Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Aug 15, 2013 10:55 am


http://www.egyptindependent.com/opinion ... t-comeback

Police brutality: Don't call it a comeback
Tom Rollins
Thu, 15/08/2013 - 12:02


After weeks of speculation in post-Morsy Egypt, yesterday's horrific violence at least confirmed one thing. That the old regime is back.



The army and police finally moved in and dispersed the two pro-Morsy sit-ins in Cairo, al-Nahda Square and Rabaa al-Adaweya. After weeks of threats, hopes for negotiations and then more threats, Egypt's police finally moved in with the brutality we have come to expect from a security state responsible for Mohamed Mahmoud, the clearing of Tahrir and every knock on the door at 3 am for an “invitation to coffee” by the mukhabarat.



People were surprised. I'll admit, I was taken in. Weeks of threats, talk of negotiations, mixed messages and then more threats not only made it more difficult to predict when dispersals might happen, it gave the sense the police weren't sure themselves. Sitting in Rabaa at dawn on Sunday, waiting for the police to arrive as promised, I wasn't sure anymore if the police would be so short-sighted and repressive. But then Wednesday happened. Over 421 people dead, 3,500 injured. Is this what happens when you give them the benefit of the doubt? Massacres?



In the end, the Egyptian police behaved like fascists, which I suppose is what they are.



And yet the most worrying upshot of yesterday's violence has been reactions in government and on the street.



At Nahda not long after the police rapidly cleared the site, local residents were cheering vans taking away the detritus of the one month-old occupation: air-conditioner fans, scrumpled-up Brotherhood banners and bags of rubbish that some person would have called their belongings at one point.



Nearby, four plainclothes soldiers sat around sipping tea and smoking cigarettes underneath an apartment block, chatting and watching state TV relay images of policemen clearing away protesters in Nahda. They were happy. On the street outside a trickle of policemen walked back with tear gas guns and rifles slung over their shoulders, joking with each other and carrying themselves like war heroes.



Most pro-Morsy protesters had already moved to Mohandiseen. When I got there, crowds were huddling for cover on Balat Ahmed Abdel Aziz. People were running between barricades and an up-turned police van was on fire in the middle of the street.



Inside the field hospital in Mostafa Mahmoud mosque, doctors were resuscitating a man, shot in the head, whose eyes had burst out of their sockets from the pressure. Five bodies were laid out on top of each other in a makeshift morgue too small to hold all the dead. You could tell when the next casualty was coming in from the tsunami of screams and cries coming down the corridor. Chest wounds, head wounds; all from live ammo. 22 dead.



I spoke to people who saw armed Brotherhood yesterday. But does that justify what happened? Did the fact Hamas had rockets justify what happened during Operation Cast Lead in 2008? Then too an organized security force pummelled retribution on hundreds of civilians for the alleged crimes of a few. People justified that too, sided with authority. Collective punishment on dubious charges.



Worse still, on Wednesday night, Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim thanked the police for showing “self-restraint.” He then vowed to return Egypt to the halcyon stability of the Mubarak era.



"I promise that as soon as conditions stabilize and the Egyptian street stabilizes, as soon as possible, security will be restored to this nation as if it was before January 25, and more," he said, according to Reuters.



It's an amazing statement. Of course Egypt could be said to have been more stable under Hosni Mubarak. Police states are good for stability. It's the word they've been writing in Lucida Handwriting on the “Egypt: Good for Business” brochure handed out at US State Department events for years. But for a government supposedly acting in the name of the 25 January revolution, this takes a special dose of doublethink. Sisi and the government are getting comfortable.



And so the old regime is back, this time with a new face, new tactics. Mubarak is in prison but the security state is back on the streets with impunity. You can argue Mohamed Morsy created this. But Egypt is back in the grip of fascism, and it's not the Brotherhood in power this time.



Police brutality was one of the driving forces of Jan25, now the so-called revolution cheers it on. It's time to admit that Jan25 has been claimed, counter-claimed and co-opted for so long, it has begun to eat itself. And it's Egypt's army and police who are responsible.



If Egypt wants to regain its revolution, its the security state it needs to take on. In the meantime, Egyptians will have to make do with an old regime making a comeback.

Tom Rollins is a British Cairo-based journalist and is a reporter for Egypt Independent.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 15, 2013 7:10 pm

See the rise of Egypt’s next pharoah

Steve Huntley August 15, 2013 5:32PM

President Barack Obama’s call for national reconciliation in Egypt fell on deaf ears for the simple reason that there is no basis for reconciliation. Egypt is locked in an existential struggle for supremacy between the radical Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the disorganized and even disparate secular elements of society who have no other agent for their cause than the military.

The bloody confrontations across Egypt have been building since Mohamed Morsi was elected president in 2010. He sought to consolidate authority in an Islamist-rooted government, granted himself unlimited powers to legislate without oversight and marginalized Egyptians who didn’t follow the Brotherhood.

Unlike Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has similar goals, Morsi failed to go slow so as to have time to tame the military, police and judiciary, which remained opposed to his radical vision for a new Egypt. If Morsi though he had neutralized Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with a hands-off attitude toward the military, he was wrong.

Even as anti-Morsi demonstrations grew in the streets of Cairo, the military, which controls much construction, real estate and consumer trade in the country, helped ratchet up anger by manipulating the economy with food and energy shortages. Economic misery, as much as anything else, was at the core of the upheaval in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and north Africa these past several years.

Deposed from power, the Muslim Brotherhood has been in no mood for compromise. It massed its own crowds, and weapons too. Feverish cries of Islam over all and praise for martyrdom made the confrontation inevitable. The Brotherhood stayed true to its stripes by using the chaos to attack and burn Coptic Christian churches — anti-Christian violence was a hallmark of Morsi’s reign.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been behind the curve from the start — slow to criticize Morsi’s agenda that was all but a coup, unable or unwilling to see the fundamental nature of the conflict, and feckless in trying to prevent the overthrow of Morsi and the military crackdown that followed.

In his remarks Thursday, Obama suspended a joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercise and appeared to threaten to cut off $1.3 billion in American aid. But Washington’s ability to influence events with money is shrinking. With the overthrow of Morsi, Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab regimes alarmed by the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood quickly anted up $12 billion or more in aid to Egypt.

The Obama administration might do better to keep its work mostly behind the scenes rather than issue ineffective pronouncements. The goal should be achieving stability to protect the peace treaty Egypt has with Israel, a cornerstone of American policy in the Middle East, and maintain the economic artery of the Suez Canal.

Nightmare scenarios abound. Egypt could descend into civil war. The Brotherhood could wage a bloody terror campaign that could cripple the country’s fragile economy.

A Western-style democracy that Obama called for is not in the foreseeable future. The best outcome may be that the military will re-establish an authoritarian government less repressive but not unlike the kind that ruled the country for half a century before the eruption of the ill-named Arab spring overthrew Hosni Mubarak. Whether he takes the mantle of president or rules as a Eminence grise, Gen. Sisi looks to be the next pharaoh of Egypt.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Aug 15, 2013 7:18 pm


http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/15/m ... t_on_brink

Thursday, August 15, 2013
Massacre in Cairo: Egypt on Brink After Worst Violence Since 2011 Revolution


At least 525 people were killed in Egypt on Wednesday when security forces cracked down on two protest camps filled with supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood says the actual death toll tops 2,000, and has called new rallies for today. The Egyptian military has defended the crackdown and declared a state of emergency. We’re joined by three guests: in Cairo, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who covered Wednesday’s violence and visited the makeshift field clinics overrun with the dead and wounded, and Lina Attalah, chief editor and co-founder of the Cairo-based news website, Mada Masr; and in Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Chris Toensing, executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project and co-editor of the book, "The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have called on followers to march in protest in Cairo today after at least 525 people died when security forces raided two protest encampments filled with supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. More than 3,500 people were injured. The Muslim Brotherhood says the death toll may top 2,000. Police and troops used bulldozers, tear gas and live ammunition to clear out the two Cairo sit-ins. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood responded by storming and torching police stations. Forty-three police officers were reportedly killed. Wednesday marked the third mass killing of Islamist demonstrators since Morsi was deposed six weeks ago. Egypt’s army-installed government declared a month-long state of emergency and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the capital Cairo and 10 other provinces.

