01/29/13 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is Adam Morrow from InterPress Service.
Hey, Adam, how you doing?
I'm good.
I'm good, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Welcome back to the show.
Everybody, Adam is live on the phone from Cairo right now.
And according to all the papers, at least on their Internet website versions, all hell is breaking loose in Egypt.
Please give us an update on what's going on over there.
Sure, sure.
Well, all of this basically follows on the second anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising, the January 25th revolution that saw the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
So they just celebrated, Egypt just celebrated the two-year anniversary of that uprising.
And it's been accompanied with – it was accompanied by massive, massive anti-government demonstrations that were held in Cairo and in Alexandria and several provinces around the country, which eventually led later in the day to clashes with security forces, which went on for a couple of days, and which in some cases, in some places, are still continuing until now, and which has basically put the scene and, you know, returned Egypt back into a semi-state of chaos.
The latest development on Sunday night was President Mohamed Morsi issued a decision, basically, declaring a state of emergency in the three cities of Egypt's Suez Canal, which are the city of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailia, all of which are now in a state of emergency, which includes also nighttime curfew from, I believe, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
So there have been considerable developments in the last couple of days, and I think the death toll countrywide now stands at more than – somewhere between 50 and 60.
Wow.
All right.
So now the background to this, I guess I'll oversimplify it real good and then you straighten this out, but basically the forces that combined to overthrow Mubarak's dictatorship and even to marginalize the army out of some of their domestic power anyway was a combination of the liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberals who were very opposed to Mubarak anyway, and the Muslim Brotherhood who were the most organized so-called civil society-type group outside of the state itself.
They were the only ones really – as we talked about at the time two years ago, they were the only ones really prepared to take any power and to have any real widespread grassroots support, right?
So then they won, but now the liberals are really angry and feel like they don't have a stake in the new system at all, and so rather than trying to participate within the new constitutional system, they're rebelling against it and saying the whole thing's a sham and trying to do a re-revolution and get a much larger stake.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's a good way of summing things up.
I mean, basically they're basically saying this is sort of a second revolution, the liberals and the sort of secularists that didn't really gain anything, that performed very poorly in parliamentary elections and whose candidates lost in presidential elections.
So they're calling it a second revolution, a revolution part two sort of thing, whereas the Islamists, who are led up mainly at the Muslim Brotherhood, are calling it a straight-up counter-revolution and saying that elements of the former regime are deeply involved, that it's being pre-planned by elements of the deep state that still exists, that still is held over from 30 years of Mubarak's rule, that's still deeply, deeply entrenched through many state institutions, that basically two years has passed since the January 25th revolution of 2011, and they've finally gotten their acts together, the deep state is sort of pushing back again now to undo everything that's been done over the last two years.
Do you believe that, or is that just the regime's pathetic excuse, or what?
No, I think there's quite a lot of it to support it.
I think there's a lot to support it, because you're seeing incidents of violence that really aren't in character for members of Mohammed Baradar Baradar's Constitution Party, for example, or these liberal groups or these secular groups aren't really characterized by employing violence.
I mean, that's very much something that's associated with the former regime.
Well, but who's suffering the most?
Is the Morsi regime, or are the liberal protesters suffering the most from, reputation-wise, I mean, political power-wise, from the violence?
Well, you have the situation now where these hardcore demonstrations are being incited, you've got people marching on state institutions and that sort of thing, and you've got the security services who are sort of caught in the middle between this mandate to protect vital state institutions and to sort of protect the sovereignty of the state, but at the same time don't want to be accused of repeating Mubarak-era tactics, Mubarak-era heavy-handedness against protesters and demonstrators, so they're sort of caught in this situation where, you know, protesters will push and push with increasing ferocity, and then if they're met with any level of violence, everybody will immediately jump on the Morsi administration and say, oh, look, they're resorting to, you know, they're resorting to the same old tactics that Mubarak used to do by shooting protesters and that sort of thing.
And also, it also has to be mentioned also that the security services now, and there are many of them, there are many different security services, the main one that's being employed now is the central security services that are being used to combat demonstrators and to sort of, you know, combat rioters and stuff like that, that these guys are not entirely loyal to Morsi.
It's not like Morsi was elected six months ago and all of a sudden all of these security services immediately start implementing his directives, you know?
I mean, these guys are sort of, remember, these guys were loyal to Mubarak for 30 years, and that, you know, that legacy is still very much, you know, it's still very much in evidence among those security services.
So who these guys are actually answering to, it's hard to tell, you know?
Because they're not, for example, police sort of refusing to redeploy in the streets, you know?
