Posted on 08/18/2013 7:09:13 PM PDT by lbryce
The Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces had killed 36 Islamists in its custody Sunday, as the military leaders and the countrys Islamists vowed to keep up their fight over Egypts future.
The news of the deaths came on a day in which there appeared to be a pause in the street battles that have claimed more than 1,000 lives in recent days, most of them Islamists and their supporters gunned down by security forces. The Islamists took measures on Sunday to avoid confrontations, including canceling several protests of the militarys ouster of a democratically elected Islamist-led government.
While confirming the killings of the detainees on Sunday, the Ministry of the Interior said the deaths were the consequence of an escape attempt by Islamist prisoners. But officials of the main Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, described the deaths as assassinations, and claimed that the victims, which it said numbered 52, had been shot and tear-gassed through the windows of a locked prison van.
The government offered conflicting details throughout the day, once saying the detainees had suffocated to death in the van from tear gas to suppress an escape attempt, but later insisting that the Islamists died in a prison where they were taken.
In either case, the deaths were the fourth mass killing of civilians since the military took control on July 3, but the first time those killed were in government custody at the time.
The Islamists, followers of the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, have vowed to continue their protests, both against the militarys ouster of President Mohamed Morsi and the violence of recent days that started with the bloody crackdown on Brotherhood sit-ins that left hundreds dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“But in almost every protest that I witnessed, there was a curious group that didn’t seem to fit into the police or the protestors. Armed thugs attacking either side, and providing both with an excuse to say the other attacked first.”
250 years ago, it was "the black hole of calcutta" that the press created.
This year, it's "the gas hole of Cairo".
What is funny is that the Left thinks we care!
I wonder what Janet Reno would say about that.
The representation of Egypt in the Western media is completely wrong
http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/
“Well, it was the right result as it turned out: the one that wasn’t followed by violence or accusations of fraud (though I wouldn’t struggle to believe them). So there were some wild promises. Apparently, President Morsi would fix the security problems, provide affordable food, reduce the dreadful traffic, and clean the streets of rubbish, all within the first 100 days!”
It’s nice to see we are not the only ones who are stupid when is comes to politicians. :-)
BTW Thanks for this.
Walter Russell Mead Alert!!
Bambi Meets Godzilla In The Middle East
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/08/18/bambi-meets-godzilla-in-the-middle-east/
President Obama has had a rude awakening in the Middle East. The region he thought existed was an illusion built on American progressive assumptions about the way the world works. In the dream Middle East, democracy at least of a sort was just around the corner. Moderate Islamists would engage with the democratic process, and the experience would lead them to ever more moderate behavior. If America got itself on the right side of history, and supported this hopeful development, both Americas values and its interests would be served. Our relationships with the peoples of the Middle East would improve as they saw Washington supporting the emergence of democracy in the region, and Al Qaeda and the other violent groups would lose influence as moderate Islamist parties guided their countries to prosperity and democracy.
(Snip)
Unfortunately, much of our political and policy class, both on the left and the right, shares an unfounded confidence that liberal capitalism is going to triumph tomorrow. They are the secular, liberal counterparts of Christian fundamentalists waiting for the Rapture, a near-magical translation to a better world. This is what most American policy makers believed about Russia in the heady years after the Soviet collapse. President George W. Bush bet the ranch on the imminent democratization of the Middle East. So did President Obama.
(Snip)
What Americans often miss is that while democratic liberal capitalism may be where humanity is heading, not everybody is going to get there tomorrow. This is not simply because some leaders selfishly seek their own power or because evil ideologies take root in unhappy lands. It is also because while liberal capitalist democracy may well be the best way to order human societies from an abstract point of view, not every human society is ready and able to walk that road now. Some arent ready because like Haiti they face such crippling problems that having a government, any government, that effectively enforces the law and provides basic services across the country is beyond their grasp. Some arent ready because religious or ethnic tensions would rip a particular country apart and cause civil war. Some arent ready because the gap between the values, social structures and culture of a particular society make various aspects of liberal capitalism either distasteful or impractical. In many places, the fact that liberal democratic capitalism is historically associated with western imperialism and arrogance has poisoned the well. People simply do not believe that this foreign system will work for them, and they blame many of the problems they face on the countries in Europe and North America who so loudly proclaim the superiority of a system that many people in the global South feel has victimized them.
(Snip)
Here is the permalink to that article.
The representation of Egypt in the Western media is completely wrong
http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-representation-of-egypt-in-western.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.