Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by justdrew » Sun Aug 18, 2013 5:31 pm
AlicetheKurious » 18 Aug 2013 13:48 wrote:Oh, and speaking of your shores, brace yourselves. After all the great work they did in Syria and Libya, and Egypt, give a warm welcome to Al-Jazeera America.
by Nordic » Sun Aug 18, 2013 5:35 pm
by justdrew » Sun Aug 18, 2013 5:40 pm
AlicetheKurious » 17 Aug 2013 05:46 wrote: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".
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.
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":
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.
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.
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.
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:
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):
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:
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:
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.
by JackRiddler » Sun Aug 18, 2013 5:56 pm
http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairorevie ... px?aid=410
Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in, Nasr City, August 13, 2013. Amy Austin Holmes.
Before the Bloodletting: A Tour of the Rabaa Sit-in
Amy Austin Holmes
August 16, 2013
For the record, not everyone who took the bullets at Rabaa belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood.
I visited the Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in the night before security forces besieged it. The atmosphere was relaxed. Children jumped on trampolines. Men were playing soccer. A woman wearing a black niqab embraced me when I told her in Arabic that I lived in Cairo. There was no sense of impending doom.
The exception was the entrance, where people kneeled at a makeshift shrine, stones in a circle on the sidewalk. They kissed the blood on the pavement of those who had been killed in the previous two massacres, fellow supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi. Wednesday was the third. With over 600 dead, and more than 56 churches, monasteries and Christian schools attacked, it was the single most violent day in recent Egyptian history.
Together with a journalist friend, I had signed up for the Rabaa Tour, an outreach initiative launched about ten days earlier. We were met by Mohamed and Aisha, who spent the next several hours showing us around the huge encampment. According to our guides, they had approximately one visitor per day. Presumably, we were their last guests.
The sit-in was huge, sprawling over several kilometers. It had grown into a miniature city, considerably larger in terms of physical space than the sit-in on Tahrir Square.
State officials, the media, as well as a number of liberal commentators, have framed their battle against the Muslim Brotherhood as a war on “terrorism.” The sit-in has been described as “violent and armed.” For a variety of reasons, I was skeptical.
First of all, holding a sit-in is not exactly the tactic of choice of a terrorist organization. I’m not aware of Al-Qaeda ever having staged a sit-in. They tend to prefer taking more drastic measures, such as kidnapping people, hijacking airplanes, car bombings, etc. Holding sit-ins are, however, a relatively common tactic of non-violent social movements.
Second, state media had also claimed that armed Coptic Christians were attacking army soldiers on October 9, 2011. That turned out to be false. In reality, the Maspero massacre resulted in the deaths of 52 unarmed civilians, most of them Copts.
Finally, social movements do not necessarily have strict membership criteria. Even those who claim leadership of a movement may never know how many people or who exactly ‘belongs’ to a movement due to differing levels of engagement. Some people may dedicate their entire life to a movement, others may only show up occasionally at a demonstration. If there is no membership, there is no such thing as excluding members for bad behavior. This is what makes social movements harder to grasp and more difficult to study than political parties. So while some participants of the Rabaa sit-in may have engaged in violence, this does not necessarily mean that all other participants supported this. The same is true of the Tahrir sit-ins.
To be sure, some elements of the Muslim Brotherhood have engaged in acts of violence. However, not everyone at the Rabaa sit-in belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In fact, not a single one of my interlocutors at Rabaa were members of the Brotherhood. Maissa, a housewife who has been living in France for 13 years, said that before she starting coming to the sit-in she didn’t even know anyone from the Freedom and Justice Party, an organizing force behind the demonstration. Aisha, a young college student studying international relations in New Hampshire, told me that she was not there for Morsi, but for her principles. “If you get elected by the ballot box, you have to leave by the ballot box.” If Mohamed ElBaradei had been president, and had been removed by a military intervention, she claimed, she would be defending him instead of Morsi. Mohamed, a 27 year-old marketing instructor at the American University in Cairo, was also not a member of the Brotherhood. He even referred to Morsi as a “loser.” He said that he wasn’t insisting that Morsi be re-instated. What was it then that they wanted? Why had they been camping out there for 45 days, enduring bullets, tear gas, and the August sun. As if he were pleading for his life, he said, “We just want people to know we are peaceful. We are not terrorists.”
The hundreds, possibly thousands, of signs that had been hung up all over the sit-in, also did not give much indication of nefarious terroristic intent. One large banner read: “The People Want the Return of President” in Arabic, English, and French. Another said: “Democracy versus Coup.” And another: “We Refused Military Coup in Egypt.” Then there was a series of signs that said “Veterinarians for Morsi,” “Teachers for Morsi,” “Liberals for Morsi,” and so on. And my personal favorite: “The Army Threw Away my Vote.”
Despite threats that the sit-in would be cleared, on Tuesday evening the protesters showed no signs of leaving. In addition to the tents, one of our guides proudly pointed out how wooden structures consisting of three levels had been erected. It was as if they were about to build a three-story home. I had never seen anything like this attempted during the various encampments in Tahrir Square. The protesters were determined to stay. In fact, they seemed to be quite happy there. Maissa, the housewife who lives in Paris, said the Rabaa sit-in was “the best 37 days of her life.”
I woke up Wednesday morning to the news that the sit-ins were being attacked. Upon hearing that it was impossible to gain access to Rabaa, I went immediately to the middle-class neighborhood of Mohandiseen. This is where many of the protesters from the Nahda sit-in had escaped. Blood was on the pavement and gunshots whistled through the air. At least seven barricades had been erected along Batal Ahmed Abdel Aziz Street. A Central Security Forces vehicle was overturned and on fire. As the shooting intensified, a group of bearded men to my right began chanting, “Allah Akhbar.” To my left was a clean-shaven man visiting from London. I asked if he had voted for Morsi. After hesitating, he admitted that he did not vote at all in the presidential elections. He said that he had come to the protest, not to defend Morsi, but because he didn’t want his country to return to military rule. “Sixty years of military rule was enough.”
Back home on Wednesday evening, I called Mohamed, the marketing instructor at the American University in Cairo. He had been shot in the stomach during the siege on Rabaa. He said he was “lucky”, and that he would be okay.
In defending the bloodletting, Ahmed Ali, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said, “When dealing with terrorism, the consideration of civil and human rights are not applicable.” Calling people like Maissa the housewife, Aisha the student, and Mohamed the marketing instructor terrorists, is not only inaccurate, it is dangerous. Shooting at them is the logical consequence. Even over the phone, I could hear the pain in Mohamed’s voice: “We will tell our grandchildren about this day, if we have the chance to live some more.”
Amy Austin Holmes is an assistant professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, where she has taught since 2008. She is currently a visiting scholar at Brown University and at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Toulouse. On Twitter: @AmyAustinHolmes.
by conniption » Sun Aug 18, 2013 6:33 pm
AlicetheKurious » Sun Aug 18, 2013 6:19 am wrote:This may sound silly, but it creeped me out and I thought I'd share it here for what it's worth. On August 15, followers of Turkey's prime minister Erdogan, who is a spiritual godfather to the Muslim Brotherhood, came out with a yellow banner in the center of which was a black hand with four fingers.
Immediately afterward, followers of Morsy began to wear yellow and to put this banner and other yellow photos as their profile photo on their online accounts. Yellow means "wait". Four is a pun on the name of the primary terrorist camp they had set up in Nasr City, in the neighborhood of the Rabea el Adaweya mosque, named after a famous Islamic saint. Her name means "fourth".
Some have interpreted this as a message to Morsy's followers to retreat temporarily, after their repeated failure to provide the US and its allies with a pretext for militarily attacking Egypt by either provoking Egyptian security forces into committing a massacre, or by fabricating sufficiently persuasive evidence of one. The savage attacks against Christian people, businesses, churches and convent schools had the same purpose, but once again, their plan didn't work as expected, because the Coptic Patriarch and the Coptic Christians in Egypt and abroad issued very powerful condemnations of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the US for supporting the terrorist group, and expressed their total solidarity with their fellow Egyptians, the Egyptian armed forces and the Egyptian police.
