A week ago footage of an anonymous woman, knocked to the ground in Cairo, dragged and beaten by Egyptian soldiers, ricocheted around the world. During the attack the woman, unconscious, had her shirt pulled up over her head, exposing her blue bra. Cairo journalist Issandr El Amrani tells Brooke how the 'blue bra girl' has become a potent symbol of Egypt's political turmoil.
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Comments [4]
I fail to understand why Egyptian woman continue giving their votes to MB and likevice - It's simply to ask for more "Blue Bra Girls". Muslims will continue suppressions of the women - But Women is half the population and have all the power needed to change current suppression, but they just talk!
Man's inhumanity to man seems to continue unabated. Interestingly enough just after she is brutally stomped, one of the soldiers covers her chest. Where was his humanity and extreme sense of Islamic modesty 20 seconds ago? Popular on the internet now, she will be forgotten soon.
NPR is my current best source of political humor, you leave Colbert and Stewart in the dust. When an 86 year old woman is pepper sprayed at an Occupy protest in Seattle, when people are beaten and brutailized, the story DOESN'T spread to the corporate media, and that isn't news. No, NPR is eager to show how much of a free press we have - by talking about something that's going on way over there. It reminds me of a joke Reagan used to tell. Gorbachev said "the proof that we have glasnost is tthat the press is free to criticize me." Reagan says, "yes, we have that too. Our press can also criticize you freely."
Well, that isn't exactly how Reagan told it, but it's the way he SHOULD have.
In March 1979 there was a massive feminist and women's rights march in the streets of Tehran just one month after the Ayatollah returned to Iran.
A French documentary captured it on film complete with an appearance by Kate Millet at the 1979 protests.
Like this year in Egypt, American progressives celebrated the downfall of an American ally in Iran but their attention span did not last long enough to save civil liberties from the anti-American mullahs and Iranians were thrown to the same wolves that surround them to this day.
When female reporters were being abused by "pro-democracy" protesters in Tahrir Square earlier this year, was that the time for those truly concerned about women's rights and freedom of the press in Egypt to have sounded the alarm or did they avert their eyes in denial?
If Egypt steps into a new and more oppressive tyranny like Iran did in 1979, will western progressives lose interest again? Does the outrage of progressives against human rights violations depend on who is a friend or foe of the US?
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