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Breaking the Code of Silence
I was going to write something about financial markets but after watching 60 Minutes on Sunday, I decided to post this amazing interview with Lara Logan breaking the silence on the Cairo assault:
The night of Feb. 11, the Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was falling. More than 100,000 people filled Cairo's Tahrir Square in wild celebration. Among those in the crowd was our "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Lara Logan.
Lara, a native of South Africa, is an experienced war reporter, but Tahrir Square became her most hazardous assignment.
During the revolution, dozens of reporters were assaulted, often by agents of the regime. On the night of the 11th, a mob turned on Lara and her "60 Minutes" team and singled her out in a violent sexual assault. Since then, Lara has been recuperating with her husband and two children.
Now, she is returning to work and she has decided to tell the story of what happened - just once - on "60 Minutes."
She's speaking out, she tells us, to add her voice to those who confront sexual violence; to break what she calls the "code of silence."
Lara arrived in Cairo at a moment of triumph for Egypt. She didn't imagine, in the hours before midnight, she would be fighting for her life.
Lara Logan: When we drove from the airport into Cairo that night, moments after Mubarak had stepped down, it was unbelievable. It was like unleashing a champagne cork on Egypt.
Logan: I'm anxious to get to the square. I've got to be there because this is a moment in history that you don't want to miss.
Scott Pelley: What does it look like?
Logan: It looks like a party.
Logan: It's a roar of sound because everyone is so excited and they are singing songs of the revolution and shouting slogans.
Logan: And everybody is, you know, very physical, so you are being jostled and pushed. And sometimes people get closer. And my guys are very protective of me, you know, they want to keep people at bay. It was impossible not to get caught up in the moment, which was real moment of celebration.
Pelley: Tell me about your team.
Logan: Our producer was Max McClellan. My cameraman was Richard Butler.
Logan: We had a local fixer Bahaa, whose job was to bridge the divide for us as foreigners.
Logan: We had two Egyptian drivers with us who were purely there to act as security and bodyguards. And then we had a security person, Ray, who's done security all over the world.
She reported, without a hint of trouble, for more than an hour.
Pelley: And what happened then?
Logan: Our camera battery went down. And we had to stop for a moment. And suddenly Bahaa looks at me and says, "We've gotta get out of here."
Pelley: He's Egyptian. He speaks Arabic. And he can hear what the crowd is saying?
Logan: Yes.
Pelley: He understands what no one else in the crew understands?
Logan: That's right. I was told later that they were saying "Let's take her pants off." And it's like suddenly, before I even know what's happening, I feel hands grabbing my breasts, grabbing my crotch, grabbing me from behind. I mean - and it's not one person and then it stops - it's like one person and another person and another person. And I know Ray is right there, and he's grabbing at me and screaming, "Lara hold onto me, hold onto me."
As she was pulled into the frenzy, the camera recorded Lara's shout: "Stop!"
Logan: And I'm screaming, thinking if I scream, if they know, they're gonna stop, you know. Someone's gonna stop them. Or they're gonna stop themselves. Because this is wrong. And it was the opposite. Because the more I screamed, it turned them into a frenzy.
Someone in the crowd shouted that she was an Israeli, a Jew. Neither is true. But, to the mob, it was a match to gasoline. The savage assault turned into a murderous fury.
Logan: I have one arm on Ray. I've lost the fixer, I've lost the drivers. I've lost everybody except him. And I feel them tearing at my clothing. I think my shirt, my sweater was torn off completely. My shirt was around my neck. I felt the moment that my bra tore. They tore the metal clips of my bra. They tore those open. And I felt that because the air, I felt the air on my chest, on my skin. And I felt them tear out, they literally just tore my pants to shreds. And then I felt my underwear go. And I remember looking up, when my clothes gave way, I remember looking up and seeing them taking pictures with their cell phones, the flashes of their cell phone cameras.
Pelley: Ray reported that he found himself with the sleeve of your jacket in his hand. It had been completely ripped from the rest of the jacket.