So the banner seems to be telling the Brotherhood to be patient and "wait for the four". Some people have interpreted this to mean that the US, Turkey and two other states; (France? Germany? Great Britain?) have a Plan B. So there we were, busily discussing this banner and the color yellow, when the following day, the official White House spokesperson turns up wearing yellow, with a green necklace. In the video below, she points out that -- by coincidence -- one of the White House press corps also just happens to be wearing yellow... So, when did yellow become such a fashionable color in the White House?
For reference, this is the logo of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is green and yellow:
For what it's worth.
Looked up "Evil" in the Thesaurus and couldn't select one.) For them, the Ends will forever justify the Means. by justdrew » Sun Aug 18, 2013 6:40 pm
CAIR Wants Obama Administration To Act Against Egyptian Rulers
By gmbwatch
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a statement calling on the Obama Administration to take steps to end what it calls “the ongoing massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Egypt and to seek the restoration of democracy.” According to the CAIR statement: http://www.globalmbwatch.com/2013/08/15/cair-obama-administration-act-egyptian-rulers/ ...
The GMBDW notes that CAIR issued no statements during the tenure of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi regarding his rule.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) describes itself as “a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group and as “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.” CAIR was founded in 1994 by three officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine, part of the U.S. Hamas infrastructure at that time. Documents discovered in the course of the the terrorism trial of the Holy Land Foundation confirmed that the founders and current leaders of CAIR were part of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood and that CAIR itself is part of the US. Muslim Brotherhood. In 2008, the then Deputy leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood acknowledged a relationship between the Egyptian Brotherhood and CAIR. In 2009, a US federal judge ruled ”The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas. CAIR and it leaders have had a long history of defending individuals accused of terrorism by the US. government, often labeling such prosecutions a “war on Islam”, and have also been associated with Islamic fundamentalism and antisemitism. The organization is led by Nihad Awad, its longstanding Executive Director and one of the three original founders.
by justdrew » Sun Aug 18, 2013 7:00 pm
Al Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Overthrow of Morsi
COMMENT: In past articles, we have noted the close relationship between the Al Jazeera network and the Muslim Brotherhood. (The Brotherhood is an Islamic fascist organization allied with the Axis in World War II and nurtured in the postwar period by Western intelligence services and Persian Gulf oil kingdoms as anti-communist and anti-Israeli proxy warriors.)
Based in Qatar (which is utilizing I.G. Farben’s Fischer/Tropsch process), the network is growing in presence in the United States.
In addition to its purchase of Al Gore’s “Current TV” and resulting entry into the U.S. cable TV market, Al Jazeera has been broadcasting for some time on the Pacifica Radio network, which caters to the so-called progressive community.
(In past posts, we have noted that Al Jazeera/Muslim Brotherhood’s benighted presence in American media, along with that of Bertelsmann, corresponds to a tee to the Serpent’s Walk scenario we have discussed for many years.)
A gag order, Muslim Brotherhood style
One place where Al Jazeera’s influence is NOT waxing is Egypt. (See text excerpts below.) In addition to the fact that many of their journalists have resigned in protest over the network’s blatant pro-Brotherhood bias, the Egyptian army has been arresting some of its staff in the crackdown on Morsi’s supporters.
In addition, Al Jazeera correspondents have been barred from news conferences by fellow journalists, because of the network’s pro-Brotherhood stance.
“Al-Jazeera Egypt Staff Resign Over Orders To “Favor” The Muslim Brotherhood” by gmbwatch; Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch; 7/9/2013.
EXCERPT: Gulf media is reporting that 22 members of the Al-Jazeera Egyptian bureau have resigned in protest over what they say were instructions from the management to “favor the Muslim Brotherhood.” According to a Gulf News report: The news channel Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr saw 22 members of staff resign on Monday in Egypt over what they alleged was coverage that was out of sync with real events in Egypt.
Anchor Karem Mahmoud announced that the staff had resigned in protest against what he called ‘biased coverage’ of the events in Egypt by the Qatari broadcaster.
Mahmoud said that the resignations had been brought about by a perceived lack of commitment and Al Jazeera professionalism in media coverage, adding that ‘the management in Doha provokes sedition among the Egyptian people and has an agenda against Egypt and other Arab countries.’
Mahmoud added that the management used to instruct each staff member to favour the Muslim Brotherhood.
He said that ‘there are instructions to us to telecast certain news’.
Haggag Salama, a correspondent of the network in Luxor, had resigned on Sunday accusing it of ‘airing lies and misleading viewers’.
He announced his resignation in a phone-in interview with Dream 2 channel.
Meanwhile, four Egyptian members of editorial staff at Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha resigned in protest against what they termed a ‘biased editorial policy’ pertaining to the events in Egypt, Ala’a Al Aioti, a news producer, told Gulf News by phone . . .
In 2009, Egyptian authorities were reported to be in the process of revoking Al-Jazeera’s license to broadcast and that the network was planning to close its bureau office in Cairo.
Leaked US State Department cables indicate that Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar and funded by the Qatari government, operates as an arm of Qatari foreign policy which has recently been strongly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood and the recently deposed Mohamed Morsi. . . .
RECOMMENDED READING: “Why Does Al Jazeera Love A Hateful Islamic Extremist?” by gmbwatch; Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch; 7/11/2013.
EXCERPT: Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg has published an article titled “Why Does Al Jazeera Love a Hateful Islamic Extremist?” that summarizes recent developments adverse for Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi. The article begins:
So, it hasn’t been the best week for Al Jazeera, the television network owned by Qatar’s despotic ruling family, for the same reason that it hasn’t been a great week for the despotic ruling family itself: the ouster of Egypt’s president, Mohamed Mursi, the bumpkin fundamentalist.
Qatar pumped a lot of money into Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood government, and for what? The Qatari royal family should sue the Brotherhood for malfeasance. So much hope was riding on Mursi’s experiment in political Islam. Although Qatar spreads risk around a bit — it has provided millions of dollars to Islamists in Syria and to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas (now there’s an investment in the future) — Mursi represented its main chance to advance the cause of Islamic fundamentalism.
And now, to add insult to financial injury, Saudi Arabia just promised post-Mursi Egypt $5 billion, and the United Arab Emirates, another of Qatar’s main rivals, has kicked in $3 billion.
As for Al Jazeera, which is scheduled to introduce its American network next month in place of Al Gore’s hapless Current TV, well, let’s put it this way: It will certainly be more popular among Americans than it is among Egyptians. Which isn’t saying much.
Journalists Protest
The millions of Egyptians who rose up against Mursi’s rule also aired their feelings about Al Jazeera’s breathless pro-Muslim Brotherhood coverage. The harsh criticism directed at the network prompted Egyptian reporters to expel Al Jazeera reporters from a recent news conference, and led several journalists to quit Al Jazeera’s Egypt operation, apparently to protest its obvious bias.
One of the correspondents who quit, Haggag Salama, accused his ex-bosses of ‘airing lies and misleading viewers.’ The journalist Abdel Latif el-Menawy is reported to have called Al Jazeera a ‘propaganda channel’ for the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s possible that some of the journalists who quit did so as a matter of self-preservation; the Egyptian military is behaving in predictably heavy-handed ways toward journalists it doesn’t like. But it’s also entirely plausible that they quit because they couldn’t abide Qatari government interference in their reporting. . . .
by semper occultus » Sun Aug 18, 2013 7:16 pm
AlicetheKurious » 18 Aug 2013 20:26 wrote:
It's true we just didn't know one-hundredth of what we know now about what the Muslim Brotherhood is and how it operates, but even if we'd read about it, I doubt many of us would have taken it seriously. I also don't know how to convey how surreal it feels to read what is being said by the Western media. I always knew that they lie, but this is beyond anything.
