Police Storm Protest Camps; 278 Dead Across Egypt

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

Updated: Wednesday, 14 Aug 2013, 5:15 PM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 14 Aug 2013, 5:15 PM EDT

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian officials say the death toll has risen to 278 from violence that erupted when riot police shut down two encampments of supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi.

Government forces in armored vehicles, bulldozers and helicopters swept away the encampments, setting off running street battles in Cairo and other Egyptian cities.

Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-reform leader in the interim government, resigned in protest over the assaults as the military-backed leadership imposed a monthlong state of emergency and nighttime curfew.

--CLIP
It was the highest single day death toll since the 18-day uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The Health Ministry says 235 civilians were killed and more than 2,000 injured. The Interior Ministry says 43 policemen died in the assault.

Read more: http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/international/Police-storm-protest-camps-278-dead-across-Egypt_22578538

---

Thank gawd this wasn't a 'coup' right Mr. President? That would have really been tragic

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Morsi and the brotherhood were not wanted. It's horrible what's happened to Morsi supporters

but they are by far the minority in the country and were the target of the protest which began weeks ago, successfully toppling Morsi from power.

[Purveyor]

2. Maybe the US should try that next time we decide we don't look the result of our democratically

elected gov't.

Mass protests and then a military coup, eh?

[oberliner]

10. The US has mechanisms to remove unpopular leaders

Sadly, the people Egypt had no such abilities and no such recourse.

We take for granted our political system here in the US - maybe it's time we too a moment of gratitude and appreciation.

[Comrade Grumpy]

13. Of course they had recourse. It was called voting them out.

Instead, the "liberals" allied themselves with Mubarek's deep state--the army, the police, the courts, the Interior Ministry--to overthrow the democratically elected government. And now the generals are running the show again. Where's your democracy now, Tamarod?

[oberliner]

19. How could they have done that?

Morsi granted himself immunity to judicial oversight and declared the authority to pass any law that would advance the revolution. Essentially, unchecked executive powers.

Whose to say there would have been an opportunity for another election?

[daleo]

25. There's no proof that there wouldn't have been another election

This was another grave error by the west.

[oberliner]

26. How could there be?

There literally would be no way to prove something like that.

[daleo]

28. Well, don't have a coup for one whole term, then see if there's an election

That's the customary way of testing such a possibility. The onus for making that scenario impossible to prove rests on the part of the parties that overthrew the elected government.

[oberliner]

30. Well alrighty then

That approach may have also had disastrous consequences. We shall never know.

The question is - what should happen now?

[daleo]

66. The military should put the elected government back in power

Like happened in Venezuela after the attempted coup against Chavez.

[azurnoir]

3. weren't wanted by who? The Egyptan Army, Saudi Arabia, The US?

the Egyptian people elected Morsi remember?

[oberliner]

11. Were you out of town during the mass protests?

Were those not the Egyptian people?

[azurnoir]

12. yes I know but are you justifying a military coup? and the deaths there after

it seems so IMO, this would hardly be the first case of buyers remorse among voters if indeed that's what it is, however IMO that does not justify a foreign funded military coup

[oberliner]

16. Not justifying anything

Just saying that the Egyptian people seem very torn about what they want.

[azurnoir]

17. Then what was your point in the first place?

[oberliner]

20. You wrote "The Egyptian people elected Morsi"

It could also be said that "The Egyptian people rose up against Morsi" because he had seized power that was not meant to have been granted to him via that election.

[azurnoir]

21. Leaders take more power than they are initially supposed with some frequency

some say it happened here during the Bush2 years , but no military coup, sounds to me as if you're still attempting to justify a military take over

[oberliner]

24. Yes they do

Again, all I am doing is reporting on what I observed. I make no justification or value judgement whatsoever. I observed huge numbers of Egyptian people calling for Morsi to go. Did you not see these protests? They were massive. So, my conclusion is just as it can be said that the Egyptian people elected Morsi, it can also be said that the Egyptian people got rid of Morsi. The Egyptian people seem torn about the whole thing, which is concerning considering the violence that has already taken place as a result of all of this. My hope is that the violence will end and peace will prevail.

[disidoro01]

4. Post facts

I'd like to see numbers and references on this.

[Fire Walk With Me]

23. This might help, might not.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023464937#post5

Morsi was peacefully ousted. The Brotherhood began firing live weapons at peaceful protesters and are now apparently staging acts of revenge.

[daleo]

27. Peacefully ousted by the military

Which, by definition can't really be peaceful.

