03/27/14 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for WallStreetWindow.com.
Mike Swanson is a successful former hedge fund manager who provides his subscribers with a very real window into his investments, updating them on every move he makes in the markets.
Right now, Mike's anticipating a bear and is dumping all his stocks while the getting is good, investing instead in gold and the commodities.
Protect your assets and learn the wise ways of the markets, WallStreetWindow.com.
And check out Mike Swanson's great contribution to the history of the rise of the American empire and the war state, available at ScottHorton.org slash Amazon.
All right, Adam Morrow is up.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net and he writes from Cairo, Egypt when he does write.
But anyway, how are you doing, Adam?
Are you there?
I'm doing all right.
How are you, Scott?
How are you doing?
I'm doing real good.
I appreciate you joining us today.
Sorry for the not very funny joke there at the beginning.
Don't worry, we'll cut that out of the archive.
No worries.
Is there a media frenzy about the jet?
Is that the idea?
You know, it's so ridiculous.
If you remember that a couple of years ago.
It's so ridiculous.
It's like we're in a TV show and this is what's on the news in a TV show.
Real life could never be this completely stupid and absurd.
You know what I mean?
But no, that's all they've been talking about for three weeks is there's a plane somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.
Yeah, there was a similar weird frenzy with the Chilean miners two or three years ago, if you remember that.
There was this bizarre media obsession that lasted for several weeks as they were extracted one by one, painstakingly, and the media covered every last detail.
Yeah, anything but housing demolitions in East Jerusalem, right?
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So give us the latest on Field Marshal Sisi.
Well, let's see.
Last night in a televised address to the nation, he announced his candidacy for president, which actually doesn't really come as a surprise to anybody.
I mean, I think we spoke in our last conversation that there's been a long drawn out sort of will he won't he sort of thing going on for the last several months, ever since the coup, which was almost nine months ago now.
He's been sort of doing the dance about, you know, sort of these dropping these hints that he would run and sort of denying it.
And then, you know, speaking to a foreign newspaper and mentioning that he was going to, you know, mentioning that he was about to announce his candidacy, and then an official spokesman would come out later and deny that.
And I think a lot of it was gauging public, the gauging of public opinion.
I think a lot of it was to test balloons that they were sending up just to see how the public would react to these kinds of announcements.
And now finally, we have it officially late last night, he appeared on television wearing military fatigues, and would basically announce that he had resigned from the position of defense minister to become a civilian and has now you know, he's no longer the the Egypt's army chief, and is now ready to contest the elections as a civilian.
So, but again, it really doesn't come as that much of a surprise.
All right.
And so now, when are the elections going to be held, the ones that he's going to be running and they're having presidential elections first and then parliament later, maybe, is that right?
Supposedly.
Well, I mean, one of the things that makes this whole experience such a farce, this whole so called electoral process such a farce is the fact that the whole process has been sort of waiting for him.
You know what I'm saying?
From what I understand, in the next couple of days, an official announcement is going to be made, and they're going to announce the dates of the presidential elections.
But I mean, just what's interesting is that like the whole, I mean, everything was put on hold until it was sort of decided whether or not whether or not he was going to run.
And now that he has, apparently, like they can now set the dates for elections.
I mean, the whole thing is basically dependent on one guy.
And it also looks like he's only going to have one real competitor, which is the leftist candidate from the last election.
I think he came in third in the 2012 polls after Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, if you remember that, and that's Hamid Sabahi, who's the leftist candidate.
It looks like he's going to be the only real contender, other contender for the post as it stands now.
So we'll see.
So we'll see.
We might have the emergence of some other, we might have the emergence of some other candidates in the weeks ahead.
It sort of depends when elections are going to be, you know, it depends on when the election dates are, you know, whether it's going to be one month from now or whether it's going to be three months from now.
We might have a bundle, there were a total of 13 candidates in the 2012 poll.
So that means that we might see, like I said, we might see the emergence of...
The guy that you just mentioned, what's his name again?
Hamid Sabahi.
And who does he represent exactly?
He's sort of the leftist candidate.
He was the main...
If you remember, there were four or five big contenders in 2012 polls, and he was one of them.
He's sort of like the big leftist representative.
He has been a shameless supporter of the coup ever since it happened.
He was balls to the walls against Morsi when Morsi was in office, totally supported the coup, jumped on board with both feet.
