My printed paper:
"Protests spread against Mubarak" by Sherine Bayoumi and Leila Fadel, Washington Post, January 26, 2011
CAIRO - In the largest protest in Egypt in years, thousands of anti-government demonstratorscalled Tuesday for the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, a cry inspired by the fall of an Arab dictator in Tunisia.
Also see: Tunisian Trickle (and related links).
By late Tuesday, about 15,000 protesters were encamped in Cairo's Tahrir Square, saying they had no plans to leave, as supporters brought blankets, food and water to sustain them. Among their demands, posted online and circulated by activists on Twitter, was a call for Mubarak's immediate "abdication of power."
According to the Associated Press, a large security force moved in about 1 a.m. Wednesday, arresting people, beating some, chasing others into side streets and filling the square with clouds of tear gas in an effort to clear it of protesters.
Many of the demonstrators said they were publicly denouncing Mubarak's rule for the first time, inspired by the images of young people in Tunisia effecting change in a region where most Arab countries are led by autocratic rulers and freedom of speech is limited....
But these guys are ALL our ALLIES!
The day's protests began downtown and spread to the port city of Alexandria and on to the northeastern city of Suez, where violent clashes with police left two demonstrators dead. A police officer was killed in Cairo, where Arabic satellite news channels broadcast images of police dragging demonstrators through the streets.
For much of the day, Egyptian authorities had demonstrated unusual tolerance in allowing the demonstrations to take place. Organizers said they were seeking to emulate the events in Tunisia, where a popular revolt over unemployment, lack of opportunity and hopelessness in young people ended the rule of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Similar discontent has long pervaded Egypt, a country of about 86 million, where a small, wealthy elite has thrived under the autocratic government headed by Mubarak since 1981, but where nearly half the population lives at or under the U.N. poverty line.
The mood turned sour in Cairo late Tuesday when demonstrators clashed with police outside the Egyptian Museum, throwing rocks and bringing down a police kiosk before backing away with appeals for nonviolence.
Yes, violence only discredits the movement (cui bono?).
Later, police attacked the crowd with water cannons and tear gas and, in some cases, beat protesters after demonstrators hurled stones, the Associated Press reported.
If you keep reading you will find it was not only protesters throwing rocks.
Apart from Mubarak's ouster, the demonstrators called for the removal of the government headed by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and the disbanding of Egypt's parliament.
These CIA-inspired coups are getting out of control.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Egypt's government, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, is stable despite the protests. She urged the government and protesters to avoid violence.
Lies and hypocrisy all in one sentence.
Egyptian security authorities have a reputation for heavy-handedness that is a source of simmering anger among Egyptians. It was not clear Tuesday night whether the authorities would permit the demonstrators to remain in Tahrir Square, a large downtown plaza whose name means "liberation" in Arabic.
The protest started off small in downtown Cairo with a few hundred activists who had heard about it through social-networking sites....
The demonstrations in Egypt are the latest and largest in the Arab world to follow the fall of Tunisia's government. Other protests have occurred in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan, and they have included repeated cases in which demonstrators set themselves afire...
That, too, is violence. Please don't do that.
Notice that the reporting on the protests in those three nations has been near non-existent in the AmeriKan media?
Regime change not part of the agenda-pushing plan for them?
Also see: Yemen Yakety Yak
Middle East Elections
Africa On Edge
More evasion, 'eh?
In her public appearance in Washington on Tuesday, Clinton acknowledged that Egypt, "like many countries in the region," has been experiencing demonstrations.
"We support the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people, and we urge that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from violence," she said. "But our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.''
She's still backing Mubarak -- meaning the plan has gotten out of control.
And because of the shell game I forgot to grab the link.
Oh well.
What you webbers received:
"Antigovernment protesters, police clash in Cairo; Thousands call for resignation of Mubarak" by Kareem Fahim and Mona El-Naggar, New York Times / January 26, 2011
CAIRO — Thousands of people demanding an end to the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak filled the streets of several Egyptian cities yesterday, in an unusually large and sometimes violent burst of civil unrest that appeared to threaten the stability of a crucial Arab ally of the United States.
