"The careful wording of the army's plea on Monday marked a change of tone from the more autocratic style of the past, provoking concern among some industry executives," Reuters news agency reported. It cited the comments of one boss, Chamber of Metallurgical Industries General Manager Mohamed Said Hanfy, who declared, "The army must use stronger language to the people. A lot of them don't have a problem but want to seize the opportunity presented by the political situation."
This arrogance is typical of the ruling elite that has profited enormously from decades of brutal suppression of the Egyptian working masses, as well as lucrative payoffs from foreign capital and the government of the United States, the principal financial and military backer of the Mubarak dictatorship.
The workers are rebelling against all the corrupt representatives of the old dictatorship, not only in government and business, but in the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation. Thousands of workers demonstrated this week outside the ETUF headquarters, demanding the resignation of its chief, Hussein Megawer, and members of its governing board. All are stooges of the Mubarak regime.
News reports from Egypt have all taken note of the mood of protest sweeping the country. Associated Press wrote, "Since the military took power from longtime leader Hosni Mubarak on Friday, Egyptians have been airing grievances everywhere over just about everything, from meager wages to police brutality and corruption." Reuters added, "Workers cite a series of grievances. What unites them is a new sense of being able to speak out in the post-Mubarak era."
The US news magazine Time commented on the growth of class antagonisms in Egypt: "The opposition coalition that brought down Mubarak is not only divided on political lines: there's also a cleavage of social class. Strikes continue to paralyze much of the Egyptian economy despite appeals from the military -- and even from opposition figures like Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who personifies the Facebook aspect of the youth rebellion -- to return to work."
The magazine continued: "Many of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who took to the streets to oust Mubarak were driven by economic despair. Even those lucky enough to have jobs face the growing squeeze of wages not keeping pace with inflation. Their circumstances and interests are very different from those of the middle-class Facebook generation."
In an ominous signal, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton backed away from previous suggestions that the emergency law imposed by Mubarak 30 years ago should be lifted immediately. "I am not going to substitute my judgment," she said, "for what is going on in Egypt right now."
Asked by Al-Jazeera whether she was calling on the new military regime to lift the ban on public demonstrations and protests imposed under this law, she replied, "I am not. It's not for me to counsel them. This is an Egyptian process that must be directed and defined by the Egyptian people."
This pretense of deferring to the "Egyptian people" is completely cynical, since Mubarak devised the emergency law for the specific purpose of suppressing the democratic rights of the Egyptian people and blocking any opposition to the regime.
An indication of the growing nervousness in Washington came in a column by conservative pundit Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post Tuesday. She wrote, "Disappointment in the slow pace of post-revolutionary change cannot be avoided. Historically, the months following a revolution can therefore be more dangerous than the revolution itself. The dissatisfaction with the February Russian revolution of 1917 led to the Bolshevik coup d'Ã �tat in October."
Applebaum slurs the October Revolution as a mere "coup d'Ã �tat," but her meaning is clear: the upsurge in Egypt threatens not only the downfall of US stooges like Mubarak, but the overthrow of the capitalist system itself.
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