12/03/13 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
I got Adam Morrow on the phone.
That's good.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service at IPSNews.net.
How's it going, Adam?
It's going okay.
How's it going, Scott?
I'm doing good.
Appreciate you joining us again.
Of course, I meant to say, everybody knows I meant to say that you're reporting from Cairo, Egypt right now.
Yeah, that's correct.
It's kind of important to mention when I'm asking you what's going on in Egypt that you're there.
Fair enough.
Through the magic of electronic technology these days, I got you on the phone with hardly a delay.
It's just great.
Tell me this, Adam.
How's the restoration of democracy going?
Restoration of democracy is going poorly in Egypt, unfortunately.
I don't know.
What are the main headlines?
If I can be a little bit selfish, what are the main headlines that are coming to you guys in the States right now about Egypt?
Is it mostly Constitution stuff?
Is it an occasional protest that breaks out in Tahrir Square?
What sort of news are you?
What's dominating the headlines from Egypt for American audiences?
The only thing I've seen in forever is that Hagel called Sisi and said, hey, be a little bit nicer and I hope you hold some elections at some point or something.
But other than that, you know, I guess I wouldn't call it a blackout, but it's kind of a brownout anyway.
Certainly not covered on TV at all.
And no, they don't.
If there's a big protest, nothing.
There's some coverage of some young ladies, quite a few of them, I believe, being prosecuted for protesting in pro-Muslim Brotherhood protests against them.
That's being reported, though.
That's that's that's something.
But it is far from, you know, a big cause like Pussy Riot in Russia or something like that.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Right.
Nothing like that, because we're on the other side.
We're on the dictatorship side in this one.
Well, now, so by the way, it's been since was it the beginning of June or the beginning of July when when the dictators overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood?
Now, June, right?
It was July 3rd was like the military coup.
And then June, June 30th, where the where the mass of the beginning of the mass of the mass demonstrations that came out.
And then three days later, you had him declaring basically removing Morsi and not just removing Morsi, but arresting all of the leaders of the Brotherhood and their and their political and their legal political party and all of this sort of thing.
So it's been it's been five months, actually.
It's been five months, remarkably.
So under the Mubarak regime, they tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood, not that they let them have majority power in the parliament or anything like that or any real power, but they let them be them.
Right.
But now the organization is outlawed.
Is that correct?
Or just the political party?
Under Mubarak, they were they were formally outlawed, but they still were allowed to field candidates in parliament on an independent basis, which was kind of a weird compromise that the two forces reached.
And and as we know, under Mubarak, all the elections were were famously and known to be rigged.
But that didn't stop the Brotherhood from in 2005 in the first round of parliamentary elections in 2005.
Mubarak in what what people people sort of believe was sort of a was sort of a way of letting America know, because there was a lot of pressure at that time for democratization.
If you remember, there was a lot of pressure, whether or not it was sincere that was coming out of Washington at the time, sort of pushing these Arab leaders post Iraq.
So there was a lot of call, a lot of calls for democratization in the region and that sort of thing at that time.
So so what Mubarak did was he he actually let the first round of parliamentary elections in 2005.
He let them open.
He left.
He left.
He didn't.
He didn't fix them.
He let them just sort of go.
And in that first round of elections alone, the Brotherhood picked up 88 seats or something like that, picked up this huge number.
And then they immediately began rigging the next three rounds of elections.
They immediately rigged and they sort of caught them at night, let them get 90 seats of parliament.
So my point being, they were they were actually a parliamentary force, even under Mubarak, even though they were outlawed.
So you have the situation where they were formally outlawed, but they were allowed to contest elections, sometimes quite successfully on an independent, as long as they ran on an independent ticket and didn't call themselves the Muslim Brotherhood or Muslim Brotherhood Party.
Right now, those days are long over now and the organization itself is outlawed.
Now it's become existential.
Oh, yeah.
Now the battle has become existential.
Now you've got, I mean, massive crackdowns.
You've got you've got the killing in on August 14th.
If you remember, there was a big sit in.
It was, you know, in the month and a half after the coup, you had tens of thousands of Islamist Morsi supporters, but possibly even hundreds of thousands indetermined, impossible to tell exactly how many people would flock to Rabat al-Adawai Square in Cairo.
