Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED: Poor Pollyanna & The Liberal Media (Logan Assault Cover-Up)

Crime, Feminism, Gender, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Sex

CBS reports a shocker (not): The glorious revolution in Egypt was marred by the “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” of their chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan (via Erik Rush).

Someone has to say this: So deeply silly is the prototypical, progressive female in her fantasies of rescuing the world, that she discards reality. Logan’s rescuers, a couple of clever—presumably local—sisters, were no doubt clad in the traditional nosebags. Local sisters are not so careless as to dress immodestly in a country in which the majority (82 percent) supports executing adulterers. The left-liberal women of the West imagine they can walk around Africa or the Middle-East as free as birds, burdened only by overwhelming love for the locals.

The assault occurred on “the day Mubarak stepped down.” This poor, poor Pollyanna, and the men and women of the liberal media, will return armed with assorted rationalizations intended to solve inner-conflict: the rapists were Mubarak’s men; should be forgiven because of the circumstances, etc.

UPDATE (Feb. 17): Diana West questions the Logan assault cover-up, during which the 39-year-old journalist was called “Jew, Jew”:

Why CBS kept mum for four days about the brutal sexual assault of network correspondent Lara Logan by a Tahrir Square mob on Feb. 11 we just don’t know.

Did Logan, flown out of Cairo by a network-chartered jet to a U.S. hospital hours after the attack, request secrecy as a brutalized victim?

Were news executives, or even Logan herself, concerned that the bombshell news of the assault, which took place almost exactly as Hosni Mubarak was relinquishing all powers, would detract from the “jubilant” crowd’s “democracy” drama? Such a news blackout is hard to imagine if, for example, a star correspondent had been similarly violated by a mob of tea party-goers at, say, a massive Glenn Beck rally – and particularly if other correspondents had previously suffered unprecedented assaults and threats from the same crowd. A keening outcry would have arisen from the heart of the MSM (mainstream media) against the mob, accompanied by a natural zeal to investigate cultural or other reasons for the brutality. Not excuses. And not disinterest.

But in this singular Logan case we’ve seen both. First, only after news queries indicated the story was breaking did CBS on Tuesday release a brief rap sheet on the Friday crime. We were told of Logan’s accidental separation from her crew in the crowd. The prolonged assault by over 200 people “whipped into a frenzy.” The rescue by a group of women and 20 soldiers. What CBS didn’t mention – what was later attributed to an unnamed network source – was that as the thugs assaulted the 39-year-old journalist and mother of two, they shouted, “Jew! Jew!”

…

“Missing is any acknowledgement of the fact – the overwhelming, highly upsetting but nonetheless unavoidable fact – that Islam’s teachings on women and particularly Jews are literally hateful. And that’s the Quranic truth, as copiously expressed by the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, approximately Sunni Islam’s “pope.” As he put it, and with plenty of canonical support: Jews “are the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.”

Read more: Media hushes up Islamic misogyny of Logan assault http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=264941#ixzz1EHiFNRTV

It Takes a Man… Or A Merkel

Democracy, Europe, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, libertarianism, Media, Middle East

Be it in Africa or Arabia, liberals labor under the romantic delusion that the effects of millennia of development-resistant, fatalistic, superstitious, and cruel cultures can be cured by Facebook, an infusion of foreign aid, or by the removal of the Mubaraks and Mugabes of the respective regions. I hope they are right about Egypt. My non-interventionist, libertarian inclinations jibe with a certain detachment about the events on both the Egyptian and Iranian street. (See “Let’s Fret About Our Own Tyrants.”) I’m nothing if not consistent. As I said (“Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn”), “I wish the Egyptians better luck with their next ‘son of 60 dogs’ — that’s an Egyptian expression for political master.”

So far, I’m buoyed by the peacefulness of the protest; Egyptians clearly wish to get on with the business of building their lives. Maintaining the peace with Israel would be an organic extension of the admirable restraint exhibited by the demonstrating Egyptians. Besides, what’s wrong with peace? However, American media have not paused long enough from slobbering to express what German Chancellor Angela Merkel has enunciated (“Merkel: Egypt must keep peace with Israel”):

[Merkerl] welcomed Egyptian President Mubarak’s departure in the face of pro-democracy protests as “a historic change” and a “day of great joy.”
But, Merkel said, “We also expect the future Egyptians governments will uphold peace in the Middle East and respect the treaties concluded with Israel, and that Israel’s safety will be guaranteed.”
Israel’s greatest concern has been that its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt might not survive under a new government, especially if Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – the largest and most organized opposition group – gains influence. The Brotherhood has opposed the treaty.

Trust a German woman to keep her wits about her. Merkle also has a good record of refusing to heed the hedonist B. Hussein Obama (an agitator from Chicago), who urged her to print and inflate her country’s currency to Weimar-Republic levels.

Babes In Nosebags

Democracy, Feminism, Gender, Islam, Middle East, Propaganda

Has anyone spotted women in secular attire among the crowds of protesters in Egypt? I’ve seen one or two in the footage (via the Guardian). More often than not, when one does see women on the streets, they’re wearing the traditional nosebag. I understand that the self-celebrating media wants us all to slobber in unison over the protests. Fine. Whatever floats the people’s boat. (The conditions of my slobber were stipulated in “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn.”) Still, I’d like to know how representative are the images transmitted from the Egyptian street, and whether the presence everywhere of women in these nosebags correlates with their mistreatment.

Feminist Phyllis Chesler has a photo essay featuring Cairo University graduates in 1959, 1978, 1995, and 2004. I can see what she means when she observes that “the female graduates in 1959 and 1978 had bare arms, wore short sleeved blouses, dresses, or pants, and were both bare-faced and bare-headed. By 1995, we see a smattering of headscarves—and by 2004 we see a plurality of female university graduates in serious hijab: Tight, and draping the shoulders.”

Chesler equates the trends with “a regression really, in terms of women’s rights.”

A June, 2010 Pew opinion survey of Egyptians confirms that Egyptian society is thoroughly Islamized:

Fifty nine percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics….Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion…When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

I agree that the demos must have its say. But must we American prance about like fools pretending that there are no concerns about popular rule in Egypt?

Assassinations Under US Auspices?

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East

I hope the failed assassination attempt on Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s vice president, recently appointed to quell the unrest in that country, is not a harbinger of things to come. I am thinking of the vulgar cellphone images that circulated the Internet, in which a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, is heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner. Even more repugnant than the hasty hanging carried out under US auspices were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly (See “No Due Process For A Despot”).

Similarly, such a barbaric specter in Egypt (conjuring the French, and not the American, Revolution), will have been greatly inspired, like in Iraq, by American media screeches.

I worry because the US is not necessarily averse to hasty hangings, considering that the strongmen we betray may turn around and tell all: You know; the stuff about how they helped the U.S. with its rendition and torture programs.