So, I mean, he doesn't really represent, you know, real opposition to Sisi.
I mean, he's more or less on the same page with Sisi, although, you know, he comes from a civilian background and he comes from a supposedly leftist background.
But as it stands now, those two look like they're going to be the two main competitors.
Well, and it sounds like, if anything, he at least might as well be working for Sisi and just, you know, trying to block anybody else.
Exactly.
So what I'm thinking is what they might do is...
I mean, nobody's really taking the election seriously in terms of integrity.
It's interesting to note that about a week or two ago, Ahmed Shafid, who came in second, who was a very close runner-up in the 2012 polls, basically a leak came out, a leaked conversation came out in which he said explicitly that the whole thing was a farce and that elections would be rigged in Sisi's favor.
And he actually came out and took credit for having said it.
He didn't deny having said it.
He said he admitted to having said it.
So I mean, that's incredible.
If you remember, Ahmed Shafid was Mubarak, Hasni Mubarak's last prime minister.
And he came in at a very close second behind Morsi in 2012.
And he's basically been staying in Abu Dhabi ever since he lost the elections in 2012.
He's been in Abu Dhabi, and he's stayed there until now.
And he came out explicitly saying, again, it was a leaked conversation.
He didn't intend for it to come out, but he, again, he didn't deny it.
And he actually said he actually, you know, like I said, he took credit for having said it.
And he stated explicitly that the elections would be rigged in Sisi's favor.
So the whole thing is looking very iffy.
And then again, at the same time, they might decide to throw it to Hamid Sabahi.
And then they can turn around and say, look, the Egyptians have chosen a civilian leadership.
But when all along, they're both serving the same master at the end of the day.
You know, Sabahi's a candidate who will never threaten the deep state the way Morsi threatened the deep state, the way Morsi and a Muslim Brotherhood-led, you know, government truly threatened Egypt's deep state.
These guys, I mean, the only people who are basically allowed, would be allowed to run are people who are safe, safe candidates, candidates who would be willing to run the show, but without actually, you know, taking on the entrenched, deep, deep, deep corruption that characterizes the Mubarak deep state until now.
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on them throwing it to anybody to try to show anything.
Sisi's got the power in his hands right now.
The only reason he's resigned and decided to run is because he knows he's got it set his way and he wants to be president and he will be.
The only one who can stop him now might be Obama, but Obama's probably the guy who arranged this whole thing in the first place, right?
Well, what's kind of interesting, though, about this, and it's something I've noticed, this is a trend that I've sort of noticed, is I think his popularity is definitely on the wane.
If you remember, there was a lot of talk about the Sisi mania and, you know, people were wearing Sisi t-shirts and everybody's, you know, waving his picture and putting pictures up in storefronts and all of this sort of thing.
What's interesting is they tried to push some pro-Morsi demonstrations in the constitutional referendum that happened in the middle of February, and those went over, those did not go over.
I mean, they tried to mobilize people out on the streets and the response was very, very weak.
There were, here and there, there were sort of sporadic demonstrations that were very closely, that were very heavily protected and looked to consist mostly of people like private, public sector workers that they might have given 50 pounds to to go out and stand out there.
And the same thing happened today and yesterday, is one would have expected, if this guy was riding this incredible wave of unparalleled popularity, one would have expected people to have hit the streets in celebration of his announcement, and that hasn't happened.
That hasn't happened at all, with a few very, very minor exceptions here and there.
People are calling for such rallies tomorrow.
People are calling for Friday pro-Sisi rallies tomorrow, to sort of celebrate his candidacy.
So we'll see sort of tomorrow, tomorrow will be an interesting litmus test to see if he can still draw the crowds.
If you remember that he managed to pull, a month after the coup, he called on the Egyptian people to come out and sort of, you know, come out in support and give him a popular mandate to fight terrorism, if you remember that.
And people did turn out.
I mean, he did manage to back Dover Square.
I had to walk through it to get home from work.
So like I saw with my own two eyes, he definitely, you know, but that was in, that was last summer.
Well, and listen, I mean, from being kind of drawn now, at least, at least from the images coming over TV, it was a reasonable facsimile of the Arab Spring uprising of January and February of 2011, but it was not the same.
I mean, you really, you could tell the difference where you had left, right and, and poor and working and middle class and everybody from any faction you could think of represented out there in 2011.
