EGYPT, REALITY, AND CORPORATE MEDIA

EGYPT, REALITY, AND CORPORATE MEDIA

          Our media was unusually accurate with the Arab Spring in Egypt before the corporate ‘thinkers’ got involved.  Why, they even had “Sandman”, the Twitter Toast, on CNN.  Now, however, they can’t even get that right.

          We can see what moves the military has already made, but do not be fooled by that.  Egypt has finally achieved the same sort of ‘democracy’ we have here.  That is to say, no matter who they vote for, there will be no difference.

          I had thought that it was possible for a clear-headed politician to be elected, but several of them ran and were thus eliminated, canceling out one another’s votes.  It is sort of like the Democratic Primaries here when Dennis Kucinich theoretically could have been elected.

          Now, this is not to disparage the Brotherhood.  They have actually done a great deal for the people of Egypt.  One even left the party to run and then the brotherhood was allowed to run a politician and he is sort of like an Obama here.  They other guy is left over from the Mubarak regime and is sort of like a Bush here.

          Now, what is wrong with the Brotherhood’s candidate?  Well, it may surprise you to learn (although not as much as the Egyptian people, it seems) that he worked for NASA.  In most cases, anybody who works for NASA must be an American citizen.  Hillary has made nice with him.  What else do you want?

          The results will be announced on Sunday (we are told), but don’t hold your breath.  Also, the military has already made sure that he will not be able to do anything.  The military also runs the tourism industry and other things.  Dow that sound like the Military-Industrial complex to you?  Hrm.

          Even “Liberals” here wonder if aid will be cut off and other blather.  Believe  me, the U.S. and the Egyptian military have already made sure that this election is meaningless.

          An interview:

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

A Coup in Cairo: As Muslim Brotherhood Claims Election Victory, Military Strips President of Power

Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports from Egypt on the country’s growing political crisis. Former President Hosni Mubarak is on life support, both candidates claim to have won last weekend’s election, and the ruling military council has seized greater power. Official presidential election results are not expected to be announced until Thursday. Tens of thousands of Egyptians protested Tuesday night in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a rally called by the Muslim Brotherhood, expressing outrage over the army’s decree late Sunday that it would seize all legislative powers. "Right now the country has no constitution, no parliament, and an incoming president that will have scant power," Kouddous says. "So, really, the military council is controlling the key branches of state. ... [It’s] perhaps a fitting end to this nonsensical transition that we’ve seen over the last 16 months." [includes rush transcript]

Filed under  Egypt

Guest:

Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent reporting from Cairo

Related

• A Judicial Coup in Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood-Controlled Parliament Dissolved, Military Gains Power Jun 15, 2012 | Story
• Mubarak Sentenced to Life Term in Egypt, But Protests Erupt as Sons, Aides Avoid Convictions Jun 04, 2012 | Story
• Jimmy Carter on Monitoring Egyptian Elections, U.S.-Egypt Relations, Future of Camp David Accords May 29, 2012 | Story
• Report from Cairo: Protests Erupt in Egypt as Mubarak’s Ex-PM Secures Spot in Presidential Runoff May 29, 2012 | Story
• Egypt Election: Muslim Brotherhood Candidate Could Face Mubarak’s Ex-Prime Minister in Runoff May 25, 2012 | Story

Links

• Read Sharif Abdel Kouddous’ Articles in The Nation magazine
• Follow Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Twitter

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >

Transcript

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show on the political crisis in Egypt. Former President Hosni Mubarak has been moved from prison to an army hospital in Cairo where he is reportedly unconscious and on life support. The military strongman ruled the country for 30 years until he was toppled from power during last year’s uprising. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the deaths of protesters. Senior officers have given various accounts of the 84-year-old Mubarak’s condition, but they denied reports he was, quote, "clinically dead," as briefly reported by the state news agency.
The news comes amid high tension over the results from last weekend’s presidential vote that pitted Mubarak’s former prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, against Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Official results are not expected to be announced until Thursday, but both sides have already claimed victory.
Meanwhile, Egyptians showed little sympathy to news about Mubarak’s deteriorating health.

ADEL MORAD: [translated] We do not need anything from him or his family. We want them to leave us alone, because we’ve gotten tired of them. We are looking forward for good people to rule us. We do not need anything from his family. We want to live. We need security. We need a decent life. We need freedom. And we need to retrieve our dignity.

AMY GOODMAN: Tens of thousands of Egyptians protested Tuesday night in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a rally called by the Muslim Brotherhood. Others protested outside Egypt’s parliament. They expressed outrage over the army’s decree late Sunday that it would seize all legislative powers. Some have described the move as a "military coup." This is Egyptian parliament member, Mhamed Uof.

