I have highlighted the romanticized view of uprisings in the Middle East taken by NY Times reporters and pundits, projecting Western liberal values onto what in many cases were fundamentalist and virulently anti-Semitic Islamists:
- NY Times Whitewashes Return of Anti-Semitic Egyptian Cleric
- Who’s Afraid Of The “Arab Street”?
- The Yuppie Revolution In Egypt Is Over, The Islamist Revolution Has Begun
The NY Times slowly is awakening to the fact that Islamists are on the upswing, although The Times acts as if this were a surprise development, Islamist Group Is Rising Force in a New Egypt:
In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.
It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.
As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.
What a bunch of dupes and fools. Not the Egyptians, the Editors, reporters and pundits at The Times.
The NY Times’ reporters on the ground in Egypt apparently did not see Islamism coming, unlike the right-bloggers in pajamas sitting in dimly lit basements with candy wrappers strewn on the floor.
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Related Posts:
Bloggers In Pajamas Scooped Again By Big Media
It Could Happen Anywhere, But It Happened There
The Haunting Logan Photo As Metaphor
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Egyptian women protesters forced to take ‘virginity tests’
"20-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Salwa Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.
The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat. They were threatened that “those not found to be virgins” would be charged with prostitution.
According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks."
Amnesty International
With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel…
Still The Times sees what it wants to see
and disregards the rest
lie la lie
Phyllis Chesler,among others, has documented the unsurprising but still appalling failure of western feminists to respond both generally to the oppression of women in Arab Muslim countries and specifically to the outrages against women on the part of the Egyptian rebels.
But as the NY Times sees moderates among Hamas and Hizbollah, it's not astonishing that they'd see them other places where either they don't exist or "moderate" is, shall we say, a term of art.
Announcing another winner of the Captain Louis Renault Award for ever-vigilant awareness and incisive, investigative journalism.
Densa (Mensa-negative-universe-counterpart) charter member.
In the modern world, secular enlightenment is proving it can't hold a candle to jihadist spiritual enlightenment.
How long until this latest episode of self-determination by a distinctly undemocratic people brings the dark ages of its imperialistic empire?
The NY Times Doctrine helps enable the fruition of a one-world vision. But it won't be their vision. There's more than one way to make the world's people "one." If and when the progressives ever realize this, it will be long too late. Leave bad enough alone, dupes.
Anyone with two grey cells bumbing together knew that as soon as Mubarak was ousted, the Muslim Brotherhood was going to step in a play an important part. The results of last weeks election in Egypt to have "speedy" elections for power put the MB in the cat bird's seat.
So while our government was shouting the "rah rah's" for the protesters in Egypt, it will work out to be a) bad for the U.S. and b) REALLY bad for Israel.
Now we are backing Islamists in Libya. The same tribalists that sent radicals to Iraq to kill American soldiers.
The R2D plan, as outlined by Samatha Powers, and her husband, Cass Sunstein, is working just fine. If I were Israel, I would be arming, and training, every one over the age of 16.
Last week we learned how Three Strong Women prevailed over timid male advisors and persuaded an indecisive male President to initiate our humanitarian intervention in Libya.
This week, what a surprise: as the situation evolves and facts emerge, feminists are disavowing that narrative.
"…unlike the right-bloggers in pajamas sitting in dimly lit basements with candy wrappers strewn on the floor."
Oh, crap – did my kids report me again?
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, a couple days ago when I read this by Vladimir Putin saying, "The Security Council resolution is flawed, it allows everything and is reminiscent of a medieval call for a crusade," … "In fact, it allows intervention in a sovereign state."
WTH(eck)! He's damn straight only about one thing. Can you imagine further occupation or annihilation of Israel and the Holy Lands through this, whatever it's not called!
My mind boggles to think of the repercussions spawning over this 'democracy experiment' with these ME freedom fighters. wink wink
The only people with a clue are those who embrace the faith of a loving Alpha and Omega daily. It's a diverse crowd of many individual faiths that binds together because of the exclusion of HATE, and every insidious thought and behavior executed in the absence of love.
"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! "
I think the folks at the Times know exactly what's going on- and they're all for it.
OT, but history may be unfolding in Syria. As as important as Egypt, maybe more so. Many killed in Syria today, widespread and rising unrest.
"Dara’a. An eyewitness on BBC Arabic said that armed units speaking only Farsi descended upon Dara’a. They have smothered the walls of the al-Omari Mosque with their graffiti but several of them were captured. Another witness, Omar al-Masri, said that snipers took positions on rooftops and started shooting. He said Syrians converged in large numbers upon the rooftops and five snipers were captured. Al-Masri, confirmed the other eyewitness, and said that non-Syrians wearing all black were captured in al-Omari Mosque. They spoke only Farsi. The same eyewitness said that 25 Syrians are known to have died today in Dara’a and that many security people have resigned their positions in As-Sanamyn and Inkhil.