Interim Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate, resigned hours after the crackdown began, saying the conflict should have been resolved by peaceful means. European envoy Bernardino León said Western allies warned Egypt’s military leaders against using force to crush the protests. León said, quote, "We had a political plan that was on the table, that had been accepted by the other side (the Muslim Brotherhood). They could have taken this option. So all that has happened today was unnecessary."

AMY GOODMAN: International response has been mixed. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the violence, but the Obama administration announced no moves to cut some $1.3 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian military. The Turkish prime minister, Erdogan, called on Thursday for the U.N. Security Council to convene quickly and act after what he described as a massacre in Egypt. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates expressed support for the crackdown, saying the Egyptian government had, quote, "exercised maximum self-control."

Four journalists died in Wednesday’s violence, including a reporter from the United Arab Emirates, 26-year-old Habiba Abd Elaziz, who worked as a journalist for the Dubai-based Xpress. The other journalists killed were Mick Deane, a 61-year-old cameraman for Sky News—before that, CNN; Ahmed Abdel Gawad of the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar; and Mosab El-Shami Rassd, a photojournalist for the Egyptian RNN news network.

We’re going now to Cairo, joined by three guests: in Cairo, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Lina Attalah, chief editor and co-founder of the Cairo-based news website, Mada Masr, and joining us from Washington, Chris Toensing, executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project and editor of MERIP’s publication, Middle East Report. We go first to Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

Sharif, yesterday morning, when this all began, please describe what happened. Take us through the day.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, before I do that, just a slight correction, three journalists were killed yesterday; the photojournalist, Mosab El-Shami, was not killed. That was an erroneous report that filtered through the media yesterday.

But to answer your question, yesterday was, you know, a day of violence and chaos and bloodshed, the most violent episode that I’ve witnessed as a reporter in Egypt for the past two-and-a-half years. Walking around Nasr City, which is the northeastern neighborhood in Cairo where the Rabaa Al-Adawiya mosque was located, you could hear the crackle of machine-gun fire intermittently in the air. There was tear gas on the outskirts and in the sit-in that mixed with black smoke rising from tires set alight by the protesters. And just to give you a sense of what it was like to get in, for protesters to get in or out, you had to make this very perilous run across a stretch of open road that was exposed to sniper fire. When I was leaving once, a man next to me running was hit in the head with what appeared to be shotgun pellets. Many protesters had taken to writing their names in magic marker on their arms and the number of someone to call in case they were killed.

And, you know, the Interior Ministry had spoken for a couple of weeks about the plan to disperse the sit-in, that would go in stages and first involve surrounding the protesters and then a gradual escalation. But by all accounts, all the witnesses I spoke to have said the attack started sometime around 6:30 and came in very hard with tear gas, and the casualties started pouring in, most of them with live ammunition, very soon after that.

The scene inside the main medical facility in Rabaa was extremely tragic. People were being brought in, the dead and wounded, every few minutes. The floor was slippery with blood. The windows were closed to prevent tear gas from coming in, and it was almost unbearably hot. And the dead were everywhere. In one room alone, I counted 24 bodies just strewn on the ground, packed so closely you couldn’t even walk in; on another floor, another 30; on another floor, another eight. Doctors were overwhelmed with the casualties. So, it was a very difficult situation and one that I think will have deep implications for Egypt’s future, not just for years, but for decades to come.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sharif, there were also reports yesterday that the hospital that you mentioned near Rabaa, that they in fact even fired tear gas within the hospital, the security forces? Is that correct?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: There’s been reports of that. I didn’t see it myself. I think what’s important to understand also is that there was no access for the ambulances to get to the—to get to the critically wounded, and so there was a lot of additional lives that were lost because these wounded did not have a safe passage out of—out of Rabaa. And this was the case around the sit-in completely. So, you know, I think it’s also important to remember that this was a day where we saw so many hundreds killed, and the death toll keeps rising.

There’s—I just came today from the Iman mosque, which is a mosque not far from Rabaa, which is really another massive morgue. I counted 230 corpses in the mosque alone. It’s another hot summer day, and family members are bringing in blocks of ice and placing it on the corpses, but—and there’s fans everywhere. But really the smell of death hung heavy in the mosque. And many of the bodies, or at least 10 that I saw, were charred, very badly burned. And these were bodies that were in Rabaa Al-Adawiya mosque and in another field hospital that were completely burned to the ground when the security forces raided sometime around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Sharif, what about the warning before all this took place? What do you understand? What about the military saying they gave warning?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: All the witnesses I spoke to said they did not have a warning of the attack, that the attack began very hard with tear gas and followed very quickly by live ammunition. They came in with bulldozers and cleared the sandbags and makeshift barriers that they had erected. So, you know, none of the eyewitnesses I spoke to spoke of any kind of warning—and no real safe passage for people to escape the violence, had they wanted to.

AMY GOODMAN: Lina Attalah, can you describe what you witnessed yesterday?

LINA ATTALAH: So, I arrived to the site of the clashes just outside of the area that became completely barricaded by military and police forces. And in this area, even though it was supposed to be the area falling outside the scope of the sit-in, there was still extremely heavy gunfire, extremely heavy gunfire everywhere, tear gas being incessantly thrown at protesters, at what remained of Muslim Brotherhood protesters who managed to exit the sit-in.

And then, when I tried to move on to reach the sit-in itself, I was interested to know whether earlier reports of a safe exit that was basically said in a Ministry of Interior statement earlier in the day, if these reports were real. But what we figured is that there was really no safe exit outside of the sit-in. The sit-in was heavily surrounded by both military and police and special forces. Only one tight street was not—did not have a strong presence of military and police forces; however, this street was heavily subjected to gunfire by snipers from surrounding rooftops. And this was basically the main exit for those wounded and dead bodies who could not make it into the main medical facility that Sharif mentioned earlier.

Inside the medical facility, like Sharif said, it was a horrific scene of so many people. In fact, we met a lot of people who were hurt with birdshot and who could not get into the medical facility just because they sort of gave priority to live ammunition injuries and dead bodies. So a lot of people were precariously injured but had to stay outside of the hospital in what seemed to be a tighter and tighter sit-in once the police have moved on to tighten the sit-in completely on the Muslim Brotherhood. The way out of the hospital, when we decided to exit the hospital, was an extremely precarious moment of having to run through gunfire in order to exit the sit-in. So you can imagine how difficult it was to transfer injured and dead bodies in there. And then, just an hour after we left, this very medical facility was stormed and put on fire by the police.

I would say this is one of the most atrocious moments of use of force to disperse a sit-in that I’ve seen in the last three years, despite all the reports that we have gotten from the Ministry of Interior of using gradual force and basically, you know, resorting to first beseeching the sit-in and providing safe exit to the protesters, and so on and so forth. So...

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lina Attalah, could you also explain why the security forces decided to act with such unprecedented force?