MHAMED UOF: [translated] We should stream into the streets. I’m calling on all free people from the army, police, all of the state associations, and all of Egyptians who are brave and free people, to come to Tahrir Square to protest. Hosni Mubarak stepped down after only 18 days. But the military council will leave power only during nine days. We will hinder traffic, close streets. We will do whatever it takes to achieve our demands. It is going to be a civil, peaceful disobedience.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the situation in Egypt, we go to Cairo, where we’re joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Sharif, can you tell us what’s happening, from what’s happening to Mubarak right now, reported—reportedly in a coma, to what’s happening in the streets, the reports of a military coup?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, this news of Mubarak’s health came in late last night, the state news agency, as you reported, saying that he was clinically dead. This caused, of course, a huge flurry in the media. But quickly, those reports were denied by his lawyer, senior members of the military council, who said he wasn’t clinically dead, that he had suffered a stroke or he had suffered some kind of a heart attack, his heart had stopped. There’s varying reports. What we do know is that he was transferred out of the prison where he’s been held since he received his life sentence earlier this month. He’s now in a military hospital. The news has been, honestly, treated with some skepticism amongst the Egyptian public here. I mean, Mubarak’s health and reports of his death have been swirling in the media since the beginning of this revolution, especially since he was taken into custody last year. We keep hearing rumors that he died. And also, especially when he was moved to prison earlier this month, immediately there were rumors that he had collapsed, that he was having trouble breathing. But now he’s moved out of the Tora prison. Some think that this was all just to get him out of the prison and back into a hospital. So, that’s where—that’s where that stands right now.
But it comes at a very, very sensitive time. Tomorrow we’re going to learn who the winner of Egypt’s first competitive—arguably competitive—presidential election will be. Both sides have claimed victory in the poll. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi has said that they won with 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent of Ahmed Shafik. They’ve backed this up with very detailed documents from each polling station around the country, which are stamped. And their tally seems to coincide with most independent reports and from most local media outlets. The Shafik campaign has denied that he lost, saying instead that their candidate won. But we’ll find out for sure tomorrow.
Over and above that is that what exactly—what powers will this president have, and that really this handover of power that was scheduled for June 30th has really been rendered meaningless by a sweeping set of amendments to the constitutional declaration that has been governing the country since March of 2011. These amendments were issued unilaterally by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and made public minutes after polls closed on Sunday evening. And really, they entrench the military’s power, and they strip the incoming president of any significant authority. And, of course, we have to remember that these amendments come just three days after the country’s top court, the Supreme Constitutional Court, dissolved the popularly elected parliament and also after a decree by the Ministry of Justice that really returns elements of martial law to Egypt and allows the military widespread powers of arrest and detention of civilians.
So, most prominently, perhaps, of these constitutional amendments is that it removes the president’s role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. It gives that to the head of the Supreme Council, who is Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and effectively gives the military complete control over its own affairs. So what this does, really, is creates the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces as a fourth branch of state that’s constitutionally separate from the presidency, the parliament and the judiciary. It also—the amendments also shield the military from any kind of public oversight whatsoever, any kind of civilian oversight.
They also—the amendments also allow the military to act as parliament. In the absence of a sitting parliament, they’re allowed to issue laws by decree. They also tighten their grip on the writing of the country’s constitution. So they have an effective veto over any clause that they might disapprove of, and they can also actually go further and dissolve the current assembly, that was formed by parliament just two days before it was dissolved, and on very vague grounds, if it encounters what’s called an obstacle, they’re allowed to dissolve that body and handpick their own hundred-member body that will draft this country’s permanent constitution. And the military has made clear throughout the transitional period—we only need to look back to last fall to something called the Selmi Document to know exactly what they’re looking for, what kind of protections they’re looking for in the constitution, and that’s really to enshrine their political and economic privileges in the constitution. So, and also, to add insult to injury, they recently—the head of the advisory council to the military council, a man named Sameh Ashour, said that the incoming president may only serve for an interim period, until a new constitution is written.
Further above that, the Tantawi—the military council announced a national defense council that will be formed, of 17 members, which will be headed by the incoming president. But of those 17 members, 11 of them are senior military commanders, and decisions will be made by a simple majority vote. So, really, all of these sweeping steps have really stripped the incoming president of any significant authority, in a last-minute power grab, and really is perhaps a fitting end to this nonsensical transition that we’ve seen over the last 16 months. Right now the country has no constitution, no parliament, and a president without—an incoming president that will have scant power. So, really, the military council is controlling the key branches of state.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sharif, the powers you describe are, as you said, quite sweeping. Is there any way in which the incoming president can either—in any sense, either alter or overturn some of these amendments, these constitutional amendments?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, the Muslim Brotherhood, who is widely expected to win the presidency tomorrow, has soundly rejected these amendments. They have also rejected the Supreme Court’s ruling to dissolve parliament. The army deployed troops around the parliament building to prevent MPs from entering the building over the weekend. We saw a massive protest yesterday that was called primarily by the Muslim Brotherhood but also other forces, also political forces, but including revolutionary forces like the April 6 Youth Movement. The Revolutionary Socialists were there, as well. But really, the square was packed by members of the Muslim Brotherhood who rejected these amendments. And I think it was also a show of force to act as a warning, in case Ahmed Shafik is named as president, that they might return to street protests.
From a legal perspective, whether these amendments can be overturned, it’s anybody’s guess. I mean, the Supreme Council has been changing the rules as it goes along and has issued laws by decree. There’s no—there’s no rules to the game right now. So, I’m sure negotiations are probably underway, but right now the military council is acting with a lot of hubris and really—and also in what appears to be desperation, which may be encouraging in a way, that they fear that their power may be slipping. But right now, they hold all the cards in terms of the levers of power of the state.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, what role does the United States play in all of this?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, the State Department and the Pentagon voiced concern over these amendments. We heard State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland expressing concern, as did the Pentagon. But as with so much in U.S. policy, especially towards Egypt, words rarely match the actions. And so, U.S. policy towards Egypt has changed very little since before the revolution.
Washington, of course, backed the Mubarak regime with annual military aid of $1.3 billion for decades. We’ve seen that aid continue. Congress last year, in the wake of the revolution, added a provision to the aid that had this—the State Department had to certify that the military, the ruling military council, was doing a transition to civilian democracy. The Obama administration issued a national security waiver that overrode that provision to continue the aid to Egypt, despite widespread human rights abuses by the army and security forces. It came in the wake of the NGO crisis, where U.S.-funded NGOs were raided and closed down, and the son of the transportation minister, Sam LaHood, was not allowed to travel or leave the country.
So, we’ve seen this continuation of U.S. policy where issues regarding regional concerns with Israel and so forth have trumped human rights concerns. But many people here on the ground are asking for the U.S. to finally take a stand and perhaps have its actual policy match its words and have a significant cutoff of aid, given what’s happened with this—what many are calling a constitutional coup by the military council.
AMY GOODMAN: Also, the number of people who came out to vote in this election this past weekend, can you talk about the boycott movement? I mean, the Egyptian elections are looking a little like the U.S. elections in how few people came out to vote.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, you know, Egyptians have gone to the polls three times in this transition, and each time they go, their vote has been rendered meaningless. They went in March 2011, voted on nine amendments to the constitution, and that was supplanted by a constitutional declaration issued unilaterally by the military council just a few days later that altered over 60 articles to the constitution. Then they went to the polls last fall, and they voted with a much lower turnout, and they voted for parliament. That parliament has now been dissolved, and so those elections were rendered worthless. And now they’ve gone to the polls again, and with again a lower turnout—or we’re actually not sure what the turnout is, to be clear, in this round, but it’s close to about 50 percent, some have predicted. And we’ve again seen that their vote has been rendered somewhat meaningless, because the person that they voted for has been stripped of all power.
So, there has been a growing movement to boycotts, a growing movement to spoil ballots, to say that there’s a third choice, we don’t have to pick between the two candidates that were represented. And I don’t know. I mean, if Egyptians find that there’s—that their vote means nothing, then perhaps they’ll seek other avenues of change. But, you know, the runoff election that we saw—really, the enthusiasm of the streets—I traveled around Cairo and went to the Delta, as well, to different polling stations, was—the enthusiasm was very low. You didn’t see the ubiquitous, you know, person holding up their ink-stained finger and proudly showing that they voted, because of this—a lot of confusion and apathy that has been fostered by this very nonsensical transition, as well as the candidates themselves—on one side, Ahmed Shafik, who’s really a stalwart of the Mubarak regime and represents the authoritarianism of that state, and on the other, the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative Islamist group that, in many ways, has been seen as abandoning the revolution in pursuit of its own interests. So it was really a kind of a low-energy turnout.
We’ll have to wait for the numbers tomorrow. But everyone is going to be glued tomorrow to this announcement by the Presidential Elections Commission. It’s a very close vote, regardless, by all counts, somewhere between 52 to 48 or 51 to 49. And the Presidential Election Commission’s decision are unappealable. So, if they—so everyone will be tuned in tomorrow to find out who the incoming president is, even though his powers have been severely curtailed.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Sharif is joining us from overlooking Tahrir Square in Cairo, in Egypt, Democracy Now! senior correspondent.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Julian Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. He is seeking political asylum. The British police have issued an arrest warrant for him. We’ll speak with Assange’s lawyer, Michael Ratner. Stay with us.

