Lara Logan Talks About Cairo Assault

Lara Logan talked to 60 Minutes about the sexual assault she suffered in Cairo. Logan was beaten by flag poles, dragged and assaulted for 25 minutes.

The Cost of Mubarak's Greed

Where do dictators do their banking? The answer is Switzerland.

GENEVA, Switzerland, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- The Swiss foreign ministry says it has located bank accounts worth millions of dollars associated with ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak stepped down Feb. 11 amid enormous public demonstrations calling for an end to his 31 years of autocratic rule. The interim military government then made a call among Arabic countries to freeze his assets, The New York Times said.

Switzerland was not formally asked to identify or freeze any holdings, but did so on its own, the newspaper said.

Mubarak and his family are estimated to have a $40 billion to $70 billion net worth. Under Egypt law foreign businesses are required to give a 51 percent stake to an Egypt citizen. Often that is Mubarak or one of his cronies. Mubarak got rich while many of his people lived in poverty. Tas has been in Egypt and describes how poverty is spreding in the country.

Similarly, if you go around the outskirts of Cairo, poor neighborhoods are spouting up -- very similar to shantytowns. Jobs in Egypt are in its cities, and the major city is Cairo. But even when you goto Alexandria, there is the rich tourist area near the Mediterranean coast, and the demographics of the neighborhoods get progressively -- and drastically -- poorer the farther away from the shore you travel. I've seen the neighborhood of Sayid Darwish's first house -- tourism dollars do not hit that part of Alexandria. Which, by the way, is only a couple miles away from the Sheraton.

To quote James Carville, "It's about the economy, stupid." People want to work and earn a decent living, whether it is the United States and Egypt. People can only take living in subhuman conditions for so long.

Lara Logan Sexually Assausted in Egypt

The details are sketchy but this sound really bad. Earlier this month: Logan and her CBS News crew were detained and forced to leave Egypt. Logan told Charlie Rose that her Egyptian driver was badly beaten by the police. Logan still went back to cover the story of the Egyptian protests. That takes a tremendous amount of courage.

Logan and her CBS News crew were covering the Tahrir Square protests for a 60 Minutes story. A mob sepearated Logan from her crew. CBS News reports that Logan "suffered a brutal and sustained assault." Translation: Logan suffered the unspeakable terror of being gangraped.

A group of Egyptian woman came to Logan's rescue. Egyptian soldiers also helped get Logan away from the mob. There is no word on whether Logan's attackers were Mubarak supporters or pro-democracy protesters.

Logan is currently recovering from her injuries in the United States.

Side note: Logan talked to Esquire about being detained by the Egyptian army.

Update: Ann Friedman makes an excellent point that I didn't consider.

News broke today that CBS News correspondent Lara Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” while she was covering the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square. As Garance Franke-Ruta pointed out on Twitter, the fact that we’re hearing about this probably means that Logan was OK with making her assault public. This is an incredibly brave act, not just from a personal standpoint — she has come out as a sexual assault survivor — but also from a professional one.

Lara Logan Detained in Egypt

CBS News foreign correspondent Lara Logan was detained by the Egyptian police. Logan and her crew were taken to the airport and expelled from Egypt. Charlie Rose interviewed Logan about Egypt and her detention. Logan makes it clear the protests were started by the people and not the Muslim Brotherhood.

Logan tells Rose that President Hosni Mubarak wants a journalism blackout. This will allow Mubarak to use the police and miltary to brutally crackdown on the protesters. President Barack Obama needs to speak out on behave for the safety of the protesters. America either supports free speech or it doesn't. It we don't speak out on behave of the Egyptian protesters then the United States will have no credibility speaking out on free speech and democratic reforms in the future. Iran and North Korea can throw our support for the Mubarak regime in our faces when we pressure those countries for democratic reforms.

Update: Logan explains to Rose that the protesters find Obama's half-hearted gestures of supporting democratic reform bullshit. The Egyptian government is pissed at Obama not not providing full support after all the help they provided the United States with fighting terrorism. Trianglation fails again.

Update: Logan tells Rose that her Egyptian driver was badly beaten in an interrogation room.

Hillary Clinton on Egypt

Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has come out against the treatment of journalists covering the protests in Egypt.

"We condemn attacks on reporters," Clinton said.

Clinton added , ""Free and fair elections are essential."

A few days ago Clinton was waffling on the issue of Egypt. Clinton must realize that is is over for the Mubarak regime.

Shocking: Conservatives Do Not Support Democratic Protests in Egypt

Say it ain't so! Conservative pundits are full of it when they say they support peace in the Middle East. Fox News pundits label the Muslim Brotherhood a "radical" group. Shadi Hamid notes the Muslim Botherhood has a rather secular governing philosophy.

Decades ago, it renounced violence. More recently, the group has publicly committed itself, in Arabic, to many of the foundational components of democratic life, including alternation of power, popular sovereignty, and judicial independence. In its political programs, the Brotherhood has largely stripped its programs of traditional Islamic content. Where the Brotherhood once talked endlessly about "application of shariah law" (tatbig al shariah), it now settles for vague expressions promoting Islamic vaulues and morals. Meanwhile, its vocabulary has shifted from favoring an "Islamic state" to a "civil, democratic state with a Islamic reference."

The Fox News pundits are calling the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists. It doesn't matter to Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck if they have no evidence of the Brotherhood ever committed a terrorist attack. Their job is to create ratings and scare their auiences.

Obama’s Shay Party Problem

[This will be posted to my Islamic issues blog, The Middle Everything, tomorrow morning.]

American politicians have become accustomed to thinking that maintenance of status quo will bring stability to their domestic and foreign policy objectives, but two phenomenons that have occurred since 2008 should shatter this belief. (I say “should” with the implication that it won’t, because if there’s another beast on this planet more stubborn than an American politician, I’d like to know what it is.)

