how will egypt’s revolution affect women?
Posted by Michelle Moquin on February 16th, 2011
Thank you all for the Valentine wishes – I HOPE that everyone enjoyed themselves!
Nawzad, Lashkar Gah, Shulgareh, Kushka, Mazar-E-Shaif, Chaghcharan: My concern is always for women and especially women when it concerns their rights, or should I say lack of rights. And I am being gentle here. Perhaps I should be blunt and say that I am especially concerned for women who are treated with less respect than animals, less rights than animals, women who are abused, raped and murdered, simply because they are women.
I perused the net reading the latest articles about Egypt hopeing that I would read something that broached the subject of women and their future now that Mubarak has resigned as president. Nothing was mentioned. It’s all about the men, their quest, their needs.
It wasn’t until I googled “How will Egypt’s revolution affect women?”, that I found anything. And even then, it was slim pickings. It seems there is much talk about everything else, and very little on how women will fare in this country’s fight for democracy. Just whose fight is it?
Will It Get Worse for Women in Egypt After the Protests?
“I’d rather have Mubarak than an Islamic government,” a woman in the street wearing a full black niqab told NOS, a Dutch news service yesterday. Seeing the fear in her eyes makes it hard for me to feel excited for the revolution. Though there has been footage of women in the streets, looking through most recent photos from Cairo, I see an ocean of men. (Read more on women in the Egyptian protests in Slate.) Women appear to be almost completely absent from any wide-angle shot you see of the protests at this point, and those I do see are often in Western clothes, speaking to the cameras with American and English accents. They are not representative of the majority of Egypt’s women, who are working class and in hijab.
Though Mubarak has been in power for too long, and violated the human rights of his people, for the average Egyptian woman, there is the potential for things to get far worse. The position of women in Egypt has already declined in the past two decades.
You could blame it on the stagnant economy, which could of course be blamed on Mubarak’s bad policies. On even a normal day, thousands of men loiter in the streets of downtown Cairo. Young and unemployed, most have never had a normal sexual partner. This kind of young, male frustration manifests itself in religious devotion, aggressive sexual harassment, or both. The Egyptian streets have become increasingly conservative, and women, in turn, have covered up.
Look at photos from 20 years ago and you’ll see women in skirts that show their calves, their hair and make-up done. These days, the women’s car (I dare you to ride in the men’s section during rush hour) on the Cairo subway smells from the sweat trapped by layers of black polyester. Subway reading material of choice is the Koran, held open and aloft by black-gloved hands, read through eye-obscuring lenses. And 85 percent of Egyptian women have had their clitorises removed, a practice that Suzanne Mubarak campaigned to end, citing its African, rather than Islamic origins.
Once Mubarak is gone, the climate of the country will still be frustrated and devout. The real will of the common Egyptian could be dangerous to women. A recent public opinion survey in Egypt showed that 80 percent of men think it is OK for a husband to beat his wife for speaking to another man, one-third of men and women believe that it is OK to resort to violence if a woman refuses sex. Acid attacks and honor killings are already far too commonplace, but they have been condemned by the current administration. A new government could turn a blind eye to domestic abuse or even worse. The new government will have to actively engage women in the political process in the increasingly hard-line country to keep their oppression from seeming democratically sanctioned. Revolutions have begun like this in other countries—Iranian women certainly thought they were getting something far different for themselves when they took to the streets to depose the corrupt Shah—only to leave women suffering and invisible behind metaphorical and literal curtains when the dust settled.
Jessica Olien is a Washington D.C. based writer.
Kushka and June: I can only imagine what happened to Lara Logan was devastating. And yet I know this is something that Muslim women deal with everyday. Thank you to the women who helped her. I too wish for a quick recovery for Lara Logan. Perhaps although her experience was incredibly horrific, she will pull out of it stronger, and something good will come from it in some manner. I wish her well.
In similar vein, I read this:
Still, in what is coming across to many as offensive, or even a sick joke, a journalist named Nir Rosen called Logan a “war monger” who would probably become a “martyr” for having been attacked.
Rosen, 33, Tweeted: “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson [Cooper]. … Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.”
Although some of the comments subsequently were removed from Rosen’s Twitter page, Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for The Atlantic wrote: “Rosen found humor in the fact that Logan was sexually assaulted in Cairo. Apparently, Rosen doesn’t understand much about violence against women; he also doesn’t seem to understand much about Twitter.”
Of course it is a man who finds humor in the brutal abuse of women. Sickening.
