Monday, May 2, 2011

Lara Logan Speaks Out , Will the Egyptian Media listen !?

Lara Logan has Spoken out and I wonder when the Egyptian media will listen and discuss her case in the country.

If the link does not work, then check out this link from the CBS News website itself. 

I feel so angry and sorry that she had been through all this.

The least we can do is to speak about her case now in our media, I hope that Yosri Fouda speaks about her case today but of course, I know Osama Bin Laden will take over all his show tonight !! I hope that he shows this segment translated.
 
I found online testimony for someone who was there and said that those who attacked her were thugs and that they claimed she was Israeli who insulted Egypt before attacking and dragging her during the huge chaos and crowdedness at the square then.

 On that night I went to Tahrir and could not get there, there were no less than 4 million people in the streets mostly first-timers not revolutionary protesters including some strange dangerous faces.
Maybe I am asking much but Lara has to report this officially to the Egyptian authorities in order to investigate and document the matter and to cut all the talk and speculations even after this interview, even if it is after three months and it will reach to nothing but this is the correct step to fight sexual harassment.

 It is not enough to speak in the media outside, this incident should be reported to the public persecutor. Documenting the case is another part to fight it, speaking out against it is not enough now despite the difficulty to speak about such incidents openly in this way.
 
This is the lesson we were taught in the case of Noha Rushdie, the Egyptian Palestinian girl who dragged the man who just groped her while he was in his car to the court and brought the case to the daylight.
 
If Lara Logan does not want to report her case then at least she should give that letter of that Canadian lady to the Egyptian ambassador and give her contacts so we can investigate her case.

 A Canadian lady sent a letter to Logan telling her that she was raped by a taxi driver before arriving at Cairo international airport during the early days of the revolution. 

Even if it were from 3 months ago, still there is a rapist in our streets who will rape any female riding with him if he has a chance.
 
Already the SCAF and the cabinet have issued a law that maximizes the sexual assault and harassment of women and minors to the level of execution. “I have to thank them because for years we called for restricting laws to fight sexual assault and harassment in the country but we did not get them because the first lady Suzanne Mubarak did not recognize we had a problem in the first place”

Most Egyptians do not know who Lara Logan is and what happened to her while some of those who knew her story began to have too many questions and began to suspect her story because of how it turned in to hate campaign against Egypt, Egyptians, the Egyptian revolution, Arab and Muslims alike.

Some of them even went a little far and began to feel that Lara Logan’s attack was being used currently to punish Egypt because of our shift in regional policies despite all recognising the sexual harassment problem and xenophobia that took Egypt by storm thanks to Mubarak’s media policies during the revolution.

 Unfortunately, Lara did not speak earlier and reported the matter in more detail like other journalists who were attacked in the country giving considerable time for everyone to speculate anything he wants especially with the amount of hate and racism from another side. 

‘It is worth mentioning that the Mubarak orphans are using the case against Tahrir revolutionaries and the revolution forgetting the fact that Egypt knew the true meaning of sexual harassment and assault except in the time of Mubarak.’

Now no one can ignore the comments about Lara Logan’s case, it is like an elephant in the room. They showed ignorance, hate and racism as you have seen in the comments of previous posts about her in this blog. 

It is no longer a sexual violence case but it turned into a crusade against a whole nation and a whole religion, anyone who reads the blog posts of that creature called Debbie and the comments across the internet feels that these people from the American right-wing will not calm down except when the entire Egyptian and Muslim population wiped out of the entire universe. 

It is not longer Lara Logan’s case or a woman’s case, it turned into “pigs in Cairo need some dictator to teach them some manners” and “Egyptians celebrated the revolution by raping an American journalist” … etc.  “One must wonder if Debbie and she fellow racists will be very eager to defend the Iraqi women raped by the American army soldiers in Iraq or even the U.S army women soldiers who suffer from sexual assaults in the U.S army itself.”

As I hinted before the Egyptian media did not focus on the case and it was not because of bias but because of unprofessionalism if you may ask me. 