LINA ATTALAH: I’m not sure if there was really a way for the security forces to act differently, to be honest with you. We have not seen any precedents of security forces basically using gradual force, for example, to disperse sit-ins or anything like that. So, anyways, we do not have a precedent, even though there were all those statements about, you know, being very careful of trying to minimize the death toll. We don’t have precedent, or we don’t even believe that the Ministry of Interior have expertise to basically disperse sit-ins in the least costly way, like we’ve seen yesterday.

What the Ministry of Interior has been saying is that both sit-ins, in Nahda and Rabaa Al-Adawiya, are armed, and hence this basically justifies their need to use force in order to both defend themselves and to disperse the sit-ins. But what we’ve seen also is that the Nahda sit-in, on the other side of Cairo in Giza, was basically dispersed in less than an hour, while in Rabaa Al-Adawiya we don’t have corroborative evidence of protesters firing at police. There might have been some use of force from the side of protesters, but there is no way this would have circumvented the police ability to disperse the sit-in completely. So we’re not talking about an equal—an equal amount of weaponry or anything like that between the protesters and the police. So, my main explanation is that the police simply has no other way than to disperse sit-ins using excessive violence. We don’t have any precedent; we don’t have any experience with them doing things differently, basically.

AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, the military said something like, well, more than 40, 43 security forces, military forces, were killed. Do you know anything about that?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We have no information about how they were killed. As Lina mentioned, there have been reports of Muslim Brotherhood or Morsi supporters using firearms and firing back. We do know that at least one police truck was thrown off the main bridge here, and there’s photographs of police officers who were killed. We don’t know how those were killed.

I think it’s very important to also point out that there’s been a wave of attacks on Christian churches, monasteries, schools and facilities, mostly in cities south of Cairo. And, you know, the leading human rights group in Egypt, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, has called this reprisal attacks by Morsi supporters for these raids coming down. So there was—you know, once these raids began, it ignited a wave of violence across the country. Many police stations were also attacked. And the death toll—but the death toll is overwhelmingly, you know, on the side of the Morsi protesters, and it keeps going up by the hour. We’re almost approaching the total number of people killed in the initial 18-day uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in 2011. So, it’s really a very, very bloody day in Egypt.

And to the shame of many of the political and business elite in Egypt—have praised the police force and praised the security apparatus for what they called "self-restraint," as has Hazem el-Beblawi, the prime minister, last night. The one notable exception, of course, is Mohamed ElBaradei, you know, the acclaimed Nobel Peace laureate and probably the most prominent statesman in the interim Cabinet that lent a lot of legitimacy in the eyes of the international community to the military-led transition. He resigned yesterday, saying—and he was one of the lone voices, one of the few voices, that was calling for the sit-ins not to be forcibly dispersed. And he said he didn’t want to take responsibility for actions that were outside of his control anymore. And so, you know, I think this lays bare even further, if there ever was any notion, that this is a fully military-led transition and that the military is in control.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to this discussion. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent, in Cairo along with Lina Attalah, co-founder of Mada Masr. And when we come back, they’ll be joined by Chris Toensing of the Middle East Research and Information Project. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

[break]

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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:25 pm

A Method to Egypt’s Madness
August 15, 2013
The bloody assault on Egyptians protesting the ouster of democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi has the look of madness – as the military pushes Islamists toward more violence – but there is a sick logic if the generals see more Islamic extremism as their lock on U.S. aid, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

By Paul R. Pillar

There were other ways of dealing with the camping-out protestors in Cairo. The Ministry of Interior had even talked about other ways — about some combination of tear gas and leaving open an exit route so the protestors could disperse. And surely it must have occurred to the Egyptian generals that the action they in the end took, just like the event in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that this week’s event so readily evokes, would leave a lasting bloodstain on their legacy.

The casualty total of what happened in Cairo on Wednesday is uncertain, just as the toll of what happened in Tiananmen Square still is, but it is possible the numbers are of similar orders of magnitude.


Egyptian General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi as shown on official Egyptian TV.
There are many plot lines and accompanying explanations that can be applied to the current mess in Egypt, but one does not have to be a Middle Eastern conspiracy aficionado to look in particular at how the Egyptian generals and their shades-of-Nasser leader, Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, may be doing what they are doing as a way of staying within the embrace of the West and especially the United States.

One of the most prominent things they have been doing over the past couple of months is to motivate Egyptians and especially Islamists to turn to extremism and violence. First there was the slamming of the door in the face of the Muslim Brotherhood, incarcerating its leaders and making it very clear the Brotherhood would not be welcome to participate in any new and purportedly democratic political process.

Most of the Brotherhood’s supporters were not ready to abandon the peaceful ways that the organization had followed for decades, but their dismay and anger made the protests and the camps inevitable. Now there is the bloody and brutal destruction of the camps, and at least some of those supporters are surely concluding that there is no method left to them but violence.

Wouldn’t the breeding of more Egyptian terrorists be a bad thing from the viewpoint of Egyptian military leaders? Not if they wish to present themselves as a bastion against terrorism and to lay claim as such to American support. The brass may be more comfortable with this sort of claim than with one based on shepherding the introduction of true democracy — given all the uncertainties democracy is apt to pose for the highly privileged position of the Egyptian military and its officer corps.

The cultivation of more extremists and terrorists may be necessary to sustain any claim based on an Egyptian Islamist bogeyman. Mohamed Morsi’s presidency certainly was not sufficient; it did not come close to realizing the old Islamophobic scenario of one man, one vote, one time.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Morsi’s one year in office was how he was not able to take control of the organs of state even though he supposedly was the chief executive. He came nowhere close to taking control of the all-important security forces. One of the bevy of army and police generals who have just been installed as provincial governors had earlier, when Morsi was still president, been demonstrably open about his intention not to take any action when a mob was ransacking offices of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The technique of following policies that cultivate more extremists and terrorists and then laying claim to a special relationship with Washington as a bastion against extremism and terrorism is not one that the Egyptian generals necessarily thought up themselves. They could have learned it from the masters of the technique next door in Israel. They are even collaborating with Israel in practicing the technique, as punctuated the other day by an Israeli drone strike, evidently condoned by Cairo, against oppositionists in the Sinai.

If the Egyptian generals have not seemed very worried about jeopardizing their $1.5 billion in annual U.S. aid, maybe it is because they see how Israel gets twice that much, not to mention all those vetoes at the United Nations and other political cover, despite the Israelis repeatedly sticking their thumbs in American eyes. The latest thumb-sticking has been this week, with an announcement of more expansion of settlements in occupied territory just as Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are getting under way.

Secretary of State John Kerry reassures us that this was not a surprise because Prime Minister Netanyahu had been “upfront” with him about the latest settlement expansion. Evidently even thumb-sticking is acceptable if those doing it are brazenly “upfront” about it. General el-Sisi looks like he has this kind of swagger.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Fri Aug 16, 2013 4:52 pm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23721918

US credibility 'in tatters' over Egypt crisis

On the streets of Cairo it's not just a fledgling democracy that lies in ruin. US policy too is in tatters - in the eyes of many - or at least America's reputation and credibility.

Since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the US has struggled to strike a balance between support for the tenuous progress towards democracy and protection of its national security interests.

The White House has tried hard to work with whoever is in power in Egypt but has ended up with no friends and little influence in Cairo.

Washington's recent diplomatic efforts in Egypt have failed one after the other. Up until his removal from power, the US tried to counsel Mr Morsi to accept a compromise with the army and the protesters.

The US also appealed to the military not to remove Mr Morsi. After the coup, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns travelled to Cairo twice to help mediate between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. But even getting an audience in Cairo these days is a hard task for US officials.