< >
All Egyptians stand firmly behind the heroic police and army officers who are sacrificing themselves to defend our people and our nation from the same devils that the US, Germany, Britain, France and other "civilized" countries have decided must rule us, must participate as "partners" in our nation's political future. In the latest outrage, these states are threatening to condemn our government for standing with the Egyptian people against the US-sponsored terrorists that they've unleashed against us.
by AlicetheKurious » Sun Aug 18, 2013 8:25 pm
JackRiddler wrote:What I have seen is that both, those who are characterizing Morsi's fall as an illegitimate, violent coup, and those who support it as a necessary salvation of the revolution and the nation, are making the same claim: that the United States supports the other side. Here I have to think the US, for once, is not in control of events and has no coherent strategy or clear idea of what outcome will best serve their interests.
A papal residence source told MCN the Coptic patriarch said, during the meeting, that Coptic citizens held the same feelings as Muslim citizens’ regarding the country. He noted that Copts have the right to participate and express their opinion regarding the current situation, and the Church has no right to prevent its followers from their national duty.
During the meeting with the ambassador, His Holiness was keen on affirming that the Church’s role is a spiritual one and has nothing to do with politics.
“I know the role that the pope represents in the community, especially from a religious aspect,” said Ambassador Patterson, as the meeting came to an end. Link
Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood and its allies have been telling the country’s Copts to keep off the streets during the protests planned for 30 June, with Assem Abdel-Maged, a senior figure in Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya Islamist group (Abdel-Maged was among the terrorists responsible for assassinating Sadat and was personally involved in massacring 118 policemen in Assyut in 1981, in order to set up an "emirate" there; under Morsy, they were allowed to play a major role in the country's politics -- Alice), telling the country’s Christians that “if you go down into the streets on 30 June, you will bring black days onto yourselves.”
The signs suggest that the ruling Brotherhood is scared of the prospect of millions of Egyptians, among them the country’s Copts, taking to the streets to denounce its rule.
Last week, President Mohamed Morsi invited Pope Tawadros II, the leader of the country’s Christians, to a meeting at Al-Ittihadiya presidential palace in what has been seen as an attempt to put pressure on him. According to high-level Church sources, Morsi wanted to sound out the pope on the 30 June protests.
“I cannot stop the Copts from taking part in the protests because this is a matter of their personal freedom. I have no desire to involve the Church in politics,” the pope is reported to have said.
“Do what is necessary to bring the nation together and work for the peace of Egypt, not to stir up quarrels. I am still hoping to see improvements in the economic and social life of the country,” the pope told the president, as the latter suggested that the Church should advise the country’s Christians not to take part in the protests.
As the pressures mounted on the Church, US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson paid the pope a visit before he went to meet the president, with the timing of the visit raising eyebrows in the Coptic community.
Graffiti has appeared in the Ain Shams and Matariya areas of Cairo, with the wording, in what appears to be the work of Brotherhood members, declaring that the 30 June protests constitute a “declaration of war on Islam by crusaders, communists, and atheists”.
The Coptic community has reacted strongly to the pressures being put upon it. Coptic women have begun mobilising to participate in the protests, and some are already making arrangements for child-care so that they can be free to take to the streets.
“Go down and participate. Have no fear,” was the message that Coptic young people have been sending out through text messages and social media sites. It is a message that has become more widespread following the perceived threats made by the Brotherhood and its allies against Christians.
One woman visited the present writer asking for a signature on the Tamarod petition against President Morsi. Asked why she was giving up her time to collect signatures, she said, “when I heard they were threatening Christians I thought that they should not be allowed to scare us. I am too old to march in the streets, but I want to encourage others to participate.”
Coptic young people are full of energy to change the political, social and economic situation, said Coptic youth bishop Anba Moussa.
“The youth have to express their political views, but without violence, because there are people trying to project a distorted image,” he said, adding that the Church could not deny young people’s right to express their views. Amir Ramzi, president of the country’s Criminal Court, denounced the threats against the Copts, calling on the attorney-general to take action on the matter.
“If anything happens to the Copts, we know who the culprits are. I believe that the threats will backfire, as the Copts are not afraid of the Islamist groups. There are likely to be more Copts taking part in the protests as a result of these threats,” he said.
Youssef Edward, media coordinator of the Anglican-Coptic Organisation, said that “the Copts are Egyptian citizens, and they do not live in isolation from the political realities of Egypt. They feel discriminated against, and they have every right to reject this regime.”
Edward said that the Coptic media had not instructed the Copts on what to do on 30 June. “I believe that the Church is analysing the political and social situation, but it is not offering advice,” he said.
According to Edward, the Copts had suffered over the period of Morsi’s presidency, and they distrusted a regime that failed to offer them justice and equality. He also described the threats against the Copts as an attempt at “psychological intimidation”. Link
The sit-in was huge, sprawling over several kilometers. It had grown into a miniature city, considerably larger in terms of physical space than the sit-in on Tahrir Square.
by AlicetheKurious » Sun Aug 18, 2013 8:52 pm
by JackRiddler » Sun Aug 18, 2013 10:39 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:45 am
Israel Escalating Efforts to Shape Allies’ Strategy
By JODI RUDOREN
Published: August 18, 2013
JERUSALEM — Israel plans this week to intensify its diplomatic campaign urging Europe and the United States to support the military-backed government in Egypt despite its deadly crackdown on Islamist protesters, according to a senior Israeli official involved in the effort.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of an edict from the prime minister not to discuss the Egyptian crisis, said Israeli ambassadors in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels and other capitals would lobby foreign ministers. At the same time, leaders here will press the case with diplomats from abroad that the military is the only hope to prevent further chaos in Cairo.
With the European Union planning an urgent review of its relations with Egypt in a meeting Monday, the message, in part, is that concerns about democracy and human rights should take a back seat to stability and security because of Egypt’s size and strategic importance.
“We’re trying to talk to key actors, key countries, and share our view that you may not like what you see, but what’s the alternative?” the official explained. “If you insist on big principles, then you will miss the essential — the essential being putting Egypt back on track at whatever cost. First, save what you can, and then deal with democracy and freedom and so on.
“At this point,” the official added, “it’s army or anarchy.”
Israeli leaders have made no public statements and have refused interviews since Wednesday’s brutal clearing of two Muslim Brotherhood protest encampments. But even as the death toll climbed in ensuing gunfights in mosques and on streets, officials spoke frequently to members of Congress, officials at the Pentagon and State Department, and European diplomats.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who convened an emergency meeting of his inner cabinet Friday regarding Egypt, has not spoken since the crackdown to President Obama, who on Thursday rebuked the Egyptian government by canceling joint military exercises set for next month. But Mr. Netanyahu has discussed the situation with Secretary of State John Kerry; Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was in Israel last week; and a visiting delegation of more than two dozen Republicans from Congress, led by the majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia.
General Dempsey and Israel’s military chief have also consulted on Egypt, as have Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Israeli counterpart. Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has been forcefully arguing for sustaining Washington’s $1.5 billion annual aid to Egypt since the July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi by Egypt’s military commander, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi.
“Israel is in a state of diplomatic emergency,” Alex Fishman, a leading Israeli columnist, wrote in Sunday’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “It has been waging an almost desperate diplomatic battle in Washington.”
While Israel is careful to argue that Egypt is critical to broad Western interests in the Middle East, its motivation is largely parochial: the American aid underpins the 34-year-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, so its withdrawal could lead to the unraveling of the agreement. More immediately, Israel is deeply worried that Egypt’s strife could create more openings for terrorist attacks on its territory from the Sinai Peninsula.
At the same time, Israeli officials are aware that the aid package is one of the Obama administration’s biggest potential levers against Egypt’s military rulers — and a topic of debate within the White House.
