All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
And finally, it's time to talk with our guest today, Adam Morrow, from Interpress Service, IPSnews.net.
And what a bummer, man.
Look at this article, From Mubarak to Worse, by Adam Morrow and his oftentimes, if not always, co-author Khaled Moussa al-Amrani.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How are you, man?
Good, good.
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us here.
So go ahead and break the bad news.
I'll try to come up with smart follow-up questions if I can think of any.
Sure, sure.
Well, as your listeners probably know, Egypt had its first ever free multi-candidate presidential elections last week, at the end of last week, on Wednesday and Thursday.
And the final results of which were finally just released, I think it was yesterday, the final, final official vote tally was finally released yesterday.
And much of the country was surprised to discover that the two leading candidates who will be facing each other in a presidential runoff vote next month were the Muslim Brotherhood candidate and the candidate Ahmed Shafib, who is actually closely associated with the former Mubarak regime, who actually served as a civil aviation minister for a very long time under Mubarak and actually served as Mubarak's last acting prime minister at the height of last year's revolution.
So a lot of people here are sort of in a bind right now, certainly amongst the more liberal or leftist quarters are in a bind right now as they will be forced to make a decision next month between, like I said, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate and a candidate who is very closely associated with the overthrown Mubarak regime.
So that's quite an interesting turn of events.
Yeah.
Let's see, there's so many different questions to ask here.
I guess, first and foremost...
Nobody knows really sort of where to begin.
Everybody here is sort of in a sense of shock right now.
Yeah.
Well, a very limited set of options, as you say, but whose side, because it's a very limited set of options for the CIA and the State Department, too.
And, you know, that's my primary interest is in what I wish was the non-intervention of the American government on the issue.
And so I always want to know what's the opposite of that.
Who are they backing?
What are they doing?
Who are they threatening?
What are they threatening to withhold or to do to have their way?
Right, right.
Well, I mean, theoretically speaking, their choice, I'm sure that, you know, their choice would logically fall with the, you know, the Mubarak regime holdover, Ahmad Shafi, because as we all know, the Mubarak regime for the 30 years that it was in power, especially in the last 10 years of Mubarak's tenure, was a very, very important asset of United States foreign policymaking and Israeli foreign policymaking.
Mubarak was even described at one point by Israeli officials as a strategic treasure.
So the idea of continuing, I would assume that as far as the CIA is concerned, and these types of agencies, that they would want, they would certainly want, want Ahmad Shafi, the former Mubarak man, and would be much less enthusiastic about having a Muslim Brotherhood figure assume the presidency.
Well, now, is that a part of the discussion in Egypt, where kind of everybody knows that America's on the side of this or that?
And if so, does it make a difference in how people perceive the situation?
That's a very good question.
And I'm actually, it's been kind of disappointing, because, you know, everybody's attention in Egypt over the last year, or even in the last 15 months, I'd say, of the revolution, but especially in the last year, the last six months, everybody's attention has been very, very focused on domestic issues, and foreign policy issues that you would think would play a larger role in the way people thought.
All of that stuff has been put on the back burner, for the most part.
For example, the Gaza issue, which we talk about quite often, when I speak to you, the issue of the siege on Gaza and the long standing closure of the Egypt-Gaza border, for example, nobody has talked about it.
It's been eight months since I've heard anybody even even talk about that.
I could even understand how people might rationalize that away and say, well, we have to weigh on that we got, you know, first things first, and this and that kind of thing.
But the question of whose side is America on when Hosni Mubarak was their American backed puppet military dictator all this time, when they are relatively speaking a very weak state in comparison to the US, which is attempting to rule the entire region and wage a counter revolution against what they've pulled off so far, for them to not have whose side is the CIA on, whose side is the CIA working for right now on the tip of their tongue at every minute to me is absolutely mystifying, if that's really the case, that they think that this is all about Egypt?
Give me a break, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I people see things people, people are seeing things from a very, very domestic perspective.
Their domestic issues are absolutely at the top of the agenda.
Far more people are talking about what to expect from Islamist rulership.
Far more people are talking about, oh, the Muslim Brotherhood is going to make all women wear the, you know, cover their hair.
And there's a lot of a lot of things are being exaggerated right now in terms of what what an Islamist president would do.
And the Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, is bending over backwards to reassure everybody.
