07/12/13 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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On to our next guest.
It's the great Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter like Gareth for Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net.
But he's living in Cairo.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How are you doing?
Good.
I'm good, Scott.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good.
I really appreciate you joining us.
Anyway, all right, so hey, today's Friday, so today's a big day.
Are people chilling out?
Are the battle lines getting harder?
People are getting madder?
Or I saw the coalition splitting, so maybe more factions have the fact that they have no power in common now and they can start being friends again?
I have no idea.
Tell me what the hell is going on in Egypt.
Sure.
Well, what you have now is in the wake of President Morsi's oust a week ago, I think it was on the 3rd of June, you now have an interesting dynamic where you're seeing more, you're seeing the Islamist ranks or the Islamist, the various disparate Islamist parties and groups unifying behind calls for the reinstatement of Morsi versus, you know, what used to be the opposition, which is now in power on the back of the military, is actually now in a state of fragmentation where just a month ago, the opposite, you had this very unified opposition, you know, opposition, all of whom were thoroughly behind Morsi's ouster, all of whom were thoroughly, you know, all lining up to take aim at Morsi and were unified in their demands for Morsi's removal, and now all of that is sort of falling into disunity and disarray now that they actually have power, while the Islamists, who had previously been in a state of disarray and sort of division over various things when they were in power, are now unified behind calls, like I said, for Morsi's reinstatement.
So it's interesting, you have a shift, you do have a shift in dynamics, more unity on the part of Islamist ranks who have all sort of come together and coalesced behind this, you know, calls to reverse this military overthrow, and now you have different opposition groups are now raising their various concerns about the seemingly unlimited powers that this new interim president has.
So this is an interesting development and an interesting turn of events.
I don't know if you know, also today there were massive demonstrations, pro-Morsi demonstrations, in the capital and in several Egyptian provinces, but it's very difficult, unfortunately it's difficult to gauge how large they are, mainly because of the incredibly slanted nature of the media.
If you remember from our last conversation, as soon as Morsi was ousted, the authorities immediately shut down all Islamist channels, six Islamist channels, I believe.
So it's very difficult to get the Islamist side of the story right now.
So again, it's very difficult to determine just how big these pro-Morsi demonstrations are.
From what I can tell, Gazeta is showing them, but Gazeta's coverage is very limited.
And Gazeta has, for the most part, been declared persona non grata under Egypt's new military regime.
So it's difficult to gauge how big they are, but certainly from the limited amount of footage we're getting, there are definitely tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people out on the street demanding Morsi's reinstatement.
Okay, so let me oversimplify it, and it'll be oversimplified, but you tell me if I'm wrong outright.
I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
You had the Muslim Brotherhood in power for about a year there, and then in the opposition, at least de facto coalition against them, you had the old regime militarists, you had whatever so-called liberal groups, which I guess just means like labor unions and university students and stuff like that, and then the Salafis.
But see, I think that's probably where I'm really oversimplifying is who all's who in the Salafis or whatever.
But they were part of the opposition, and even part of the opposition that was so impatient that they didn't want to wait for elections or anything.
They agreed with the militarists and the liberals to go ahead and overthrow Morsi now.
But now you're telling me, I think, that they've already taken that back in a way and said, no, you know what, we actually like Morsi a hell of a lot better than you guys, and mostly as a result of the form of the military power grab and how they've set things up so far and who's supposed to get what power sharing, and they're now balking and getting pissed off and switching sides back to the brotherhood.
Is that correct at all?
The only oversimplification you're making here is when you refer to the Salafis.
It's not all of the Salafis, which are actually a formidable force.
The Salafis are actually quite a formidable force, and they got roughly 25 percent of the parliament in 2011-2012.
The group that stuck around and endorsed the military takeover, the one Islamist party that basically broke off from the rest of all the other Islamist groups and parties, it's just one Salafist party.
There are multiple Salafist parties, but traditionally the largest Salafist party called the Nour Party, which itself has seen, even before this incredible showdown on June 30th, had already seen massive defections by a lot of its membership.
In fact, other parties started to, there were break-off parties from it and that sort of thing, because they basically saw it as being too oppositional.
It basically got into bed with the opposition to Morsi.
Basically, this is a super ultra-conservative Salafist party, and it was basically getting into bed with the incredibly liberal opposition at the expense of the elected president who comes from the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood.
