07/13/11 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm happy to welcome Adam Morrow from interpressserviceipsnews.net back to the radio show.
He's in Cairo, Egypt, keeping an eye, keeping an eye or two on the revolution there for us.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How are you?
Good.
Good.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for joining us today.
I really appreciate it.
My pleasure.
All right.
So the latest is a bunch of stuff, I guess, starting with last Friday.
Why don't you start from there, unless I'm wrong?
Sure.
Well, another million man demonstration.
We haven't seen one of those for a couple of months.
Another million man in the iconic square with protesters demanding the or protesting the slow implementation of reforms by the ruling military council, demanding the speedy prosecution of former regime officials and demanding ministerial changes, demanding that all vestiges of the former Mubarak regime be removed from the current transitional government.
And those those protests have continued until today, sort of off and on.
But until today, protesters are still refusing to leave the square until their demands are met.
And there have been a couple of announcements by a couple of a couple of official statements by the prime minister, basically saying, I think the most recent one he said he promised a ministerial reshuffle within within the next week.
And I think he also sacked his assistant assistant prime minister or assistant foreign minister.
But these all of these moves have been rejected by the protesters who are continuing to camp out in Tahir Square.
So when we're talking about the prosecution of officials, it's still just like cops, like a cop was on trial and then got off right on charges.
Yeah, you had one incident about a week ago.
Yeah, it's very much focused on people who are seen as having been responsible for the death of protesters or or what are widely called the martyrs of the revolution here.
People want to see anybody who was remotely connected with with any of those deaths during the revolution.
And I said there were several hundred deaths, they want to see all of those people prosecuted.
Now I know about a week ago, there was a big there was a group of police officers who were let off in the city of Suez.
And that caused a big controversy.
And a lot of people protest that.
And I think that there have even been reports, scattered reports of people clashing with with police and army now in Suez because of this.
So the situation really is getting dire.
And people do have a right to to protest the slow pace of demands.
Because let's let's not forget that when it was supposedly put in place was given the revolutionary legitimacy and was put in place by the people of Egypt, or so it would, so it should be in order to fulfill their fulfill their demands.
And these have been very slow in coming.
The President Mubarak himself has yet to be prosecuted.
And people people want to see that as soon as possible.
Wow.
Well, you know, if the people of Egypt are successful in in having that much accountability, that sure would be never mind this whole revolution so far, but that specifically would really put the Americans to shame at this point, when you know, here, we're supposed to have the oldest republic in the world and all of this stuff.
And there's no law whatsoever, the idea that Dick Cheney or George Bush could ever end up in the dock on some criminal charges for anything that they did any line they tapped any person they killed is ridiculous.
It's not even you couldn't even make a Saturday Night Live skit out of it, people would have no connection to reality whatsoever.
So if they can prosecute Hosni Mubarak and his highest level cronies, and that sure would, I think maybe I'd like it just for the amount, it would shame the people of the United States.
Right.
Well, I think this is one of the reasons why you have the powers that be behind the scenes, I think, are probably working to prevent his prosecution, for that exact reason, for the precedent that it would set, because I think if other people around the world saw the successful prosecution of a head of state, and I'm not talking about by some external, multilateral institution, like the criminal the the interest International Criminal Court or other things like this, that are largely biased and largely instruments of the West, I'm talking about prosecution by, you know, as the result of a successful popular revolution, I think that would set a very bad precedent for other, other heads of state around the world, not just in the Middle East.
And the efforts by the Saudis is definitely that's definitely in the public domain, that the Saudis are very keen to prevent Mubarak's prosecution and have even made have even made offers and made deals aimed at avoiding his, his prosecution.
But like I said, it's not just heads of state in the Middle East, I think the whole world might learn a lesson.
If they saw if they saw the president of a former dictatorship being taken down by his own people, which, as we've said, has yet to happen.
Although, you know, kicking him out and force him to retire at some resort or whatever, and step down, he really has been ousted from power, at least and, and that's pretty powerful.
You know, Pepe Escobar was on the show yesterday, and he was talking about how he's been, you know, you know, he's been he was talking about how kind of depressed he is about the counter revolution and its success, as the dictatorships have been very hard to get rid of over these past months.
And he said, you know, all eyes on Egypt, man, it's Egypt is everything here, if the people really get fair elections, and they really are able to create this new, much more bottom up fair trial, peaceful foreign policy type system, then, you know, there, then there's hope.
But if if everything fails in Egypt, then, you know, things are going to look much, much worse for the rest of the people of the Middle East, which is, you know, exactly the inverse of, you know, of what you just said about how worried the king of Saudi Arabia is that there actually could be accountability.
And I guess the Saudis are intervening all over the region to try to back dictators and keep them there.
Right, right.
Well, I don't think the Egyptian people would be satisfied with him just retiring to a resort.
I don't think they would see that as a complete victory.
And I don't think that would really, really provide the deterrent that proper prosecution would I mean, if dictators can still think that they can do their nasty business, and the worst that they can, the worst that they can expect is to is to retire in comfort.
I don't really think that would have the same deterrent effect as does as would prosecution, which is what people are really, really pushing for.
And not just of Mubarak, but also a lot of his cronies, his two sons, both of which were involved in many of the financial dealings during his during his time.
Well, and now about those elections that are supposed to happen in September, if you ask the average guy in Tahrir Square today, you think he'd say that he's pretty confident they're going to happen?
It's going to be all right.
