(Updated Jan. 16) Tunisia's intifada topples tyrant: 'Yezzi fock!'

He has stayed long enough. 23 years was more than good enough time to prove your self. If you deprive your people from their basic rights you will be removed from power sooner. If people do not have job and something to survive with, how can you expect them to stay calm in their homes? I express my deep sorrow for the young man Mohamed Bouazizi, It was too early for him to leave this world. Enough is enough, "Yezzi fock!” as they say.

Of course it is the majority of people, the working poor who bring about change.
Such real change is when the wage-slaves decide by direct democracy, coordinate in solidarity to take direct action like general strikes. Political and Religious groups agitate for their own agenda in such uprisings and history is full of their dead-ends where workers remain exploited.

What is new & interesting in Tunisia situation was that Wikileaks broke the censorship by exposing what the rulers were up to in their own words. Autonomous & Anonymous hackers caused disruption to the Government web-sites exposing they were vulnerable not "all-powerful" ... That opened up the space for change.
Rather than remaining spectators like other regions of the planet the youth went wave after wave into the streets, repression by the Police fuelled more protests.

The use of internet and twitter to update the Maghreb diaspora (eg in France) of ongoing events without censorship who then communicate with relatives inside Tunisia was also crucial for encouraging solidarity, community power sense " stick together we can win this".

Ben Ali departure and re-branding of the Government new Boss spin is what happens most other societies these daze, get rid of Bush to get Obama, get rid of Howard to get Krudd then Gillard, get rid of Bliar to get Cameron, duopoly racket of Politicians who serve the wealthy = plutocracy/government for the wealthy.

The "democratic revolutions" of the 19th & 20th century that saw the end of Monarchy and universal suffrage for example are still to happen in places like Saudi Arabia.

Qui Bono - who benefits/who profits ?
Like the "liberalisation" of former Stalinist regime Russia and "free elections dissent" in China, Korea, Cuba such "regime change" is for exploitation. This is agenda of Corporate neo-liberalism, to privatise resources like oil and gas (Iraq & Iran) and lithium (Afghanistan & Bolivia) for energy/transport capos primarily.

The insurrection in Tunisia and the future of the Arab Revolution
Written by Alan Woods

Saturday, 15 January 2011

The marvellous revolutionary movement of the Tunisian workers and youth is an inspiration and an example to the whole world. For more than one week Tunisia has been living through a revolution of epic dimensions. The mass uprising in Tunisia has ended in the overthrow of the hated dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power.

tunisia2The uprising took almost everyone by surprise, including the government. On January 6 The Economist said confidently: "Tunisia’s troubles are unlikely to unseat the 74-year-old president or even to jolt his model of autocracy". The North African nation had been seen as a haven of stability and relative prosperity, albeit one ruled with an iron first. For foreign investors, Tunis has been a safe place to invest and a source of cheap labour. For the tourists it was a place to lie in the sun and enjoy life.

But what looked like a thunderbolt form a clear blue sky had in reality been prepared for decades. It reflected in part the worsening of the economic situation, which has its most severe impact on people from the lower social strata. But it also reflected something else, less visible but more important. Revolution cannot be explained by poverty alone, since the masses have always suffered poverty. It is a dialectical process in which a thousand small injustices add up until the accumulation reaches a critical point at which an explosion is inevitable. When society reaches this point, any accident can provoke the explosion.

In this case it was the self-immolation of a fruit vendor in the city of Sidi Bouzid that was the spark that caused a general conflagration. Mohamed Bouazizi, the young man who set himself on fire was, in reality, a university graduate who, like so many others, was unable to find suitable work. He tried to scrape a living selling fruit and vegetables, but even that proved impossible when the police stopped him from selling without a permit. In desperation he decided to end his life in a dramatic gesture. He died a few weeks later. This incident provoked a massive wave of demonstrations and rioting.

The rising in the prices of food and other basic goods, rampant unemployment and the lack of freedom caused the riots to spread and become nation-wide. In addition to the poor people who started the agitation, thousands of students and workers came onto the streets to demonstrate their hatred of the regime. A new element in the equation is the emergence of a large layer of educated youth who have no job prospects. In a period when millions have access to television and internet, when people are aware of the luxurious lifestyle of the rich, the lack of escape from grinding poverty and unemployment becomes increasingly unbearable.

Ben Ali and the Trabelsi clan were synonymous with corruption, huge inequality, and political repression. Their corruption was so bad that it provoked the indignation of the US ambassador, as we know from the Wikileaksrevelations. Starting as a protest afainst intolerable living conditions, unemployment and the high cost of living, the mass movement rapidly acquired a political character. It can be summed up in a single slogan: Ben Ali must go!

Once the fire was lit there was no way of extinguishing it. A wave of unrest has the country, with continuous mass demonstrations against unemployment, food price rises and corruption. Large numbers of unemployed graduates, frustration with lack of freedoms, the excesses of the ruling class and anger at police brutality seem to have come together to spark an unstoppable wave of public anger.
From repression to concession

The clashes became much more deadly on the weekend of 8-9 January, and then spread to the capital Tunis. Shaken by the revolt on the streets, the regime attempted to save itself by a combination of repression and concessions. As always, the first recourse was the use of bullets, tear gas and batons. The ferocity of the police repression shocked even hardened western journalists. It is impossible to say how many lost their lives in these bloody clashes, but according to human rights organizations at least 60 people were killed.

But after a week it became evident that these methods were not working. On the contrary, they only served to pour more petrol on the flames. Once an entire people stands up and says “no”, no state, army or police force in the world can stop them.

Once the masses begin to lose their fear, a dictatorial regime cannot save itself by repression alone.

At first, the President denied that the police over-reacted, saying they were protecting public property against a small number of "terrorists". This did nothing to pacify the protestors. All universities and schools were closed in a bid to keep young people at home and off the streets. This also failed. Little by little, as his regime crumbled before his eyes, reality began to penetrate even the thick skull of the president.