For example, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate today just came out Mohammed Morsi just came out today and said unequivocally, for example, that there would be no dress codes.
They don't plan to to force any dress codes on anybody.
Women aren't going to be forced to cover their hair or anything like that.
They just came out and announced that today, which is which is which I think is important.
Yeah, well, definitely it is.
I guess, you know, maybe I'm just being self-centered and thinking this is all about the American empire.
I just thought it all is, you know.
Yeah, no, I mean, Egypt's importance geostrategically can absolutely cannot be underplayed.
You know what I mean?
It's like who cares about Jefferson versus Adams if they're both puppets of King George, right?
Right.
Sure.
Sure.
This is another question.
How independent the Muslim Brotherhood is.
I mean, there's some people say that the Muslim Brotherhood itself has been infiltrated by by these same elements that you mentioned earlier.
And they certainly go back in history.
I don't know if anybody has if you ever hear about somebody documenting very current day stuff about that.
I'd love to see it.
But I know in Devil's Game, Robert Dreyfuss talks about how the CIA basically adopted the Muslim Brotherhood, handed off from the British after the last big war and ran them for a long, long time over there.
Right, right, right.
There is a lot of talk to that effect.
How much of it can be proven?
I can't really say what's for sure is that the Brotherhood Brotherhood representatives have been to Washington several times in the last couple of weeks and months to reassure the Americans that they don't plan to do anything too radical.
Yeah, right off the bat anyway.
And that makes sense.
I mean, that pretty much fits, I think, with their character and ideology.
Anyway, maybe I'll let you answer what you think about that when we get back from this break.
It's Adam Morrow from Interpress Service, IPS News dot net from Mubarak to worse back after this.
All right, so looking back to the show, it's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and we're on the line with Adam Morrow from Interpress Service, IPS News dot net.
We're talking about his piece from Mubarak to worse.
And now we talked to this guy, Adam, last week.
Oh, wait, I was going to let you answer about my wild assertion right as we were going out to break that the Muslim Brotherhood, for them to play it cool, to reassure Washington about what, you know, continuity there's going to be in terms of Egyptian foreign policy and other things that matters very that matter very much to the U.S. government, that that pretty much fits with their character.
Right.
They're not a bunch of barn burning radicals over there.
They're the conservatives.
They're like basically right wing Republicans.
Not that I'm OK with that, but just that they're conservatives, not radicals.
They don't want to start a war.
They can they can reassure Obama that their policy toward Israel is not going to change, for example, with a straight face because they're not lying.
It's not going to.
They want the status quo, their power.
They're the richest or at least, you know, the very, very upper middle class is classist type people in the society who want things to say where it is.
Yeah, they definitely the organization definitely includes many members that could be described that way.
As I was saying earlier, their first choice presidential candidate, who was actually subsequently disqualified from the election because of legal issues, is an incredibly successful businessman.
Al-Khairat al-Shattar was, like I said, their first choice presidential candidate.
I mean, this is a guy who's managed to make millions, possibly even billions of dollars in his falling business empire.
So so, yeah, they definitely have wealthy businessmen in their ranks as well who played a big role in financing the group.
Also, bear in mind that they are a very pragmatic organization.
Like you said, they're not into burning barns and all of this sort of going off half-cocked and making wild statements.
Everything they do is very, very carefully studied.
You know, all their options are weighed against one another.
This is a group that's been around for over an 80 year history playing the political game, even though most of that history, it was forced, you know, it was it was forced underground.
But yeah, that's the way you described in a very good way.
This is they're they're very pragmatic and and won't won't are not likely to do anything that would that would certainly that would give the United States an excuse to come down on that.
Although this should that being said, it should be noted that from what I understand, the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi has promised to open the Rafah border should he be elected.
So I don't really understand.
He said one of the first things he'll do would be to open the border, which is which is quite interesting.
It would be it'll be very interesting to see what the reaction will be by the United States and by Israel for that.
Well, first, he's got to live up to his promise.
Then we'll see their reaction.
But anyway, yeah, I just I'm sorry to be so negative.
I just can't imagine things ever working out for the people of Gaza.
I mean, how are they supposed to?
I don't know.
No, I agree that it's probably in a bind, although right after the if you remember right after the revolution, I mean, we had some conversations back then and everybody was you know, Gaza was very much that much at the forefront of everything.