Readers: Not only are Egyptian men guilty of the above abuse, but Egypt also has a sexual harassment problem. In a 2008 study, 86 percent of women said they had been harassed on Egypt’s streets—any woman walking through a crowd of men in Egypt braces to get groped.
Men abuse women.
(Not “All” men. That’s for you men out there who are new to my blog; to my writing, and are maybe feeling a little defensive)
We see it happen. We talk about it, and hear about it, right here on my blog.
American women are not immune from the abuse. Yes, the abuse can be and is very brutal. And yes the abuse can be more subtle, more sly, more covert, than the abuse of Muslim women. But non the less, abuse is abuse in any form, and abuse is here too.
Physical abuse is obvious and hard to miss. The interesting thing is, so many American women don’t realize it, but on a daily basis we are dissed just because we are women, and men think of us not as equals. Things are said and done by men to women, that wouldn’t happen, if a man instead of a woman was in the equation. Even in humor, as I mentioned above, women are the brunt of jokes. We just have to pay attention and notice the nuance, or it will surely, slyly slip past us. And it does slip past many women.
While pondering the plight of women, while feeling once again frustrated and at a loss of what to do, I thought to myself yesterday, ”If men don’t give a shit about women here in our own country…if men don’t support and protect and honor and respect women right here in our own country, why would they ever give a damn about women half way across the world in Egypt, or Iraq, or Iran or…that they have absolutely no connection to?” You already know what the answer is.
So when we talk about men standing up in support of women….when we talk about men taking a stance and refusing to buy oil in countries such as Iraq, unless they demanded that the men treated their women as equal, we can say almost without doubt, “I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen. I’ll say it again, ”If men don’t give a shit about women here in our own country…if men don’t support and protect and honor and respect women in our own country, why would they ever give a damn about women half way across the world in Egypt, or Iraq, or Iran or…that they have absolutely no connection to?”
So your sentiment Lashkar Gah, “…Thus muslim world women are being oppressed by Western men equally as they are by muslim men”, I’m sad to say, is right on.
Still in spite of it all, I have not lost HOPE.
Lisa: I am disgusted by how we treat animals, our meat that provides us nourishment (?) in big factory farms. And people eat way too much meat per week. If people just ate less meat per week, and purchased only good quality meat (organic/grassfed) demanding only the best quality, we could put these big farms to rest. But cheap is what people go for. You are what you eat is something that not enough people take to heart. Thanks for posting.
Doug: This was such a disappointing article to read. I signed that petition and this morning I have been reading even more about the monster Monsanto. Maz is right when he says that we shit on our own range. And we’re eating all of the shit. This won’t be the last of my writes concerning Monsanto. Thanks.
Victor: Thanks for expressing your loving words in recognizing all that your sister and women do. You are a wonderful brother.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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February 16th, 2011 at 9:23 am
Michelle:
You are a very astute writer. You have a way with the meat of an issue that brings home what the reader might miss in its subtleties.
I always enjoy reading your column.
Scott
February 16th, 2011 at 10:07 am
Hi Mischa, I’ve been reading but I’m afraid I’ve just been left speechless re: the state of everything you’ve written about lately.
…and esp your write this am, if men in this country barely care about womens’ rights here in this country why would they concern themselves with women of another country and their rights. I’m trying hard not to have hatred in my heart for all males in the middle east and all muslim males here right now, it’s tough and feeling hatred just isn’t a solution, it’s not helpful and I guess that’s my issue, I feel helplessness and it’s leaving me very heavy hearted and in a funk. I’ll snap out of it I’m sure, I always do, but how do the abused women of this world ‘snap out of it’ – they don’t and I have a hard time reconciling that also. I feel like a caged animal and I really want to go give brutal men (not all men) some ZL what for (that’s scathing commentary and I’m feeling like I want to lash out and kick some ass physically also) alongside Madeline (why does she get to hog all the satisfaction of setting bad males straight?).
Al, Howie and Lloyd, thanks for the V Day acknowledgement, Howie I particularly liked how you cited it as a celebration of women. I always disliked V Day, seems like a contrived Hallmark holiday to me, any day of the year is a great day to receive a flower or bauble from the one you love, and wear red anytime, I love red, too. I know, I’m such a contrarian sometimes…what can I tell you…
Luv, Zen Lill
February 16th, 2011 at 10:39 am
How Money Experts Bill and Mary Staton Trimmed Their Own Budget by $10,000
Mary Staton
Bill Staton, CFA
The Staton Institute, Inc.
