Can the new post-Mubarak Egypt succeed in addressing the socio-economic grievances that helped spark the January 25 uprising? The ‘prevailing discourse among Egyptian elites and opinion makers, however, already signals that the answer is no,’ writes Hesham Sallam.

The situation in Egypt is increasingly complex writes Sokari Ekine, where power still lies with the remnants of the state and military, and the old mechanisms of repression are starting to reappear.

Egypt’s premier has said that delaying a parliamentary election scheduled for September would give political parties more time to prepare, state media said, amid fears that an early poll would benefit Islamists. His comments come amid a mounting campaign by liberal and secular groups to delay the election until after a new constitution has been drafted. The 'Constitution First' campaign has sparked intense debate, with critics arguing that delaying the poll would keep the ruling military in place for longer.

On 6 June 2010, Khaled Said, 28, was beaten by two plain-clothes police officers in an internet café in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria. He was then dragged out into the street where, eyewitnesses say, the beating continued until he died. Khaled Said quickly became a symbol for every victim of the security forces’ brutality. The first seeds of what would become the ‘25 January Revolution’ were sown in Alexandria on 6 June 2010. Despite the uprising, however, the trial for those accused of killing Khaled Said is still ongoing.

GA had looked forward to leaving Eritrea with her husband and living a better life in Israel, until they found themselves kidnapped for money by local Bedouins in Egypt’s Sinai desert. GA, who spoke to IRIN in the Israeli city of Jaffa, is just one of the hundreds of asylum-seekers trafficked by international gangs every month from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East, mainly through Sudan, ostensibly in search of better opportunities. However, say human rights groups, many of them end up in captivity. Bedouin tribes in Sinai, which borders Israel, often hold them until their relatives pay a ransom.

Egypt and Kingdom Holding Co., the company controlled by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, have signed an agreement in Cairo over contested land in Toshka in southern Egypt. The signing ends a dispute over a 100,000-feddan (104,000- acre) piece of land that is part of the Toshka agricultural development project, which is intended to use water diverted from the Aswan High Dam reservoir to irrigate land in Egypt’s western desert. Kingdom’s original acquisition came under criticism after a revolution in Egypt that ended the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

A former Egyptian minister, Youssef Boutros-Ghali has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for squandering public funds and abuse of power. He is also expected to pay a fine of approximately $11 million. The ruling delivered in his absence indicates the country's determination to deal with past mistakes as it prepares for a new dispensation. Youssef Boutros-Ghali, the nephew of former UN Chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was a finance minister and a close confidant of Gamal Mubarak, son to the ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Reports that we couldn't verify independently indicate that he is in currently living Beirut. An arrest warrant has been issued by the International Police, the Interpol.

A senior Egyptian general admits that 'virginity checks' were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities. The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the 9 March protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks. The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

Egyptian officials are warning that the country, just emerging from a popular uprising that ousted the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, could be facing a major economic crisis with lagging international aid and foreign investment. General Mahmoud Nassr, a member of the Supreme Military Council, which is running the country’s interim government, told an economic conference in Cairo last week that foreign direct investment (FDI) has come to a standstill while Western rating agencies race to downgrade the country’s sovereign credit rating. The poverty rate has also worsened to 70 per cent, Nassr added.

Billions of dollars are set to flow into Egypt from a host of International Financial Institutions (IFIs), writes Adam Hanieh on the website Jadaliyya. But far from supporting the aspirations of the Egyptian people, their real aim is to hijack the transition and ensure that the neoliberal project in Egypt is hastened.

Two-and-a-half years into the financial crisis that began in the fall of 2008, workers have begun to fight back on a mass scale, says this World Socialist Web Site article. 'The ruling class and its political representatives are engaged in a worldwide drive to turn back the conditions of workers gained through struggle over generations. The war in Libya and the efforts of the US to bolster the military regime in Egypt are part of a global process that includes historic cuts in social programs in Europe and the United States. The February events in Egypt and the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa were the beginning of a working-class counteroffensive.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/531/egyptian_socialists_logo_t… newly formed Egyptian Socialist Party brings together supporters of the country’s transition into a socialist society to work together to develop a coherent strategy to ‘guide the people in the right direction’. In the following paper, the party sets out its perspectives and goals. The Egyptian Socialist Party will be launched in Cairo on 18 June.

Five Egyptian political parties and movements have united to form the Coalition of Socialist Forces, they announced in a meeting on 10 May 2011. The newly formed coalition is made up of the Social Party of Egypt, the Democratic Labour Party, the Popular Socialist Coalition Party, Egypt Communist Party and the Revolutionary Socialists. It aims to include under its umbrella other socialist movements in Egypt, which are considered fragmented.

The subject of child abuse and its long-term implications in adulthood has been widely studied in literature in different areas of the world and across different cultures, notes this article in the The Arab Journal of Psychiatry about a study that looked at Egyptian university students. It found that a large proportion of the sample reported both child abuse and several long-term pathological consequences of abuse in adulthood. 'The problem seems to be serious in this middle class sample and it remains possible that these problems could be worse in lower social classes.'

While experts are working with the military council to amend the political rights law, news has leaked about the cancellation of the allocation of seats to women, known as the 'women's quota' and which is one of the positive types of discrimination in law. The women's quota is not the only type of positive discrimination. There is another type: the quota of workers and farmers which is 50 per cent of the elected seats. However, there is not any news on canceling this quota, which raises the question on the validity of canceling the women's quota.

The wife of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was being held on corruption charges, has been released on bail after handing over assets. Suzanne Mubarak turned over a villa in a Cairo suburb and $3m (£1.9m) held in bank accounts in Egypt, officials said.

At least 120 people were injured, one of them critically, when Egyptian security forces attacked a pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Sunday night, according to witnesses. Activists told Al Jazeera that army and internal security troops used tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition to disperse thousands of protesters who had gathered to mark the 63rd anniversary of the 'Nakba' or 'catastrophe' - the day in 1948 that Israel declared its independence and thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled form their homes.

Egypt’s new leadership has promised to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza permanently after more than five years of partial and occasionally full closure, but observers wonder how far this will go to ease the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). 'Our intention is to alleviate the human problems and living conditions for the people in Gaza,' Ambassador Mahna Bakhoum, spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IRIN. 'It is under study now - how, when and what [the opening of Rafah crossing will involve]. This is all being discussed by the government and by the whole country, not just the Foreign Ministry.'

'Egypt is one of only two states to have entered reservations on ratification of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The three reservations concern the guarantee of freedom of conscience, non-discrimination of women and children and the right to receive information...The African Commission has been resolute in rejecting the subjugation of continental human rights standards to restrictive national laws that nullify the human rights guaranteed. This is particularly critical in the context of the current transition in Egypt. It is important that the people access information on the decades of injustice and find the truth about corruption, torture, missing persons.'

'In response to the woes of our dispossessed masses and the aspirations of our popular classes and in the name of the Great Revolution of the Egyptian People on January 25th, 2011, we are founding The Egyptian Socialist Party, the Party that aims to be the flag of the Egyptian popular classes. We invite you to join us for the inauguration of our party on Saturday, 4 June, 2011. There will be a good chance to meet and interact with all Left and progressive political forces and unions of Egypt and the Arab World as well as many other countries of the World. Our comrades will be glad to help you booking the suitable room and to manage the logistics. For organisational purposes we appreciate your timely confirmation or response to our invitation positively or negatively.' Contact: [email][email protected]