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Occypy Hypocrisy -- Iran, Terror, and Egpyt

          As promised, here are the transcripts.  Both are more than adequately introduced and it is fortunate that such information is allowed in our Corporatocracy, a polite term for Fascism.

          Some other notes, Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign until 2016.  A Catholic, President Kennedy’s statements made him want to vomit.  I am unable to muster the same degree of enthusiasm for Mr. Santorum’s statements.

          One of you said it would have been nice of me to mention Che at the close of the last posting and his words to the fact that “I am a man.”  In those days, it meant human being and had no sexist overtones.  Whatever the truth about Che and his life, his meaning as an icon and a figure to admire is what makes him so valuable today – almost as much as Guy Fawkes.

          Anyway, here we are, and I should mention that all the links should work and take you to other transcripts, videos and audio sources:

April 10, 2012

Training Terrorists in Nevada: Seymour Hersh on U.S. Aid to Iranian Group Tied to Scientist Killings

Journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed that the Bush administration secretly trained an Iranian opposition group on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists. Hersh reports the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command trained operatives from Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, at a secret site in Nevada beginning in 2005. According to Hersh, MEK members were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office. The MEK has been listed as a foreign terrorist groups since 1997 and is linked to a number of attacks, spanning from the murders of six U.S. citizens in the 1970s to the recent wave of assassinations targeting Iranian nuclear scientists. Hersh also discusses the role of Israeli intelligence and notes the Obama administration knew about the training, "because they have access to what was going on in the previous administration in this area in terms of the MEK, in terms of operations inside Iran." His new report for The New Yorker blog, "Our Men in Iran?," comes as nuclear talks are set to resume this week between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. [includes rush transcript]

Filed under  Iran, War on Terror, Human Rights, Drones

Guest:

Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter for The New Yorker magazine. His latest piece for their website’s "News Desk" blog is titled "Our Men in Iran?"

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• Tariq Ali: Obama’s Expansion of Af-Pak War "Has Blown Up in His Face"

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• A Path to War? Assassination of Iran Nuclear Scientist, New Sanctions Strain U.S.-Iran Relations

Jan 12, 2012

• Seymour Hersh: Propaganda Used Ahead of Iraq War Is Now Being Reused over Iran’s Nuke Program

Nov 21, 2011

• "Pakistan on the Brink": Ahmed Rashid on Perilous Ties Between the U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan

Mar 28, 2012

Links

• “Our Men in Iran?” By Seymour M. Hersh. (New Yorker newsdesk blog, April 6, 2012)
• Watch additional Democracy Now! interviews with Seymour Hersh
• Read all recent New Yorker articles by Seymour M. Hersh