Financial advisers have plenty of suggestions for trimming the family budget — but what savings strategies do these financial pros follow in their own lives?
Bottom Line/Personal asked Bill and Mary Staton, the married pair of professional money advisers who cowrote the book Worry-Free Family Finances, what they have done to trim their budget in these challenging times…
We don’t go shopping without a list. We used to wind up with a full cart every time we went to the grocery store for just a few items.
Now we don’t set foot in a store of any kind without a shopping list, and we don’t buy anything that isn’t on that list. This has kept us from making impulsive, unnecessary purchases.
Estimated savings: Around $1,000 per year.
We stopped using most credit cards. Credit cards are a convenient way to shop — too convenient. They made it easy for us to buy things that we really didn’t need and really couldn’t afford.
We started using debit cards instead so that we can’t spend more than we have in our bank account, and we never get stuck paying huge credit card interest charges.
Exception: We do use an American Express card to purchase electronics and appliances, because the card provides extended warranty protection. We also use the card to rent vehicles, because it provides rental-car insurance.
Estimated savings: By using debit cards primarily, we calculate that the reduced spending and elimination of interest charges save us between $3,000 and $5,000 per year.
We “shop” in our closets. There was a fancy fundraiser for the arts in October.
Rather than buy a new gown as she might have done in the past, Mary “shopped” for something to wear among the gowns and shoes already in her closet.
New clothes are almost never a necessity, and shopping can be a very expensive form of entertainment.
Estimated savings: At least $1,000 per year.
We use our car’s cruise control. When we drive on the highway, we set the cruise control.
We select a speed close to the speed limit that balances our need to get where we’re going in a timely fashion and our desire to maximize our mileage.
Exception: Cruise control wastes fuel on hilly terrain because it keeps gunning the engine to get up the hills.
Our vehicles display miles per gallon (mpg) right on the dash, so it’s easy for us to choose a fuel-efficient speed.
If your vehicle does not display your mpg, experiment with different highway speeds until you find the one that best stretches your fuel.
Fuel economy generally drops by at least 1% for every one mile per hour (mph) over 55 mph.
Estimated savings: Several cents per mile — which adds up to $200 or more per year.
We favor retailers with liberal return policies.
Getting stuck with an ineffective or inappropriate product because a retailer won’t take it back is a major money waster. Now we try to shop only at stores that are good about taking things back.
Estimated savings: Potentially hundreds of dollars a year, depending on what we need to return.
Important: Many stores have toughened up their return policies, so ask before you take anything home that you think you might want to return.
We combine our errands. We work from home, so we used to jump in the car whenever we had a chore to do.
We would drive to the bank, come home, then go out again a few hours later to the dry cleaner. Those short trips ate up our free time and increased our gasoline bills.
Now we coordinate errands, thinking through everything we need to do and everywhere we need to go in a particular direction before we get in the car.
We have greatly reduced the total number of trips we take to town. Each round-trip we avoid saves us about 14 miles of driving and at least a half-hour of time.
If we eliminate an average of one trip to town per day, that’s 180 gallons of gas saved per year.
Estimated savings: About $400 per year in gas… as well as the wear-and-tear those short trips took on our vehicles.
We learned to make fancy coffee drinks. Bill used to go to a local coffee shop almost every day to treat himself to one or two large lattes (espresso with steamed milk), which cost about $4 each.
Rather than give up this indulgence to save money, he bought a latte maker for $399 and learned to make his own lattes.
The machine paid for itself in less than a year and now saves Bill around $1.50 per latte, plus time, gas and wear on his car.
Estimated savings: At least $500 per year.
We cut down on eating out. We used to eat out somewhat regularly, but we’ve both learned to cook a range of meals.
Bill really enjoys cooking. Now we try to go out only on special occasions.
Estimated savings: About $2,000 per year on restaurants.
We gave up trying to cool the hottest room in our house. In the summer, our son’s bedroom was always much hotter than the rest of our home.
We never realized just how much it was costing us to keep that room cool until our son left for college and our electricity bill fell by 20%.
In retrospect, we could have saved that money long ago by having our son sleep in a cooler room on the hottest summer nights.
Estimated savings: $400 to $500 per year.
We rely less on automatic bill payment. Instead of having monthly payments automatically deducted from our checking account, we sit down and pay our bills together, writing out the checks by hand.
