Who would want to kill Samir Geagea?

Dr. Samir Geagea is a man with a colorful past. Let’s leave it at that. Any more info on the man can be found on his Wikipedia page (a rather glowing biography).

The Lebanese Christian leader has been taking it easy in recent years, sticking to a narrative he espoused during the civil war and backed up with military action during the 1980s. Given the goings on in Syria, and given Lebanon’s (or at least this government’s) relationship with Damascus, Geagea has been striking a chord of anti-Assad opprobrium that has gone down predictably well with partisans and even generated some unexpected bonhomie with champions of wildly different ideologies who happen to have found, in Geagea, a mutual Bashar basher.

Tags: Assad, assassination, Geagea, Lebanese Forces, Lebanon, LF, Syria, UN, US

Two orientalist takes on the Party of God

Sorry for not posting for a while; circumstances beyond my control have limited my access to WordPress.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ll have seen the recent article about four western journalists – all pretty well established – going paintballing with Hezbollah in south Beirut.

If not, I won’t spoil it. As you’d expect from the authors, it is at least entertaining…but not terribly illuminating. I know exactly why it was pitched – it was accepted by VICE editors after all. Outlets still have a perspective from which they approach Hezbollah; that the party is tough and mysterious and highly organized, and predominantly hostile to Americans. It is all of those things, of course, but it’s also a highly functioning social outfit, an organization with links established in education, construction, infrastructure…even scouts groups.

Tags: Beirut, Hezbollah, Lebanon, paintballing with Hezbollah, VICE

An open letter to The Hon Kevin Rudd MP

Mr. Rudd

Australia's Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd

PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Let be begin by saying that I have no reason to believe you are anything other than a humane and decent man. I am not an Australian citizen, nor have I had any great exposure to your country’s domestic politics. I have no opinion either way on your stances concerning divisive issues such as the Iraq war and gay marriage.

This letter is motivated neither by a will to embarrass or discredit. I simply desire action.

As a user of social media and, no doubt, as a keen upholder of tasks mandated under your position as Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, I am sure you are aware of the case of Australian citizen Austin G. Mackell, who was arrested in Egypt last weekend and charged with incitement at a protest rally in the Nile basin city of Mahalla.

Austin is a journalist, and in case his ordeal has not registered on your agenda, details of his bogus arrest and incarceration can be perused here.

Given your previous declarations on Egypt’s transition to democracy, I can only assume you are aware of the climate in which foreign journalists operate in and around Cairo, and that you take a keen interest in it. You yourself last year stressed the need for reform and progress to “ensure the opportunity and freedoms that ordinary Egyptians have been calling for.” One such call, Mr. Rudd, was for a free press.

As I have already confessed relative ignorance over Australian realpolitik, I am compelled to assume that when you took the opportunity to inform the world of your hope over Egypt’s future, you did so out of genuine concern for its inhabitants, and not from a perspective of grandstanding or opportunism. We are all proud of what the Egyptian people have achieved Mr. Rudd, and I believe we can all agree that sharing in their revolutionary euphoria is legitimate so long as words are corroborated with action.

I referred to you as something of a social media aficionado; I see now you have more than 1 million followers on Twitter. You (or, more likely, a member of staff) tweet with pleasing regularity. The problem that myself and many other users have encountered in recent days is that our messages about Austin’s predicament seem to be passing you by. I have no evidence to suggest your engagement with micro-blogging is a misguided attempt to stay relevant to a younger electorate and continue the slow dissemination of 140 characters of valedictory spin, but you will – I hope – forgive the thought having crossed my mind these past few days.

I know that your schedule as the Foreign Minister of Australia is extremely taxing on the time and concentration of yourself and your team, and for that I sympathise. There are surely complicated diplomatic considerations at play, out of the view of the general public, which need to be taken into account before the Foreign Minister can utter so much as a word on the situation. But to have successive requests for assistance ignored, and to see your country’s mission in Egypt respond in so underwhelming a manner to the plight of one of its citizens has, I am afraid to say, sapped most of our patience with the quiet diplomacy approach.

