01/26/15 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright guys, welcome back to the show.
So sorry for the confusion, I screwed up and I did not have Omer Kotter's lawyer on.
I had Gabriel Chavon on to talk about the Israeli border in Arizona.
The occupied West Bank, i.e. the West.
On the phone is our good friend Adam Morrow, live from Cairo, a reporter for Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net when he's writing, anyway.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Adam?
Good, Scott.
I'm good.
Glad to be back.
Good, good.
Very happy to talk to you again.
Hang on.
Let me get my earphones on.
I forgot.
Alright.
So, how's the Arab Spring going?
Well, I don't know if your listeners saw yesterday, but there was considerable bloodshed in Egypt as Egyptians marked the fourth anniversary of the January 25, 2011 uprising that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.
We saw demonstrations and clashes across the country yesterday, and I think the final death toll is something like 21 people, and that might include two or three police as well.
As usual, it's impossible to really get details because the government's statements are entirely untrustworthy, and it's just very difficult to get to the bottom of these things.
But what we do know, there were definitely violent clashes in several parts of the country yesterday to the surprise of many observers, because people had sort of thought that maybe due to a string of recent setbacks, the whole opposition demonstration phase had sort of ended, and these weekly demonstrations were winding down.
But yesterday actually looked like things have sort of been re-energized, possibly because of, I don't know if you know, that Hosni Mubarak, the president, was finally sort of declared innocent of all charges against him, and his two sons, who also faced charges of corruption, were both let free today, were both released from prison today.
Today?
Wow.
Sorry.
Yeah.
They want to make sure, rub it in your face a little bit there, huh?
Yeah, well, they often do that.
They sort of tend to choose these politically significant dates to do these things on, and I think that's the exact intention.
I think it's sort of to rub people's faces in it, and resistance is futile sort of mindset.
But yesterday was surprising.
Yesterday was, again, people didn't expect it was going to be that serious, and it turned out to be a pretty big deal, reflecting massive, massive discontent, I would say, because we're now in a situation, basically, now where it's a very similar situation to that which preceded the uprising in 2011, where you've got mass unemployment, you've got poverty rates that are above 50% now nationwide, you know, very little chance for any sort of upward mobility on the part of, you know, the thousands of fresh graduates that enter the job market every year.
So the situation is no better.
The desperation is the same.
The economic stagnation is the same.
People don't see any change, you know, four years after the uprising and a full year and a half now since the coup that replaced the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, with its current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
So people haven't seen anything, any improvements, and yeah, there's still a lot of resentment, as was palpable yesterday.
All right, well, so I think first question is, who all's protesting out there?
Are they mostly Muslim Brotherhood supporters, or is it, I know the big headline here was the young woman from the Socialist Party who was killed, murdered by government forces with birdshot from a shotgun killed her.
Yeah, that's a, you know, that's a very good question.
That's a very good question.
And while it's tragic, what happened to her, of course, needless to say, I mean, everybody is unanimous on the tragedy of that incident.
What's interesting also is how there's definitely a trend in the media to sort of seize on the non-Islamist victims of recent political violence.
Yes, you know, I mean, she was, apparently she was a socialist, but she was atypical.
The thing is, her picture, the pictures of her death went out on Twitter almost immediately, I think, and so.
Yeah, yeah, no, they caught, they caught her death on camera, definitely.
Yeah, no, grotesque, definitely grotesque.
You know, the police are heavy handed as ever.
I mean, they're basically, they're basically, you know, they begin with live ammunition.
It's not like in the past where they would start with tear gas and then move up to birdshot.
They start with the heavy ammo right off the bat.
You know, that's how desperate they are to clamp down on these protests.
But back to your question about who's protesting, it's a very good question.
And it's interesting how little what we had traditionally called the revolutionary, the revolutionaries are participating in the last, in the demonstrations we've seen over the last year and a half.
And they have become, for the most part, they have definitely become brotherhood led.