Last summer, it was a lot of some of those factions, but it was clearly not the same.
And I'm sorry, we're at the break here.
We got to do some commercials.
We'll be right back with Adam Morrow from Interpret Service, IPSnews.net, right after this.
So you're a libertarian and you don't believe the propaganda about government awesomeness you were subjected to in fourth grade.
You want real history and economics.
Well, learn in your car from professors you can trust with Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
And if you join through the Liberty Classroom link at scotthorton.org, we'll make a donation to support the Scott Horton Show.
Liberty Classroom, the history and economics they didn't teach you.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Adam Morrow from IPSnews.net.
And he writes from Cairo, Egypt, and we're talking about America's sock puppet fascist dictatorship there and the pretension of some kind of election or peaceful exchange of power.
It's really the same thing as the Mubarak era.
Yeah, he didn't wear a general's uniform.
I always called him General Mubarak because that's what he was as a military dictator with what a different costume.
He was the head of the military.
That's what he was.
And that was what made him the head of the country, the same as this guy, Sisi.
And so you know what I'm most interested to hear about from you now?
Or actually, say whatever you want if you didn't get to finish up anything from the last segment there, sorry, Adam.
But also, I would have you address, if I could, the police state and torture and death sentences being handed down and persecution of the electoral right, as you might call them.
Sure, sure.
The only point I wanted to make about, from what we were saying before, is just that the comparison, I think it's worth, people need to sort of draw the contrast between what happened in January and February of 2011 and the June 30, 2013, anti-Morsi protest.
In the former, you had people basically sitting in and occupying Tahrir Square for a period of 18 days and getting the crack kicked out of them frequently.
You had 800 people die during those 18 days countrywide.
And compared to the anti-Morsi protests in 2013, the middle of 2013, which lasted basically one day, which were basically lots and lots of people taking their kids, you know, taking their whole families down, sort of making a day of it, you know, cool picnic in Tahrir Square.
And it was so obvious when- And absolutely facing and absolutely suffering no kind of, you know, no kind of physical threat whatsoever.
Yeah.
I mean, it's easy- Because a lot of people like to compare the two and sort of say, like, oh, we've had two re-Egyptians, we've had two revolutions.
I mean, the two were like entirely different animals.
And that's an important point.
It was a hoax.
It was a hoax.
Sisi went on TV and went, look, everybody, a massive protest.
I have to prevent a civil war from breaking out.
And then crickets.
And everybody's like, what civil war from breaking out?
What are you talking about?
Well, what's interesting about this charge, this accusation against Morsi that he was driving the country to civil war and these claims by Sisi that he was stepping in in order to save the country from civil war.
What's so interesting about that is that, and that brings us to the topic that you wanted to talk about, which is basically the crazy draconian stuff that's been going on here, the crazy death sentences that have been being thrown around recently.
I mean, if anybody is risking a civil war, you know, it's this guy, it's this guy's policies.
It's the stuff that this guy has done ever since taking over, ever since not only, you know, I was removing the elected president, a democratically elected president from office, but then imprisoning him.
And everything that they've done since where they basically, you know, they were the ones who turned the whole conflict into an existential one.
You know, before that, it was just a political conflict.
They're the ones that accused the Brotherhood of being behind a bunch of terrorism without any sort of proof, you know, and they're the ones that started arresting them and torturing them.
And it's, and more, you know, more than one, more than one observer, intelligent observer has said, like, it almost looks like they're trying to elicit a violent response, but they want a violent response.
They're cracking down hard because they want a violent response so that they can, so that they can then retaliate overwhelmingly, take a, take a, take a page from the Israeli, Israeli book and use that as an excuse, you know, elicit a reaction from your enemy so that, so you have an excuse to annihilate them.
And that's, that's, that's, I think that's the strategy.
And I mean, after handing out this mass death sentence of something like 550 plus Brotherhood guys, or, or not even Brotherhood guys, apparently most of them aren't even members of the Brotherhood, but 550 guys were demonstrating against the coup or whatever, and all, and hanging them, you know, and accusing them all of complicity in the death of a single police officer.
I mean, this is just a drawn condemnation, it's a drawn condemnation from all quarters.
I mean, even people, a lot of the people who participated in the anti-Morphy stuff, even the, even the solidly anti-Morphy elements here, you know, these so-called revolutionary leftist liberal elements, whatever, all, you know, all can't believe, you know, have all, you know, come down, have all happened to condemn these death sentences because they're so ludicrous, because they're so, they, they happened after, I think they were based on the one or two court sessions.