While I appreciate that there must be a fair amount of hysterical requests bombarding you at the time of writing, I am fortunate enough to be a trained and qualified journalist. So, Mr. Rudd, for your guidance, the facts:

Austin Mackell is being wrongly investigated for crimes that could carry a significant punishment. His passport has been confiscated and a travel ban is in place. He has been threatened on the street and propaganda insinuating to the public that such treatment is tacitly approved by the state has appeared in newspapers and on television. His accommodation has been raided and he is currently homeless. He is a journalist and an Australian citizen. You are the Foreign Minister of Australia. You can do something about this.

There is no need for me to point out Austin’s total innocence; the courts will, I have faith, eventually determine this truth in an official capacity. Nor do I need to mention the thousands of human rights abuses and unlawful arrests that continue within Egypt, for they are not my concern within this letter (and you follow Egyptian affairs closely as it is).

I do hope my take on your silence on the matter so far has been accurate and received in the hopeful manner it was conceived. I would hate to think that a politician of your standing and gravitas would be so pusillanimous as to deliberately ignore requests for assistance.

I remain firmly convinced the former is the case. But I think it is only fair to tell you, Mr. Rudd, that we will not let this drop; that the case of Austin Mackell is not something you will be able to avoid or ignore indefinitely. We will keep up the noise, and you will have to listen. If you do so voluntarily, then I shall be pleased for Austin and pleased that my initial assessment of your compassion and professionalism was correct after all.

Yours Sincerely

Patrick Galey

Tags: Austin Mackell, Cairo, Egypt, freealiya, freeaustin, freederek, freekamel, Kevin Rudd, press freedom, SCAF

Egypt’s football riots

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It didn’t take long for the conspiracy theories. As soon as the news broke that dozens of fans had been killed during a football match in Port Said, Twitter became flooded with people trying to rationalise the horrific violence. The incident had, variously, all the hallmarks of Mubarak, SCAF, the Ministry of Interior, the ultras, foreigners.

I took a trip up to Port Said this afternoon, and the mood was among the tensest I’ve experienced. It’s not unusual to be accused of being a spy here by people in the street, but there was sustained and genuine hostility towards me and other members of the media. The most striking thing, as was the case watching footage of the killings last night, was the absence of anything resembling law enforcement or security activity.

Tags: Alhy, Cairo, Egypt, Feb2, football, Masry, Mohammed Mahmoud, Port Said, riots, Tahrir, ultras

Pictures from last week

A busy week here. I realised that I took a helluva lot of photos, so here’s some of them from the week that Egypt marked its anniversary.

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Tags: Cairo, Egypt, Jan25, revolution, Tahrir

Friday of anger turns irritable

Jan. 25 is the date that the revolution began, and hundreds of thousands of Egyptians marked its anniversary this week. But ask anyone who participated in the uprising and they will likely tell you than Jan. 28 was when Egypt changed irrevocably. It was a violent and damaging day, but one full of significant and tangible gains for the revolutionaries.

Today was again dubbed the Friday of Rage, and saw protestors convene in their thousands in Tahrir and outside Maspero after coordinating several marches across Cairo.

I mentioned in my Jan. 25 post that the various motivations of the million or so people in Tahrir had produced tension, and today I saw a continuation – indeed, an escalation – of that.

Tags: Cairo, Egypt, FridayofRage, Jan25, Muslim Brotherhood, revolution, Tahrir

“This is a revolution, not a party”

One of the most frequently stressed aspects of Egypt’s fractious and flawed transition to democracy is that Islamist parties have gained the most from the revolution. With two-thirds of the People’s Assembly vote going their way, governments and commentators from the  Western Hemisphere have been vocal in the need for administrations across the world to support a Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Noor led parliament. We will support the Islamists, the caveat always runs, as long as their power is representative of public opinion. It has been an awkward shift for major players such as the US to undertake, with the realisation that Islamism is not diametrically opposed to democracy. Islamists love democracy in Egypt; they win.

Tags: Al-Noor, Cairo, Egypt, Jan25, Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood, revolution, SCAF, Tahrir