Eyewitness: About What Happened To Lara Logan:

LATEST UPDATE : 


I am reconsidering the tone of the following article; I can say right now that I do not wish to be used to back up anyone's argument in this matter.
  
Thanks to everyone who commented, especially 'Julia' (here and here; publication on the latter delayed because blogger thought it was spam, my apologies).

PREVIOUS UPDATE: 
I will be checking from time to time to reply to comments.
Am attempting to secure interview with the belowmentioned person, also there.
Was struck with how consistent that account was with this – that was what prompted this post.  Well that and the aroma this story had, and not from close.  Smelled like................ 
                                             ..................................um, no, nuh-uh.  No way.
(Scroll to end of post for more excerpts and links) 
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The place is Tahrir Square, Cairo, and the context is revolution, long sought, long expected, and long overdue.  

Nobody is perfect; we all make mistakes, and compassion is called for when reviewing the errors of others: we cannot know with certainty what another experiences in any given situation; we cannot be sure that any account is complete and unembellished, not even our own.    That kind of precision, however, is thankfully not necessary for an accurate assessment.  

What really happened to Lara Logan?   

The  Main Stream Media's (MSM's) internal inconsistencies alone should disabuse  one of the notion of their authority. A basic, if determined, search session or two and I can tell you what did not happen: krugerrands to Krispy Kremes, she was not gang raped.  Double or nothing: she did something to get herself singled out as and accused of being an Israeli operative, a crime for which, from what I understand, discovery, trial, verdict, and sentencing are performatively implicit in the accusation itself.  In other words, they hold such crimes to be self-evident: that all Israeli spies merit being dragged off, for starters.  The dragging away and the subsequent protection by soldiers - men - let me repeat that - protection by male soldiers, not women - was a detail corroborated by another eyewitness account, personally related to me. FWIW. 

Like many others who no doubt will emerge in the coming weeks, Témoris Grecko was there. 

He describes in detail everything he himself observed – Read more at Ubuntu, Témoris' Blog  http://temorisblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/rape-women-stripped-what-really-happened-to-lara-logan/ –  and records interviews he conducted of colleagues and fellow bystanders:

Rape? Women? Stripped? What really happened to Lara Logan

I witnessed part of the mob attack against CBS’s Lara Logan at Cairo’s Tahrir square on the evening of Friday, February 11th. I was struck when I read CBS’s February 15th communiqué describing the attack as a “brutal and sustained sexual attack”, and attributing her rescue to “a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.” This account does not fit with what I, and others, witnessed.

The TV network’s communiqué, which came rather late, as noted by Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, was promptly interpreted by many in the international media to mean rape, and in these terms it became a debate that soon adopted racist and sexist overtones. Egyptian and Muslim men are portrayed as wild beasts and Islam as an inherently violent religion. Attractive women, many commentators have said, should avoid taking on risky tasks, and if they insist, then they had it coming.

I was buying tea from a vendor in Tahrir with two friends, Amr Fekry, a 26 year old Egyptian call center agent, and Andi Walden, a San Francisco political science student. Then we heard the noise and saw the mob coming. A blonde woman, neatly dressed with a white coat, was being dragged and pushed. It didn’t seem to me she was panicking, but rather trying to control the situation. They passed us in an moment. They were yelling “agent!, agent!”

I tried to run to intervene, but some Egyptians I didn’t know prevented me from doing it.  There was nothing I could do and, as a foreign journalist, I’d surely end up being accused of being an agent too, and attacked. Fekry did go there and disappeared into the crowd, 50 or 100 people strong.

Later I spoke with two young male activists who helped the person I later learned was Lara Logan (I didn’t know her before, I don’t usually follow US networks).  They were Omar El Shennawy, a 21 year old teacher of English, and Abdulrahman Elsayed, a 25 year old teacher of physical education. They said they had formed a human chain with other young men to protect Logan, and then delivered her to the Egyptian Museum military post.

When I read CBS’s story and it’s interpretation by other media outlets, I felt troubled.  It seemed misleading. “It didn’t make sense to me”, said Benjamin Starr, from Boston who arrived as a tourist on January 24th, and stayed to witness the uprising.  He also saw the mob pass by with Lara Logan. “I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe something happened in another part of the square, but from what I saw, she was being taken by men to the soldiers, and her clothes were not torn off. There were no women, I didn’t see a single woman in the crowd around her.”

Similarly, in hearing the CBS’s communiqué, Amr Fekry wrote on my Facebook wall: “It’s a little bit ridiculous what we hear that she was raped in Tahrir!! We were there! You remember she was about two meters away from us when we were buying tea! Maybe someone harassed her, but she ran and people protected her from being hit! I tried to go and help her but many people pushed me hard to go away as they thought I was trying to hit her. The only thing that some people only thought she was an Israeli spy!”

“I think it is a big exaggeration”, said Alshimaa Helmy, a 21 year old Egyptian biotechnology student and cyber-activist. “It couldn’t happen. How can someone risk to rape a foreign woman in the most important square of Egypt, in front of tens of witnesses? If those were bad guys, what about all the good people who were celebrating? She doesn’t deserve what happened to her, no one does, but if you are going to a revolution, you should protect yourself.”