On 12 January, he sacked his interior minister and ordered the release of all those detained during the riots. He also created a special committee to “investigate corruption”. This is like Satan investigating Beelzebub. He also promised to tackle the root cause of the problem by creating an extra 300,000 jobs. But the unrest continued and reached the centre of the capital on 13 January, despite a night-time curfew.

Ben Ali then promised to tackling rising food prices, allow freedom of the press and internet, and to "deepen democracy and to revitalise pluralism". He also said he would not amend the constitution to enable him to stand for office again in 2014. In a last desperate move to save himself, Ben Ali appeared on television promising that the police would no longer be allowed to fire on demonstrators and announcing a series of reforms and concessions. It is easy to concede that which is no longer within one’s power to preserve.

The President only ordered a halt to the shooting, when it was clear that any further massacres by the police would provoke a mutiny in the army even at the top level. A French-language website reports the existence of growing unrest in the armed forces and an open split between the police and the army: “One of the new and important developments early this week was the distancing of part of the army from the regime. On Monday, a dozen soldiers stood guard in the courthouse of Kasserine, both to prevent possible unrest inside and to protect the lawyers, as reported by several witnesses.

There were many reports of fraternisation between the Army and the people and in some cases of the Army protecting the demonstrations against the police forces. This was the reason why the army was withdrawn from the streets of the capital and replaced by the police. When the mass demonstration reached the presidential palace the people and the soldiers embraced.

The protests came to a head on Friday as thousands of people gathered outside the interior ministry, a symbol of the regime. Many climbed onto its roof. Police responded with volleys of tear-gas grenades, but to no avail. The masses on the streets had acquired a sense of their power, and correctly interpreted the President’s speech as a sign of weakness. Everywhere the slogan was raised: Ben Ali must go! Ben Ali had already promised to step down - in 2014. But this calculation proved to be somewhat optimistic. The people on the streets demanded – and got – his immediate resignation.

In indecent haste, the former president dissolved his government and the country's parliament, packed his bags and headed for the nearest airport. Mr Ben Ali and his family left Tunisia, and are looking for a place of asylum. But this is easier said than done. It is a sad fact of life that when a man is successful and prosperous he has plenty of friends, but a failure finds all doors locked against him.

President Nicolas Sarkozy politely but firmly rejected a request for his old friend to land his plane in France. The latest reports say he ended up in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, where he will get a more sympathetic welcome from the members of the House of Saud, who must be beginning to worry that they may expect a similar fate some time in the not too distant future.

The hasty departure of the President has prepared the ground for a manoeuvre on the top, with Washington’s anxious hand pulling the strings from behind the scenes. As a first step, in a televised address on Friday afternoon, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi announced that he would be taking over as interim president, and a state of emergency has been declared.

Soldiers have already begun taking down the ubiquitous portraits of Mr Ben Ali from billboards and on the walls of public buildings around the country. The leaders hope that by removing the outward signs of authoritarian rule, the masses will be satisfied and go home. This would allow the same people that ruled before to retain all the levers of power, while allowing the people the illusion that something has changed.

To expect these people to introduce meaningful political reforms and free and fair elections would be the height of stupidity. Mohammed Ghannouchi is a leading member of the old regime. He is ‘Ben Ali's man'. He was the architect of the very same economic policies which contributed to the present mess. He has been at the heart of the old regime from the beginning. He cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the people. While delivering fine speeches about democracy and constitutionalism, he bases himself on a state of emergency, enforced by the army and the security forces.

This is a stalling tactic by the army and the regime elite to suppress the protests and then restore their grip on power. The reality behind the “democratic” façade is the maintenance of the state of emergency decree, which bans gatherings of more than three people and imposes a night-time curfew. Security forces have been authorised to open fire on anyone who defies these orders.
Hypocrisy of the imperialists

All this has set the alarm bells ringing in Washington, Paris and London. The imperialists have been shocked by events that they did not anticipate and are powerless to control. Revolutions are no respecters of frontiers, and least of all the artificial frontiers established by imperialism in the past that divide the living body of the Maghreb.

North Africa and the Middle East are fundamental to the economic and strategic interest of the USA and the EU, especially France. A BBC Arab affairs analyst, Magdi Abdelhadi, was quoted as saying: “Mr Ben Ali's demise may rattle the entire post-colonial order in North Africa and the wider Arab world.” This is very true, and it goes to the heart of the matter.

Now that the masses have overthrown the old tyrant by a heroic uprising, the western governments are falling over themselves in their haste to call for democracy. President Sarkozy said he stood side-by-side with the citizens of Tunisia, his country's former protectorate. Nicolas Sarkozy has raised cynicism to an art form. If there was a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, he would undoubtedly win it.

In April 28, 2008 he declared during one of his trips to Tunisia: "Your country is engaged in the promotion of universal human rights and fundamental freedoms ..." A few months later, the IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss Kahn, said in Tunis in late 2008 that Tunisia, the Ben Ali regime was "the best model for many emerging countries.”

These men cannot plead ignorance. For decades human rights have denounced innumerable violations in Tunisia, but this did not prevent the French President from being the first Head of State (and one of the few) to congratulate Ben Ali after his rigged "reelection" in 2009. Now the same man can say without even blushing: "Only dialogue can bring a democratic and lasting solution to the current crisis".

These foxy words are intended as a trap for the unwary. The revolutionary masses are advised to stop fighting and instead enter a friendly dialogue - with whom? A dialogue with the same people who have robbed and oppressed them for decades, the same hangmen whose hands are stained red with the blood of the people. Who is the man who offers this friendly advice? He is the man who supported the hangmen right up to the very moment when he was overthrown by the masses. Throughout the uprising of the people of Tunisia, Sarkozy was silent but his government was trying to save the dictatorship.

The army fired live ammunition at unarmed people but the spokesman of the French government, Francois Baroin, said that condemning the crackdown would "demonstrate interference. " - as if the permanent presence of the French army in many African countries that have nothing remotely to do with political democracies was not interference of the first order.