It's not like Morsi can just snap his fingers or wave a wand and all of a sudden all of these guys are, you know, back on the streets doing their jobs, you know?
So it's hard to tell.
If there's, like, a heavy-handed crackdown like there was, I think it was in Port Said, where nine protesters were killed two or three days ago, I mean, that's the last thing that Morsi and his administration would want, you know?
So it begs the question whether these guys are actually, like, on his side and following his instructions or whether they're making problems simply to discredit him.
You know, that's how complex the situation is now.
People like to simplify it and make it like, oh, you've got, you know, this new Morsi government on one side and then you've got these, you know, anti-government protesters on the other side, when it's actually much more complex than that because you have these state institutions, including security services, whose loyalties really are not determinate yet.
Do you know what I mean?
Well, sure, and, you know, to my libertarian mind, anyway, right down to each and every individual bureaucrat in the entire Egyptian state, every judge, every secretary in their army, and I mean the secretary, secretary, not secretary of something.
I mean, every single one of them has their own interest in whatever outcome.
So who knows?
Right, right, right.
And I think a substantial majority of those actually do dream of a return of the Mubarak regime when they were looked after, you know?
I think a lot of people haven't sort of come to terms with the change, you know, this massive change in leadership.
Hang on one second.
Let me ask you this.
Because, okay, so if there's a deep state movement that wants to co-opt these demonstrations and use them as an excuse to sow chaos and weaken Morsi and the Brotherhood's regime, new regime, they still need these big liberal protests to hijack and provoke and take advantage of and create a crisis.
And that really seems to be, I think you said that I was more or less right, that the liberal groups, say the labor unions and whatever other socialists and academic types, I would imagine, that they feel like they don't have a stake in the government at all.
Why would they acquiesce to a so-quote-unquote democratic system under this Constitution when this Constitution is written just to make sure that Morsi and the Brotherhood get their way from now on?
That seems to be the way they feel about it.
Is that a legitimate criticism?
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a legitimate criticism.
I mean, the Constitution is very much a big part of what's going on right now.
That being said, it's important to note that I think just today, yeah, news just came out within the last couple of hours, that a national dialogue that's being held between Morsi, not all of the opposition has answered his invitation to hold a dialogue.
The National Salvation Front, which is the sort of most visible opposition bloc, and that includes Hamid Baradieh and Hamid Sabahi and Omar Moussa, the latter two of whom were both presidential candidates but failed in the last election, that group, that bloc, that National Salvation Front, has refused to enter into any kind of dialogue, is playing super hardball with the presidency and is saying, look, we're not going to enter into any talks until you answer our short list of demands and that sort of thing.
All other, most of the opposition groups, however, have entered into these talks.
I think they held the special talks today or yesterday.
It should come out today that the president has promised to create some kind of new committee to discuss proposed constitutional amendments.
So the issue of the Constitution and the contents of the new Constitution are still, it would appear, even though it was passed in a popular referendum last month, it looks like the contents of the referendum and the contents of the Constitution and certain constitutional articles are still up for discussion.
And I guess he's really feeling the heat and he really means it, you think, huh?
He's going to go ahead and acquiesce some.
Yeah, and let's not forget also that the Constitution only passed with 64% approval.
I had sort of thought it would go, would get wider, get broader support.
But that is also, I think that's indicative also of people's sort of disenchantment with the whole political process and how chaotic it's been over the last couple of months and the last year and saw a very, very low turnout rate.
I think only 33% or something like that of the voting public actually participated in the constitutional referendum.
So there is definitely disenchantment.
He's definitely lost a bit of popularity, not necessarily because of his particular policies, but just because of the chaos that's accompanied the whole political process for the last six months or so ever since the presidential election.
Hey, tell me this, man.
When you go grocery shopping in Cairo, what are the prices like these days?
Yeah, no, that's a very good question.
I think inflation has maybe, I'm not really an economist, but I think the inflation rate has sort of stabilized a little bit over the last couple of months.
But that is within the context of a very slowly, steadily rising, steadily rising prices of basic commodities across the board.
I don't know how much of that can be attributed to the global economic crisis.
A lot of extreme cases like the blame on the globe.
And they might be justified in doing so.
On the global economic crisis and how much of it has to do with domestic problems is another issue.
But it definitely is an issue.
It's definitely an issue.
And it's one of the things that people complain about.
Why hasn't, you know, Morsi's been in power for seven months now, and prices still, you know, we still have these same everyday problems, one of which is the steadily increasing prices of basic commodities, including, you know, strategic foodstuffs.
So that is definitely, you know, that's definitely one ingredient of the sort of general malaise you hear now amongst the public.
