The Thing With Egypt

If you're like me, you're probably baffled by the lack of information about what's going on in Egypt, then at the misleading direction the news comes in from one source to another.

A usually trustworthy source is Al-Jazeera, who had this to say:



An Egyptian friend of mine questions this version, though, saying ''with the eyes of the world watching their every move, there is no way the army would go out of their way to murder opponents in broad daylight, especiall after ridding the country of yet another government who oppressed the people''.

Which is true. And proponents of this view usually point to videos like this one as evidence:



And pretty much the only Western media taking the army's side on a consistent basis is Fox News. Which doesn't help, seeing as they're involved in fiction and propaganda as their major business, and seeing as their always-against-Obama stance inevitably leads to the main comments sections of such videos to look like this (these were actually consecutive, no editing was required):

By being fed incomplete information as news for over a decade, these folks rely on still-incomplete factual omissions in their assessments of Barack Obama's work in this rock-and-a-hard-place situation. As an elected world leader, he has to keep in mind that fallen oppressor President Mohamed Morsi was also an elected official, whose term was merely a year in before the army stepped in. Meaning it seems to have been the Will Of The People that put him in power as, let's not forget, the first democratically-elected leader of Egypt. And evidence shows the crisis he was involved in - power and fuel shortages - were brought on by supporters of the (Hosni Mubarak-led) regime that was overthrown before these elections took place, i.e. the one the Arab Spring had deposed.

And, officially, the U.S. has stopped encouraging armies to perform a Coup. Whether they're in it for the right reasons or not.

As I've shown here, both sides can point to ''evidence'' supporting their cause, and, in most civil cases, those types of situations demand an outside party to weigh the evidence and reach a verdict, which can be appealed twice by either side.

If the Americans admit the Coup was founded, their whole ''exporting Democracy'' thing that Republicans and Fox News were so hell-bent on during the George W. Bush years proves to be wrong on every count, meaning the U.S. can be deemed war criminals. Though it'd be a good thing to put Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in jail, since the Nuremberg trials, the political leaders aren't the only ones responsible, as each individual partaking in illegal activities has a ''duty to do which is right, even if it defies current Law'' - and that means prosecuting the Generals, most of which are still active in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as all the soldiers. You know, the ''heroes'' we are over-compensating in glory to make up for having desecrated the ones who went to Vietnam and the first attempt to invade Iraq.

Not only is that something that'd be lengthy, it'd stand against everything those who now condemn Obama for standing pat believe in, meaning they'd hate him even more for it. As a wise man by the name of Bartholomew J. Simpson once said: ''damned if you do, damned if you don't''.

The actual truth is, for once, there is no precedent for this - and especially in such a media-savvy and media-weary world. There is no logical or correct way to act, either, because either way, people will die.

Our government, here, when a whole generation tried to start a dialogue that almost created a revolution, told us to let them finish their term (with anywhere from 6 months to 2 years left) and show our displeasure via vote, by ousting them; they were even arrogant enough to hold premature elections, and were voted out, albeit in favour of a minority government.

And having learned from that, the international community should have sent a message to ''hang in there until the term ends, and if you're still unhappy, go another route; if we detect problems at the election, we'll intervene''. It would be unsustainable to have another Haiti (where a revolution almost follows each election) smack-dab at the heart of the Middle East.

What we need, on this side of the Pond, is for the media to do their fucking job and report on both sides equally so we can have a broader picture. This isn't a hurricane a journalist can stand next to, knee-deep in water, telling us it's windy. We don't need to have ground-level reporting an interviews with screaming, terrorized victims of either side.

Instead, disarm fucking drones, mount HD cameras on them, with fine, music-studio quality microphones (good Shure ones go for $100 apiece, it's a very fair price and a news organization might even get a decent bulk discount for purchasing a bunch), and have 25 of them at a time hover above the crowds, some in the middle of it, others a bit far removed, and show us some fucking perspective. Operators could zoom the picture in and out from miles away (even from the States!) and capture exactly who is doing what. I'll bet both sides are equally to blame, with each using half the deaths to advance their own cause.