Daily Archives: February 5, 2011

The limits of television

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One of the mot paradoxical aspects of the last week is that, on the one hand, we have seen endless loops of TV footage of what’s going on in Cairo, and yet the only times I’ve felt that I had any real insight into what it was like has been when print journalists on the ground reported what they were seeing — as, for example, with the report by Robert Fisk that I blogged the other day. Here’s another remarkable account — this time by the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof.

Inside Tahrir Square on Thursday, I met a carpenter named Mahmood whose left arm was in a sling, whose leg was in a cast and whose head was being bandaged in a small field hospital set up by the democracy movement. This was the seventh time in 24 hours that he had needed medical treatment for injuries suffered at the hands of government-backed mobs. But as soon as Mahmood was bandaged, he tottered off once again to the front lines.

“I’ll fight as long as I can,” he told me. I was awestruck. That seemed to be an example of determination that could never be surpassed, but as I snapped Mahmood’s picture I backed into Amr’s wheelchair. It turned out that Amr had lost his legs many years ago in a train accident, but he rolled his wheelchair into Tahrir Square to show support for democracy, hurling rocks back at the mobs that President Hosni Mubarak apparently sent to besiege the square.

Amr (I’m not using some last names to reduce the risks to people I quote) was being treated for a wound from a flying rock. I asked him as politely as I could what a double-amputee in a wheelchair was doing in a pitched battle involving Molotov cocktails, clubs, machetes, bricks and straight razors.

“I still have my hands,” he said firmly. “God willing, I will keep fighting.”

The courage of these protestors is awe-inspiring, given the savagery of the regime they are opposing.

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The Daily Digger costs a modest 99c a week, which looks like a fairly cheap way to get a daily newspaper. The only problem is that you have to buy an iPad in order to read it. This chart comes from a lovely blog post by Bryan McComb in which he calculates how long it would take before a Daily Digger subscriber would be better off buying the iPad version rather than purchasing Murdoch’s New York tabloid from a newsagent. The breakeven point comes in November 2014.

(And, yeah, I know that iPad owners don’t buy the device just to read the Digger. But still, the calculation illustrates how cheerfully we early adopters write off substantial expenditure.)

Egypt: how to negotiate the transition.

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Fascinating and thoughtful post by Maciej Bartkowski and Lester R. Kurtz contrasting the different ways in which the Chinese and Polish pro-democracy movements approached the task of dealing with the regime. This part of the piece deals with the Polish ‘Roundtable’:

When the Roundtable met, sitting next to regime representatives was almost the whole spectrum of oppositionists, from conservatives and liberals to social democrats and the main social actors: trade unions, intellectuals and the Catholic church. In the main room of the Council of Ministers office where the round table was set up, 60 negotiators from the government and opposition were seated side by side. The leader of Solidarity, Lech Wałesa, and the minister of interior Czesław Kiszczak, co-chaired the main sessions. The round table discussions were divided into three ‘tables’ for political reforms, economic and social policies, and union and party pluralism. Each table was co-chaired by two representatives – one from the government and another from the opposition. Simultaneously, the more detailed and technical discussions concerning the main themes of the ‘tables’ were taking place in twelve ‘sub-tables’ and in a number of working groups bringing together more than three hundred government and opposition leaders. If negotiators could not agree on some issues they were submitted to higher ‘tables’ for further discussions, and in case the disagreement continued the main leaders were then involved in trying to come to an accord.

It was agreed from the beginning that the negotiations would be public and its main sessions televised. Given censorship in media that existed prior to negotiations, the Roundtable gave the opposition an opportunity to present and explain their views openly and reach out to the public. The negotiations took almost two months to conclude. The Roundtable led to legalization of the opposition, the establishment of a bi-cameral parliament with open elections for 35% of seats in the lower chamber and for all seats in the Senate, freedoms of expression and press, and freedom to set up political and civic organizations. Most importantly, the round table negotiations built trust among the parties involved that they would adhere to democratic principles despite political differences and thus led to the peaceful transformation of the Polish state.

The problem with Egypt — as the authors observe — is that whereas in Polant the Communist regime was relatively coherent in terms of ideology and control, the Mubarak regime is a ragbag of security agencies, kleptomaniacs and cronies.

So why isn’t the UK providing consular support for Bradley Manning?

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From openDemocracy.

The brutal treatment of the young soldier, who has not been convicted of any offence, has been described by Amnesty International as “unnecessarily severe”, “inhumane” and “repressive”. It is widely believed US authorities are treating him harshly to obtain a plea bargain that implicates WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange as a co-conspirator. But there is a twist to this tale. Bradley Manning is a dual UK-US citizen under the right afforded to him by jus sanguinis. His mother is Welsh and his father American; he was born in Oklahoma though sat his GCSEs at a Welsh secondary school. He should therefore be entitled to consular assistance.

As according to a guide issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) called “Support for British Nationals”, the UK would not normally offer consular support to dual citizens unless the citizen is a minor, facing a capital sentence, or if “having looked at the circumstances of the case, we [the FCO] consider that there is a special humanitarian reason to do so.”

Manning is not a minor, and nor is he facing a capital sentence (though some prominent US politicians have called for a treason charge, which could result in the death penalty) but his situation is certainly of serious humanitarian concern. Given the severity of Amnesty International’s condemnation of Manning’s treatment, and the additional involvement of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, it seems clear that Manning has a “special humanitarian” case. A spokesperson for the FCO said that they could not comment on individual cases, however confirmed that “in instances of mistreatment, we would potentially look to intervene.”

The piece goes on to observe that

though the UK may wish to keep a distance from Bradley Manning for political reasons, UK authorities – whether they like it or not – were implicated in the investigation from the beginning. In July last year, shortly after Manning was charged, American ‘officials’ reported to be F.B.I agents made an unannounced visit to the Welsh home of Bradley Manning’s mother, Susan. Accompanied by a Detective Sergeant from Dyfed-Powys police force, they are believed to have searched Bradley’s old bedroom. Earlier this week Dyfed-Powys police would not confirm or deny this – saying only that they “facilitated a request from an American agency to accompany them as they conducted their investigation last year.”

It appears then that while UK authorities have been happy to comply with the Americans on UK soil as they seek evidence to prosecute Manning, they remain reluctant to get involved in an issue that has the potential to put serious strain on the notorious “special relationship.”