“From the Israeli perspective it is security, security and security — and then other issues,” said Yoram Meital, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “The Obama administration took a stand that has a lot to do with universal values. Of course, killing hundreds of protesters in this brutal way should be condemned. If we study the Israeli perspective, then these universal values are secondary to the top priorities of security and security.”
Most Israeli experts on Egypt share the government’s support for the Sisi government and view Mr. Morsi’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement as a dangerous threat. But several said Israel’s diplomatic push was risky because it could promote a backlash in Egypt and across the Arab world and hurt Israel’s credibility as a democracy.
“This is a very big mistake to interfere in what happens in Egypt,” said Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and director of its new Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam.
Dr. Kedar invoked an old joke about a lifeguard kicking a boy out of a pool for urinating — from the diving board. “You can do things, but do them under the water,” he said. “Israel, by supporting explicitly the army, exposes itself to retaliation. Israel should have done things behind the scenes, under the surface, without being associated with any side of the Egyptian problem.”
But Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, praised Mr. Netanyahu’s government for “acting very discreetly,” and Yitzhak Levanon, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt until 2011, said the lobbying had not been aggressive.
“We are talking to a lot of friends,” said Mr. Levanon, who teaches a course on Egypt at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “Pushing? I don’t think that this is the word. We are expressing what we believe is best for the region.”
Mr. Shaked said that unlike the Obama administration and the European Union, Israel did “not have any illusions about the possibility of a democracy in Egypt.”
“I understand Washington and Europe with their criticism, but there is no alternative to letting the army in Egypt try by force,” he said. “We have to choose here not between the good guys and the bad guys — we don’t have good guys. It is a situation where you have to choose who is less harmful.”
The Israeli official who described the diplomatic campaign acknowledged that Washington’s suspension of the military exercises and Europe’s announcement Sunday that it would review its relations with Cairo did not signal success so far.
“It’s very important for us to make certain countries understand the situation as we see it,” the official said. “We do that with a sense of urgency. This is something we’re going to try and share with as many influential countries as we can this week.”
by JackRiddler » Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:10 am
http://www.egyptindependent.com/print/2044646
Egypt's polarised media: Between claims of faked videos and Sisi posters
Author: Farah Yousry
"Finally, a video exposing the sleazy actors of the Brotherhood and anti-coup protesters. Share now to expose their real face!"
This is the message that has been viewed and shared on social media websites - as well as Egyptian TV.
The message formed the caption to a video clip from a TV report screened on Qatari-owned channel, Al Jazeera International.
The video, from near Fateh mosque in Ramses Square, shows a young man with a bandage on his head, blood rushing from the head wound hidden from view. As a field doctor pulls up the man's bloodied t-shirt to check for any other wounds, the injured man supposedly loses consciousness and kicks up with his leg in an abrupt way.
According to privately-owned Egyptian channel CBC, as well as social media users sharing the video, the man was clearly afraid his act would be unmasked when the doctor pulled up his t-shirt on camera only to find that there was no wound and the whole scene was a fake.
On YouTube alone, the video has been viewed around two million times receiving more than 100,000 comments, of which almost none were challenging the authenticity of the caption. Additionally, on Facebook, the video along with its caption were shared more than 100,000 times.
The video was not only picked up by social media users and some Egyptian TV channels, but also Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, who used the video during an international press conference held on Sunday as proof of the opposition's bad faith and a hostile media outlet's fabrications.
To an average Egyptian viewer who has been saturated with reports of "sexual Jihad," foreign espionage drones and poor hygiene leading to an outbreak of scabies, this scene - along with the explanation media have provided - is believable.
"Of course it is an accurate report. Muslim Brotherhood supporters have been faking deaths and killing themselves to make the military look bad, and drag them down to their level," Ahmed Fakhr, a taxi driver, said. "Everyone is aware of the [Muslim Brotherhood's] forgeries by now. Many of my passengers are very well-rounded, educated people and they hold the same view."
Little do Fakhr, his passengers and the several millions who have shared the video or watched it on Egyptian TV, know that the injured young man's abrupt kick is due to the "agitation state" caused by the "frontal lobe edema" he suffered after receiving a bullet in the head.
"He was shot in the head with birdshot from the rightside which bruised the brain and created pressure on it; a condition called frontal lobe edema," Dr. Mohamed Ahmed, neurosurgeon at Demerdash hospital where the young man is currently being hospitalized, told Egypt Independent. "This condition makes the patient very agitated and unable to control his reactions towards any external stimuli. This is what people saw on the video and mistook it for an act."
He added that when the patient was admitted to the hospital, he was at a "disturbed consciousness level" and "hardly obeying commands." According to the neurosurgeon, this causes agitation, which explains the abrupt kick he gave the doctor who was trying to pull up his t-shirt on camera.
The young man appearing on the video is Omar Nasser, 25, a medical student who has just finished his internship year and about to start his residency as a toxicology doctor at Demerdash Hospital. On Saturday, Nasser went to Ramses Square to help the injured protesters and deliver those in need of further intervention to the nearby Helal hospital. He was shot by security forces at Ramses near the Fateh mosque.
Propaganda and demonisation
Following army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's speech urging Egyptians to support the regime's endeavors and curb further protests and sit-ins, an Egyptian newspaper mimicked a Larry David HBO poster to promote Sisi on its front page. The general was standing at the front with a crowd of civilians behind him, all of them with the head of Sisi. The headline to the picture: "We are all al-Sisi."
On Saturday when Fateh mosque was being surrounded with protesters trapped inside, Egyptian TV, newspapers, radio channels reported that Fateh mosque had been cleared of any protesters after successful negotiations between security forces and protesters. Video streams and eyewitnesses proved otherwise.
In the weeks leading to the breakup of the Rabaa al-Adaweya sit-in, anchors reported an outbreak of scabies due to the camp’s lack of hygiene, the "sexual jihad," a permit for unmarried, at at times, nonconsensual sex to support "jihadis" in the square and a "foreign drone", for espionage purposes flying over Rabaa al-Adaweya protesters.
The scabies outbreak never happened. The "sexual jihad" turned out to be a rumour spurred by an errant question on a Muslim Brotherhood Facebook page. And the suspicious foreign drone turned out to be a consumer camera used to take overhead pictures of the crowds.
After Sisi's 3 July speech announcing the overthrow of Morsy, anti-Brotherhood media outlets blatantly celebrated the ouster with hosts shouting "good riddance!" against the backdrop of patriotic songs and tears of joy.
Sectarianism and violence
Pro-Morsy channels, on the other hand, were reported to have resorted to hate speech and sectarianism.
Following Ettehadiyya sit-ins protesting against Morsy's Constitutional Declaration, Brotherhood media reported the presence of "used condoms," alcoholic drinks and drugs where the protesters were camping out. All of which proved to be from staged photos and footage.
The Muslim Brotherhood has also consistently reported news disproven or unverified by independent media outlets and human rights groups. Pro-Brotherhood media erroneously claimed that nerve gas was used during the Rabaa demonstration break-up, and an official death toll of over 2,000 casualties among pro-Morsi protesters.
Following the killing of protesters on 8 July at the sit-in in front of the Republican Guard's headquarters, media supporting the Muslim Brotherhood resorted to publishing pictures of "victims of the massacre" which then proved to be archived pictures of Syrians killed during the civil war between President Bashar al-Assad and rebel forces.
They have also turned a blind eye to the fact that while their protests "against the coup" are predominantly peaceful and unarmed, there do exist armed individuals in some of their rallies as reported by many eyewitnesses and journalists including Egypt Independent's own.
These allegations and others are proof of a binary that has been unfolding on social media, private media outlets, and the nation’s state-owned radio stations, television channels, and newspapers before and since nationwide protests erupted on 30 June.
Experts' view
Tarek al-Shamy, director of Al Hurra's bureau in Egypt, told Egypt Independent that professionalism was absent in Egyptian media coverage of the recent events unfolding in Egypt.
