Egyptian Chaos Round-up

Yesterday, I posted here about my concerns that iconic symbols of Ancient Egyptian culture and history could be in peril. Today's post is a followup to that.

Temple of Mut has a terrific post about the threat facing Egyptian antiquities and a moving account of the nice, normal Egyptian people who are bravely trying to protect the. It is truly the best piece I've read about this and I encourage you to go and read it HERE.

Photo from Temple of Mut of brave Egyptians forming a human shield to protect the Cairo Museum

 Mut gives us a reason to remain hopeful for Egypt:

The fact that Egyptian citizens made a human shield around the Cairo Museum gives me good hope that true to what I know about Egypt: Egyptians pride themselves on their ancient roots. This action gives be good hope that Egyptians, who love their country more than any ideology, will ultimately prevail.

Al Jazeera English  describes how looting has spread to other cities and residential neighborhoods and how regular folks are arming themselves to protect their property as the police abandon them and the military replaces them in some areas:

Residents in Cairo have set up neighbourhood vigilante groups to ward off looters [AFP]

Residents in the Egyptian capital of Cairo have set up neighbourhood groups armed with guns, clubs and knives as looting spread across the capital, despite the deployment of army troops to restore order.
Witnesses reported gangs of youths, some on motorbikes, roaming the streets, looting supermarkets, shopping malls and shops on Saturday.
Some of the gangs also entered wealthy residential areas of the capital, and gunfire could be heard in the city centre as well as outlying districts.
Residents also said that banks were broken into and hundreds of young men carted away televisions, fans and stereo equipment looted from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) near the Egyptian Museum, before setting the building alight.
The looting has prompted residents in some neighbourhoods, including the upscale Zamalek district in central Cairo, to set up vigilante groups to protect private property. Outside some apartment blocks, guards armed with machine guns had taken up posts.
In the Maadi area south of Cairo, neighbourhood mosques called on young men over loudspeakers to come down to the entrances of building and homes to ward off looters.
Naglaa Mahmoud, a Maadi resident, told the Associated Press that thugs were breaking cars and threatening to get into homes. She said even the ambulance service in the neighbourhood had abandoned their offices and accused the regime of planning the chaos by pulling out all of its police forces.
"All this seems to be prearranged. They are punishing us for asking for this change," she said.
"What a shame he [Mubarak] doesn't care for the people or anything. This is a corrupt regime."
The military also urged local residents throughout the country to defend themselves from looters.
However, in the port city of Alexandria, residents called on the army to protect them, as well as organising their own committees in defence. Looting has also occurred in wealthy areas of Cairo,
Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reporting from Suez, said that looting is widespread and that people have been walking into buildings and stealing objects.
"Residents here are pleading with the military to stop watching this happen, and act to enforce some security," she said.

Soldiers enter museumMeanwhile, soldiers have entered the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to secure it from looters, as anti-government protests continued in the capital in defiance of a curfew.
Early on Saturday morning, soldiers secured the museum and its grounds, located near some of the most intense of the mass anti-government protests in the capital.
The museum is home to priceless ancient artifacts, some dating back 5,000 years. Many artefacts lay damaged on the floor, but officials said nothing had been stolen.
Before the army arrived, young Egyptians - some armed with truncheons grabbed off the police - created a human chain at the museum's front gate to prevent looters from making off with any of the artefacts.
Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the would-be looters only managed to vandalise two mummies, ripping their heads off. They also cleared out the museum gift shop.
He said the museum's prized King Tutankhamun exhibit, which includes the boy pharaoh's gold death mask, had not been damaged and was safe.
However, the museum's contents could still be damaged by the potential collapse of a neighbouring building gutted by fire, Hawass said.

The Republican Herald has an article about an American college student who is trying to get out of Egypt and the chaos she is witnessing.