[cali]

63. that is categorically false

Morsi was ousted by a military coup. There is NO FUCKING credible refutation of that. Furthermore, what happened yesterday as reported by EVERY member of the press there, was wholesale slaughter. And yeah, big surprise that that violence spurred more violence. The protesters at the sit in were unarmed and they were massacred. One doesn't have to support the MB to oppose mass murder.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. How about all repliers to my above post google "morsi hamas jail" for more information.

And for any who somehow forget, this country was founded through rebellion against bullshit. Rebellion against far less bullshit currently being foisted upon us by "our own" government.

[jessie04]

6. I agree with you.

There is more to democracy than a vote... which is why the people overthrew the MB.

The MB has shown its true self by its anti-Semitism, its hatred of Coptic Christians, and its treatment of women.

[Comrade Grumpy]

14. "More to democracy than a vote..." Yeah, apparently tanks, bullets, and mass murder.

[telclaven]

65. Well, that's usually how it happens

Democracy is a revolutionary form of government. Literally. No one gives you democracy, you have to take it by force.

[shaayecanaan]

7. What a disgusting comment...

At this rate, the military will exceed the death toll of Tiananmen Square by tomorrow morning, to say nothing of the hundreds of demonstrators that the military has killed already.

And what was the demonstrator's crime? Protesting against the ouster of a democratically elected president?

It just goes to show that half the people on this website will happily clap along to a slaughter, as long as those being slaughtered are Muslims.

[Fire Walk With Me]

8. You make many ASSumptions regarding me. Place them where conjecture is encouraged. And

read my own reply regarding going out and googling "Morsi hamas jail" to see what a bright, wonderful person is Morsi.

I support no murder, no slaughter, etc. etc. etc. I am not against Muslims. You may also NOT KNOW that the muslim brotherhood ain't no purty positive group; ever research that? Or that Morsi was acting like a dictator?

Fucking Where do these people come from?

[shaayecanaan]

9. Then deplore the slaughter

and leave it at that. Don't then go on to offer supplicant, shit-eating, half-arsed justifications of said slaughter.

Whatever Morsi's flaws, the demonstrators in the streets are innocent of them. They are everyday civilians exercising their right to protest, and are being shot like dogs for their trouble. The students in Tiananmen square never had the support of the majority either. That didn't give the Chinese government the right to slaughter them.

Quasi-fascist sentiments like yours make me sick. I don't give a shit that the American media are toeing the government line on this, they always do. That doesn't relieve you of the obligation to think critically.

[David__77]

15. It doesn't matter whether or not a majority supported them.

Cheering their removal from power is right nonetheless.

And these are hardly just innocent protesters. MB were running detention and torture centers in their encampments, attacking police and suspected "informers," terrorizing religious minorities, and trying to set up an alternative government. No country would find such activities tolerable.

For weeks now, MB has been hankering for martyrdom. Under such circumstances, avoiding it would have been nearly unavoidable. Millions of Egyptians are relieved at the events occurring now.

[azurnoir]

18. wth all due respect sir

Egypt (military) restores feared secret police units

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014551670

[David__77]

22. Yeah, they suck too.

Nonetheless... lesser evil and all.

[shaayecanaan]

31. "And these are hardly just innocent protesters"

So the protestors being gunned down in their hundreds are "guilty" of something?

This is an absolutely disgusting sentiment, all the worse because it seems to be the view of the silent majority on a supposedly "progressive" website.

"and trying to set up an alternative government"

They were the fucking government. The democratically elected government.

Amazing what you can get away with when you're dealing with Muslims. Make an intemperate remark about gay people, abortion, or any other cherished bauble of the bourgeois new left and they'll tweet on their iphones till their thumbs bleed. Blow up a hundred people at an Afghan wedding or gun them down in the streets and they'll clap and cheer.

Yeh, I read the New Republic(an)
Rolling Stone and Mother Jones too
If I vote it's a Democrat
With a sensible economy view
But when it comes to terrorist Arabs
There's no one more red, white and blue

CHORUS

Once I was young and had an attitude
Stickers covered the car I drove in
Even went on some direct actions
When there weren't rent-a-cops to be seen
Ah, but now I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in

[joshcryer]

36. "and trying to set up an alternative government"

They burned government buildings, police stations, and churches. And they took to arms. In one case, in a funeral procession, caskets were found to be filled with ammunition.

When you take up arms you are irrevocably trying to set up a new system in place. You either die or get arrested and spend time in jail for taking up arms against a government or succeed in destroying it and build another in its place.

