23 year old filmmaking student Nadim Fateh was born in Cairo,Egypt and moved to Toronto in his early life. After making it onto the Toronto Police's top 40 'wanted' list for his alleged role in the fiery G20 protests, he spent the last spring and summer in Cairo, Athens, and Madrid, participating and documenting the revolutionary movements there before becoming a part of Occupy Toronto.

When did you go back to Egypt?

I went back May of 2011 so everything had pretty much died down there but it wasn't really focused much on the actual revolution but the things that not many people were focusing on which is the post-revolution, that liquid state, that liquid area we don't usually talk about.

Was there much of an occupation when you went to Tahrir?

34 year old architect ALI MIKKAWA was an active participant in the Egyptian uprising. He helped organize demonstrations and to establish the initial sit-in in Tahrir square. In December 2010, Linchpin conducted the following interview with Ali.

What were the first protests or meetings that you got involved with in Egypt?

I got involved with the Kefaya protests that started seven years ago. This movement was the first to take to the streets to protest against the long rule of Mubarak and it stands for “Enough”. The movement started to gain momentum slowly but surely... and I really got engaged later when [former IAEA head] Mohammed El Baradei returned to Egypt. From that point onwards I was more active campaigning for his One Million Signature campaign to change the constitution.

How did you and others build these protests under such intense police repression?

23 year old filmmaking student NADIM FATEH was born in Cairo, Egypt and moved to Toronto in his early life. After making it onto the Toronto Police’s “top 40 wanted list” for his alleged role in the fiery G20 protests, he spent the last spring and summer in Cairo, Athens, and Madrid, participating and documenting the revolutionary movements there before becoming a part of Occupy Toronto.

34 year old architect ALI MIKKAWA was an active participant in the Egyptian uprising. He helped organize demonstrations and to establish the initial sit-in in Tahrir square.

Both Nadim and Ali spoke with Linchpin separately.

Read Nadim's full interview
Read Ali's full interview

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What were the first protests or meetings that got you involved with events in Egypt?

Un argument pour que les survivantes(s) de viol et de violence domestique deviennent des militantes(s) syndicalistes

Liberté Locke, une militante au syndicat des travailleurs de Starbuck, écrit dans cet article la similarité entre la violence au travail et la violence sexuelle. Elle explique en effet que les agresseurs sexuels et les patrons utilisent les mêmes techniques de contrôle et qu’il nous est nécessaire de se battre contre ces deux formes d’oppression.

AVERTISSEMENT: Cet article parle du sujet de la violence sexuelle.

J’ai été violée par mon chum le 18 Août, 2006. La journée suivante, je retenais mes larmes pendant que je mentais à un inconnu au téléphone expliquant pourquoi je devais manquer ma 2e entrevue pour un emploi que j’avais besoin désespérément. Quand j’ai finalement raccroché, je reçu un nouveau message texte. ‘’ Ce n’est pas terminé. Ce ne sera jamais terminé entre nous...’’

On the weekend 19-20th a new wave of mass protest all over Egypt broke out because of the systematic violence of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) against the Egyptian masses. People are tired of its dictatorial behaviour, the use of extreme force against protesters, the military trials that in 10 months have ended up with 12,000 comrades rotting in jail, their censorship, the torture, kidnappings and selective murder of activists. People are tired of the military council hijacking the banners of our revolution to continue the same old dictatorship through other means. People are tired of the sectarianism they promote to divert us from our real fight for justice, equality and freedom.

On August 9 2011, Linchpin spoke with Tim Matthews, a member and spokesperson of the anti-austerity group UK Uncut.

Linchpin: For some of our readers in Canada who may not be familiar with your organization, what is UK Uncut? How does your group organize?

When Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight he unwittingly ignited a wave of popular uprisings and rebellions that have spread like wildfire across North Africa and the Middle East, the heat of which can be felt as far afield as Zimbabwe where, on Saturday 19th February, 46 pro-democracy activists including students, workers and trade unionists were arrested in Harare. According to police documents they were arrested for plotting an Egypt-style revolt to overthrow Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, at a meeting to discuss the fall of Hosni Mubarak and events in North Africa and the Middle East. The arrested, who represent the Zimbabwean Federation of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZNSU) and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), had just watched documentary news footage on the uprising in Egypt and, according to state prosecutors, were there to "organise, strategise and implement the removal of the constitutional government of Zimbabwe ...

By Ajamu Nangwaya

We are now in February and for Africans in North America it is a significant month. It is usually observed as Black History Month.

It is taken as an opportunity to acknowledge African people’s struggles, achievements and commemorate significant moments in the fight against white supremacy, capitalism, sexism and other forms of oppression.

Some of us use this month to reflect and rededicate ourselves to the revolutionary or radical African political tradition.

In the spirit of collective self-criticism, are we at the point where Black History Month is due for a name change and focus?

Names are quite important to resistance. It was no accident that the enslaved Africans who were taken across the Sahara Desert ended up with Arab names and those who went by way of the Atlantic Ocean had European names imposed on them.

by Chris Bisson

At the close of 2010, delegations from 184 governments assembled in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th gathering of the “Conference of Parties” (COP) under the banner of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This gathering of the global political class under the guise of climate change mitigation produced an agreement much heralded by bureaucrats, CEOs and journalists alike.

Though this agreement set a maximum cap of 2 degrees Celsius average global rise in temperature, it involves no binding agreements and relies almost entirely on market mechanisms to accomplish this. Most nefarious of all, the primary mechanism opted for is the “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (REDD) programme – which is basically a system whereby rich industrialized countries bribe poor developing countries into cutting back on deforestation.

By Alex Balch

At the G20 Summit held this past June in Toronto, the heads of the world’s most advanced capitalist economies met with their counterparts from the IMF and World Bank to hammer out a savagely coordinated attack on the international working class.

Central to the “decade of austerity” prescribed by the IMF – and zealously promoted by the meeting’s host, Stephen Harper – are massive cuts to public spending, aimed at curbing the national deficits that resulted from injecting trillions of dollars into the international banking system in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

Effectively, this amounts to the largest transfer of wealth in modern history – and a particularly audacious act of class warfare, waged by the rich against the poor.