So that party already had a serious identity crisis that it was facing, and then what it did when it saw the size of the protests on June 30th, it basically joined calls for early presidential elections, but was the only Islamist party to do so.
All the other Islamist parties immediately backed Morsi, even though they might have had their own personal smaller-scale differences with the Brotherhood.
They've all backed Morsi, and now that we're 10 days or so into this thing, the Nour party has definitely balked.
For example, when it saw that when two big liberal figures were touted to take up the premiership, for example, it vetoed both of them.
It suddenly found itself in this very difficult position, very hard-to-justify position where it's basically in the same coalition against an elected president with a bunch of its ideological rivals, with a bunch of its ideological nemeses.
So yeah, the last thing that I heard, it's sort of withdrawn from the government, and it's sort of distanced itself.
And I think the reason they're doing that is basically it's the only way to preserve their Islamic credentials.
If they were to stay with this new military-backed government and give it its endorsement, I don't think it would have had much of a political future, because it would have been seen as a massive, massive sellout to this new interim government at the expense of the Islamist parties and groups, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, yeah, I dig it.
So now the elections, the military has announced that there won't be a presidential election for two years, right?
They'll have a parliamentary election next year.
But they've tried to say, well, we'll include the Brotherhood.
You guys can run again.
Well, this is what's so incredible, are these incredibly disingenuous calls to talk about, oh, how inclusive we are and how democratic we are, and we want everybody to participate.
I mean, you basically just backed the military overthrow of an elected president, and then you're acting like you've got the good grace to allow them to compete, and they don't want to exclude anybody from the political process and the democratic process.
It's very, very Orwellian, some of the stuff we're starting to hear now, in terms of the verbal gymnastics people are playing in order to avoid calling this a military coup.
A lot of people are still in fantasy land and still think this is just a reflection of the popular will and haven't yet come to terms with the fact that this was a public relations coup from beginning to end.
And like we said last time, I seriously don't think it could have happened without a green light from the U.S. government, which has been so, so incredibly closely involved in the Egyptian military for the past 30 years plus.
So if that goes some way towards answering your question.
Well, I mean, Eric Margulies, the way he portrayed this situation was that the Egyptian military is nothing but part of the Pentagon.
And if this happened, it's because the Pentagon did it, basically.
And they're so closely linked together that there's just no other conclusion you could come to, basically, was his conclusion, from where he is understanding the relationship.
Right, right.
Yet at the same time, you've got these opposition groups, these groups that have just come to power on the back of the military, basically trying to make themselves out to be like the ones that are sort of bucking U.S. policy.
They're trying to cast this whole myth that the Brotherhood was actually America's choice, and that this whole big military overthrow that just happened came despite the U.S., which just, you know, if anybody knows anything about the region or the history of the region, I mean, it's just very, very difficult to swallow.
All right.
All right.
Now.
Hey, can I ask you a question?
What kind of coverage are the pro-Morsi demonstrations getting in the Western mainstream media?
Well, you know, I got it on CNN International the day, and I'm not seeing anything.
I haven't had a chance to look at Al Jazeera or anything else.
This is sort of typical where you see like any sort of anti-Morsi activity is highlighted by the media and gets a lot of attention, and yet when you have instances of pro-Morsi activity, pro-Morsi activity that's happening like today in Cairo with these demonstrations, the media, both local and international, seems to just ignore it, which is disturbing.
I guess really the way to judge it as far as CNN International, I guess, would be how much attention Amanpour plays to it in an hour or so when her show starts.
I think that's, you know, she's pretty much got the – that's been delegated to her to cover or not, I think.
You know what I mean?
The rest of them, they're just talking about soccer and plane fires and stupid, you know, rainstorms and whatever, you know.
Right.
But – Right.
All right.
Well, so I don't know.
The U.S. role, obviously, you know, if you go all the way back, the Brits helped create the Muslim Brotherhood in the first place.
They worked very closely with the CIA to marginalize commies and socialists and nationalists, you know, through the decades.
And then – but I guess for the last 30 years, they've been very much suppressed.
I don't know what the CIA role with the Muslim Brotherhood has been since, say, Reagan or whatever or since Carter.
This is a big question.
This is barbaric.
This is a big question that I've noticed comes up in our conversations a lot, and it's an important element in the equation.
