@Using armies to establish a democracy, isn't that what the 4th of July is supposed to celebrate?

not sure exactly but i've seen numbers like 200,000 protestors in cairo (the center of the protesting), and there are over 82.5 million people in egypt.

um, i think there is a difference when we overthrew a colonial monarchy, to a government elected a year ago, who won a constitutional referendum with almost 2/3rds of the vote just in december.

Is Egypt the new France, ie, revolutions every Tuesday? ;)

(But in all seriousness, Morsi DOES represent a danger to Israeli-Egyptian relations given his Muslim Brotherhood ties...does anyone know if the protesters would feel any differently about that all-important alliance?)

I think Egypt is a tricky one, and it is also very new to democracy so is likely to be a bit messy. Once a system settles down the ideal is that more centrist parties gain power, and there are less extremes.
I think the worry of the People was that the democratically elected government were ruling for a large minority of the people and not for all. And that they were eroding free speech and many of the pillars needed for a successful democracy.

This is serious. This is what happened in time in Iran - religious leaders dictating their own agenda, and fixing elections. Once the administration take over key positions then it is hard to go back.

So this coup maybe justified. However, I agree that it is a sad day that a democratically elected government is overthrown by the military; and I think the quicker new elections can be held the better.

My personal belief is that religion and politics should be separate, and this should perhaps be reflected in their constitution. The absolute essential for democracy to succeed is FREE SPEECH and there must be safeguards to stop the ruling party ever eroding this.

A very large % of the population want the same things you take for granted, this is no big surprise.
A significant % of the people who voted Morsi last year were voting for some kind of change and the other candidate was too close to Mubarak, people who voted for Morsi were not giving a green light to a religious govt, many want a secular society.
A lot of young Egyptian men are randy fuckers who love white women, see, they're just like most of us.

200,000 people is way below the real numbers, altogether around 13-18 million people are out across the country.

The demonstrations on the streets of Egypt are the biggest ever in the history of the World, I think that is pretty significant

I was on holiday in Egypt (in the south) when all this was going on.

Southern Egypt is extremely tourist based. Our tour guide told us that there had been very little protesting there against Mubarrak in 2011. I was on a nile cruise, and she said that pre-2011, there were 300 boats on the Nile in high season between Luxor & Aswan. Since the revolution, there were only about 45 in high season. She expected people to protest this time, because the people in the south were so much worse off now. From talking to the crew (all Egyptian, mostly from Aswan/Luxor, although our guides and some others were from Cairo and Alexandria), I didn't find a single Pro-Morsi supporter. All of them were extremely guarded because they couldn't "scaremonger", but under their breaths the housekeepers and the barstaff did admit to hoping for a change, but also hoping it was fast.

We were sailing back from Aswan to Luxor on the 30th when all the protests began, and we heard loudspeakers and chants in Edfu when we went through it. When we sailed into Luxor we could see some large protests on the shore but we couldn't see the main square so I'm not sure just how big the protests were the first night.

Monday was then quiet during the day and we visited Karnak & Luxor Temples (Luxor Temple in particular is right in the centre of Luxor) without any trouble, but we did this in the morning. We heard a few more protests in the night but we were docked outside Karnak Temple which is some way from the main square. It wasn't violent at all at that point though. Luxor was perfectly normal on Monday while I was in the city.

The next day we did all our excursions on the west bank in the morning, which obviously has very few people. By the time we came back we could all sense that the crew was very tense. The only two news channels we could pick up on the ship were some Arabic news, and a very poor signal for French News 24 so we really very little idea what was actually happening, only the headlines we could read on the French channel. There was no internet on the ship (unless you paid for super slow satellite net) and using 3G on your phones would empty your bank account within an hour.

That evening there was an optional horse and carriage ride tour excursion around Luxor and then a sound & light show at Karnak Temple. They sent 5 tour guides who were constantly counting to make sure all the carriages got through the small markets at the back and avoided the city centre. After the sound and light show, they had to walk back instead of getting a coach because the driver wouldn't go into the city centre to turn around, and they were hurried back quickly (luckily it was a very short walk and nobody knew why they'd have needed a coach anyway). There were a lot of protesters armed with clubs and waving Egyptian flags, but none of them really paid much attention to the tourists.

That night the protests turned violent in Luxor, and a load of people got shot in Coptic Churches.

Wednesday was our last day, but the crew were all really uncertain about what was happening because the next cruise had been cancelled due to all the travel restrictions that had been slapped in by the European governments. We weren't sure whether we'd be able to fly home and the atmosphere was kinda tense as we heard about the violence in the city. Some people got reports that all flights in and out of Egypt had been cancelled just before we left for the airport so we were still unsure if we'd have to come back. We left on our normal flight, but it left half an hour early, and was crowded with extra passengers as a lot of people had had their holidays cancelled and were being evacuated. Our captain told us we were the last remaining non Red Sea resort tourists to be evacuated, but apparently Sharm el Sheikh was evacuated too. We left at pretty much the exact moment the coup was announced by the military.