"Foreign media surpassed all Egyptian outlets as they were mostly able to set agendas aside and not be part of the political equation in Egypt," he said, referring to BBC, Al Hurra and France 24 as examples of news outlets providing professional coverage.
The post-30 June regime is complaining that foreign media is "misled" and fails to capture the full picture of what is unfolding in the country, according to Mostafa Hegazy, presidential adviser. Al-Shamy explains that if there is any truth to this claim, it would be because the Egyptian government does not provide the necessary protection and assurance to foreign journalists trying to cover events.
On Saturday, Tom Rollins of Egypt Independent was harassed by security forces and plainclothes men in Ramses Square, his passport was stolen along with all his equipment. A string of other foreign reporters have been robbed, assaulted or detained.
On the same token, Yasser Abdel Aziz, media analyst, says that some foreign media were one-sided in their coverage because of cultural reasons and tenets. For instance, in the west, military rule is almost a taboo. Hence, some foreign media might not give as much weight to stories of soldiers dying or police stations looted as it gives to stories of sit-in dispersal or a civilian dying.
Mohamed Soliman, a journalist at Al Karama newspaper and a TV producer, explains that a code of conduct for reporters is almost non-existent in Egyptian media.
Media became a tool in the hands of those who own it, he said.
"Affiliations came before professionalism and respect to the audience," Soliman added.
Qutb al-Arabi, assistant secretary general of the Supreme Council of Journalism, said that he knows of some newspapers that refrained from publishing some writers’ articles for opposing their owners' political affiliations, others banned media professionals from TV shows so as not to express the other point of view.
Jaqueline Zaher of DPA believes that the Egyptian media have become "vessels" for political powers.
"Authentication and double-checking news are not on the table for many of them. Rumors and half-leads were considered okay to publish or air," she said. "This was either due to an avarice to publish more news to feed the audience that is always hungry for information, or, in most cases, to serve political agendas of the media owners."
Al-Arabi also said that anonymous sources have run rampant in Egyptian media, making it easy for some newspapers to get away with inaccurate news.
Media outlets private and state-owned are steamrolling moderate, unpolarised opinions and news coverage leaving average Egyptians confused, while those affiliate to either side of Egypt's political divide complain of media bias or resort to the end of the spectrum that confirms their bias and feed it even more, leaving little room for unbiased reports.
Egyptians are confused and the deep polarisation present in the street proves that few of them are empowered with the tools needed to weigh news before sharing them on social media or even adopting some of the media's propaganda as personal opinions.
Publishing Date: Mon, 19/08/2013 - 11:40
Source URL (retrieved on 19/08/2013 - 18:49): http://www.egyptindependent.com/node/2044646
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/19/sharif_abdel_kouddous_in_modern_egypts
Monday, August 19, 2013
Sharif Abdel Kouddous: In Modern Egypt’s Bloodiest Period, "New Horrors Are Brought Every Day"
Mass violence continues in Egypt amidst the bloodiest period in the country’s modern history. Around 900 people have been killed since state forces attacked Muslim Brotherhood protest encampments five days ago. At least 173 people were killed in a "Day of Rage" protest called by the Brotherhood on Friday, followed by at least 79 deaths on Saturday. Around 90 police officers and soldiers have died in the violence, but Islamist supporters of the Brotherhood and ousted President Mohamed Morsi account for the bulk of the victims. On Sunday, at least 36 prisoners were killed in Cairo after guards said they tried to escape while being transferred. But the Muslim Brotherhood accused state forces of a "cold-blooded killing" and demanded an international probe. And earlier today at least 24 police officers were reportedly killed in the northern Sinai after coming under attack by militants. "New horrors are brought every day, nightmarish scenes that Egyptians could never have imagined," Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from Cairo. "It’s not a Cairo that many people recognize. With both sides vowing to escalate, worse days surely lie ahead."
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the crisis in Egypt. At least 850 people have been killed since last Wednesday, when security forces raided protest camps filled with supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. It’s been the bloodiest period in the country’s modern history. In the latest development, at least 24 Egyptian policemen were killed earlier today in an ambush in the Sinai Peninsula. It was the deadliest attack on security forces in Sinai in years. After the ambush, Egypt closed the Rafah border crossing that connects the Sinai with the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, there are reports out this morning that former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak could soon be released. His lawyer said he expects Mubarak to be released from jail in the next 48 hours after a prosecutor cleared him in one of his corruption cases.
In other developments over the weekend, the military-run government admitted Sunday 36 prisoners had been killed in detention. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said the prisoners had taken an officer hostage, and suffocated to death after police fired tear gas. The Muslim Brotherhood accused the military of murdering the prisoners.
On Friday, the Muslim Brotherhood organized a "Day of Rage" after Friday prayers to protest the coup and the bloody crackdown on Morsi supporters. But the day ended in bloodshed, as well, with at least 173 people dead.
We’re joined now by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent in Cairo.
Sharif, can you update us on the developments over the weekend?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, it was another weekend of chaos and bloodshed. It seems new horrors are brought every day, nightmare scenes that Egyptians could never have imagined could take place in this country. We saw on Friday, as you mentioned, widespread clashes happening in Ramses Square, which is a main central square in downtown Cairo, really awful scenes with gunfire, citizens opening fire on each other, people jumping off bridges to avoid the bullets and lying motionless on the ground. There were more attacks on Christian churches across the country, reports of nuns being paraded around as prisoners of war. The death toll is really quite staggering. The decrepit state morgue is so overwhelmed that there are four refrigerated food trucks outside, big large semis, with corpses piled in them to try and stave off the decay. So, it’s a very—it’s a very depressing situation that’s happening in Egypt.
We’re six days into a curfew and a state of emergency. Egyptians were never ones to abide by any military curfew, but now everyone is indoors at night. The night is owned by helicopters and tanks in the streets and bands of men armed with clubs and knives and guns that man these checkpoints. So, it’s not a Cairo that many people recognize. It’s not a country that bodes well. And with both sides vowing to escalate, worse days surely lie ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: On Friday and Saturday, can you talk about what was happening at the mosque where people had taken refuge and then stayed overnight, afraid to come out?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Well, this happened in the wake of these clashes in Ramses Square where dozens of people were killed. A hundred seventy-three were killed on Friday across the country—very fierce clashes. And right on the edge of the square is al-Fateh mosque, which is a very large mosque, and a lot of people sought refuge in there. And they were basically besieged in there for the entire night with angry mobs outside, as well as police and army soldiers. I was on the scene on Friday, but also on Saturday, as well, when they were still trying to get people out—very chaotic scene, with at one point army soldiers trying to escort out a few of those inside. They came under such fierce attack by the mobs inside, soldiers were firing in the air to try and back off the crowd, and they couldn’t hold them back, so they had to retreat back inside the mosque. At one point, apparently, there was some kind of gunfire from the minaret, or at least there was assumed to be, and we saw police, special forces and army soldiers open up heavy machine gun fire on the minaret of the mosque—a really shocking scene, scenes that we’ve seen in other countries, like Iraq and Syria.
And there was a very fierce attack on journalists that day. Two journalists that I was with, Alastair Beach of the London Independent and Matt Bradley of The Wall Street Journal, were repeatedly assaulted. Alastair Beach was held inside the mosque. I tried to negotiate him out. We walked out with him, and he got attacked by a mob. Someone hit him very hard on the head with a two-by-four, and he fell to the ground. We eventually got them to military soldiers, who put them inside an APC to keep the crowd away. The military eventually let them go, but at least a dozen journalists were attacked, mostly Western journalists, were attacked across Cairo that day. So, there’s a growing feeling that this vicious rhetoric against the media, especially the Western press, is manifesting itself on the streets.