The protests, at least partly inspired by the toppling of the authoritarian government in Tunisia, began small but grew all day, with protesters occupying one of Cairo’s central squares. Security forces, which normally prevent major public displays of dissent, initially struggled to suppress the demonstrations.
But early this morning, firing rubber bullets, tear gas, and concussion grenades, the police finally drove groups of demonstrators from the square, as the sit-in was transformed into a spreading battle involving thousands of people and little restraint. Plainclothes officers beat several demonstrators, and protesters flipped over a police car and set it on fire.
Protests also flared in Alexandria, Suez, Mansura, and Beni Suef. There were reports of three deaths and many injuries.
Photographers in Alexandria documented people tearing up a large portrait of Mubarak. A video posted on the Internet of demonstrations in Mahalla el-Kubra showed the same, while a crowd snapped cellphone photos and cheered. The acts — rare, and bold here — underscored the anger coursing through the protests and the challenge they might pose to the aging and ailing Egyptian leader.
Related: Odds and Ends of Egypt
Several observers said the protests represented the largest display of popular dissatisfaction with the government in recent memory, perhaps since 1977, when people across Egypt protested the elimination of subsidies for food and other basic goods.
It was not clear whether the size and intensity of the demonstrations — which seemed to shock even the protesters — would or could be sustained.
The government quickly placed blame for the protests on the country’s largest opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is tolerated but officially banned. In a statement, the Interior Ministry said the protests were the work of “instigators’’ led by the Muslim Brotherhood, while the Islamic movement declared that it had little to do with them.
The reality that emerged from interviews with protesters — many of whom said they were independents — was more complicated and reflected one of the Egyptian government’s deepest fears: that the opposition to Mubarak’s rule now spreads across ideological lines and includes many people angered by corruption and economic hardship as well as secular and Islamist opponents. That broad base of support could make it harder for the government to co-opt or crush those demanding change.
“The big, grand ideological narratives were not seen today,’’ said Amr Hamzawy, research director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. “This was not about ‘Islam is the solution’ or anything else.’’
Remember, dumb newspaper readers out here in the sticks of New England are reading none of this in their newspaper.
*****************
There were mixed signals about how the authorities planned to handle the unrest.
Along with the MIXED MESSAGES provided by my selective mouthpiece media.
Related: CIA TO TOPPLE MUBARAK AND SPLIT UP EGYPT?
The use of the Muslim Brotherhood by MI6 and the CIA in Egypt, Syria, and Iran
I'm really starting to wonder because I never saw mention of the Brotherhood in print.
In contrast with other recent political demonstrations in Cairo, thousands of security officers seemed content at times to contain rather than engage the protesters — especially when it became clear that the demonstrators would not retreat from Tahrir Square. In a statement, the Interior Ministry said its policy had been “securing and not confronting these gatherings.’’
But there were signs of other containment tactics: Several times, cellphone networks appeared to be blocked or otherwise unavailable for people calling from Tahrir — or Liberation — Square. Many had trouble accessing Twitter, the social networking tool that helped spread news of the protests.
That makes me suspicious because of how Twitter was used against Iran.
Twitter confirmed that its site had been blocked in Egypt, Reuters reported. For much of the day, state television made no mention of the demonstrations....
I wouldn't know about my state news take because I never watch television news anymore.
--more--"
Related:
"Egyptians denounce Mubarak, clash with riot police" by Hamza Hendawi Associated Press / January 25, 2011
CAIRO—Egyptian police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and beat protesters to clear thousands of people from a central Cairo square Wednesday after the biggest demonstrations in years against President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian rule.
Two protesters and a police officer were killed in the nationwide demonstrations inspired by Tunisia's uprising, which also demanded a solution to Egypt's grinding poverty and were likely to fuel growing dissent in a presidential election year.
Mobilized largely on the Internet, the waves of protesters filled Cairo's central Tahrir -- or Liberation -- Square on Tuesday, some hurling rocks and climbing atop armored police trucks.
"Down with Hosni Mubarak, down with the tyrant," chanted the crowds. "We don't want you!" they screamed as thousands of riot police deployed in a massive security operation that failed to quell the protests.
As night fell, thousands of demonstrators stood their ground for what they vowed would be an all-night sit-in in Tahrir Square just steps away from parliament and other government buildings -- blocking the streets and setting the stage for even more dramatic confrontations.