This is more time-consuming but well worth it because it forces us to think about the money we’re spending. Did we need to make this purchase? Was there a way we could have paid less?
Example: We used to pay our health insurance automatically — we didn’t want to miss a bill and lose our coverage.
As a result, we failed to pay close attention as the cost of our policy increased over the years. When we finally got around to shopping for new coverage, we discovered that we could have paid thousands less per year all along.
We would have shopped around years ago if we had been paying the bill by hand each month.
Estimated savings: Potentially in the thousands each year.
We’re taking fewer overseas trips. We are going to our one-bedroom cabin in the mountains more often. It is a three-hour drive each way.
Considering the hassles of air travel, local vacations can be more relaxing than distant ones anyway.
Estimated savings: Thousands of dollars per vacation.
Bottom Line/Personal interviewed Bill Staton, CFA, a money coach and economic historian based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Mary Staton, CEO of The Staton Institute, Inc., and Staton Financial Advisors LLC, also in Charlotte.
They are authors of several books on financial topics. Bill’s latest book is Double Your Money in America’s Finest Companies (Wiley). http://www.statoninstitute.com.
February 16th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Zen Lill, sometimes you baffle me. I don’t know what to think after I read you sometimes.
I can understand you not wanting to hate all men of any class. My brother is a muslim. I used to be, but I dropped that cult because it is simply a go-ahead-and-abuse-women card.
My family kicked me out and refuses to associate with me. Therefore my two sisters both at least 3 years younger continue to stay in the cult.
My older brother tries to point out the “good” things about islam. I try to point out to him that that is a luxury that only males can enjoy.
What doses it matter to a woman that islam has some “good” points when it is allowing men to treat women as non equals, and in most instances as a little more than an animal that they own.
My best friend is catholic she is constantly trying to get me to go to her place of worship. I tell her that I just left an oppressive cult and I refuse to join another one.
She says that catholic men don’t believe that they have the right to treat women as non equals.
I said oh that’s because the laws in America are different. But you go to any latin or Portuguese speaking catholic country and that cult gives the men the right to treat women as non equals.
She starts right in about how much good her church does around the world. I remind her that I will not join a religion that makes women second to men.
She emphatically declared that Catholicism does not teach that. When I pointed to her that it does so because it preaches that ONLY men can be priest. ONLY men can absolve sinners in the name of Jesus.
I told her unless catholicism had made her brain dead that would mean at the very least that men were closer to Jesus than women and at worst it was saying to all the little girls that you must serve men to be acceptable to Jesus as Nuns do to priest. You have to be subservient to men to please God.
Now go be a good little nun to your husband the priest. Catholicism is a cult just like islam because it too teaches little boys that they are better than the little girls. God loves them more because he gives them the power to absolve sins in his name.
Then I asked her. “What do you think that does to the psyche of your two little girls?”
She has not spoken to me since. That was two weeks ago. I know she reads your blog because she introduced me to it about a year ago.
She often points out the “illogical thinking” of women that allows men to abuse them. I wonder if she will she her “illogical thinking” in this situation.
As she has pointed out to on many occasions, I doubt it.
But I still miss our morning talks about the blog, Heather.
Love
Trish
February 16th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Here are a few of Nir Rosen’s tweets:
“jesus christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and
glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger”
“lara logan had to outdo anderson. where was her buddy mcchrystal?”
“yes yes its wrong what happened to her. of course. i dont support
that. but it would have been funny if it happened to anderson too”
“it sort of depends who it happens to. sometimes we have to find humor
in the small things.”
“i wasnt excusing it, its wrong. i just think she’s so bad that i ran
out of sympathy for her”
====================
They show the disdain men like Rosen have for women. It is hidden most of the time because they want to be accepted by the public.
But they are just like their counterparts in countries that can exhibit their true hatred because that is accepted behavior in their public.
Rosen being an american male trying to earn a living selling his talents to both sexes had to pretend like most men do to believe in the equality of the sexes.
But he temporarily lost it like most men do. The difference is his was so glaring that women could not over look it.
Most women make exceptions for the “slips” their men make which would tell them more about his true character than they really want to know. So they ignore those “slips.”
Victor mentioned one such slip by his brother-in law. I wonder if his sister will see it?
Rosen, like most sexually uncomfortable men, feel threatened by women and homosexual men. They secretly doubt their sexual skills and their masculinity.
Hence, they hate, or distrust women and they hate and fear homosexual men(they fear that if they are f**Ked by one they will turn).