You're opening the Rafah border was even considered one of the you know, one of the initial demands of the revolution.
And yet, like I said, over the course of the last year, with all of the weird stuff that's happened here and all of these clashes and all of these different political groups coming to blows, foreign policy issues have been put firmly on the back burner.
And everybody right now is focused on on domestic issues, including including we haven't even mentioned this yet.
There we Egypt has yet to have a constitution still doesn't have a working constitution that will define the power, the exact powers and precise authority of the coming president.
So Egypt is actually in the process of electing a president whose powers haven't even been defined yet.
So this is another big issue.
Yeah, well, and you know, there was a bit of a thaw between Egypt and Iran there at the beginning of one about a year ago.
Whatever happened to that?
Yeah, this was another thing that very much was brought to the forefront of the revolution.
If you remember, there was a foreign minister who served briefly named Nabil al-Arabi.
He was the first foreign minister, first post revolution foreign minister.
And he had he said explicitly that he planned to to open relations with Iran, which have been frozen Egypt to Egypt.
Iran relations have been frozen since 1979.
So there was some talk on that front as well.
And again, this is another issue that's very much been pushed into the background in light of recent events.
Well, you know, as long as we're all bringing up old stuff here, a big part of what we talked about a year ago, too, was that and this is the subject of an interview I did with a guy last week from Counterpunch as well, which is that the Egyptian military is the state and not just that they are the country, man, they own some super majority of the economy.
There is no real independent capitalist system there outside of the military state.
It's probably even maybe worse than China along those lines, percentage wise, you know, with the PLA doing the business of regular business.
And so that's something that's really hard where, you know, you can have different guys in suits competing over who gets to be the guy in this suit.
But if the entire state is owned for all the capital of the country is owned by the military, then, you know, what's any of this except a beauty pageant, you know?
Yeah, yeah, no, it's true.
It's like running for class president when the principal has all the power, not you, you know, right.
This is the information about that has been very difficult to get because it was illegal to even publish information about the armed forces before the revolution in Mubarak's time.
So nobody really knows exactly how extensive the influence the military is on the machinery of the state, but it is estimated to be vast.
And military production is a really, really big part of that.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Well, now.
So now I guess we didn't really talk about the liberals, the poor liberals, how come it is that the super majority of or almost anyway, definitely the majority of Egyptian society is young and yet.
Well, I guess that's the answer.
They just can't get their act together to get their guys elected.
Right.
Well, people vote saying this here doesn't necessarily just because people are young, though, doesn't necessarily mean they aren't Islamist.
For example, you've got I mean, the Brotherhood, the Brotherhood.
Well, Tahir Square, back when this thing started, was, you know, more or less, I don't know, it seemed, you know, your friend, I'm out of Lassie and his people.
Right.
They were more like labor activists, socialist types, liberals rather than white Islamists.
Right, right.
Ahmed is Islamist, is definitely Islamist.
But in general, yeah, that could be that the revolution did sort of kick off with these what they did, this young generation.
But that that group has been the influence of that group, I think, has been greatly, greatly exaggerated by the Western media.
The idea of the revolution, they might have started it.
They might have triggered it.
But but if you look and see who was actually out there facing down the police in Tahir Square during those 18 days, you'll find that there were a lot of, you know, 45 year old taxi drivers and 50 year old workers, you know, state employees who just simply weren't getting enough money to feed their families, you know, from their monthly salaries.
So I think it's very easy to exaggerate this whole youth thing.
Yeah.
Well, I think it was a much, much more broadly based.
Hmm.
Well, you know, to me in the larger picture, the real point here is how bad America blew it after 9-11, how this is, in fact, Osama bin Laden's victory.
There's so much hype about just in the last few weeks about how bin Laden's letters say that he was so frustrated that he didn't get to be the dictator of the new caliphate or whatever the hell.
But that's the only part of his plan that didn't work out, that he and his, you know, particular people were going to benefit and come out on top.
But it never really was about that.
It was about, you know, bankrupting America and making it harder for America to support the local dictators so that they could be overthrown by their people who could create Islamic governments in their place.
So it looks to me like America won the war for Osama.
Right.
Egypt is just one example, you know.
Well, maybe not.
I don't know.
Anyway, we're out of time.
Thanks so much for your time, Adam, as always.
Appreciate it.
Scott, I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Great.
