The Washington Post reports: The men and women who have taken up residence at the Muslim Brotherhood protest camp on the outskirts of Cairo emerged from their tents into the scorching July sunshine on Tuesday with new determination, their defiance reinforced by a night of demonstrations that culminated in deadly clashes with police in the center of the Egyptian capital.

Seven people were reported killed in the encounter, during which police personnel fired tear gas, bird shot and, the Brotherhood says, live ammunition at several thousand supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi who had marched into Cairo’s Ramses Square to call for his reinstatement.

Far from deterring the protesters, “this only makes us stronger,” said Marwan Ghanem, an accountant who was among those who fanned out from the camp to join in the Brotherhood’s boldest push yet into the heart of the city. “We have to rely on the streets to send our message.”

The message that the Brotherhood is seeking to send, two weeks after Egypt’s first democratically elected president was overthrown by the country’s powerful military, is that Egypt will become ungovernable unless Morsi gets his job back. The impromptu encampment outside a mosque in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City where the Brotherhood’s supporters and its fugitive leaders have gathered stands at the center of their escalating campaign of civil disobedience. [Continue reading…]

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: Ousted President Mohamed Morsy is not being detained by the army and is being well looked after, according to Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Ali, the official spokesperson for the Armed Forces.

The army has prioritized protecting the ex-president due to the instability witnessed on the Egyptian street, Ali said.

The military spokesperson denied that Morsy was in detention because he was not facing any judicial order to that end.

In an interview with Al Arabiya satellite channel, published on its website on Wednesday, the army spokesperson said that nobody will be excluded from Egypt’s politics in the future. No one would be hunted down for their political opinions, he added.

Ali claimed that the army has no presence in politics because Egypt already has a president and a Cabinet. The army would concentrate on security Egypt and its borders, he said.

Ursula Lindsey writes: I have been out of Egypt since late May, and my reaction to all that’s happened there is shaped by that distance, by not having had the contact high of millions on the street, the ambient euphoria of collective will flexed and fulfilled. But in this case perhaps it was a good thing.

When I left the Tamarrod campaign seemed significant but unrealistic, part of the politics of regret and indignation that was all the powerless non-Islamist groups had left. Now lo an behold their improbable demands have all been granted, the compass of power has flipped, and we have Islamist leaders facing prison and men like Mohamed El Baradei in government.

But who had the power to make these dreams come true, to so drastically alter Egypt’s political reality? Who were the millions of protesters calling on to act? The deus ex machina, once again, is the military. For the second time in three years the Egyptian army, acting in response to enormous protests, has deposed a president. The first was a dictator of 30 years. The second had been elected, by a slim majority, a year ago, and had gone on to alienate, infuriate and terrify a good number of his countrymen.

I’ve spent the last year railing against the Brotherhood’s increasing bigotry, bullying, incompetence. They failed, on strategy and substance. They don’t have the vision or the guts or the skills or the decency to govern Egypt and make something better of it. And the divisiveness the country suffers from now is largely their fault — they could never represent anyone beyond themselves, and they could never believe that there were so many who they did not represent at all.

But that doesn’t mean one should support unwarranted retaliation agains them, or countenance the dehumanization (and murder) of their supporters. And that doesn’t mean one should celebrate now — quite the contrary, I fear. Since June 30, on social and old-fashioned Egyptian media, I have found a startling lack of lucidity. The endless denunciations of US meddling — the alleged American backing of the Brotherhood, CNN’s biased coverage — and the endless aspersions cast on all Islamists are pathological, a way to change the subject, to use indignation as a rhetorical and psychological feint. The denial of the pivotal, dangerous role played by the army and the police in what happened (a role that continues to be documented in greater detail) is, as one observer puts it, “a delusion so outlandish that it must be willfully self-induced, a device to conceal the enormity of a shameful choice.” [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: In the clearest statement yet of the United States’ position on the military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, a senior American diplomat warned on Monday that the generals would jeopardize Egypt’s “second chance” at a democratic transition if their new interim government continued to crack down on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters.