The US refrained from calling Mr Morsi's removal a coup for fear of upsetting the country's generals and the millions who demanded Mr Morsi's departure.

This has infuriated the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters who feel robbed of a democratic election. But far from ingratiating the US with the new interim rulers and the generals, Washington finds itself criticised by the anti-Morsi camp for what they perceive to have been the US's unconditional support for Mr Morsi while he was in power.

When President Barack Obama interrupted his holiday in Martha's Vineyard, he "strongly'' condemned the violence and said the US opposed the imposition of martial law in Egypt. He sounded sombre and stern, though he spoke in an incongruous summer resort setting, he mostly seemed frustrated.

"America cannot determine the future of Egypt. That's a task for the Egyptian people. We don't take sides with any particular party or political figure," said Mr Obama.

Some argue that the mere fact the US is still providing military aid to Egypt means the US has taken sides with the army. But Egypt's commanding general, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, has been openly scathing of the US.

"You left the Egyptians. You turned your back on the Egyptians, and they won't forget that," said Gen Sisi in a recent Washington Post interview. "Now you want to continue turning your backs on Egyptians?"

President Obama said it was tempting to blame the United States or the West for what was going wrong in Egypt.

"We've been blamed by supporters of Morsi. We've been blamed by the other side, as if we are supporters of Morsi. That kind of approach will do nothing to help Egyptians achieve the future that they deserve. We want Egypt to succeed. We want a peaceful, democratic, prosperous Egypt. That's our interest. But to achieve that, the Egyptians are going to have to do the work."

Mr Obama did cancel a planned joint military exercise with Egypt and said American aid would be reviewed.

The US cancelled the biennial Bright Star military exercise in 2011 as well because of the post revolution upheaval and to press the country's interim military rulers to stick to the agreed democratic transition plan.

But today, Egypt's generals are not listening any more, not since US Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to endorse their latest move.

"The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descent into chaos, into violence," Mr Kerry told Pakistan's Geo TV two weeks ago.

"And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment - so far. To run the country there's a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy," he added.

US policy so far had been convoluted - it wasn't calling it a coup and it wasn't not calling it coup. American officials were furiously backtracking for days after Mr Kerry's comment, but the statement could no longer be undone.

But Mr Kerry's comments were also a reflection of years of close co-operation between Washington and Cairo. Despite all the upheaval, Egypt and its army remains a key security partner.

The generals' support is crucial to maintaining the country's peace treaty with Israel, the Camp David accords signed in 1979. Washington also supports Egypt in its fight against militants in the Sinai, bordering Israel. Washington is also worried about access to the Suez Canal.

A recent report released by the Congressional Research Service highlighted concerns within the administration and congress about how to maintain security co-operation with Egypt at a time of continued upheaval. The report was issued before Mr Morsi's ouster but the concerns remain the same now that he's gone.

Egypt gives the US Navy expedited passage through the Suez Canal while other countries have to wait for weeks. About a dozen US warships pass each month through the Canal, a key shortcut to reaching Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Without passage through the canal the Navy would have to deploy ships around the Cape of Good Hope - adding significant time to deployment from Norfolk, Va. to the Persian Gulf or Indian Ocean," the report said.

The US is also still dealing with the consequences of cutting military aid to another country for several years.

In 1990, the US suspended aid to Pakistan because of nuclear proliferation related sanctions. In the decade that followed, Washington and the Pentagon's connection with the Pakistani military frayed - Pakistani officials stopped coming to the US for training, for example. To this day, although aid has resumed, the relationship has yet to recover, with a direct impact on counter terrorism co-operation.

But critics of the administration's position on Egypt are growing by the day.

Republican Senator John McCain has repeatedly called on the White House to declare the removal of Mr Morsi a coup and cut aid. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Washington shared responsibility for the bloodshed. The common message is that maintaining ties with the military has become too costly for the US.

"I think it's time for the United States to recognise that what we have here is the restoration of a military dictatorship in Cairo," said Tamara Wittes from the Brookings Institution, and a former State Department official working on Middle East democracy issues during the first Obama administration.

"That means that the United States needs to call these events what they are - under American law it needs to suspend assistance to the Egyptian government because this was a military coup and it is a military regime."

Ms Wittes also said the Egyptian army would maintain security co-operation with the US, even if aid was cut, because it was in its own interest. For now that's a risk the Obama administration is not willing to take.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby justdrew » Fri Aug 16, 2013 5:27 pm

well I think it's a sick fucking joke watching these republican scum try to score points over this. If it's "bad" because it's a military regime now, what the fuck do they think it was for DECADES before 2011? Worthless hypocrites should be ignored.

It's ALSO utter bullshit to constantly harp on how powerful a thing our "aid" is to Egypt. They get Aid from other sources that Dwarfs the money we send. We are simply not that influential, and it's insanity to pretend, as the "news opinion" mongers love to push, that the US can somehow control this situation in ANY way.


So what is the point of calling for a "day of rage" ?

MB decides it wants to make a lot more martyrs.

They're sending their people to die. For nothing.

Why is political power SO FUCKING important that they have to throw so many lives into this?

Just calm down and walk away MB, live to get elected another day.

They are the ones who make this bloodshed, there was NO REASON to have have those camps out there. They were told what would happen. They apparently EAGERLY awaited their martyrdom.

Insanity.

walk away and let the big guys with the real weapons do what they want, go about your lives, don't throw it away for nothing. It's not remotely worth it.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby justdrew » Fri Aug 16, 2013 11:16 pm

just listen to these worthless jackals...

ALL OF A SUDDEN these pieces of shit are all aghast that Islamic radicals are dying. WHAT THEY FUCK DO THEY THING we did in Iraq for OVER A DECADE NOW.

John McCain and Lindsay can go straight to hell.

Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) released a statement on the crisis in Egypt.

The massacre of civilians this week in Egypt has brought our longstanding relationship with that country to a fork in the road. The interim civilian government and security forces – backed up, unfortunately, by the military – are taking Egypt down a dark path, one that the United States cannot and should not travel with them.

We condemn all acts and incitement of violence against civilians, including those that supporters of former president Mohamed Morsi have committed against Christians and other Egyptians. At the same time, we cannot be complicit in the mass slaughter of civilians. It is neither in our long-term national interest nor consistent with our values and laws to continue providing assistance at this time to Egypt’s interim government and military. We urge the Obama Administration to suspend U.S. assistance to Egypt and make clear to the current leadership of the country what steps we believe are necessary to halt Egypt’s descent into civil conflict and ultimately to restore our assistance relationship, which has historically served U.S. national security interests.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby AlicetheKurious » Sat Aug 17, 2013 8:46 am

I want to apologize in advance; I should have read what others have posted here in order to respond, but I can't. I think I will go mad if I have to look at any more lies right now. I did note that some articles posted here earlier were written by members of the so-called "Revolutionary Socialists"; I figured them for agents provocateurs linked to the Brotherhood more than a year and a half ago. They, like the Brotherhood itself, have played a very destructive role in the very revolution they claim to speak for. Their "activism" consists primarily in acting as agents of disinformation directed at Western Leftist circles and especially in the early months of 2011, "bait" for young and naive Egyptian Leftists, thousands of whom they incited into stupid and pointless vandalism against public property, although now they have been largely discredited locally. Now, their job seems to be mainly to give Leftist "street creds" in English publications to the Islamists' false narrative of victimization, which also happens to be the official US line.

