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It is Antiwar Radio here on Pacifica 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.
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I am Scott Worden.
We're here every Friday from 630 to 7 o'clock pacific time and at antiwar.com this week we've been covering revolutions and well at least massive protests from Morocco to Malaysia.
The entire Muslim world is being turned upside down.
The American empire is wetting its pants and it was one week ago that the people of Egypt successfully drove Hosni Mubarak their dictator of 30 years from power and today in Tahir Square was a massive celebration of hundreds of thousands of people.
On my other radio show earlier today, I interviewed a reporter named Joe Lauria, who some of you may know from the Sunday Times of London and the Huffington Post and a few other places, who was there one half a block off of Tahir Square and we could hear the madness, the celebration, fireworks going off and people cheering and like the biggest concert in the background.
It was a very exciting thing and now to follow up a bit on that story, the one week celebration of the end of the regime of Hosni Mubarak is Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service and you might remember we interviewed his friend Ahmadi Lassie on the show here last week and he is joining us now from Cairo.
Welcome to the show Adam, how are you?
Hey good Scott, good to talk to you again.
Well I'm very happy to have you on the show here tonight.
So were you in Tahir Square earlier today witnessing all these insane festivities?
I was not in Tahir Square but I was in contact with several people who were right in the middle of Tahir Square.
Right on.
So yeah and it sounded like from what I understand, I know there are always conflicting reports regarding numbers but I heard that it was as big as it ever was today, that it was past the million man mark for what it's worth.
You hear different numbers from different places but I heard it was just as packed as it was during the biggest demonstrations more than a week ago.
Well I was tuned into Al Jazeera English's live stream online earlier today and the numbers look no less impressive to me from a week ago and that would have been a million plus there.
Standing room only, the people that I knew left very early in the morning and couldn't even make it into the actual square.
They were in sort of some of the streets adjacent to the square, all of which were packed, standing room only.
Well I got to tell you Adam, it's my view, there is nothing more beautiful than to see the kind of revolution that we've seen in Egypt.
It's not often that a state falls at all but to see a state fall after three weeks of determined peaceful protest, it's not a green revolution for Islam or red revolution for Marxism or anything.
It's simply a bottom-up revolution of people demanding liberty and it worked and the precedent set obviously in the Muslim world has taken immediate effect.
As I was saying, from Morocco to Malaysia there have been protests but really I think in the hearts and minds of men and women all over this world, it can be done.
Right, right, right.
Well what you said about it having no particular political or religious orientation is definitely true.
It hasn't morphed into an Iranian style Islamic revolution as a lot of the western media tried to portray it.
It hasn't been co-opted by any particular political party.
It still very much remains a broad-based grassroots movement.
That being said though, I think your listeners should be aware that it's not really as simple as that.
We can't really say that there's an entirely new regime in Egypt yet.
This story hasn't really ended yet.
As you know, when I spoke to you a week ago, Mubarak had just handed power or delegated executive power to the military here.
And in the week that's passed, in the week since then, the military has, the supreme armed forces council here, has granted or has met several of the demands, several of the primary demands that the protesters had always called for from the very beginning.
That includes a suspension of the national constitution as well as the dissolution of both houses of parliament, both of which were demands of the long-standing demands of the opposition.
However, there are still several things that the military has not, several demands, protesters' demands, that the military has not met yet.
And that is sort of becoming a cause of concern a little bit for some of the, a lot of the people in the revolutionary movement.
Some of those demands that still have been met, for example, are the emergency law.
Egypt's long-standing emergency law, I think I might have mentioned it last week to you, has been in force for 30 years, the entire duration of Mubarak's regime, the emergency law has been in force.
And this emergency law technically forbids people, more than five people, from getting together without the permission of the state, technically.
So it's a very draconian law, and it still remains in effect.
The military has not unilaterally canceled it, which a lot of people were asking for.
What else?
There's still the issue of people who were arrested during the demonstrations, and there are hundreds of people that are thought to have been arrested, and there are several people who remain unaccounted for.
And this is one thing that the opposition is also calling for.
They're calling for a blanket release of everybody that was arrested during the demonstrations, and they're also calling for the release of political prisoners that have been languishing in jails for years on end.
Neither of these requests or demands have been met yet by the military.
And thirdly, and possibly most importantly, much of the Mubarak government still remains in place.
All of the ministers that we have currently, even the new ones, are all Mubarak appointees.
And this is something that the opposition is not happy with.
The opposition would like to see an entirely new government come in.
They'd like to see all of these figures that are still associated with Mubarak and his circle, they would like to see them out, and they would like to see them replaced with brand new ministers and officials.
And that also hasn't happened yet.
All right.
Now, one of the big questions, you know, the military has said that they'll hold elections soon, although that still, I think, means within six months.