We know that all groups to some extent are going to be co-opted.
We've learned that the hard way, that all groups everywhere are co-opted in one way or the other by the powers that be.
Now, the question is just how badly co-opted was the Muslim Brotherhood.
Was it a creation of the U.S.?
Like you said, you know, it's detractors here.
We'll accuse it of being a freemasonic organization and things like this.
I mean, that's a very, very good question, and you can't really get a bead on what's actually happening until that question is answered.
I don't know.
I don't – you know, it's still sort of open to question.
However, I will tell you that what just happened on June 30th, the fact that the military stepped in and pulled this thing off on the back of this crazy public relations coup, strongly suggests that they were perhaps more independent than we thought they were.
You know?
I mean, it's an indication that the powers that be wanted them out.
And if the powers that be wanted them out, then that suggests that they did represent a level of independence.
You know?
And again, it's also difficult to determine because Morsi really didn't have that much of a chance to govern.
We only saw him, you know, in the presidency for one year, during which time he was putting out fires left and right, during which time he was trying to tame this Mubarak-era deep state, which still remains completely in place, undisturbed from two and a half years ago.
It still remains, you know, and I'm talking about the police.
I'm talking about the military.
I'm talking about large segments of the bureaucracy, you know, Egypt's massive, sprawling, quasi-socialist bureaucracy.
The Mubarak-era deep state still remains firmly in place, you know, in those areas.
And Morsi got resistance on all fronts in his 365 days when he got to govern.
So it's very difficult to tell.
It's very difficult to tell what he was going to do.
I will point out, though, that people really haven't mentioned is that his entire time in power, practically, Egypt was negotiating for a big IMF loan package, if you remember, a $4.8 billion loan package.
And they never sealed the agreement, which leads me to believe that Egypt was basically – Egypt under Morsi was basically pushing back and was basically saying, look, we're desperate for this money, but we're not going to – we're not going to, you know, we're not going to just sign all of these preconditions.
We're not going to sign on to all these preconditions that the money comes with.
So they were obviously not – there was some resistance, you know.
They hadn't agreed to anything yet, and they were still in the process of, you know, of negotiating.
See, I didn't understand that aspect of it.
I guess I had thought that he had gone ahead and started implementing the reduction of the subsidies, and, I mean, he was damned if he didn't, damned if he didn't anyway, right?
Yeah, but they never reached final agreement.
There were some points where he sort of tried to do a couple things, tried to raise taxes a little bit, but there was a big public outcry, and he had to reverse those decisions very quickly.
But a final agreement on the loan and the loan conditions was never reached.
So this is just something to bear in mind.
Yeah.
And now – so I want to ask you about – well, hell, man.
I want to ask you lots of different things at the same time.
Let's focus on what you talked about, the Mubarakist deep state that refused to give an inch to the democratically elected whatever the whosits.
There is a piece in the New York Times I'm sure you must have seen.
In fact, I have it here.
Sudden improvements in Egypt suggest a campaign to undermine Morsi.
Wow.
Is that the New York Times?
Yeah, yeah, New York Times.
And I was trying to remember.
I'm pretty sure it was Eric Margulies who went ahead and stuck his neck out and said – and this is something that you obviously very well could have predicted yourself judging from everything you've ever said on the show in the past couple of years – that you just wait.
I bet you give them a few days and all of a sudden the cops are going to be out on the street providing security.
All of a sudden there's going to be better electric service.
By the way, many normal Egyptians, many average Egyptians have been very quick to point that out.
I've had several people saying, have you noticed that the benzene crisis, the gasoline crisis, and these various shortages, there have been no electricity cuts.
There were chronic electricity cuts going on in Cairo and in the governorates for a month.
Margulies wasn't shy at all in saying that, look, this Mubarakist deep state, they refused to cooperate with the Brotherhood's so-called regime for the last year whatsoever, basically, knowing that they, the elected, would get all the blame and then they would be able to go back to the way things were.
It's simple, but it's absolutely spot on, Scott.
I mean that's basically what's going on.
I think basically the master plan was to basically trick him up and to destabilize the country absolutely as much as possible, and that includes calling constant demonstrations so as to hurt tourism.
Tourism numbers were low to create these chronic shortages of basic necessities, including fuel, bread occasionally, massive electricity cuts.