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: In what appears to be a first for U.S. foreign policy, new revelations have emerged that the Bush administration secretly trained an Iranian opposition group despite its inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists. Writing for The New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reports U.S. Joint Special Operations Command trained operatives from Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, at a secret site in Nevada beginning in 2005. According to Hersh, MEK members were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office. The MEK has been included on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups since 1997. It’s been linked to a number of attacks, spanning from the murders of six U.S. citizens in the ’70s to the recent wave of assassinations targeting Iranian nuclear scientists.
Although the revelation that the U.S. government directly trained the MEK comes as a surprise, it’s no secret the group has prominent backers across the political spectrum. Despite it’s designation as a "terrorist" organization by the State Department for 15 years, a number of prominent former U.S. officials have been paid to speak in support of the MEK. The bipartisan list includes two former CIA directors, James Woolsey and Porter Goss; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Vermont Governor Howard Dean; former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton; and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
Last month, Rendell and other unnamed officials were subpoenaed by the Treasury Department over their ties to MEK. Mukasey and Freeh have retained former Clinton administration Solicitor General Seth Waxman in response to the Treasury Department probe. Rendell, meanwhile, has shrugged off the scrutiny. Speaking at a public event in support of the MEK Friday in Washington, he told the crowd, quote, "I never knew obtaining a subpoena from your own government would be so much fun."
Well, for more on the U.S. and its ties to the MEK, we’re joined by Seymour Hersh in Washington, D.C. His new piece for The New Yorker is called "Our Men in Iran?"
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Sy Hersh. Oh, and happy birthday.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, yes, that’s right. It’s great to be older.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll focus on the wiser part. Tell us what you have learned. Who are, as you call it, "our men in Iran"?
SEYMOUR HERSH: They are as you said. The MEK—and by the way, once again, Amy, the piece was on The New Yorker blog, not in the magazine; it’s a shorter piece. But anyway, the point is, it went through the same sort of intense checking as anything in The New Yorker, of course.
Simply, they’re just the Khalq, the MEK. We began to—I learned about this many years ago. It’s just one of those things that it never quite occurred to me how important it was. And what is important about also the—they did stop, there’s no question, this sort of training that was going on. It was going on at a place called the Nevada Nuclear Security or National Security Test Site. It’s a former site for World War—post-World War II nuclear testing of weapons, testing of nuclear weapons. And it’s off-limits to people. And it’s—there’s an air base there. God knows what went on there. My own guess is rendition flights also flew into that air base in '02, ’03. There's some evidence for it. But certainly, the groups of MEK were flown in secretly by, I presume, the Joint Special Operations Command. This is this new high-powered group that’s been doing all the night raids in Afghanistan, that also came up in your news broadcast.
What’s important to me about it is not only that it did end, this kind of direct training of this group that is, as you said, a terrorist group; it’s also very clear that the United States is still involved, as is Israel and as was, for many years, England, in using the MEK and other dissident groups inside Iran as surrogates for the continued pressure we’re putting covertly on inside of Iran. And that is, as you said, there are assassinations done by the MEK. And let me make it clear, the MEK has been in a virtual war with the mullahs in Iran since the fall of the Shah, and you don’t have to—you don’t have to urge them to kill anybody. They’re very eager to do it themselves inside that country. But still, nonetheless, we provide intelligence. We, the Americans, have continued to provide intelligence and other kinds of material support for the MEK. Don’t forget, they speak Farsi, which is a great asset to us. These are people who are able to translate intercepted communications inside Iran for us very quickly and very—with great skill. And so, we have a lot of reason to rely on them, as we rely on other dissident groups inside Iran—the Kurds, the Azeris and others—to cause—basically, to try and keep some sort of internal chaos and mayhem going inside the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Is it believed the MEK were involved in the assassinations of the Iranian nuclear scientists?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, nobody has a video of it, but that seems clear that one of their goals, obviously, is to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons. And it’s not clear who they’re really assassinating, whether they’re—I know they’re—at one time, my government—I wrote about this in The New Yorker many years ago, in '05 or ’06. We've been actively involved, beginning in the Cheney-Bush days, of encouraging insurrection inside Iran—whether it’s aimed at regime change or not isn’t clear; I doubt that—but basically, blowing up things, etc. We did have a list at one time we created here in Washington of people we’d like to see gone, captured perhaps, turned over or turned into our agents, you know, double agents inside Iran. We tried to do that, too. But certainly, the Israelis are pawing the ground as if they are directly responsible or deeply involved with the MEK in the recent assassination of a 32-year-old scientist whose role in terms of—there’s not much evidence he was involved in making weapons, because there’s no evidence that Iranians are making weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the bombs that were used in the assassinations?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, they’re most interesting bombs. They’re limpet bombs, Marine limpet bombs. They’re designed—they have a special charge, and they’re designed to go inside. They blow inside. And they’re, of course, of great use by the Navy SEALs. And the Navy SEALs, if you’re going to do an underwater demolition, if you’re going to blow up a ship from underwater, which as the SEALs traditionally were trained to do—most of them are involved in day-to-day combat in Afghanistan, etc., and much different from their initial role of underwater stuff. But if you want to blow up something underwater, you have to have a charge that explodes inward to cause water to rush in, etc. And these kind of very sophisticated charges have been used by the MEK in the assassinations.
And the reason we know it is that the car that was hit, for example, in January in Tehran that killed the young scientist, or the nuclear physicist or whatever he was, exploded inward. You can argue this is also good because it avoids non-combatant deaths. You know, you don’t want to kill a lot of people other than the one you’re trying to kill. It is also useful because you make sure anybody in that car gets it, because it does blow inside. It’s a very sophisticated shape charge. And there’s no question that some of the best mines in the Navy mine-making business were—some of that information was obviously passed on, whether directly to the MEK or through Israeli assets, or explicitly how. But it’s not an accident that these kinds of sophisticated weapons can be traced to the Navy SEALs, who are a major element of the Joint Special Operations Command.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, you end your piece by quoting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at Fort Bliss in Texas acknowledging the U.S. has some ideas as to who might have been involved, but we don’t know exactly who was involved, you know, being questioned about—this was the day after—a few days after the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientists. He said, "I can tell you one thing: the [United States] was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does."
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, I think that’s technically correct. I don’t think there’s any other way to read that comment as—the use of that last graph as an ironic statement, perhaps. I think it’s correct that—also, it’s to my knowledge—this isn’t in the piece, because only one particular source about it, but I do understand that we really don’t know what’s going to happen 'til after it happens, and then we are put on notice. We do get notice that something has happened before it's released to the public. We have that kind of communication, essentially through Israel. Israel is obviously a little closer to everything that’s going on than we are. But we’re certainly—we’re not picking targets. I doubt that now. At least I don’t have any evidence we are. But we’re providing general intelligence.
And it’s not an accident that the first units of the MEK to show up in Nevada, late '04, early ’05—and it was months and months of training. It's not—the first word used by two different people about it was "commo," communications, and "crypto." The point is that—there was a story in the Washington Post just the other day here describing how America has been using drones to overfly Iran for at least three years. I would argue that, long before that, we’ve been using American satellites flying high that can’t be detected. And obviously, you can uplink and downlink communications to satellites. You can—if you’re on the ground and you find out something very useful tactically—by training the MEK in communications and how to use encrypt communications, you’re also enabling them to become an asset on the ground for us.
There was a period, I would say, in the Bush administration—I also think it stopped under Obama—when our boys, our Joint Special Operations Command guys, were directly inside Iran. We came in through Herat in Afghanistan. We also—that was one of—what we call a rat line. There are other rat lines through Balochistan in Pakistan, and etc. There are ways to get inside Iran clandestinely that we’ve been using for at least since, I’d say, late '04 until probably right before Obama got in. So we were there—look, it's been a huge, big internal game designed to destabilize.
And as somebody said to me in one of the pieces, one of the quotes in the pieces, "We’re not necessarily looking for Einsteins." That suggests to me that the scientists who are really the most deeply involved in the enrichment. And by the way, let me say again, there is no evidence that our intelligence community or even the Israeli intelligence community has—and I know that firsthand—suggesting that there’s an ongoing bomb program. So we are now—the United States is now in the position of increasing sanctions and pressuring all sorts of economic pressure on the Iranians to stop—the whole purpose of the economic sanctions is to stop the Iranians from making a bomb that we know they’re not making. Once again, I don’t know how we get into this convoluted position. And then, as readers of the major newspapers know, we are now also entering new talks with Iran with new preconditions, and basically telling them that they must stop doing enriching, what they are legally entitled to do as members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran may be secretly wanting a bomb, and they may have that passion, and they maybe, you know, dream about it at night, but we haven’t a shred of evidence that they’ve done anything, concretely, physically, to create a facility for making a weapon.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Seymour Hersh. We’re going to come back to him in 30 seconds, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has written a piece for The New Yorker online called "Our Men in Iran?" Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. His latest piece is online at The New Yorker magazine’s "News Desk" blog; it’s called "Our Men in Iran?" And it tells the story of a group still designated as terrorist by the State Department, the MEK, which was trained at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has a look of northwest Iran. Sy Hersh, why the Department of Energy? And again, this is under the Bush administration. They’re labeled terrorists, but they are training them, not only in communications, you point out.
SEYMOUR HERSH: They’ve had—there is a secret site. It’s about 60-some-odd miles out of Las Vegas, deep in no-man’s land in southern Nevada, where we’ve been doing an awful lot of stuff for many years. There’s a—it’s called "Site 12." That particular site, it’s—our CIA and other agencies have been training foreign troops. It’s where, I would guess, when we do joint training with the special units of the Israeli army and other units that we train, we do train foreign soldiers. We can fly to this base. It’s got a long landing strip, 7,500 feet, concrete landing strip. And for a long time it had yellow crosses on it, which meant, for even aircraft, commercial aircraft, in trouble, do not land here. And this is a strip that you come in and you—I presume, you come in in a military plane. You can turn off the transponder. Nobody—no FAA is checking anything. Nobody is going to get a tail number. You can land. And there’s a facility there. There’s barracks and other work, other facilities, in Site 12 for—and a food hall. It’s all—you could actually find it online if you go through the Department of Energy’s annual—they provide annual environmental impact reports, and they describe what’s going on in each site in terms of the environment. And there you get a pretty good description. In fact, they actually use the word—there’s a training facility used for other government agencies. An "OGA," other government agencies, is a longstanding phrase that means the CIA, essentially—actually specifically to people on the inside. So there’s been training there forever.
And it just so happens, if you take a look at northwest Iran and take a look at the topography in that part of the desert in Nevada, it’s a very arid area, I think 15 inches of rain, or something like that, a year. It’s got a desert. It’s got valleys. It’s got mountain ranges. And it really is similar. I’ll tell you what the most frightening thing was. When they first began the training, one very senior four-star officer was called by somebody who knew about the training in Nevada, very worried about it, and because the Joint Special Operations Command people were training in—not only in communications and cryptography, small unit tactics, but other cute things, which, to me, of course, and to my friend, meant interrogation tactics, you know, how to—you know, I don’t know this, but I presume included the standard sort of horrible stuff that we know American intelligence agencies have and CIA and other personnel have done to various prisoners of war since 9/11, waterboarding and the like. It was very troubling, that message, that this kind of training is being done on a group that’s listed as a terrorist group.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile—
SEYMOUR HERSH: But so it goes. They—
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, so many public officials, Bush and Republican and Democrats, are calling for them to be taken off the list. Among the U.S. officials to speak in support of MEK is former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. Speaking to CNN last year, he said the U.S. should lift the terror group designation to help protect MEK members living in Iraq.

