Wael Ghonim vs. Barack Obama: Change we Can Believe in, Yes we Can
10 February 2011By Juan Cole
It is no secret that President Barack Obama has been
in some regards a profound disappointment to the
American Left, and his erratic and often disgraceful
performance on the Egypt crisis exemplifies his faults
in this regard. (Tom Engelhardt puts it best regarding
the administration: "It has shown itself to be weak,
visibly fearful, at a loss for what to do, and always
several steps behind developing events.") Obama just
seems to lack empathy with the little people and is
unwilling to buck the rich and powerful, even though
they all opposed his run for the presidency. As Iran's
speaker of the house put it, the Obama administration,
faced with a choice of supporting the youth revolution
or the camels unleashed on it, has chosen the camels.
It makes a person think there should be rule that no
one can run for the presidency who didn't have a
proper father figure in his or her life (Bill Clinton,
W., Obama), since apparently once they get into office
they start thinking the billionaires are their
long-lost parent, whom they have to bend over backward
to please.
Obama dealt with the Wall Street crisis by rewarding
with more billions the corrupt and/or grossly
incompetent financiers who threw millions of Americans
out of work and out of their homes, and by appointing
persons to deal with the crisis who had been among its
instigators. He declined to end the abuses against the
Bill of Rights of the Orwellian-named ‘PATRIOT Act,'
even though he had a Democratic House and Senate.
Indeed, the Left was put in the humiliating position
of being grateful to Michelle Bachman for helping do
what Obama would not, when she and other Tea Party
Republicans joined the principled Democrats in the
House to decline to extend the human rights abuses
embedded in that infamous Act.
"National Security Letters" under the act allowed the
FBI to snoop on people with no court warrant and no
evidence of wrongdoing, even spying on their library
records. Librarians from whom the records were
demanded were put under an unconstitutional gag order
that prevented them from revealing what was going on.
You could discover that the FBI had tossed your
apartment with no warrant and for no reason, and then
be forbidden from even publicly complaining about it!
This is not America, it is North Korea. Obama has
actually expanded the Surveillance State, violating
our Fourth Amendment rights in a thoroughgoing way. He
is enamored of pulling the trigger on people he
doesn't like through covert operations rocket and
missile strikes, operating outside any rule of law
(the missiles are fired into places with which the US
is not at war, killing people who have been convicted
of no crime; in short, Obama is simply assassinating
people, and would do so to Americans, something that
even past Republican presidents agreed was illegal.
Because he charged the CIA with the drone strikes,
they are classified operations and citizens and their
representatives cannot even question administration
officials about them in public!
Obama has coddled his administration colleagues who
support Mubarak, want him to stay, and support VP Omar
Suleiman.
Unlike Obama, Wael Ghonim, the 28-year-old Google
executive who helped instigate the Egyptian uprising,
wants genuine change.
He wants long-serving autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step
down. Unlike VP Joe Biden, Ghonim has no doubts that
Mubarak is a dictator.
Ghonim wants an end to the "Emergency Laws," more
Draconian than the PATRIOT Act, whereby the Egyptian
state sets aside any slight civil liberties mentioned
in the constitution.
He wants an end to Egypt's crony capitalist state,
which allowed Hosni Mubarak to accumulate a fortune of
$70 billion while 40 percent of Egyptians live on $2 a
day or a little over that. Ghonim told CNN, "The plan
was to get everyone on the street. The plan was number
one we're going to start from poor areas. Our demands
are going to be all about what touches people's daily
life. And by the way we honestly meant it. One of the
very famous videos we used all the time to promote
this was a guy eating from the trash."
He added, ‘we truly believe in these demands. Like the
minimum wage. Like talking about the end of, the end
of unemployment…reducing unemployment or at least
giving people some sort of compensation to make
living.'
Ghonim's emphasis on labor demands came about because
the uprising in Egypt is largely a labor uprising. It
is an alliance of blue collar workers with white
collar workers, all of them supported by a progressive
youth movement and college students. It is therefore
not actually a surprise that some 200,000 working
class people joined in the protests on Wednesday,
striking, encouraging strikes, and demanding a proper
minimum wage.
"Muhit" reports that as the revolutionary movement
entered its third week, thousands of workers in a
number of factories and establishments launched
sit-ins, strikes demanding better pay and better
working conditions.
A few workers at the Suez Canal joined in, which threw
everyone in the West for a loop — though their work
stoppage was not aimed at disrupting canal traffic.
7.5 percent of all world trade goes through that
artery, and 10% of all petroleum. Given tight supplies
for the former, a Suez work stoppage that actually
closed the canal temporarily would be a further blow
to Western economies. (The small labor actions of
Wednesday did not threaten such a thing, but the
longer the uprising festers and Mubarak refuses to
step down, the more the danger grows). In Port Said,
poor slum dwellers set the governor's mansion ablaze.
On Wednesday, 1500 workers in the official government
telecom company struck, and in Damanhour, 2000
electricity workers ceased work. In the Delta town of
Kafr Ziyat, 1500 hospital workers stopped work.
Additionally, thousands of protesters on Wednesday cut
the road and rail link of the southern city of Asyut
with Cairo.
The broad commitment of the working class to the
revolution has been apparent all along, but it turned
dramatic on Wednesday because of the size and variety
of unions who declared for read change.
Change we can believe in
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