The Minister of Agriculture, Bruno Lemaire was quite open in his defense of the Tunisian dictator. Ben Ali "is someone who is often misjudged" but "did a lot of things," he said. We will not know what "things" he was referring to, whether they were good or bad. What we do know is that the French Foreign Minister, Alliot-Marie, went even further than her colleague, offering Ben Ali the "know-how of our security forces". Thus the “democrats” in Paris offered the dictatorship to help suppress its own people in a country France had colonized for 73 years. Old ways die hard.

Three days after the shooting of unarmed crowds François Fillon said he was “worried” about the "disproportionate use of violence", thus placing victims and executioners on the same level. Following the usual trickery, he called on all parties to exercise restraint and to choose the path of dialogue. But nobody has ever explained how it is possible to “choose the path of dialogue” with police who shoot at anything that moves.

Now that the game is up, all these “democrats” are anxious to advise the Tunisian people. And not just in Paris. Barack Obama has graciously condemned violence against Tunisian citizens "peacefully voicing their opinion in Tunisia". But this same man, as we know from the Wickileak revelations, was in full possession of all the facts concerning the corrupt and repressive regime in Tunis and did absolutely nothing about it.

Now this same man says: "I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people.” But he hastened to add: "I urge all parties to maintain calm and avoid violence, and call on the Tunisian government to respect human rights, and to hold free and fair elections in the near future that reflect the true will and aspirations of the Tunisian people."

The same song is being sung on all sides. It is a soothing lullaby, and like all lullabies it is designed to send the masses back to sleep. They are asked to be calm, and to “avoid violence.” All that is required of the masses is that they go home quietly, “stay calm” and above all “avoid violence”. Is it not strange that it is always the masses who are asked to be calm, stay quiet and “avoid violence”, when it is the rich and powerful who have a monopoly on violence, and use this monopoly to defend their power and privileges?

People who have had to brave the bullets and truncheons of the police, who have seen their comrades, friends and relatives, brutally beaten, kicked, tear-gassed, arrested, tortured and murdered in cold blood. They were even refused access to the mangled corpses of their loved ones. Now they are advised to keep quiet, “avoid violence” and above all get off the streets, demobilize and go home in order to allow a gang of thieves to determine their fate. This is a joke in very bad taste.
The revolt spreads

The eruption of popular discontent in Tunisia and neighbouring Algeria is a nightmare for authoritarian leaders across North Africa and the wider Arab world. The corrupt and reactionary regimes in North Africa and the Middle East are shaking in their shoes. They fear that the example set by the masses in Tunisia will be followed tomorrow by the workers and peasants of other counties where the same problems exist. That is why within a few days the revolt had expanded to the neighbouring country of Algeria over price hikes in sugar, milk and flour, which resulted in the death of at least five people.

Al Jazeera reported that youths were heard chanting ‘bring us sugar’ and demonstrators broke into warehouses to steal sacks of flour in protest against food prices, which had risen between 20 and 30 percent in the first week of January. In a bid to calm the protesters, the Algerian government imposed urgent cuts on import duties and taxes to help bring down food costs and states that it has now “turned the page” on the nationwide food riots.

members of a self-defence committee

Riots in several Algerian towns subsided only after the government promised to do whatever was necessary to protect citizens from the rising cost of living. Libya, Morocco and Jordan have also announced plans to ease prices of basic goods. But the situation in Algeria remains very unstable. Let us remember that during the whole year of 2001 the southern Berber region of Algeria (Kabilia) was the scene of a widespread insurrection. In Morocco too, the reactionary regime of King Hassan is very unstable and has many similarities to the situation in Tunisia.

Just before Ben Ali was overthrown, columnist Abdelrahman al-Rashed wrote in the Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper: “Much of what prevents protest and civil disobedience is simply the psychological barrier.” The overthrow of Ben Ali, as well as efforts in Algeria to appease anger over price increases will have had the effect of puncturing the fear that has long kept discontent in check across the region. Satellite news and social media can sidestep such autocratic tactics and can quickly fuse frustrations of young people in isolated, deprived regions into a broad movement.

The flame of revolt is spreading to other Arab countries. The revolutionary movement in Tunisia has been closely followed on regional satellite television channels and the Internet across the Middle East where high unemployment, bulging young populations, rocketing inflation and a widening gap between rich and poor are adding fuel to the fire.

Algeria is just next door to Tunisia, but Amman is 1,500 miles (2,500km) from Tunis, but the reason for the protesters' anger was the same, and so too were the calls for the leader to resign. Feeling the ground quake under his feet, King Abdullah II ordered a reduction in prices and taxes on some foods and fuels. The government has already allocated £141m in the 2011 budget to subsidise bread, on which many poor in the country of 7 million people depend. The money will also be used to reduce the price of fuel as well as creating jobs, but it was a case of too little and too late.

According to a report by Al Jazeera, demonstrators were seen holding banner reading ‘Jordan is not only for the rich. Bread is a red line. Beware of our starvation and fury’. More than 5,000 people staged protests across Jordan in "a day of rage" to protest against escalating food prices and unemployment on the same day as, in another part of the Arab world, Tunisia's president fled the north African state after weeks of violent demonstrations.

Jordanian University students and Ba'athist party supporters also held rallies in Irbid, Karak, Salt and Maan, demanding that the prime minister, Samir Rifai, step down. Official reports claim that police successfully contained the demonstrators by forming circles around them, and no arrests were made. After seeing what happened in Tunisia the Jordanian authorities realised that bloody clashes could turn the protests into an insurrection.

Jordanian blog Ammon news reported that at the protest, called "the day of rage", people chanted: "United class, united government has sucked your blood," and waving posters with bread attached. "We are protesting the policies of the government, high prices and repeated taxation that made the Jordanian people revolt," Tawfiq al-Batoush, a former head of Karak municipality, told Reuters.

A report by Tom Pfeiffer, Reuters, Saturday, January 15, 2011 contained very interesting quotes: “This could happen anywhere,” said Imane, a restaurant owner in Egypt who did not want to give her full name. “The satellite and Internet images we can see nowadays mean people who would normally be subdued can now see others getting what they want.”

