Egypt army moves to stop assault on protesters (Regime supporters use barrage of automatic gunfire)

[shadowrider]

CAIRO – Egyptian army tanks and soldiers cleared away pro-government rioters and deployed between them and protesters seeking the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, as the prime minister made an unprecedented apology Thursday for the assault by regime backers that turned central Cairo into a battle zone.

Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told state TV that the attack Wednesday on the anti-government protesters was a "blatant mistake" and promised to investigate who was behind it.

The protesters accuse the regime of organizing the assault, using paid thugs and policemen in civilian clothes, in an attempt to crush their movement. Government supporters charged central Tahrir Square Wednesday afternoon, sparking 15 hours of uncontrolled chaos, with the two sides battled with rocks, sticks, bottles and firebombs as soliders largely stood by without intervening.

The military began to move with muscle for the first time to stop the fighting early Thursday after a barrage of automatic gunfire hit the anti-government camp before dawn, killing at least three protesters in a serious escalation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt_171

[shadowrider]

1. I sure am glad the protesters aren't armed otherwise someone could get hurt n/t

[hlthe2b]

2. right.... instead of 7 dead, we'd have 7,000

[shadowrider]

3. So 7 unarmed protesters is ok with you because it wasn't more? n/t

[hlthe2b]

4. Gunners lusting for a blood bath.

No, count me out. :eyes:

[shadowrider]

5. Strawman. No one said they're lusting for a bloodbath, YOU say that

I'm saying it could turn into a slaughter since the protesters are unarmed and therefore unable to fight back.

[hlthe2b]

6. Aren't you? Too many bad Hollywood movies & violent video games

makes the gunners very willing to take risks with others lives.

[shadowrider]

7. So you're suggesting the protesters just voluntarily get themselves shot

and don't fight back.

Very, very, very telling.

[hlthe2b]

8. Neither side is armed and thus few deaths. for that I am grateful

even if it does not satisfy your need.

[shadowrider]

9. Re-read the op. One side IS armed n/t

[hlthe2b]

10. the army has not taken sides. They have the guns

AND THE TANKS. They are using them for crowd control at this point (with very few exceptions, it has been the army with the guns

[shadowrider]

11. So the pro-regime supporters who DO have guns don't exist

because the Army has the guns.

I'm done.

[hlthe2b]

12. Good..

It is the result of the democracy protester's being unarmed that they have the moral high ground that has resulted in international pressure on Egypt. I really wonder what part of non-violent protests and the lessons of Gandhi and MLK--with their success against the odds in unarmed protest, seems to totally escape some here. Had the democracy protesters been armed, there would be violent clashes, the army would not have sided with them to protect them, but would be engaging them. Further, the world would very likely have bought into the Mubarak propaganda, that the protesters were criminals and violent agitators.

Just as those with a hammer seek a nail for every solution, so too the gun crowd....

[Nuclear Unicorn]

16. One sword keeps the other in its sheath

2 sheathed swords = peace

[hlthe2b]

18. ... wrong

No swords = Peace

[Nuclear Unicorn]

19. OK, you disarm first

You trust us, right?

[hlthe2b]

20. You really didn't learn anything from history, did you?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

21. Such as?

Baseless assertions are just that.

[hlthe2b]

22. ...

While the gun advocates may think them fools, the rest of the world recognizes what REAL courage is. Peaceful protest against the odds has more power than any armed guerilla movement could ever achieve.

It is the result of the democracy protester's being unarmed that they have the moral high ground that has resulted in international pressure on Egypt. I really wonder what part of non-violent protests and the lessons of Gandhi and MLK--with their success against the odds in unarmed protest, seems to totally escape some here. Had the democracy protesters been armed, there would be violent clashes, the army would not have sided with them to protect them, but would be engaging them. Further, the world would very likely have bought into the Mubarak propaganda, that the protesters were criminals and violent agitators.

Just as those with a hammer seek a nail for every solution, so too the gun crowd....

I know, you just will not GET it... Sadly for you. Guns are not the answer for everything, everyone, and every situation.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

23. MLK had armed supporters guarding his family at night

The fact they had guns did not provoke redneck violence, it prevented it.

That's the history of the matter.

