{"id":29525,"date":"2011-01-30T23:47:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T07:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=29525"},"modified":"2011-01-30T23:47:03","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T07:47:03","slug":"yisroel-pensack-class-warfare-erupts-in-egypt-over-rich-poor-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=29525","title":{"rendered":"Yisroel Pensack: ‘Class Warfare’ Erupts in Egypt Over Rich-Poor Divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The popular uprising against the regime of Egypt’s dictator President Hosni Mubarak has given way to “class warfare” in some areas of that nation, according to a New York Times report<\/a> by David D. Kirkpatrick and Mona El-Naggar:<\/p>\n

CAIRO \u2014 As the government of Egypt<\/a> shakes from a broad-based uprising, long-simmering resentments have burst into open class warfare.<\/p>\n

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Over the past several days, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians \u2014 from indigent fruit peddlers and doormen to students and engineers, even wealthy landlords \u2014 poured into the streets together to denounce President Hosni Mubarak<\/a> and battle his omnipresent security police. Then, on Friday night, the police pulled out of Egypt\u2019s major cities abruptly, and tensions between rich and poor exploded.<\/p>\n

Looters from Cairo\u2019s vast shantytowns attacked gleaming suburban shopping malls, wild rumors swirled of gunfights at the bridges and gates to the most expensive neighborhoods and some of their residents turned wistful about Mr. Mubarak and his authoritarian rule…<\/p>\n

Now some accuse the Mubarak government of deliberately fanning class tensions in order to create demands for the restoration of its brutal security state. But such resentments have built up here for nearly a decade outside of public view.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese big guys are stealing all the money,\u201d said Mohamed Ibraham, a 24-year-old textile worker standing at his second job as a fruit peddler in a hard-pressed neighborhood called Dar-al-Salam. \u201cIf they were giving us our rights, why would we protest? People are desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had little sympathy for those frightened by the specter of looting. He complained that he could barely afford his rent and said the police routinely humiliated him by shaking him down for money, overturning his cart or stealing his fruit. \u201cAnd then we hear about how these big guys all have these new boats and the 100,000 pound villas. They are building housing, but not for us \u2014 for those people up high.\u201d<\/p>\n

The widening chasm between rich and poor in Cairo has been one of the conspicuous aspects of city life over the last decade \u2014 and especially the last five years. Though there were always extremes of wealth and poverty here, until recently the rich lived more or less among the poor \u2014 in grander apartments or more spacious apartments but mixed together in the same city.<\/p>\n

But as the Mubarak administration has taken steps toward privatizing more government businesses, kicking off an economic boom for some, rich Egyptians have fled the city. They have flocked to gated communities full of big American-style homes around country clubs, and the remoteness of their lives from those of average Egyptians has become starkly visible.<\/p>\n

The new rich communities and older affluent enclaves closer to the city were seized with fear over the weekend after a rash of looting Friday night…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The popular uprising against the regime of Egypt’s dictator President Hosni Mubarak has given way to “class warfare” in some areas of that nation, according to a New York Times report by David D. Kirkpatrick and Mona El-Naggar: CAIRO \u2014 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[169,18818],"tags":[25357,25356,3761,25358,25328,25359],"class_list":["post-29525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-york-times","category-yisroel-pensack","tag-cairo","tag-class-warfare","tag-egypt","tag-gated-communities","tag-hosni-mubarak","tag-rich-and-poor"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t