[shaayecanaan]

45. You're talking out of your arse...

you're seriously claiming that the Freedom and Justice Party was trying to set up a government as an alternative to...themselves?

[joshcryer]

50. As an alternate to the junta.

Which the current government most obviously is.

[joshcryer]

33. Yeah, Morsi supported jihad in Syria.

I frankly am not concerned to see him go, so much.

I appreciate your consistency David__77.

[yoloisalie]

39. You say it like supporting Jihad is a bad thing

Didnt you support the Jihad in Libya that turned that secular African country into an Islamic state?

[joshcryer]

49. Nope.

But it's nice to see another stalker is back.

[joshcryer]

32. They are not the minority.

They were the silent majority and it took the leftists by surprise. It sucks but that's how it is.

Morsi did, however, overreach and cause a situation that was easily rectified by simply acknowledging the left element rather than suspending everything and taking dictatorial powers.

[Scootaloo]

29. Well, as FWWM, Oberliner, Jessie04, and David_77 are telling us...

They're just Arabs, so who cares?

[joshcryer]

34. What a nasty characterization of their positions.

Shameful.

[jessie04]

35. Wrong interpretation.

We are for all Arabs and all people's to live a democracy that respects all human rights...including the respect for the rule of law, protecting minorities like the Christian Copts and respecting women's rights.

It appears WE stand with the vast majority freedom loving Arabs.

Does Morsi actions not bother inn anyway?

[shaayecanaan]

42. Unless they vote for Islamic parties

in which case, its time to gun the fuckers down, right?

[Scootaloo]

46. I'm sorry, you can't use "human rights" to justify mass murder

Which seems to be your MO - not that you're unique on DU. No, there's a whole cadre of fucks who try to commandeer and exploit women, GLBT people, Jews and assorted religious minorities, in order to make the case for the murder and oppression of Muslims and Arabs.

It's not working anymore, I suggest you stop trying

[jessie04]

57. Wow

" there's a whole cadre of fucks who try to commandeer and exploit women, GLBT people, Jews and assorted religious minorities, in order to make the case for the murder and oppression of Muslims and Arabs. "

show me.

[oberliner]

37. Disgusting comment

I hope it stands so that people can really see where you are coming from.

[Scootaloo]

43. So do I

Because I'm coming from a place where I'm fucking fed up with the consistency with which I can read a thread about hundreds of Arab civilians being gunned down, and find you glad-handing the people with the guns and telling everyone, "oh, it's not a big deal, because..."

Your response to hundreds of people being killed in Cairo today is to talk about how the US should be happy we have an impeachment process. Even if I didn't know you, and could afford to give you some benefit of the doubt, that's just a fucking callous approach on your part. However, I DO know you, and see no reason to make such an extension towards you.

[shaayecanaan]

44. You don't even have the guts to state your own views with any conviction...

you just make dog-whistle posts and then after you get challenged claim that you don't hold any views at all and are simply "stating facts".

You have no idea how much fickle, pseudo-liberal gutless wonders like yourself play into the hands of radical preachers distributing their mix tapes across the middle East. Right now they are telling all their supporters: "so much for democracy, win power in free and fair elections and get gunned down in the street by a pro-Western coup for your trouble. Those benevolent western liberals wax lyrical about human rights, but not for you."

[David__77]

38. That's such an infantile assertion.

There's not a hint of racism in play here. The election of MB was not some victory for Arab aspirations or freedom. It was actually an outgrowth of manipulation by the West, convincing Muslim people that Islamism (not Islam the religion) represents a liberation movement. It's a blind alley.

I care very much for the people of the Middle East (Arab and non-Arab). They deserve self-determination, peace, and development.

[Scootaloo]

40. But in the meantime, they're being gunned down in the streets and you don't seem to mind

You call it "cheering their removal," which I suppose is just as accurate a phrasing as anything I could stay about the attitude you show here.

You say "there's not a hint of racism in play here"? Right, so you accept this sort of thing on general principle? People unhappy with the government, so the military takes over and turns their guns on the people? No special consideration for this being Egypt? So I can assume that if tomorrow, the Russian military captured Vladimir Putin, most of his cabinet, and declared themselves the new government of Russia (ala Yeltsin) you'd be as blase? That if protestors eallied for the United Eussia party, and were gunned down in the streets of Moscow, your response would be to "cheer the removal" and pedantically remind everyone that Putin had a habit of reaching past his authority?

What about Xi Jinping? There's something you could get behind right, a military coup in China, and the mass murder of protestors in the streets of Beijing?