Logan: I felt at that moment that Ray was my only hope of survival. You know, he was looking at me and I could see his face and we had a sea of people between us, obviously tearing at both of us, beating us. I didn't even know that they were beating me with flagpoles and sticks and things, because I couldn't even feel that. Because I think of the sexual assault, was all I could feel, was their hands raping me over and over and over again.
Pelley: Raping you with their hands?
Logan: Yeah.
Pelley: Nonstop. During this whole time?
Logan: From the front, from the back. And I didn't know if I could hold onto Ray. I'm holding on to him. I didn't wanna let go of him. I thought I was gonna die if I lost hold of him.
But in that moment Ray, a former special forces soldier, was torn away.
Logan: When I lost Ray, I thought that was the end. It was like all the adrenaline left my body. 'Cause I knew in his face when he lost me, he thought I was gonna die. They were tearing my body in every direction at this point, tearing my muscles. And they were trying to tear off chunks of my scalp, they had my head in different directions.
Pelley: Pulling at your hair?
Logan: Oh yeah, not trying to pull out my hair, holding big wads of it, literally trying to tear my scalp off my skull. And I thought, when I thought I am going to die here, my next thought was I can't believe I just let them kill me, that that was as much fight as I had. That I just gave in and I gave up on my children so easily, how could you do that?
Pelley: Your daughter and your son are one and two years old?
Logan: I had to fight for them. And that's when I said, "Okay, it's about staying alive now. I have to just surrender to the sexual assault. What more can they do now? They're inside you everywhere." So the only thing to fight for, left to fight for, was my life.
It was a fight she endured about 25 minutes.
Logan: I was no doubt in my mind that I was in the process of dying. I thought, not only am I gonna die here, but it's gonna be just a torturous death that's going to go on forever and ever and ever.
Lara was dragged along by the mob until they were stopped by a fence. At that spot, a group of Egyptian women were camped out.
Logan: And I almost fell into the lap of this woman on the ground who was head to toe in black, just her eyes, I remember just her eyes, I could see.
Pelley: Wearing a chador.
Logan: Yes. And she put her arms around me. And oh my God, I can't tell you what that moment was like for me. I wasn't safe yet, because the mob was still trying to get at me. But now it wasn't just about me anymore. It was about their women and that was what saved me, I think. The women kind of closed ranks around me. And I remember one or two, maybe three men standing with them and throwing, the women were throwing water in the crowd. And they were pouring water over me, 'cause I couldn't breathe. You know I was I was rasping.
By this time her team had convinced a group of soldiers to go in after her.
Logan: Finally, finally some soldiers fought their way through the crowd with batons, beating the mob back, and that was the moment I thought, "I have a chance to get out of here alive." And I grabbed the first soldier and I did not let him go. I did, boy, I was not letting go of him. And I am screaming and hysterical, I'm like a wild thing at this point. Imagine my hair is everywhere because they tried to tear my scalp to pieces, my clothes are shredded, I am filthy, black with dirt from going down into the filth.
Pelley: The soldiers took you out of there?
Logan: That one soldier that I was holding onto, he threw me over his back and they still had to beat the mob back to get through it, back to the tank, where they had more soldiers.
Pelley: What happened in that moment when you first were reunited with the rest of the crew?
Logan: I remember Max going down on his knees in front of me. And he said, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. "
By the time producer Max McClellan saw Lara, she was in the arms of one of the drivers, dangling as if her legs were broken.
Max McClellan: She looked like a rag doll. She looked completely limp. She looked like someone who was physically, emotionally and mentally spent. Overwhelmed.
The soldiers drove Lara and her "60 Minutes" team back to their hotel, where a doctor examined her.
McClellan: She was basically sore everywhere. Head to toe. It was like she had been through some sort of grinder.
The next morning, Max and Lara flew back to the U.S.
Pelley: When you landed in Washington, you didn't go home. You went straight to the hospital.
Logan: And I stayed there for four days, which was hard. My muscles were so unbelievably sore, because they were literally stretched from the mob trying to tear my limbs off my body. My joints, every joint in my body was distended. And then they, the more intimate injuries, the injuries, the tearing inside. And the mark of their hands, their fingers all over my body, cuts and everything you could imagine. But no broken bones.
Pelley: Tell me about that moment when you saw your children again.
