A challenge to Mubarak

[Hannah Bell]

FOR THE first time since he took power 30 years ago, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt--the largest Arab country and a key U.S. ally in the region--faces a serious political challenge to his dictatorial regime on two fronts.

On the one hand, Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who once butted heads with George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq, has launched a new movement for democracy to challenge the 82-year-old dictator. ElBaradei's campaign has electrified a country ravaged by poverty and political repression for so long.

More significantly, a new wave of workers' strikes and protests unseen in decades is shaking the regime and promising to reverse neoliberal policies that have reigned more or less unchallenged for 30 years. "The current wave of protests that is erupting forms the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century," wrote Joel Beinin, a leading labor historian of Egypt, in a report for the AFL-CIO-backed Solidarity Center in Washington.

The conjuncture of these political and economic struggles could usher in a new future for Egypt and the whole region--and could signal the start of the first serious challenge to U.S. imperialist domination of the region since the days of the Arab nationalist project of the 1960s.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/07/challenge-to-mubarak

[hlthe2b]

1. Wow... ElBaradei has guts (if we didn't know that already)...

This is a big deal for someone to challenge our designated and loyal dictator....