(Michael Ledeen): Syrians speak Arabic. Iranians (and some Afghans) speak Farsi. So the implicit allegation in this update is that Iranians (probably the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards) are killing the protesters."
The Tatler, Michael Ledeen
Blood in Syrian Streets – video from today, 3/25/2001
Enduring America, World view
"I think the folks at the Times know exactly what's going on- and they're all for it."
So do I. They hope (a key word to them) it will all stay at arms' length and let them party on. They don't want to rouse themselves from their parties.
Sybarite's response to dangerous people: humor them, appease them (deepest form of disrespect) and erect economic barriers to keep them at bay, and if they won't stay put, physically isolate or kill them, using proxies of course.
The last two tactics drove the invasion of Libya. Their leader even had to rouse himself from a party to get on with it. They hate it, they hate it, they hate it, to be distracted by upstarts and forced to address their demands/threatenings.
The folks at the Times know what's going on and are for it, but they're getting mad now that the upstarts aren't going for appeasement and economic barriers, the first line of defense.
Now they have to sweat a sweep into their bacchanals and they hate that. Not the sweep so much, for they imagine their proxies able to take down the upstarts if necessary, but the sweat. They really hate distractions, they hate being forced to attend to something they didn't initiate and thought they had cauterized.
I dare say not one female NYT staffer at any level desires a virginity check. Nor any non-Mohammedan male a direct choice between conversion, death or dhimmitude.
I was with you until that last statement. I do blog in a basement, and the wrappers strewn on the floor are from Ho-Hos, not candy. I'll grant you the dimly lit part. :p
Uh, the link in the first comment about the virginity tests makes it perfectly clear that the sexual abuse of women is being done by the pro-Mubarak security forces. It even says that the wives of Muslim Brotherhood members are sometimes singled out for abuse.
…and don't you right-wingers see Amnesty International as a bunch of commies anyways?
Zeinobia – just (an) Egyptian girl
"What happened last night at Cairo university can’t be ignored or passed so easily and I think it is our responsibility and the responsibility of the mainstream media before us when it let what happened at the Egyptian museum pass in that disgraceful way.
Now the mainstream media speaks about how the military police attacked the students and professors at the faculty of mass communication, Cairo university during their legal strike inside campus because simply but it totally ignored what happened at Tahrir and Egyptian museum. The whole world is speaking about the VIRGINITY TESTS and our media does not dare to speak about it despite their silence is harming the image of the Egyptian army's abroad.
Egyptian writer Belal Fadl presented a file with these violations to the prime minister who presented to the AFC and last night we heard on TV some anonymous army commander speaking that these were individual cases !!
Suddenly yesterday we found the military police stormed the Cairo university campus to end the strike by force. The military police arrested university professors and students , it attacked the students using their electric shock weapons against them !!?"
Friday, March 25, 2011
Egyptian Chronicles
Watch when these rebels in all these ME countries (supposed fighters for democracy) turn out to be virulently anti-democracy, sharia law committed, anti-semetic (although the NYT won't care much about that), anti-Israel, anti-christian (again NYT won't care) and favoring the tyranny of Islam, they'll somehow try to blame the Republicans for the supposed loss of opportunity and/or Bush.
What would you have the Pres.,et.al. do differently? We didn't initiate or get involved in the revolution in Egypt. We didn't provide cover for dictator. What choice did we have?
Some suggestions:
1) "Cultivate the right friends. For two years, the administration cultivated Mr. Mubarak at the expense of Egypt's genuine liberals, who were treated as nuisances. When parliamentary elections were rigged late last year, Mr. Obama raised no objection." Bret Stephens, WSJ
2) Reassert the Need for Close Strategic Cooperation with Israel. The political instability that has swept the Arab Middle East in recent weeks underscores the fact that Israel is the only ally in the region that the U.S can reliably count on. The Obama Administration should continue its efforts to revive the stalled Israeli–Palestinian peace talks but should refocus its diplomacy by abandoning its unrealistic one-year deadline for attaining a peace agreement and its counterproductive push for an immediate freeze on settlements, which only encouraged the Palestinian Authority to hold back from negotiations.