And they stayed there.
They managed to sort of hold the fort there for about six weeks.
And they were actually being visited when they were there.
They were being visited by foreign delegations and foreign diplomats and stuff like that, which was really freaking out the new, you know, the new powers that be that, you know, the new military, the new military backed rulers.
So they had to they had to do away with it.
And on August 14th, they went in and they completely cleared it and killed upwards of looks like something like eight, nine hundred people.
Really, really, really vicious.
I mean, unprecedented in Egypt's modern history, anything like that.
And ever since then, you've had you know, you've had these daily protests demonstrate it's never gotten as bad as, you know, not not nothing.
You've had occasional massacres since then on a much smaller scale.
But until now, you continue to have this dynamic where every day you're seeing quite large, quite substantial protests in all different parts of Cairo.
I mean, I'm looking at some right now on Gazir's live channel that's covering some of the live ones coming in from the provinces every day.
I mean, without fail every day.
And in some cases, apparently they're drawing larger and larger crowds.
You're getting you know, I'm sure you've seen it's not just Islamists anymore, but you've now got massive student groups.
You've probably seen coverage of some of this.
You've got massive student demonstrations that are taking place to two or three days ago.
You had an engineering student getting killed in during during one of these demonstrations when police intervened to sort of break it up with tear gas and shotguns.
And one of these kids got killed.
And that just that just sort of, you know, galvanized the whole the whole university, you know, the whole student movement.
And you've been seeing larger and larger campus demonstrations every day, again, all over the country, in Upper Egypt and the universities in Upper Egypt and some of the universities in the canal cities like Suez and Ismailia.
And then Cairo University, of course, University, which is in Cairo.
And Al-Azhar University actually has seen the most, although nothing has happened in the last week or two.
The Al-Azhar University has actually seen the most violent sort of clashes.
And you've also at the same time, you've also seen these incredibly harsh sentences being handed down on pro-Morsi demonstrators.
One example being the girls you mentioned.
I mean, you're talking about these girls.
Most of them are in their early 20s.
They're all they're all wearing the headgear.
You know, they're all look, they're obviously, you know, these like incredibly harmless girls who are out joint, you know, out joining up, you know, at a pro-Morsi protest.
And they were all rounded up in October.
And they were charged with these ludicrous charges like blocking roads and attacking pedestrians and, you know, and inciting violence and things like that, and received 11 years in prison each.
That was just about five or six days ago.
And that, that, that, that those are the young, you probably saw pictures of them.
And that that caused a tremendous backlash as well, specifically against the judiciary, which, as you know, from earlier conversations, this remains Mubarak's judiciary, you know, the judiciary was never touched in the three years since the January 25th revolution, the judiciary remains as it was under Mubarak.
So, so people are outraged over that.
But, but the status quo remains intact for the time being.
Yeah, I mean, they don't, it doesn't sound like they have anybody really to rally around.
So what are they going to do about it?
They can be upset, but all they can do is just go out and protest and get bashed over the head themselves, basically, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Although that being said, though, in the last couple of weeks, it does look like the, the, the coup leaders and such have sort of have kind of lost control.
One, one thing that most people, you know, there's consensus about at this point is that they never imagined when they planned this whole thing, they never imagined that the reaction was going to be as big and as persistent as it's proven to be.
Now, like we said, we're five months since the July 3rd coup, and you still have people taking to the streets in massive numbers.
They, you know, this is something that they're desperately trying to downplay in the media and both the private, all, you know, all of the private media in Egypt, as well, obviously, all of the state media, it's all entirely pro-army, does not vary from the, from the, from the, from the, from the army line at all, does not move out of lockstep.
And both the private and the public media here do not move out of lockstep with the military.
The, the, these protests and, you know, the, the, basically the crackdown on the brotherhood that we've seen since the coup are constantly being portrayed on television and in the media as a war against terrorism.
They basically adopted the whole American post 9-11 war on terror sort of thing.
It's kind of gross.
