Much has been said about peaceful demonstration and the Egyptian people just wanting to be free.  Perhaps we need to re-examine how peaceful the revolt really was.  The Cairo Museum was broken in to and artifacts from antiquity were damaged or stolen.  There were hundreds of deaths.  Supposedly nice people were hurling stones.  Anderson Cooper and Fox News crew Greg Palkot and Olaf Wiig  were  beaten up pretty badly.  And on Friday, as it was all supposedly coming to an end, the Huffington Post reported:

On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.

 

That is not peaceful demonstration. It is an outrage that any member of the press should be subjected to such a brutal crime.  Not all can be blamed on pro Mubarak thugs.   In light of this behavior, the United States needs to re-evaluate the foreign aid it has shelled out in the past.  I would sure put my check book away.  Beating up and sexually assaulting American journalists is totally unacceptable.

17 Thoughts to “Egyptian Revolt: Not so Peaceful”

  1. Yeah, I noticed that contradiction awhile ago. The first gathering might have been peaceful, but no one could deny the violence that ensued. Someone was trying to sweep it under the rug.

  2. I sure wouldn’t want to be talking about the Egyptian Tea Party movement now.

    I don’t think these things are ever peaceful. Peaceful Revolution seems like an oxymoron to me.

  3. Need to Know

    Foreign aid needs to be reexamined and cut at all levels. During the Cold War these pay-offs, even to dictators, played a useful role in containing the Soviet Union. Yes, even despite my more moderate-seeming posts on other issues I was a strong hawk during the days of Soviet expansionism and even played a role myself at that time helping advance U.S. foreign policy objectives.

    However, the fact that some people have not realized that the Cold War is over combined with bureaucratic inertia, keep these taxpayer funds flowing. The President’s own deficit reduction commission recommends cuts, even of the billions of dollars of voluntary contributions the U.S. makes to the United Nations over and above our dues assessments.

    The Soviet Union no longer exists and the threats we face now are vastly different. U.S. taxpayers no longer receive the security-related benefits from foreign aid and, aside from perhaps some limited humanitarian aid as partners with other nations, it’s time to pull the plug.

  4. Big Dog

    This was a terrible incident.

    I’ve have long admired Logan’s work, especially on “60 Minutes”. She is a first rate journalist.

    I wish her a full recovery, aware the physical scars may heal quicker than the emotional ones.

  5. hello

    Is anyone surprised by this?

  6. I am always surprised when human beings act like neanderthals. But in reality, NO. Thank goodness for the women who rescued her. I hope all the journalists got out of there in one piece.

    No more foreign aid there.

  7. Elena

    Thank G-d those muslim women were brave enough to help her, along with the soldiers, to save Lara from probable death. That kind of heroism gives me faith, even the face of such brutality and primitive inhumane behavior

  8. @e, I don’t think we know who her attackers were. Men on a feeding frenzy it sounds like.

    Would that ever happen in the United States?

  9. e

    a bunch of seventh century savages all of them, i spit on them all

  10. @e
    It doesn’t have to be an organized group. The misogynistic hate is strong there.

  11. DB

    Didn’t something like this happen in Central Park in 2000? A bunch of women were robbed, had their clothes torn off, and were manually raped by gangs of men after a parade? And the police were within screamng distance and did nothing? Bystanders did nothing as well. Think that I read somewhere that some of the men involved in the wilding were sentenced to 5 years in prison.

  12. Alex

    So let me get this straight. After weeks of protests involving hundreds of thousands of people, in a country of 82 million people a total of 365 people died. 365 people! in the great scheme of what happened in that country that is close to a small miracle. I think that to denounce the “peaceful” label of this rebellion is offense to the Egyptian people who managed to overthrow a powerful autocrat without throwing the country into civil war (see Libya). The idea thats hundreds of thousands of people could gather in one place for a singular goal and limit the death toll to 365 is actually quite remarkable. The assualts against reporters that you are reference were mainly done by pro-mubarak supporters who were actually paid by the government. so yea thats my point, I think the Egyptian people deserve more credit than you gave them.

    1. @Alex, and when our reporters are beaten up, raped, and nearly killed, I say it isn’t peaceful. If this happens to one person, then it isn’t peaceful, at least in that person’s eyes.

      How do you know who assaulted our reporters? I think we can say that some of the uprising was not peaceful. I don’t think I assigned credit. I simply said it wasn’t peaceful.

  13. Alex

    oh and on another note, the US didnt care that Mubarak stayed in power and unlawfully put people into jails and enact laws restricting freedom for over 30 years but now that a few reporters were attacked you suddenly want to stop aid? Explain that to me?

    1. Real simple. Beat up our reporters. No 2 billion a year. We have better things to spend our money on than foreign aid.

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