And then there's, I've been made aware, it was actually Jill Laurie on the show earlier said, there's a bit of a debate as to whether they should keep a constitutional presidency, or try to work on creating a brand new parliamentary system.
And that that already seems to be splitting the opposition in a couple of ways.
Can you comment on that?
Okay.
I haven't heard that specifically.
What I do know is that I think it was on Tuesday, the military had said it had appointed a small council of legal experts who were supposed to were mandated with amending six or more constitutional amendments, all of which govern all of which have to do with the electoral process and presidential term limits.
They were within 10 days, they are supposed to have drafted new new amendment or new new constitutional articles.
And those articles are then supposed to be put in front, put before a national referendum within the next two months.
That's what they said.
And as far as I know, people, people are people have been broadly happy with that.
However, there have also been some dissenting voices who have voiced displeasure with the choice of the people on the constitutional panel, the constitutional panel apparently is a I think it has eight members, two of whom are from the Muslim Brotherhood, and other ones have our various political affiliations.
I know people are complaining that I don't think there's a Coptic Christian on the on the on the committee.
I know women's groups are complaining that they're there.
No, you know, there's no woman on the committee.
So this has sort of become as far as I can tell, this is sort of been become a bit of a bone of contention.
Well, political parties have basically been banned anyone trying to compete with the National Democratic Party there this whole time.
So there's a real big question right as to whether these different opposition groups have worked together to overthrow Mubarak are going to be able to form effective political parties, you know, that have the organization and capability to get themselves elected, assuming the military does let them have their elections, right?
Assuming they can figure out a process for them.
Right, right.
A very interesting thing about Egyptian politics before before this uprising was the they did they do have legal opposition parties, they are allowed to have and there were a handful of maybe a dozen or more opposition parties that were allowed to operate in the political arena.
However, all of those, all of those parties were always generally suspected, none of them enjoyed much popular support.
And many of them were suspected of really being just, just on the regime, just what their function basically was to provide the appearance of plurality.
And the multi party system, when in fact, they actually weren't representing the people at all.
And they were ultimately at the end of the day, it's suspected, and probably, rightly, that that they were all taking their orders from the regime, and that they never actually represented any sort of real opposition that they were just there in order to so that to allow the ruling party to say, Look, we have, we have, we have a competitive political system in which in which we have a multi party system, when in fact, when in fact, it was just the illusion of diversity, right, like in the United States, what what I was going to say, sorry, but when what happened was an interesting knockoff of knock on effect of this recent uprising was that it had the effect of outing a lot of a lot of groups that were always loyal to the regime, even if they pretended to be even if they pretended to oppose it.
And all of those legal parties that were taught that I that I that I just mentioned all of these legal opposition parties that they had these licensed opposition parties, all of them showed ended up showing their true colors during the course of the uprising, when they urged when most of their leaders urged demonstrators to go back home, and to accept confessions, accept the government's acceptable bark confessions, when the people rejected that the people wanted more.
But these these these long standing opposition parties, the Nasserist party, the Teghemwa party, the loft party, these historical opposition parties in Egypt, all were sort of exposed for really just being arms of the regime.
That being said, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a political party, it was never allowed to it was never it was never granted a political party license.
So remains banned.
The Muslim Brotherhood was has always been has been banned for the last 30 plus years.
Well, you know, all these images, Adam, that we've seen coming over the TV the past few weeks have been mostly and I know, I know, it's been very broad based multi class and every age group and all that.
But it seems like the leadership has been, you know, the April 6 movement and these young tech savvy, secularist type, you know, little d democrats are do they have the ability?
Do they have even the shell of an old party that they can sort of take over and reform or any kind of ability to really participate in the system?
I just even especially after seeing the celebration today a week later, that many strong that many hundreds of 1000s of people out in the street, maybe more than a million.
It seems like these people really want to keep their hard won gains.
But you know, they have to be able to participate in the process in order to keep them.
Right, right, right.
Well, these these groups definitely had a role in at a major role, probably a leading role, from what I can understand, in starting this thing, in setting the thing off on the 25th.
Which, if you'll recall, January 25, if you'll recall, was actually a it's original demands on January 25.
That was that was originally a demonstration against police abuses, and spiraling inflation, and socio economic grievances, that the people of the demonstrators on 25th, January did we're not calling for the fall of the regime that only that only happened to that only evolved over the course of the next couple of days.
But the very first thing that very first big push on Tahrir Square on 25th, January, I think it was a Tuesday, the day of the original day of anger was was really was not a call to for regime change.
You know, this this came later.
But But I think for the most part, you can give these, as you described them, these young tech savvy, sort of, sort of secular oriented youth groups definitely played a leading role in that.