I went to ask Abdulrahman Elsayed, and he related a similar account. “I was in front of her, one metre away. This was after I saw her running with a man beside her. They stopped, maybe because someone blocked their way. We formed a human chain to protect her. Only young people, 10 or 15, all men. We surrounded her. People behind us were pushing and trying to grab her, someone might have touched her. I saw her top was uneven. There was a women and children’s tent (Tahrir sq. had become a campsite) and we tried to take her there, but we couldn’t because of the pressure. Someone had a taser and he held it high, making electric noises and threatening the attackers. He told them to move away. So we could go to the Museum’s military post and deliver her to the soldiers. Then we stood there blocking the people who tried to follow her. We brought her two doctors, first a young male, then an older female. The doctor and Lara were the only women around.”

(Read more http://temorisblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/rape-women-stripped-what-really-happened-to-lara-logan/)

I have heard reports that corroborate this story from sources close to me.  It checks out, as it does internally. More than what can be said for other versions of the story, including the official. 

For the record, I am not saying Ms. Logan is responsible, although it would certainly be a ray of integrity were she to own up to it.  Or even maybe just tell us what really happened. 

 What a revolutionary concept.

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UPDATE: LINKS
Pardon me, I forgot not every Reader can access my mind. or visit me literally (*wink* to mr. suavite ---)

If A Mob Yells ‘Jewish Spy!’ and the MSM Is There, Do They Not Hear "Spy" Or Just Not Report It??

(Formerly titled "If A Mob Yells Jew! Jew! In A Cairo Square, Will Any MSM Hear It" emphasis mine -----ff)

Posted by Diana West Feb 19th 2011 

Why CBS kept mum for four days about the brutal sexual assault of network correspondent Lara Logan by a Tahrir Square mob on Feb. 11 we just don’t know.

Did Logan, flown out of Cairo by a network-chartered jet to a U.S. hospital hours after the attack, request secrecy as a brutalized victim?

Were news executives, or even Logan herself, concerned that the bombshell news of the assault, which took place almost exactly as Hosni Mubarak was relinquishing all powers, would detract from the “jubilant” crowd’s “democracy” drama? Such a news blackout is hard to imagine if, for example, a star correspondent had been similarly violated by a mob of tea party-goers at, say, a massive Glenn Beck rally — and particularly if other correspondents had previously suffered unprecedented assaults and threats from the same crowd. A keening outcry would have arisen from the heart of the MSM (mainstream media) against the mob, accompanied by a natural zeal to investigate cultural or other reasons for the brutality. Not excuses. And not disinterest.

But in this singular Logan case we’ve seen both. First, only after news queries indicated the story was breaking did CBS on Tuesday release a brief rap sheet on the Friday crime. We were told of Logan’s accidental separation from her crew in the crowd. The prolonged assault by over 200 people “whipped into a frenzy.” The rescue by a group of women and 20 soldiers. What CBS didn’t mention — what was later attributed to an unnamed network source — was that as the thugs assaulted the 39-year-old journalist and mother of two, they shouted, “Jew! Jew!” (Read more).

For instance even Susan Milligan from US News (Hardly a Muslim friendly person, had to admit ..)  "In Muslim Albania, I found that rebels who stopped to check us for weapons would barely touch me, although they would examine my male colleagues in a way that would make a TSA screener blush. As Muslims, they automatically recoiled at touching a strange woman  .. (I’d pull open my field vest to show I had no weapons, which was enough)"

"The Wall Street Journal cited an unnamed source as saying Logan, a married mother, was not raped, however, details regarding the exact nature of the assault remain unclear. ... Neither CBS nor Logan reported the crime to Egyptian authorities "      The Post Chronicle 

"The difference was Coopers attack and the arrest and assault on journalist at that time, supposedly came from pro Mubarak forces trying to squelch the uprising. Logan 's assault came at a time when .. the Egyptian people were jubilant and celebrating in the streets of Cairo"     Yahoo Associated Content

"It is unclear whether Friday's assault against Ms. Logan had political aims."     WSJ

I could fill up 3 more pages of these quotes but as Mike Rivero @ Whatreallyhappened.com commented .. "This Logan story is a repeat the Jessica Lynch hoax used to help sell the Iraq war, only it turned out Jessica wasn’t such an innocent lady after all."  (Complete with pix of her) and I tend to agree with him.

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Remember Katrina?  The reports that surfaced of gangs raping women openly? They were false too. Maybe somebody needs better porn.  Which reminds me, let us not forget who watches the most porn in America, i.e., what community standards really indicate -- that rank steaming lies such as the Lara Logan story can ruin lives, wreck careers (even if people admit they were wrong - par for the course in fucked up America), and land innocent people in jail (here's another example).  This could get someone killed. 


But only if those who know the truth stand silently by, and do nothing.




And the moral of this story is?

Be seeing you.