Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

FTR #655
FTR #656
FTR #663
Guns of Novem­ber, Part I
AFA #38 (Fara Man­soor inter­view is in sec­tion 3.2, com­posed of sev­eral audio segments.)

Rove: Clothes make the man

Intro­duc­tion: A com­plex pro­gram, inex­tri­ca­bly linked with pre­ced­ing and suc­ceed­ing broad­casts, this show man­dates a use and under­stand­ing of, the archived mate­r­ial on this web­site. The title expresses the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that the upris­ings sweep­ing the Mid­dle East are the prod­uct of a com­plex covert oper­a­tion under­taken dur­ing the sec­ond Bush admin­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued under Obama.

It is not clear whether Obama fully under­stands what is going on. He may very well be a vic­tim of what John Lof­tus expressed in FTR #706, in which he ana­lyzed the Obama admin­is­tra­tion as the last vic­tim of World War II–deliberately under­mined by the GOP/multinational cor­po­rate fac­tion of the CIA and State Depart­ment.

Cit­ing Obama’s pres­ence in a Chicago polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment that heav­ily over­lapped the milieu tar­geted by the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, the pro­gram high­lights Karl Rove’s pres­ence in that con­cate­na­tion. [Rove has had a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence in Swe­den for the last decade or so, act­ing as an adviser to the Prime Min­is­ter of Sweden.]

Ref­er­enc­ing sev­eral pro­grams recorded in the imme­di­ate after­math of the 2008 elec­tion and before Obama assumed office, the pro­gram reca­pit­u­lates the hypoth­e­sis advanced in the “Bad­jack­et­ing Obama” series. With Karl Rove’s pen­chant for set­ting up poten­tially trou­ble­some indi­vid­u­als or sit­u­a­tions in such a way as to be dis­cred­ited by the press and polit­i­cally destroyed, one must look very care­fully at the pos­si­bil­ity that such a thing is under­way with the “Piggy-Back Coup.” Is Obama being set up to take the fall for hav­ing “lost the Mid­dle East” as Lee Har­vey Oswald was set up to take the fall for the assas­si­na­tion of JFK?

[For the con­ve­nience of the lis­tener, links to the “bad­jack­et­ing” series are pro­vided above.]

The term “Piggy-Back Coup” refers to the direct influ­ence of the suc­cess­ful Tunisian upris­ing on the Egypt­ian revolt, as well as to the sup­po­si­tion that the gen­uinely demo­c­ra­tic nature of the ini­tial events will, ulti­mately, pave the way for the rise of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an Islamic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion allied with the Axis in World War II.

Deeply con­nected to Karl Rove, GOP king­pin Grover Norquist and the Bush fam­ily milieu, the Broth­er­hood is viewed with favor by the transna­tional cor­po­rate com­mu­nity because of its cor­po­rate phi­los­o­phy. The pro­gram advances the the­ory that a Broth­er­hood ascen­sion to power is what is being sought by the ele­ments manip­u­lat­ing “Lee Har­vey Obama” and the Piggy-Back Coup.

In addi­tion to imple­ment­ing “cor­po­ratism” in the Mus­lim and Third Worlds, the Brotherhood’s ascent and tri­umph will, if real­ized, result in the anni­hi­la­tion of Israel,  the ruin of United States and the estab­lish­ment of domin­ion by the Under­ground Reich.

One should not fail to note that the tur­moil in the Mid­dle East stem­ming from the upris­ings is boost­ing the price of oil, which will go through the roof if the sce­nario pro­posed above comes to pass.

The ref­er­ences to the Bay of Pigs and the Octo­ber Sur­prise in the title con­note infor­ma­tion pre­sented in The Guns of Novem­ber, Part I and AFA #38. (Both shows are linked at the top of this page, as well.) The real­ity of both the Bay of Pigs and the Octo­ber Sur­prise dif­fer fun­da­men­tally from the con­ven­tional view of both events.

In The Guns of Novem­ber, Part I, we exam­ined Col. L. Fletcher Prouty’s relat­ing of the delib­er­ate sab­o­tag­ing of the Bay of Pigs inva­sion by CIA ele­ments involved in the oper­a­tion. (The moti­va­tion for so doing is a mat­ter of speculation–perhaps they were try­ing to force Kennedy to openly invade Cuba.) Through Wik­iLeaks dis­clo­sures (aided by Rove and/or the Bush fac­tion of State?) it is on the pub­lic record that the U.S. was aid­ing the Egypt­ian upris­ing and that the assis­tance began when Bush was in office. As a result, the cover of the oper­a­tion was blown.

The Octo­ber Sur­prise refers to what has been reported to be a deal between the Khome­ini forces in Iran and the Reagan/Bush cam­paign to with­hold the hostages taken from the U.S. embassy until after Jimmy Carter’s polit­i­cal humil­i­a­tion and result­ing defeat were assured. Fara Mansoor’s analy­sis has dis­closed that, in fact, the ascen­sion of the Khome­ini forces in Iran was the out­growth of a covert oper­a­tion under­taken in the mid-70’s, much of it dur­ing the tenure of George H.W. Bush at the C.I.A.

Hav­ing learned that the Shah had can­cer in the early ’70’s, the Bush CIA under­took to place the mul­lahs in power in Iran, in order to assure that the Soviet south­ern flank would be cov­ered by dog­matic anti-Communists. It is worth not­ing that, ini­tially, the forces that over­threw the Shah com­prised an amal­gam of dif­fer­ent, pop­ulist ele­ments. Even­tu­ally, the Khome­ini forces con­sol­i­dated their power and eclipsed their polit­i­cal rivals. Will some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pen in Egypt? (Note that the Khome­ini forces were an out­growth of the Devo­tees of Islam, a Shi­ite off­shoot of the Mus­lim Brotherhood!)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: attacks on Tunisian and Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment web­sites by the Anony­mous hacker milieu; the State Department’s revised and “prag­mat­i­cally opti­mistic” reassess­ment of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Brotherhood’s call for the devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons; sym­pa­thy for the Islamists at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity in Cairo (attended by April 6 move­ment mem­ber Wael Ghonim of Google); Google’s rela­tion­ship with the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity; ide­o­log­i­cal affil­i­a­tion between ele­ments at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity in Cairo and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood eco­nomic guru Ibn Khal­dun; links between the “Khal­dunite” ele­ments at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; con­tacts with the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt in 2005; par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Mubarak by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; the role in the Mid­dle East upris­ings of the rise in food and com­mod­ity prices; the prob­a­ble role of the U.S. Insti­tute of Peace in the Piggy-Back Coup; the role in the Piggy-Back Coup of the Mus­lim Brotherhood-dominated Al-Jazeera net­work.

1. It devel­ops that Karl Rove is hold­ing forth in Swe­den, act­ing as an adviser to the Swedish Prime Min­is­ter. Media spec­u­la­tion has cen­tered on the pos­si­bil­ity that Rove may be aid­ing in Assange’s pros­e­cu­tion. Is Rove actu­ally pre­sid­ing over Wik­iLeaks’ oper­a­tions in Swe­den? Is the Wik­iLeaks’ leak­ing of State Depart­ment cables part of a Rove-directed covert operation?

. . . For at least 10 years, Rove has been con­nected to Swedish Prime Min­is­ter Fredrik. More recently, Fredrik, who is known as “the Ronald Rea­gan of Europe,” has con­tracted Rove to help with his 2010 re-election campaign.