And I think basically that this was the idea was to just sort of alienate the public and basically make it look like life is worse under Morsi than it was under Mubarak.
I mean Mubarak might have been a dictator, but at least he kept the electricity coming.
At least he kept the fuel supply coming.
At least he did this.
At least he did that.
And that's basically what they did.
They did that for a year, got a lot of people upset with this nonstop media barrage against anti-Morsi stuff, and basically this very, very disingenuous tendency to basically put everything on Morsi, put the responsibility for absolutely everything on Morsi.
I mean there was no empathy whatsoever.
It's like you'd think this guy has got the most difficult job in the world.
This guy has just been elected to the absolute most difficult task in the world, which is basically rebuilding Egypt after 30 years of Mubarak.
And he was not given any leeway by his critics.
I mean his critics held him to task for absolutely everything.
And in many cases what bothered me the most about the opposition is that they would help create the problem.
They would actually create the problem, like calling for constant demonstrations.
And then in the very same breath they would turn around and say, oh look, since Morsi took over, tourism is down 20 percent.
Or they would actually help create the problem, and then turn around and blame Morsi for the very problem that they were promoting.
And that all culminated on June 30th with this massive public relations putsch when they managed to get several million people out on the street, and they turned it into a big festival.
And the army very, very quickly, before any violence had occurred, before without real due cause, immediately stepped in to assume responsibility.
So yes, in a nutshell.
Yeah, that's an important point that I think everybody saw it happen, but not many people noticed it or put it into words that way or what have you.
But that is certainly no one could dispute if you go back and just think about it.
They really did come out with their 48-hour ultimatum thing really quickly.
There was no real pretense that something's got to be done, oh my God, or else.
You know what I mean?
Like you said, it was a festival in Tiger Square.
It was no riot.
Exactly.
And the Brotherhood and Morsi were basically just hoping to ride it out.
They were like, look, we're going to have all these people on the streets for a couple of days.
Let's just ride it out.
They consistently reiterated the public's right to protest peacefully, the right to peaceful demonstrations.
Just let them do it.
Let them get their anger out.
And then maybe once it's all over, we can get back to trying to run the state here.
And then were betrayed, I guess.
I mean, they had had assurances from the defense minister, who Morsi himself appointed.
I mean, Morsi himself appointed this defense minister.
And I think they were betrayed.
I think the guy, you know, I think the guy knew even before.
I mean, he was actually, you can see him sitting, attending a speech.
It was Morsi's last address to the nation that he delivered on the occasion of the end of his first year in office.
And the defense minister is sitting there in the first row with a big smile on his face.
And I'm sure that he knew even then, when Morsi was speaking, that he knew what was about to happen.
He knew what was coming.
He knew this June 30th thing was going to be held.
It was going to get massive, massive international media coverage.
It was going to be spun like the Egyptian people sort of, you know, are breaking their silence and hitting the streets.
And they've had enough of this, you know, of this incompetent rule and da-da-da-da.
And they knew full well that that was going to give them the justification that they needed to basically reassume control of the country.
Yep.
All right.
And now, real quickly, and we got about six minutes here.
Real quickly, how many turned out to protest for this thing?
Is that today you're talking about?
No, I'm sorry.
During the 48 hours, all-important 48 hours there, I mean, the common term, I kind of just remember you corrected me last time.
I said, well, 30 million people.
But why?
Just because I heard that somewhere?
Well, apparently that's what everybody heard somewhere was that 30 million people came out.
So you can't call that a putsch, man.
That was the people of Egypt's will.
And they just couldn't wait for an election because Morsi was so bad.
Right, right, right.
I seriously dispute, first of all, I seriously dispute the 30 million.
Say it was 5 million, which might be closer to the mark, but which itself is an enormous, I mean, that is an incredible feat to manage to get 5 million people out on the streets.
That is an incredible feat.
However, that being said, I would suggest that the majority of those people were not hardcore, diehard activists who were demanding his ouster.
These were just normal sort of average, everyday Egyptians.
And I know a lot of them who aren't politicized.
They weren't chomping at the bit to see Morsi removed from office.
But they went out because everybody else was going out.
People made a day of it.
And that's where the media comes in.
That's how the media did it.
The media really, really mobilized these people over the last two or three months to get people to go out, again, even like the non-politicized class.
And again, I don't think all of those people were, maybe you could say 10% of them, were hardcore activists who weren't going to leave until Morsi stepped down.