However, I think it's a mistake to say that they are spearheading the entire uprising, they were basically joined.
Later on in the in the days that followed, they were basically joined by the by the by the working rank and file Egyptians, many of whom aren't necessarily young, we're talking about guys in their 40s and 50s, who simply whose whose paychecks simply won't won't, won't get them through the month, or, you know, they just won't provide enough for them and their families.
And a lot of people that were just set up with that with economic status quo, came out as well.
So you might consider them the vanguard or the sort of spearhead of the uprising, but they were but but I think it's a mistake to overlook the part played in average Egyptians and who I said aren't aren't necessarily all young people.
If you if you walk, you would see people of all ages from the very young to the very, very old.
And there's a, I wouldn't say that there's a that the young people have a monopoly on this thing.
You know, I mean, the diversity goes with age and as well as class.
I guess what I'm trying to get to is the people who are the revolutionaries, young or old, who are not, you know, part of the Muslim Brotherhood, they're not tied to any of these kind of faux political parties that you're describing earlier, these people who've been left out this whole time, which is why they were the ones who came together and rose up and overthrew Mubarak.
Are they going to be able to have political parties?
It seems like this whole movement is so broad that it has very little real leadership.
And of course, the worry is that, you know, Suleyman will, you know, rig his own election and in six months, or, you know, that kind of thing, right, that the people won't be able to keep their revolution.
So that's what I'm trying to explore is, you know, the ability of the Egyptians to carry on what they've accomplished so far.
Right, right.
Well, to answer an earlier question of yours, I don't think there's any pre-existing structure that these young people will be able to step into.
I think they will create new political parties.
And I think that this is one of the promises that the military council has made, is that within six months, enough constitutional amendments will have been made to allow for free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections that are overseen by international or judicial, you know, monitors.
So I think the idea is, and I know the Muslim Brotherhood now is talking about, has their own party in the works.
They're getting ready to launch their own political party.
So I, in fact, there have been several.
There have actually, their NDP, the National Democratic Party, which was Mubarak's party, a bunch of them have left and are now themselves jumping on the bandwagon and say they're going to create a new, their own party.
So I think you're going to see, you're going to see an explosion of political parties being created in the next, in the next, in the coming months, in advance of parliamentary and presidential elections.
It's Adam Morrow from IPS News, joining us from Cairo on anti-war radio.
And for those of you who didn't see the pictures today, there was another massive demonstration, this time, just really a celebration in Liberation Square, Tahrir Square there in Cairo.
And I wonder, Adam, whether you think that that could be interpreted, not just as a big party, but also as a warning to the people left standing inside the government that what was said was meant and that they're not going anywhere?
That's a really great question.
You actually, you actually, that's the, that's the, that's the question to the answer that I was, I was, the point I wanted to make is that, yeah, it wasn't just a sort of party.
It wasn't just, it was originally, I think they were originally calling it a Yom Kippur or a day of victory, sort of party, a victory party.
And then it sort of became a, a commemoration for the fallen and the, the martyrs that, the 350 plus martyrs that died during the course of this.
It was going to be, you know, a sort of day of remembrance for them.
But, but today, but in the last couple of days, and finally today, it definitely, it definitely took on a, it took on, it took on the overtones that, similarly to what you just mentioned, definitely a show of force or, you know, muscle flexing just to remind the, the, the, the incumbent government that, that they are still able to mobilize millions and, and that they, and that they did, there's definitely what was, that they did reiterate their demands.
There's still things that are, they want everybody out.
Like I said earlier, they want all traces of the former government gone.
And, and I think there's a bit of discontent, still quite a bit of discontent about that, about a lot of the old faces that were associated with some of the most destructive and, and, and foolhardy policies of, of, of, of the Mubarak regime are still in place.
You know, you have a very unpopular petroleum minister who's still, who's still there.
You have, I think, I believe the foreign minister is still around, Foreign Minister Aboulafit is still there.
And, and I mean, these are the guys that were, were responsible for some of the most, or some of the least popular policies, certainly in terms of foreign policies, in terms of Iran, sorry, Israel and Palestine and Iraq and things like this.
I mean, especially the foreign minister, this was seen very much as an American stooge, you know, kowtowing to Washington and slavishly following American foreign policy.
And he's still there.
So, so people aren't happy about that.
So yes, to answer your question, today definitely did have that, you know, did have a sort of threatened element to it.
Well, good.
That revolution was a hard one.
I agree, it is good.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for your time on the show today, Adam.
I really appreciate your insight.
Sure, sure.
I hope to do it again soon.
All right, everybody.
That is Adam Morrow.
He's a reporter for Interpress Service.
You know, Jim Loeb and Gareth Porter and all the heroes there at IPSnews.net.
And he's reporting live from Cairo.