Rove was said to have fled to Swe­den dur­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer Alabama Demo­c­ra­tic Gov. Don Siegel­man, who believes his pros­e­cu­tion to have been polit­i­cally motivated.

“Clearly, it appears that [Rove], who claims to be of Swedish descent, feels a kin­ship to Swe­den . . . and he has taken advan­tage of it sev­eral times,” the source added.

Shuler’s source spec­u­lated that Rove could be try­ing to pro­tect the Bush legacy from doc­u­ments that Wik­iLeaks may have. “The very guy who has released the doc­u­ments that dam­age the Bushes the most is also the guy that the Bush’s num­ber one oper­a­tive can con­trol by being the Swedish prime minister’s brain and intel­li­gence and eco­nomic advisor.” . . .

“Rove’s Hand Seen in Julian Assange’s Pros­e­cu­tion, Sources Allege” by David Edwards; The Raw Story; 12/20/2010.

2a. The sub­ti­tle comes from the recent Tunisian coup, that was inspired by Wik­iLeaks’ release of a cable that was crit­i­cal of the regime of Ben Ali.

The man now pres­i­dent, Mohamed Ghan­nouchi was pro­filed in Jan­u­ary 2006 in a secret US cable in 2006, recently released by Wik­ileaks. “A tech­no­crat and econ­o­mist, Ghan­nouchi has served as prime min­is­ter since 1999. Is rumored to have told many he wishes to leave the gov­ern­ment but has not had the oppor­tu­nity. Length of his ser­vice as PM also sug­gests Ben Ali [pres­i­dent until res­ig­na­tion] does not view him as a threat and he is unlikely to be viewed as a qual­i­fied suc­ces­sor. How­ever, aver­age Tunisians gen­er­ally view him with respect and he is well-liked in com­par­i­son to other GOT and RCD [rul­ing party] offi­cials.” Then US ambas­sador William Hud­son said: “Given the fact Ben Ali has a dic­ta­to­r­ial hold, it is hard to believe he’ll vol­un­tar­ily step down.” Even so, “the mere fact an increas­ing num­ber of Tunisians are talk­ing about the end of the Ben Ali era is remarkable.”

Pub­li­ca­tion of Wik­iLeaks sourced pri­vate US com­ments on the cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism of a hated “scle­rotic” regime is said to have helped cre­ate Tunisia’s protest, and gen­er­ated talk by US com­men­ta­tors of a “Wik­ileaks revolution”.

“Tunisia: The Wik­iLeaks Con­nec­tion” by Ian Black; The Guardian; 1/15/2011.

2b. It turns out that the Anony­mous milieu (described in FTR #732) launched attacks against Tunisian gov­ern­ment sites.

Sites belong­ing to the Min­istry of Indus­try and the Tunisian Stock Exchange were amongst seven tar­geted by the Anony­mous group since Monday.

Other sites have been defaced for what the group calls “an out­ra­geous level of cen­sor­ship” in the country. . . .

“Anony­mous Activists Tar­get Tunisian Gov­ern­ment Sites”; BBC News; 1/4/2011.

3a. Ini­tial reports on the coup described a pos­si­ble role played by for­eign­ers with blond hair and blue eyes, some car­ry­ing Swedish and some car­ry­ing Ger­man passports.

. . . Police said they had caught two men with Swedish pass­ports after one of the shoot­ing inci­dents, and state tele­vi­sion quoted a secu­rity source as say­ing four peo­ple car­ry­ing Ger­man pass­ports had been detained in the same incident.

How­ever, the Swedish news agency TT said the men were part of a Swedish group vis­it­ing Tunisia to hunt wild boar who had been attacked by a mob. . . .

“Tunisia Forces Fight Pres­i­den­tial Guards” by Tarek Amara and Chris­t­ian Lowe; yahoo.com; 1/16/2011.

3b. Interestingly–and per­haps significantly–an ear­lier, [now] cached ver­sion of the story had a sig­nif­i­cant detail, which was scrubbed from later ver­sions of the story. In this con­text, it is impor­tant to  remem­ber that there are ongo­ing oper­a­tional links between Swedish and Ger­man neo-Nazis. In FTR #735, we exam­ine the pos­si­bil­ity that the coup will ulti­mately ben­e­fit the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Police said they had caught two men with Swedish pass­ports after one of the shoot­ing inci­dents, and state tele­vi­sion quoted a secu­rity source as say­ing four peo­ple car­ry­ing Ger­man pass­ports had been detained in the same incident.

It showed what it said were the detained for­eign­ers, with blond hair and fair com­plex­ions, being guarded by armed police, and said the arms they were car­ry­ing included auto­matic weapons. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

How­ever, the Swedish news agency TT said the men were part of a Swedish group vis­it­ing Tunisia to hunt wild boar who had been attacked by a mob. . . .

“Tunisia Forces Fight Pres­i­den­tial Guards” by Tarek Amara and Chris­t­ian Lowe; yahoo.com; 1/16/2011.

4a. Con­ser­v­a­tive ana­lyst Robert Spencer noted that the upsurge in demo­c­ra­tic sen­ti­ment fol­low­ing the Tunisian upris­ing might lead to the empow­er­ment of the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

When Tunisian Pres­i­dent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was top­pled from power and fled to Saudi Ara­bia on Fri­day, The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Jen­nifer Rubin hailed this “Jas­mine Rev­o­lu­tion” as a “remark­able event: a pop­u­lar, sec­u­lar revolt in a Mus­lim coun­try” that “poses an oppor­tu­nity and a risk for the U.S.” Mona Elta­hawy, also writ­ing in the Post, explained that “a 29-day pop­u­lar upris­ing against unem­ploy­ment, police bru­tal­ity and the regime’s cor­rup­tion” brought down Ben Ali. But there are numer­ous indi­ca­tions that there were other sources of dis­sat­is­fac­tion in Tunisia with Ben Ali — includ­ing the rel­a­tively sec­u­lar char­ac­ter of the gov­ern­ment. Pro-Sharia Islamic suprema­cist forces are poised to take advantage.

The pop­u­lar per­cep­tion is that Ben Ali was brought down by the will of the peo­ple. The French gov­ern­ment declared that Tunisians, by top­pling Ben Ali, had “expressed their demo­c­ra­tic will.” Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel expressed her sup­port for “real democ­racy” in the North African nation, adding in a mes­sage to offi­cials of the new Tunisian gov­ern­ment: “I appeal to you to use this deep break in Tunisia’s his­tory as a new departure.”

A fac­tory worker in Carthage had sim­i­lar high hopes: “This is like the French Rev­o­lu­tion,” he said enthu­si­as­ti­cally. “It’s the end of an era. I’m hop­ing there is real change. We can’t con­tinue like this.” Polit­i­cal ana­lyst Ahmed Lashin declared: “The Arabs have been repressed for too long. They are eager for change and are on the verge of explosion.”

But what kind of change? What kind of Reign of Ter­ror might come in the wake of this new French Rev­o­lu­tion? Rached Ghan­nouchi, the London-based leader of the banned Tunisian pro-Sharia party, the Tunisian Renais­sance Party (Hizb al-Nahdah), was quick to dub the Tunisian upris­ing an “intifada” and to claim it as a vic­tory for Islam. “The Tunisian intifada,” he exulted, “has suc­ceeded in col­laps­ing the dictatorship.”