That's not to say that you have leftists in there and you have some liberal activists and these sort of things that have joined in as well.
But for the most part, the bulk of it is definitely being led and being maintained by people who want, people who are demanding the reinstatement of Morsi as president.
Which is interesting, because if you remember the sort of long interregnum between Mubarak and Morsi, there was a very strong revolutionary presence all the time.
There were constant revolutionary demonstrations for every possible thing you could conceive of.
The so-called revolutionary forces were calling demonstrations both before Morsi was elected and after he was elected.
They continued to push these demonstrations all the time.
And what's interesting now is how little you hear of these so-called revolutionary groups now.
Well, wait a minute.
I mean, it sounds like what happened was they got their coup, the military came and kicked the Muslim Brotherhood out of power.
And then that was when they quit protesting because that was what they really wanted.
They were happier with the next Mubarak in line than with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Well, from what I understand, the revolutionary camp was split in two after that.
You basically had the ones who were like, look, you know, this is the best thing for everybody.
Democracy.
If democracy leads to Islamism, then let the military take over.
And then you had another camp who will always be against the military establishment and who will always be against the Mubarak regime.
And that was what was reanimated.
I mean, the coup brought back the Mubarak regime.
So those people, you know, you have those people who are against the Brotherhood and who are also against the or against any sort of return to the to the Mubarak regime.
But it's just interesting how little organization you're seeing.
I mean, it's the Brotherhood has been the only one that's been able to consistently, despite the incredible crackdown, despite this unbelievable, unprecedented crackdown on the Brotherhood.
I mean, people are saying it's by far the worst crackdown going back to the Nasser period, that this is the Brotherhood.
And so this is the worst thing by far that we've ever faced.
But yet they still managed to mobilize people on the streets, which is which is pretty remarkable.
And they're doing it from from exile for them, for the most part.
A lot of them are in Qatar.
A lot of them are in Turkey now.
But again, there's no revolutionary front, you know, there's no single sort of revolutionary party or front that you could really name that's been that's been particularly active in in the demonstrations.
So as to your question, back to your question, who is demonstrating?
It's interesting.
It's been a full four years after January 25th.
And if you remember, some of the early criticisms of the Brotherhood was that it sort of waited a little bit before it joined the revolution in 2011.
It sort of tested the waters to make sure that, you know, is this thing really going to take off?
Or are we going to throw in our lot with this thing and then and then get screwed in the end?
You know, because it turns out to be, you know, a dud or whatever.
So they took some criticism early on saying that, oh, you know, they didn't they didn't participate in the revolution from the first day.
It took them a couple of days before they joined.
And what's interesting is we've gone from that to now where they pretty much I mean, as far as I'm concerned, a lot of people would take exception to this.
But from what I can see, they really are the you know, the main revolutionary force.
And it's part of that is just a generational thing, right?
We're all the old men are in jail.
So the the young Muslim Brotherhood guys, they don't have to be conservative.
They can be, you know, on the right, but radical rather than conservative.
Well, that's saying a lot of the young guys are in prison, too.
I mean, the numbers that we're hearing range from 20,000 to 40,000 people behind bars.
Really, 20 to 40,000.
Wow.
Yeah.
And how many killed?
I know there are more than a thousand massacred right during the coup.
But then what about since then, you know, I don't have a tally since the coup, since the coup, which was July 3rd of 2013.
So that's about a year and a half ago.
Real quick.
All right.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
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And Tom Scott sent you.
Hey, I'm Scott.
Welcome back.
I got Adam Morrow on the line reporting for us from Cairo.
And I'm sorry, man, about these heartbreaks, Adam, and I never look at the clock.
No worries.
So the question was, I know approximately a thousand people were killed right during the coup d'etat in the summer of 2013.
But and I know that hundreds more have been sentenced to death for, you know, treason or were all convicted and sentenced in unison by hundreds at a time, like a Mooney wedding or something.
Yeah.
But so then that was all the preface to the question of how many people do you think have been killed since then, if there's any kind of reasonable way to estimate?