Logan: I felt like I had been given a second chance that I didn't deserve. Because I did that to them...I came so close to leaving them, to abandoning them.
Pelley: Do you feel like you're healing now?
Logan: Oh, definitely. I'm so much stronger.
That night, her attackers faded away in the crowd. It's not likely anyone involved will be brought to justice. We may never know with certainty whether the regime was targeting a reporter or whether it was simply - and savagely - a criminal mob. It is true, in Egypt in particular, that sexual harassment and violence are common.
Logan: I had no idea how endemic that it is so rife, so widespread, that so many Egyptian men admit to sexual harassing women and think it's completely acceptable. In fact, blame the women for it.
Pelley: Why are you telling this story now?
Logan: One thing that I am extremely proud of that I didn't intend is when my female colleagues stood up and said that I'd broken the silence on what all of us have experienced but never talk about.
Pelley: What did they mean by that?
Logan: That women never complain about incidents of sexual violence because you don't want someone to say, "Well women shouldn't be out there." But I think there are a lot of women who experience these kinds of things as journalists and they don't want it to stop their job because they do it for the same reasons as me - they are committed to what they do. They are not adrenaline junkies you know, they're not glory hounds, they do it because they believe in being journalists.
What does Lara Logan's harrowing tale have to do with pensions and financial markets? Absolutely nothing except to show us that there are much more important things in life. It takes incredible courage to share this story on national television and it took incredible courage for those Egyptian women to save her from the jaws of death. The next time you think of breaking the code of silence, think of Lara Logan and thousands of others who had the courage to stand up and speak against injustice. I embed the interview below (warning: this contains the graphic descriptions mentioned above).
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There is something truly sick about this community.
Really? And you claim complete healthiness, eh?
And BTW, in case you haven't kept up with the latest jargon among the cognoscenti, "Sick", is now the new "Great!". Check it out.
And only a codger would pick "antidisestablishmentarianism" in an avatar and think that's not 'sick'.
Be Sick.
Any man who has not been abused by women, is simply inexperienced.
Sorry, Leo, decent enough story, wrong forum.
You know, if it's not physically abused, it doesn't count.
Boo hoo. CBS just want their ratings to go up. F the bitch
Egyptians were trying to rape her as a Western blond, and kill her as a Jew. Apparently, she was only speaking out against rape. I did not hear anybody protesting the assault based on (erroneous) assertion that she was Jewish.
Wow, so sad to see so many callous comments. Another indication of how far we have fallen. Thanks Leo, from your female readers.
+1
Sad to see some commenter I otherwise liked showing themselves to misogynist losers.
Please don't confuse attacks on Leo the little bitch for misogyny. Of course the attack on Ms Logan was disgusting - nobody is saying that it's not, a few antagonizers notwithstanding.
I think people have a problem with Leo and his approach to things, not the substance of the message itself. That's probably why his pointless postings are usually swept off the main page after about an hour.
+1
Hey,
Maybe folks will come forward and put the Banksters and the ISDA members in prison for what they did to the American economy / financial system and the tens of millions of victims?
The West should boycott visiting Egypt until Egyptians treat women with respect.
The people below who enjoy blaming the victim or who suspect her motives are the types who perpetuate this stuff by scaring other women to remain silent when they see such public condemnation
Even though we know misogyny is embedded in some primitive cultures in no way does this make the victim wrong.
What should she do? Stay at home and serve her husband instead?
You know what I see here? A bunch of wannabe ''alpha'' males who trade for a living and denigrate women every chance they get. What a bunch of losers! Grow some balls and then you can call yourselves men!
Pathetic.
This from ''Gene Parmesan'', someone who's still trying to find his balls? (insert rolleyes here)
What the hell are you talking about?
You're holding up quite well Leo ;-)
It's a cultural thing over there and apparently around some places in the west judging by some of the insane comments here.
Her employer showed an incredible lack of knowledge of the ME by sending her in there...at the same time no one expects that in any large crowd there would not be more than enough real men to put a stop to any thing such as this.