Pro-Sharia MPs in Kuwait applauded “the courage of the Tunisian peo­ple,” and Abdel­malek Der­ouk­dal, a leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, hailed the rev­o­lu­tion as a jihad and expressed sol­i­dar­ity with the Tunisians. In Gaza, the jihadist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad were both thrilled at events in Tunisia. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri hailed the vic­tory for democ­racy, and Gaza For­eign Min­is­ter Fathi Ham­mad empha­sized that “we are with the Tunisians in choos­ing their lead­ers, no mat­ter what sac­ri­fices it takes.”

Islamic Jihad praised the Tunisian peo­ple for lib­er­at­ing them­selves “through blood, sac­ri­fices and the expres­sion of free will,” adding omi­nously that the top­pling of Ben Ali was “a mes­sage to Arab and Islamic coun­tries to pay atten­tion to the aspi­ra­tions of their peo­ple that are reject­ing hege­mony and tyranny before it is too late.”

Islamic Jihad held a rally in Gaza City, fea­tur­ing hun­dreds of jihadists wav­ing Tunisian flags fes­tooned with the words “Revenge against tyranny.” Islamic Jihad spokesman Dawud She­hab sounded a drea­rily famil­iar note in accus­ing the Ben Ali regime of main­tain­ing “sus­pi­cious ties” with Israel.

Mean­while, a PLO fac­tion warned Tunisians about “waves of polit­i­cal Islam” that could fol­low Ben Ali’s top­pling, and urged them to “cut the road to polit­i­cal Islam and its mis­lead­ing slo­gans to avoid a repeat of the Gaza Strip expe­ri­ence in Tunisia” — refer­ring to the seizure of power in Gaza by the Islamic suprema­cists of Hamas.

The great unac­knowl­edged truth about Tunisia and the rest of the Islamic world is that Islamic jihadists and pro-Sharia forces, far from being the “tiny minor­ity of extrem­ists” of media myth, actu­ally enjoy broad pop­u­lar sup­port. Any gen­uine demo­c­ra­tic upris­ing is likely to install them in power. That’s why jihadists are hail­ing events in Tunisia, and why all lovers of free­dom should view those events with extreme reserve — for a Sharia gov­ern­ment in Tunisia is unlikely to be any kind of friend to the United States, and if the “Jas­mine Rev­o­lu­tion” does indeed spread and other Arab and Mus­lim dic­ta­tors are top­pled, an already hos­tile anti-American envi­ron­ment could become much, much worse.

The events in Tunisia also show yet again the cry­ing need for real­is­tic analy­sis in Wash­ing­ton of the jihad threat, rather than the fantasy-based analy­sis that pre­vails there now. But that is even less likely than the flow­er­ing of a plu­ral­is­tic, sec­u­lar democ­racy in Tunisia.

“A Jihad in Tunisia” by Robert Spencer; Human Events; 1/18/2011.

4b. The Tunisian Islamist leader has returned from exile in the wake of the WikiLeaks/Jasmine Revolution.

The leader of a banned Tunisian Islamist move­ment said on Sat­ur­day he would return in the next few days from exile in Lon­don after Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who ran the coun­try for 23 years, was forced out.
Tunisian author­i­ties out­lawed the Ennahda, or Renais­sance, move­ment in the early 1990s after accus­ing it of a vio­lent plot to over­throw sec­u­lar rule. But the move­ment said it is non-violent and the vic­tim of gov­ern­ment repres­sion.
“I am going to go back very soon,” Rached Ghan­nouchi told Reuters in an tele­phone inter­view. “I haven’t decided when yet, but pos­si­bly in the days to come.” . . .

. . . Tunisia has had a strong sec­u­lar tra­di­tion since its inde­pen­dence from France in 1956 and Islamist politi­cians have a much lower pro­file than in nearby coun­tries such as Alge­ria or Egypt.
There is some back­ing for mod­er­ate Islamist groups in Tunisia, but it is not clear how much because sup­port­ers hid their sym­pa­thies to avoid arrest. . . .

“Tunisia Islamist Leader to Return from Exile” [Reuters]; msnbc.com; 1/16/2011.

4c. Despite reas­sur­ing state­ments con­cern­ing Tunisia’s sec­u­lar tra­di­tion, many  observers feel that the Islamists will assume power there, eventually.

There was also a loom­ing wild card: the revival of the banned Islamist party. The gov­ern­ment said that for now it would con­tinue to block the return of the party’s exiled founder, while he repeated that his party espouses a mod­er­ate pluralism.

Many Tunisians said they were wait­ing — some hope­fully, some anx­iously — to see what kind of rebirth the once-flourishing but long-outlawed Islamist polit­i­cal party might have. In a radio inter­view, Prime Min­is­ter Ghan­nouchi said that the exiled leader, Rached Ghan­nouchi — no rela­tion — would be banned from the coun­try until the gov­ern­ment passed an amnesty law lift­ing a con­vic­tion he was given in absen­tia under the Ben Ali government.

The exiled leader, mean­while, made clear that his party envi­sioned a soci­ety far more lib­eral and open than Iran or Saudi Ara­bia. In an inter­view with The Finan­cial Times, Rached Ghan­nouchi said his party had signed a shared state­ment of prin­ci­ples with the other Tunisian oppo­si­tion groups that included free­dom of expres­sion, free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and women’s rights.

It remained unclear how much sup­port he com­mands in the coun­try. Some argued that Tunisian soci­ety today was too res­olutely sec­u­lar for the Islamists to find much sup­port, after two decades of efforts by Mr. Ben Ali’s vast secret police to elim­i­nate the party and crip­ple it.

“They have peo­ple who are 50 years old or 60 years old, but they don’t have any­body under 40 because of the repres­sion,” said Ahmed Bouazzi, an exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber of the largest oppo­si­tion group, the Pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­tic Party.

Oth­ers, how­ever, argued that the reli­gious con­vic­tions of Tunisians would assure the Islamic par­ties a strong base of sup­port, espe­cially away from the more cos­mopoli­tan coasts. “Look, they will be eas­ily the most pop­u­lar party,” said one ana­lyst who opposes the Islamists, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymity to avoid anger­ing fam­ily and friends. “No one can say any­thing against any­thing that is Islamic.” . . .

“More Offi­cials Quit in Tunisia Amid Protests” by David D. Kirk­patrick and Kareem Fahim; The New York Times; 1/19/2011.

4d. Upon his return, Rached Gan­nouchi, the Tunisian Islamist leader, was greeted by enthu­si­as­tic throngs, demon­strat­ing the party’s popularity.

The recep­tion for Sheikh Rachid Ghan­nouchi, leader of the Ennahda party, at Tunis air­port was the biggest show­ing by the Islamists in two decades, dur­ing which thou­sands of them were jailed or exiled by pres­i­dent Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Ghan­nouchi was exiled in 1989 by Ben Ali, who was top­pled on Jan­u­ary 14 by pop­u­lar protests that have sent tremors through an Arab world where sim­i­larly auto­cratic lead­ers have long sought to sup­press Islamist groups.

Pro­test­ers in Egypt demand­ing an end to Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule have been inspired by the exam­ple of Tunisia. Egypt’s main oppo­si­tion group is also Islamist, but played no part in orga­niz­ing the protests there.

Ennahda is expected to con­test future leg­isla­tive but not pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, dates for which have yet to be set.

The Islamists were Tunisia’s strongest oppo­si­tion force at the time Ben Ali cracked down on them in 1989 but are thought not to have played a lead­ing role in the pop­u­lar revolt.