They had one court session, and then the following court session, within five minutes, they had, they had decided to execute all these guys, you know, like 150 of whom are being tried in absentia.
Yeah, I read a thing where they got an average of 13 seconds worth of trial each, if you averaged it out between them.
And so, well, you know, and Eric Margolis said, nah, don't cancel it, they won't, you know, if nothing else, I don't think he said this part, but I guess if nothing else, the Americans will call and say, dude, we can't have you hang 500 people at once like this, or something like that.
You can't do that, dude.
You're going to, it's going to be stupid.
But how could they be, how could they be so stupid?
It's like, didn't they learn their lesson?
Didn't they learn their lesson with that ridiculous 11-year jail sentence on those, those, those teenage girls?
If you remember that, about three or four months ago, that was a huge international scandal where they basically, they basically sentenced, you know, a dozen teenage girls to 11 years each in prison because they had been, had been participating in a pro-Morsi demonstration.
And it, and you know, the whole, it got, it, it, it caused international outrage, and in the end, they canceled it.
They, in the end, they overturned it because it was so ridiculous.
And they ended up losing on all fronts.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, they ended up losing credibility.
They ended up losing, you know, they didn't even, you know, the girls didn't even survive the sentence.
I mean, they, they didn't get anything from it.
They didn't get any, they gained nothing from that except looking like a bunch of idiots and, and, you know, discrediting themselves.
And they seem to be doing the same thing again with this, you know, with this, with this massive death sentence that was, I think, was delivered on Monday in Upper Egypt.
I was just going to ask you about the Al Jazeera journalists who've been arrested.
I mean, they are, in effect, agents of the state of Qatar, right?
Or not?
Or how's that work?
No, no, no, that's, that's, that they work for the Crown, that they work for Qatar directly.
I mean, first of all, you have to distinguish between their, Al Jazeera actually has multiple television channels, and they're sort of all, they sort of all have slightly different, they seem to have slightly different agendas.
And you have four of the, four of these journalists were, were working for Al Jazeera English, which has a, definitely has a different political line than Al Jazeera Arabic, which is definitely pro-brotherhood.
Al Jazeera English has a more, sort of a more of an independent, takes a more of an independent line.
And four of those guys, including at least one or two foreign nationals, I believe, are still in jail.
To be honest with you, I haven't been following it that closely.
I know a couple of journalists have been released, although a number of them still remain, still remain in detention.
Well, and I'm not trying to support, I'm not trying to support the jailing of any journalists or anything, but I do think it's interesting that there seems to be kind of a proxy war, or there seems to have been a kind of a proxy war between Qatar and Saudi Arabia about who's going to take power in Egypt, right?
Oh, well, this is another thing.
I don't think we mentioned.
I don't think we've spoken since, I guess, two weeks ago or so, when Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, I believe, all pulled their ambassador from Doha, from Qatar, which is amazing.
I mean, because they're all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and they're a fairly tight-knit crowd.
And the fact that three of them pulled their ambassadors from a fellow GCC member is pretty remarkable.
I don't know if you noticed that.
That was about two or three weeks ago.
And I understand they haven't returned yet.
The Egypt issue is actually causing big rifts within the Gulf itself, between the Gulf monarchies, which is just a very interesting point.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah.
No, actually, I'm sorry, man.
You go ahead.
Well, I mean, it's just interesting to point out the regional ramifications that the Egypt thing is.
You know, people tend to just, you know, especially living here, everybody sort of tends to focus entirely on what's happening domestically, because so much is happening, and it's of such an intense nature right now.
And in fact, this Egypt thing has, what's happening in Egypt has actually had repercussions as far afield as places like Tunisia, which, you know, the ruling Islamist party there washed with great, great, with incredible dread and fear, what events in Egypt.
I mean, if you remember, and then they actually were, they actually weathered their own round of anti-government demonstrations.
They managed to survive by cutting a deal with the opposition.
So the Tunisian Islamists remain in place, more or less, but so you've had it affect other countries in North Africa, like places like Tunisia.
You've had it deeply affect the Gulf, where actually, like I said, three Gulf countries have pulled their ambassadors from a fellow Gulf country, being Qatar.