It's kind of, you know, it's kind of gross after having, having lived through that for so long, post 9-11, all that, you know, the overplaying of the whole terrorist thing, to see it play out, to see it play out in an Arab country, you know, in an actual Arab country where the actual regime is, is, is, is starting to employ that kind of, the same sort of language and that same kind of extremely simplistic outlook where it's the, you know, this us versus them sort of stuff that came out after, after 9-11.
Yeah.
I mean, think about the parallel would be if, you know, all the Republican rhetoric about how anyone who was against their war agenda, most of whom were either Democrats or leaning left one way or the other during those early post 9-11 years there under George W. Bush, they called everybody a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer, this, that, but it was just a smear.
It's not like they really, they waged the war on terror against a hell of a lot of innocent Iraqis, but they didn't like outright unleash the army and the, and the secret service on the American people in that sense, you know, acting like they really meant it, rounding up Democrats just for being Democrats and, and basically calling them traitors, something like that.
I mean, this is way, way out of control.
You have the same dynamic, you have the same dynamic playing out here, but like on steroids, you know, where very, very quickly, it began with the Robo allied the way, a massacre that I mentioned earlier.
If you remember, that was the first time that a major crack appeared in the whole, you know, in the whole new ruling structure was when Baradai and, and one other guy resigned.
If you remember that, they were all firm supporters of June 30th.
They were all supporters of the military coup, but when they, when, when the, when the, when the security forces moved in and killed all those people, killed all those mostly unarmed demonstrators on August 14th, Baradai resigned as did another major figure in their, in their coalition.
And that was kind of the first sort of, the sort of first sort of show of dissent.
And from what I understand, if, I mean, it's only, they're only get becoming more hawkish, you know, I mean, there, there's talk about a looming cabinet reshuffle in which people who have, you know, anybody who's even floated the idea of reconciliation with the brotherhood should be, should be, you know, should be, uh, should be excluded.
And this, this whole idea of accusing people of being with the, but this has been going on since Morsi was in the presidency, everybody that he would appoint would be accused somehow of being a brotherhood sleeper cell or something like that.
Anybody who showed any kind of sympathy, anybody who was basically anybody who was willing to work with them was accused by some quarters, was accused by the most extreme quarters of, of being a, a secret brotherhood cell to the point where, um, the point where CC himself, when he was appointed defense minister by, uh, by Morsi was actually accused of, uh, if you remember when, when Morsi got rid of the old guys, uh, Tantelli and Amman, the two, the two former chiefs of the, uh, the Supreme military council, uh, he replaced them with CC who became the defense minister and CC himself was accused by some quarters of, of being a secret brotherhood agent, you know, simply by virtue of the fact that Morsi had appointed him.
So, uh, so this whole thing about accusing anybody who steps out of line, you know, anybody who suggests a moderate course, anybody who suggests me, you know, Hey, maybe we shouldn't like annihilate the entire Islamist current in Egypt.
Anybody like that is, is, uh, is prone these days in the current environment, you know, in this, in this current rabidly pro army, uh, uh, very, very jingoistic environment.
Anybody who moves out of lockstep a little bit is, uh, and we've seen, we've seen a lot of resignations.
You've had, you've had a lot of, um, respectable people, people who didn't buy into it, people who were too intelligent to buy into it and people who had too much, uh, integrity to buy into it, journalists and that sort of thing, sort of leaving their positions at newspapers and stuff like this and watching newspapers that had once been, you know, at least had a veneer of respectability just turn into total pro army rags, you know, almost overnight.
Well now, so what about this being a self-fulfilling prophecy?
And, uh, you know, I mean, it's not hard to imagine that the average, uh, young, irate Muslim brotherhood supporter or supporter of what used to be the Muslim brotherhood, uh, might find himself agreeing with Ayman al-Zawahiri that I guess the Muslim brotherhood were a bunch of suckers for thinking they could play the West's democracy game and that a legitimate election would mean anything.
The Americans are always going to insist on military dictatorship and so jihad and all of that crap, right?
I mean, uh, and in fact, as long as you're going there, why not do that on purpose?
If you're the military dictatorship, go ahead and make real enemies out of these guys, get a few suicide bombings to happen or whatever, and then you can have a real ass war, you know, like Assad.