HOWARD DEAN: The FBI screened all these people. The FBI counterterrorist folks screened all these people in 2006. Not one of them is a terrorist, according to our FBI. This is outrageous, what’s going on. It’s an outrageous behavior by the State Department. And frankly, the administration has direct responsibility for making sure that the promises were kept. We kept one promise. That is, we kept George Bush’s promise to get out by the end of 2011. We need to keep the promise of the people at Ashraf. We ought not to be complicit in human rights massacres.

AMY GOODMAN: Among those appearing at the public event in Washington on Friday in support of the MEK was Michael—was Mitchell Reiss, a former policy—a foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He acknowledged to the crowd that the Treasury Department considers MEK supporters, quote, "potential criminals." At a campaign stop in New Hampshire last year, an audience member asked Romney about Reiss’s support for the MEK.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Have you heard of or do you support the MEK, the People’s Mujahideen of Iran?

MITT ROMNEY: I have not heard about the MEK, and I—so I can’t possibly tell you whether I support the MEK. But I can—all right? But what is—what is the MEK? Why would you think that I supported it? Because you said it’s a terrorist group?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: There’s been—there’s a terrorist group in Iran which is variably violent. It’s attacked civilians before. It’s called the MEK, the People’s Mujahideen of Iran. And if you look into it, some of your staff members, I believe, have made statements to lobby the executive branch to remove them from the terrorist list.