AMY GOODMAN: People can link at democracynow.org—you can watch and listen to Alastair’s report on Democracy Now! last week. Also, a female McClatchy reporter who attempted to see the carnage inside the Fateh mosque as the Islamists were cleared of the site was confronted by a police officer. Angry, he shouted at the men behind her, "Beat her! She’s an American!" The men happily obliged and manhandled the reporter. As she escaped, men surrounded her, recording her face. Do you know what happened here?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I only know what—that was reported, what you read out.
I think it’s important to realize that there’s a very coordinated campaign that’s happening with the media. On the one side, you have the state and private media, nearly the entire swath of private media, in a very coordinated campaign parroting a government line, the main thrust of which is that all Islamists are terrorists. Private media and state media have a banner in English and Arabic saying things like "Egyptians against terrorism" or "Egyptians fighting terrorism." There’s a lot of dehumanization by the announcers, portraying the Islamists as subhumans, essentially. And we see this manifesting itself on the streets with all these attacks on Muslim Brotherhood members, on any Islamists taking to the streets, vigilantes pulling people with beards out of cars. So, it’s almost like a creeping fascism that’s happening.
And also, a lot of human rights activists, very prominent, that were a main feature on private TV stations during Morsi’s rule, who were rightly critical of Morsi’s government and the abuses that his government was committing, are no longer invited on these stations, because they’re critical of this crackdown. The military, the military-backed Cabinet, the government all want to portray this as a war on terror. And if there’s any deviation from that, then there’s harsh criticism. The foreign minister, other Cabinet members have publicly criticized the Western press. General Sisi himself, the head of the armed forces, in a speech publicly criticized the Western media. There’s been allegations of a foreign agenda and so forth. And so, journalists, especially Western journalists, are seen as enemies, and they’re targeted. There’s an Al Jazeera journalist who has now been detained. Al Jazeera is the only satellite network that’s really been more sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. He has been detained, charged with murder and incitement to violence charges, very serious charges. So, this is the state of the media that we find ourselves in, and it’s indicative of a creeping authoritarianism in the country as a whole.
AMY GOODMAN: In his first public comments since last week’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, pledged the military’s support for the people. This is a clip from his televised speech Sunday.
ABDEL FATTAH AL-SISI: [translated] The will of the Egyptian people is free. Their will is free. They can choose whoever they want to rule them. And we are the guardians of this will. The army and the police right now are the guardians of the will of the people. With regard to choosing who their leaders will be, that’s true. I want to tell you that the honor of protecting the will of the people is more valuable to us and to me personally than the honor of ruling Egypt. I swear to God on this. The honor of protecting the will of the people and its freedom for it to choose whatever it wants and to live the way it wants is more important and valuable to me, I swear, than ruling Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Egypt’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the guy in charge right now. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, your response?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Well, those were Sisi’s first comments since the massacres that happened on August 14th when police and army troops raided the two main sit-ins that were the epicenters of support for the ousted President Mohamed Morsi. Sisi very dangerously said, "Our self-restraint will not continue." Government officials, the police themselves have said that the way that they cleared the sit-ins was an act of self-restraint, and this was—August 14th was the bloodiest day in Egypt’s modern history. The minimum number of people died is somewhere around 600, at—probably about 800 is closer to the actual figure, and it really was, by any means, a massacre. And to call that self-restraint is really quite shocking.
And the way they’re treating these people, the bodies—there’s two—the reason there’s a discrepancy in a lot of the counts—there’s a 200-count discrepancy, and the reason is, is that 200 bodies were transported to the al-Iman mosque the next day. To be in the official state of—Department of Health count, you have to either pass through a hospital or the morgue, and these bodies were left at Rabaa after the police and army stormed in. Many of them were burnt when the mosque and the field hospital were burned down. They didn’t even allow ambulances to go pick these people up, and so family members and loved ones and friends had to use private cars, go to the site of the raid later at that night and take these bodies back to this mosque and just ferry them back and forth. And these bodies lay decaying in this mosque for a day before finally being buried. And so, some organizations, like The New York Times, puts the count at over a thousand now—just days of carnage in Egypt and very, very worrying.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, this latest news, the announcement that Mubarak might be released?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, this just came, as we went to air, that Mubarak might be released. It’s coming from his lawyer, Farid el-Deeb. The charges—he’s still facing a number of charges, corruption charges, so it’s unclear if he’s going to be released at this point. I think we have to wait and see. I think if you look at the broader picture, his release—the trial was handled very, very poorly, the one conducted around his responsibility for the deaths of protesters. And, in general, most of the trials of members of the former regime were conducted very poorly by the prosecution. So, he might be let go. At this point, as a political figure, I would argue that he’s largely irrelevant. His release would be symbolic, and symbolic of the re-empowering and reconstitution of the former regime really flexing its muscles, and the fact that the former president, the autocrat for 30 years, is free on the streets is very symbolic of that. But as a political figure which can actually have decision-making authority on the ground, I think Mubarak is finished. It’s Sisi and the army who are in charge now.
AMY GOODMAN: I was just—as we followed your tweets through the weekend, Sharif, one of them was "'Despair is betrayal' is our saying [during] tough times in the revolution. I am trying not to feel like a traitor, but it is very difficult." Talk more about that.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, you know, a lot of—a lot of, I think, revolutionaries who started this revolution, who fought successive authoritarian regimes, fought Mubarak regime, fought the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, fought the Muslim Brotherhood, while political elites were allying with the military at different times for their political goals, they find themselves sitting on the sidelines and pushed out of the discourse and forced to watch this bloodletting continue. And we had this saying that we used to say, that "despair is betrayal." And there’s been a lot of trials and tribulations over these past two-and-a-half years. And to say that, you know, to keep up hope and to keep up the fight, but it’s such a dark, dark moment right now, a creeping fascism in the country, that it’s very hard not to feel like a traitor. And so, that’s why—that’s why I wrote those words.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and when we come back, Sharif will stay with us, and we’ll also be joined by the acclaimed novelist, Ahdaf Soueif. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent in Cairo, we’ll also link to his piece in The Nation magazine. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back with our guests in a moment.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/19/a ... oodshed_we
Ahdaf Soueif: Amidst Egypt’s Bloodshed, "We Are Trying Keep the Discourse of the Revolution Alive"
As reports emerge that former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak could be released this week, we speak to the acclaimed Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif. A prominent backer of the 2011 Tahrir Square, Soueif reflects on the state of the revolution and the growing divide in Egypt. "One of most depressing things that we’ve seen has been how a strand of what what was the revolution, and what was either progressive or liberal, has so completely backed, endorsed, egged-on the military and the police and have completely, unrelentingly demonized the Brotherhood and Islamist currents," Soueif says from Cairo. "And I think that is part of why we’ve had an escalation of violence. It’s as if everyone is playing out a role that is expected of them." We’re also joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Chris Toensing, executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are in Cairo with Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now!'s correspondent. He's there; we’re based in New York. And Ahdaf Soueif has just joined us, the Egyptian write, author of The Map of Love and other books, including, most recently, Cairo: My City, Our Revolution. She also wrote the foreword for Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as It Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made It.
We welcome you, Ahdaf, to Democracy Now! once again. You have written a piece in The Guardian_, "Now Egyptians Are All Paying the Price." We last spoke to you, Ahdaf, on egypts">July 3rd, when you were calling for the ouster of Mohamed Morsi. What has happened?
AHDAF SOUEIF: Well, what has happened is that, A, the army, or General Sisi, instead of possibly enforcing an early referendum on early—a referendum on early presidential elections, simply announced the ouster of President Morsi. And so, as expected, the supporters of President Morsi, whether they were Brotherhood or slightly broader supporters, dug in, declared sit-ins and marches, and, you know, would not accept that they had lost the country. Everything went wrong from there because there was no logical and planned and forward-looking way that the government or the army dealt with the supporters of President Morsi. So it just became a face-off with each side showing how powerful they were, and people started getting killed. And it’s really just been a spiral of violence and of polarization ever since.