And then you also have the Turkey connection.
It's also very, very interesting, because the Turks were very heavily invested in the Muslim Brotherhood here.
They were very supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood here while they were in power, and continue.
But I think Erdogan continues to sort of, you know, refer, he hasn't made a statement in a long time, because he himself is now under incredible, you know, is now under all this pressure.
But until recently, Erdogan was saying that Morsi was still Egypt's legitimate president, which caused incredible, which infuriated the authorities in Egypt.
There's a strong, as well as an anti-American, you know, as well as the sort of anti-American thing going on here, there's also very strong anti-Turkish sentiments among the pro-army crowd.
Because they see Turkey as, they see Turkey like Qatar, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which they do.
And in fact, a lot of the Muslim Brotherhood guys who fled the country in fear of their lives are now in either Qatar or Turkey.
All right, now, I'm sorry, we have very little time left, but can you tell me if they've been successful at all in provoking the Muslim Brotherhood into fighting?
Because we've heard about, you know, I've read like in Nancy Yousef about police are being assassinated all the time, and there's some bombings here and there, and I'm wondering if that's the Muslim Brotherhood.
I think she indicated, that's a McClatchy's reporter there, I think she indicated that it seems like the Muslim Brotherhood is restraining themselves and are under orders to not go for it.
But there are some people who are taking up the opportunity to begin to try to wage an insurgency against the government there.
Is that possible?
And you've got about 30 seconds to answer, you know?
Not even.
Sure, sure, sure.
I understand, basically, the Brotherhood is maintaining its policy of peaceful protest because it knows that if it does anything violent, that little, little tiny act, no matter how small, will be seized upon and exaggerated and inflated in the media.
They're smart so far, I'm sorry, we've got to go, I talked way too much and wasted your interview.
Thanks, Adam, I appreciate it.
We'll talk to you again soon.
Adam Morrow, everybody, IPSNews.net.
My pleasure, Scott.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for CashIntoCoins.com.
So you want to buy some bitcoins?
CashIntoCoins.com makes it fast, easy, and safe to get bitcoins.
Just deposit the money into their account at any of the major banks they support, and then just email them a picture of the receipt and your bitcoin address, and you get your bitcoins.
Almost always, the same day it clears.
In a tough, competitive new market, CashIntoCoins.com has the advantage, a great system, and great customer service to keep you coming back.
That's CashIntoCoins.com.
Just click the link in the right margin at ScottHorton.org.
Man, you need some new stickers for the back of your truck.
Scott Horton here for LibertyStickers.com.
Aren't you sick and tired of everyone else being wrong about everything all the time?
Well, now you can tell them all what's right with some stickers from LibertyStickers.com.
At LibertyStickers.com, they're against everything, so you know they're good on your issue, too.
Whether it's the wars, police, state, gun laws, the left and right of the president, LibertyStickers.com has hundreds of choices, so you can find just the right words to express your opposition and contempt for those who would violate your rights.
That's LibertyStickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for the Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future of Freedom Foundation at fff.org slash subscribe.
Since 1989, FFF has been pushing an uncompromising moral and economic case for peace, individual liberty and free markets.
Sign up now for the Future of Freedom, featuring founder and president Jacob Horenberger, as well as Sheldon Richmond, James Bovard, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy and many more.
It's just $25 a year for the print edition, $15 per year to read it online.
That's fff.org slash subscribe, and tell them Scott sent you.
Don't worry about things you can't control.
Isn't that what they always say?
But it's about impossible to avoid worrying about what's going on these days.
The government has used the war on guns, the war on drugs and the war on terrorism to tear our Bill of Rights to shreds, but you can fight back.
The Tenth Amendment Center has proven it, racking up major victories.
For example, when the U.S. government claimed authority in the NDAA to have the military kidnap and detain Americans without trial, the nullifiers got a law passed in California declaring the state's refusal to ever participate in any such thing.
Their latest project is offnow.org, nullifying the National Security Agency.
They've already gotten model legislation introduced in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas, meant to limit the power of the NSA to spy on Americans in those states.
We'd be fools to wait around for the U.S. Congress or courts to roll back, big brother.
Our best chance is nullification and interposition on the state level.
Go to offnow.org, print out that model legislation and get to work nullifying the NSA.
The hero Edward Snowden has risked everything to give us this chance.
Let's take it.offnow.org.