I only read about Lara Logan in Egyptian press twice: Tabloid pro-Mubarak Youm 7 and some Egyptian English language lifestyle magazine called Insight while on TV there was a short mention of the incident in Yosri Fouda’s interview with Jan25 TV CEO Mohamed Gohar on TV. 

Of course, after this interview I believe the media may speak about the incident now as we have got more details.
 
Update: The websites in Arabic began to speak about the interview, some commentators are disbelieving the story while the majority of our Arab brothers along with Mubarak orphans are attacking us and the revolution.
 
Back to Lara Logan, well she is a strong lady for sure and I believe what she has been through is not only exclusively for women journalists but for women in different fields, everywhere. 

I once heard of a fearful experience of an Egyptian doctor who used to work in the Gulf from several years ago and was raped during a night shift at the hospital she was working at, of course, she did not report the matter and only left the country.
 
I feel very angry for Lara and personally believe that justice will get all those who hurt her in Cairo from that night sooner or later in one way or another, this is personal belief.

 I apologize to Lara and to all other journalists who had been through hell technically in Cairo in those days. Maybe this file is closed for Lara but it will not be closed for Egypt if we insist to put our heads in the sand and claim that nothing happened.

46 comments:

  1. #incommonworld5/02/2011 04:16:00 PM

    Bless You for your courage and sincerity.
    I believe with all my heart that Egyptians must be a Light in our world. As a nation you should be brave enough to create a country of tolerance, kindness, equality, respect and opportunity for all.

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  2. Thank you for this new Lara thread, Z. That last one must have set a record.

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  3. Two notes about Lara's statement. First, she had painful internal intimate injuries, so lets stop the talk about mere groping. Second, people were recording it on cell phones. It's sick, but the pics and videos have prurient interest and market value. So they may yet turn up.

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  4. Stop the talk. Lara was raped by a bunch of backwardly brain dead group of wild animals, and each one of them who was there there was an animal. I just cannot believe that instead of helping this poor women, they were taking pictures by cell phone. I hear that someone shouted she is an Israeli, so what? so because she may have been Israeli, you go and rape her? In fact especially if she was an Israeli, I would go well out of my way to help her and lead her to safety particularly that this gang rape was about to take place at a time when a so called democratic revolution was in full swing. Well done you idiots, your revolution has been left with the after taste of gang rape.
    Put simply, you do not harm, beat, rape or group rape any women at all, full stop.I hope to god, they catch all of them and stick them in Jail forever, all of them and throw away the keys.

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  5. "The websites in Arabic began to speak about the interview , some commentators are disbelieving the story while the majority of our Arab brothers along with Mubarak orphans are attacking us and the revolution."

    It's good that they are discussing it. I hope we find out who was responsble for it and some testimony comes forth.

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  6. I don't buy her story at all. She claims she was raped by 300 men for 40 minutes. She is just digging for a story that's all.

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  7. I don't know if you realize this but the blog on your main page for this entry has a girl pole dancing on it instead of the interview with Lara. Just letting you know.

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  8. "I don't buy her story at all. She claims she was raped by 300 men for 40 minutes. She is just digging for a story that's all."

    I think Egyptians made up the story, disguised themselves as her and told in on CBS so they can appear more virile and manly.

    What are the Arab papers saying? Are there any eye-witness accounts in the paper yet? Have any pictures or videos from cell phones surfaced?

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  9. Thanks Z for keeping us updates on Lara story. I am glad and have great respect for her for coming out to tell her painful experienced on that night! I felt sorry for her and am happy to see that she is recuperating and back with her family.

    I am not sure whether the Egyptian Authority could catch the culprits or thugs since there were millions of people at Tahrir that night! This is a crime and should be punished,I am happy the SCAF have now stern law regarding this matter.

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  10. You should feel sorry more for the wives of the men she had affairs with in Iraq. Feel sorry for the child whose parents are now divorced because of her.
    Feel sorry for the women whose relationships and marriages she destroyed.
    She is more famous for her sex scandals than what happened in Egypt.