“If representatives of some of the largest parties in Egypt are detained or excluded, how are dialogue and participation possible?” the diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns, told journalists after meeting with generals and the interim officials they have appointed.

“It is hard to picture how Egypt will be able to emerge from this crisis unless its people come together to find a nonviolent and inclusive path forward,” Mr. Burns said.

Mr. Burns, the first senior United States official to visit Cairo since the takeover, spoke against the backdrop of a standoff between the military’s interim government and tens of thousands of Islamists who have staged a two-week sit-in to protest the ouster of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president.

New clashes broke out between the Islamists and the police within hours of Mr. Burns’s statement. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Egypt’s new rulers gave new credence to a court case against the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday over their escape from prison during the uprising that toppled his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

The case was transferred from an appeals court to the State Security prosecutor for further investigation. No charges have yet been filed. Its acceptance by powerful prosecutors follows the arrest of many Muslim Brotherhood members and is a new blow to the group by the military-backed government.

The detentions have been criticized by rights groups and the Obama administration, which spent Thursday walking back remarks made early in the day by a State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, seeming to criticize Mr. Morsi as undemocratic and in so doing seeming to validate the military’s move to oust him.

Reuters reported that Ms. Psaki’s counterpart at Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, Badr Abdelatty, interpreted her remarks as a welcome signal that the United States understood “the political developments that Egypt is witnessing in recent days as embodying the will of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets starting on June 30 to ask for their legitimate rights and call for early elections.”

The Muslim Brotherhood denounced her remarks as hypocritical and further proof of what it has called American endorsement of the military takeover in Egypt.

At her regular State Department briefing on Thursday, asked about the reactions, Ms. Psaki said she had been “referring to all of the voices that have been — we have heard coming — the millions, I should say, coming from Egypt, and how strongly they have voiced their views about his rule.” She added, “But beyond that is up for the Egyptian people to determine.” [Continue reading…]

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: The Brotherhood Without Violence movement, founded by a number of young Muslim Brotherhood members, has proposed to stop violence in exchange for the release of Mohamed Morsy, Hazem Abu Ismail, and all Brotherhood leaders.

Scores of people were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsy after he was toppled by the armed forces.

Ahmed Yehia, coordinator of the movement, called for amending the Constitutional Declaration issued by interim President Adly Mansour, insisting that early presidential elections be held before parliamentary elections, military trials of civilians be outlawed, conditions for the committee amending the constitution be set, and all religious channels be reopened, pledging to renounce all forms of violence in exchange.

Hürriyet Daily News reports: The Obama administration has still refrained from calling former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster a “coup,” but top U.S. officials have thrown their backing behind the military rulers.

“It’s clear that the Egyptian people have spoken,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, when asked whether Washington still considered Morsi the legitimate president.

“There’s an interim government in place … this is leading the path to democracy, we are hopeful. And we are in touch with a range of actors. But obviously, he is no longer in his acting position.”

Challenged about the fact that, before his ouster, Egypt already had a democratically elected government, Psaki replied: “It wasn’t a democratic rule. That’s the whole point.”

A U.S. decision to brand his overthrow a coup would, by U.S. law, require Washington to halt aid to the Egyptian military, which receives the lion’s share of the $1.5 billion in annual U.S. assistance to that country.

Egypt’s interim government praised the United States for showing “understanding” by describing the rule of ousted Morsi as undemocratic. Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said the U.S. comments “reflect understanding and realization … about the political developments that Egypt has been witnessing in recent days, as embodying the will of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets starting on June 30 to ask for their legitimate rights and call for early elections.”

Jean MacKenzie writes: It hardly pays to be the head of the most powerful nation on Earth any more — just ask President Barack Obama, whose semantic tightrope-walking over Egypt is gaining him new and powerful critics, even within his own party.