“We are not used to something like this in this part of the world,” said Kamal Mohsen, a 23-year-old Lebanese student. “It is bigger than a dream in a region where people keep saying ‘what can we do?’

“Young people across the Arab world should go to the streets and do the same. It is time that we claim our rights,” said Mohsen, the Lebanese student. “Arab leaders should be very scared because they do not have anything to offer their people but fear and when Tunisians win, the fear will be broken and what happens will be contagious. It is only a matter of time,” he added.

Of all the Arab countries, the most important is Egypt, with its powerful working class. The concerns about its future were expressed in a recent article in the Daily Star, a Lebanese daily:

“Anyone expecting a region-wide revolution would do well to look at Egypt, which imports around half of the food eaten by its 79 million population and is struggling with inflation of more than 10 percent.

“With a massive security apparatus quick to suppress large street protests and the main opposition Muslim Brotherhood excluded from formal politics, the state’s biggest challenge comes from factory strikes in the Nile Delta industrial belt.

“Egypt’s Internet based campaign for political change, the country’s most critical voice, has failed to filter down from the chattering middle classes to the poor on the street.

“'There has been such a division between economic struggles and political struggles in Egypt,' said Laleh Khalili, a Middle East expert at the University of London. 'Strikes have been going on, but not spilling into the public domain.'

“This could however change if rising discontent over food price inflation feeds into the wider malaise about political and economic stagnation and the lack of opportunities and freedom.”

The International Monetary Fund said that with current unemployment rates already very high, the region needs to create close to 100 million new jobs by 2020. But in a situation where budgets are being strained by the soaring cost of imported food and fuel, this will be impossible, especially in those countries lacking big energy reserves.

“There is a danger in … getting a bit too comfortable with the ‘Arab state will muddle through’ argument,” said Stephen Cook of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations in a blog this week. “It may not be the last days of … [Egypt’s President Hosni] Mubarak or any other Middle Eastern strongman. But there is clearly something going on in the region.”
The need for a revolutionary perspective

Bourgeois political experts console themselves with the idea that the Tunisia’s example will not spread and unseat autocratic governments from Rabat to Riyadh because opposition movements are weak and demoralized. But that misses the point entirely.

The uprising in Tunisia was not organized by the opposition, which is also weak and demoralized. It was a spontaneous uprising of the masses, and was unstoppable precisely because there was no “responsible” reformist organization to lead it into safe channels. The weakness or absence of reformist mass organizations is not a reflection of the strength of autocratic regimes, but of weakness. Once the masses begin to move, it will be like a car going downhill with no brakes.

As we pointed out in relation to Iran, the spontaneous character of the movement is at the same time its strength and its weakness. In Tunisia the masses were strong enough to overthrow a corrupt and rotten regime. But the question is: what happens now?

"Our big problem is the lack of political perspective, "said Nizar Amami, one of the leaders of the branch of PTT UGTT, speaking to Mediapart on noon on Monday in Tunis. "No party has emerged; the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, the legal opposition party) is too weak. The UGTT has taken the place of the opposition to launch slogans, solidarity actions and so on, but as for the [political] project ... Still, the regime has been really destabilized, and that is something really unprecedented."

Emma Murphy is a professor at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University and an expert on Tunisian affairs. She was asked by the BBC:

“Can they [the legal opposition] deliver anything more for the Tunisian people?”

She answered as follows:

“Probably not. But if democracy is going to come, the leadership council needs to make very early indications that there will be substantial reforms to the political party system, the election processes, freedom of association, civil rights and the freedom of the media well in advance of the elections.

“An early end to the state of emergency and some clear indication that the committee into corruption announced a few days ago will directly address the activities of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans would go a long way towards convincing Tunisians that, this time, the promises of constitutional rule will be fulfilled, that this time national reconciliation will really mean just that, and that the army, in defending stability, will not once more succumb to the defence of authoritarian rule.”

We can confidently predict that in the next weeks and months an army of “friends of democracy” will descend on Tunis: representatives of “free” trade unions with suitcases full of dollars, men in suits from the USA and the EU, NGOs by the dozen, the “Socialist” International, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and other “respectable” fronts for the CIA, all anxious to provide advice and (for those willing to follow it) considerable material resources. The aim of these people can be summed up in one word: the restoration of order.

Order can be restored by different means. Counterrevolution can be carried out in a as well as a dictatorial guise. What Ben Ali could not achieve by bullets and truncheons, his successors and their imperialist backers hope to achieve through smiles and kind words, aided by dollars and euros. However, the objective remains the same: to get the people off the streets, to return the worker to his lathe, the peasant to his farm, the student to his studies. What they fervently desire is a speedy return to normality: that is to say, a speedy return to the old slavery under a new name.

Absolutely no trust can be placed in these hypocritical “democrats”. These self-same governments backed the dictatorial regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Western big business made handsome profits there and had no reason to complain at the low wages, since that was the basis for their profits in the first place. These ladies and gentlemen maintained a polite silence for decades about the rotten and repressive regime in Tunis because that same regime was defending their profits. Now that that regime has been overthrown, they suddenly find a voice to plead for “calm”.

Events are moving with lightening speed. Even as I write these lines, Ghannouchi has already been replaced by the speaker of the Parliament Foued Mbazaa who is attempting to cobble together a national unity government to call new elections in 60 days. This shows that the regime is weak and riven with splits.

Workers and youth of Tunisia, be on your guard! What you have conquered is the result of your own heroic struggles and sacrifices. Do not allow what has been won with blood to be taken from you by fraud! Do not place your trust in fine speeches and hollow promises. Trust only your own strength, your own self-organization, your own determination.

The idea of a “national government”, inclusive of the various legal political parties and perhaps one or two others whom the military do not consider a threat to the stability of the country and its relations with important allies such as the US and the EU. This is yet another trap. The “legal opposition” is a pack of weak, cowardly opportunists, compromised by years of collusion with - or submission to - the Ben Ali regime.