There were 9 ships owned by the holiday company I was with, but only 2 were running. So they still had 9 staffs who would alternate between when they'd actually work. My housekeepers said they got 400 Egyptian pounds for working 1 week each month. That's roughly £40 per month. Most of their money comes from tips, because every passenger pays a £20 tip at the start which gets divided between every crew member. And then some passengers (like me) give extra tips as well. One of my housekeepers told me he lives with his sister, mother, wife and 2 children and he's the only one who works.

If the new government doesn't stabilise the country and get the tourists back soon then there are going to be some serious issues in the south of the country. Luxor has some industry but not that much, and Aswan has even less. Tourism either directly or indirectly makes up roughly three quarters of the economy in Upper Egypt. Even the towns in between Luxor & Aswan like Esna, Edfu and Kom-Ombo are significantly tourist based. Because tourism and agriculture is all there is.

SD & Tolstoy - this was a protest by millions of people, not a few hundred thousand. There are few examples in history of this many people protesting at one time - and peacefully so. The Muslim Brotherhood supporters are the ones causing the violence and saying they'd die for Morsi. Morsi stripped the courts system of it's independence, took out the top generals in the military, ramrodded through a Constitution that the majority (or at least half) of Egyptians did not want and did jack all to help move the country forward. He then proceeded to completely ignore the demands of millions of people. Hell, the President of the United States reacts to less, and that's in a country of over 300 million.

Excellent video which doesn't just assume loads of shite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5suNtLwbBw

please give a source for your 13-18 million? don't get me wrong i am against the Morsi governmenet and don't like it one bit. but the liberal hypocrisy here is disgusting! hey if i democratically elected a government and within a year of everything it was deposed by the military and some people of different beliefs i would use violence to protect eh government. and that constitution passed with almost 2/3rds (again i was against it but how can you say the majority or at least half of people didn't want it)?!

obviously you also don't get the point of representative democracy - you choose someone to rule, and then they rule by the laws of the country until the next election. it doesn't matter if most of the people are against what they do. misconceptions here!

even if he should have been removed, which I would say he shouldn't, don't you at least think it is a dangerous precedent to have the military able to remove a president?

really the courts and consitutions should play harder ball and protect people's "rights", but to have a government deposed by the military and then praise it as a success for democracy? this arab spring BS really gets me riled up

you end up getting a bunch of wishy-washy liberals that hear their favourite and most empty meaningless word (democracy), and then they go on a hype. who cares about whether it is really democratic, or just, as long as you can put the empty label on it it is something we're happy to support.

@Socrates: "Obviously you also don't get the point of representative democracy"

Yeah, but you are clearly ignoring the reality on the ground, which are the Morsi fucked up and the military had reason to remove him. A better president who worked with people would still be in power. And guess what, you can't rule anything when ~22 million people threaten to go out and protest in the streets (because basically that's enough to bring the country to a halt)

The reality is that this is not a representative democracy, this is a failed representative democracy, and you can have whatever frakking ideals you want, if people don't believe in it, democracy doesn't work. No matter how 'great' you think it is... And guess what, it is not that surprising - things don't just change over night.

it's not that morsi fucked up, it's that the arab spring had little to actually do with regime change, they were upset about the economy, he hasn't fixed it, and now they are used to protesting. the military is not an institution to remove government!!!! again can someone show me where it says 22 million people are protesting against it???

i don't think democracy is great, and i'm not surprised it's failed - i'm more concerned/annoyed about the hypocrisy of people saying this is a victory for democracy and they are doing it for democracy. i personally agree that morsi should be deposed, but there is a conflation of points here - whether it was good that he's gone, whether it was right that the military did it, and whether it was democratic. they don't all have the same answers but somme people are trying to say yes to all three questions!

"The Muslim Brotherhood supporters are the ones causing the violence and saying they'd die for Morsi. "

So if someone says they'd die for Obama, and that someone is killed by the military in an anti-Obama military coup, that person "caused violence"?

"Morsi stripped the courts system of it's independence,"

The courts were all staffed by three decades' worth of Mubarak appointees. What is he supposed to do, in a country where the Mubarak regime candidate was rejected and Morsi elected by Egyptian voters? He's supposed to leave every single Mubarak appointee in power, completely paralyzing the government and laying the foundation for the coup we're seeing now?

"took out the top generals in the military,"

Yeah, I'd say he obviously wasn't thorough enough in this regard.