His government has signaled it will carry on delivering F-16 jets and other assistance to Egypt even after the North African country’s military ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi following mass protest against the Islamist leader.

Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters call this a flat out military “coup.” The Obama administration does not.

“It’s clear that the Egyptian people have spoken,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters when asked whether Washington still considered Morsi the legitimate president.

But that’s not what some US legislators are saying.

On Tuesday, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) joined the growing chorus of lawmakers calling for Washington to restrict aid to Egypt in the wake of last week’s ouster of Morsi.

Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, was not hesitant to use the “c” word in discussing Egypt.

“It’s certainly a takeover. It’s certainly the removal of office from a sitting president, democratically elected,” Feinstein said. “It is a form of a coup. If it walks like a duck … it is.” [Continue reading…]

Images of millions of Egyptians taking to the streets helped solidify the notion that June 30 triggered a democratic coup, but now it’s not just the Muslim Brotherhood which claims the remnants of the Mubarak regime engineered the uprising.

The New York Times reports: The streets seethe with protests and government ministers are on the run or in jail, but since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, life has somehow gotten better for many people across Egypt: Gas lines have disappeared, power cuts have stopped and the police have returned to the street.

The apparently miraculous end to the crippling energy shortages, and the re-emergence of the police, seems to show that the legions of personnel left in place after former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011 played a significant role — intentionally or not — in undermining the overall quality of life under the Islamist administration of Mr. Morsi.

And as the interim government struggles to unite a divided nation, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mr. Morsi’s supporters say the sudden turnaround proves that their opponents conspired to make Mr. Morsi fail. Not only did police officers seem to disappear, but the state agencies responsible for providing electricity and ensuring gas supplies failed so fundamentally that gas lines and rolling blackouts fed widespread anger and frustration.

“This was preparing for the coup,” said Naser el-Farash, who served as the spokesman for the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade under Mr. Morsi. “Different circles in the state, from the storage facilities to the cars that transport petrol products to the gas stations, all participated in creating the crisis.”

Working behind the scenes, members of the old establishment, some of them close to Mr. Mubarak and the country’s top generals, also helped finance, advise and organize those determined to topple the Islamist leadership, including Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire and an outspoken foe of the Brotherhood; Tahani El-Gebali, a former judge on the Supreme Constitutional Court who is close to the ruling generals; and Shawki al-Sayed, a legal adviser to Ahmed Shafik, Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, who lost the presidential race to Mr. Morsi.

But it is the police returning to the streets that offers the most blatant sign that the institutions once loyal to Mr. Mubarak held back while Mr. Morsi was in power. Throughout his one-year tenure, Mr. Morsi struggled to appease the police, even alienating his own supporters rather than trying to overhaul the Interior Ministry. But as crime increased and traffic clogged roads — undermining not only the quality of life, but the economy — the police refused to deploy fully. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: It has been one week, and nobody knows where the former president of Egypt is. Mohamed Morsi is being detained, along with at least seven of his top aides, held incommunicado. The authorities promise, “He is in a safe place.” But safe where? They refuse to say. He has not been charged with any crime.

Authorities have issued arrest warrants for hundreds of other Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters, including the group’s spiritual leader, known as the “supreme guide.” He and nine other senior Islamist officials were accused Wednesday of provoking the violence that led Egyptian security forces to fatally shoot more than 50 pro-Morsi demonstrators Monday.

The warrants come as authorities continue to round up the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, which saw its hold on the presidency and several top ministries end after 368 days when Morsi’s government was ousted last week in a military coup backed by millions of Egyptians who had taken to the streets.

The mass arrests and the continued detention of Morsi and his aides are exactly the type of behavior that the Obama administration has warned Egypt’s military leadership against. But the crackdown shows how little influence Washington has been able to exert here since the generals proved they remain the nation’s preeminent force.

Morsi himself was accused of selectively using the judicial system to prosecute opponents, as was his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in early 2011. Now human rights advocates say that Egypt’s new rulers may be doing the same. [Continue reading…]