As protesters stormed sections of Cairo on Friday afternoon, Laura Dolbin watched towers of black smoke rise from city streets as she watched from a rooftop as the chaos unfolded.
"The dorm I was staying in was located in (the district of) Zamalek," Dolbin, 22, of Pottsville, a college student studying abroad, said in a phone interview Saturday from a hotel in Cairo. "I was three blocks away. We were standing on the roof of the dorm. I could see black smoke and fires. I could see all the tear gas leaking in. I could hear gunshots and I could hear people screaming. My throat was starting to hurt and my head was starting to hurt from the tear gas.
"I never felt fear like this."
The daughter of Schuylkill County Judge Cyrus Palmer Dolbin, Laura Dolbin is a senior psychology and history major at University of Delaware, Newark, Del. She and nine of her fellow students embarked to study in Egypt on Jan. 3. They were due to leave this Thursday, but turmoil in the country has led them to try to leave sooner.
Protests have been raging in Egypt for five days, demanding President Hosni Mubarak end his nearly 30-year regime. Rioters have battled police with stones and fire bombs and burned down the ruling party's headquarters, according to The Associated Press.
"My wife, Suzy, and I have been on absolute tenterhooks. We can't eat. We can't sleep. We're just waiting for the university to get the kids - not only Laura - out of there. We're praying. I'm going to church Sunday to ask God for there to be deliverance for my child and peace in Egypt," Judge Dolbin said late Saturday.
Laura Dolbin said she was hoping to depart from Cairo International Airport to return to the U.S. this morning.
"Hopefully, we can get on a plane," she said Saturday.
According to AP, thousands of passengers were stranded at Cairo's airport Saturday as flights were canceled or delayed, leaving them unable to leave because of a government-imposed curfew.
Egypt blocked the Internet across the country Friday to hamper protesters who use social-networking sites to organize, according to AP. The only connection Dolbin had to her parents was her cell phone.
"When the protests started to get bad on Friday, we discussed leaving Sunday. Our professor contacted the university and tried to get us out of here faster," she said.
Dr. Yasser A. Payne, an assistant professor with the Black American Studies Program at the University of Delaware, has been the students' guide during the trip.
When violence crept closer to her dorm in Zamalek, a district of Cairo, she and her fellow students were moved to the Kempinski Nile Hotel at Garden City, Cairo.
"It has very good security on it," she said.
On Saturday afternoon, hotel security asked Dolbin and her fellow students to dim their lights to hide from looters.
"We got to dinner. I sat down. We got our appetizers. Then the hotel workers had us take our dinners to our rooms and shut off all our lights and be quiet because there were looters at the door. When the curfew sets in, looters come out, and they are no longer protesters. They are people who want to break in and get what they can. They're targeting rich areas," she said.
Laura Dolbin said that before the protests erupted, her visit to Egypt was pleasant. RTR

The Seattle Times has an article worth reading as well:
Unease in Egypt as police replaced by army, neighbors band against looters
Excerpt:

Demonstrations aimed at ending Mubarak's nearly 30 years in power were eclipsed for many by a growing fear of lawlessness. After police retreated from clashes with protesters, vigilantes armed with sticks and knives patrolled Cairo neighborhoods. Reports spread that escaped prisoners and thugs from the ruling party were roaming the capital and other cities on motorcycles.
"We were out guarding our neighborhood, and we caught a number of people attempting to loot, including five carrying identification cards from the Interior Ministry," said Kamal Banna, a labor activist from Suez, the scene of some of the most violent battles between security forces and protesters since the nationwide revolt began Tuesday.
More than 100 people have died in the unrest of the past week, including at least 25 in Cairo, 38 in Suez and 36 in Alexandria, according to tallies on local TV stations. The Al-Jazeera satellite-television network broadcast footage of at least 20 dead Egyptians in morgues, along with images of their distraught relatives clamoring outside hospitals.
The retreating police were replaced by the more popular Egyptian army, which was welcomed by protesters who hugged soldiers and snapped souvenir photos of their tanks.
Throughout the day, the military showed extraordinary restraint, even allowing some protesters to write graffiti on some tanks: "Down with Mubarak!" But Egyptians were bracing for a showdown. The question was, will the army stand with the people or with the Mubarak government?

Lubbock Online's Mr. Conservative asks, "Is It a Religious Revolution?" It is an excellent piece and I highly recommend that you read it.

Newsmax also has a good article about the looting and the Egyptian civilians who are trying to protect their communities from it. Read it HERE.

At Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller writes about how the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, CAIR and Code Pink are involved in the Egyptian chaos. She also mentions the Wikileaked documents which show that Barry himself has had a hand in encouraging the uprising. Read it HERE.

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has a must read post comparing today's Egypt to 1979's Iran and it highlights how Barry has botched the American response just as Jimmah did: Egypt Is the New Iran I implore you to go and read it, all of it.

Maggie's Notebook has a terrific round-up of all the related stories that you may have missed, get caught up on them HERE.

At Big Government, Pamela Geller has written an article which I really don't want you to miss:
Obama's Carter Moment

In 2009, his silence about the brutal, murderous putdown of its people by the Iranian mullahcracy amount to his tacit support of that putdown, and spoke volumes. Obama became part of the problem, not part of the solution. He gave religious barbarism the free hand. In response, Iranian protestors had a direct message for America’s president: “You’re Either With Us or With Them.”
And since then also, Obama’s most consistent response to Iran (as well as to North Korea’s hostile moves) has been to ignore them and hope that proven evildoers will behave themselves. Wrong. The good cop is off the beat.
Obama failed, and the consequences of his failure have begun to be made manifest now in Egypt. I cannot understate the importance of Egypt to American interests and Israeli security. Egypt is arguably the second-most important country to the US in the region. Mubarak has been a U.S. ally for decades. We send three billion dollars a year to Egypt. And Egypt made a peace deal with Israel.
But knowing Obama, he will throw another ally under the bus.

Yes, Mubarak needs to institute democratic reform. I pray he doesn’t brutally respond to the uprising like Iran did — they slaughtered their people and crushed the Iranian revolution.
Meanwhile, the more the layers are peeled back, the more we see the hand of Iran behind what is unfolding in Egypt and all over the Middle East.
Who has emerged as a leader for post-Mubarak Egypt? Iran’s man, Mohammad ElBaradei. It is widely acknowledged that, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ElBaradei ignored and left out of reports evidence that the IAEA had about Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. He did as much as the North Koreans to advance Iran’s nuclear weapons program. For years he provided the cover they needed in the international community to build their annihilationist program.
If Obama had seized the moment in the Iranian freedom uprising, we would not be in this position now. Iran is casting a dark cloud over the free world. The mullahs are conducting a covert war against the West in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran has aligned with Venezuela and Brazil, in an Islamic imperialistic advance into Latin America. And now Iran’s bomb man ElBaradei is jockeying for power in Egypt.
Whatever comes after Mubarak will be terrible. Make no mistake.
The disastrous handling of the Iranian hostage crisis by the worst-ever President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, led to the rise of Islamic jihad across the world (that and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan). If we still had an ally in Iran, what a wonderful and different world this would be.
The Islamic takeover in Iran also started out as a secular movement and democratic unrest. Then Khomeini flew in from France and it was game over. Fast forward to 2011 in Egypt, and the same story is playing out again.
The global jihad means to install beachheads in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and in any other state that may succumb, in what appears to a domino effect. There are now rumblings in Syria and Jordan as well. Turkey is switching sides.
And the rest of the Muslim world has its finger on their itchy trigger. I hold little hope that freedom lovers in these countries have any shot against the devout Muslim movements when the leader of the free world has long since abdicated. Egypt is a secular government. The objective for all freedom-loving peoples in the world should be a transition to a new secular government. Will those elements in the protest movement be able to stave off Islamic supremacists? Iranian imperialism? I think not.
Iran has its hooves all over this.
This could be America and the West’s worst nightmare.

READ THE WHOLE THING

And what about the long suffering Coptic Christians in Egypt? Nobody is much talking about them now, are they? Here is an article that does:
Where are the Copts in this?

At The Winds of Jihad, you can read more about the Muslim Brotherhood, and about how Jordan appears to be next in line to fall to chaos. Read ME Meltdown & the Muslim Brotherhood, there are a lot of great links there as well for further reading.

Please take a moment to pray for the nice normal people who are in Egypt, that the anarchy that they are witnessing subsides soon and that they do not find themselves under even more oppressive rule than that which the people there trying to overthrow now. I fear that this whole thing isn't going to end well for anybody.

This post is linked at the Conservative Hideout, thanks, Matt!