This afternoon, atrocious news surfaced that CBS correspondent Lara Logan had been subjected to “brutal and sustained sexual assault” while covering the celebrations in Egypt.

According to a full statement released by CBS:

On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS Correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy.

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.

When the news initially broke, I was on Twitter as people began talking about it. Almost everyone was shocked, appalled, and deeply sympathetic for Logan, except for one man.

That man was Nir Rosen. Rosen is a fellow at the NYU Center for Law and Security. When he realized what he said was outrageous and others began informing him of that, he deleted his worst comments. However, some were captured using a “screen grab.”

The ones grabbed show Rosen letting everyone know that he “ran out of sympathy” for her and that everyone should “remember her role as a major war monger”. Also stating, we have to “find the humor in small things”. Rosen also deleted his bio as people began to tweet him. (click pictures to enlarge.)

These are not the kinds of things anyone should say, let alone a fellow at the NYU Center for Law and Security. If you would like to contact NYU about the matter, click this link for the contact information.

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From the Associated Press:

President Hosni Mubarak will meet the demands of protesters, military and ruling party officials said Thursday in the strongest indication yet that Egypt’s longtime president may be about to give up power and that the armed forces were seizing control.

Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met today.” Some in the crowd held up their hands in V-for-victory signs, shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” a victory cry used by secular and religious people alike.

The military’s supreme council was meeting Thursday, without the commander in chief Mubarak, and announced on state TV its “support of the legitimate demands of the people.” A spokesman read a statement that the council was in permanent session “to explore “what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people.”

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I believe that Americans are the smartest and most innovative people in the world. If we weren’t how could we become the greatest economic, cultural, social and military superpower the world has ever seen? It puzzles me though why we sometimes refuse to learn from our mistakes.

Case in point; energy independence; the oil embargos of the 1970s crippled our economy. Apart from creating the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, we did painfully little over the last 40 years to make sure that oil could not be used as a weapon against us. If anything, we made oil a more powerful weapon. In 1972, we imported 28% of our oil from foreign countries. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest figures (from 2009), 62% of the oil we consumed that year came from other nations.

In July 2008, OPEC reminded us of the power of oil as a weapon when the price of a barrel of oil reached $147. The tactics had changed from the 1970s – OPEC manipulated the supply to jack up the price versus imposing an outright embargo – but the results were eerily the same; Americans struggled to pay high gasoline and home heating oil prices, and America’s economy teetered on the brink of recession (our weakened economy would eventually be pushed over into the Great Recession by the collapse of the subprime housing market).

What was America’s response to the crisis? Nothing; or to be fair, we did nothing to increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas. In fact, the Obama Administration recently made oil an even more powerful weapon by banning oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico thereby shutting down another 11% of our domestic oil production. So, here we are in 2011 more heavily dependent on foreign oil than ever before and watching helplessly as the price of oil climbs towards $100 a barrel thanks to the unrest in Egypt.

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Yesterday at the National Press Club, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a lengthy sermon justifying his grand strategy for the US economic recovery.  In his discourse, the Chairman made it abundantly clear that, in his view, it was unfair to label Fed monetary policy as the cause of global increases in commodities prices, an issue some market pundits have speculated as of late.

Attacks on the Fed have been quite peculiar–some have even gone so far as to suggest US monetary policy played a role in the government collapse of Egypt.   Three decades of oppression would seem a more likely explanation.  But Bernanke’s statement was also peculiar:

It’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand issues in emerging markets to US monetary policy.

“Entirely unfair?”  One would expect the Chairman to say to his critics that it is ‘entirely inaccurate’ or ‘misleading’.  But it does not seem entirely unfair to, at a minimum, examine a linkage between record high commodity prices and the Fed’s controversial, and highly unconventional, monetary policy.  This early in the game, it simply cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor.  Then again, that is the very problem- it’s too early in the game.

To provide a sensible explanation for his critics, Bernanke puts in plain words how the role of supply and demand accounts for price increases:

On the inflation front, we have recently seen significant increases in some highly visible prices, notably for gasoline. Indeed, prices of many commodities have risen lately, largely as a result of the very strong demand from fast-growing emerging market economies, coupled, in some cases, with constraints on supply.

