Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Viva Flug!

Nicely done, Mike.

Adding to that, the demands of striking Egyptian steelworkers:

(h/t Richard Seymour @ Lenin's Tomb*)

"1- Immediate resignation of the president and all men and symbols of the regime.

2- Confiscation of funds and property of all symbols of previous regime and everyone proved corrupt.

3- Iron and steel workers who have given martyrs and militants call upon all workers of Egypt to revolt from the regime's and ruling party workers federation, to dismantle it and announce their independent union now and to plan for their general assembly to freely establish their own independent union without prior permission or consent of the regime which has fallen and lost all legitimacy.

4- Confiscation of public sector companies that have been sold or closed down or privatized as well as the public sector which belongs to the people and its nationalization in the name of the people and formation of a new management by workers and technicians.

5- Formation of a workers' monitoring committee in all work places monitoring production, prices, distribution and wages.

6- Call for a general assembly of all sectors and political trends of the people to develop a new constitution and elect real popular committees without waiting for the consent or negation with the regime."

* - http://leninology.blogspot.com/

Ambitious demands eh

Looking at trotsy's tomb
Suggests this is a certain tendency hyper ventilating

Hyperventilating? Hardly. Given the way the Egyptian regime's been treating their people for the past thirty years, these sound like perfectly reasonable demands to me. Throw out the corrupt dictatorial regime? Hold free, fair and real elections? Stop abusing workers? Fuck, yeah.

If only the US labor "movement" still had this kind of cajones. (sigh)

Flug
The goals are
Too modest
The public swan
Of them at this point
Is idiotic

There is a party line and a mass line

At least for us non nihilists

Looks like some folks over in Egypt are thinking along the same lines:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41486277/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

I like that headline. "Worker strikes add to turmoil" just has a certain sound to it that makes my heart warm over and my hope rise.

I'll try not to let the natural cynic within me squelch that feeling too much.

Y'know what's really inspiring to me about all this is the same thing that terrified my wife, who was an antiwar organizer at GWU circa 1969 -- a massive mob of pissed-off people with no leaders, no centralized organizing committees, no spokescouncil, just a bunch of fed-up people who knew what to do and hit the streets and started tearing shit up.

Right about the time I got involved in "A16" organizing on the heels of Seattle, my wife liked to tell me a story about how, right after Kent State, thousands and thousands of people just showed up in DC out of nowhere and started kicking shit in the streets, causing massive chaos, making the place ungovernable. She pissed and moaned about the lack of planning, of the lack of bullshit like organizing committees or phone trees or press releases, nothing like that -- just pure spontaneous rebellion. She was mortified at the idea of people just deciding to spontaneously gather and engage in mass rebellion. Far from having the intended effect, however, this story deeply inspired me. "Hot damn," I thought, "Chaos! Havoc! Unbridled anarchy! Spontaneous mass rebellion! Bring it on!"

Fuck, yeah!
Look what's happenin' out in the streets!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ljxpyH4dnA

Mike,

The self-imagined Central Planners of the Politburo of the Future Perfect are very unhappy with your attitude.

Adjust accordingly. You may choose your poisons, but you cannot choose not to take poison. Sell out to the spectacular, or get with the Fourth Int, already, man.

You aren't allowed to ventilate the north winds, here. It's all number crunching and poly wonking.

Notice has been served. Gnomic verse and econo-logic will follow if you do not behave.

Damn. . . OP is becoming our resident skeptic! I also was smitten by those demands cited by lenin, but actually couldn't find them repeated or confirmed anywhere. lenin did say his information was second hand.

the best we can say, I think, is that the addition of labor to the mix broadens and strengthens it, but falls short of changing it from an uprising to a revolution. My SO is screaming from the other room that according to MSNBC the military coup has begun.

The announcement from the military, characterized as a coup by MSNBC, is framed as a response to protesters demands. The military will take over the government, in some way, in order to satisfy the desires of the protesters!

Now that is smooth!

Perhaps OP is a skeptic because his personified Clio is a faithless harlot who continues to refuse his marriage proposals?

Wow... very exciting. It looks like this could be it

This presidential announcement better be a resignation