So they use every opportunity to put down the two groups. Most of the time they have to do it secretly because they fear being ostracized for their behavior.
But as soon as they feel that the opportunity is there for them to vent their anger and not be called out on it, they let go with a vengeance. Ergo this woman hating closet gay afraid he might be, thought this was his opportunity.
But Mr. Rosen, you were wrong. Or maybe not. Men may just slap your wrist and some women will go on buying your books, but this woman has been forewarned.
I see you for the misogynistic , homophobic hypocrite you are. I will shun and boycott anything connected to you.
Sar-e Pol
February 16th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Trish, what’s to be baffled about? I don’t want to hate them but I do and that feeling alone makes me feel heavy hearted, to feel total hatred towards anyone or any one group, even those who deserve it.
…and most religious women don’t want to recognize male dominance over females bc they’ve been taught the ‘father knows best’ theory by society, reinforced at home most likely and on and on…so, you see, none of us are free,(not even the males running the religious freak shows really bc they have to pretend they know what the fuck they’re saying/doing though they have the advantage to be sure), if you grew up Catholic you probably bought into the program very young, (lucky for me I was busy singing pop tunes in my head during church to even catch that bullshit), and your freedom is further stripped at school, you’ll learn what they’ve been taught to teach you and it ain’t free thinking, sisters, I was onto that crap at 5 when I wouldn’t get with the mandatory 3:15 pick up, I’d leave whenever I was done for weeks, my mother would bring me back, when the mandatory thing was explained I understood that we are free in the land of the ‘=free= and the ‘brave” but only to the degree that we are allowed to be by others. You can carry that =free= thought into your work life, your marriage (depending on the man you picked) or anything else where your ‘freedom’ is somewhat watered down…
Hope you’re not baffled now : ) and I hope you can find some common ground with your friend but it’s unlikely if she’s firmly entrenched in Catholicism, they don’t dig it when you stray from the herd.
Luv, Zen Lill
February 16th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
That was perfectly clear.
Thank you Zen Lill.
Alas, I suspect you are correct about by friend too.
Trish
February 16th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Michelle:
Muslim men feel that they can do whatever they wish to arab women. No one will care. This is just shameful.
=========================
Shock in brutal murder of Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim? Her powerful lover’s arrest
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, September 5th 2008, 11:49 AM
Getty
Lebanese pop sensation Suzanne Tamim was found with her throat brutally slit.
Getty
Hisham Talaat Mustafa was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly paying a hit man $2 million to kill Tamim. Business men are often above the law in Egypt.
CAIRO, Egypt – It’s the Mideast version of a sordid soap opera. A Lebanese pop star is brutally murdered in her luxury Dubai apartment, her throat slashed. Arrested in her death: One of Egypt’s most politically connected businessmen, accused of paying $2 million to have her killed.
The slaying of Suzanne Tamim has gone beyond a lurid crime story to something more serious — a glimpse into the close links between Egypt’s government and powerful business tycoons long viewed as above the law.
It is also exposing strains between societies like Egypt’s, where wealth and political power increasingly go hand in hand, and Dubai, which recently launched a high-profile push against corruption.
People in the Arab world have long followed with fascination and moral clucking the tales of businessmen and politicians cavorting with actresses, belly-dancers and singers — a sort of Hollywood Babylon in the conservative Muslim Middle East.
But even by those standards, the Tamim drama is a stunner. The 30-year-old singer, famed for her striking green eyes, was found dead in her Dubai apartment in July, with multiple stab wounds and a 20-centimeter (8 inch) slash across her throat.
This week, Egyptian authorities arrested real estate mogul Hisham Talaat Moustafa, said to be Tamim’s former lover.
For many, the surprise wasn’t Moustafa’s alleged involvement — but his arrest.
Egyptians are widely convinced their government won’t touch influential businessmen. When Moustafa’s name first appeared in media reports weeks ago, he denied a role and complained on Egyptian television that the rumors hurt the economy.
The government promptly banned press reports on the murder, suggesting that Moustafa was off-limits.
The tycoon is a top ruling party official close to President Hosni Mubarak’s powerful son, Gamal.
In the past 10 years, he has become one of Egypt’s top billionaires, the owner of luxury hotels and beach resorts and a leading force in building Western-style suburbs ringing Cairo for the upper-class.
But on Tuesday, Egypt’s public prosecutor accused the tycoon of contracting for the singer’s killing by paying $2 million to Mohsen el-Sukkary, a former Egyptian state security officer.