During the question and answer period, Bernanke was keener on separating the Fed’s liability:

There’s a lot going on there …When you talk about food prices… you talk about supply and demand …The fed monetary policy is aimed at the US economy….We are using policy to address stability in the United States.

Let us use the crisis in Egypt as a way of applying his methodology.  While under political turmoil, Egypt is also the world’s largest importer of wheat.   Yesterday wheat prices surged on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange to levels past $10 a bushel, as demand in Egypt is likely to increase partly based on the following speculation: political disorder will interrupt routine commercial activity, thus more wheat will be needed to supply Egyptian natives.

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The Egyptian government may have blocked Egyptians’ access to the Internet, but it couldn’t block the Internet itself. Thanks to the likes of John Scott-Railton, voices of countless Egyptian protesters continue to wend through the web.

Once the government imposed muzzling began, the 27-year-old UCLA graduate student reached out to friends in Egypt by telephone, gathered updates, and posted them to his Twitter account @Jan25voices, named after the day the protests began.

Nearly 700 tweets later, Scott-Railton (who up until last week was a Twitter newbie) soon found himself in the midst of the Middle East revolt. In one week he has attracted 6,700 followers and counting and his audio clips of Egyptian voices have been played more than 3.5 million times.

Reason.tv caught up with Scott-Railton at his UCLA office.
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Lt. General Sami Enan is the chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

Reuters is reporting that the “Egypt general could be new leader-Islamist “:

Enan could be an acceptable successor to Hosni Mubarak because he is perceived as incorruptible, a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood said on Tuesday.

Egyptian Muslim cleric Kamel Al Helbawi, a main figure in the opposition movement with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,  is quoted:

“He can be the future man of Egypt… I think he will be acceptable …”

The prominent Kuwaiti news service Gulf News just released a story under this stunning headline:

“Armed forces chief seen as Mubarak successor”

And now this breaking news from French news service Le Quotidien:

“The intellectual community of Egypt calls on Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, and Sami Enan, Chief of the Egyptian armed forces, to act as leaders of the opposition. We do not want El-Baradei. He spent too much time abroad, and knows nothing of the daily reality of the Egyptian people. He does not represent us,” declares on Facebook a professor of economics lecturer at the University Amércaine Cairo (AUC.)

Le Quotidien quoted directly from the Muslim Brotherhood website.

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Decades of autocratic government and a lack of free elections are, of course, the main drivers of the political upheaval in Egypt. But did the sinking dollar and skyrocketing food prices trigger the massive unrest now occurring in Egypt — or the greater Arab world for that matter?

In addition to Egypt, the people have taken to the streets to varying degrees in Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Yemen. Local food riots have even broken out in rural China and other Asian locales.

While the mainstream media focuses on the political aspects of this turmoil, they are overlooking the impact of rising inflation, driven mainly by record food prices. For example, former Bush advisor Dan Senor notes that Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer. Yet because of skyrocketing prices, Egyptian inflation is now over 10 percent, while some experts estimate that Egyptian food inflation has risen as much as 20 percent.

So I have to ask this tough question: Is Ben Bernanke’s ultra-easy QE2 money pump-priming partially to blame?

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Will the 400 leftist rabbis refute this?

This was some sick stuff. Anti-Semitism is alive and well at Media Matters.

Media Matters blamed the Egyptian crisis today on the US Jewish lobby and media-owning Jews.
Yid With Lid reported this from Media Matters.

If one needs additional proof that the “pro-Israel” lobby and the policies it dictates to US policymakers are bad for both the U.S. and Israel, look no further than what is happening in Egypt.

The regime that the Israeli government and its U.S. lobby have depended upon to enforce the status quo is going down. It is not clear when, but it’s going to be soon, much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And you can be sure that any democratic government that takes Mubarak’s place is not going to play the role of America’s (let alone Israel’s) enforcer in the Middle East.

Hopefully, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty will survive — thousands of lives on both sides have been saved by President Carter’s Camp David Treaty — but there are no guarantees. Far from it.

Of course, no one would even be worried about the peace treaty if the Israelis had agreed to implement the critical second part of the Camp David Accords.
That was the part that would have ended the occupation. But the Israelis chose to ignore it and the lobby and the ever-faithful Congress blocked Carter’s efforts to push it through.