Well, look, I would be remiss if I didn't mention, I mean, there have been, along with these peaceful demonstrations that have been going on on a daily basis, there have also, there's also been a huge upswing in violence, uh, which we've also, we spoke about a bit in our last conversation, there have been these regular attacks on police and army personnel, um, some of them quite spectacular, some of them quite brazen, um, most of them in the, uh, in the northern, uh, in the northern Sinai Peninsula, but there have also been, there have also been attacks, uh, uh, in, uh, on, in Egypt proper.
Those have kind of slowed down over the last week or two, there haven't been so many, they're isolated reports, there's not, there hasn't been anything too big.
Um, but, uh, but yeah, I just wanted to mention that just because, I mean, it's not, it's not like these, uh, and, and again, the, the relation, needless to say, the pro-army media and, and, and army spokesmen will, will immediately assume a direct link between, you know, the brotherhood and, and these attacks going on.
Meanwhile, the, the, the pro-Morsi people will sort of distance, the brotherhood will sort of distance themselves from these facts saying, look, we're not responsible, which is entirely possible.
Who, who exactly is responsible still remains sort of misty, you know, still remains very much open to question.
You know, the, um, the, uh, the pro-army, uh, people will, will, will try to, try to draw a, uh, try to draw a connection with, uh, with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Most of those accusations don't, don't, don't hold up to any scrutiny, they just don't make any sense.
Uh, please go ahead and segue into Gaza all you like too, please, sir.
Uh, well, uh, if you want to talk into Ga, about Gaza specifically, we can.
Um, I mean, uh, what happened, uh, the July 3rd coup was a huge blow to Hamas, um, which is in a serious bind right now because, uh, not only has it lost its, uh, its big ally to the South, which was, which, which, which was, uh, Morsi.
And you remember the Mubarak regime had a very, um, had a very antagonistic relationship with, uh, with Hamas, uh, and, uh, and, uh, Morsi's, uh, victory in elections, uh, in 2012 was, uh, well, um, would have totally changed the equation, uh, for Hamas, uh, which is now doubly isolated as well because of the, because they've, they've sort of lost their home base in Syria as well.
The, what's going on in Syria has also cost them their, their home base in Syria.
So they're sort of, they're sort of stuck there.
But I wanted to, I wanted to go back to, to the, to, to Egypt just for a second, because, uh, one of the biggest, one of the big sort of changes in U.S. policy, you were saying how it just hasn't been covered that much in the media over there.
I'm just, I, it's just interesting.
Did, did, uh, when Kerry, about a week ago, did you, did you even catch this?
What he said, he, he came out and basically said that, uh, that the brotherhood had stolen the January 25th revolution, which was, which was pretty radical.
Oh, no, I did not realize that he had doubled down on his claim that this is the restoration of democracy here.
Uh, I was of course, mocking him with my first question for you there.
Uh, his statement that a military nullifying an election, uh, indefinitely, uh, is the restoration of democracy.
But I guess if democracy means you do, uh, whoever in question does exactly what the U.S. State Department says they better do, then I guess it is democracy.
You just, most people don't understand the term in that sense, but, um, no, I did not.
And they did not cover that as far as I know.
Uh, I didn't see any coverage of that.
Yeah, that was big news here, but what's remarkable is not only did he, um, you know, not only did he praise Egypt's new military back rulers, but he also accused the, the brotherhood of stealing, uh, the January 25th revolution, which I think is kind of dangerous because I mean, if anything, they, um, they played the, they played the game, you know, um, they can't be, you know, they can't be accused of having rigged elections or anything like that.
Uh, you know, you've got your usual, the usual complaints that people make here.
Like they, you know, they, they deceive people by using religion and mixing religion and politics, you know, all these sort of tired old accusations against the brotherhood.
But in terms of, you know, technically running an electoral campaign and, you know, sort of fielding candidates and, uh, you know, you know, all of this sort of stuff.
I mean, they play, they played the game and they, they, they won, you know, uh, you know, if you could chalk it up to the lack of competition, you could shack, chalk it up to the fact that none of their political rivals had their acts together with, you know, one iota, which would be true.
But nevertheless, they, you know, they played the game.
Um, you know, they, they've, uh, they haven't been involved in any sort of violent activity since the 1950s.