Since July 3rd.
And I'm sure tallies have been done.
I mean, people that people are tracking this, you know, you'll have, for example, like we had 20 people were killed yesterday.
If the January 25th that preceded it, I think it was 60 people were killed.
That was one year ago.
So all of these things have probably added up.
And also, by the way, the numbers of the people who were killed on the on the on August 14th, which was when those two big pro-Morsi sit ins were dispersed, were violently dispersed by security forces.
It's it's still uncertain exactly how many people were killed.
I mean, the the the death tolls are conflict wildly.
You know, the government came has consistently come out and said it was no more than 500 or something like that.
The Brotherhood has said something like twenty five hundred.
So people are the consensus is sort of like it might have.
It's about a thousand, maybe a bit more than a thousand on August 14th alone of 2013.
So so it's really hard to nail down what you can do.
We can definitely say that at least two thousand people or maybe even as much as twenty five hundred have definitely been confirmed killed when that's and that's a conservative estimate.
And that's not also not including all the people that were killed after the the 2011 revolution uprising.
If you remember in 2011, something like 800 people were killed during the 18 day uprising.
And none of those none of the killers of those people have been brought to account.
As I mentioned earlier, Mubarak and his long standing interior minister, Habib al-Adly, and a bunch of ministry officials and Mubarak's two sons, all of those guys have been vindicated or exonerated of of of murder charges.
So as it currently stands, I mean, nobody's paid any price for any of the people that were killed even back in 2011 at this point.
And this is, by the way, one of the things that's contributing to popular discontent is the feel this sense of unaccountability and the fact that so many people have died and virtually no one is has been held account for the only people that are going to jail are demonstrators at this point.
When this just in from antiwar dot com is the Egyptian health ministry is saying that the death toll is twenty three from yesterday and while the Muslim Brotherhood or the pro-Morsi bloc, as they call it here in this GCReport.com, they're saying twenty five.
But, yeah, so that was going to be what I was going to ask you to was about the popular perception of Morsi, who, you know, deposed the barely popularly elected Muslim Brotherhood.
That obviously was a subject of much discontent.
But if there if there was a way you could compare him to, say, Mubarak's popularity, you know, I don't know, six months before their spring broke out or something like that.
Sure.
You mentioned you mentioned Morsi.
Did you mean Sisi?
Yes.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Yes, I did.
I meant Field Marshal, meaning desk officer Sisi, who's never been in a fight in his life and is now the Israeli and American and self-appointed dictator of Egypt, counselor of the revolution of 2011, the villain Sisi.
Yes.
Right, right.
Well, as we've said, as we've mentioned before, he he went from a sort of high that was very much media induced, by the way, this the euphoria, you know, the so you know, this sort of euphoria that followed Morsi's ouster and this, you know, the ascension of this this great new national savior, Sisi, was very much media, you know, this was entirely born of media hype.
I mean, the media was behind this guy like like I mean, people were comparing him to Old Testament prophets.
And I mean, it was just like that's completely out of control.
So that sort of initial euphoria has fallen, has has fell very, very quickly.
And now a full year and a half since he took over, I would say it's kind of bottomed out.
And a lot of the people who had who had sort of fallen for the trick, who had sort of supported him in those early days and who had joined those those anti-Morsi protests in the summer of 2013, a lot of those people have now, you know, have now sort of changed their minds.
And a lot of them express, you know, feel feel that they've been tricked, basically feel that they were duped and they were like, you know, they were like, we thought this guy was going to come in and clean the house and change things overnight.
And it's been a full year and a half now, full of more than six months since he's been president now.
And we've seen, you know, and there are very few tangible results on the street.
You know, there's no changes in the standard of living or or anything like that that the that the average that the average person can point to.
You know, he's tried some there have been some there's there's there are media, you know, there are media bids to improve his legitimacy, to improve his popular legitimacy, like a big this big Suez Canal project, which which which it was claimed was going to it was going to accrue all this all this fresh revenue to Egypt.