The Republican party is currently suffering an identity crisis — the Tea Party phenomenon.

Here’s what happened: For decades Republican politicians would push support for conservative issues to their base, but then never act towards resolving these issues. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll focus on abortion. Republican politicians said abortion is evil and we must outlaw it, and that’s been their stance since the US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973 — but for decades, abortion stayed legal in America. It’s still legal despite the fact that, during the majority of President George W. Bush’s term, the Republicans controlled the Executive and Legislative branches of federal government. With a conservative leaning Supreme Court, many conservative voters that Republican politicians considered their natural base of voters itched for action — they wanted abortion overturned. They wanted abortion made illegal now.

Republican politicians balked, though. Without issues like abortion to froth up anger in their base of voters, what else could they use to create voter anger to channel to the voting booth and vote Republican? The Republican Party was stuck in a quandary of having all the power — but taking ultimate action on their issues was a risk to that power.

Eventually, a new crop of politicians like Sarah Palin arose to take care of this problem for the Republicans. Sarah Palin is basically a 100% representation of the kind of conservative voter Republicans have pandered to, but she doesn’t take no for an answer. She doesn’t care about the details, she just wants what the Republicans have promised her for years.

Sarah Palin is the essence of the conservative voter base Republicans used for years to prop themselves into power, tending it by playing to their emotions, telling them “Vote for us and we’ll make abortion illegal!”; among other promises. Now Republicans must battle with the insatiable base they created. The Republicans thought holding a carrot on a stick in front of their voter base would create stability, but instead it created an earthquake.

How does this relate to foreign policy, especially for Islamic nations that I primarily write about now? For some reason, the Republican Party’s troubles with the Tea Party are the first thing I thought of when pondering Obama’s reactions to the ongoing Egyptian Revolution.

It would be dishonest not to mention that Obama is a victim of decades of Middle East and North African (MENA) foreign policy objectives laid before him by previous presidents; and the primary concern of American foreign policy for the often volatile MENA region is maintaining stability so we continue to have access to oil and the Suez Canal. But America is also supposed to be a beacon of democracy to the rest of the world, so I’ve been wholly unsatisfied with Obama’s refusal to tell Egyptian Dictator Mubarak to listen to his people and resign from office.

After Mubarak used his 2/1/2011 speech to try telling the world that all the Egyptian people wanted from him was to handpick a new government to put into place, Obama’s follow up speech was equally as out of touch with the demands of the Egyptian people. Obama said Mubarak needs to “manage the aftermath of these protests” — what aftermath? Just because the dictator refuses to step down immediately means the protesters leave the streets? I’ll skip the speculation on just how violent clashes between the government and protesters could become because of Mubarak’s continued arrogance, but it isn’t speculation to say that Obama is out of touch with reality.

Or, rather, Obama’s trying to maintain the reality that MENA dictatorships propped up by American soft (and occasionally hard) power will continue to exist.

I realize that Obama is walking a fine line right now. If he casts off Mubarak’s regime in his public proclamations, that’s an open invitation the the rest of the American-supported dictators that we will not support you if your people revolt — a message that will be heard loud and clear by the people of MENA countries. America’s primary foreign policy objectivity in the MENA region is to maintain stability.

But after decades of American presidents telling the American people — and people around the world — that we support democracy, Obama supporting Mubarak no matter what decision he makes has created problems for him at home and abroad. Obama was elected to office on the mantra of “Hope and Change” — but his Egypt policy has been anything but. Obama’s base of voters clamor for equality at home and abroad, and one must wonder if a representative of the Democrat Party base of voters, equivalent to Sarah Palin on the right, will rise up.

More importantly, though, are the masses on the streets outside of America’s borders. The people who, for years, we claimed we would support in their endeavors to create democratic societies — all while propping up their dictators with billions in American financial aid. Successive American presidents assumed this schizophrenic foreign policy would maintain stability in the MENA region.

Well, they were wrong.

The Republican Party has a Tea Party Problem. The Arabic word for tea is “shayy” — coincidentally, in American history, a citizens revolt happened from 1786-87 called “Shays’ Rebellion”. So I think calling the situation the president finds himself in “Obama’s Shay Party Problem” is appropriate.

Placing the latest Israel/Gaza violence into perspective...

Robert Fisk (h/t mattthebastard):

Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis -- just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated." And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" -- as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.

Amnesty International:

This is the highest level of Palestinian fatalities and casualties in four decades of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The escalation of violence comes at a time when the civilian population already faces a daily struggle for survival due to the Israeli blockade which has prevented even food and medicines from entering Gaza.

So this latest Israeli hissy fit bout of violence may be unprecedented (since 1948, at least). And speaking of the Israelis blockading aid, the Guardian reports...

Israel accused of ramming Gaza aid ship

The Free Gaza Movement said its vessel, the Dignity, was intercepted by several Israeli vessels as it was heading to the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli aerial bombardment since Saturday.

One gunboat rammed the Dignity on the port bow side, causing heavy damage, although no one was hurt, the group said.

"[The Dignity] is taking on water and appears to have engine problems," the movement said on its website. "When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza.

As for the origins of this current crisis, it's tough to know where to begin... But, as OpenLeft points out, some blame should be given to the Bush administration since it was them who helped bring Hamas into power (ironically enough):

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

But, as we all know, the real question is how many anti-Arab, pro-death trolls will this post rake in? Fuck talking about reality! Meanwhile, the bodycount mounts... And Arab leaders still don't know what the hell to do. (Well, except for the Egyptians, who seem content with shooting at Gazans at the border and not opening up their hospitals to them. Classy.) But to be fair, Bush doesn't know what to do either -- he won't even cut his vacation short because of the crisis. Which is also classy.