But of course the Egyptian Army (some of her own late rescuers perhaps) made muslim women submit to virginity checks...of course we know there is only one way to do that.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369259/Egypt-protests-Women-forced-virginity-checks-arrests-Tahir-Square.html
Hot blonde + Moslem uprising = ?
How naive are these MSM types ?
This event demonstrates their delusional world view
to perfection, my symathy to the lady but she should
not have been their.
She ranks up there with Anderson Cooper and the mush mouth Geraldo Rivera.......if you enter a den of snakes you will get bit.
@ Oldmangina, it is the miss-placed efforts of white knights who support radical feminism which are the helping the destruction of the family. Your chivalry would be better spent defending real mothers instead of idiotic MSM whores.
You sound just like some moslems i know. What an advanced society!
@Leo, "This lady was doing her job." Her gross stupidity (which is made worse because she is supposed to be an expert on such things) aside, which is more important: her job or her responsibility to her children?
Many childish posts, juvenile viewp0ints about women, freedom and justice.
mmm...
When in Rome, do what the Romans do. Why did she not even learn the lesson that women are not allowed out much let alone with revealing clothes and long flowing blonde hair in Egypt? Hello. Especially in a wild crowd. Want to bet her fixer warned her?
This is pure propaganda. I think the the US wants to install a "democratic" regime so they are beginning their painting of a backwards society that we need to convert to Amrikenism.
Ah yes.
Another american plot against those virtuous third worlders.
That's another fact I missed FatFingered, good catch.
Can we make Leo honor a "code of silence" so we don't have to take up valuable ZH space with his idiotic posts?
Honestly what the fuck does this story have to do with the markets, the economy, or really anything people come to ZH to read about? If I get mugged tonight will you make a frenzied post about it?
Go away. Seriously.
Exactly. Enforce the 'code of silence' on this melodramatic innanity. Go around the world and see suffering infinately more worthy of a documentary than this.
I hope you do get mugged tonight...
Of course I sympathize for the woman, but this is had nothing to do with what I though ZH is about. Since it's here, I will comment on it.
I dislike this story for one reason. It encourages many women to claim they are victims and yet should always be viewed as equals.
If a woman just says a man did this or a man is acting strange, the police will many times throw a man in jail on an accusation and/or he instantly loses credibility. Rarely is the woman questioned properly or enough in these situations. This woman has a right to be involved in war zones, but needs to realize, men in these situations are capable of anything. Avoid the mob. Kind of like a woman gets drunk at a bar with a man and gets into his car. Think about it. Does she run a chance of having a sexual encounter? Is she more vulernable?
The reporter's incident is obviously different, but it's a risk she does. Obviously she'll be in at risk situations again staying a reporter.
I'm going to go into what many people may feel is off topic, but it's the true reason this interview is in mainstream news. There are a lot of women who get embarrassed about being involved with certain people. If a man wakes up with a certain woman, he won't claim rape if his friends tease him. Women on the other hand will or say he's intimidating her.
They are then asked, Why are you still talking to him if he's this, that and that? Well, uhhhh....
Telling someone you're being forced in a situation as a woman makes you the victim that has to be protected at all times without clear investigation of the truth.
Divorce is so high these days because women get to tell all sorts of rights to lie (and/or sleep with other men) and still gets to take take over half of the man's assets from him. She can take more of what a man has if she has children while treating a man terribly until the kids are out of school.
The true silence isn't abuse, rape and sexual assault.
The true silence lies in the name of men being treated unequally when claims are made against them. It's sexist, unjust and he's always guilty with much reasonable doubt system. Even if the man is more than 50% not guilty, he's still treated as guilty.
Bottom line, women know where to go or not, it's been told to them for over a decade as they grow up to age 14, they divorce more than men do and get paid, men have unequal rights when claims are made from the opposite sex.
Guys look at this interview as a warning signal. Many more women than you think will go several times beyond this to save face from appear to be sleeping around, they will divorce you because they see it as a free ride while they get to be around other men without problems and they will use the system to burn you and/or outright extort you at their pleasure.
I put this out hear again because this is being done to keep men silent of an even bigger crime. Men when involved with women who want something are treated as victimizers, modern day negroes for just being men. Men now and have been for years, 100% at woman's whim.