But at Tunis air­port on Sun­day, they were out in force. . . .

“Tunisian Islamists Show Strength at Chief’s Return” By Lin Nouei­hed and Tom Perry [Reuters]; Yahoo News; 1/30/2011.

5a. A Wik­iLeaks leak indi­cated that ele­ments of the State Depart­ment under George W. Bush were tak­ing note of sen­ti­ment for remov­ing Mubarak. This may have actu­ally led to a slow-motion desta­bi­liza­tion of Mubarak’s regime.

For the last three years, the US gov­ern­ment secretly pro­vided aid to the lead­ers behind this week’s social upris­ing in Egypt aimed to top­ple the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak, accord­ing to a leaked diplo­matic cable.

One of the young Egypt­ian lead­ers who attended a sum­mit for activists in New York with the help of the US embassy in Cairo was detained when he returned to Egypt, the memo released by Wik­ileaks said.

The Daily Tele­graph reported Fri­day that it and the secrets out­let were both hid­ing the iden­tity of this young Egypt­ian leader. He was arrested in con­nec­tion with this week’s demonstrations.

The leaked doc­u­ment indi­cates that the US gov­ern­ment was pub­licly sup­port­ing Mubarak’s gov­ern­ment while pri­vately back­ing oppo­si­tion groups. . . .

“US Secretly Backed Egypt­ian Protest Lead­ers” by Nathan Diebenow; The Raw Story; 1/28/2011.

5b. More detail on the U.S. back­ing of the pro­test­ers, from the Tele­graph arti­cle cited in the above story:

The Amer­i­can Embassy in Cairo helped a young dis­si­dent attend a US-sponsored sum­mit for activists in New York, while work­ing to keep his iden­tity secret from Egypt­ian state police.

On his return to Cairo in Decem­ber 2008, the activist told US diplo­mats that an alliance of oppo­si­tion groups had drawn up a plan to over­throw Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak and install a demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment in 2011.

He has already been arrested by Egypt­ian secu­rity in con­nec­tion with the demon­stra­tions and his iden­tity is being pro­tected by The Daily Tele­graph.

The cri­sis in Egypt fol­lows the top­pling of Tunisian pres­i­dent Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the coun­try after wide­spread protests forced him from office.  . . .

“Egypt Protests: America’s Secret Back­ing for Rebel Lead­ers Behind Upris­ing” By Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swin­ford; Daily Tele­graph; 1/28/2011.

5c. Note, again, that the dis­si­dent was con­fer­ring with U.S. Ambas­sador Mar­garet Scobey in Decem­ber of 2008, while Bush was still in office.

The United States has been covertly prepar­ing a regime change in Egypt for the last two years secretly assist­ing the lead­ers who were prepar­ing a blue­print to bring rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment to Egypt now emerged as lead­ers or orga­niz­ers of the mass upris­ing that the world is wit­ness­ing today.

The US State Depart­ment offi­cials, US Con­gress­men and their imme­di­ate staff were engaged in hav­ing dis­cus­sions with the Egypt­ian rebel lead­ers on US soil. The US embassy in Cairo was instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing a sum­mit in New York in 2008 to meet one of the young Egypt­ian activists. On his return to Cairo this activist was detained by the Egypt­ian intel­li­gence unit.

All these and more are now revealed in a clas­si­fied diplo­matic cable sent from the Amer­i­can embassy in Cairo to Wash­ing­ton, dated 30 Decem­ber 2008 dis­closed by Wik­iLeaks which the Asian Tri­bune will place before its readers.

This young Egypt­ian activist was arrested and detained in this week’s upris­ing in Cairo, it has been revealed.

The name of this young Egypt­ian leader is with­held for obvi­ous rea­sons. The Wik­iLeaks released Cairo US embassy cable is very clear that the United States gov­ern­ment was overtly sup­port­ing the Mubarak regime, while covertly endeav­or­ing to under­mine it and replace it with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive government.

Sens­ing some erup­tion in the future against the auto­cratic Mubarak regime and to safe­guard U.S. inter­ests in the region, the U.S. was forced, in the inter­est of its national secu­rity, to find an alter­na­tive, this diplo­matic cable very clearly depicts the grand design of the super power.

A plan con­cocted by the Egypt­ian dis­si­dent groups to remove Hosni Mubarak from power before the sched­uled Sep­tem­ber 2011 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and replace his rule with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment was relayed to Wash­ing­ton through the embassy in Cairo. . . .

“US covertly Aided Egypt­ian Protest Lead­ers for Regime Change, Secret Decem­ber 2008 Wik­iLeaks Cable Reveals” by Daya Gam­age; The Asian Tri­bune; 1/30/2011.

5d. The Anony­mous group under­took to attack Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment sites.

The group Anony­mous, known for stag­ing web attacks on Pay­Pal and Mas­ter­Card in sup­port of Wik­ileaks, has called for vol­un­teers to stage a dis­trib­uted denial of ser­vice (DDoS) attack against web sites run by the Egypt­ian government.

The group’s Face­book page, called “Oper­a­tion Egypt” car­ries mes­sages about the Egypt­ian protests, and also a pic­ture of a recruit­ing poster with an IRC chan­nel as well as a “care pack­age” to down­load. The rest of the page has news and updates from Egypt­ian and for­eign sources. . . .

“Anony­mous Asks for DDOS Attacks on Key Egypt­ian Sites” by Jesse Emspak; Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times; 1/26/2011.

5e. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has indeed been posi­tion­ing itself to par­tic­i­pate in the polit­i­cal process.

. . . ElBa­radei, the for­mer head of the U.N. nuclear watch­dog agency, has gained a fol­low­ing among young sec­u­lar democ­racy activists with his grass­roots orga­niz­ing. But some demon­stra­tors dis­miss him as an expa­tri­ate long removed from Egypt’s problems.

“Many peo­ple feel he loves prizes and trav­el­ing abroad,” said Muham­mad Munir, 27. “He’s not really one of the people.”

The out­lawed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which wants to estab­lish an Islamist state in Egypt, has made some state­ments that it was will­ing to let ElBa­radei act as point man for the move­ment. But it also appeared to be mov­ing for a more promi­nent role after lying low when the protests first erupted.

On Sun­day evening, the pres­ence of overtly pious Mus­lims in the square was con­spic­u­ous, sug­gest­ing a sig­nif­i­cant Broth­er­hood rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Hun­dreds per­formed the sun­set prayers. Veiled women prayed sep­a­rately.

A senior Broth­er­hood leader, Essam el-Erian, told The Asso­ci­ated Press he was head­ing to Tahrir Square to meet with other oppo­si­tion lead­ers. El-Erian told an Egypt­ian TV sta­tion that the Broth­er­hood is ready to con­tact the army for a dia­logue, call­ing the mil­i­tary “the pro­tec­tor of the nation.“

Clin­ton sug­gested there were U.S. con­cerns over the pos­si­bil­ity of the Broth­er­hood seiz­ing direc­tion of the move­ment. She warned against a takeover resem­bling the one in Iran, with a “small group that doesn’t rep­re­sent the full diver­sity of Egypt­ian soci­ety” seiz­ing con­trol and impos­ing its ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs. . . .

. . . Egypt­ian secu­rity offi­cials said armed men fired at guards in overnight bat­tles that lasted hours at the four pris­ons — includ­ing one north­west of Cairo that held hun­dreds of mil­i­tants. The pris­on­ers escaped after start­ing fires and clash­ing with guards.