The people of Tunisia are not fools or little children to be lulled to sleep by hypocritical words. They must not demobilize but, on the contrary, step up the mobilization, and give it an organized and generalized expression. The remnants of the old regime must be given no respite. These gangsters must not be allowed to re-organize a new “democratic” version of the old regime. The time for talking is long past. No more intrigues! Down with the government! An immediate end to the state of emergency! For full freedom of assembly, organization and speech! For a revolutionary constituent assembly! For the immediate disbanding of all repressive bodies and a people’s trial for the murderers and torturers!

In order to achieve these demands, a nationwide general strike must be organized. The working class is the only force that has the necessary weight to overthrow the old regime and to rebuild society from top to bottom. The proletariat must place itself at the head of society. This is the only way forward. The call for a general strike has already found an echo in sections of the UGTT. According to reports, regional general strikes took place in several regions last week (Kasserine, Sfax, Gabes, Kairouan and Jendouba).

In order to prepare a general strike action committees must be formed at all levels: local, regional and national. Life itself teaches us that the only way to get freedom and justice is through the direct action of the masses. In Tunisia the question of power is posed point blank. It is necessary to organize and mobilize the entire people to bring about the decisive overthrow of the old regime.

There have been reports of widespread looting all last night. This has been clearly organised by the police force and agent provocateurs loyal to Ben Ali. They want to create a situation of chaos which they hope would allow them to derail the revolution and make a comeback. There are also reports of neighbourhood committees being set up for self-defence.

The workers must fraternize with the soldiers who are on their side. There should be an appeal to the ranks of the army to form soldiers’ committees to link up with the people. The workers and peasants must obtain arms for self-defence and set up a people’s militia in every factory, district and village to keep order and defend themselves against bandits and counterrevolutionaries. This is crucial to the success of the revolution.
The revival of Arab Marxism

I have no doubt that there will be “clever” people who for some peculiar reason consider themselves to be Marxists who will say that what is happening in Tunisia is “not a revolution”, although, truth to tell, they cannot say what it is. In his book The Permanent Revolution, Trotsky compares Mensheviks to an old school teacher who for many years has given lessons on the spring. Then one morning he opens the window, and when he is greeted by radiant sunshine and birdsong, slams the window shut and declares these things to be a monstrous aberration of Nature.

Genuine Marxists proceed from living reality, not lifeless schemas. The revolution in Tunisia in many ways resembles the February revolution in Russia in 1917. The revolution has clearly begun, but it is not finished. It has succeeded in overthrowing the old regime, but has not yet been able to put anything in its place. Therefore, it is possible that the revolution may be defeated, particularly in the absence of a genuinely revolutionary leadership.

If it had not been for the presence of the Bolshevik Party, the February Revolution would have ended in defeat. Moreover, if it had not been for the presence of Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolshevik Party itself would have been incapable of playing the role that it did. The leadership would have remained with the reformist leaders of the soviets, and the revolution would have ended in shipwreck. If that had occurred, there can be no doubt that the same “clever” Marxists would be writing learned books explaining that, of course, there was no revolution in Russia, because of a, b, c, and d.

As I was preparing this article and reading different reports on the Internet, I happened to read a few anarchist blogs. I was interested to see that there are “clever” people, not only among the Marxists but also among the anarchists. The author of the aforementioned blog, complained bitterly about the lack of support for the revolution in Tunisia because it does not fit in with anarchist prejudices. He at least has healthy revolutionary instincts, unlike the pedants who refuse to give the Tunisian revoltion a birth certificate because it does not fit in with their stupid preconceptions.

For decades the idea has been carefully cultivated that there is no basis for socialism and Marxism among the masses of the Middle East and North Africa. Insofar as there is any opposition – so the argument goes – it is under the banner of Islamic fundamentalism. But this argument is false to the core and is disproved by events in Tunisia. The young women who went onto the streets to confront the police did not wear the burka. They are educated and intelligent people who speak good French and English. They are not demanding the introduction of sharia law but democratic rights and jobs.

Those so-called leftists who have been flirting with Islamic fundamentalism display a contempt for the level of understanding of the Arab workers and youth. To paint the fundamentalists as a revolutionary tendency is a betrayal of the cause of socialism. The future Arab Revolution will take place not under the black flag of Islamic fundamentalism but under the red flag of socialism.

In the past there was a strong socialist and communist tradition in the Arab world. But the crimes of Stalinism had their most terrible effect in this part of the world. The mass Communist Parties in Iraq and Sudan were destroyed by the treacherous policy of “two stages”, which handed power on a plate to so-called “bourgeois progressives” like Kassim and Nimeiri. This led to the annihilation of the Communist vanguard and the consolidation of dictatorial regimes like that of Saddam Hussein, with all that this implied for the peoples of the Middle East.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The same is true of politics. Into the vacuum left by the collapse of Stalinism stepped the Islamic fundamentalists, who pose as “anti-imperialists”, despite the fact that they were supported and financed by US imperialism to combat “communism” and fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. It is sufficient to recall that Osama bin Laden was an agent of the CIA until he quarrelled with his old friends in Washington.

On the demonstration in Brussels this afternoon (January 15), a comrade reported a conversation with an old Tunisian women. She asked: “Have you seen men with long beards at the our demonstrations in Tunisia? No! Because we do not need those people to liberate ourselves.” The fundamentalists have always been used as a means of diverting the masses from the socialist revolution. It is no accident that Rashid Ghannoushi, an Islamic leader, has been allowed to come back from exile and is now being played up in the Tunisian media. Many are saying: “we did not kick out Ben Ali to get the Islamists!”

It is very important to stress that this is the first time that an Arab dictator has been overthrown by the people themselves without outside intervention. This represents a decisive break with a fatalistic view that has unfortunately become widespread in the Arab world that says: “yes there have been many struggles but we were always defeated”. It is significant that on the Brussels demonstration today the main slogan chanted was: “Yes we can!”

Regarding the impact in other countries, an activist in the movement, writing in nawaat.org, one of the voices of the insurrection had this to say: "‎"The Tunisian people have given a lesson to the whole world, and to those oppressed in the Arab world in particular: expect nothing from anyone else and everything from yourself, and overcome the fear that paralyses your will and your energy.""