Half of our own nation fucking hates obama. I mean like literal, angry, raging hate, and out of the remaining half, there's apparently 20% that are pretty angry with him as well. So you'd have no problem with the military deposing Obama, and then turnign their guns on the 40% of hte nation that still stands by him? Would you have supported this move against Bush?

After all, if you're not making a special exception for Egypt here, we have to assume this is what you're going with.

[shaayecanaan]

47. I'm sure that he supports white people being gunned down in the streets all the time...

there is not a hint of racism here, no no no, there is never a hint of racism here...

[Scootaloo]

48. Like David Brooks, he's "just being realistic" I suppose

[joshcryer]

52. I don't think that's fair. The west understimated the MB.

The west thought Mubarak's fictionalization of the MB was going to keep them in disarray, not unite so quickly and so flawlessly. The west probably didn't realize that all of those fake MB parties (parties pretending to not be MB but actually under the MB umbrella) would unite. The elections were swift and unambiguous and the activists who got Mubarak to resign were left pondering wtf happened. They spent too much time being activists and not enough time being political (not that you can't be both but once Mubarak stepped down there should've been a severe shift of priorities).

Now that the junta is in place the secular activists have had a reality check.

[David__77]

53. It's just chickens coming home to roost.

The US did not tactically support MB in 2011, that is true. But it has been strategically undergirding it for more than three decades through its actions. And not just the MB, but a whole collection of Islamist organizations and ideologies. Somewhere along the line, the dedication to the enlightenment worldview went out the window. Cold War politicking and all...

[joshcryer]

54. I loathe the Turkey approach though.

It seems really there's no real way out without having moral and ethical dilemmas. I think the US played a less Turkey-style hand (Truman Doctrine) because the world hates it when the US meddles so directly and unambiguously. And I think the US security culture thinks they have it all figured out and can just throw a bit of money here or there and get people on the ground to act on the behalf of the US's interests.

If only Morsi feigned inclusiveness...

[shaayecanaan]

41. Its a sign of the times me old mate...

the Muslims have replaced the Communists as the number one fashionably bashable choice of the Right and their faux-left quislings.

Or as someone put it:-

The reason why the EDL's adoption of Islamophobia is particularly significant is that unlike the 1970s, when the National Front was embracing antisemitism, there are now sections of the media and the British establishment that are relatively sympathetic towards Islamophobia. It is not difficult to look through the media and find quite hostile views towards Islam and Muslims. That is fundamentally different to the 1970s, when very few newspapers or politicians were endorsing the NF's antisemitic message

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Defence_League#cite_note-121

[David__77]

55. Who's bashing Muslims?

Sisi is a Muslim, Morsi is a Muslim. This isn't about Islam, but perhaps about Islamism, which is very different. Similarly, people criticizing Jerry Falwell aren't "anti-Christian."

[shaayecanaan]

61. i dont think that sisi is anti-muslim

I think that he would happily shoot a Christian or Jew as readily as he would kill a Muslim. Whereas you, on the other hand, would prefer that he keep killing Muslims.

[mwrguy]

51. Oakland PD is jealous

[ConcernedCanuk]

56. I must have missed something, I thought it was just a peaceful "sit-in"

.
.
.

CC

[Ash_F]

58. Some people wanted 2nd amendment remedies for Obama's election too. /nt

[oberliner]

60. And many called for Bush to be impeached

Sadly, that went nowhere.

[oberliner]

59. Death Toll in Egypt Violence Rises to 525

Egyptian authorities on Thursday significantly raised the death toll from clashes the previous day between police and supporters of the ousted Islamist president, saying more than 500 people died and laying bare the extent of the violence that swept much of the country and prompted the government to declare a nationwide state of emergency and a nighttime curfew.

The death toll, which stood at 525, according to the latest Health Ministry figures, makes Wednesday by far the deadliest day since the 2011 popular uprising that toppled longtime ruler and autocrat Hosni Mubarak — a grim milestone that does not bode well for the future of a nation roiled in turmoil and divisions for the past 2 ½ years.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hundreds-reported-killed-egypt-smashes-protests-19964410

Most likely this will go even higher. Grim indeed. Seen some pictures online that are absolutely horrific.

[shaayecanaan]

62. An AFP reporter counted at least 124 bodies in one set of morgues at one camp at one time

Based on that, the death toll would have to be higher than 500.

[oberliner]

64. The numbers keep climbing sadly

I also fear things are going to get worse before they get better.