El-Sukkary worked at Cairo’s Four Seasons Hotel, owned by Moustafa. The prosecutor said the tycoon helped facilitate visas and tickets for the security man as he trailed the singer first to London, then to Dubai.
The singer had moved to Dubai, friends say, to break off her relationship with Moustafa, who is married. She rose to stardom in the late 1990s but then hit troubled times, separating from her Lebanese husband-manager who filed a series of lawsuits against her.
=================
When will the world get better? Not any time soon, for sure. Look for the lives of women in Egypt to become a nightmare.
When they aren’t raping their goats and sheep, the men in Egypt are fantasizing about punishing “bad” islamic women.
If you show any skin, you excite them to a sexual frenzy. They react either by attacking you with sticks or stones or they try to rape you.
Most have no idea of how to even enter a woman sexually. So they rape her as if she were one of the animals they molest.
Islam forbids contact between unchaperoned members of the opposite sex. It further teaches males that females are seductresses who will lead them to hell.
So these misfits grow up desiring and fearing women at the same time.
Mahmud e Rad
February 16th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
Here is the rest.
====================
According to Dubai investigators, el-Sukkary stalked the singer the morning of July 28 to her apartment in the swanky Dubai Marina complex, overlooking the Persian Gulf and a harbor full of yachts. From the lobby, he rang her video intercom, showing her an ID of the management company from which she had recently bought the apartment. She buzzed him in, police say.
Once inside, he stabbed her repeatedly with a knife, then shed his overalls and cap, dumping them in a trash bin outside the building, officials said.
They were found by police and tested for DNA. Police say the killer’s face also appeared on security camera footage.
“It took 12 minutes for the murderer to enter the building, kill the victim and leave,” Maj. Gen. Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina of the Dubai police told a press conference.
The killing was an embarrassment to Dubai, a boomtown trying to shed its reputation as an anything-goes corner of the conservative Muslim Gulf.
The emirate has recently cracked down on tourists going topless on beaches, and has launched a public anti-corruption effort.
El-Sukkary was arrested Aug. 6 in Egypt. Dubai police traveled to Cairo to present their evidence against him but then turned their attention to Moustafa.
Egypt’s independent Al-Masri Al-Youm newspaper Thursday printed transcripts of alleged phone conversations kept by el-Sukkary and seized by police.
In one, Moustafa says “the agreed amount is ready” and tells the security man, “Tomorrow, she is in London and you should act.”
In a later tape, el-Sukkary explains he missed his chance in London and “will wait to move it to Dubai.” Moustafa chides him then says, “OK, let’s finish with this.”
A senior Egyptian police official confirmed the transcript, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because those investigation details had not been released.
Mubarak and his government have not commented publicly on the case.
But some government critics believe the arrest came only under Dubai pressure. “There was serious pressure from the Gulf,” said Abdel-Halim Qandil, editor-in-chief of the independent Sout Al-Umma newspaper and a frequent Mubarak critic.
There also has been growing discontent at home over the clout of businessmen who dominate the government, overshadowing even the military figures who long held the reins of power. Earlier this year, the millionaire owner of a ferry company was acquitted of negligence in the 2005 sinking of a Red Sea ferry that killed 1,000 people, angering many.
Several top businessmen hold Cabinet posts or are on the ruling party’s policy committee, headed by Gamal Mubarak, a former investment banker considered the likely successor to his 80-year-old father.
Moustafa is a top committee member and also in parliament’s upper house.
Beyond the corruption worries, the singer’s murder highlighted the gap between Egypt’s rich and the largely poor, conservative bulk of its nearly 80 million population.
Rumors abound of businessmen and politicians peddling out actresses and singers in prostitution rings. The frequent marriages and divorces of celebrities and businessmen make big news.
“The mix of sex, money, business and power is the mix that defines the ruling elite now,” said Qandil.
He said Moustafa’s arrest may signal divisions within the regime between the politician-businessmen and an old guard, including the military, worried over the tycoons’ excesses.
The government may tout Moustafa’s arrest as a sign businessmen aren’t untouchable, he said, but “people ask if Hisham Talaat Moustafa did this, what else is going on?”
=====================
Men in the Middle East know that islam gives the absolute authority over women.
Mahmud e Rad
February 16th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Adam Carolla said it best on his podcast today: Can we start openly judging these countries now? If you, as a country, treat your women like shhh, you are a shhh country.
