Stop Me Before I Vote Again

If politics is simply concentrated economics, then economics is diffuse politics.

With the Egyptian SCAF now brushing aside "the old legitimacy" to rule with naked gun barrels (with or without flowers) until the day when ballots decide... it's high time the uprising spread out in this new protracted phase of the struggle and immediately challenge the new power -- not with a few mighty but symbolic points of mass focus, but at ten thousand points of sweat: work sites, civil service offices, cop beats, tenant fields... you name it.

Obviously the challenge has been thrown down by the combover gang in the SCAF. So probe 'em, find the limits of this raw preemptive show of power over the people, this presumption that civil order trumps civil liberty.

It's a moment of some danger. I hope the Egyptians go on to manifest the people's right of unfettered public speech, public assembly, demand political amnesty, close the torture chambers and sandbox gulags, and most of all, assert by deeds the right to organize on the job and strike for living wages, decent conditions, full employment; demand food and utlities, shelter for all, occupy the vacant lots, open the storehouses on the authority of the people's right to live.

Sure, the SCAF can clear Liberation Square. But can it make the people produce against their will? Can it demand the people go hungry and jobless as they wait for their day -- someday -- to exercise their "right " to vote in a "free and fair" election.

If repression is going to come, better it come now while the people have the taste of power still in their mouths.