Daily Archives: July 18, 2013
Killing in Cairo: the full story of the Republican Guards’ club shootings | World news | guardian.co.uk
Killing in Cairo: the full story of the Republican Guards’ club shootings <The story from perspective of reporter and people he spoke with. He was not there and videos could not capture all that happened – that said, it may or may not be fully accurate>
In the early hours of 8 July 2013, 51 Muslim Brotherhood supporters camped outside the Republican Guards’ club in Cairo were killed by security forces. The Egyptian military claimed the demonstrators had attempted to break into the building with the aid of armed motorcyclists.
After examining video evidence and interviewing with eyewitnesses, medics and demonstrators Patrick Kingsley finds a different story – a coordinated assault on largely peaceful civilians. ‘If they’d just wanted to break the sit-in, they could have done it in other ways. But they wanted to kill us,’ a survivor says
Kirkpatrick and the Myth of Egypt’s “Liberals”
Send this to the New York Times
If you would like to read a perfect example of a monochromic simplification of the complex Egyptian political scene, take a look at David Kirkpatrick’s piece in the New York Times: Egyptian Liberals Embrace the Military, Brooking No Dissent.
His opening paragraph begins with, “In the square where liberals and Islamists once chanted together for democracy, demonstrators now carry posters hailing as a national hero the general who ousted the country’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Like many western analysts, Kirkpatrick has redefined the various shades of non-Islamism in Egypt as liberalism. It has become a lazy way to lump together anyone with the slightest unease about the Muslim Brotherhood’s failed policy within one broad, simple definition. In a rather absurd way it labels in one big condescending swoop both ex-regime supporters and army supporters as “liberals.”
He continued by saying, “Liberal…
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Plans to test 5-year-olds is not the coalition’s worst policy – but it’s their stupidest
Spot on!
(not satire – it’s UK education today)
Have any government ministers ever actually spoken to a 4-year-old child?
Because formally testing children at that age has got to be the stupidest idea the coalition has come up with yet.
This is what a formal test of a 4-year-old is likely to look like:
EXAMINER: Hello, what’s your name?
4-YEAR-OLD: Tom.
EXAMINER: Hello, Tom. And what’s your surname?
4-YEAR-OLD: I like sausages. Do you think we’re going to have sausages for tea today?
EXAMINER: Erm, I don’t know. Your surname?
4-YEAR-OLD: Trump.
EXAMINER: Trump’s your surname?
4-YEAR-OLD: He he he …. (blowing raspberries and laughing hysterically) … that’s what a trump sounds like.
EXAMINER: Right. OK. Well maybe we can forget the surname. Let’s have a look at these shapes and can you tell me which one is the square?
4-YEAR-OLD: (without moving) Yes.
EXAMINER: Can you show me by pointing?
4-YEAR-OLD:…
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Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News 