There haven't, you know, they've, they've denounced violence for like more than 50 years.
They played the game and they, they won all these elections and that, that, and then, and then Morsi was overthrown in their part of their democratically elected parliament, which they had dominated was, uh, was, uh, summarily, uh, dissolved, uh, in 2012 by the, by the military as well.
People forget that as well, that they lost a full parliament as well as the presidency.
Um, so that brings us back to the thing that you said earlier, the, the, the question you had earlier about, you know, these like aggrieved young, you know, Muslim brotherhood, you know, Muslim brotherhood guys, are they gonna, you know, are they gonna, are they going to come around to this idea that they've been hearing that democracy doesn't pay off and that it's, you know, violence and jihad are the only means to accomplish their ends and that sort of thing.
I mean, what, what conclusion would you draw if you were one of them?
Do you know what I'm saying?
I mean, if I, if I would, maybe not that one, but I can certainly understand where they'd be coming from.
Yeah.
And, uh, I mean, if you want to, if you want to, you know, look, I mean, obviously what Carrie means, and this is obvious, maybe, you know, the, you're saying the dictatorship has an iron grip on the media and all that, but, uh, for anybody else in the world, who's not American, they know that all Carrie means is they stole it from us.
They stole it from the people that we wanted to win, which was the young and liberal and malleable, um, who, you know, and in fact, even that was really their second choice.
Of course, uh, what they really wanted was Omar Suleyman and, and even then they only wanted him.
And he was the head of the secret police rendition division, but they only wanted him after they finally gave up on doing everything they could to keep Mubarak.
I mean, hell Ronald Reagan told Ferdinand Marcos, you got to go pal, but Barack Obama did everything he could to keep Mubarak in power as long as he could.
And then he said, okay, okay, let's have the, the head of the secret torture police in.
And then when that didn't work, they said, okay, well, let's try to get the young April six movement types.
They'll do what they're told or whatever.
But as you say, they weren't prepared.
The Muslim brotherhood, at least as we were talking about, they have a history and, uh, they, at least they're a known quantity to the people of Egypt.
And they were just in the catbird seat.
They, they inherited the revolution.
It was never going to be the, the young liberals, not in a fair fight and not even with the CIA bank rolling them either.
You know?
Right, right.
Yeah.
People, people have to remember that all through the Mubarak regime, they, they, you know, all through the long Mubarak era, they really were the only real opposition force.
You know, they were the only, they got to remember too that they they're actually, and I don't know everything about them, but from what I do know about them, I disagree with them on just about everything.
They're pretty much hardcore right-wing conservatives, but they're not bomb-throwing radical terrorists.
They're conservatives by definition.
They're old enough and rich enough to want to keep what they have.
It's like a Republican or maybe a real right-wing one.
Right.
Well, the, the, the, the socialists here accused them, you know, accused them of being neoliberal economists and all of this sort of thing.
Oh yeah.
Well, I'm sure they're going to love the, the economy as it, as it grows, uh, into more and more military control from here.
I mean, this is something we've been talking about for two years now is, uh, or three, no, two, uh, about how, what some huge percentage of the economy, more than half is in the hands of the military in the first place.
And that never changed.
The deep state never went away.
That was why it's so easy for them to take the whole thing back.
Right.
Right.
Hey, Scott, I just want to mention also really quickly, just cause it's kind of, could be relevant.
Yeah, we got to go real quick.
So make it quick.
Right before what Kerry said, what he, what he said, uh, there were a big, a major Russian delegation came to the, came to Egypt and there's been a lot of talk right now about Egypt shifting its alliances, basically from the alliance and dependence on, on the U S to more of dependence on Russia, which apparently is like really, really open to the idea to offset the losses it's taking in Syria.
Yeah.
But who's going to pay him $3 billion a year to pretend to not hate Israel, Russia?
No.
Yeah.
Well, with help with the Gulf help, help, help from some friends in the Gulf.
Right.
Yeah.
I guess the Saudis can make up the shortfall.
All right.
We got to go.
Thanks very much, Adam.
Great.
Talk to you again.
Take care of Scott.
All right, so that's the great Adam Morrow from IPS news.net.
We'll be right back.
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