This was another thing.
It would have been interesting if the army had waited.
It would have been interesting to see how many, that was one of the things people were asking, how long are those people going to stay in Tahrir Square?
Or would they all have left after the first day?
Would they all have sort of left after the first day?
Would they really have stayed like they had in the 18 days in 2011 that got rid of Mubarak?
Were they really that committed to staying there until Morsi left?
Well, compare those numbers.
In which case, it would have been a real popular uprising.
In which case, we could have said this was a… Tell me, Adam, how do these numbers from this time compare to 2011?
Oh, they were bigger.
They were bigger.
But remember, 2011 was, I mean, as far as I can tell, was an actual sort of popular uprising.
People weren't preparing for it for months.
This last thing was in the works for a month, like I said.
I mean, people were pushing it.
Everybody was saying, like, look, our appointment is on June 30th.
Don't even go out before that.
Save your strength.
Everybody needs to go out simultaneously on June 30th.
Don't do anything else.
You know, it had a lot of planning.
It had a lot of money behind it.
Whereas the stuff in 2011 was of a much more spontaneous nature, so it wasn't as big.
And also, again, if you think about it, in 2011, people had much, much more legitimate reason to hit the streets.
I mean, they were basically revolting against an unelected dictator who had been in office for 30 years and who was known to rig elections, was known to be extremely corrupt, was known to have a vile foreign policy which basically kowtowed to the United States and to Israel at the expense of its own people.
As opposed to what just happened on June 30th when you had people hitting the streets to get rid of an elected president who's only been in power for one year, you know, and has had to face, like, Still, there were bigger protests, though.
I mean, that's pretty significant, isn't it?
Listen, I mean, a lot of people would argue with me, but I think that is the power of the media.
When the media really wants to, you know, wants something done and devotes a lot of time and energy to it, it can move mountains.
Hey, I live in the USA.
You don't have to convince me of that.
I know.
I didn't see the Egyptian media in the lead-up to this thing, but I do know the power of the TV to tell people what they think, no doubt about that.
Now, let me ask you this real quick.
It's not just the TV, Scott.
Oh, go ahead.
It's not just the TV, Scott.
I just wanted to make one really quick point on a much more general level.
It's not just the TV.
It's also this new, the advent of new social media, which has been with us for about five years.
Let me ask you about this.
I got a comment here from your last interview.
What's your opinion about Hamdin Sabahi, who came in third in the election in the first round, not too far behind Morsi?
Yeah, he's a big leftist figure.
He was a big activist under Mubarak.
He was a vocal critic of Mubarak during the Mubarak era.
And he was the big leftist candidate who did come in third.
A lot of people said if he had made it into the runoff, he would have won, you know, because if you remember, the runoff was just Ahmed Shafit, the Mubarak-era prime minister, and Mohamed Morsi.
So it sort of put people into a box.
Anybody who wanted a third, you know, a sort of third way, they didn't really have the choice.
So people said if Sabahi had actually made it into the runoff, he would have beaten Morsi, and he would have beaten Sabahi, or he would have beaten Shafit.
Now, whether or not – that's difficult to say.
It's hard to say, because you have – the leftists here, I think, all have a sort of exaggerated sense of how big they are.
I think an Islamist would have won in any fair contest, just given the sort of demographics in Egypt.
And now we're right up against the time wall, but just very quickly, does it seem like things are calming down at all, or everybody's just getting madder and madder, and there's a danger of worse violence, you think, or which way you think it's going?
No, on the contrary, I think violence is pretty much inevitable.
I mean, you've basically taken – you've taken the demographic in Egypt that won 75 percent of parliament in a free election, and you've basically marginalized them from the political process, despite what you might say, despite what they – all these stressing this newfound inclusivity that everybody's stressing and urging the Islamist parties to join the political process.
You basically – I mean, they have no reason to join the political process anymore.
They tried the political process.
They won a parliament, which was canceled by the military, dissolved by the military.
They won a presidency, which was taken from them by the military.
There's not going to be any – there's not going to be any – they have no reason to participate in the democratic process anymore.
So I think, like what I said earlier, I think violence is inevitable.
We've got to go.
Thank you very much for your time.
I sure appreciate it.
Adam Moore, everybody, Interpress Service, IPSnews.net.
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