MITT ROMNEY: I’ll take a look at the issue. I’m not familiar with that particular group or that effort on the part of any of my team.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mitt Romney being questioned about his foreign policy adviser Mitchell Reiss’s support for the MEK. Seymour Hersh, your response?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, I would say that the Obama administration has even more trouble than Mr. Romney does. It’s clear he didn’t know much about it. This administration knows an awful lot about it, because they have access to what was going on in the previous administration in this area in terms of the MEK, in terms of operations inside Iran, and they’re still going on. And so, the question then becomes—I’m amazed that we’ve had nothing from the White House about this story. And there’s also been sort of a—I shouldn’t complain about it, because I understand it. You know, it’s "not invented here" syndrome. But I’m a little amazed that more reporters aren’t asking more questions about this, because it seems to be so egregious. This is—right now, our Treasury Department is actually asking questions, because no matter how you cut it, it’s a terrorist group, and if you’re aiding and supporting a terrorist group, under the law of the United States—as you know, there’s been some prosecutions in this area of people of Middle East descent supporting groups that we consider to be terrorists, and they get put away in jail. There certainly seems to be a double standard here at work. And yeah, Romney seems lost in space on this issue, but I can assure you right now, there are people in this White House who are not.
AMY GOODMAN: Is the Obama administration still training MEK?
SEYMOUR HERSH: I don’t think the word is "training" anymore, because are we directly training them down in Nevada? No, I don’t—there’s no reason to believe that. I don’t know that. I’ve been told that there is more stuff going on than we know of, of course, and that’s also possible. You know, one of the things that I’ve learned—I’ve been doing a book about Cheney for a number of years. It’s just amazing how many things we really don’t know about what our government can do. There are amazing things out there that happened that we just don’t know about. And so, they can keep secrets. Of course the government would like to keep pressure on Iran as much as it can. And I don’t think we can totally walk away from responsibility in terms of—at the minimum, we’ve been providing intelligence that we know goes to the MEK and also to other dissident groups inside, inside Iran. Does that mean we’re aiding and abetting in the specific killing of somebody? No, I have no reason to believe that anybody can make that case. But what the hell are we doing in there? Why are we putting so much pressure? Why do we take so much pleasure in bombings and explosions that take place inside Iran, which may be linked to us? And I just don’t quite understand the policy. It’s certainly not one that’s conducive to having good negotiations in good faith.
AMY GOODMAN: The latest news that nuclear talks in Turkey are taking place—talk about how the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, has found—what they have found in relation to the nuclear program and also Mohamed ElBaradei. In a minute, we’re going to be speaking to Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Mohamed ElBaradei, who was the Nobel Prize-winning head of the IAEA, was going to run for president of Egypt, then pulled out. But what he had to do with information that came from the MEK?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very early, the MEK was the first group to announce that the—that they had discovered—in 2002, they had a news conference. And by the way, at that point, they were considered—the MEK were always considered a cult group, very fringe, marginal, irrational group. They had been involved in the '70s, so we believe, in the killing of some Americans inside Iran. And they were a Marxist, leftist group in opposition to the Shah that couldn't connect with the mullahs, the religious mullahs that took over, Khomeini in those days. They couldn’t connect with them, and they began a protracted struggle in which murder, murder, murder was all over the place, both sides killing each other, very brutal stuff. And so they were always considered to be outside the normal realm of groups.
And suddenly in 2002, they get a lot of street cred, credibility, because they announce that they, the Iranians, are building a nuclear facility. They didn’t say they were enriching uranium there, but it was clear, from the import of what they said, the only reason they’re getting involved in building a facility for nuclear production was for weaponization. And I learned—I was told at the time that Israel was behind that intelligence, that it really didn’t come from the MEK themselves. Israel, as you know—there are what, something like a million-and-a-half Iranian Jews, many of whom fled the country when the Shah fell. And Israel still has a pretty good net of—intelligence net inside Iran, so it wasn’t illogical.
And I began to see Mr. ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, pretty regularly, certainly at least once a year, and talked to a lot of people there in Vienna about what was going on in terms of nuclear development around the world. And this is a wise man. We didn’t like him because he’s Egyptian, but that was a big mistake. He turned out to be—he was enraged at Iran when I first began to talk to him about it. He thought they cheated. He was quite angry. But he also told me—I told him—we talked about the fact that I had heard that the Israelis were involved in providing that intelligence, and he also had heard the same thing. And in fact, before this article was published online for The New Yorker, the fact checkers went back to his office to his secretary and once again reminded him of that conversation and got his permission to say something he wouldn’t let me say earlier, which is that he had provided me with that information, too.
So Israel has had a tremendous role in supporting the MEK. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel was also deeply involved in helping us or abetting with the training inside—in Nevada. That would make a lot of sense. And Israel certainly is a key player right now in the MEK activities, along with us, and for many years along with the Brits, who were also involved in providing signals intelligence inside Iran or collecting intelligence. The good thing about having Britain around is they’re actually more hated than we are in the Middle East because of their long history of exploitation. That’s always a plus.
But having said that, Baradei’s been—he’s been a very neutral arbiter of what was going on, very critical of Iran for many years. He eventually turned—his position turned, as he learned more, as the Iranians trusted him more, began to talk more to him and his people. And what we now have is—he left a few years back—we have a new director general, a Japanese sort of center-right politician named Amano, who is different. He’s much closer to us. There’s been WikiLeak cables released by Julian Assange that show very clearly that we helped him get elected as director general. There was a—it’s a U.N. agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, that ElBaradei headed for so many years. It’s U.N. And the new leader was voted—I think there were seven ballots, and it was our ability to swing some votes that got Amano the job, and he immediately told us how he would be different about Iran, etc. There’s a whole series of WikiLeaks cables about this that Julian’s group released that are pretty devastating, that aren’t enough in the American currency. They’re there. They were published widely in the British press, but not here. We really need to take a look at this relationship, because it raises a lot of questions just about—I’ll be honest: I’m not sure we come into negotiations with very clean hands on this. And we begin negotiations really behind the eight ball with the Iranians, because they are very deeply involved. They have very good intelligence. They know what we’ve been doing. Despite all this talk you have about Iranians being involved inside Afghanistan right now and all this talk about Iranians being involved inside Iraq and killing Americans, there’s never been much of a case for that.
And I will tell you right now, after 9/11, the Iranians were absolutely willing to work with us, particularly against al-Qaeda. Don’t forget, Iran is Shia, and al-Qaeda are mostly Sunni, Sunni fanatics, and there was no love lost. And they actually, in the first few—six months or so after 9/11, they closed their borders and captured a lot of al-Qaeda that were being driven out of the country by us, and they were looking for refuge in Iran, and they’ve been jailed. I think they’re still there in jail, over a hundred of them. And so, we really blew a chance by putting them on the Axis of Evil. I’d sure like to do a takeover of American history after 9/11. I think the history books are going to be—as bad as we think it is, it’s worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New Yorker. His latest piece is online at their "News Desk" blog; it’s called "Our Men in Iran?"
When we come back, another prize-winning journalist. We’ll be joined by our very own Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He has just flown in from Cairo. He’s heading up to Ithaca College this evening to give a major address as he receives the Izzy Award from the Park Center for Independent Media, named for the muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

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• * *

April 10, 2012

Shock Doctrine in Egypt: Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Post-Mubarak Economic Crisis, Presidential Race

As Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief Omar Suleiman announces he will run for president and Egypt teeters on the edge of an economic crisis, we discuss the state of post-revolution Egypt with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, based in Cairo. Suleiman headed Egypt’s intelligence services for more than 18 years, becoming a close U.S. ally and playing a key role in the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program. Now he joins a crowded field of candidates in the presidential election set to begin May 23. Kouddous notes Egypt’s economy has reached a critical juncture, as the country faces a large budget deficit and is running out of its foreign currency reserves even as it relies on imports for key food staples, such as wheat. "We don’t know where we stand in terms of the Constitution, where the elections stand. Egypt’s revolution still is up in the air," Kouddous says. He is in New York to to accept this year’s Izzy Award for Special Achievement in Independent Media for his reporting on the Egyptian revolution. [includes rush transcript]

Filed under  Egypt, Arab Spring, civil rights, Human Rights

Guest:

Sharif Abdel Kouddous, an independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent, now based in Cairo, Egypt.