The socialist traditions are still alive and are gathering strength. A new generation of Arab activists is growing up under conditions of capitalist crisis. In the course of struggle they are learning fast. What they are looking for is the ideas of Marxism. The magnificent work of Marxy.com is beginning to produce important results, not just in defending the ideas and principles of Marxism, but in organizing practical revolutionary work and solidarity, as their campaign in support of the Tunisian Revolution shows.

Yesterday evening during a program on the Tunisian-based television Nessma (the television of the Greater Maghreb) with intellectuals and journalists the question was asked about how to get back the wealth the Ben Ali family had robbed from the people. One journalist said: We should nationalise the banks and all assets of the Trabelis clan. Then one mentioned the “Tunisian spring”, and another one spontaneously added "yes we know about that Marxist article (referring to the title of the first article on Marxy.com on the Tunisian insurrection) but we have not reached that spring yet".

This is a small anecdote, but it reveals the echo that the ideas of Marxism are getting amongst the left in Tunisia. What we have just witnessed in Tunisia is nothing less than the beginnings of the Arab Revolution, a colossal event that will change the course of world history. From one country to another the flames of revolt will spread from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. The revolutionary movement will develop and mature and raise itself to the level of the tasks demanded by history. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the masses, the forces of Marxism will grow with them. The Arab Revolution will triumph as a socialist revolution or it will not triumph at all.

* Down with the Foued Mbazaa regime!
* Full democratic rights now!
* For a revolutionary constituent assembly!
* For the expropriation of all the ill-gotten goods of the Trablesi clique!
* Victory to the Tunisian workers and youth!
* Long live the Arab Socialist Revolution!

London, 15th January 2011.

Tunisia: IMF "Economic Medicine" has resulted in Mass Poverty and Unemployment

By Prof. Basel Saleh

Global Research, December 31, 2010

Mass and spontaneous demonstrations erupted on Friday, December 17th in the city of Sidi Bouzid (central Tunisia) when Mohammad Bouazizi , a 26 year-old, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire after a female police officer slapped and spat on him. The only crime Bouazizi committed was that of being a street vendor selling vegetables and fruits without a permit, in a country where neoliberal economic policies failed to provide economic opportunities to Bouazizi and thousands of others like him.[1] Bouazizi’ s attempted suicide, which comes hard on the heels of police humiliation and confiscation of his only source of income, reveals the utter despair prevalent today among Tunisia’s population especially college graduates. Twenty-four years of ruthless corruptions, dictatorship, and neoliberal economic policies led to wealth being concentrated in the hands of very few people connected to President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his wife’s family. Bouazizi, a college graduate,[2] was trying to live in dignity and provide for his family by becoming a street vendor despite living in a country that is considered an economic miracle and one of the African lions by western economic monitors and analysts.[3]

The miserable economic conditions in the interior of the country, lack of employment opportunities and political freedoms pushed Bouazizi, like thousands of other young men and women in the Maghreb countries, to the margins of society. Tunisia’s national unemployment rate, which understates the true unemployment situation, stands at 14%.[4] However, the youth unemployment rate (those between15-24 year-old) is at 31%. The income share of the top 10% is approximately 32%, and the top 20% of the population controls 47% of Tunisia’s income. Tunisia’s inequality is so severe that the bottom 60% of the population earns only 30% (the top 40% take home 70% of the income).[5] Still, the IMF describes the government management of the economy and the uneven economic growth which benefited mainly northern and coastal cities while marginalizing the interior of the country as a “prudent macroeconomic management.”[6]

The despicable behavior of the police officer described above is not uncommon in Tunisia and is condoned by the police state that ignores basic human rights, shows no respect for the dignity of its citizens, and does not tolerate any signs of dissent. Poverty, unemployment and oppression have pushed yet another young man to commit suicide just few days later after Bouazizi’s attempt. On Wednesday, December 22nd, Hussein Nagi Felhi, also unemployed, unfortunately succeeded in committing suicide by climbing a high-voltage electric power line. He was electrocuted and died on the scene. Witnesses say the young man was shouting “no for misery, no for unemployment” as he climbed the electric pylon.[7]

The epidemic of youth unemployment, inequality, political repression, and lack of any meaningful freedoms inflamed solidarity among the population which took to the streets in a spontaneous and unplanned organic protests. Within days of the attempted suicide by Bouazizi and the suicide of Felhi, protests spread across the country and reached the capital Tunis and are still ongoing even in the face of total national media blackout and police brutality which resulted in the killing of an 18 year-old. This is not the first time the dictator of Tunisia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has faced street anger over joblessness and economic misery during his 24-year reign, but this is by far the most serious challenge to his rule. About three years ago in January 2008, his security apparatus crushed protesters in the southern mining town of Redhayef when workers and young people protested wages and unemployment.[8]At that time, over 300 people were arrested as a result of the protests.[9] However, this time the desperation among the population has reached the boiling point. Aided by social media, some protesters launched a Facebook page to document riots and share news although the government promptly shuts down any protest-linked websites.[10] The demonstrations are increasing in intensity and show no signs of abating. The protesters are fed up with the status quo of a self-enriching and corrupt ruling family which is the de facto governing system in the Middle East and North Africa.