And I think that—I mean, what we’re seeing now is we’re seeing sort of big, monolithic kind of structures taking up certain positions, as if they’re setting the map for what is to come. And as Sharif was saying, there is no part for the revolution in any of this. In fact, what’s happening is that all these behemoths that are now lining up to fight each other, are actually all profoundly anti-revolution. And at the same time, the situation and the rhetoric and the long hardship that people have suffered is making it possible to whip up the people behind them, you know, whether it’s behind the Brotherhood or behind the army and the police state. And so, we are living through this extremely unpleasant time where you see the people embracing a fascist discourse really on every side.
AMY GOODMAN: Ahdaf Soueif, do you think this could have been predicted? I mean, you had this unusual alliance, you know, progressives like Tamarod and others calling for the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, but that required the military and putting their faith with the military—and then, what their statements are today?
AHDAF SOUEIF: Well, I mean, there is a big question mark on Tamarod, really. I think we have to wait and see what information comes out and what other positions they take up.
I don’t know about whether—I mean, I’m uncomfortable with questions about whether things could have been predicted. I think that from the point when the military decided or the state decided to take—to take a physical, violent line with the sit-ins, then we were on this path without a possibility of change. I mean, we need, of course, to remember that the sit-ins were to varying degrees armed, the Nahda sit-in more than the Rabaa sit-in. We need to remember that the sit-ins caused death and that we know that people were taken into these sit-ins and were tortured. We need to remember that the Brotherhood, in their year of ruling the country, resorted to violence, and that also that they did not—that Mohamed Morsi’s government did not make any moves towards clipping the wings of the Ministry of the Interior, which is a very brutal force in the country. And, in fact, what the Brotherhood tried to do when they were in power was that they tried to court the institutions of brute authority: They courted the military, and they courted the Ministry of the Interior. In other words, they courted the bits of Mubarak regime that were—of the Mubarak regime that were his instruments in enforcing his rule, and they tried to make them work for them. And so, what we are seeing now is we’re seeing these very instruments turn, naturally, against the Brotherhood. And I think, yeah, it’s not—it’s not surprising that we are where we are once the decision had been made to break up the Brotherhood sit-ins by force.
And also, Amy, we have—with the Ministry of the Interior, we have such a combination of willingness and a kind of natural willingness to use brute force together with inefficiency, and that is really a very, very dangerous and lethal combination. And so, for example, the fact that last night we had 38 prisoners dying in personnel carriers, prisoners who—I mean, they weren’t convicted; they were people who had been taken off the streets and were being held on remand. And they were in—they were being moved from one jail to another, and they were killed, in—while they were in the care of the Ministry of the Interior. It’s very possible that this was not intended, but that doesn’t matter, because, basically, the proclivity, the natural tendency of the Ministry of the Interior is to use force. And I think that—I think that the very important shift that has happened in this last set of incidents is that the Ministry of the Interior has moved back into central position in the state. And because what it has done now in breaking up these—breaking up the sit-ins violently and the huge numbers of people it has killed, because it has been done with the cover of the state, it’s going to be extremely difficult in the future to take it to account for having done this previously during the two-and-a-half years before that, the two-and-a-half years of the revolution. And this is partly what this is about.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring someone else into this discussion right now from Washington, D.C., Chris Toensing, executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project and editor of MERIP’s publication, Middle East Report — he co-edited the book The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt — and ask you about the U.S. role here, Chris. The front page New York Times on Saturday, "U.S. Sees Ally Holding Cards." And it’s about the close relationship the U.S. has with the generals, with the officers in Egypt right now, and talking about how much the U.S. needs the military, which the Times says is sort of—sort of handcuffing the U.S. right now, you know, with President Obama not calling what has taken place a coup, not cutting yet the $1.5 billion. Can you talk about that relationship, Chris?
CHRIS TOENSING: Sure. I think there’s a lot of truth in those reports. I mean, essentially, the U.S. is in a form of trap of its own devising, where it allies with forces in countries with autocratic governments which pledge to secure U.S. interests as the sine qua non of the alliance. And then, when these countries experience political turmoil, when the natural aspirations of the citizens of these countries for a more free and democratic country come to the fore, as today and in the last two years in Egypt, then the U.S. is in a trap of its own devising, because its rhetoric, its foreign policy rhetoric vis-à-vis the Middle East and vis-à-vis the rest of the world, is that we support freedom, we support the spread of freedom and democracy in the world, and yet it comes to conflict with what we view as our interests in the various parts of the world. And time and time again, administrations of whatever ideological stripe—liberal, conservative, neoconservative, liberal internationalist, Republican, Democrat—they choose autocracy and U.S. interests over democracy and an uncertain outcome. That is what’s happening in Egypt. And at a time like this, when the guarantor of U.S. interests in Egypt is the prime bad actor and the prime violator of what the United States proclaims to be its values and the goals of its foreign policy, then, by definition, that bad actor in Egypt holds almost all the cards, and the United States is basically reduced to wheedling totally ineffectually on the sidelines—unless the United States is willing to abandon its interests, which it has almost never proven willing to do.
AMY GOODMAN: It quotes Mattis, the former head of Central Command, saying, "We need them for the Suez Canal, we need them for the peace treaty with Israel, we need them for the overflights," — that’s Egypt allows almost no notice for U.S. planes to fly over, for example, to go to Afghanistan — "we need them for the continued fight against violent extremists who are as much of a threat to Egypt’s transition to democracy as they are to [us]," he basically said. Let me bring Sharif back into this conversation to talk about those issues, and also, Sharif, the latest news we have in Sinai, the largest killing of Egyptian forces there in many years.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right, well, this is an attack that came this morning. Twenty-four police—policemen were killed somewhere in northern Sinai. There’s been conflicting accounts from the Interior Ministry about how that happened. They first said that they came under RPG attack. They later said that the bus, the minibus that was carrying the soldiers, was stopped, and the policemen were forced to—forced out and shot on the ground. I think we’re going to have to wait and see what happens with that.
But I think I agree with a lot of what Chris was saying with regards to U.S. policy towards Egypt. There is a lot of hatred and vitriol on both sides here against the United States. I’ve never seen this kind of animosity towards the U.S., both from people who support the military, people who support the Muslim Brotherhood or Morsi, as well as revolutionaries, as well. I mean, I don’t understand what the policy is effectively trying to achieve, other than, of course, these national security objectives that the U.S. ostensibly is trying to—is trying to win over. But it—I think, in the long term, what we’ve seen time and again with the U.S. supporting Mubarak, supporting the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, supporting the Brotherhood, now supporting the military, they’re willing to work with any strong actor, the strongest actor on the ground that they think can provide some realm of stability in Egypt, so they can achieve their objectives. But if we’ve learned anything over the last two-and-a-half years, it’s that you cannot enforce stability. There has to be a political solution. But right now the regime is going for a security solution, which is not a solution, which is just driving us into a deepening spiral of violence.
AMY GOODMAN: Ahdaf Soueif, what do you think needs to be done right now?
AHDAF SOUEIF: That’s a very, very difficult question, Amy. I think that, for our part, we are sitting this one out, but are keeping—keeping a discourse out there that insists on condemning both sides, insists on valuing human life, insists on valuing human rights, and tries to keep the discourse of the revolution alive.
Now, the thing in the future is that whatever—whatever the shape of the next phase is, whoever comes to government, if they don’t actually manage to start putting the country on the road to social justice, if they don’t start putting the economy right, if they don’t start, you know, showing a bit more awareness of the great desire of the people for more social justice and for—you know, just to be able to live, to have a house, to have a job, to have education, to have healthcare, then that government is also going to fall. What will the shape of that next wave be? And is it at all likely that a government that is sponsored by the military is actually going to want to put the country on the road to social justice?