[hlthe2b]

24. You really don't get it...

I'm sad for you, but have a good day. I wish you well.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

25. What a cop-out

You make an appeal to history and when history doesn't say what you predetermined it should say you run away.

What Dr. King provided to this nation, and the world at large, is monumental. We are indebted to him. But the fact is many evil people wished him harm. And the police were not an option becuase the police were wearing the hoods as well.

If you had, had your way Dr. King would have been lynched long before he had been able to prick our national conscience by the superiority of his dream.

The man had to be alive to speak for non-violence.

This running away, power-poutage is a big part of the reason I moved to the 2A side. The pro-rights side seems to have no trouble proving history, argument and facts for their side. Yet time-after-time, pro-control people reach a point where they cannot respond so they make some weak paean about feeling sorry for the poor, deluded interlocutor as if they have some high-minded superiority.

"You won't believe what I tell you to believe so I feel sorry for you."

Yeah, well, I feel sorry for any progressive who values humanity and principles having to accept you as an ally.

[shadowrider]

26. You are quickly moving to Jedi Knnnnnnnnnnigt territory n/t

[hlthe2b]

27. History is on my side with respect to nonviolent protest...

but, like the hammer seeking the nail, those with an obsessive fondness for guns, will always see that as the solution.

I am not going to convince you or any of the gunners. Your intransigence is well known. I do applaud your attempts to engage in civil discussion however. That is refreshing. And, no, that is not a cop-out. I have other things to do. Like work and I've already devoted far more time than I had available.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

29. And how would you have kept Dr. King from being murdered?

Remember, the civil authorites were corrupt bigots.

[hlthe2b]

30. Gun owners kept him from being murdered? Really?

I'm sure that will be news to millions.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

31. Ignorance of a fact is not the same as refutation of an argument

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was no stranger to the idea of self-defense. According to Annelieke Dirks, “Even Martin Luther King Jr.—the icon of nonviolence—employed armed bodyguards and had guns in his house during the early stages of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. Glenn Smiley, an organizer of the strictly nonviolent and pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), observed during a house visit that the police did not allow King a weapon permit, but that ‘the place is an arsenal."<3> Efforts from those like Smiley convinced Dr. King that any sort of weapons or “self-defense” could not be associated with someone like him in the position that he held. Dr. King agreed.

In many areas of the “Deep South” the federal and state governments had no control of local authorities and groups that did not want to follow the laws enacted. One of these groups, the Ku Klux Klan, is one of the most well-known and widely publicized organizations that openly practiced acts of violence and segregation based on race. As part of their strategy to intimidate this community , the Ku Klux Klan initiated a “campaign of terror” that included harassment, the burning of crosses on the lawns of African-American voters, the destruction (by fire) of five churches, a Masonic hall, and a Baptist center, and murder.<4> These incidents were not isolated but a significant amount of this victimization of African-Americans occurred in Jonesboro, Louisiana in 1964.

Not wanting to fall victims any longer to groups like the Klan the African-American community felt that a response of action was crucial in curbing this terrorism because of the lack of support and protection by State and Federal authorities. A group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana led by Earnest "Chilly Willy" Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick founded the group in November of 1964 to protect civil rights workers, their communities and their families, against the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Most of the Deacons were war veterans with combat experience from the Korean War and World War II. The Jonesboro chapter later organized a Deacons chapter in Bogalusa, Louisiana led by Charles Sims, A.Z. Young and Robert Hicks. The Jonesboro chapter initiated a regional organizing campaign and eventually formed 21 chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The militant Deacons' confrontation with the Klan in Bogalusa was instrumental in forcing the federal government to invervene on behalf of the black community and enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act and neutralize the Klan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice#cite_note-muse.jhu.edu-2

[hlthe2b]

34. Equating protection of a leader versus a MOVEMENT based on non-violence

You have failed to understand his entire philosophy... his entire movement.

Like I said, you clearly do NOT get it. My guess is that you never will. And, that really is tragic.

[friendly_iconoclast]

32. Actually, you're the one who doesn't get it. Read these and learn some history:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=331645

Remembering Robert Hicks and the Deacons of Defense


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=robert%20hicks&st=cse

Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: April 24, 2010

Someone had called to say the Ku Klux Klan was coming to bomb Robert Hicks’s house. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was the night of Feb. 1, 1965, in Bogalusa, La.