Write Media Matters here and demand that they retract this awful anti-Semitic attack against American Jews.

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Barack Obama and the U.S. government have called for a “peaceful transition” in Egypt, in response to massive protests, riots and escalating anarchy. But I wonder if President Obama is taking notes? I wonder if he realizes just how close America is to facing a similar crisis that could result in riots, revolt in the streets, and economic paralysis. I wonder if President Obama would act much different than President Mubarak in Egypt. So far, small signs hint that Obama might turn out to be just as intolerant to dissent as Mubarak.

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again. Let’s review the economic crisis that America faces at this very moment. Just in the days since Obama’s State of the Union speech there have been numerous signs that the U.S. faces an economic Armageddon. Dark storm clouds are fast approaching:

• The U.S. budget deficit is far more than even economic experts imagined.
• Unemployment is up yet again — far more than the experts projected.
• Social Security shortfalls are bigger and have happened sooner than any expert predicted — a decade sooner.
• Fourth Quarter GDP was lower than projected — and even the figure released was merely the result of the Fed printing fake money 24 hours a day, to create false consumer confidence, to prop up a U.S. economy that is falling off a cliff.
• The foreclosure crisis is deepening beyond what any expert imagined. As a result, real estate prices are falling even further, thereby threatening not only consumer spending, but the very survival of major banks.
• Inflation is skyrocketing on the two things that matter most — food and energy prices. One more disaster — perhaps the fall of Egypt, leading to an oil crisis — could lead to a hyperinflation that could turn America into a combination of Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic.
• We already face economic Armageddon on a state and local level. U.S. cities, counties and states are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Their grave financial condition is the result of massive unsustainable spending and debt, caused in large part by irresponsible public employee salaries, pensions and health benefits. The worst part of this crisis is that the stimulus money is gone and the federal government is bankrupt, unable to bail itself out, let alone the cities, counties and states.
• There are early signs of revolt and anarchy here in America — with a record number of policemen shot and killed during a two-week period in January.
• The Middle East threatens to turn into a powder keg that could lead not to democracy, but to radical Islamic control of many Arab countries. This grave new threat to America, American interests, and the survival of our ally Israel, would lead to more military spending and a potential oil crisis that could engulf and overwhelm the U.S. economy. In our current vulnerable economic state this tragedy could set off a worldwide economic panic.
• Japan’s credit rating was downgraded on what most economists agree is a disastrous slide toward oblivion. Japan’s debt is so huge it can never be repaid. As one famous economist describes the crisis they are facing: “Japan is a bug in search of a windshield.” Japan’s impending implosion could also trigger a worldwide economic panic.
• Spain just announced unemployment of over 20%. Not only does this news threaten the survival of the EU, it also drives a stake through Obama’s strategy for saving the U.S. economy by creating green jobs. Spain proves there is no market for green jobs. The whole idea is a mirage created by leftist progressive politicians desperately grasping for straws.

Can you imagine that all of this toxic news has occurred in only the few days since Obama’s State of the Union?

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We are navigating through truly uncharted political and economic territory.  Members of the financial cognoscenti have freshly alluded to the notion of the ‘government bubble’ as the next blow to the world economic order.

Since 2008 we have seen the housing, financial, and insurance markets hit on a global level, one after the other.  At one point, they all burst because they were unsustainable.  You don’t have to be a politico to know that the sovereign debt crisis is real.  Just look around.  As European countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Belgium) reshuffle hundreds of billions of dollars to lighten rising government deficit and debt levels, Republican appropriators here at home futilely attempt to get our books in order.  Ladies and gentleman, something is afoot.

The recent crisis in Egypt has only intensified discussion on the stability of the world economic order. No one knows what’s going to happen.  In an ideal situation, a peaceful transition of power will re-stabilize what has triggered a sell-off in equity markets and posed more geo-political uncertainty in the region as energy commodities are poised for gains based on fear.  And the bad news just keeps pouring in.

According to Reuters,

Adding to Cairo’s financial woes, ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the country’s debt rating on concern the Mubarak regime may spend more to placate protesters.

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