You obviously have problems with women.
Sure, the USA legal system sucks, and in most states divorce law favors women. Knowing that marriage and divorce rules are set by the state, and any judge can ignore your prenup, why get married, if you are male? Personally i think any number of people (of any sex) should be able to file a marriage agreement with the state and the state should recognize their marriage contract instead of a state mandated one.
That said, little of your rant has anything to do with sexual assault, in USA or Egypt. It certianly has nothing to do with this case The woman has several witnesses and the facts are not in dispute. The fact that the news crew had inadequate security does not put the woman at fault. "Blame the victim" sounds no better coming from you than it does coming from a state.
It is very funny to read stuff by retards. It keeps me coming back!
She confirms all my worst stereotypes about blondes. Moronic PC dope - she got felt up like a schoolgirl at the movie theater and calls it rape?
HEDGETARD- winner of the Absolutely Worthless Human Being Award!
Congrats, asshole!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I second that!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Leo,
You have two good excuses for being such a metrosexual libtard. you are Greek, and you are Canadian. What is the other libtard's excuse?
Hedgetard, you have no excuse for being such a pathetic moron.
Has my vote. Hedgetard the retard.
There are many angry men on this site who love to take out their frustration on women. Sad and pathetic. You should be ashamed of yourselves. This lady was doing her job. Do you think she would have gone if she even thought something like this would ever occur? THINK before you post your moronic and vitriolic comments!
Leo, what is wrong with your head?
Reporters know more than anyone else who travels that dangerous areas are filled with people who rape, kindnap, steal and murder.
You don't see the real reason this was reported. It was reported to hold men down. It encourages female bad behavior to make this woman famous for being touched.
Women have been victims for over 50 years now. 2/3's of women divorce a man and get paid whether they cheat or not. Many rape claims, like this one are falsely stated. This isn't rape, it's sexual assault. A big difference.
Women have a men hauled away to jail without any proof of wrong doing all the time regarding abuse, assault and rape. It's her word that has become king and she knows if she lies there is no chance of jail time for her and therefore nothing to lose.
What you are saying is the just a bunch of crap.
Men have to stand up for their rights more now than ever. At a woman's whim we can become a modern day negro. Negroes had no rights due to color when a white man made a claim, men have no rights due to sex when a woman makes a claim.
Oh my god you are so funny!
Do you think she would have gone if she even thought something like this would ever occur?
The point is Leo - how could she not?
It's still, even in this context, politically unacceptable to critisize a culture that treats women like animals but if you want to paint someone as an angry sociopath for pointing this out - yeah, that's still cool.
Hey 60 Minutes! here's a free scoop - bears have been using and continue to use the woods as a bathroom!
And moslems will always be primitive.
If you want to report on rape, do a story or two on how government rapes us every two weeks on payday, every time we fill up our tanks, and every time we buy something. Otherwise fuck off. Not sure why I even bother opening your posts anymore, it just ends with me asking myself WTF and wanting to punch my screen.
Leo, is your life full of drama queens?
I bet it is.
Wakanda,
Bet you and other morons here have difficulties cultivating solid relationships with women (not the ones based on money!). I'd bet all my solar shares you guys are emotionally scarred and that's why you're taking out your frustrations on the Internet. What a bunch of whining COWARDS! None of you have a fraction of the courage of Lara Logan! Just a bunch of coward claptraps!
"Cowards"? Really?
Whenever we speak out against the epidemic of black-on-white rapes in the US and Europe, commies like you immediately call us "racists", "nazis", "KKK members", blah blah blah.
It's easy to speak up for Lara Logan. Cheap emotion.
But what about the millions of innocent White women who are assaulted and raped by blacks--here in the US?!
Who speaks up for them?!
Oh geez, another moron!!! RAPE IS RAPE! PERIOD! Doesn't matter whether it's black on white, black on black, brown on brown, brown on white, yellow on yellow, yellow on black, white on white, white on black! Where do you get your official statistics? You perpetuate the myth of the ''big,bad black man'' who goes raping poor defenseless white women! Bunch of crap! Unfortunately, most white women who have been raped have suffered it from someone close to them.