UPDATE: Farah has been released.

اتصلت برفيقتي و صديقتي فرح قبيسي خرجت بسلام و هي بخير حال #Farfahinne كفاره

— Gaber (@Gue3bara) October 16, 2010

Sarah Carr reports on the current polarization of the Egyptian blogosphere:

The uncovering of a Hezbollah cell in Egypt last week has created a battlefront within the Egyptian blogging community’s pro and anti Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah camps.
The Egyptian media’s outrage over the Lebanese group’s alleged transgression of Egyptian sovereignty is mirrored in the position adopted by blogger Wael Abbas, a particularly vocal critic of Nasrallah.
Abbas addresses the leader directly on microblogging service Twitter: “To Hassan Nasrallah the pimp: you’re the last thing we bloody need. Keep to yourself and leave us alone, God damn you.”
Abbas suggests that a demonstration be organized against Nasrallah. “Didn’t some m**f** hold a demonstration in front of the Egyptian embassy in Beirut because of the [Rafah] crossing? Why don’t we hold a demonstration against Hassan Nasrallah too — hasn’t Hezbollah become part of the government?”
The blogger also casts scorn on Hezbollah supporters in the Arab region.
“Shame on all those so-called intellectuals of our region who support f**** Hezbollah the fascists!!! Shame on you shame on you!!!” And in a separate Twitter posting, “Shame on any m**f** who supports Hezbollah’s interference in Egypt against the will of its own people! Why blame America then!”
Meanwhile, Socialist blogger and activist Hossam El-Hamalawy responds with a series of Twitter messages which question why outrage at violations of Egyptian sovereignty is absent when carried out by Israel.
“Those crying over Hezbollah’s ‘violation of Egyptian sovereignty’ are usually not heard when Israeli planes violate this ‘sovereignty’!” El-Hamalawy writes.
“We only hear their ‘indignation’ when Hamas shoots Egyptian police officers who are nothing but criminals in uniform aiding Israel’s siege [of Gaza].
“But we never hear this ‘indignation’ when Israel shoots Egyptian police officers.”
Writing on his She2i2 blog, Jano Charbel declares his support for Nasrallah.
“In Mubarak’s Egypt Hassan Nasrallah is being branded as a war criminal — for assisting in the resistance effort in Gaza; in fact it is the old dictator who is the real war criminal — for insisting upon the closure of the Rafah border crossing, and actively partaking in the Israeli siege against the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip,” Charbel writes.
Ishteraky Thawry (Revolutionary Socialist) writes, “I am glad to see that Mubarak is busy nowadays digging his own grave. When the revolution comes he will pay for his collaboration and his repression of the resistance. Does Mubarak’s regime really believe that anyone except the sycophants in the government press and in the NDP [National Democratic Party] will be fooled by their collaborationist actions [i.e. with the US] towards Hezbollah???”
The E-Socialists blog writes that unconditional support for “the single remaining symbol of resistance” is crucial because “defeat of the resistance is undoubtedly a step backwards and in the interests of Israel and America.”
This does not mean though, the blog post adds, that Hezbollah is “above criticism” or that Nasrallah should be “venerated or worshipped…because — without wanting to ignore the importance of the role played by individuals — liberation is in the end conditional on the will of the people.”
Blogger Zeinobia wonders why Mubarak “suddenly remembered now that our borders are being violated by foreigners” pointing to the kidnapping of tourists by non-Egyptian nationals last year in the Western desert.
“Was this not a terrible violation of our borders and our sovereignty? Why did Mubarak not speak about this?? Oh yes I know maybe because they are poor Africans who were not backed up by Iran!!” Zeinobia writes.
“Or maybe [it’s because] this is our southern borders which are not as important or explosive as our Eastern borders,” she continues.
Pointing out that Israel “violated our skies several times…during the last war in Gaza” Zeinobia is clear about whether the blame should be placed for the presence of a Hezbollah cell in Egypt.
“Do not blame Nasrallah, blame whoever made us a weak nation with no sovereignty”.

Dear friends of the Mahalla workers and all over the World.
In Solidarity with the 49 workers, whose show trial starts on the 9th of August, we staged a protest in front of the Egyptian embassy.
We chanted “Long live the International solidarity” and we were greeted by Austrian construction workers.
One of them was the son of a Mahalla resident and he was really happy to see such an act of solidarity in Vienna. We told him that we owe much to the Mahalla workers who were such an inspiration and whose action was felt like an earth quake all over the world.
Also we chanted slogans like: Mubarak – terrorist, Olmert – terrorist, George Bush terrorist to make clear that we from the international antiwar movement see those three as allies against the Arab people.
An activist from the solidarity with Gaza campaign joined in, and she spoke to personnel from the embassy and passersby, about the situation in Gaza and the responsibility of the Egyptian state for not helping the people in Gaza.
In Solidarity
Your friends from Linkswende in Austria

Click on the pic below to watch a couple of pix from the demo

I’d like to thank the Austrian comrades for their solidarity, and I hope comrades around the world would stage similar protests and solidarity actions soon, as the trial is due to start on 9 August.

Our Lebanese comrades told me during the Marxism Festival that they received an overwhelming positive response from the Egyptian migrant workers they encountered in Beirut while they were distributing leaflets in support of Mahalla last spring following the uprising.

Another thing I heard from the British comrades when I went down to Portsmouth was that the copies of Socialist Worker that had Mahalla’s news on the frontpage were eagerly picked up by the Muslim (largely Bengali) worshipers at the town’s local mosque where the SWP sets up a stool outside on Fridays, trying to approach the local Muslim population (which is eating shit and suffering from racism in this little English town).

I urge socialists outside Egypt, especially in places where there is a substantial presence of Egyptian migrant labor community (say like Lebanon), or in Europe where there are Arab and Muslim communities to devote more attention to the solidarity with the Mahalla detainees and to the Egyptian labor movement in general.. Not only that will help us tremendously in Egypt in terms of easing the regime’s crackdowns on the labor movement, but propaganda and agitation around that issue could also be one of the venues to start building bridges with the ME migrant communities you have in your countries.