RUTHFULLY YOURS

Egypt is now under a military dictatorship once again with precious little prospect of true democratic reform or human rights. It has also been reported that an Islamist theocratic fanatic has been appointed to head Egypt’s Constitutional Committee. So much for all those hailing the fall of Mubarak as the brave new dawn of freedom. Moreover, those who thought that the protesters in Tahrir Square were all enthusiasts for human rights – even though Egypt is one of the most hysterically Judeophobic countries on the planet and where polls suggest that most of the population support rule by sharia — should read here what happened to CBS reporter Lara Logan who was covering the fall of Mubarak last Friday:

‘Logan was covering the jubilation . . . when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration,’ CBS said in a statement. ‘It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy. In the crush of the mob, [Logan] 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,’ the network added. ‘She is currently in the hospital recovering.’

A network source told The Post that her attackers were screaming, ‘Jew! Jew!’ during the assault. And the day before, Logan had told Esquire.com that Egyptian soldiers hassling her and her crew had accused them of ‘being Israeli spies.’ Logan is not Jewish.

Before Mubarak’s departure the regime, it was reported, was involved in acts of thuggery against both protesters and the foreign media. But the attack on Lara Logan appears to have been carried out by elements amongst the protesters. Now Egypt has got another military regime, with the risk still very great that the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist fanatics will in due course come to power in Egypt.

Yet for the media, the story line of ‘evil dictator overthrown by freedom-loving individuals on Twitter and Facebook’ is still barely dented. Look at this interview on NBC with the British historian (now at Harvard) Professor Niall Ferguson – who has written a blistering piece in Newsweek about Obama’s flip-flop debacle in Egypt. After the NBC interviewer jaw-droppingly asserted that the uprising in Egypt had

‘gone pretty damn well’

and that Obama’s (in Ferguson’s term) ‘flip- flop’ approach

‘seems to have worked’

Ferguson contemptuously blew her out of the water:

‘It’s worked, has it? I wish I shared your confidence. Right now, we have a six-month period of military rule. Right now, we have, as far as I can see, virtually no organization on the part of secular Democrats. The only organized opposition force in Egyptian politics right now is the Muslim Brotherhood. Now if you look closely at what the Muslim Brotherhood stands for, it is for the imposition and enforcement of Shariah law and the restoration of the Caliphate. Anybody who counts this as a major breakthrough for United States foreign policy hasn’t got a clue about what happens in the wake of a revolution like this.

… President Obama is one of the least experienced men in terms of foreign policy ever to occupy the White House. And yet he has advisers around him who are, frankly, second if not third-rate. And you just can’t do that. It’s far too risky, it’s far too dangerous a world, and some of us said this when he ran for election, that it was a huge risk to put somebody with that kind of inexperience into a position like Commander-in-Chief of the United States. I think what we’re seeing unfold in Egypt reveals the truth of that statement.

… Mr. Obama said [in his 2009 Cairo speech] that in his view, Islam was a religion of peace and tolerance. Well we’ll just see how peaceful and tolerant the Muslim Brotherhood is if it is successful in getting into power in the months ahead. I think those words will come back to haunt Mr. Obama.’

Not to mention NBC. Meanwhile, the protesters we really should be supporting and cheering on, the heroic people of Iran who have been trying to rid their country of the tyrannical Islamic regime that so oppresses them, have been renewing their efforts. Despite the ‘Green Movement’ having been brutally beaten back in 2009, once again – in the wave of unrest which has reached Yemen, Bahrain and Libya — there have been mass demonstrations in Tehran, where by all accounts the protesters have been viciously beaten back with at least one person, student Sanee Zhaleh, killed (the picture above is of his funeral today). As the Wall Street Journal commented:

Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s military, dependent on U.S. aid and support, were susceptible to outside pressure to shun violence. Tehran scorns the West. To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples… Plainclothes basiji militias and riot police cleared Tehran’s streets Monday with electric batons, wooden bats, pepper gas and rubber-coated bullets. At least one protester died. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were placed under house arrest, and Iran’s rubber-stamp parliament yesterday called for them to be tried as ‘corrupts’ and hanged.

… Also notice how relatively little coverage the demonstrations received in the foreign media. Footage came in grainy videos posted on YouTube. Iran booted out most foreign journalists in summer 2009. CNN’s Anderson Cooper may have been roughed up in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, but he and hundreds of others were allowed to broadcast live from Egypt for 18 days. And where is al Jazeera in Tehran?

You may well ask. Be sure, however, NBC will not.