Those who fled included 34 mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, whose lawyer, Abdel-Monaem Abdel-Maqsoud, told the AP they were among scores rounded up by author­i­ties ahead of Friday’s large demon­stra­tions. The escapees included at least seven senior mem­bers of the group.

State TV later reported that 2,000 escaped inmates were recaptured. . . .

“Egypt­ian Reform Leader Calls on Mubarak to Resign” by Hamza Hen­dawi and Mag­gie Michael [AP]; Seat­tle Times; 1/30/2011.

5e. The Broth­er­hood called for the dis­so­lu­tion of the Egypt­ian parliament.

Egypt’s largest oppo­si­tion move­ment demanded Wednes­day that Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubark dis­solve the newly elected par­lia­ment and hold new elec­tions, in a move that appeared to be an attempt to cap­i­tal­ize on the hopes for change sparked by Tunisia’s pop­u­lar uprising.

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood also called for an end to Egypt’s 30-year-old emer­gency law that bans polit­i­cal ral­lies, and demanded sweep­ing con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments to allow free and fair pres­i­den­tial elections.

The Brotherhood’s list of griev­ances is not new, but the demands appeared to be aimed at seiz­ing on the momen­tum trig­gered by the revolt in Tunisia that top­pled the country’s author­i­tar­ian pres­i­dent and gal­va­nized oppo­si­tion move­ments through­out the Arab world.

“The events in Tunisia are a cor­ner­stone for the rest of the peo­ple of the Arab and Islamic world,” the Broth­er­hood said in a state­ment posted on its web­site. “It is a mes­sage to all the despotic lead­ers and the cor­rupt regimes that they are not safe and they are liv­ing on the tip of a vol­cano of people’s anger and God’s wrath.” . . .

“Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: Dis­solve Par­lia­ment” [AP]; The Jerusalem Post; 1/19/2011.

5f. Mohamed ElBa­radei emerged as a con­sen­sus leader, with the sup­port of the Brotherhood.

Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Essam el-Eryan said today that Egypt­ian oppo­si­tion groups have agreed to back for­mer IAEA head Mohamed ElBa­radei to nego­ti­ate with the gov­ern­ment, Al Jazeera reports:

Egypt’s oppo­si­tion groups have agreed to sup­port oppo­si­tion fig­ure Mohamed ElBa­radei to nego­ti­ate with the gov­ern­ment, a lead­ing mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood said on Sunday.

“Polit­i­cal groups sup­port ElBa­radei to nego­ti­ate with the regime,” Essam el-Eryan told Al Jazeera.

This move by Egypt­ian oppo­si­tion groups poten­tially offers a peace­ful path out of the cri­sis not only for the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, but also for the United States gov­ern­ment, which is find­ing itself the object of increas­ingly bit­ter crit­i­cism from Egyp­tians who back the pro­test­ers’ call for Mubarak to step down and see the pol­icy of the United States of back­ing Mubarak as a key obsta­cle to the real­iza­tion of their aspi­ra­tions for free and fair elec­tions. Fail­ure to take advan­tage of this oppor­tu­nity could lead to a bloody show­down in the streets — even worse than what we have seen already — for which the US would bear sig­nif­i­cant responsibility. . . .

“ElBa­radei, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Offer Polit­i­cal Path Out of Egypt­ian Con­fronta­tion” by Robert Naiman; Truthout; 1/30/2011.

5g. The Obama administration’s State Depart­ment is posi­tion­ing the U.S. to coop­er­ate with the Broth­er­hood. Note that this fol­lows directly on the contacts/cooperation afforded Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood by the Egypt­ian embassy under Bush (after 2005). This is the same embassy that was work­ing with the unnamed dis­si­dent (Wael Ghonim?) in Decem­ber of 2008.

As it braces for the like­li­hood of a new ruler in Egypt, the U.S. gov­ern­ment is rapidly reassess­ing its ten­u­ous rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an oppo­si­tion move­ment whose fun­da­men­tal­ist ide­ol­ogy has long been a source of dis­trust in Washington.

Although the group has played a sec­ondary role in the swelling protests that are threat­en­ing to top­ple Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak, U.S. offi­cials have acknowl­edged the polit­i­cal real­ity that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is poised to assume at least a share of power should Egypt hold free and fair elec­tions in the com­ing months.

On Mon­day, in what ana­lysts said was a clear ref­er­ence to the Broth­er­hood, the White House said a new gov­ern­ment in Egypt should “include a whole host of impor­tant non-secular actors.”

The move drew the skep­ti­cism of some U.S. offi­cials who have argued that the White House should embrace oppo­si­tion groups that are more likely to sup­port a demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment in Egypt, rather than one ded­i­cated to the estab­lish­ment of reli­gious law.

It also marked a change from pre­vi­ous days, when Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton and other offi­cials expressed con­cern that the upris­ing in Egypt could shift power to an Islamist gov­ern­ment much like the one in Iran, where ayatollah-led fac­tions elbowed aside other groups to seize con­trol of the coun­try in 1979.

Offi­cially, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has long shunned the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood because of doubts about its stated com­mit­ment to non-violence and demo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ples. For years, how­ever, U.S. offi­cials have engaged in back-channel talks with Egypt­ian mem­bers of the move­ment in recog­ni­tion of its sub­stan­tial pop­u­lar support.

The unof­fi­cial con­tacts have taken place spo­rad­i­cally since the 1990s but became more fre­quent after mem­bers of the Broth­er­hood were elected to the Egypt­ian Par­lia­ment in 2005. After­ward, U.S. diplo­mats and law­mak­ers held sev­eral meet­ings with Broth­er­hood lead­ers, includ­ing at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. . . .

“U.S. Reex­am­in­ing Its Rela­tion­ship with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Oppo­si­tion Group” by Craig Whit­lock; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 2/3/2011.

6. A key role in the Egypt­ian coup was played by Google Mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive Wael Ghonim. (In the broad­cast, we spec­u­lated about Ghonim being the unnamed April 6 move­ment activist that met with the U.S. embassy in Decem­ber 2008. Sub­se­quent articles–rightly or wrongly–have placed his involve­ment with the move­ment later than that.) Face­book and Google have received credit for help­ing to pro­pel the uprising.

In that con­text, it is worth not­ing that Google (like Face­book) has con­nec­tions with the U.S. intel­li­gence community.

The invest­ment arms of the CIA and Google are both back­ing a com­pany that mon­i­tors the web in real time — and says it uses that infor­ma­tion to pre­dict the future.

The com­pany is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thou­sands of web­sites, blogs and Twit­ter accounts to find the rela­tion­ships between peo­ple, orga­ni­za­tions, actions and inci­dents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the com­pany says its tem­po­ral ana­lyt­ics engine “goes beyond search” by “look­ing at the ‘invis­i­ble links’ between doc­u­ments that talk about the same, or related, enti­ties and events.”

The idea is to fig­ure out for each inci­dent who was involved, where it hap­pened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chat­ter, show­ing online “momen­tum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actu­ally pre­dict the curve, in many cases,” says com­pany CEO Christo­pher Ahlberg, a for­mer Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in com­puter science.

Which nat­u­rally makes the 16-person Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, firm attrac­tive to Google Ven­tures, the search giant’s invest­ment divi­sion, and to In-Q-Tel, which han­dles sim­i­lar duties for the CIA and the wider intel­li­gence community.