What the Western media is describing as "protests" and "sit-ins" were armed terrorist camps set up in the middle of two heavily-populated residential neighborhoods. I have relatives who live in Nasr City, quite close to the largest of these camps. They lived as virtual prisoners inside their apartment for weeks, unable to sleep from the constant noise of loudspeakers blaring all night the Brotherhood's incitement against Christians and against the more than 30 million Egyptian people who revolted against the fascist rule of the Brotherhood, whom the speakers described as "infidels" who deserve to be slaughtered. hundreds of black al-Qaeda flags were waved by these lovely advocates of democracy; one Islamist preacher approved, and described the Egyptian national flag as the flag of the "infidels".

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On July 29, jubilant applause greeted the announcement that experienced "fighters" from al-Qaeda and Jamaa' Islamiya (the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat) had joined the camp, and would participate in logistics for its defense. The camp was surrounded by barricades made of sand-bags and rocks, for which the "protesters" broke up the sidewalks.

The stench from the makeshift toilets set up to serve the 50,000 or so residents of the camps was overwhelming, especially in the Egyptian summer heat. That's not counting the piles of rotting garbage and the dozens of decomposing corpses that were unearthed after the camp was broken up. My friend and her husband and children were unable to go out even to buy food or go to work, because of the Brothers' harassment of the residents, including full body searches. Grocery stores refused to deliver, for the same reason, and because their delivery-men were frequently robbed and/or beaten. They were afraid to leave their apartment, fearing that it would be broken into and taken over by the "demonstrators", as so many others were.

As the number of people tortured by the Brotherhood inside their camps, some with their fingers cut off, continued to rise, and as eye-witness reports and photos and videos continued to show large quantities of weapons being smuggled into the camps, Western human rights groups and the Western media and Western government officials continued to describe these camps as peaceful sit-ins, and those who ran them as 'protesters'. Many of the victims were desperately poor people who were attracted to the camps by promises of free food and at least LE 200 per day (just under $30) or up to LE 1000 per day, in exchange for staying there and participating in the chants, but who were savagely beaten and sometimes mutilated when they tried to leave. Others were Egyptian journalists, who tried to document what was going on inside, or were suspected of being journalists; the Brotherhood allowed only the unfailingly sympathetic Western journalists, who were taken around on carefully guided tours and allowed to speak with only designated spokespersons, and the Brotherhood-staffed Al-Jazeera Direct Egypt, the only network whose cameras and microphones were permitted to move freely around the camp.

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Every single day, our soldiers and police were being murdered in Sinai by the battle-hardened terrorists whom Morsy and the Brotherhood had brought into the country from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere. In most cases, they ambushed off-duty troops heading home on leave, or used road-side explosives. Mohamed Beltagy, a very prominent member of the Brotherhood, explicitly said that these attacks would cease only when Morsy was returned to power:



Meanwhile, the Brothers were busy setting the stage for a "massacre" -- posting photos of dead and mutilated bodies from Syria and Iraq, labeling them as though the victims were killed by Egyptian police, and even staging fake instances of police brutality (complete with fake blood) for photographs:



Egyptians were especially outraged by the parades staged by the Brotherhood, of children (some as young as 4 years old) taken from Brotherhood-run orphanages, wrapped in funeral shrouds and bearing signs that said, "I will be a martyr for Islam":

Image

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One of my acquaintances runs a center for street children; one day, a Muslim Brother visited her and offered to take as many children as possible to what he described as a "summer camp", where they would be fed and clothed and taught karate, etc. She insisted on knowing exactly where this "camp" is, and he finally told her that it was the Brotherhood so-called "sit-in" in Nasr City. Needless to say, she refused, then contacted other centers for street children and orphanages, as well as the media, to warn others.

It took more than a month of atrocities for Amnesty International to issue this shamefully understated report, which did not begin to describe the reality of what was happening inside those terrorist camps:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/pre ... 2013-08-02

Meanwhile, people continued to disappear; some survivors, bearing signs of severe torture, were later found alive. They described horrific abuse of others, including women, that they had witnessed. Nearly 30 corpses, some with fingers cut off or other signs of torture, were only discovered after police dispersed the camp, wrapped in shrouds and hidden under the main stage in the camp in Nasr City:



or in the nearby mosque that the Brotherhood had occupied and burned to the ground as they retreated, in order to destroy evidence of their crimes.

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The Brotherhood periodically sent out groups of marchers, armed with clubs, knives, shot-guns and even swords; as they went, they smashed cars, windows, and beat anybody who didn't express full support for them.

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Sometimes, they would put their kidnapped victims in sacks, and dumped them alive, at night on major roads. This was filmed around three weeks ago on 6th of October Bridge, one of the major bridges inside Cairo:



Less than a week ago, a 10-year old boy who was walking with his friends and holding a picture of Egypt's Minister of Defense General Al-Sisi (which has become ubiquitous in Egypt), was shot by these Brotherhood thugs in his right hand and had to have three fingers amputated. During their "peaceful marches", it was not unusual for them to shoot indiscriminately up at residential buildings as they passed. "Ikhwan Without Violence", a group of Muslim Brotherhood youths who have recently turned against the Brotherhood's current leadership, report that several women and girls (some as young as 14) have been kidnapped and sexually abused inside the camps.

This is one of the Brotherhood's "peaceful demonstrations", in Alexandria last June, aiming to frighten people out of participating in the record-breaking, nation-wide, genuinely peaceful popular demonstrations that brought down the Morsy regime. Note that the "peaceful" Brotherhood are the ones wearing protective helmets and the only ones carrying weapons. The Alexandrian youths are the ones without any weapons, or even protective clothing. See the relief with which the army helicopter is greeted by the citizens near the end of the video:



When the police arrived later, shots were fired from the roof of the train station, in the background. Several shooters managed to escape, but the one who was caught turned out to be a Syrian refugee who said that he and his children had been brought to Egypt by the Brotherhood and given residency and a living allowance, on condition that he follow their orders.

Needless to say, after more than 45 days of this, the situation had become intolerable, and the general mood in Egypt was getting ugly, demanding that the security forces take action to clear out these terrorists. The Brothers, on the other hand, had ratcheted up the violence and became more deliberately provocative, refusing any negotiations that were not preceded by Morsy's reinstatement as president. They seemed to be gaining confidence with each passing day, because of the US government's insistence that the Egyptian government leave them alone. Even more infuriating, the US and EU delegates were demanding that Morsy be released (despite the fact that he was under arrest for several very serious crimes) and that the Brotherhood be included as a partner in any political negotiations for Egypt's future. Cairo residents were threatening to take matters into their own hands and clear out the camps themselves, if the security forces didn't. This faced the government with two terrible choices: either break up the camps and play into the hands of the Brotherhood and its US patrons, who would then accuse them of brutality against peaceful demonstrators regardless of the facts or whether this could be backed up with any evidence at all; or, knowing the kind of weapons inside the camps, run the risk of a massacre when regular Egyptian citizens attempted to storm them.

On Wednesday, August 14 at 6:30 am, security forces simultaneously surrounded both camps, securing the exits, accompanied by specialists in human rights law and cameras that transmitted the proceedings live on television. Using loudspeakers, they ordered those inside to leave immediately and assured them that unless there were outstanding arrest warrants against them, they would be allowed to leave safely. Most of them went quietly, filing past the soldiers, a few women even thanking the soldiers for 'rescuing' them. When the camp seemed to have emptied out, bulldozers were brought in to clear the wreckage and the barricades. The forces fired warning shots in the air and tear gas before going in. Despite some fires set by terrorists, who also shot at the incoming troops, the evacuation took little time in the Nahda camp in Giza, which was by far the smaller of the two.

