So Much to be Thankful For

There was a time, long ago, when Americans were sad and unhappy, when the world hated us, people were forced to work for a living and there were no inspiring leaders. But today, in this wonderful age of free health care, free mobs and freedom for Islamists, there is so much for us to be thankful for. Like that new age of freedom and democracy breaking out like a rash across the Middle East.

Sure, women keep being sexually assaulted in the new liberated Egypt, but that's democracy for you. Or a democracy of Muslim men. Caroline Sinz, a French reporter for Channel 3, was the latest to experience Islam's historical tolerance for women who walk down the street unaccompanied by a male guardian. Her story is nearly identical to what happened to Lara Logan. The significance here is that there's nothing new about this. Egyptian women experience sexual harassment on a nearly universal basis. Egyptians were being assaulted in this way for years. I wrote about this back during the Logan assault with "Muslim Rape Culture and Lara Logan" And then there's this, back in '06 on mass sexual assaults in Cairo.

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"It was the first day of Eid, and a new film was opening downtown. Mobs of males gathered trying to get in, but when the show was sold out, they decided they will destroy the box office. After accomplishing that, they went on what can only be described as a sexual frenzy: They ran around grabbing any, and every, girl in sight, whether a niqabi, a Hijabi or uncovered. Whether Egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones. They grabbed them, molested them, tried to rip their clothes off and rape them, all in front of the police. The ones who approached the police asking them to do something were told : "what do you want us to do? It's Eid. Happy Eid to you too!" Happy Eid indeed. You can't blame the Islamists for this or the authorities or anyone but the culture in Egypt and throughout much of the Muslim world. A culture that says a woman causes a man to attack her through her looks and that a woman who is unveiled is a #. Islam's conquests, its commodification of women as sex slaves and loot for the victorious Muslim armies certainly helped. And the Islamists will respond to assaults like this by calling for more morality, which means women "taking responsibility" by donning Burqas and avoiding going out without a male guardian. And just not to leave anyone out, Aliaa al-Mahdy, who had shot to prominence with a photo protest was beaten and thrown to the ground at Tahrir Square and dragged out of a protest area. No information on who the men were, but their goal was to move her out of a protest area, and all but one was clean shaven, which suggests these are some of the "heroes" of Egypt's democracy movement getting rid of an atheist girl who called for freedom.

Expectant Cairo Takes a Dark Turn, reads the Australian's headline. As if this was something that happened just now. Before Tahrir Square was just sunshine and bunnies. Now it's suddenly dark and rapey. Tahrir Square does represent freedom. Freedom as Egyptian Muslim men define it, which includes the freedom to burn churches, assault women and dominate ethnic, religious and other minorities. That is the true face of Tahrir Square that the media romanticized. Forget the Mona Eltahawy story, that's being utilized to call for an overthrow of the military authorities who are the only thing keeping the Islamists from sweeping the nation. The military authorities are bastards, but it should be abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that everyone playing this game are bastards and that the liberals, the Islamists and the military are no better than one another. The Sinz story proves that this is hardly some unique SCAF phenomenon. And the men dragging al-Mahdy in that video are likely members of the same liberal activists pushing the Eltahawy story. (Though to be fair Eltahawy did publish a piece in the Guardian defending al-Mahdy) The bottom line is that Egypt has a problem with abusing women not because of Mubarak or military rule, but because the culture has a problem with human equality for anyone but Muslim men. Too many bloggers were taken in by the Kefaya movement and their Twitter propaganda on the first round. Don't fall for it a second time. This is a leftist anti-American movement of articulate upper class Egyptians with El-Baradei at the top. Their main function is to sanitize the anti-government protests whose true beneficiaries have been and will be the Muslim Brotherhood. In response to the Sinz assault, Reporters Sans Frontiers suggested that the media stop sending female reporters to Cairo. After protests followed, it withdrew that statement and urged media organizations to make the security of reporters their first priority. But how much security will it take to protect a female reporter from a mob of Egyptian teenagers? Those who read the bible might suddenly find a new relevance in the stories of Abraham and Isaac traveling to Egypt and Gaza, and being forced to pass off their wives as their sisters from the Egyptians and Philistines to avoid being murdered. Though the Arabs are newcomers to the area, not much has changed over the years. But a better solution than not sending female reporters to Cairo might be to stop allowing Egyptian Muslim men into America and France. The high rape statistics coming out of Europe link Muslim men to startling numbers of sexual assaults in countries where they are a minority. A female reporter going to Cairo has some kind of security, but what do we do when Cairo comes to us, except to start acting like Egyptian Christians? Or to quote from the al-Mahdy CNN interview Women under Islam will always be objects to use at home. The (sexism) against women in Egypt is unreal, but I am not going anywhere and will battle it 'til the end. Many women wear the veil just to escape the harassment and be able to walk the streets. But we still have to remember to be thankful because these are changing times. Very soon Egypt will be free and democratic and then bunnies will dance in the sunshine of Tahrir Square. Don't believe me? Just listen to the song.

THANKFUL FOR JOBS

As the Summer of Recovery has faded into the Arab Spring and into the Winter of Our Discontent, those imaginary green jobs have died and fallen off the Washington cherry tree. According to the National Association for Business Economics, "The NABE Outlook panel expects employment will improve, albeit very slowly. Monthly job gains are expected to rise steadily over the forecast horizon, from an average of 100,000 during the fourth quarter of 2011 to 130,000 by the end of next year." Now that's optimistic. Of course the Keystone XL pipeline could have created six figures worth of jobs, but who needs those anyway? Not the Environmentalist Administration which killed the deal to get America some freedom from Muslim oil and a whole bunch of jobs. But good news to be thankful for... At the same time, my administration will build on the unprecedented progress we have made towards strengthening our nation's energy security, from responsibly expanding domestic oil and gas production to nearly doubling the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks, to continued progress in the development of a clean energy economy. I think Jimmy Fallon's drummer has an intro to go with this statement. Obama might want to ask Fishbone about making that his theme song. But at least the Islamists and the People's Republic of China have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Saudi Arabia has an even bigger stack of oil barrels, and on top of that black pyramid is a degenerate royal family wearing crowns of terrorism and tyranny. Iran has its own pyramid with hanging women dangling off it and the corpses of murdered student protesters floating in the crude. And if the environmentalists really cared about any of that, at least to the extent of wanting to end the wars, then they would be laying a pipeline that would funnel money out of the House of Saud and the Mullahs back to the United States of America. Instead billions have been poured into the People'ss Republic of China, which lends us the money to pay for the solar and wind power components that we buy from them, and after the handful of watts from green power have been exhausted to spread joy and peace across parts of Vermont and Oregon, the country goes back with hat in hand to the grinning petroleum plutocracies. Read the rest in my article at Front Page Magazine on the the Islamist-Environmentalist Alliance.