February 16th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Anonymous 10, the world is made up entirely of “shhh” countries – what country does not treat their women like “shhh”? When does/will America get judged?
February 16th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Just to lighten my own mood after googling religion and women (softly worded claims that men take care of women and love them as God) with a lot of blah blah and blah about ‘letting them’ and ‘allowing them’ in there, oh so very magnanimous of you there, fellas! Really, I can go to the bathroom by myself, cool and er, ahem, ‘thank you, my lord’ and well, all that started me laughing actually – ah, so good to smile again, I spent more than 2 days straight faced and quiet, that totally unnerves my peeps…anyway, thennnnn I googied ‘matriarchal societies’ just for more laughs and I’ll let you click through if you like,
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mosuo-One-of-the-Last-Matriarchal-Societies-36321.shtml
…and here’s my gem of an excerpt: ‘Traditionally, a Mosuo woman interested in a particular man will invite him to come and spend the night with her in her room. Such pairings are conducted secretly, so the man will walk to her house after dark, spend the night with her, and return home early the next morning.’ ah yes, the old service me but be gone by breakfast thing ; ) not too shabby, I’m sure some of these women were magnanimous enough to ‘allow’ or ‘let’ the ones who did their work well stay for a while over tea and a nip off the old peace pipe…you’ve got to click through and check out the ‘queen’ – I love her face and that pipe, wow!
Anonymous, good post, maybe a stronly worded letter to the pres and powers that be sent in and signed by predominantly women would make for change…just a thought…
Trish, I hope you find some friends who are more open minded. I’d have no thing with religion if it weren’t so one-sided, so it’s not believing in a god myth I take issue with, it’s the insistence by otherwise smart women (like perhaps your friend) that it’s ok for a man to ‘wear the pants’ bc someone has to, oh really, why? why can’t decisions be reached by mutual strategizing and consensus? Or should I as a femalke only be in charge of the groceries…? oh hee hee
…and hey, I can ‘wear the pants’, too, and I have a much better looking backside : )
You know what else I really hate, when men will read any of the above stories and they’d blame Lara for her ‘past’ sexual indiscretions (as though it has anything at all with being brutally raped and uh-huh they have no bones in their manly closets, uh hello…) and they’d say well she put herself in harms way, or maybe she desrved it ala Rosen (and he twittered his assholeishness for everyone to see, he saw humor in that? How?), the same would probably apply with the Lebanese actress, notice how many inferences about her life of luxury there were, just sordid details to put her in a bad light as if she deserved brutal murdering. Insanity. And yet, men have their f’d up indiscretions all the time, look at Bersculoni – if a female acted at all like him, she’d be dragged through the mud by the media and maybe even literally. He and his attorneys all look smug as if this is all just a pain in the ass. Pretty pathetic…
Luv, Zen Lill
February 16th, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Zen Lill, this one’s for you.
++++++++++++++++++
Shannon GalpinPresident of Mountain2Mountain
Posted: February 16, 2011 06:54 PM
What’s Blonde Got to Do With It?
According to Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, “Lara Logan is lucky she’s alive. Her liberal belief system almost got her killed on Friday. This talented reporter will never be the same.”
I almost spilled my coffee when I read this on Media Matters this morning. Thinking it must be a mistake, I read on:
Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday? Why would she think this was a good idea? Did she not see the violence in the square the last three weeks?
Did she not see the rock throwing? Did she miss the camels? What was she thinking?
Well, Jim, here’s a newsflash: this is sexist BS, pure and simple. Lara Logan didn’t wander. She wasn’t in Tahrir Square because she took a wrong turn.
She knew exactly where she was and why. Lara Logan was in the square on purpose, covering the revolution in Egypt because IT’S HER JOB. What in the world does attractive and blonde have to do with it?
Are you suggesting that she was inviting rape because she is an attractive blonde? Did anyone suggest that Anderson Cooper was attacked repeatedly in Cairo because he is handsome or that Google executive, Wael Ghonim, was kidnapped because he is young and “cute”?
I am tall, blonde and the hardworking founder of Mountain2Mountain, a nonprofit organization working to advance gender equity in Afghanistan and create opportunity for woman and girls. Some may say that I am attractive.
I read most of the online commentary and media coverage about my work in Afghanistan and the comment “tall and blonde” is a frequent lead to stories about me. I get it.
I’m tall and blonde, and I stand out in Afghanistan. Does this make me, or Lara Logan, ineffective at what we do? Does it mean we shouldn’t go about our work because of how we look? Judge us on the work we do, not on what we look like.
