Today the violence and killing in Egypt has continued in similar fashion to that of yesterday. The reports (for what they’re worth) are that the death toll is now over 500.
Here are some photos; I find that often the British newspapers are better for that sort of thing than our MSM is.
As for truth—well, here are some excerpts that might help you decide where it lies:
This is the horrifying moment an armoured police vehicle was pushed off a bridge by Egyptian protestors in a day of violence which left at least 343 people dead.
The van plunged off the 6th October Bridge before demonstrators attacked the wreckage yesterday. It is not known how many people were on board and how many people survived the fall, but bloodied men were seen lying around the van moments afterwards…
Witnesses said many of those killed were hit by snipers on surrounding rooftops. Heavily-armed police and troops reportedly opened fire with machine guns on thousands of demonstrators, including women and children…
The Muslim Brotherhood claimed over 2,000 people had been killed and thousands wounded in eight hours of continuous firing while Egyptian authorities said Mr Morsi’s supporters opened fire on security forces.
The exact death toll could not be confirmed but an AFP reporter counted at least 124 bodies in three separate locations around the camp in the capital, with many appearing to have died from gunshot wounds…
In a statement, the Brotherhood said: ‘The world cannot sit back and watch while innocent men, women and children are being indiscriminately slaughtered. The world must stand up to the military junta’s crime before it is too late.’…
Video footage from a camera on board an Army helicopter was released by officials who said it showed protesters firing on security forces.
Live TV footage on several channels appeared to show hooded Brotherhood gunmen brandishing what appeared to be small automatic rifles and firing them in the direction of security forces.
I trust neither side to report honestly on this. The Muslim Brotherhood (the “protest” side) in particular are highly motivated to provoke the violence and then use it for anti-government propaganda, in time-honored fashion. The government is hardly angelic, either. And the press is either clueless (sometimes for understandable “fog of war” reasons) and/or biased and part of the propaganda.
And photos? They each capture a moment in time, and show us the picture of what happened at that moment, but not what caused it or why or even in most cases who. Interesting but ultimately useless—except, again for propaganda.
And then there’s our own government:
The United States lead urgent calls for restraint warning that “the world is watching.”
Ah—“the world is watching.” For those who remember the 60s, like me, that should bring back memories. The man who said that to Egypt is named Josh Earnest, and he is a White House spokesman and deputy to Jay Carney. Earnest is too young (born in 1975) to remember the famous quote himself, but it occurred during the 1968 demonstrations and was shouted by antiwar protestors outside the Democratic Convention as they provoked police violence against them (not shooting or deaths, however) and the Chicago police willingly obliged by providing the press with the visuals, which were aired on TV in real time.
I have written about those 1968 Chicago demonstrations at some length here; you can also read up on their many complexities (of which we young people watching at the time were largely unaware) here. Suffice to say that in Chicago, the protest leaders (not necessarily the rank and file) purposely wanted to spark a violent police reaction and use it as propaganda. And so it came to pass.
In Egypt, they play for higher stakes. And although the whole world is watching, I’m not sure the world is caring all that much anymore, or at the very least the whole world hasn’t a clue what to do about it, if anything.
Remarks such as this one (from the earnest Mr. Earnest again, speaking for the White House) are almost laughable, although I suppose they must be uttered anyway:
We urge the government of Egypt and all parties in Egypt to refrain from violence and resolve their differences peacefully.
There are forces on the march in Egypt that are not going to become Quakers overnight, whatever we might say. Perhaps all this would have happened anyway without Obama’s intervention and encouragement of the toppling of Mubarak, but one wonders. And Obama cannot possibly say this was an unforeseeable result of getting rid of a strongman who held such forces in check; it was entirely foreseeable, and Obama has consistently supported a process that would predictably lead to it.
[ADDENDUM: Obama says, “We don’t take sides.”
Yeah, like when Mubarak was under threat?]