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  11. and it is the time to ignore your blog for being a fool that you believed the lies of Lara Logan.

    there is more important things to write about right now and you keep bringing the ugly face of Lara again and again, as if you are jobless right now.

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  12. Lara Logan had no extra-marital affairs in Iraq. She was divorced from her first husband for over a year when she met and dated her current husband (a defense contractor) who had been separated from his wife for over a year at the time (in the process of finalizing his divorce). A colleague who was apparently obsessed with her reportedly got into a fist fight with him at one point. Outside of that, she's not known to have any affairs. Divorce is part of life and has been since ancient times. She never cheated on her husband or broke up anyone's marriage. Even if she had, it wouldn't mean she deserved to be attacked for reporting the news. She is not famous for her sex scandals so much as her fearless reports in Iraq and Afghanistan and during Apartheid in South Africa.

    Ignoring what happened to Lara Logan is just as much a sin as ignoring the revolution, you fool. What sense of decency can a human being claim to have if he ignores such injustice?

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  13. The sex scandal stuff was in tabloids and blogs. It's actually not even true that there was any sort of fist fight or yelling match between the CNN reporter she dated briefly and the contractor she married. The contractor's ex wife filed for divorce months and months before he ever met Lara. Lara had been divorced for a year before she met the contractor. The ex wife of the contractor only made a fuss because she wanted custody of the kid. Lara did get pregnant out of wedlock but married Burkett, raised his child and has been happily married since that time. She's not scandalous and not known for her scandals. She's a very professional and passionate reporter known for her great work in the field. Quit trying to justify this rape. It's unjustifiable.

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  14. I think this was a conspiracy orchestrated by Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilley to both cast the revolution in a bad light and humiliate one of their most notable and outspoken rivals on the Left. Glenn Beck called up Mubrack and told him he could get Lara back into the country by promising her an interview with him (everyone only pretending it was going to be an interview with that other dude who backed out) and have her go to the square and then have his secret police gangs slide up and act like protesters then grab her and rape her in the middle of the street to turn America and the world against the protesters. But it backfired because she got rescued by soldiers and lived. I'm telling you it was Fox News that did this! Glenn Beck is trying to kill people, motherfuckers! He's gone insane!

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  15. 60 minutes overtime
    "you can't imagine what they did to me"

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20058581-10391709.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

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  16. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/item_eyjZaCHJvKzu3a1xlv6ECP;jsessionid=6A0783C0494CCB6AD3756A04625CA58E

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  17. Ms Logan is a money grabbing, headline creating tabloid story calculating Fraudster for comprehensible, mainly to distract from, grab attention to herself and undermine the democratic movement. Sure an investigation is due, but until that happens, we need to go through a legal process not mix this issue with the priorities which is to focus on democracy. If you have been through the last two decades with its tricks and media sensationalism, then you will not fall for this Blah,Blah,Blah stuff. I would be more interested in the implication of the Pakistani raid, This apart from internal politics I think, is a pretext to provoke the light headed Islamic extremist illiterate idiots to be foolish as they always are, thus associating the stupid action of these extremist criminals with the purist of the revolutions, creating a distraction from the real democratic sources of the revolution. Then what followed are rumors of extremist associations with the revolutions, followed by debates, followed by demands for military interfere in Libya (oil), Bahrain and Yemen where democracy is almost impossible. Just old tricks in new hats. The other point behind the
    raid is finally the exist strategy in Afghanistan will be justified. But what is most striking is that this raid came a week after the other idiot Donald Trump in an interview referred both to Libyan oil and Pakistan's role in hiding extremists, wow, a coincidence? and finally the best part, burial at sea? Mmmm...

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  18. Dead Osama has released a video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dri09dM348&feature=player_embedded

    This is Dead Osama II, as opposed to the Dead Osama I who released videos between December 2001 (when he died the first time) and April 2011 (when he died the second time).