It’s not the very first time Google has done busi­ness with America’s spy agen­cies. Long before it report­edly enlisted the help of the National Secu­rity Agency to secure its net­works, Google sold equip­ment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the map­ping firm Key­hole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the back­bone for Google Earth. . . .

“Exclu­sive: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Mon­i­tor­ing” by Noah Schacht­man; Wired.com; 7/28/2010.

7. Ghonim has been widely pub­li­cized as a grad­u­ate of Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity in Cairo. The broad­cast relates part of an inter­view with Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a pro­fes­sor at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity who is very pro-Islamist and pro-Brotherhood. Inter­est­ingly and sig­nif­i­cantly, Ibrahim is the founder of the Ibn Khal­dun Cen­ter for Devel­op­ment Stud­ies, named after a 14th cen­tury Islamic advo­cate of free mar­kets. Khal­dun is highly regarded by the Broth­er­hood and that atti­tude has led the cor­po­rate busi­ness com­mu­nity to sup­port the Brotherhood.

Note that no less an author­ity than the World Bank views Ibn Khaldun—revered by the Brotherhood—as “the first advo­cate of privatization”!

In the days of the caliphate, Islam devel­oped the most sophis­ti­cated mon­e­tary sys­tem the world had yet known. Today, some econ­o­mists cite Islamic bank­ing as fur­ther evi­dence of an intrin­sic Islamic prag­ma­tism. Though still guided by a Qur’anic ban on riba, or inter­est, Islamic bank­ing has adapted to the needs of a boom­ing oil region for liq­uid­ity. In recent years, some 500 Islamic banks and invest­ment firms hold­ing $2 tril­lion in assets have emerged in the Gulf States, with more in Islamic com­mu­ni­ties of the West. British Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer Gor­don Brown wants to make Lon­don a global cen­ter for Islamic finance—and elic­its no howl of protest from fun­da­men­tal­ists. How Islamists might run a cen­tral bank is more prob­lem­atic: schol­ars say they would manip­u­late cur­rency reserves, not inter­est rates. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing supply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting taxes raises pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. [Empha­sis added.] His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in power ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over commerce.

“Islam in Office” by Stephen Glain; Newsweek; 7/3–10/2006.

8. Excerpts from the inter­view with Saad Eddin Ibrahim indi­cate his sup­port for Islamists. In fact, Gamal Al-Banna, the brother of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood founder Has­san Al-Banna is on the board of direc­tors of the Ibn Khal­dun Cen­ter for Devel­op­ment Studies!

Saad Eddin Ibrahim: This is one of the projects we are work­ing on in the Ibn
Khal­dun Cen­ter. On our Board of Trustees is Gamal al-Banna – the only sur­viv­ing
brother of Has­san al-Banna, the founder of the Mus­lim Broth­ers. He is in his mid
80s but lucid. . . .

Alan John­son: You have argued for an alliance of sorts between democ­rats and
‘mod­er­ate’ Islamists. In August 2006 you wrote that ‘Main­stream Islamists with
broad sup­port devel­oped civic dis­po­si­tions and ser­vices to pro­vide are the most
likely actors in build­ing a new Mid­dle East.’ And in Decem­ber 2006 you com­plained
about an ‘unjus­ti­fied fear of mod­ern Islamists’ and called for a pol­icy of dia­logue and
inclu­sion, say­ing ‘Hamas, Hezbol­lah, Mus­lim Broth­ers – these peo­ple you can­not
get rid of; you have to deal with them … the name of the game is inclu­sion.’ You deny
that these organ­i­sa­tions are inim­i­cal to democ­racy, point­ing out that Islamists have
never come to power via elec­tions and then reneged on democ­racy. Warn­ing that
‘the Islamist scare is prop­a­gated and mar­keted by auto­cratic regimes to intim­i­date
the mid­dle class and the West, to ward off any seri­ous demo­c­ra­tic reforms,’ you
have urged a pos­i­tive response to Hamas and Hezbollah’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in elec­tions.
While you warn that ‘no sober ana­lyst would con­sider this a final com­mit­ment by
Islamists to democ­racy,’ you believe ‘the process of trans­form­ing them into Mus­lim
democ­rats is clearly under way.’ Now, these views have raised some eye­brows. Can
you set out your thinking? . . .

“A Pol­i­tics of Inclusion:An Inter­view with Saad Eddin Ibrahim”; Dis­sent Mag­a­zine; Spring/2007.

9. Although Wik­iLeaks helped trig­ger the upris­ings in Egypt and Tunisia, it was Al Jazeera that drove the Egypt­ian upris­ing. Sadly, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood appears to be tak­ing over the Al Jazeera net­work.

The Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Daily Report (free sub­scrip­tion required) has an inter­est­ing look at the grow­ing Islamist agenda of the al Jazeera TV sta­tion, and the roots of the shift in the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

It is an impor­tant obser­va­tion since so much of the Arab world-as well as the West­ern media-look to the sta­tion to por­tray and inter­pret events, par­tic­u­larly the Hamas-Israeli conflict.

It is easy to for­get (and shock­ingly sel­dom reported) that Hamas is an organic part of the global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, accord­ing to arti­cle 2 of its own char­ter. So that the Ikhwan would seek to con­trol the main medium for the out­side world to inter­pret the con­flict is not at all unusual.

The report looks at Wadah Khan­far (aka Wad­dah Khan­far), the station’s Gen­eral Man­ager, as the dri­ving force behind al Jazeera’s move toward embrac­ing the Islamist agent, while mar­gin­al­iz­ing other voices in the sta­tion that once had a sig­nif­i­cant role.

In Octo­ber 2006, one of Al Jazeera’s own cor­re­spon­dents stated that Mr. Khan­far had a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood back­ground and asked him about it directly, receiv­ing a non-denial and eva­sive reply:

Mr. Wad­dah, you have and Islamic back­ground, specif­i­cally Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, don’t you think that this is con­flict­ing with your posi­tion as a head of the biggest Arab media orga­ni­za­tion now? In fact, I do not clas­sify myself as belong­ing to a cer­tain polit­i­cal ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment, this is firstly an impor­tant issue which is very .. (inter­rupt­ing) ..Or you were belong­ing .. I think that firstly I belong to this Nation includ­ing its col­lec­tive legacy and mind, and that this some­thing I value and am keen on it, but I tell you clearly and frankly, Aljazeera taught us always that our affil­i­a­tion to Aljazeera– as an admin­is­tra­tion or press– is an affil­i­a­tion to an insti­tu­tion with deep-rooted rules and with a clear iden­tity based pri­mar­ily on pro­fi­ciency and respect­ing the opin­ion and the other opin­ion, and it isn’t absolutely based on dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between peo­ple on ide­o­log­i­cal, intel­lec­tual or party bases. Inter­est­ingly, it was the Nation Mag­a­zine arti­cle from 2007 that first reported on the grow­ing Islamist agenda of the TV station.