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Links

• “Egypt’s Looming Economic Shock Doctrine.” By Sharif Abdel Kouddous. (The Nation, April 2, 2012)
• Tuesday, April 10: Izzy Award Winner Sharif Abdel Kouddous to Speak at Ithaca College
• Watch all of the reports filed by Sharif Abdel Kouddous in Egypt for Democracy Now!
• Follow Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Twitter

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Egypt, where the former intelligence chief of ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak has joined the presidential race. Omar Suleiman announced his bid on Friday, well over a month before Egyptians head to the polls. Suleiman headed Egypt’s intelligence services for more than 18 years, becoming a close U.S. ally and playing a key role in the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program. During the Egyptian uprising last year, Mubarak appointed Suleiman his first-ever vice president before he was forced out of power. The presidential candidate for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat El-Shater, criticized Suleiman’s entry into the race.

KHAIRAT EL-SHATER: [translated] We strongly reject any attempt to restore the previous political regime in the same form and represented in the person of General Omar Suleiman. And we think that this is an insult to the revolution and shows a lack of awareness of the type of change that has taken place in the lives of Egyptian people and its impact. But in terms of how to deal with this issue and having just one Islamist candidate, the issue is not about whether the candidates are Islamist or not. The issue is about the attempt to steal the revolution. And if any attempt is made to steal the revolution or to carry out fraud, then, naturally, ourselves and others will go out on the streets.