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  19. Morons and misogynists please note:

    1) Logan is not a bimbo. She has worked for some of the world's largest news agencies since the early 1990s and reported from some of the most notorious war zones of recent years – including Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
    2) She is neither a gold digger nor a headline grabber. Her recent CBS interview was the first time that she spoke about what happened to her in Tahrir Square. She made her reasons for speaking out very clear, as well as her reasons for not wishing to speak about it again.
    3) That night in Tahrir she walked amidst the jubilant crowd with an experienced security guard, drivers, translators and fixers. It was to be a night of celebration in the political and cultural centre of the Arab world. To suggest that a female foreign correspondent of some 20 years experience should have been better informed of the local culture, should perhaps not have been there at all, is to do a grave disservice to both her and the world's most populous Arab country.
    4) A 39 year old journalist was stripped naked and finger raped by scores of Egyptian men in the course of trying to do her job. Accept it. Perhaps even do something about it. If, on the other hand, you find yourself trying to defend the indefensible you have a problem with your moral compass. You are, in fact, a piece of shit.

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  20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y49Cr3S3BA

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  21. "I think it's an outrage to point the finger at journalists and say that this is our fault. I really do. And I think it shows an abject lack of respect for any journalist that's prepared to come to this country and risk their lives." ~ Lara Logan

    http://crooksandliars.com/2006/03/26/lara-logan-smacked-down-the-quotnegative-iraq-war-coveragequot-charges

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  22. Test for virginity, and Lara Logan, and what different reaction! And if it's done with your girl with Tahrir? again convince the Egyptian national boundaries, is always to blame someone, and you always offend someone! to civilization you will grow and grow. ....

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  23. “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." ~ An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith

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  24. Can we not identify the men on either side of her in the well-publicized photo http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2011/02/22/alg_lara_logan.jpg and from them identify the perpetrators?

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  25. Those are her Egyptian drivers/bodyguards. They are identified in her interview on 60 Minutes.

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  26. You know, anecdotally one of the reasons I think Lara Logan was targeted - and that mob instigated - by regime goons who detained her week before are comment threads like this one.

    Lara Logan incites really virulent opinions about her from other people just by being her. It could be a manic admiration or even crush, or it could be a manic repugnance, even hate. But its always a strong opinion.

    Some people have 'it' that way, most don't. I'm talking about a wide variety of types here. A completely opposite much more famous character who over time developed a distilled, extremely intense version of the 'it' I'm talking about would be Michael Jackson. People thought he was a demi-god or a kid-toucher freak if they thought about him at all. Logan has a faint touch of that same peculiar quality with most people who notice her at all, and you see it seep out in comment threads like this one.

    And that makes me wonder about her interactions with the regime in Cairo when she was detained. How much she irritated the shit out of them and they couldn't touch her then. And when they knew Logan was coming back, and then the regime was over, in all that chaos, they're like 'fuck it' because they're out of a job in a two months anyways. It seriously makes me wonder if she irritated the shit out of those detaining peeps in Cairo week before much as some people are irritated with Logan on comment threads like this one.

    And seriously I don't mean that in some accusing way or anything, I'm just saying Logan's good at making people either fall for her completely like idiot fan-boys or want to knock her the fuck out...even now.

    Just say'in.

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  27. I don't think it's being an "idiot fan-boy" to defend a woman against people who are accusing her of tabloid bullshit or inciting a riot or whatever else. I'm pretty sure that's just being rational.

    Other than that, I agree. I mean, how do you get a group of 200 to 300 dudes focussed on any one thing if it's not a somewhat organized group of some sort. I think there was some sort of gang or group involved.

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  28. If it was the regime and they wanted revenge then why wouldn't they just abduct her like they did before? Why wasn't she whisked off to some private prison or brothel? Because they wanted to humiliate her and then let her go without killing her? Why? Because they wanted to turn the world against the protestors? Make a statement? It's weird.