Whether it’s report­ing the Hamas per­spec­tive from the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries with­out men­tion of the Pales­tin­ian Authority’s ver­sion of events, or the fawn­ing depic­tion else­where of Islamist par­ties and mili­tias as the grass­roots reflec­tion of Arab sen­ti­ment, Al Jazeera has moved away from its ide­o­log­i­cally diverse ori­gins to a more populist/Islamist approach. After the March 2003 US inva­sion of Iraq, Al Jazeera replaced its long­time sec­u­lar bureau chief in Bagh­dad, Faisal Yasiri, with Wadah Khan­far, who had reported from Afghanistan after the Amer­i­can inva­sion in 2001 and then Kurdish-controlled ter­ri­tory as the war with Iraq was launched in 2003. Shortly there­after, the sec­u­lar head of Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem Ali, was ousted and replaced by Khan­far, whom nine cur­rent and for­mer employ­ees of the sta­tion inter­viewed for this arti­cle char­ac­ter­ize as an Islamist. It was around this time that Jazeera’s Iraq bureau “became a plat­form for [Sunni] extrem­ists,” says Shaker Hamid, a sec­u­lar Jazeera cor­re­spon­dent in Bagh­dad from 1997 to 2000, who left to work at another Arab satel­lite sta­tion after get­ting what he says was a bet­ter offer. “I can’t say that Jazeera’s rhetoric is com­pletely against Shi­ites,” Hamid says. “The Amer­i­cans intro­duced this, but the media should not make it worse, and Jazeera did.”

I am all for free­dom of expres­sion and the rights of oth­ers to get their mes­sage out. But I am also in favor of full dis­clo­sure of own­er­ship and inter­ests. Al-Jazeera is los­ing its right to claim to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent voices, because the Islamist agenda has made it increas­ingly dif­fi­cult for any other voices to be heard.

“The Islamist (MB) Takeover of Al Jazeera?” by Dou­glas Far­rah; www.douglasfarah.com; 1/16/2009.

9b. The pro­gram presents an update on the Brotherhood’s takeover of Al Jazeera:

Could Qatar and Al Jazeera’s satel­lite chan­nel located there be secretly manip­u­lated by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood? This is a ques­tion fre­quently asked by Arab media try­ing to puz­zle out the high pro­file adopted by the ruler of the tiny desert coun­try and the nation­al­is­tic and rad­i­cal Islamic con­tent of the chan­nel he owns. The Broth­er­hood exerted a pro­found influ­ence on the con­ser­v­a­tive Beduin soci­ety of Qatar, which num­bered less than 100,000 peo­ple in the 1950s. In a paper he wrote in 2007, Abdal­lah Alne­fissi, a well-known Kuwaiti philoso­pher, explains that the then ruler of Qatar, Ali Ben Abdul­lah Al-Thani, was so impressed by their piety and moral­ity that he gave them his trust and let them carry out a wide range of reli­gious and cul­tural activ­i­ties. The creed that the Broth­er­hood was teach­ing was that of its founder, Has­san al-Banna, and his mas­ter the­olo­gian, Sayed Qutb.

Their rad­i­cal Islamic move­ment was cre­ated in 1928 in Egypt but saw itself as endowed with a mis­sion to bring enlight­en­ment to the whole world and rein­state the caliphate — a Mus­lim empire ruled by Shari’a, Islamic law. As a first step the move­ment tar­geted Islamic nations but intended to spread to the rest of the world. Indeed, branches were set up in most Arab coun­tries in the early 1940s. . . .

The mete­oric rise of the net­work and its increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity have led many polit­i­cal and media com­men­ta­tors in the Arab world to won­der exactly who or what was behind what appears to be its main pur­pose: encour­ag­ing oppo­si­tion and pro­mot­ing incite­ment against Arab regimes, expos­ing the cor­rup­tion of their lead­ers and their entourage, while hold­ing to an extreme Arab nation­al­ist atti­tude against the US and Israel and extolling the val­ues of con­ser­v­a­tive — and some­times extrem­ist — Islam. It did not take long for one name to emerge: the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. THIS HYPOTHESIS is sup­ported by a num­ber of facts. The director-general of the net­work, Wadah Khan­far, was a mem­ber of the orga­ni­za­tion in Jor­dan, where he was arrested. Today he is one of the clos­est advis­ers of the emir. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is also a mem­ber of the inner cir­cle of the emir and is known to work closely with Khanfar.

Both sup­port Hamas. Arab researchers have suc­ceeded in uncov­er­ing a num­ber of other Broth­ers work­ing for the net­work, but it is sur­mised that there are many more. The gen­eral con­sen­sus is that Qaradawi is the vis­i­ble tip of the ice­berg. In an arti­cle pub­lished in 2003 in the London-based Ara­bic daily Asharq al-Awsat, Maa­mun Fendi, a well-known Egypt­ian lib­eral thinker today liv­ing in the US, wrote that some 50 per­cent of the network’s per­son­nel belong to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. He added that their influ­ence in Qatar was ris­ing both in the net­work and among gov­ern­ment cir­cles. Accord­ing to him, the Broth­er­hood had intended to hold its world sum­mit in Qatar in 2003 but had to scut­tle its plan when it became known. . . .

“Al-Jazeera and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood”; Mil­i­tant Islam Mon­i­tor; 6/26/2009.

10. It appears that the “Piggy-Back Coup” is an out­growth of an ini­tia­tive taken dur­ing Bush’s sec­ond term. The United States Insti­tute of Peace under­took its “Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive” in the sec­ond half of the last decade, osten­si­bly pro­mot­ing “mod­er­ate”, “peace­ful”, “demo­c­ra­tic” Mus­lim ele­ments. In fact, they were pro­mot­ing the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

The United States Insti­tute of Peace aka the Ummah Shari’a Islamist Prop­a­ga­tion Insti­tute, is work­ing together with rad­i­cal Islamists pro­mot­ing fun­da­men­tal­ism under the guise of their new ‘Mus­lim World Initiative’.The USIP’s new Saudi backed Islamist affil­i­ates include CAIR, MPAC, ISNA and the CSID. Among the board mem­bers are CAIR’s Nihad Awad, Ahmed Younes of MPAC, and the CSID’s Rad­wan Mas­moudi, as well as Imam Has­san Qazwini of the Islamic Cen­ter of Amer­ica and Demo­c­ra­tic Sen­a­tor Larry Shaw a Mus­lim who is also a board mem­ber of CAIR. http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1972&theType=NR

After infil­i­trat­ing the USIP, Abdel­salem Mah­grouhi, the head of the Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive authored a USIP brief­ing coyly enti­tled: “What do Islamists really want? ‘An Insid­ers dis­cus­sion with Islamist lead­ers’, in which he made the absurd claim that there were mod­er­ate Islamists:

An impor­tant dis­tinc­tion can be drawn between mod­er­ate and rad­i­cal Islamists. Mod­er­ate refers to polit­i­cal par­ties and move­ments that use Islamist prin­ci­ples, Islamic law, and/or Islamic ref­er­ents to par­tic­i­pate peace­fully in the polit­i­cal process. Rad­i­cal, extrem­ist, Wah­habists, Salafists, or Jihadists are terms for those who eschew non­vi­o­lence in the name of their Islamic beliefs....The most effec­tive strat­egy to engage Islamists on nor­ma­tive demo­c­ra­tic issues is to refer to Islam’s pro­gres­sive and human­is­tic tra­di­tions, not to West­ern lib­eral democracy.

MIM: In the Islam­o­facist weltaan­schau­ung of Maghroui and the USIP’s Mus­lim World Initiative:

Mod­er­ate Islamists sup­port Hamas’ right to resist occu­pa­tion and con­sider its gov­ern­ment demo­c­ra­tic and legitimate.

