Yesterday, I was watching CBC News Now’s coverage of the riots in Egypt. The anchor (I forget her name, but she was sitting in place of Carole McNeil) began to interview Egypt’s ambassador to Canada, Wael Aboul-Magd (whose name I later found out they did not hyphenate – intentional slight, or typical foreign name error? You decide.).
Anyways, she started to ask Aboul-Magd questions, and the exchange went something like this:
Anchor: Yeah, so how about them riots?
Aboul-Magd: Yeah, isn’t great? This type of thing is wonderful, and totally protected by Egypt’s constitution. The protesters totally have the right to assembly and free association. Totally cool that people can do this kind of stuff.
Anchor: Uh... yeah. Three protesters and one police officer are dead...
Aboul-Magd: Mmhmm. Yep. That’ll happen in these types of things. You know, people get dead. But we promote this type of thing. Riots, that is; not death.
Anchor: What about the heavy police presence?
Aboul-Magd: Ah, what about it? They were merely herding the protesters, protecting them from ... Stuff.
Anchor: But we just saw footage of people running in fear from the riot police.
Aboul-Magd: Ha! Yeah, that’ll happen. Don’t worry about it.
It was much longer than that, but you get the point. Egypt’s stance is something like, “What? Why should the people be mad? We’ve only been in power for over three decades and practically define stale governance! Jeez, chill out.”
Meanwhile, since Egypt is such a crucial ally, the U.S. is all like, “Hey, settle down, both sides of you! Okay, fine, do what you want, just don’t kill anybody. Hey, what did I just say?”
Really, though, hopefully there are no more casualties, and some dramatic change will happen for the better.
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| If this isn't protection, I don't know what is. |
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