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  29. "If it was the regime and they wanted revenge then why wouldn't they just abduct her like they did before? Why wasn't she whisked off to some private prison or brothel?"

    Because it wasn't 'the regime' that was on it. It was individuals who worked for regime, people who encountered her week before. The way police states work is persons-of-interest have a file, certain individuals are responsible for tracking assigned persons-of-interest etc.

    So Logan - like most other journalists at that point I think - had people assigned to tail her and such. They told her as much when they detained her previously. Important caveat here is she wouldn't know them directly by face, because she was blindfolded by them when she was in their custody. Logan's own account of her detainment is circumspect but suggestive: Blindfolded, interrogated, photographed...she was sick and throwing up all over, they had to give her an IV. And I bet she was quite mouthy, 'outspoken' to put it politely, as Logan seems apt to be. And I bet she pissed them off.

    So they find out she's coming back. Again Logan is on record stating her team tried very hard with Egyptian Embassy to secure press credentials etc. Which means the bureaucracy was aware at some level she was coming back, what flight, hotel, everything.

    So, they're tracking her in Tahrir Square. If anything, regime was protecting her in a way like most journalists...they'd hardly want an incident like that while regime seemed viable. Again look at her account of her previous detainment: She and her team got the works, but only her driver - the Egyptian - got the shit kicked out of him, the Americans were untouchable that way, undoubtedly from orders on high. And once 'regime' was gone all those working police-state bits of it - like the agents trailing journalists - were still in motion, including the ones tracking Logan.

    And once those agents knew the regime was over, knew they would be out of a job, while in that chaotic scene tracking Logan, what did they have to lose at that point? Nothing at all apparently. So why not show that mouthy blonde American bitch a thing or two?

    That's what I think happened.

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  30. “But we would be wrong to assume that in controlling Egyptians, Mubarak somehow also kept women safe. In fact, state-sanctioned violence against women was widespread and well documented. For years Egypt has been cited by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for using rape, torture, and sexual assault to threaten and intimidate female activists who criticized the regime. These tactics were also used against female family members of dissidents. There is also considerable evidence that members of Mubarak’s security forces ordered the assault of female protesters during the recent demonstrations.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachel-newcomb/blame-the-muslims-violenc_b_824008.html

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  31. Here is a question for you:

    Could those who raped Lara Logan even be tried (in a court of law) by a government that didn't exist at the time of her rape? That night, there was no government. Mubarek stepped down. Who was his successor? Was the military in charge? Was this crime committed under any viable Egyptian government rule? If video does surface (and men are identified) can they be prosecuted when no law existed at the time of the rape?

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  32. @ The Zeitgeist: Sure, it's possible that elements of the regime instigated the attack. But ultimately, there appears to have been a crowd of scores or even hundreds involved in some way. This is the worrying part.

    The same phenomenon, to a lesser degree, can be witnessed on Talat Harb Street every Eid Al Fitr: crowds of sexually frustrated young men emboldened by the anonimity of a crowd behaving in what can only be described as a primitive fasion. It is a social malaise which Egypt will have to first admit to and then confront before it can progress as a nation.

    Sadly, the silence of the local press on the issue suggests that it is not ready to do that.

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  33. ...been following it for the last month or so and can't be bothered setting up a blog profile.

    I watched Ms Logan recounting her assault which has left her a tortured soul who has suffered greatly; but some little details just don't add up. It could simply be confusion on her part.

    She talked about her "clothing giving way" during the assault and her panties being ripped off her.
    Then in "60 minutes overtime" she talks about her clothing and panties being packaged away as evidence.

    how in the world was her clothing recovered from the Melee of assaulting Men when the soldiers rescuing her had to beat back the men with batons?
    ..and she was apparently thrown over the shoulders of one of the soldiers because she was too weak to walk, I think at that point her safety was more of concern than her clothing.