Also, people—even though at the moment people are sounding pretty—pretty fascist, pretty chauvinist, yet I think that when things shake down, it is still true that we have now arrived at a space where people in general will not tolerate being brutalized by the state. And so, again, this is something that the people will come into conflict with the government about. And I think that the revolution needs to get ready for what is to come, and perhaps to try to do what it has not succeeded at doing so far, which is to develop a vision and a discourse that appeals to people, that people can understand, and to try and reach people with it, and wait for the moment when the country is ready to turn once again.
AMY GOODMAN: You quote, in your piece in The Guardian, Ahdaf, a much-shared tweet that says, "Three of my comrades in the revolution have brothers in the MB [the Muslim Brotherhood] sit-in. What am I supposed to feel?"
AHDAF SOUEIF: Yeah, well, the thing—
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about whether there is a dialogue right now in the country on the streets. And what about that—well, the coalition a few weeks ago, which was between the military and progressives, what’s happening? Are you seeing any conversations between those in the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, other Islamists, and progressives, very concerned about what’s happening now with the military?
AHDAF SOUEIF: No, I don’t think that that is happening. In fact, at a very, very tiny level, we tried to have a discussion in our family, to two members of the family who have been—who are supporters of the Brotherhood and who were at Rabaa and who were at the Nahda sit-ins, meeting with progressive, outspoken members who are very active revolutionaries, and trying to work out some kind of areas of common agreement. And while, ultimately, everybody accepted that the other was speaking in good faith and that the other would not lie, yet their—I don’t know, the universes were very different. And so, when one of the Brotherhood supporters went and checked on a fact we had given him about seven people having been tortured by the Brotherhood in the Nahda sit-in, and he came back, and he said, yes—he had first rejected that that had ever been a possibility, and he came back and said that, "Yes, it had happened, and you were not lying. You were being truthful when you said that. However, these are the reasons why people were tortured." And so, then you say, "But there should be no justification whatever for torture." And then the conversation really stops there. And this was at a very small and personal level.
There is—I do not think that there is a dialogue really going on at the moment between the—between Brotherhood supporters and the others. It should, however, really be noted also that with the continued brutalization of the Brotherhood supporters by the police backed by the army, there are people who are not supporters who have drifted or who have gone deliberately to show solidarity. And some of these people have been killed. People who were part of—very much part of the revolution, even part of the 30th of June to get rid of Morsi as president have actually been killed by the state as they tried to show support for the Brotherhood in their time of tribulation.
And the final thing that I will say is that you said that the progressives in their coalition with the military. I think that one of the most depressing things that we’ve seen, really, has been how a strand of what one would have—what was the revolution and what was either progressive or liberal have so completely backed, endorsed, egged on the military and the police, and have completely, unrelentingly demonized the Brotherhood and Islamist currents. And I think that this is part of why the—why we’ve had an escalation of violence. It’s as if everybody’s playing out a role that is expected of them. And I think that there was a wish by some of the progressives and the liberals to actually see the Brotherhood act in the most abhorrent way possible, so that they would have been proved right in their long-standing hatred of them. And a side effect of that, of course, is the vilification of Mohamed ElBaradei for continuously urging a negotiated solution to the issues we’re facing.
AMY GOODMAN: And I asked Sharif this question, but, Ahdaf Soueif, your response to the possibility that Mubarak, the former dictator, will be released in the next, say, 48 hours, at least according to his lawyer? Were you able to hear that, Ahdaf, that Mubarak will be released? I was wondering your response. We may have lost the audio for Sharif and for Ahdaf Soueif. The IFB just dropped, so we’re going to have to leave it there. But I—let me put that question to Chris Toensing before we move on to our last segment. The significance of what this means right now, Chris Toensing?
CHRIS TOENSING: Sharif got it exactly right: It’s symbolic. Mubarak is not going to be the president of Egypt ever again. Neither will either of his sons. There is no possibility of a Mubarak political dynasty in Egypt. But what the goal of releasing Mubarak at this stage would be, would be, essentially, if you will, a big long middle finger in the face of the Egyptian people from the Egyptian deep state to say, "Right now we’re in charge, we’re calling the shots, we can do whatever we want, we can release this figure who inspired so much loathing and hatred and was the face of our hated regime for 30 years, and there’s absolutely nothing that anybody can do about it." That would be the message that would be intended by such a move. And important to recall, in that regard, that ever since Mubarak was ousted, there has been a small but vocal contingent of sort of old regime supporters who have been very adamant that Mubarak was unjustly accused, that he was the victim of a witch hunt, and they have been organizing and calling for precisely this, his release from prison and the clearing of him of all charges and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris, I want to end—
CHRIS TOENSING: So—
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end back in Cairo, because we just reconnected with them.
CHRIS TOENSING: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: Ahdaf Soueif, the question, as we wrap up this discussion, and if Sharif wants to end with any final words—Ahdaf Soueif, the question of the significance of Mubarak being released and what that means, if in fact it’s true, according to his lawyer, that he might be released within the next few days?
AHDAF SOUEIF: Yeah, I think, as Sharif said, it would be very largely symbolic. He doesn’t matter now, except as a symbol. And I agree that this would be to say everything is back to where it was, and you can’t do anything about it. And there we are. And I think, of course, that this ties in very much with the desire to bury the revolution of January 25th. But I will also say, as a comment on what Sharif was saying earlier and what he wrote in his last article, that the whole point of insisting on optimism and on seeing a way forward and not getting into despair, the whole point of that is to do that when the time is darkest. And this is where we are now.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us in Cairo, Democracy Now!'s Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and we'll link to Sharif’s pieces in The Nation at democracynow.org, and Ahdaf Soueif, the acclaimed Egyptian novelist, author of The Map of Love. Her other books most recently include Cairo: My City, Our Revolution; she also wrote the foreword for Tweets from Tahrir. And, Chris Toensing, thanks for being with us in Washington, D.C., executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project and editor of MERIP’s publication, Middle East Report.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to Madison, Wisconsin, to the publisher of The Progressive magazine. He was arrested this weekend for taking pictures of protesters in the Capitol in Madison. Stay with us.
by AlicetheKurious » Mon Aug 19, 2013 4:53 pm
by AlicetheKurious » Mon Aug 19, 2013 5:36 pm
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an Egyptian-American journalist based in Cairo. He is a correspondent for Democracy Now! and a fellow at the Nation Institute.
From a prominent Egyptian family, he grew up in Cairo, the great-grandson of the prominent actress and later turned journalist, Rose al-Youssef. His grandfather, Rose's son, was the journalist and novelist, Ihsan abd al Quoddus. He attended the British International School, and left for the United States when he was eighteen years old. Kouddous attended Duke University and obtained a degree in economics with a minor in philosophy.[1]
Kouddous worked for Bank of America as an investment banker for two years in its leveraged buyout division.[1] He worked for Democracy Now! in 2003 as a volunteer and then as a full-time producer as well as occasional correspondent and co-host. He covered several prominent events for Democracy Now! such as the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and the 2004 and 2008 Republican (RNC) and Democratic (DNC) national conventions.[2] He shot to international fame during the 2011 Egyptian popular uprising for his tweets and live reporting from Tahrir Square. His actions as a journalist during the revolution were a major feature in the 2012 documentary, In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution.[3] He has written for prominent newspapers including Foreign Policy, Al-Ahram Weekly and Al-masry Al-youm, magazines such as The Nation, and appeared on television shows including MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, The Ed Schultz Show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and on Al Jazeera English.[4] In April 2012, Kouddous was awarded the fourth annual Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. In addition to Egypt, he has reported from Syria, Gaza and Bahrain.
During the 2008 Republican National Convention Kouddous was controversially arrested in Saint Paul, Minnesota and charged with suspicion of felony riot while covering the street protests. Kouddous, with Amy Goodman and Nicole Salazar, who were also arrested during their coverage for Democracy Now!,[5] sued the St. Paul P.D.[6] and won a settlement.[7] In 2011 he moved to Egypt to cover the region as freelance journalist and as a foreign correspondent for Democracy Now! He remains a fellow of The Nation Institute.[8] Link
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