Right.
No, that's a very good question.
It was just, well, it was just announced either late last night or today that elections have actually been postponed until November or December.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And how much does that have to do with the protest in Tahrir Square right now?
Um, I I couldn't tell you exactly what the relationship is.
But I think there are definitely very strong forces at work that do not want to see democratic elections being held soon in Egypt.
And I think I think this is this is only part of a delaying tactic that we're going to see more of.
I think I think there's a there's definitely a reluctance to allow Egypt to decide its own foreign policy and to decide its own future, simply because it's too strategically important to so many of the major players involved.
I mean, let's not forget that, along with being the largest, the largest Arab country in terms of population with about 80 million people, Egypt also is straddles across straddles the Suez Canal, which is of extreme strategic importance.
And it also shares a very long border with Israel.
And all of these things, you know, sort of combined to to make it to too important strategically, to allow to just go its own way, if you know what I mean.
So I think there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of a lot of wheeling and dealing a lot of pressures being exerted in different ways to trip up the democratic process, both both by by groups inside of the country and also by foreign powers.
Well, yeah, I mean, it seems like in a way you had, I don't know if, if having a civilian dictator or civilian face on the dictatorship made it more tenable for that long or whatever.
But now, you know, they got rid of Mubarak, but now they have just basically a plain old military dictatorship.
So I wonder if, in essence, in the long run, as difficult as that is, I wonder if it means that they're just going to have no legitimacy to hang on here that they're going to have to allow the people of Tahrir Square to create a civilian, a new civilian face for their power.
Right.
Well, the main point to take away from the latest round of protests in Tahrir Square is that the honeymoon between the people and the army, which was such a central feature of the revolution in January, and then February is over.
And now you have people basically calling for the removal of the ruling military council and calling for its replacement with some kind of civilian council.
People have waited five months now for their demands, their revolutionary demands to be met, and those have been very slow in coming.
So now you have people in the square, who are actually calling for the removal.
In the beginning, it was the people want the fall of the regime.
And that was the central rallying cry of the revolutionaries.
Now what they're actually you're actually hearing people want the people want the fall of the ruling council, which is quite an escalation from from from what we had earlier.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is.
I mean, before it was Mubarak asked the army, hey, massacre these people and they wouldn't do it.
Right.
And so right.
Well, if you remember, if you remember, at the height of the revolution, you had to just when when the police withdrew, and the army sort of stepped in, you had these moving pictures of people embracing army officers on the tops of tanks.
And there was this huge love fest between the people in the army and the army was there to to protect the people and to protect the revolution from the from the from the depredations of the police and this corrupt government.
And now five months has passed.
And that that love fest has turned cold.
And and people, people are sort of now maybe seeing through this, this this military council and starting to question its motive.
Do you know what the average army conscript conscript thinks of all this?
In terms of salary?
No, in terms of, you know, whose side they're on, as the revolution and the military council find themselves more and more estranged from each other?
That's a really good question.
I don't know.
It's very difficult to get information about the army, both in terms of dispositions and attitudes and things like that.
They're they're considered state secrets.
But, but I would I would have to stress the enormous disconnect between the average conscript and the ruling council.
I mean, the conscripts are just normal, you know, normal guys, every male has to serve in the military.
Although there have been cases of in the last month or two, there have been cases of officers sort of publicly siding with protesters.
That's, that's been something but but again, whether or not that is part of some perhaps some kind of spy op, that's meant to, you know, that's meant to promote this idea of the of the of the army of this noble institution that's there to protect the people.
I don't know.
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you say that the protests more and more turning against this military council, the same military council that I as far as I could tell, anyway, as far as we were hearing over here, had refused to fire on the protesters had basically decided even at the highest levels to take the side of the protesters over the Mubarak regime.
But if the fight is now between the military council and the protesters, I wonder if the junior officers would follow orders to fire from the senior officers?
Right, right.
That's a very good question.
And also, I guess, what did the protesters in Tahir Square guess would happen?
You know, because that's going to determine what they're doing, you know?
Right.
Well, one of the one of the one of the things that's being put out a lot is this idea that there are there are dark forces, possibly members of the of the former regime out there, trying to sow strife between the people and the army and the military.
This is another thing that's being put out a lot.
Now, whether or not that's true, or whether this is just again, like I said, sort of propaganda, to reinforce this notion of the of the military of the protector of the people, I'm, I'm really not sure.
Egypt has definitely entered a state of confusion now where a lot of you know, even a lot of Egyptian activists who are in Tahir Square every day, really are having trouble telling the good from the bad at this point.
There's a there's definitely an effort to sow a lot of confusion, either by remnants of the former regime, or by elements that are being directed from outside.
It's really uncertain right now.
But I can't discount the possibility of another round of violence here, though.
People are quite nervous about that.
Has anything changed at the border with Gaza since we last spoke?
No, nothing.
From what I can tell, they've still as you remember, they improved, they improved conditions a little bit.
They're allowing people through.
Oh, did I lose you?
What happened, Adam?
Oh, come on, NSA TNT.
I'm having a conversation with my man here.
Adam, are you there?
Huh?
Well, you know what?
Stupidity or the plan, right?
It could be.
They don't like the part of the interview about Gaza.
It could be that AT&T is just the least competent bunch of monopolists in the history of mankind.
Oh, well.
Adam Morrow, everybody.
Reporter from Interpret Service.
Revolution in Egypt.