You know, it seemed like that had a lot to do with the revolution in the first place, that a lot of people who were really living on the margin, they saw the value of what little money they had, you know, being inflated right out from under them.
And it was sort of a bread riot along with, yeah, and we want fair trials, too, as long as we're rioting.
Right, right.
And if you've noticed also over the last maybe month or two, the Egyptian pound has also lost value against the U.S. dollar significantly.
I mean, not much.
I think it went maybe from six Egyptian pounds to the U.S. dollar and up to six pounds fifty to the U.S. dollar.
So that's also affecting, you know, that's also affecting the economy in mostly negative ways.
It does have, you know, it does have certain positive effects as well, but it's been generally negative.
The fact that the local currency is now worth slightly less than it was six months ago.
Yeah.
And also the latest round of violence, the latest round, you know, the latest round of clashes and whatnot the last couple of days has also just started to impact.
I think it was yesterday, Sunday, was the first trading week on the stock exchange.
And you're starting to see an impact as well, stock exchange as well, where you've got investors starting to sell off because they're worried about, you know, Egypt's political future.
Yeah.
Tell us a little bit about the Salafists and the cops.
I would imagine, pick your typical Western newspaper would probably tell you a scare story about the future of the Coptic Christians, for example, something like that.
Can you give us an update about that?
Sure, sure.
That is a great question.
And it should be taken with the understanding that the Western media does like to play up this issue a little bit.
You know, they know this is a sensationalist, you know, they know that this is a sensationalist issue.
This idea of persecuted Christians will always sell, you know.
But at the same time, there are also sectarian issues that, you know, there have been sectarian problems that have cropped up intermittently.
There hasn't been anything like that within the last couple of months.
But what you do have is, in general, I can tell you that, in general, in Egyptian culture, you know, Egypt has a thousand-year-plus history of Muslims and Christians living together in perfect harmony, even to the point where Sharia law or Islamic law is actually specifically, you know, specifically forbids any sort of attacks on Christians, that under Islamic law they are protected by the state, they should be protected by the state.
I'm talking about the Christian community.
So it's only recently within the last couple of decades, specifically under Mubarak, that you started having serious sectarian outbreaks occurring.
Now, what you have now is, the phenomenon that you have now after the revolution is now that with the empowerment of the Salafists, who you never used to hear about before.
They used to sort of keep their mouths closed.
You just never heard much about the Salafists before the revolution.
But since the revolution, they've become extremely vocal.
They've got a number of satellite television channels now.
And so what you do is you get these sort of high-profile Salafist preachers who will occasionally come out and make very provocative comments about Christians.
You know, say things like, a good Muslim shouldn't congratulate a Christian on the occasion of Christmas, you know, and just sort of silly things like this that really, you know, all they do is sort of rile people up.
And I have to wonder when I hear stuff like that, I have to wonder if some of these preachers aren't actually, you know, aren't agents for some third party that are specifically trying to sow some kind of sectarian discord in a country where, you know, in a country where, like I said, the two communities have always gotten along and have always lived harmoniously for more than a thousand years.
This is a very weird phenomenon.
I don't know if you're – is your question based on a particular incident?
Has something happened recently that you've heard regarding Salafists and the Coptic Christians?
Nah, just, you know, I'm a typical American, and the way I look at the old world and the way it's carved up by the former empires and by my own empire now, not that I have anything to do with it, but, you know, the American one is – has a lot to do with dividing and conquering and sealing off factions.
And, of course, the truth of the matter is that in the old world, people really do define their leadership in old tribal ways much more than we do in America, even though, of course, we still have our problems with tribalism and racism and that kind of thing, too, of course.
But it's not quite the same as over there.
You know, like in the Iraq War, it wasn't all the Sunni people versus all the Shiite people, but sure as hell was the Sunni leaders versus the Shiite leaders.
You know what I mean?
Well, sure, but in the case of Iraq as well, I mean, it's noteworthy that, again, those two communities lived together for a thousand years plus.
They often intermarried.
There was never any of the sort of carnage that you saw, you know, all that sort of fighting, all that awful stuff you saw that started around 2006, if you remember that, the bombing.
Well, right, because the Americans invaded and overthrew the government, and then they said they declared majority rules.
Well, majority doesn't rule the capital city, so Civil War time.
Right.
But, again, it's a phenomenon that just simply didn't exist before the U.S.
– you know, before foreign troops came in and started messing things up.
Sure, well, but, I mean, that's what I'm saying.
I mean, this is not a foreign invasion, but it is a revolution, and like you're saying, there are reports of now the Salafists seem to be trying to cause some discord, whatever.