A Western Ally: The Hypocrisy of Western Neoliberal and Foreign Policies

Respect for human rights and freedom of the press is almost nonexistent in Tunisia. The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom labels Tunisia as ‘mostly unfree’ nation and marginally close to being repressed—its lowest score.[11] Transparency International ranks Tunisia among its seriously corrupt nations with a score of 4.3 out of 10 (10 being free of corruption and 1 as most corrupt), and Tunisia is considered ‘not free’ according to Freedom House Index.[12] This is no surprise in a country where the government controls almost all aspects of people’s lives. Young people are especially tightly controlled and monitored. Even fields of study in post-secondary education are decided by the government where the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research decides in which field of study students will be placed.[13]

Although the protests that are spreading across the country took on the form of social unrest for the first few days, they rapidly metamorphosed over the last ten days to become a mass political rally by the people. The protesters are now on the streets calling openly for the president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to leave office by holding signs in Tunisian Arabic dialect that read “Yezzi Fock” (Ben Ali, it is enough) which has become the protesters’ political slogan. Labor and industry unions which played an active role in public life since independence from France are also supporting the protesters. President Ben Ali, nearing 80, is very aware of the gravity and the real threat to his grip on power. His first reaction was to preempt the protesters by firing some local officials, replace some ministers in his cabinet, and then immediately promising more investment and job creation completely oblivious to his record after 24 years in power. When these empty promises failed to deflate the protesters’ anger, he resorted to the routine policies of riot police and explicit threats directed to his citizens. Facing the most serious unrest in the history of his rule, he took to the airways and gave a televised address in response to the demonstrations. He vowed to punish “the minority of extremists” whom he blamed for the riots (as he calls them) and also indicated that these protests “will have a negative impact on creating jobs. It will discourage investors and tourists which will hit jobs."[14] It appears that the President’s main concern is the tourism industry which is tightly controlled by his family and that of his wife as revealed by several Wikileaks concerning the economic and financial corruption of the first family.

The Tunisian dictator and his family are touted by Western governments as an example of a stable and progressive North African Muslim nation. The neoliberal economic policies are hailed as prudent and wise by the IMF yet these policies primarily benefited his family, that of his wife in addition to other well-connected wealthy Tunisians. In one incident of corruption revealed by Wikileaks, the Son-in-Law of the President purchased a 17% share of a bank just before it was to be privatized and then sold the shares at a premium. Readings from Wikileaks U.S. diplomatic cables underscore that success in the Tunisian economy is directly related to connection to the first family. Income and regional inequalities are on the rise in Tunisia. Job creation and widespread prosperity promised by defunct orthodox economic dictates never trickled down to the masses or even materialized for most unemployed college graduates where net migration has been steadily increasing rising from -16,000 in 1980 to -80,000 in 2005.

The Tunisian Government is an important ally for the U.S. in its resource-driven colonial wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. A United Nations report on secret detention practices lists Tunisia as having secret detention facilities where prisoners are held without International Red Cross access. [15] Intelligence services in Tunisia cooperated with the U.S. efforts in the War on Terror and have participated in interrogating prisoners at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and in Tunisia. Recent Wikileaks diplomatic cables reveal that the U.S. not long ago was concerned about the growing anger on the streets and the corruption of Ben Ali and the Trabelsi family (his wife’s family) who treat everything in the country as theirs. A list of Wikileaks cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia posted on The Guardian newspaper website indicate that the U.S. considers Tunisia as a police state “with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems,” and the Ben Ali family as a “quasi mafia.”[16] Nevertheless, the State Department boasts about the active support the Tunisian security forces receive from the U.S. in spite of the Ben Ali’s government record of serious human rights violations. According to the State Department website:

“The United States and Tunisia have an active schedule of joint military exercises. U.S. security assistance historically has played an important role in cementing relations. The U.S.-Tunisian Joint Military Commission meets annually to discuss military cooperation, Tunisia's defense modernization program, and other security matters.”[17]

The fate of the protests is unclear at this point. The Ben Ali government is frantic to control the situation by sending police and security enforcements in the cities affected by the protests. The protesters have been peaceful and have not resorted to any violence or destruction of property. Some protesters simply held a loaf of bread and others are simply holding signs that call for jobs and dignity. In the meantime, the IMF is continuing to push Tunisia to more austere economic policies on the expenditure side, recommending that the government ends its support for food and fuel products and reform its social security system, a code word for privatizing the pension system in Tunisia which benefits the masses of poor Tunisians.[18]The greatest hypocrisy in all of this is that the IMF recommends these policies in the name of greater employment and growth which is the IMF’s cut-and-paste recipe for all nations it studies.

In the meantime, the Western international community has been largely silent about the protests. The U.S. corporate-run media is as usual busy selling air time to corporations eager to cash in on the Christmas holiday while simultaneously raising their prices to squeeze more out of their customers.[19] The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal didn’t report on the Tunisian protests at all. The U.S. State Department remains tight-lipped on the issue and has yet to release any statement on the situation. The U.S. government’s deafening silence confirms the inherent hypocrisy in U.S. diplomatic and foreign policy that is widely known, detested, and recently confirmed by Wikileaks released U.S. diplomatic cables.

Basel Saleh is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Peace Studies Faculty at Radford University, Virginia. His work on Palestinian suicide bombers is widely cited in national media and academic journals. He is currently writing his book Economics When People Matter due for publication with Kendall Hunt in the summer of 2011. The author can be reached by email bsaleh@radford.edu

Notes

[1] See Aljazeera story in (Arabic), 23 December 2010:
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D2ACC91E-B225-411B-8073-AC6C79845D77…

[2] There are conflicting reports on whether Mohammad Bouazizi is a college graduate or not. But most news sources indicate that he is. See:
http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id…

[3] ‘African lions’ is a term used by Boston Consulting Group to describe the eight countries driving growth on the continent: South Africa, Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Mauritius, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. See Florence Beaugé, Economic power of the 'African lions' tallied. , The Guardian Weekly, 10 June 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/09/morocco-southafrica

[4] Julian Borger, Tunisian President Vows to Punish Rioters After Worst Unrest in a Decade. The Guardian, 29 December 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/29/tunisian-president-vows-pun…

[5] World Bank Indicators: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.1524.MA.ZS/countries/TN?disp…

[6] Joël Toujas-Bernate and Rina Bhattachary, Tunisia Weathers Crisis Well, But Unemployment Persistsa. IMFSurvey Magazine: Countries & Regions , 10 September 2010:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2010/car091010a.htm

[7] Amro Hassan, Tunisia: Apparent Suicide Triggers Youth Protests Against Unemployment. The Los Angeles Times, 23 December 2010:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/tunisia-suicide-t…

[8] Human Rights Watch, World Report Chapter: Tunisia, January 2009: http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79260

[9] Amnesty International, Behind Tunisia’s Economic Miracle: Inequality and Criminalization of Protests, June 2009:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE30/003/2009/en/2e1d33e2-55da…