Even more despicable is your use of a woman’s attractiveness as an excuse for sexual assault. My own rape and assault was a long time ago, very few people knew about it, and I wasn’t a public figure like Lara.
Luckily for me, years later, when I did talk about it publicly, it was not front-page news.
You should not castigate Lara Logan because she’s an “attractive blonde female reporter.” She is a reporter who, while heroically covering one of the most important events of the decade, was the victim of a terrible crime. Period.
The other thing that disturbs me about the coverage is pinning the attack on culture. The Daily Beast article states: “Logan faced an ugly side of Egypt that Egyptian and foreign women here are all too familiar–and fed up–with.”
I can only imagine how the Fox News coverage will spin this into the Islamaphobia-sphere.
Women all over the world are facing the “ugly side” of culture, and we are fed up with it. Congolese women are raped as weapons of war and as a means to frighten and control them.
Afghan women are jailed or ostracized for being raped and brutalized and, to add insult to injury, often victimized and assaulted inside the prison by male guards.
Women are raped systematically in war zones and developing countries for a variety of reasons that dehumanize them.
But let’s not forget what happens right here at home.
My own rape was in Minnesota. My sister’s was in Colorado. Every two minutes, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted.
That’s 1 in 6 women. While rape victims are not routinely jailed as they are in some countries, neither are their attackers.
The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) estimates that only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.
News came out this week that Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates are being sued over their failure to deal with the cases of rape and sexual assault in our own military.
A group of American servicemen and women accuse the two of failing “to take reasonable steps to prevent plaintiffs from being repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by federal military personnel.”
Sexual assault is not a problem that belongs only to the Middle East, the developing world and war zones. This is a systemic problem that spans the globe, including our own backyard.
It is rooted in how we value women. How do you change perceptions of value and respect? Things will never change until violence against women moves from a women’s right issue to a human rights issue that EVERYONE gets behind.
Using World Bank data for 2008, there were 2,982,865,203 women of all ages; approximately 44.3% of the total world population. Nearly 3 billion mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends.
Recently, Ben Affleck said, “As long as violence against women, sexually or otherwise, remains exclusively a women’s issue, it will always be an issue.
We men must own this and we must recognize it as vital to our own survival. And we must help our brothers see it as such.”
Rape is a weapon of control and of power. Until we all stand up and take a hard look at the realities of perception, accusation, and systematic dehumanization that occur all around us, this “problem” will never be resolved.
Jim. You owe Lara Logan an apology. And another three billion for every women in the world.
Follow Shannon Galpin on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/sgalpin
February 16th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
Stroke Patients May Improve Years After Their Strokes
Daniel F. Hanley, MD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Even two to three years after their strokes, patients still can learn to use undamaged areas of the brain to perform tasks, especially if their physical therapy includes long-term, supervised walking on a treadmill.
Physical therapy typically is prescribed for only 30 to 60 days following a stroke because, until recently, it was believed that patients could make significant improvements only within that time frame.
Personal interviewed Daniel F. Hanley, MD, department of neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and leader of a study published in Stroke.
February 16th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
I should be on earth tomorrow. I am asking aliens that are in possession of t8pk0lnn to make it available.
I will need access to the scuvar region as soon as possible. The volcanic action is scheduled to blow in 4 days. It is your precursor to plate shifting.
I have been advised that the dircron will not work. The actors expected it would be used to locate the primary sites of their work.
Roi
February 17th, 2011 at 7:56 am
Bravo Craig for sharing Shannon Galpin. I agree with her statement “Things will never change until violence against women moves from a women’s right issue to a human rights issue that EVERYONE gets behind.”
Let’s not forget, most human behavior is learned. Men that rape and abuse were probably abused themselved by their fathers and/or watched their fathers abuse their mothers. Mothers that abuse learn it from their parents. The cycle of violence and oppression will not break until respect exists for each other.
February 17th, 2011 at 8:38 am
Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
February 18th, 2011 at 9:50 am
[...] Scott: Thank you. I HOPE you’ll keep reading. [...]
February 19th, 2011 at 9:48 am
[...] Craig: Thanks to you for posting your comment a few days ago and including an article by Shannon Galpin. I knew I would want to give her more blog time. So I cruised over to her website to take a look around. And I read a few more of her blog posts. I so was diggin’ her most current write Roar, Baby, Roar – a right on write in my book. [...]