In the large, original camp in Nasr City, suddenly the officers were targeted by a barrage of gunfire, including from occupied apartments overlooking the street and the outbreak of several fires set off by molotov cocktails, among them a huge one in the Rabea Adaweya Mosque, which had been taken over by the Brothers as the camp's operations center. Several officers were shot and had to be evacuated. I'm not sure if any died of their wounds, since the figures get mixed up with the large number of officers killed throughout the day. Anyway, the remaining terrorists were disarmed and arrested, and the camp was evacuated, to the great joy of Egyptians across the country. Residents swarmed behind the bulldozers, many carrying brooms to try to clean up their ruined streets.

Our joy was short-lived. By 10:30 am, there were reports from residents in Mohandessin, a quarter in Giza only a few kilometers from the former Nahda camp, of hundreds of Brothers breaking up sidewalks to build barricades, others trying to set up a stage similar to the one at their former camp, and snipers shooting at buildings, cars and residents.





The area, not too far from my husband's office, quickly became a war zone, with the peaceful demonstrators shooting live bullets and buck-shot indiscriminately at passers-by. Residents came out to defend their neighborhood and street battles raged throughout the day. My husband heard the shooting and closed the office and came home, and none of us has left the house since Wednesday. I don't know what happened after that, but the army declared a curfew from 6:00pm to 7:00pm, and the street was totally deserted by the time the curfew started.

By late afternoon, reports, photos and video were pouring in from the length and breadth of the country, of gangs of Islamists torching churches, convent schools and Christian-owned businesses, burning a total of 23 churches alone, robbing them and pillaging them first. An employee of ours, in Minya, Upper Egypt, has been unable to return to work in Cairo. He, like most Christians, are terrified, holed up in their homes as the Brothers and members of their offshoot group, the Jama'a Islameya, rampage through the streets, burning, pillaging and killing as they go along. The police have handguns and rifles, but they are simply not equipped to deal with this kind of swarming savagery, and dozens of policemen have been killed in the past two days alone.

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They smashed cars, attacked police stations and massacred the police officers inside, They burned down the central court-house in Ismailia where a few months ago, a very brave judge had presided over a court-case during Morsy's own rule, related to the violent, armed prison break that had released 34 high-level members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Morsy, along with 26,000 prisoners during the January 25th Revolution. In this case, compelling evidence was presented that the prison-break (during which police, prison guards and prisoners were shot dead) was the result of a criminal conspiracy between the Brotherhood, including Morsy himself and foreign parties. The resulting criminal charges (which were lodged when he was still president) are only some in a long list of criminal charges that he is currently facing.

Throughout Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, horrors were emerging too fast to fully comprehend. The young brother of a woman I know (she is a well-known singer, Leqaa Swedan) was standing at his window when a bunch of Brothers were marching down his street. He yelled out, "Long live Egypt!", and they shot him in the head. He died instantly.

They attacked a police station in Kerdasa, not far from the pyramids, and, after the police officers ran out of ammunition, they and everyone inside the station were slaughtered, including General Mohamed Abbas Gabr:

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An eyewitness in Cairo took this picture from his balcony when he saw two cars stop near his building, from one of which the body of a shot soldier was dumped (he provided police with a description and the license plate numbers of the two cars):

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In Alexandria, they murdered a Christian taxi driver, Mina Raafat Aziz, because he had a cross hanging from his rear view mirror. A horrified family witnessed it from their balcony (the man filming is traumatized that a man is being murdered in front of him and that he is helpless to do anything):



This is one of the killers of the taxi driver, after his arrest:

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They threw a police truck with five troops inside, from the top of an overpass, then later dragged out, beat and kicked the survivors:



Yesterday (Friday), the Brotherhood's violence crested to a feverish pitch across the country; in Cairo, they burned the building housing the Egyptian Red Cross, including our central blood bank, and a large office building, both in Ramses Street, then set up a make-shift camp in Ramses Square. With the help of snipers shooting from its second floor, they also invaded and occupied the Fateh Mosque in Ramses early yesterday. Ramses Street is one of the main streets leading to Tahrir Square downtown, which the Brothers have been desperately trying to reach. In every attempt, they've been thwarted by the sheer number of citizens determined to stop them from getting there. Tahrir Square belongs to the Egyptian people; it is a place of unity and love, and should never again be polluted by a bunch of blood-soaked, hate-crazed fanatic terrorists.

There is much more to say; we've experienced and learned so very much during the past two and a half years that's it's hard to communicate it. Even when I talk to my own sister who lives abroad, I find myself tongue-tied, paralyzed by the enormity of what she doesn't and can't know, because there is this wall between Egyptians and the outside world. Sometimes, when I feel up to it, I turn to one of the Western news channels and Al-Jazeera, and there I watch, genuinely shocked, as the most outrageous lies are packaged so slickly and so professionally that if I didn't know better, I'd have no doubt they were telling the truth. This is not surprising, given what we're dealing with.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fascinating organization, with many faces. It's an extremely wealthy, extremely secretive (at the higher levels) transnational criminal organization, with financial headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and its organizational headquarters almost certainly in London, Great Britain, but with businesses and tentacles all over Europe and the Middle East. Its membership is divided into very distinct degrees, very similar to Masonism. It is fed from the bottom up, via a vast network of "charitable" organizations, including religious schools, medical clinics and village mosques. At the very bottom of the pyramid is the category of "moheb", or supporter of the Brotherhood; for the most part, these are the wretched of the earth, those who suffer from both extreme poverty and extreme ignorance. With rare exceptions, they are recruited from impoverished rural areas where the central state's authority is almost non-existent and where the cultural wealth of the urban centers might as well be in another universe. The Muslim Brotherhood provides them with free clinics and small but regular family allowances in exchange for access to the children, whom they indoctrinate via religious lessons into the Muslim Brotherhood cult (which has nothing to do with Islam, other than on the most superficial level, and indeed is deeply hostile to Islam, along with all other religions, including Christianity and Judaism).

From the age of 14 or so, these children undergo a filtering process; they are carefully observed and tested via exercises and experiments, to nurture certain character traits and suppress others. This is done in the schools themselves (over the past 40 years, the Brotherhood has also been relentless in its infiltration of government schools via Brotherhood teachers), and also in the summer camps and field trips organized for children by the Brotherhood. The purpose is to produce an army of foot soldiers and pawns who have been made literally incapable of thinking for themselves, whose mental surrender to the Brotherhood is complete and inviolable. They will believe whatever their leadership tells them to believe, no matter how much evidence contradicts this belief; they will obey without question whatever orders they are given. In the Brotherhood, this is called the principle of "sam' we ta'a" (hear and obey), one of the most important criteria for membership in the Brotherhood. Any deviation results in immediate punishment, including ostracism, which is a lot worse than it sounds. These people have been made emotionally, financially, socially and intellectually dependent on the Brotherhood. Once they are recruited as children, they are told what to think, what to say, who their friends can be, even what they are allowed to tell their parents and what must be kept secret. In exchange, they are taken care of, on every level. They are taught by the Brotherhood, and kept busy and entertained in Brotherhood activities. Their friends are from the Brotherhood, they can only watch television shows and channels approved by the Brotherhood, they shop only in Brotherhood-owned stores and pray only in Brotherhood-controlled mosques; when they grow up, they are employed by Brotherhood-owned or controlled businesses and institutions, and a wife or husband is found for them by the Brotherhood. Such people are not necessarily actual members of the Brotherhood, but they are its minions, the major pool from which low-level members are recruited, and their loyalty to the Brotherhood is absolute. The individuals in this video, interviewed after Morsy was deposed in a record-breaking uprising against him and the Brotherhood, are very typical:



It is people like these, transported by the Brotherhood from their distant villages, who formed the core of the "demonstrators" in the two camps set up by the Brotherhood in Cairo. It was they who waved the al-Qaeda flags and went into paroxysms of ecstasy as the Brotherhood's televangelists described divine visions of the Angel Gabriel blessing Morsy and announcing his imminent return to power. It is they who allowed themselves to be whipped up into a frenzy of rage against the Christians, the Shi'ites, the Islamic religious authorities of Al Azhar and the satanic "atheists" who conspired with the Jews to bring down their messiah, Mohamed Morsy, so that the True Islam could be eradicated forever. It is they who are currently smashing, burning and murdering people indiscriminately across the country, in an orgy of mindless rage and violence. Meanwhile, the Western media shows only the enormous banners in English which proclaim that the "peaceful demonstrators'" demand is for "democracy" and for "legitimacy". The vast gulf between the reality on the ground and the professional re-packaging and re-labeling of this reality that is being peddled to the West sometimes makes for some black humor. This man hasn't the slightest clue what his sign says in English -- he just obeyed and carried it, like they told him to, and his brain would possibly explode if he did:

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Which brings me to my final point. Don't believe what you see on the news. The BBC, CNN, France24, CBC, and newspapers like The Guardian, the Independent, USA Today and the Washington Post are marching in lockstep as they propagate the exact same lies, which have nothing to do with the reality we are living. The Egyptian people are determined as never before: Christian and Muslim, young and old, military, police, judges, rich and poor, to defend their nation against the gang of terrorists and their brainwashed automatons who have been doing everything possible to destroy it. With the collusion of the Western media and Western governments and Western public relations firms, the Muslim Brothers have been exporting a totally false narrative of victimization that has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality. I give you my word that they will lose, because Egypt is united and strong, with, for the first time in more than 40 years, a leadership that is worthy of our great people.

As you can imagine, I have barely touched the tip of the iceberg here, and I have so much more to say, especially about why all this is happening now, but this is long enough for the moment.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby AlicetheKurious » Sat Aug 17, 2013 8:59 am

I can't seem to find any "edit" button to make a correction: the government curfew is from 6:00pm to 7:00am.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby coffin_dodger » Sat Aug 17, 2013 9:03 am

Alice, thank you so much for confirming perfectly that which I already considered to be true - the peoples of Egypt have risen against the agents of oppression and will not accept anything except liberation - true liberation! I feel it in my heart and my greatest admiration goes out to a brave people that are setting an example for the rest of the world. And GOOD LUCK to you all.

It's a big ask, but please keep us updated with the intreague and machinations of the adversary - it may help others to understand the beast when change comes to their shores.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby AlicetheKurious » Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:49 am

With pleasure, but I fear that the change came long ago to your shores and it is we who are dealing with the consequences today, and for a long time to come.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby AlicetheKurious » Sat Aug 17, 2013 11:48 am

Taken direct from Al-Jazeera...fake news about fake dead bodies:



Does anybody really believe that if the Egyptian security forces had indeed committed a "massacre" as all the Western media are claiming, that the supposed victims would need to play dead?
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby Searcher08 » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:09 pm

Thank you so much for your post Alice - I had just been reading about the Muslim Brotherhood members attacking many Christian communities and I felt ice cold reading it. Even the less lockstep media in the UK like Channel4 have been producing variations on the 'poor Morsi' theme. There has been *nothing* questioning the background of the MB.
The UK has definitely backed off directly supplying Syrian rebels (though who knows what they are doing behaind the scenes) It is now being framed more in terms of a Sunni-Shiite conflict, with the Iranians being equally as bad.
There certainly seems to have been a step change in the last couple of years in the role of Qatar - from Libya to Afghanistan and Eqypt - is that accurate of is it just a faulty perception from Western media?
Another thing I was wondering about was the role of the forces from the old regime - where are they fitting into this mess?
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:34 pm


http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/live-cai ... an-crisis/

Live from Cairo: Hannah Elsisi on the Egyptian crisis | Ceasefire Magazine


Egyptian revolutionary socialist Hannah Elsisi, currently in Cairo, talks to Hesham Zakai about the sources and repercussions of Egypt's unfolding tragedy.

By Hesham Zakai and Hannah Elsisi

(Photo: Mohammed Abdel Moneim /AFP/Getty Images)

Hesham Zakai: Have we just witnessed a massacre in Cairo and where does the blame for the enormous bloodshed lie?

Hannah Elsisi: We haven’t just witnessed a massacre. We’ve just witnessed another massacre.

The blame begins on the 18th/19th of November 2011, when the army massacred hundreds of youths on Mohammed Mahmoud Street just as the parliamentary voting polls were opening their doors. The Muslim Brotherhood’s members chose to support the military then; its leadership – unlike many on the “revolution continues” list – chose not to withdraw from the SCAF-orchestrated elections.

Subsequently, for the past year and half that saw the MB in power, the revolutionary street was met with nothing but a complicit, counter-revolutionary force which aided SCAF’s massacres and ordered its own officers in the interior ministry to kill, maim and torture protesters.

Now we are dealing with an army hell-bent on sending the MB members home – a popular voice that is increasingly okay with the notion of just killing a lot of MB members. Alongside this, there is a large section of MB protesters who would just like to go home but are too scared to do so, seeking strength in numbers, and a smaller section of their members which is armed and ready to die, either in “self-defence”, for “Islam”, or for Morsi’s “shariya” [legitimacy].

It’s a fragmented picture but the blame lies squarely with both SCAF and the MB’s Ershad office (leadership).


HZ: How have the events been portrayed in Egypt?

HE: State TV announced 525 dead – apparently 43 of which were security forces. The telling aspect here is that whereas previously civilian deaths would be referred to in the mainstream media as “shaheed” (Arabic for “martyrs”) and security deaths would be referred to as just that, today deaths on the side of the security forces are referred to as “shaheed” or “mowaten” (citizen) and deaths on the Muslim Brotherhood side are referred to as “3anaser al ikhwan” (MB elements) – the same way that members of Mubarak’s regime would be referred to.

It’s a language play, but a very critical one because it lays the basis for the branding of MB members as unpatriotic or traitors – people whose deaths are therefore inconsequential. It also serves to further drive the violent dispersal of their gatherings through the promotion of a discourse which says that “traitors” = “threat to Egyptian civilians”.

HZ: You’ve touched on this powerful rhetoric against ‘Islamism’. How has the interim government managed to – so successfully – brand the MB so negatively, and only 12 months after Morsi’s victory at the ballot box?

HE: They haven’t. The state rhetoric is decades old. In fact, it could be traced back word-for-word to at least 1954 – when [former President Gamel Abdel] Nasser led his own MB-killing/imprisonment spree.

The rhetoric never went away and it was actually key for many hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who voted for Ahmed Shafik [in the presidential run-off against Morsi] not out of spite against the revolution, but out of fear that the MB would win the elections and “take over”. The Arabic word for this is “yekawesho”.

HZ: Head of the armed forces Abdel Fattah El Sisi asked for a mandate from the Egyptian people to combat terrorism and Tahrir responded. Does this represent a shift in opinion from the ouster of Mubarak and chants against SCAF that accompanied it?

HE: There are three things to note here. Firstly, the idea that 50%, even 30%, of Egypt’s population was last year conscious or adamant enough of their opposition to the military is just not true. Complete opposition to military rule or military “oversight” was never even attained within the revolution’s ranks, but it was a sentiment that was certainly spreading by the day until the handover. In a sense noting this is reassuring because we shouldn’t be too pessimistic about how everyone has “forgotten” the military or “shifted”.