A large security force moved in around 1 a.m. Wednesday, arresting people, chasing others into side streets and filling the square with clouds of tear gas. Protesters collapsed on the ground with breathing problems amid the heavy volleys of tear gas.
The sound of what appeared to be automatic weapons fire could be heard as riot police and plainclothes officers chased several hundred protesters who scrambled onto the main road along the Nile in downtown Cairo. Some 20 officers were seen brutally beating one protester with truncheons.
"It got broken up ugly with everything, shooting, water cannon and (police) running with the sticks," said Gigi Ibrahim, who was among the last protesters to leave the square. "It was a field of tear gas. The square emptied out so fast."
Ibrahim said she was hit in her back with something that felt like a rock. "Some people were hit in their faces."
Some protesters turned violent amid the crackdown. They knocked down an empty white police booth and dragged it for several yards before setting it on fire, chanting that they want to oust the regime. A police pickup truck was overturned and set ablaze behind the famed Egyptian Museum. Protesters also set fire to a metal barricade and blocked traffic on a major bridge over the Nile.
Police at the bridge fired tear gas and protesters mounted a charge, forcing officers to retreat, though they quickly regrouped. Two protesters with bleeding head wounds were carried off in ambulances.
Well after midnight, the smell of tear gas drifted throughout central Cairo and riot police remained deployed in large numbers. Tahrir Square looked like a battlefield covered with rocks and debris. The gates of the ruling party headquarters near the square were smashed.
Scattered groups of protesters were holding out in several areas. Many were chased by police vehicles into the Shubra neighborhood, where the streets were strewn with rocks in a sign of a heavy confrontation.
Discontent with life in Egypt's authoritarian police state has simmered under the surface for years. However, it is Tunisia's popular uprising, which forced that nation's autocratic ruler from power, that appears to have pushed young Egyptians into the streets, many for the first time.
"This is the first time I am protesting, but we have been a cowardly nation. We have to finally say no," said Ismail Syed, a hotel worker who struggles to live on a salary of $50 a month.
"We want to see change, just like in Tunisia," said 24-year-old Lamia Rayan.
Dubbed a "day of revolution against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment," Tuesday's protests in cities across Egypt began peacefully, with police at first showing unusual restraint in what appeared to be a calculated strategy to avoid further sullying the image of a security apparatus widely criticized as corrupt and violent.
With discontent growing over economic woes and the toppling of Tunisia's president resonating in the region, it was an acknowledgment of the need to tread softly by an Egyptian government that normally responds with swift retribution to any dissent.
But as crowds filled Tahrir Square -- waving Egyptian and Tunisian flags and adopting the same protest chants that rang out in the streets of Tunis -- security personnel changed tactics and the protest turned violent.
At one point, demonstrators attacked a water cannon truck, opening the driver's door and forcing the man out of the vehicle. As protesters hurled rocks and dragged metal barricades, officers beat them back with batons.
Protesters emerged stumbling amid clouds of acrid tear gas, coughing and covering their faces with scarves. Some had blood streaming down their faces. One man fainted. Police dragged some away and clubbed a journalist, smashing her glasses and seizing her camera.
The sight of officers beating demonstrators had particular resonance because Tuesday was a national holiday honoring the much-feared police.
Like the Tunisian protests, the calls to rally in Egypt went out on Facebook and Twitter, with 90,000 people voicing their support. Throughout the day organizers used Twitter to give minute-by-minute instructions about where to gather in an attempt to outmaneuver the police, until the government blocked it in the late afternoon....
Nearly half of Egypt's 80 million people live under or just above the poverty line, set by the U.N. at $2 a day. The widespread poverty, high unemployment and rising food prices pose a threat to Mubarak's regime at a time when tensions between Muslims and Christians are adding to the nation's woes....
I think they are on the same side on this one.
Adding to the uncertainty is that Mubarak, 82 and ailing, has yet to say whether he plans to run for another six-year term in office.
Actually, one of my links above said he was; however, who is counting AmeriKan media lies anymore?
Mubarak has not appointed a deputy since he became president in 1981 and is widely thought to be grooming his son Gamal to succeed him....
Related: Egypt president's son, family flee to Britain
I guess the old guard won.