The Klan was furious that Mr. Hicks, a black paper mill worker, was putting up two white civil rights workers in his home. It was just six months after three young civil rights workers had been murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

Mr. Hicks and his wife, Valeria, made some phone calls. They found neighbors to take in their children, and they reached out to friends for protection. Soon, armed black men materialized. Nothing happened.

Less than three weeks later, the leaders of a secretive, paramilitary organization of blacks called the Deacons for Defense and Justice visited Bogalusa. It had been formed in Jonesboro, La., in 1964 mainly to protect unarmed civil rights demonstrators from the Klan. After listening to the Deacons, Mr. Hicks took the lead in forming a Bogalusa chapter, recruiting many of the men who had gone to his house to protect his family and guests...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=337407

SteveM (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-30-10 05:22 PM
Original message
Rosa Parks was an armed. No surprise from this Cracker.

Tim Tyson, Visiting Professor at Duke Divinity School, did a little "myth-busting" on NPR's "On The Media" last year, saying this about the fabled civil rights leader Rosa Parks:

"There's a sense in which Mrs. Parks is very important to our post-civil rights racial narrative, because we really want a kind of sugar-coated civil rights movement that's about purity and interracial non-violence. And so we don't really want to meet the real Rosa Parks. We don't, for example, want to know that in the late 1960s, Rosa Parks became a black nationalist and a great admirer of Malcolm X. I met Rosa Parks at the funeral of Robert F. Williams, who had fought the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina with a machine gun in the late 1950s and then fled to Cuba, and had been a kind of international revolutionary icon of black power. Ms. Parks delivered the eulogy at his funeral. She talks in her autobiography and says that she never believed in non-violence and that she was incapable of that herself, and that she kept guns in her home to protect her family. But we want a little old lady with tired feet. You may have noticed we don't have a lot of pacifist white heroes. We prefer our black people meek and mild, I think."

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/08/27/02

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=238936

virginia mountainman (1000+ posts) Fri Jul-17-09 03:38 PM
Original message
“Negroes with Guns” America's Dark History of brutal, sadistic violence against African Americans
Edited on Fri Jul-17-09 03:42 PM by virginia mountainman
Great Read! A few excerpts..

....In the summer of 1957, a Klan motorcade sent to attack the house was met by a disciplined volley of rifle fire from a group of black veterans and NRA members led by civil rights activist Robert F. Williams.

Using military-surplus rifles from behind sandbag fortifications, the small band of freedom fighters drove off the larger force of Klansmen with no casualties reported on either side.
Williams, a former Marine who volunteered to lead the Monroe chapter of the NAACP and founded a 60-member NRA-chartered rifle club, described the battle in his 1962 book, "Negroes With Guns," which was reprinted in 1998 by Wayne State University Press.
According to Williams, the Monroe group owed its survival in the face of vicious violence to the fact that they were armed. In several cases, police officials who normally ignored or encouraged Klan violence took steps to prevent whites from attacking armed blacks. In other cases, fanatical racists suddenly turned into cowards when they realized their intended victims were armed.

Oddly, it appears that the organized armed blacks of Monroe never shot any of their tormentors. The simple existence of guns in the hands of men who were willing to use them prevented greater violence...

[Nuclear Unicorn]

33. Far better than my paultry contribution

Thank-you

ht2zomg (sorry, it's honestly hard to remember), no one is advocating violence but these honest, decent people were being terrorized and the authorities were in collusion.

The history is there. You're smart. You're decent but it seems others have mislead you by keeping information from you.

Please. Be fair and seriously, honestly consider what has been presented here today.

[PavePusher]

28. Gosh, that really should have worked in Bosnia too...

and China. Sudan. Ivory Coast...

[Atypical Liberal]

17. That's a loaded question.

Not a fair question there, shadowrider.

[TheCowsCameHome]

13. Reply to your own posts much?

:wtf:

[shadowrider]

14. Usually. Is that a problem?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

15. It just proves the old adage

Outlaw guns and only outlaw (regimes) will have guns.