But of course, none of that has you know, that hasn't been completed yet.
And so so people aren't happy, people aren't happy.
And and I think there's some people are saying that you might see another big explosion on June 30th, which would basically mark the second anniversary of the coup.
So like I said earlier, you wanted to compare it to Mubarak, even though Sisi's only been around, we've only we've only even known Sisi's name for the last two years.
He finds himself now in a very similar position as Mubarak, where he's dealing with with with deep, deep discontent countrywide.
And no, you can't take 2011 back.
The people of Egypt have proven how much power they have when they can get their act together.
And that's a lesson that they're not ever going to be able to forget.
You know, they did it.
So they don't.
In other words, it took them 30 years to realize they could get rid of this Mubarak guy.
But now they're fresh from getting that done, even if it is four years later.
That's not very long.
So he's got he's in a different position than Mubarak was, it seems like.
It's easier for them to imagine hurting him or getting rid of him.
Exactly.
The people know that they did it once so that it can be done.
And at the same time, the regime knows it also.
So they're incredibly defensive and, you know, about criticism.
You know, they're extremely defensive and insecure.
To give the devil his due here.
Is he really trying to be a good technocrat and get everything together as best he can?
Or is this guy just simply another African kleptocrat?
Oh, I think I mean, any any attempt to to get a, you know, to making the country function better and to improve the lot of the average Egyptian, I think it's done in entirely for entirely tactical purposes and would only be to forestall revolution.
I don't think it's out of any genuine desire to help, you know, the average the average citizen.
You know, any any any steps taken in that direction would only be would only be in order to, you know, in order to sort of ease, you know, public disaffection with his regime.
I don't think it would be out of any any true sense of, you know, empathy with the average Egyptian.
Now, so the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed, but are there any kind of parliamentary elections coming up?
Any other real players or it'll just be a parliamentary elections coming up?
But everybody sort of, you know, everybody sort of knows that they're completely valueless because they don't you know, it'll be it'll be an entirely cardboard, rubber stamp assembly, you know, I mean, the Muslim Brotherhood were the real opposition before before 2011.
They were the real opposition.
And all the other parties were just basically there to provide the illusion of multi-party democracy.
Again, the Brotherhood represented the only real opposition, the only the only opposition that wasn't made up just to just to lend the regime legitimacy.
Now that they're gone, the only ones left you have are these, you know, these ones that are willing to just be for show.
They're just they're just show parties.
So it's kind of a waste.
It's a waste of time.
It's a waste of badly needed Egyptian resources.
You know, the country's already struggling and they're going to have to what are they going to they're going to spend several million Egyptian pounds putting on elections that don't really have any practical, you know, but there's no for which there are no there's no practical necessity.
So you have that.
There's a lot of cynicism in that regard.
I mean, why?
What's the point?
We've got a dictator.
Everybody knows.
Why do we need to spend all this time and aggravation?
And I'm sure the regime thinks the same thing.
You know, I'm sure they're thinking, like, good grief, I can't believe we have to go through this stupid we have to put on this stupid show for everybody.
You know, they would much rather do without it.
You know, they have to have to maintain the impression.
Right now, give me give me a minute here real quick on Rafa.
Is it true that they're just completely raising the village of Rafa, creating a no man's land?
Tell me quick.
Well, from what I understood, they doubled this buffer zone from a 500 meter buffer zone, a full kilometer buffer zone, which runs along the border between Egypt, Egypt, Egypt, Sinai Peninsula.
And so this just completely destroys the black market tunnels.
Is that it?
This just eliminates them, Adam.
I mean, that's their aim.
I don't know how many how many of you tunnels are still in operation, but I'm assuming that most of them are gone, if not all of them at this point.
All right.
Thank you so much for coming back on my show, man.
I sure appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, so that's the great Adam Morrow from Cairo.
Be safe out there, dude.
Hey, I'll Scott here.
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