Weekend Sober Thread: Shit's Gettin' Real in Egypt

If you play with fire, the fire might get rapey.... Perhaps if she was wearing a burka the men could have controlled themselves, so her fault really.

Egypt regime overthrow? Fucking peoples revolution?.... Wank. It will be an even worse shit hole in 5 years with the religious far right using the instability to leverage more control. I would bet the Sack’s hairbrush on it.

The sooner the west withdraws all interest from the middle east (including Israel) outside purchasing their commodities at an arm’s length distance the better. Occupying ME country’s just increases the hate and resentment, and before someone slings shit at me, I’m not against it for touchy feely reasons, I’m against it because it doesn’t seem to have ever worked in the mid to long term. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Really.

If after leaving them the fuck alone “they” then press into “friendly” territory or conduct terrorist strikes on “friendly” targets make the reprisal strikes so terrifying that effective internal controls are formed to prevent it ever happening again.

You can’t tame a wild dog buy beating him with a stick or keeping him in a cage, as soon as you stop or take you eye off him he’s going to bite. Leave it the fuck alone or shoot it in the head.

 

Shit's getting real in Bahrain.

Police opened fire on protesters with both rubber bullets and, in some cases, shotguns. Legit, fully-lethal shotguns. 4 dead, many more injured.

<a class="postlink" href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011217191751611489.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middl ... 11489.html</a>

 

Extremists do not speak for an entire region. Treat people like people and you'll be okay. Treat them like subjects and expect to be deposed eventually.

 

Okay dude, we get it. You made something up about the mobs burning Israeli and American flags a few pages ago and this is the only vindication you'll get.

I wonder about the mob that actually committed the assault against Logan. It seems to me that most of the violence has been committed by those "pro-Mubarak supporters", more probably policemen in plainclothes and hired goons. You know - the guys on horses riding through the streets beating people. I was also under the impression that Anderson Cooper was mobbed by those Mubarak supporters. So with Logan, I wonder who exactly was behind the attack. Not that it particularly changes anything that happened to her, but if these "Mubarak supporters" were to go around pretending to be pro-democracy agitators and raping Western journalists, well, you see where I'm going with this.

 

I didn't make anything up; I saw the footage of the flag burning on the Russian news program RTN, but I couldn't find any news stories about it on the English Internet. Was it made up information by a part of the Russian press? Possibly. Although, RTN is generally pretty anti-American and anti-Israel, so I'm not sure what their motivation was.

Nice implication there, but no, every credible news source says that the crowd was a bunch of "anti-Mubarak protesters".

HAHAHA. Wow. That must be the most insane rationalization I have ever heard of anything! The people who think the moon landing was fake or 9/11 was an inside job could take a pointer from you.

I mean, read back what you wrote, and think about it. Does it sound even remotely plausible?

 

Good to know this thread held up so well. Round of applause, guys. Round. of. applause.

 

In the same vein the Nazi party didn't speak for the entire German people in the 40's, they just spoke the loudest.

 

Okay, but what you described above is perfectly logical.

But doing that to beat and sexually assault female Western journalists? What could they possibly get out of doing that?

Apparently, it was a crowd of dozens that separated her from the camera crew, and eventually, it was the Egyptian police (the ones most likely to be pro-Mubarak) that saved her. Are you saying that there is a crowd of dozens of pro-Mubaraks among every single anti-Mubarak crowd, just waiting to sexually assault Western women?! I don't even think they have that much manpower.

I find that very unlikely, considering she spent several days in the hospital. Granted, that was probably from the beating, but if she was beaten up that badly (and this lasted 25 minutes...a long time), do you really think the only sexual assault was "some groping and inappropriate touching"? I don't.

It doesn't affect my view of the protesters at all, nor do I believe it should for anyone else.

Any mob, regardless of what they're protesting against/in favor of, is violent, dangerous, and not composed of a bunch of saints.

You can be in favor of the protesters while still decrying the actions of one of their mobs. I don't see the problem. And that's why I'm even more amazed some people are taking issue with this, and blaming it on Mubarak or whoever, regardless of the facts.

 

No, no. Don't you get it? A fraction of a fraction of the crowd committed a heinous act. So that means that they're ALL terrible human beings. Don't you see? They all hate Jews and women. This is absolutely a legitimate way to dismiss the entire protest as a violent overthrow by Muslim extremists who want to kill Jews and cut off every clitoris they see.

For a place that prides itself on "intelligent discourse", there's some really specious reasoning going on here.

Except that your suggestions as to the extremist nature of the event have been anything but subtle from the start. Cut the "Who, me?" bullshit, please.

 

Every article I have read said it was a group of Egyptian women and Egyptian soldiers, not police, that saved her.

 

Yep, my mistake there. Egyptian soldiers, not the Egyptian police.

Are the Egyptian soldiers generally more pro-Mubarak? I had the idea they were, but correct me if that's wrong.

 

The police are the pro-Mubarak, they are hated by the people. That is why the soldiers were cheered by the the Egyptian people. The Egyptian army also said during the protests that they wouldn't harm the protesters.

 

Egyptian soldiers are conscripts. Common citizens. Wherever their loyalties may lie, it wasn't with Mubarak. This was established by dozens of news agencies over the past four weeks.

 

I think they realized that siding with Mubarak was a lost cause. Now, they're just patiently biding their time. Eventually, they will identify a figure they consider strong and powerful enough, and put their numbers behind him.

Speaking of which, I wonder what the logistics of the food (and pay, if any) the Egyptian military gets during this period is.

 

Seriously? Really? Egyptian men are like infants and can't control their urges? Hence it's HER fault?

At first I got pretty pissed at the flippancy of the sentence.. but you're probably right. Just I can't imagine anyone saying that of gang rape outside the Middle East. In other words, if a woman gets raped in Egypt, it's her fault - meh, what did you expect. If it's in a developed country, she's the victim of a horrific crime committed by dirtbags.

That said, you seem to go out of your way to assert a political pro-Mubarak narrative behind the sexual assault. As KIMaster mentioned, a 25 minute beating/rape was politically motivated/sanctioned? Come on. Pull the other one.

Holla!

But yeah, you're right. A sensational incident like this is more distracting than enlightening.

 

Uh, LessTalk MoreStab was being sarcastic there, dude.

That was mostly ghettoastronaut's point, but yeah, these rationalizations are ridiculous.

What I originally wrote, and strongly believe is that virtually any mob is violent and dangerous. Just because you agree with them doesn't change this, nor does it mean they're all saints.

A crowd of protesters, even if they hate a deposed dictator, can still be racist/sexist, and these traits should not be condoned simply because you agree with their cause. To me, this all seemed like common sense, which anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, could agree with. But judging by the posts, not everyone did.

Some people think it was an evil conspiracy to make the protesters look bad.