Mod­er­ate Islamists there­fore see no con­tra­dic­tion between Hamas being in charge of the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity and attack­ing Israel.

http://www.usip.org/pubs/usipeace_briefings/2006/0522_islamists.html (see com­plete brief­ing below)

The inclu­sion of Saudi funded ter­ror­ist tied groups under the aegis of the USIP, and the premise that there are rad­i­cal and mod­er­ate ter­ror­ists, indi­cates that The United States Insti­tute of Peace has mor­phed into the Ummah Shar’ia Islamist Prop­a­ga­tion Insti­tute. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is now fund­ing the spread of rad­i­cal Islam. The USIP’s Islamist lean­ings are noth­ing new, put the new addi­tion of Saudi funded rad­i­cal Islamist organ­i­sa­tions with doc­u­mented ter­ror­ist ties, demands that the pub­lic con­tact their elected offi­cials and demand that they reassess and cut their gov­ern­ment fund­ing and polit­i­cal sup­port to the USIP. . . .

“The United States Insti­tute of Peace Pro­motes Rad­i­cal Islam with Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive and Tax Payer Fund­ing”; Mil­i­tant Islam Mon­i­tor; 6/5/2006.

11. A major fac­tor in pro­pelling the unrest in Egypt and else­where is the dra­matic rise in the price of food and energy stem­ming from the Wall Street col­lapse of 2008. With equi­ties prov­ing less attrac­tive, vast amounts of cap­i­tal went into com­mod­ity spec­u­la­tion, dra­mat­i­cally esca­lat­ing the cost of essentials.

This is an upstairs/downstairs story that takes us from the peak of a West­ern moun­tain­top for the wealthy to spread­ing mass despair in the val­leys of the Third World poor.

It is about how the solu­tions for the world finan­cial cri­sis that the Ceos and Big pols are mas­sag­ing in a posh con­fer­ence cen­ter in snowy Davos Switzer­land have turned into a global eco­nomic cat­a­stro­phe in the streets of Cairo, the cur­rent ground zero of a cer­tain to spread wave of inter­na­tional unrest.

Yes, the tens of thou­sands in the streets demand­ing the ouster of the cruel Mubarek regime are there now press­ing for their right to make a polit­i­cal choice but they are being dri­ven by an eco­nomic dis­as­ter that has sent unem­ploy­ment sky­rock­et­ing and food prices climbing.

Peo­ple are out in the streets not just to meet but by their need to eat.

As Nouriel Roubini who was among the first to pre­dict the finan­cial cri­sis while oth­ers were pooh-poohing him as “Dr Doom” says don’t just look at the crowds in Cairo but what is moti­vat­ing them now, after years of silence and repression.

He says that the dra­matic rise in energy and food prices has become a major global threat and a lead­ing fac­tor that has gone largely unre­ported in the cov­er­age of events in Egypt.

“What has hap­pened in Tunisia, is hap­pen­ing right now in Egypt, but also riots in Morocco, Alge­ria and Pak­istan, are related not only to high unem­ploy­ment rates and to income and wealth inequal­ity, but also to this very sharp rise in food and com­mod­ity prices,” Roubini said.

Prices in Egypt are up 17% because of a world­wide surge in com­mod­ity prices that has many fac­tors but spec­u­la­tion on Wall Street and big banks is a key one.

As IPS reported, “Wall Street invest­ment firms and banks, along with their kin in Lon­don and Europe, were respon­si­ble for the tech­nol­ogy dot-com bub­ble, the stock mar­ket bub­ble, and the recent U.S. and UK hous­ing bubbles.They extracted enor­mous prof­its and their bonuses before the inevitable col­lapse of each.”

Now they’ve turned to basic com­modi­ties. The result? At a time when there has been no sig­nif­i­cant change in the global food sup­ply or in food demand, the aver­age cost of buy­ing food shot up 32 per­cent from June to Decem­ber 2010, accord­ing to the U.N. Food and Agri­cul­ture Organ­i­sa­tion (FAO). Noth­ing but price spec­u­la­tion can explain wheat prices jump­ing 70 per­cent from June to Decem­ber last year when global wheat stocks were sta­ble, experts say.

Here’s a key fact buried in a CNN Money report—the kind intended for investors, not the pub­lic at large: “About 40% of Egypt’s cit­i­zens live off less than $2 a day, so any price increase hurts.”. . .

“The Little-Known Story of How a Finan­cial Crash that Began on Wall Street is Set­ting the Mid­dle East on Fire” by Danny Schechter; Alter­Net; 1/31/2011.

12. The broad­cast con­cludes with a fright­en­ing look at the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Brotherhood’s stated inten­tion to acquire nuclear weapons.

In the sum­mer of 2006, after press­ing the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment for more than a year to restart the country’s nuclear power pro­gram, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Egypt’s fore­most polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion force, esca­lated its nuclear goals and openly called for Egypt to develop nuclear weapons as a counter to Israel’s nuclear capa­bil­i­ties. Against this back­ground, the group reacted with lit­tle enthu­si­asm to the mid-september announce­ment by Jamal Mubarak, son of Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak, that Egypt would revive its peace­ful nuclear power – with­out declar­ing that Egypt would build a nuclear deter­rent. (See “Renewed Egypt­ian Ambi­tions for a Peace­ful Nuclear Pro­gram” in this issue of WMD Insights.)

In 2005, revival of the Egypt­ian nuclear power pro­gram had been a ral­ly­ing cry for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In its 2005 par­lia­men­tary elec­tion plat­form, for exam­ple, it had declared that under its lead­er­ship, Egypt would develop “spe­cial national pro­grams, such as the nuclear pro­gram, the space and avi­a­tion pro­gram, arma­ments pro­gram, and the bio-technology pro­gram.” [1] The party, which cur­rently holds roughly one fifth of the seats in the Egypt­ian National Assem­bly (the lower house of the Egypt­ian par­lia­ment), used the nuclear issue to chal­lenge the cur­rent Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, which had shown lit­tle inter­est in nuclear energy, unlike a num­ber of states in the region, includ­ing Iran and Turkey.

By May 17, 2006, Broth­er­hood deputies were openly attack­ing the Mubarak gov­ern­ment for not pur­su­ing an active nuclear pro­gram. Ikhwanon­line, the offi­cial web­site of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, stated that Broth­er­hood “deputies accuse the gov­ern­ment of aban­don­ing the nuclear pro­gram and [being con­tent with not] build­ing atomic power plants for peace­ful pur­poses and elec­tric­ity pro­duc­tion at the same time many other coun­tries such as India advanced in this field.” [2] (India has not only devel­oped nuclear power for elec­tric­ity pro­duc­tion, but used its peace­ful nuclear pro­gram as a step­ping stone to develop nuclear weapons.)

Despite this ini­tial focus on peace­ful nuclear energy, at a July 4, 2006, joint meet­ing of the for­eign affairs, Arab, defense, and national secu­rity com­mit­tees of the Egypt­ian par­lia­ment, Dr. Hamdi Has­san, spokesper­son of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood par­lia­men­tary cau­cus, made clear that his orga­ni­za­tion was inter­ested not merely in using nuclear power for meet­ing Egypt’s energy needs, but in cre­at­ing an Egypt­ian nuclear deter­rent: “We [Egyp­tians] are ready to starve in order to own a nuclear weapon that will rep­re­sent a real deter­rent and will be deci­sive in the Arab-Israeli con­flict.” [3] . . .

“Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Presses Gov­ern­ment for Nuclear Weapons”; WMD Insights; November/2006.