Carol Giacomo who is an editorial writer at the New York
Times is complaining that there has been “Another Mass Death Sentence in the
'New' Egypt” and that “the rest of the world, including the United States, has
not condemned these incidents, and could be considered complicit.” So that's
how the birdbrains at the New York Times operate: If you don't condemn
something you don't understand; you're complicit.
The first quote in the above paragraph is the title of the
article written by Carol Giacomo; the second quote is how she ended the
article. It was published under her name in the New York Times on December 4,
2014. Her problem is that Egypt
did not set-up a Guantanamo-like prison to keep people without trial for an
indefinite period of time because the judicial system doesn't know what to do
with them.
Instead, what the Egyptian authorities have done, and are
doing with people who do not protest their innocence but brag about what their
'blessed' hands can do, is to take them into a court of first instance and tell
them that strictly speaking, the law would have given them the ultimate
punishment. So now that they know what they deserve, they will be given time to
concentrate on what they have done rather than imagine the rewards they will be
given when they go to the Heaven of their imagination. There will be appeals,
and rather than shout fanatic slogans at the judge, they better think of the
reasons that their lawyers could use to have their sentences reduced or
overturned.
Giacomo starts her article by saying that “in Egypt, there
may be less respect for justice, the rule of law and human rights...” for
sentencing people who were duly charged with killing what she calls “a handful
of police officers” during a riot. And she laments that one of the defense
lawyers told a reporter “there was no effort to prove that any individual
personally killed any of the officers.”
Of course, that's the effort the defense lawyers will be
making once their clients calm down and start thinking about what will happen
to them in this world rather than fantasize about the rewards they will receive
in Heaven. In the meantime, the New York Times editorial writer Carol Giacomo
would have preferred that these people be thrown in a Guantanamo-like prison
for decades without charge and without trial because this would be perfect
American style “respect for justice, the rule of law and human rights.” A
decidedly superior system … don't you think so?
What she finds even more “reprehensible” is that a higher
court in Egypt
overturned the sentence that was handed down by a lower court against former
President Mubarak. This was the man who was tried not in the Egyptian press but
in the international press – mostly English speaking and mostly Jewish
influenced – for embezzling seventy (that's 70) billion (with a b) dollars, and
hiding them abroad. As it turned out when all the sensationalism had died down
was that a villa in Cairo
was given as a gift to his wife and not reported publicly. It was given back to
the government after all the brouhaha, and the case was closed. That is all
that Mubarak and his wife did in violation of the rules.
As to the 70 billion dollars, this is the amount of money
that the Libyans (not the Egyptians) are investing abroad for the benefit not
of any ruler but for the benefit of the Libyan people. Now imagine depriving
publications such as the New York Times from having a few days of fun reporting
in big headlines about the life of luxury that a modern octogenarian pharaoh
would be giving himself with 70 billion dollars. Gosh, there is enough here to
buy himself a pyramid and transit to an afterlife of luxury – and maintain it
for an eternity. Not even Ramses the Second could dare to dream as much.
It is, therefore, understandable that Giacomo and her
colleagues on the editorial board of the New York Times should feel
disappointed at this turn of the events. It is also understandable that they
would shed crocodile tears for the sentencing of three Al Jazeera English-language
network reporters to prison terms despite what she says is “an absence of evidence that
they conspired as charged” with those who would do harm to Egypt. At least,
they were charged and tried with the possibility to appeal or obtain a
presidential pardon.