"ramrodded through a Constitution that the majority (or at least half) of Egyptians did not want"

Bullshit. The constitution was passed by 2/3 of Egyptian voters. Have you read it? It contains protections for political organizing and the politically accused that far exceed the US legal system. While the media is obsessing over the criminalization of insulting prophets, they are missing the boat - this constitution was clearly a reaction to 60 years of rule by authoritarian dictators backed by brutal and sadistic "security forces". Suspending it is a step back to where Egypt was under Mubarak.

"and did jack all to help move the country forward. He then proceeded to completely ignore the demands of millions of people."

Huh? He tried to purge the government of Mubarak cronies. I would call that "moving forward", but that is being denounced as some kind of sinister act. How exactly can a country "move forward" if the government is still run by the appointees of the dictator who had been running the country for thirty years?

Instead of all this third hand conjecture, i recommend (again) Hank Green's video on the issue (which is second hand and commentary rather than conjecture)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5suNtLwbBw

And i said 22 million 'threatened' to protest, they signed a petition that they would go out and protest en-mass on the 30th of June (i think) unless Morsi resigned.

He didn't resign? So that many didn't protest? Ild be interested to see the petition numbers too, although even if it's true it doesn't really matter as they didn't protest and even if they had (which they hadn't), a mob protesting and then pushing a government out every time they don't like something isn't democracy, it's ochlocracy!

"The biggest assumption you’re making here, sadly – seems to stem from a completely defeatist position you’ve adopted, as though this is the last act of a people, as though the millions that demonstrated in the last days against Morsi’s oppression were not equally prepared to demonstrate against the military’s oppression, and again, and again, and as long as it takes to get it right.

If you don’t understand that THAT is democracy, and if you can’t see it that way, just because it’s not how you would’ve done is, that’s your problem, not that of the Egyptian people....People calling it a coup, others not. I say this; it is yet another coup, but with massive, popular, democratic support....We’re all skeptical (downright distrusting in my case) of the the military, but this IS a popular democratic removal of Morsi. That is not a failure, although what comes next might be. On one point we all agree, Morsi and his so-called Islamist goons cannot continue to hijack this country."

http://www.karmamole.com/septic/fuck-western-media/

'this IS a popular democratic removal of Morsi. That is not a failure, although what comes next might be.' - no I think you'll find the need to remove Morsi was a failure of the democratic institutions which egypt had just built.

part of the problem being that there were only two groups in the country able to run an election campaign (because they had the party infrastructure already in place) these being the muslim brotherhood and the former Mubarak government.

This left a rather unfair election, in which the ousted government's candidate got 23% of the vote (while Morsi got 24% of the vote) - though this was a free and democratic election; it didn't work very well. (and then the two had a runoff election, which by the way, is a stupid system, though i'm not sure if it is worse than the american presidential two-party system...)

They just have to find a nice and honest guy to vote for as dictator or get out of the country.

@erist, That. I have been failing to put into words my confusion regarding the widespread response to this. That's it. That is exactly what they aren't seeing. Democracy is rule by the people. Nothing stipulating that the people express themselves through ballots or polls. In a country struggling to build democratic institutions from nothing, and often, worse than nothing, the mass protest seems a rather simple solution to the problem of vocalizing the people's voice in this early stage of democracy.

people really need to understand the difference between a democracy and an ochlocracy....

...a subset, with negative connotations, of democracy? Republics to not spring fully into being at the highest forms of democracy from nothing.

i wouldn't call it a subset, and you can have perfectly working democracies that aren't republics, but unfortunately something must be wrong with me as I can't be bothered to argue/debate on the internet right now :S

"Republics to not spring fully into being at the highest forms of democracy from nothing."

Indeed, they do not. But neither do they arise in countries where the civil government is routinely overthrown by the military on a whim, justified on the basis of popular demonstrations that may or may not be accurate barometers of an ill-defined public opinion. We would do well to remember that the practice of renting a mob to affect change through extralegal means has a long and sordid history - and it is a favored method of the architects and builders of the American Empire over the last 70 years.

Well, when I was there, my tour guide was speaking about King Farouk and said "I think he was actually a very good king for this country."

If Farouk is being looked back on in a good way then you know things are very wrong there.

People are ascribing a pattern to the events that doesn't exist. It's not like Egypt has been stuck in a state of semi-permanent mob rule for 20 years. One could do worse than thinking of the events of the past couple years as a fairly continuous demand for change briefly interrupted by one flawed election. It's not another uprising, it's a continued demand for a better and more representative system.

Oh Yay! Bloodbath in the peaceful military coup....you know, the coup the media spent all weekend trying to convince us really wasn't a military coup....

Sigh....gotta love that Egyptian / Arab Spring style of Democracy....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/egypt-clashes-morsi-muslim-brotherhood-military