And mostly I just see like a news blackout on this.
I don't get any information from the media about it.
So I actually was guessing that there's not really much of a problem and that you would probably like pour water on the hype, you know, which is pretty much what you did, I think.
Oh, absolutely.
And the Western media is very, very guilty of doing that.
Definitely there's been a lot of exaggeration and stuff.
And I know the journalistic environment in Egypt, you know, the media for the most part is quite anti-Islamist in general.
I'm talking about the private media, which tends to be more liberal, tends to – it's often owned by wealthy businessmen and that sort of thing who are close to the former regime.
So it's within their interest to play up that sort of thing, because what it does is, you know, it basically puts the Islamists in a bad light.
It portrays them to the rest of the world as being despotic or being discriminatory against Christians and that sort of thing.
When, like I said, Egypt does not have a legacy of that sort of – if you look through history during the Ottoman period or even up to like the 1950s and 60s and 70s, there are no incidents of pogroms against Christians and that sort of thing, even though they represent between 10% and 15% of the population of Egypt.
You know, this whole idea of Christian versus Muslim stuff, in Egypt at least, really is a very, very new thing.
And what I think is it's always been used as a convenient tool.
It was certainly used as a convenient tool by the Mubarak regime, which could, in the event of some kind of clash or fighting between Muslims and Christians, could step in and pose itself to the West, pose itself to everybody as a protector of the Christians and say, look, we have to renew the emergency law for another two years because without these draconian measures, the Islamists are all going to attack the Christians and burn their churches and that sort of thing.
So it was a clever – it was a convenient card to play, this looming threat, this phantom menace of Muslim-on-Christian violence that could be pulled up whenever they wanted to justify, like I said, the emergency law, or any sort of draconian measure.
The $64,000 question is how badly is the CIA trying to cozy up to and or co-opt the Muslim Brotherhood and their regime, or how closely are they working together already, or what's the state of that?
Because, of course, the American government, it's not going to give up trying to have as much influence as possible.
In fact, they're even selling now a bunch of – or giving away a bunch of F-16s that are supposed to be a big part of a bribe that even post-Mubarak, you guys are still with us, right, kind of a thing.
And I just imagine, without knowing, that there's got to be uncountable numbers – whoops – uncountable numbers of CIA agents running around trying to control as much as they can, right?
Okay, sure.
Well, I would say that I've always sort of had my suspicions about the Brotherhood, and you have to – in the case of any sort of major organization or movement in the Middle East, you have to assume there have been at least attempts to infiltrate it by U.S. intelligence.
But I have to say, as this – what only looks increasingly like a counterrevolution here against the elected government heats up, I have to wonder – I mean, I'm starting to think that maybe the Brotherhood is totally legit, given the amount of energy resources that are going into stabilizing the Morsi government right now.
And I've said ever since the revolution and the days following Mubarak's ouster, I remember saying to myself that the powers that be in the West will absolutely never – given its incredible size and strategic importance, the powers that be in the West will never allow Egypt to go its own way.
So, corporate by crook, they're going to be in here trying to control the direction of the country.
No question about it.
But again, like I said, the fact that this counterrevolution that we've seen over the last couple of days, and which actually can – you can actually date back to late November, right before the constitutional law, the constitutional referendum, it seems to be so well-directed and so well sort of funded and planned that it makes me think that maybe the Muslim Brotherhood is actually a legitimate representative of the people, and that powers that be are just trying to destabilize it.
Yeah, it could be that that's the CIA's allies, that Egyptian deep state, the former Mubarak guys who are their old friends.
Really, that would be as likely at least as them finding a way to make an alliance with the Brotherhood.
Although, and I don't know near enough about this, but I know in Bob Dreyfuss' book, there's a long history going way back about the CIA and the Brotherhood.
They're not completely alien from each other, these groups.
Sure, it's not impossible.
Also, Scott, I find that intelligence agencies also like to control both sides of a given – As many as they can, yeah.
Maybe a lot more than both.
Exactly.
So you might have these guys funding the anti-Morsi counterrevolution that's going on right now, and they might also be deep into – they might also have their tentacles into the Brotherhood itself, just so they can control all outcomes.
They're going to end up on top of this.
This is also a possibility, unfortunately.
Yep.
All right.
Well, and your phone's completely going out on us, unfortunately, as well.
But we got every little bit of it but that last sentence.
So thanks very much, Adam.
It's great to talk to you again, man.
Hey, talk again soon.
Yes, absolutely.
Everybody, that is Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service.
That's IPSNews.net.
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