Equally unrealistic is the idea that of that 48% of voting Egyptians that voted for Shafik, there isn’t several million that already firmly supported military rule. Many may be toning down or shifting their anti-military sentiments in the face of what they perceive as the greater “Islamist” threat, but many more that took to the streets specifically two weeks ago to “Fawed” [mandate] El Sisi saw this as vindication of their opinions vis-à-vis the military’s role, Shafik’s election or even Mubarak’s ousting.

Finally, the notion that there are further millions that were yet to be involved in any mass movement or revolutionary/counterrevolutionary discourse until a few weeks ago, or even until today, is important to stress. There are many who just a month ago saw reason to go to a protest for the first time because the year under the MB saw them go without electricity or water, and others who may have taken to their first protest when El Sisi called for it two weeks ago, because that meant some form of “legitimate” protest or more likely because they felt sure it would be a “safe and protected” protest.

HZ: What are the similarities between the ousters of Mubarak and Morsi?

HE: There seems to be a certain amnesia plaguing the West. The ouster of Mubarak was procedurally similar to Morsi’s. In Mubarak’s case, we saw mass popular protest, followed by strategic military political and ground intervention. And in Morsi’s case, we saw mass popular protest, followed by immediate military political and later ground intervention. In the former, the protesters gave the military flowers and naively chanted “the people and the military are one hand”. Two years later, half the protesters flinched a bit and thought “this isn’t the time to chant against the military” and other half chanted for the military’s help or military rule. It was a mixed picture.

That’s not so unrealistic a development and it scarcely calls for surprised cries of “coup d’etat!” – my maths still says the military today has less support than then.

HZ: The presidency has now imposed a state of emergency across Egypt for a month, reminiscent of Mubarak’s response following the killing of Anwar Sadat in 1981. That state of emergency lasted 30 years. Do you think there is a danger that this state of emergency will be extended too? What purpose does the state of emergency serve?

HE: We have to remember that a state of emergency has been announced more recently than 1981: specifically the last one “ended” in May 2012 and before that it was announced another two times since the onset of the revolution.

There is a serious rift between what the “emergency law” might entail on paper or even pre-revolution and what it has entailed over the past few years.

For the most part it has been used either as an intimidation tactic that can be expected to temporarily clear the streets of bustling people. Other times, such as this, it also partially serves the purpose of completing the image that the army is painting for Egypt and concomitantly for itself, venerating the role it is playing in these “difficult times”.

HZ: Given the deaths and imprisonments, where does the MB go from here?

HE: I don’t think the MB needs three or four of its leaders out of jail to continue to operate business as usual. In fact, I think that’s probably just the kind of thing that the MB might need to stop the haemorrhaging of members and supporters it has seen in the past few years.

Certainly, (MB leader) Khairat Shater’s early arrest was intended as a show for the MB’s membership more than anything else. Shater could have easily avoided arrest then by staying with the others in Raba square, protected by his network. However it was a calculated and necessary move for the leadership to have to “sacrifice” something, if the membership was going to be asked to stay on the streets in the face of violent police dispersal.

Organisational questions aside, the thousands on the street right now will be conflicted between going home and “abandoning the cause”, or going home and getting beaten or killed by their neighbours. There will be those conflicted between defending the square by continuing to sit in peacefully or by pelting rocks, and those who will see defending the sit-in or their cause in taking up arms and fighting “the military” or “the counterrevolution” or “the Christians” (and it will vary).

How long this extends for and how much blood is shed is a function of two things: firstly, the willingness of MB members to go back to the way things were under Mubarak (and on this count the leadership’s experience is far nicer than the average member’s humiliation). And secondly, how far the popular street will support/push for their political and social exclusion – the extent to which they are made to feel like “hunted rats” by the media and society.

For their leadership, this is just the 50s or 70s all over again. They don’t dread the prospects, they’ll operate underground, keep turning assets and growing the organisation and they are perfectly content with offering up 1000s of their members lives in vain for that. They will tell their members that a return to the years of humiliation and 3am arrests with no crime to show for it is what they have to look forward to if they “abandon the sit-in”.

HZ: What hope is there for an anti-military alliance and what components would such an alliance include?

HE: Opposition to the military will come from those who can’t watch more of yesterday’s scenes – but the critical point is that the revolutionary street must clearly demonstrate that SCAF is responsible.

The opposition will come from those workers whose strikes and sit ins are still being stopped by force at the hands of the military and police; it will also come from those union and workplace activists who will be met with oppressive union and strike laws and also those whose working in the military’s factories.

It will come from the thousands of women that saw unprecedented sexual violence both at the hands of the police and military and under their rule. It will come from those large sections of slum dwellers who will eventually find the military responsible for water, electricity and gas shortages. And it will come from every layer of society that was touched by the military violence, arrests and trials of 2011/2012, and of course it will come from those who are meeting that same violence today.

The question that remains is whether the revolutionary street and the left can put forward and generalize the slogans and points of resistance that can forge a revolutionary alliance between these forces.

HZ: With these tasks ahead, what is the next step for the Egyptian revolution?

HE: Where next for the revolution and the revolutionaries is a complex affair. Things moving so quickly and there is often no time to stop and reflect for a prolonged period. We can only really look to our mistakes so as to avoid repeating them. In this respect, there are three key points:

Firstly, the amnesia: I think the organised left in its entirety contributed to the unfortunate situation we found ourselves in on the 30th of June and since – so emphasised was our rhetoric and slogans on the MB’s government and members in both social struggles against sexual harassment or workers’ pay or electricity shortage that criticism of the military was drowned out. People for the most part couldn’t remember why we were chanting against the military or at least hadn’t heard the chant as often and that disparity has since come back to haunt us.

Secondly, the bitter polarisation, or binary: Egypt’s recent history has essentially been stuck in a circle between military rule and “Islamic” rule, in a game of alternating peak/trough in terms of popular support. So long as our rhetoric, our slogans, our concrete alternatives and practical conduits for resistance cannot take on and overcome both dogmas, popular consciousness will remain stuck in a bitter binary choice between the two political forces.

Finally, marhaleya – or tiered transitions: we need to be uncompromising. The only thing that ensures my safety in Downtown Cairo today as I mourn the MB’s dead and lambast the military is those who remember my stance against them. And the only way we will be able to justify a revival of anti-military agitation in the next phase, is if the popular consciousness remembers a layer of the revolution that took to the streets against the MB last month and loudly denounced the army’s massacres today.

This notion of “but Morsi is better than Shafik and then we can deal with him later”, which some of the left put forward in last year’s elections, is in my opinion the mistake many of us made that paved the way for today’s “let the army get rid of them then we will deal with the army”. This transitional thinking is what keeps compromising the revolution and causes the revolutionary movement to stutter. We need to be confident and coherent and rid ourselves of the amnesia, divisive and disingenuous polarisations, and transitional circles that have blighted us hitherto in order to learn from mistakes and move forward.

Hesham Zakai is a writer who has previously worked at the Financial Times and the European Parliament. He is the former editor of Europe’s largest student newspaper, London Student, and currently blogs on his personal website, Permission to Narrate. His twitter is @ZakaiPal

Hannah Elsisi is a UK-based Egyptian activist and postgraduate History student at the University of Oxford. She has previously written for The Guardian and International Socialist Network. Her twitter is @HannahElsisi

Last edited by JackRiddler on Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:37 pm

You have certainly been on my mind, Alice, and I'm glad we're hearing from you. We very much appreciate the information. :hug1:
Don't believe anything they say.
And at the same time,
Don't believe that they say anything without a reason.
---Immanuel Kant
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