat (in the middle of the summer), to this very day by the Vice and Virtue assholes, don't particularly care for "this direction" one bit. I doubt the families of kids who get hanged for their orientation like it, either.

It would be nice if a few people in this world had the intestinal fortitude to point out that this kind of shit is just wrong, instead of pretending that it's "will of the people" when votes are suppressed and a result is gamed to produce something that is closer to tyranny than democracy.

But whatever. Just turn your head, don't look too close. It's all fun and games from a distance. From a distance, too, you don't really notice that all of the "power people" in the picture look the same.

And they should get it. And they will.

It just has to be done in a way that avoids sounding like the colonial past.

Not out of any fixation with "sounding p.c.", out of the need to avoid sabotaging the situation through badly-handled outside intervention.

A majority of the nation doesn't even remember "The Shah." An entire generation has grown up with this repressive bullshit as the norm. A lot of the post-revolution troublemakers (i.e. the "I'm not down with this Islamic regime bullshit" crowd) were sent to the "front" as cannon fodder during the Iran-Iraq War, and that took care of those gripers--if they came back at all, they came back maimed and unable to cause any trouble for the ulema.

Kids today look through their parents' shit, and are shocked to find pictures of "Madar" in a mini-skirt and "Pedar" in a pair of tight bell-bottoms and a polyester shirt with three buttons opened, and a garish (real) gold medallion nestled in his hairy chest, taken at a Tehran nightclub-disco at a table littered with cigarettes and booze. Everyone's smiling and laughing, and no Vice and Virtue monitors are anywhere in sight. If they look closely, they'll see, in the background, uncle and auntie and that farty old elder who is always squawking at people to keep it down at the mosque on Friday night. If they keep digging, they'll find their parents' disco cassette tapes and those snapshots of the happy couple swimming together in skimpy bathing suits or skiing in tight fitting ski suits, not overseas, but right at home, in Teheran and the ski resorts to the north--in short, behaving like "regular" people who lived in the real world.

Until the whole world decides that a woman or a gay person or a religious minority matters as much as the well-larded dudes in the religious robes who hold the keys to the treasure house and have the ability to order the army out to crack heads and crack down, nothing will change.

I just can't worry about what people might think when I speak out. I'm not the President, nor am I a member of the Cabinet or Congress--I speak for myself, not "The West," whatever that means in this increasingly diverse society.

But that can't be done through American coercion from outside and it was never going to happen by keeping either Mubarak or the Shah in power with American force.

Nothing has ended...and no purpose is served by declaring Egypt a dead loss-especially since such rhetoric always ends up being the first step in pushing for "regime change&quot such as the change that brought the perpetually-failing and likely-doomed-to-go-on-failing-for-quite-a-while longer "pro-Western 'democratic' government" in Iraq.

And who's suggesting that Mubarak should be kept in power?

And who's suggesting "regime change" as in "violent overthrow" or anything of that nature?

It should be a worldwide finger wag, IMO. A loud, long, talked-about and sustained tut-tut. People aren't stupid, least of all Egyptians, who are some of the smartest folks on the planet--they'd get the drift.

It's just not "OK" to fuck over half the population in the name of so-called "democracy" and pretend it is the will of the people when it is, in fact, disenfranchisement, coercion, bullying and shaming--all in the name of the predominant religion. Funny how we in the USA are lightning quick to excoriate the fundy nuts here, but can manage to pretend it's "cultural" when we see some gay kid getting kicked to shit or a woman getting beaten with a switch for showing an ankle "over there."

And it's not an "either-or" construct, either.

I'm going to take a huge guess and figure you're not a member of a minority. People who have experience as "others"--owing to ethnicity, gender, orientation, what-have-you-- grasp this issue better than those who have always held a place of privilege in society.

What's happening in Egypt is NOT good. It is a giant step back, over a hundred years, culturally. And it's fucking over more than half the population, the half that has no power and damn little voice in the society. That will never be acceptable to me. If you don't believe me, ask some of the "lucky" women or gays who escaped Iran following Khomeini's rise to power. Ask them what they expected from the revolution, and what they got, and why they left. You'll get an earful.

We also need to be conscientious of the ways that the kind of "finger-wagging" you speak of, on many occasions in the past, has been a way for "the West" to push an imperial agenda and to justify intervening in non-Western countries.

Finger-wag, yes...but not with an attitude of superiority OR from the notion that "the West" is entitled to be sanctimonious towards the rest of the world, especially since MOST of what has been taken to be more liberal in "the West" has only come very recently, and had to be forced on the leadership of "the West" from below.

who values respect for humanity at the individual level.

What is happening over there is Not Good. It's not about "The West"--it's about individual human rights.

And saying so isn't having "an attitude of superiority." Or being "arrogant." It's having an attitude of giving a crap about one's fellow humans and not putting up with the REAL arrogance--the arrogance of tyranny of a powerful, intimidating minority who feels free to bully women and other oppressed individuals because they have the clout, and those "others" just don't.

I'm not worried about how I "sound." I'm too busy worrying about the poor people under that oppressive boot to be concerned about what others might think of me. If I keep my mouth shut out of fear that someone will play that bullshit "West" card, then that means I'm cowed, and a coward. I AM "entitled" to speak out if I see a situation that sucks--just as anyone else with a conscience is.

And this IS a situation that sucks--totally.