Have not seen a word of the escape in print, either.
Why am I even bothering to buy a Boston Globe anymore?
In another parallel with Tunisia, the protests drew energy from the death of a single young man: a young Egyptian named Khaled Said whose family and witnesses say was beaten to death by two policemen in Alexandria last year. His slaying has become a rallying point for Egypt's opposition.
See: Egyptian Cops
Tunisia's protests were also sparked by a single death, that of a poor Tunisian vegetable vendor who set himself on fire to protest corruption. That act has been copied by at least six people in Egypt....
Please do not burn yourselves.
Some passers-by dismissed the protests, saying a few thousand of Cairo's 18 million people coming out on the streets was not nearly enough to force change.
"This is all just a waste of time," said Ali Mustafa Ibrahim, who works at a cigarette stand. "These are a bunch of kids playing cat and mouse. ... It's just going to create more problems and more traffic in the city."
At least SOMEONE is OUT THERE!
Among the protesters in Cairo was Alaa al-Aswany, author of the best-selling "Yacoubian Building," which portrays corrupt politicians, police brutality and terrorism in Egypt.
A keen observer of Egyptian society, al-Aswany said the demonstrations were an important opening for the government's opponents.
"They broke the barrier of fear," he said. "The writers of the regime were saying Egypt is not Tunisia and Egyptians are less educated than Tunisians. But here is the thing: these young people proved they can take their rights forcefully."
Setting an example for 'murkn kids?
--more--"
Let's stay with AP since they appear in my printed paper the next day:
"Egypt's protests enter 2nd day, ominous for regime" by Hamza Hendawi Associated Press / January 26, 2011
Appearing as print the morning of January 27 out here.
CAIRO—Thousands of Egyptians vented their rage against President Hosni Mubarak's autocratic government in a second day of protests Wednesday that defied a ban on public gatherings. Baton-wielding police responded with tear gas and beatings in a crackdown that showed zero tolerance for dissent.
Now I expect the U.S. government to be forcefully out in front with condemnations like what happened in Iran.
Egypt's largest anti-government protests in years echoed the uprising in Tunisia, threatening to destabilize the leadership of the most important U.S. ally in the Arab world. The ability of the protesters to sustain the momentum for two days in the face of such a heavy-handed police response was a rare feat in this country.
One protester and a policeman were killed Wednesday, bringing the two-day death toll to six.
Remarkable when you think about it.
Some 860 people have been rounded up, and Facebook, Twitter and cell phones -- key to organizing protests -- have been disrupted.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Egypt to adopt broad reforms and not crack down on the anti-government crowds. She urged the Mubarak regime to "take this opportunity to implement political, economic and social reforms that will answer the legitimate interests of the Egyptian people."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
After over 30 years of support for Mubarak and his oppression the U.S. finally cares about the Egyptian people?
Still, there was no indication that Mubarak, who has ruled with an iron fist for nearly 30 years, intends to relinquish power or make democratic or economic concessions, and no sign he would rein in his security forces.
The defiant demonstrations continued late into the night. In Cairo, dozens of riot police with helmets and shields charged more than 2,000 marchers on a downtown boulevard along the Nile. Smaller clashes broke out across the capital. In one, protesters stoned police, who responded with a volley of tear gas from a bridge over the Nile.
One protester, businessman Said Abdel-Motalib, called the civil unrest "a red light to the regime. This is a warning."
In cities across Egypt, protesters incensed by Egypt's grinding poverty, rising prices and high unemployment hurled rocks and firebombs at police and smashed the windows of military vehicles.
The Interior Ministry warned Wednesday that police would not tolerate any gatherings, and thousands of security forces were out on the streets poised to move quickly against any unrest. Many were plainclothes officers whose leather jackets and casual sweat shirts allowed them to blend in easily with protesters.
We call them AGENT PROVOCATEURS in this part of the world.
Now you know where the VIOLENCE is coming from.
Thousands of policemen in riot gear and backed by armored vehicles also took up posts in Cairo, on bridges across the Nile, at major intersections and squares, as well as outside key installations, including the state TV building and the headquarters of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.
Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of several hundred activists on a main thoroughfare, chasing them through side streets as both sides pelted each other with rocks while hundreds of onlookers watched. Plainclothes officers shoved some into waiting vans, slapping them in the face....
Then the COPS were THROWING THEM, too!
The latest unrest follows repeated public outcries in recent months over police brutality, food prices, corruption and, more recently, sectarian strife between Christians and Muslims.
I think we just found something that will bring them together.
Parliamentary elections in November were widely decried as fraudulent, rigged to allow candidates from Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party to win all but a small fraction of the chamber's 318 seats....
There is speculation the 82-year-old Mubarak, who recently experienced serious health problems, may be setting his son Gamal up for hereditary succession....
Where print cut it, and I begin to wonder why the escape has not been reported.
There is considerable public opposition to a father-son succession and, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic memos, such a scenario does not meet with the approval of the powerful military.
Translation: the military has taken over the country. Mubarak is a figurehead, and that is why the kid fled.
Still, the regime's tight hold on power has made it virtually impossible for any serious alternative to Mubarak to emerge....
A persistent rumor that Mubarak's family has fled the country was denied Wednesday as "baseless" by a senior ruling party official.
Then it must be true.
However, the fact that such a rumor found legs speaks to the widely held perception that Mubarak could follow the example of Tunisia's longtime authoritarian ruler, who fled the country with his family in the face of that country's popular uprising.
We have newspapers for such things here in AmeriKa.
While that is unlikely, failure to rein in the unrest could tempt the military to intervene to take charge of the streets and restore order, or even realign the political order and put forward one if its own as a presidential candidate.
I think we are seeing that now.
Amr Moussa, the outspoken head of the Arab League once seen as a viable successor to Mubarak, painted a picture of an Arab world that is in turmoil when asked about events in Egypt.
Related: ElBaradei says time for Egypt leader Mubarak to go
Also see: Egypt: The More Things Change....
Not the guy the PTB want.
"The Arab citizen is angry, is frustrated. That is the point. So the name of the game is reform," he said at Davos, where he is attending the World Economic Forum meetings.
The agenda-pushing globalist's pick for president.
No wonder I feel a kinship with the Arab masses; we feel the same way.
Many Egyptian protesters say they have been inspired by the uprising in Tunisia -- even invoking the same slogans heard in the north African nation....
Yeah, this whole regional game plan may be backfiring on the globe-kicking neo-con intelligence agencies.
--more--"
What found on web version:
"Police push back against Egyptian protests; Marches small but determined on second day" by Kareem Fahim and Liam Stack, New York Times / January 27, 2011
CAIRO — The Egyptian government intensified efforts to crush a fresh wave of protests yesterday, banning public gatherings, detaining hundreds of people, and sending police officers to scatter protesters who defied the ban to demand an end to the government of President Hosni Mubarak.
The skirmishes started early in the afternoon, and soon, small fires illuminated large clashes under an overpass. Riot police officers using batons, tear gas, and rubber-coated bullets cleared busy avenues; other officers set upon fleeing protesters, beating them with bamboo staves.
Egypt has an extensive and widely feared security apparatus, and it deployed its might in an effort to crush the protests. But it was not clear whether the security forces were succeeding in intimidating protesters or instead inciting them to further defiance.
In contrast to the thousands who marched through Cairo and other cities on Tuesday, the groups of protesters were relatively small. Armored troop carriers rumbled throughout Cairo’s downtown yesterday to the thud of tear-gas guns. There were signs that the crackdown was being carefully calibrated, with security forces using their cudgels and sometimes throwing rocks, rather than opening fire.
Like I said, AGENT PROVOCATEURS!
But again and again, despite the efforts of the police, the protesters in Cairo regrouped and at one point even forced security officers, sitting in the safety of two troop carriers, to retreat.
It is called PEOPLE POWER and WOE to those who TRY to STAND AGAINST IT!
“This is do or die,’’ said Mustafa Youssef, 22, a student who marched from skirmish to skirmish with friends, including one nursing a rubber-bullet wound. “The most important thing to do is to keep confronting them.’’
Late yesterday, Reuters reported, protesters in Suez set a government building on fire, according to security officials and witnesses; the fire spread through parts of the provincial administration office but was put out before the flames engulfed the entire building.
