Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

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Side 1  Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: We are in a posi­tion to take stock of the events of the last three years in the coun­tries affect­ed by the so-called “Arab Spring.” We call it “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring.”

We recall the tsuna­mi of praise, Hosan­nas and Hal­lelu­jahs gush­ing forth from the world’s media and polit­i­cal pun­ditry. Hail­ing the “Arab Spring” as the dawn­ing of a new enlight­en­ment in that part of the world, they missed the boat–-fundamentally.

We, on the oth­er hand, were warn­ing that this phe­nom­e­non was an Under­ground Reich oper­a­tion. Hav­ing been ini­ti­ated by pow­er­ful cor­po­rate, intel­li­gence and polit­i­cal forces in the sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush, it had its trig­ger with the Wik­iLeaks milieu–-itself a far-right, Nazi-linked enti­ty, as we demon­strated  in FTR’s 732, 745 and 755. (The Arab Spring oper­a­tion, over­lap­ping the Wik­iLeaks “op,” is cov­ered at length and in detail, in FTR #‘s 733  through 739. In addi­tion to the doc­u­men­ta­tion in the orig­i­nal WikiLeaks/Arab Spring series, see the arti­cles excerpt­ed below.)

An excel­lent overview of recent events in Egypt was pro­vided in an Eng­lish-lan­guage blog by a cit­i­zen of that tor­tured coun­try. The con­tra­dic­tions and dead­ly under­cur­rents of unfold­ing events were elo­quently summed up by Mah­moud Salem in “Imag­ine.”

A major theme of the so-called “Arab Spring” was the belief that by allow­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood unfet­tered access to the reins of polit­i­cal pow­er, the result­ing regimes would resem­ble the “mod­ern,” “demo­c­ra­tic” gov­ern­ment of Tayyip Erdo­gan in Turkey.

In FTR #‘s 737, 738, 739, we not­ed that Erdogan’s gov­ern­ment was a direct out­growth of the Bank Al-Taqwa com­plex and an exten­sion of the Islam­ic fas­cism of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In addi­tion, Erdogan’s regime has strong links to euro-fas­cists and the Under­ground Reich. We have doc­u­mented this in numer­ous posts and broad­casts.

The Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment appears to be an Islam­ic, Under­ground Reich enti­ty, ulti­mately direct­ed at the core of the Earth Island.

As civic unrest stem­ming from pop­u­lar dis­sat­is­fac­tion with Erdogan’s gov­er­nance have spread, he has respond­ed with tac­tics and rhetoric pre­cisely and eeri­ly echo­ing the rhetoric of clas­sic fas­cism. Bor­row­ing from the rhetor­i­cal arse­nal of Hitler and Mus­solini, Erdo­gan has staged mass ral­lies of rabid sup­port­ers, used ver­biage con­flat­ing the state and “the peo­ple” with him­self, accused the oppo­si­tion of being part of an amor­phous con­spir­acy involv­ing “for­eign inter­ests,” “spec­u­la­tors,” and the media–translation “Da Joos.”

With roots in the Bank Al-Taqwa milieu, it should come as no sur­prise that this gov­ern­ment has played out in the fash­ion that it has. Although elect­ed (so were the Nazis in Ger­many), Erdogan’s gov­ern­ment is demon­strat­ing a dis­tinct, total­i­tar­ian bent, as evi­denced by the results of what Paul Krug­man termed “A show tri­al on the bosporus.”