AMY GOODMAN: Egypt’s presidential elections begin May 23rd. With Suleiman’s entry into the race, one of the most public faces of the Mubarak regime joins an already crowded presidential field in a critical vote for post-revolution Egypt.
For more, we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He is based in Cairo, a Democracy Now! correspondent, fellow at the Nation Institute. He’s here tonight to receive the Izzy Award for Special Achievement in Independent Media, named after the legendary maverick journalist I.F. Stone, who launched I.F. Stone’s Weekly in 1953 and exposed government deception, McCarthyism, racial bigotry. Sharif is being honored for his reporting on the Egyptian revolution. In a statement, the Park Center for Independent Media said, "With breathtaking bravery, Sharif’s unflinching on-the-street reporting simultaneously brought us the voices and faces of Egyptians, the drama of the moment and big-picture analysis — sometimes while tear gas or live rounds exploded in the background." That is Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and he’s here in studio.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! here in New York, Sharif.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: It’s good to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the elections.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, as you mentioned in the lede, Omar Suleiman is the last candidate to join the presidential race. He submitted his candidacy papers 20 minutes before the window closed on Sunday. He, in fact, had said he wasn’t going to run, just days earlier, and then reversed that decision, and apparently in one day obtained more than 70,000 signatures for his candidacy, which is, you know, more than double the 30,000 that’s needed to be an official candidate.
It’s ironic that he’s running. I mean, this is the man that Mubarak appointed as vice president once the revolution began in a bid to quell the uprising. During the 18-day uprising, he actually went on ABC in an interview and said Egyptians are not ready for democracy. Now he’s running for president. Many consider him the candidate now of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has ruled Egypt since Mubarak’s ouster on February 11th of last year. He’s a career army officer that served with many of the two dozen generals that serve on the military council. And as you mentioned, since 1993, he’s been the head of the General Intelligence Services—in Arabic, that’s known as the Mukhabarat—a very powerful intelligence position. He played a key role in suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists during Mubarak’s era. He played a key role in Egypt’s relationship with Israel, helping to enforce the siege on Gaza, helping to crush Hamas through destroying the tunnels that provide a lifeline to Gaza.
But, of course, also he was the CIA’s point man in Egypt for the extraordinary rendition program and was involved, by some accounts, actually in torture itself. One prisoner, who is an Egyptian-born Australian citizen by the name of Mamdouh Habib, who was rendered to Egypt, where he was—he says he was electrocuted, hung from metal hooks, suspended in water up to his nostrils. He was later sent to Guantánamo, where he was held for a number of years before being shipped back home to Australia without charge. He penned a memoir, and he said at one point that while he was being interrogated, the interrogator slapped him so hard that the blindfold dislodged off his eye, and sitting in front of him was Omar Suleiman. Omar Suleiman was also the liaison for the CIA in the rendition of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who of course played a key role in the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq. So, that’s his background. And he has now entered the race.
It has caused widespread outrage in Egypt. Calls for protests have already begun for a big protest on Friday against his candidacy. A committee in parliament has approved a law—this is not approved by the parliament yet, just a committee putting it forward—to ban any former regime members who served in top-level positions in the last five years leading up to Mubarak’s ouster from running in the presidential election. It’s not understood whether this will actually pass, especially after the nomination window closed, but that’s where it stands right now. And I don’t know what kind of backing he would have popularly. I mean, let’s remember that on February 10th, Mubarak actually—the day before Mubarak stepped down, he tried to pass over all his constitutional powers to the vice president, to Omar Suleiman, and this was met with widespread disapproval. So, we’ll have to see what happens.
But another key person that is running in the presidential race, as you mentioned, and we heard a clip of him in the lede, was Khairat El-Shater. Khairat El-Shater is probably the most powerful member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He is a multi-millionaire business tycoon who was jailed for 12 years, a total of 12 years during Mubarak’s era. He ran the Muslim Brotherhood largely from his prison cell. He was released by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces in March of last year. His nomination actually caused outrage, as well, because it reversed a pledge by the Muslim Brotherhood not to field a presidential candidate. This was their pledge early on in the process. As we know, they dominate—they have about 50 percent of the seats in the legislature. They’ve dominated the constituent assembly, which we’ll talk about in a moment. And they have now said they’re going to field a candidate. They actually kicked out a key member, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who is a liberal Islamist thinker, favored by many youth and revolutionary figures, especially after the withdrawal of Mohamed ElBaradei. They kicked him out of the Muslim Brotherhood because he decided to run, against their pledge, and now they’re fielding this candidate.
In fact, also, it’s unclear—I mean, this is all part of Egypt’s very confusing and erratic transition plan that’s been headed by the Supreme Council. We don’t know if Khairat El-Shater will be allowed to run. He has this military court ruling against him. He was pardoned by Tantawi, but another candidate, Ayman Nour, who ran against Mubarak in 2005, a court just ruled that even though he received a pardon, he can’t run. So the Brotherhood have now fielded a backup candidate, a man named Mohamed Morsi, who’s the head of their party, just in case. So, this is where—
AMY GOODMAN: And the candidate whose mother is an American citizen?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, this was another—I mean, it’s hard to keep up with everything that’s happening in Egypt, but this is Hazem Abu Ismail, who’s a Salafi preacher. Salafis are—practice an ultra-conservative form of Islam. They won about 25 percent of parliament in the elections late last year. So he had widespread support. He also—while he is a Salafi preacher, he also is very critical of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, so he tapped into this section of Egyptian society that is very religiously conservative but also against the military council.
He obviously is quite anti-American in his rhetoric. And it’s very ironic, because the law right now in Egypt is that you can’t run as a presidential candidate if you’re—you have to be born to Egyptian parents, and neither of them can have ever had any foreign citizenship. It turns out that Hazem Abu Ismail’s mother did get American citizenship. His sister was married to an American, and she would come visit her here. And it turns out the Presidential Elections Commission has received confirmation that he was an American citizen. The New York Times reported that she was actually registered to vote in California. And so, he’s not allowed to run anymore, and he’s calling for mass protests of his own.
AMY GOODMAN: You recently wrote a piece for The Nation, "Egypt’s Looming Economic Shock Doctrine."
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. What’s happening right now is that Egypt is on the edge of an economic crisis. And this has been really the result of a badly mismanaged political transition. The issue is that we’ve been backed into a corner with the issue of foreign currency reserves. Egypt relies very heavily on imports for many of its staple items, including wheat. Egypt is the biggest importer of wheat in the world, relying on about 60 percent of—for domestic consumption on imports. So—but we’re running out of foreign currency, which we use to buy these imports, because there’s been a big decline in foreign direct investment and in tourism, which are our main inputs for foreign currency. And so, what has happened right now is we have about $15 billion left in foreign currency reserves. That’s about left for three months of imports. We’ve spent all this money to try and keep the Egyptian pound where it is, to prop up the currency. But if we do have to devalue the Egyptian pound, then all these imports would become very expensive and would severely deepen Egypt’s recession.
So, what’s happening right now is that the Egyptian government formally requested the IMF for a loan in January, a $3.2 billion loan from the IMF. Now, what the IMF does now is not impose direct conditionality as they used to with these structural adjustment programs. But what they have asked for is that the government put forward an economic reform package, which they then must agree to to release the funds. So this is kind of an indirect conditionality. The government reform package was drawn up by the SCAF-appointed, military-appointed government. It was not open to public debate whatsoever. A copy was leaked to the media—a very poorly written economic report. And instead of—let’s remember, this revolution was sparked in large part because of economic grievances. The revolutionary calls of "bread, freedom, social justice," two of those are essentially economic calls. And the policies put forward in this economic reform package go much further towards promoting Mubarak-era policies that people, in part, revolted against than to promoting social justice. So there is talk of including expanding the sales tax, which puts really the burden on the majority poor, because they pay more for basic staple items. There’s talk of subsidy reform, but no talk of which subsidies are going to be targeted. Egypt has about 30 percent of its budget spent on subsidies. So it’s—but we’re put in a position where we really need to take some kind of foreign currency loan, and so it’s—I mean, the reason it’s called the "looming economic shock doctrine" is because we’re in a position where we’ve been backed into a corner, and it’s unclear exactly what budgetary and fiscal policies are going to be accepted to take this loan.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, on a recent visit to Cairo, U.S. Congress Member David Dreier and other U.S. lawmakers met with Egyptian parliamentarians, also with the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate, Khairat El-Shater. Congressman Dreier told reporters during a news conference future U.S. aid to Egypt remains uncertain, given the ruling military council’s crackdown on pro-democracy groups, including some U.S. groups.

REP. DAVID DREIER: Now, we know that the decision that Secretary Clinton made is going to see a continuation of assistance, the $1.3 billion in military assistance and the $250 million in civilian assistance, that that assistance is going to be continuing now. But, with challenges that lie ahead, questions that exist, there is no certainty about that. That will be a decision that we in the United States Congress will make. And again, I can’t predetermine the outcome.

AMY GOODMAN: Egypt was the biggest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Congress passed a law that Egypt has—that they have to prove that Egypt is going on a democratic path to release the funds. But the Obama administration actually waived that on national security grounds and has continued the same policies of many U.S. administrations in providing military aid to Egypt. So, we’ll have to see where that goes.
One thing I want to mention before we run out of time is that there was news that just broke just before we went to air, again throwing Egypt’s political process up in the air, that a court has ruled that the panel that the parliament has drafted, a 100-member panel to write up the country’s next constitution, has been—has been suspended completely. So that—that ruling can be appealed, but it’s been suspended because the parliament, that’s dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, decided that they would have 50 of its own members on this 100- member panel, 50 parliament members on the panel. About 60 percent of the people on this 100-member panel were in some way affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafi movement. And so this caused outrage. About two dozen or a quarter of the panel’s members have walked out, from secular and liberal forces, including the Coptic Christian Church, including Al-Azhar, the Sunni learning institution. So, right now, we don’t know where we stand in terms of the constitution, where the elections stand. Egypt’s revolution still is up in the air.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sharif, I’m looking forward to hearing you give a talk tonight, and I hope folks come out at Ithaca College. He will be receiving the Izzy Award for his reporting in Egypt. The event is open to the public, 7:30, Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall, Ithaca College. Congratulations, Sharif.

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The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.