Dozens of protesters also threw gasoline bombs at the office of the ruling party in Suez, Reuters reported, but they did not set it on fire. Police officers fired tear gas to push back the demonstrators.
Elsewhere, the authorities had better success smothering the unrest. A significant police presence in Alexandria, where protesters tore down a large portrait of Mubarak on Tuesday, managed to contain demonstrations quickly when they began yesterday. Several dozen young men tried to gather on the Corniche, a boulevard along the Mediterranean, but the gathering was quickly broken up by more than 100 police officers in riot gear assisted by plainclothes security personnel. Baton-wielding officers arrested several protesters as the rest scattered.
In the poor Alexandria neighborhood of Abu Suleiman, a demonstration lasted for more than half an hour before it was shut down by the police. Nearly 100 people wended their way through narrow back streets, chanting, “Come down, come down, Egyptians,’’ to neighbors, who peered down on them from windows on the higher floors.
The Associated Press, quoting witnesses, reported that riot police officers with batons attacked about 100 protesters in the central Egyptian city of Asyut, arresting nearly half of them.
The government said about 800 people had been arrested throughout the country since Tuesday morning, but human rights groups said there had been more than 2,000 arrests.
Abroad, there were growing expressions of concern from Egypt’s allies.
The US ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, called on the government “to allow peaceful public demonstrations.’’
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Egypt to adopt broad reforms and not crack down on the crowds, Associated Press reported.
She urged the Mubarak regime to “take this opportunity to implement political, economic, and social reforms that will answer the legitimate interests of the Egyptian people.’’
The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle told reporters, “We are very worried about how the situation in Egypt is developing.’’
But despite signs that the protests were taking a domestic toll — the country’s benchmark stock index fell more than 6 percent — Egyptian officials, at least publicly, were mostly dismissive.
Now THAT is IMPORTANT!
When people begin to PULL THEIR MONEY OUT of a country that government is living off BORROWED TIME!
Mubarak’s National Democratic Party reiterated the government’s assertion that the protests were engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition movement.
Again, the MB never makes my printed BG.
Why?
--more--"
And lost in the shuffle?
"Egypt blames Gaza militants in church attack" by Associated Press / January 24, 2011
CAIRO — Egypt’s top security official yesterday accused an Al Qaeda-inspired group in the Gaza Strip of being behind the New Year’s Day suicide bombing that killed 21 people outside a Coptic Christian church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.
Must have been inspired by"Al-CIA-Duh."
Interior Minister Habib al-Adly said conclusive evidence showed the shadowy Army of Islam in the Palestinian territory was behind the planning and execution of the attack....
Uh-huh.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the bombing, which added to years of strained relations between Egypt’s sizable Coptic minority and the country’s Muslims. The government, eager to keep the sectarian tension under control, almost immediately blamed foreign elements for the attack.
Well, they are right about that.
The Army of Islam dismissed the accusations on an extremist website, and the Hamas militants who control Gaza and who have battled with the smaller group were also skeptical of the Egyptian claim....
As is the rest of the world.
--more--"
Related: Cryptic Attack on Coptic Church
Yeah, it stinks of Israel.
"The violence has raised fears of a deepening and potentially explosive Muslim-Christian divide in this key US ally, which is already beset by a widening income gap and frustration over government corruption and a lack of democratic reform....
And CUI BONO?
--more--"
"Officer kills Christian on train in Egypt" by Associated Press / January 12, 2011
CAIRO — An off-duty policeman boarded a train and opened fire yesterday, killing a 71-year-old Christian man and wounding five other Christians, mostly women, the Interior Ministry said in a statement, sparking new demonstrations in southern Egypt.
There are fears that the attack could ignite a new wave of Christian protests by a community still traumatized by a New Year’s suicide attack on a church that killed at least 21 worshipers as they were leaving Mass....
No motive was immediately known for the shooting, which came less than two weeks after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the church in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, sparking three days of fierce riots by Christians....
Please do not fall for the false flag and respond with violence.
It is certainly not the Christian thing to do.
--more--"
Update: Youthful protests gain momentum in Mideast (By Anthony Shadid, Nada Bakri, and Kareem Fahim, New York Times)
Will that be the article I find in my printed paper -- if I bother to buy one today?