Instead of an all-out push for a comprehensive settlement, which is impossible as long as Hamas controls Gaza, Washington should press for incremental progress on security arrangements, confidence-building measures, and bolstering the welfare of Palestinians on the West Bank. This would help shore up support for the Palestinian Authority at the expense of Hamas, which has transformed Gaza into a repressive base for terrorism." Heritage.org
3) The U.S. should leverage its $1.5 billion annually in aid to ensure that whatever regime emerges in Cairo respects the freedom and human rights of its own citizens, particularly those of women and Egypt’s Christian minority, which comprises about 10 percent of Egypt’s population. U.S. aid should also be conditioned on continued Egyptian compliance with its legal obligations under its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Over the long term, U.S. aid and foreign military sales will be important. The Egyptian military will not be able maintain readiness without the spare parts, logistical support, and equipment upgrades that the U.S. provides." Heritage.org
"It’s not surprising that there’s so much optimistic reporting that ordinary Muslims “yearn” for freedom, democracy, human rights, and to be just like the West. But outside the touristed enclaves of cosmopolitanism, I saw just the opposite: societies that were obstinately Islamic in the face of efforts by leaders with vast state-police apparatuses at their disposal to shove them into secular modernity. Indeed, the ordinary Muslims of Tunisia and Egypt seemed determined to be more Muslim than ever, some 50 or 60 years after policies of aggressive Westernization in both countries had been put into place. I could sort of understand why the Ben Ali-loyal airport cops had greeted my arrival in Tunis so heavy-handedly. They probably saw themselves as a thin Armani line between civilization as they knew it and a rolling low-key jihad that threatened to sweep it away and substitute in its place an ominous Muslim near-theocracy.
Cairo, outside of some gracefully ornamented medieval mosques, even older Coptic churches, and a handful of lovely parks, is an architectural and urban-planning disaster. The morning view from our hotel room consisted of an unrelieved vista of yellowed and decrepit office and apartment towers jutting into a furnace-like haze that passed for a sky. There were no trees to be seen, no birds to be heard singing. Generally speaking, Cairo, with its population of almost 7 million, ringed by fetid suburbs, some with unpaved streets that house another 10 million, looked like Mordor—or like the post-apocalyptic trash-skyscrapers in the movie Wall-E."
Manhattan Institute
As an example of vast cultural differences, remember 91% of all the women, girls and female babies in Egypt have undergone female genital mutilation.
Prevalence (%) of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting among women in Egypt 15–49 years old, 97.0%
UNICEF
Charlotte Allen ended her article this way:
"No one can predict what’s going to happen next in Tunisia, Egypt, or anywhere else in the Islamic world….It was just that they were different from us. They were living in their own world, and it is a world that is not necessarily friendly to ours."
Live updates on Syria’s uprising
Now Lebanon
Kurdish Syria
Wikimedia
UNHCR
"The Kurds, representing around 10% of the country’s population, are “ready, watching and waiting to take to the streets, as their cause is the strongest,” according to Robert Lowe, manager of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science."
Support Kurds.org
Right next door are the finest troops in Iraq, or for that matter the region, the Kurdish Peshmerga
Sorry – hit the wrong button and deleted this comment by Viator:
Assad’s looming downfall?
By JONATHAN SPYER, senior research fellow at the Gloria Center, IDC Herzliya.
"Talking to Syrian oppositionists, the sense that the Assad regime is running out of options is indeed very strong. Some say the prospect of a “Hama rules” style bloodbath is now simply a bogeyman, a bluff on the part of a regime running out of steam. One veteran member of Syrian’s exiled opposition noted that the people of Syria had lost their fear. This meant the fall of the Assad regime could now only be a matter of time, whatever measures it took.
Despite the undoubted aesthetic inferiority of the Assad regime’s information campaigns, however, it would be a major mistake to start dusting off the eulogies for the Alawite/Ba’athist family dictatorship in Damascus just yet."
"Syria was forced into a humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005.
What followed was a deft campaign by Syria of ruthless political violence, mobilization of proxies, intimidation and burgeoning alliance with Iran which has led, five years later, to a resurgence by the regime, riding high for the last two years. Assad did not accept what looked like the verdict of history in 2004/5. There is no reason to suppose he will meekly do so now."
"The “toolbox” the Syrian regime utilized in the 2005-8 period served it well. It still possesses it. This same box of tricks is the common property of the various members of the Iran-led Muqawama (resistance) bloc in the region, which includes the Hamas enclave in Gaza, Hezbollah’s Lebanon and Iran itself.
Recent events suggest that this set of options is currently being utilized by various members of this bloc to telling effect. Its members believe these methods will not only succeed in insulating them from any internal fallout from the Arab spring, but will also enable them to press forward, making gains from enemies weakened by the internal dissent.
The Iranian hyperactivity of recent weeks fits this pattern – the weapons ships, the convoys in Sudan, the arms-laden planes intercepted on their way to Syria.
Hamas, too, appears to want to change the subject of the conversation in Gaza by provoking a new fight with Israel.
This is the camp of which Assad is a part. These are its methods.
There has even been speculation on Arabic websites regarding a possible Syrian angle to the bombing in Jerusalem. Islamic Jihad and the smaller secular terror groups are domiciled in Damascus, after all. And Syria, too, has an interest right now in changing the subject of regional focus."
JPost