    ###needt0kn0wthetruth###

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  34. She doesn't say her panties were recovered, just her pants. I'm assuming parts of her pants were still attached to her waist or hanging from her knee high leather boots. She said her shirt was around her neck. The bodyguard is said to have had the sleeve of her jacket. This is all in the interview.

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  35. An account of what happened that night from a Christian Coptic in Egypt named "Ideodaniach" on the Temoris Grecko blog:

    http://temorisblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/lara-logan-and-cbs-dont-care-about-racism-theyre-not-helping-the-womens-cause-either/

    Ideodaniach posted this on 5/8. He also posted other comments about this as well.

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  36. Temoris wrote:
    Warning
    The person who wrote this comment has pretended to be an Egyptian among other fake personalities. His e mail address is Lambretti79@live.co.uk and has commented under the following names:

    Ideodaniach (the “Egyptian”.)
    Frederick
    Sebastian
    Gilmore’s Gardens
    ClaireBear
    Duncan
    Searchandfound
    Kenneth

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  37. Temoris is still full of shit. There is no way he can identify the woman rushed by him for ten seconds. There are half a dozen reports of other women being assaulted by large groups of women that night quoted by commenters on his page but he refuses to even entertain the possibility he could have seen a separate incident even though he initially said he had no idea who Lara Logan was before the attack and "learned later" that the woman he saw must have been Logan. It's conspiracy theory bullshit. The attack happened just as she described and it's obvious from the wounds she displayed at the IMI, the accounts corroborated by her producer and bodyguard, the medical treatment she received, etc. She was raped. Anyone denying this, still, even now, is mentally retarded.

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  38. ZEINOBIA:

    "I found online testimony for someone who was there..."

    Link please.

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  39. Has the media in Egypt spoken to any witnesses?

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  40. Why so quiet all of a sudden?

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  41. Why is everything has been said.

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  42. That is because Egyptians tolerate rape! The silence indicates rapes happen more then they want to admit and they could care less since it was a white western woman. Egypt thinks this is all a lie! They probably will blame the Jews it is never their fault!

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  43. Everything has been said, sure. But hearing from eye witnesses or uncovering pictures/video would be a huge development. Has this story gotten very much attention in the press yet? It would be hard to compete with the other stories of the day in Egypt (the literal birth of a nation) but I'm sure some are interested in finding out more about what happened. Why aren't Egyptian reporters trying to interview witnesses or find footage of the attack? Many people in the U.S. are still captivated by this story. More details would be much appreciated.

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  44. Your media's silence has enabled this to happen again. This time to Sherihan in broad daylight. When will you learn that it's time to speak out against sexual harassment.

    "Yesterday was an important day for the revolution. Protesters took Tahrir square again to assert revolution’s demands. Islamists groups decided not to participate yesterday so it was a test for liberal and secular groups to organize in the streets. It was considered a success given the thousands that showed up, but it was marred by a horrible incident of sexual harassment of the famous diva Sherihan.

    Sherihan was an actress and performer loved by Egyptians particularly during the 80s and 90s. She suffered a severe car accident in mid-90s and it was rumored that it was a chapter of love and power saga that involved Alaa the elder son of Mubarak. She magically recovered and came back to the stage, only to suffer cancer a few years later and move away from the artistic scene. Sherihan was one of the few artists who participated in the revolution unlike many artists who withdrew from making a political stance.

    My mother told me that this sad video was screened on TV that shows the horrible incident. The setting around her doesn’t look like Tahrir, some reported that this happened as she was leaving Tahrir yesterday.

    What really angers me is the lack of attention such incident got and some of the horrible comments of victim-blame that I always hear when sexual harassment is brought up. Some wonder why she went out of her home! It makes me wonder how deep the denialism about gender inequality is in our country..."

    http://rwac-egypt.blogspot.com/2011/05/sexually-harassing-egypts-revolution.html

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  45. ANOTHER Female Journalist Suffers Brutal Attack in Tahrir Square
    http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/06/another-female-journalist-suffers-brutal-attack-in-tahrir-square/

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