[10] The facebook page for protesters can be accessed via http://www.facebook.com/yezzifock?v=photos#!/yezzifock?v=wall

[11] The Heritage Foundation, 2010 Index of Economic Freedom: http://www.heritage.org/Index/Ranking

[12] Freedom House, Freedom in The World Country Report , 2010 edition:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2010 , and Transparency International Corruption Index
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/re…

[13] Housa Trabelsi, Unemployment Haunts Tunisia’s College Graduates. The Megharebia, 30 July 2010:
http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features…

[14] Tunisian President Says Job Riots are not Acceptable. The BBC, 28 December 2010:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12087596

[15] See United Nations report on secrete detention practices
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/13session/A-HRC-13-…

[16] US embassy cables: Tunisia - a US foreign policy conundrum, The Guardian, 7 December 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/217138

[17] Background Note: Tunisia, U.S. State Department, 13 October 2010:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5439.htm#relations

[18] See note 4

[19] Matthew Boyle, Wal-Mart Raising Prices on Toys, Squeezing More Out of Holidays. Bloomberg News, 15 December 2010:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-15/wal-mart-raised-prices-on-toys…

Dr. Basel Saleh is Assistant Professor of Economics at Radford University Virginia.

“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.” (César Chávez)
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Some Quick, Hasty Reflections on the Revolutionary Process Unfolding In Tunisia
by Jase Short

January 16, 2011 -- This note is meant to clarify a few things for folks who are watching the revolutionary process unfold in Tunisia, but who do not have a lot of experience observing, researching, etc. actual revolutions. In our ideologically-saturated American society, few of us have any clue what actual revolutionary politics consists of. We dream of people in the streets more or less magically overthrowing governments (often without the understanding that actual revolutions require revolutionary organization to channel those street protests nor the need for actual repression of the ruling class and its guarantors in order to prevent counter-revolution) without much context behind it.

Without going into too much detail about Tunisia’s situation, let us make clear one thing:

The regime has not fallen, it is still in power–though it is in a precarious position.

Ben-Ali has fled (as has his hated, Marie Antoinette-esque wife), but the ruling clique that operated underneath his executive direction has remained in power. The military is in the streets, cracking down on any gatherings of 3 or more people (a state of emergency has been declared). There is widespread looting and gangs of armed men have wrecked havoc in certain areas–consequently, many of the neighbourhoods are self-organizing in much the same way that local democratic structures arose during the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 (there are other examples but I think the classic one is important for those of us who do not have much knowledge about revolutionary politics in history).

An unnamed military source has told the media that the gangs of armed men are in fact Ben-Ali’s Mukhabarat–internal security services–carrying out violence in order to justify a more brutal military crackdown. In this vein, we must remember one of the major reasons for the success of the movement against the regime: Ben-Ali’s military commander, with pressure from the ranks of soldiers, disobeyed his order to use violence to disperse the protests and instead had the military pull back to defend government buildings. Scenes of soldiers and demonstrators embracing and kissing show us that the military is very seriously divided. Every major revolution–from the 1917 socialist Russian Revolution to the misdirected 1979 Iranian Revolution–has involved deep dissension within the ranks of the military (in fact, the shift in Cuba from a mass-based urban general strike-oriented movement to a special body of armed guerrillas occurred once the military, in lockstep, crushed a general strike–thereby winning over the masses of people to Castro’s view that only guerrilla war led by elite commanders could defeat the Batista regime).

So what we have is an incomplete political revolution, though there are still demonstrators in the streets. The demonstrations began in the rural south–now, in the same area, there are people taking to the streets demanding the resignation of the interim government–along with more radical demands. The urban middle class is involved heavily (50% of graduates are unemployed)…but even with all of these forces, there is simply not enough critical mass or leverage to make a serious difference. It is the working-class that has swelled the ranks of the demonstrations and replaced confused and somewhat spontaneous resistance with mass coordinated actions and general strikes.

People in the street have only symbolic power. In the end, if an army wants to, it can massacre those people–look at Tiananmen Square. When workers’ refuse to work, however, they cut the jugular of a society’s ruling elite. That is what has happened. It was not for nothing that the security apparatus snatched up the leader of the Communist workers’ movement once things began to escalate.

The protests have been going on for over a month. They have centered on demands for the government to address the 14% unemployment rate (the US unemployment rate is 17.5%), to tackle skyrocketing inflation (food, fuel, etc. going up while wages are declining–just like the US), and to put an end to government censorship and police state repression. The catalyst for their escalation came in the form of a young unemployed youth who set himself on fire in front of a government building following the state’s seizure of his unauthorized fruit stand–his only livelihood.

The same 7 clans that rule the government and command the greatest share of the economy remain in power, the Mukhabarat continues its repression and there are tanks in the streets. Without revolutionary organization, the street protests will end at the barrel of a gun, the state apparatus will remain firmly in power, an interim period before elections–which undoubtedly will be between elites, with middle-class elements dissenting from working-class ranks, dividing the previous national unity–will be overseen by the likes of French President Nicholas Sarkozy (not to mention the US role). The hopes of Tunisia will be extinguished by calls for moderation and the threat of the Jasmine Revolution spreading across the greater Arab world will dwindle as the security services of Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, etc. will take the moment to up the ante of repression.

This situation can escalate in the other direction, however. The self-organization of the neighborhoods is a promising start–it all depends on where the leadership of the working-class takes the movement: will they yield to elite promises of reform or to middle-class leadership, or will they push forward with a truly revolutionary purpose and look at completing the political revolution and perhaps even a social revolution that will undermine the very social relations that lie at the base of the economic and political crisis unfolding across their society?

These are the questions we ought to be asking. I implore everyone to learn from this experience, to enjoy the victories but to remain sober to the situation, and to understand that revolutions are very complex processes–not just lots of people in the streets. Let us stand in solidarity with our comrades suffering under the yoke of tyranny in the Arab world: neither bin Laden nor the US-backed regimes, but real people’s democracy.