Recent judi­cial rul­ings have giv­en fur­ther evi­dence of the real nature of Erdogan’s gov­er­nance.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

• Hasan Amin has char­ac­ter­ized Mor­si as “a text­book Islam­ic Fas­cist.” Of course, the Broth­er­hood is an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, with a her­itage dat­ing back to its polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary alliance with the Axis.
• The new con­sti­tu­tion may be used to fun­da­men­tally dis­re­gard human rights, in favor of Islam­ic law. It’s equiv­o­cal lan­guage even leaves the door open for the tol­er­ance of slav­ery, being prac­ticed by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood cadres in the Sudan, among oth­er places. An ear­lier draft of this AP post con­tained the fol­low­ing pas­sage, omit­ted from the update: ” . . . Omis­sions of cer­tain arti­cles, such as bans on slav­ery or promis­es to adhere to inter­na­tional rights treaties, were equal­ly wor­ry­ing to crit­ics of the new draft, who pulled out from the pan­el before the vote. . . .”
• Mor­si was able to ram through his draft con­sti­tu­tion by impos­ing what even The New York Times char­ac­ter­ized as “mar­tial law.”
• In the event that the army can­not keep the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion down, the Islamist ter­ror­ists of Jama’a al-Islamiya (an Al Qae­da affil­i­ate) will be avail­able to assas­si­nate dis­si­dents. Sup­pos­edly opposed to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Jama’a al-Islamiya actu­ally appear to have the same rela­tion­ship to the sup­pos­edly respectable Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as the Ital­ian fas­cist Ordine Nuo­vo (“New Order”) had to the sup­pos­edly respectable coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Sil­vio Berlus­coni (of the P‑2 Lodge) and his coali­tion part­ner “post-fas­cist” Gian­franco Fini of the Allean­za Nationale (suc­ces­sor to the fascisti of Mus­solini). A vet­eran of the SS-con­trolled Salo Repub­lic that gov­erned North­ern Italy dur­ing the clos­ing days of World War II, Ordine Nuo­vo chief Pino Rauti com­plained of the “post-fas­cists” of the MSI and the AN, “Too many dou­ble-breast­ed suits, not enough cud­gels.” Nonethe­less, Rauti was part of the Berlusconi/Fini gov­ern­ment that was elect­ed in the ear­ly part of the last decade. One of the orig­i­nal share­hold­ers of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Bank al-Taqwa, Karim Alessan­dro Ghe, was also a mem­ber of Ordine Nuo­vo.
• The polit­i­cal milieu of Gene Sharp, the appar­ent intel­li­gence asset whose work was uti­lized for the Arab Spring oper­a­tion.
• The role of Gene Sharp’s ide­o­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ments in the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion in the Ukraine.”
• Mor­si’s alleged con­spir­ing with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da, through his broth­er Mohammed. The infor­ma­tion is alleged to have come from Egypt­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence inter­cepts of Mor­si’s calls and dove­tails with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.
• The alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion of Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in sup­port­ing Al-Qaeda/ji­hadist cells that were involved with the attack on Behg­hazi. John McCain, who vis­it­ed Khairat el-Shater of the Broth­er­hood in prison, has been lead­ing the charge against the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion on Beng­hazi. We pre­dict­ed that the “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring” would be used to desta­bi­lize Oba­ma.
• Morsi’s Islam­ic fas­cist regime appoint­ed a vet­eran of the Al Gamaa al-Islamiya group to be a region­al gov­er­nor. That orga­ni­za­tion per­pe­trated the Lux­or mas­sacre. In FTR #‘s 457, 455, 402, we dis­cussed the Lux­or mas­sacre, the “Gamaa’s” links to Al-Qae­da, the bin Laden fam­ily and Sau­di mon­ey men. With the depen­dence of Egyp­t’s econ­o­my on tourism, this may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

1a. Con­sid­er­able insight into the machi­na­tions under­ly­ing the Arab Spring oop­er­a­tion can be gleaned from a New York Times pro­file of Gene Sharp. (The Arab Spring oper­a­tion, over­lap­ping the Wik­iLeaks “op,” is cov­ered at length and in detail, in FTR #‘s 733  through 739, as well as FTR #745.)

“Shy U.S. Intel­lec­tual Cre­ated Play­book Used in a Rev­o­lu­tion” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg; The New York Times; 2/16/2011.

. . . . When the non­par­ti­san Inter­na­tional Cen­ter on Non­vi­o­lent Con­flict, which trains democ­racy activists, slipped into Cairo sev­eral years ago to con­duct a work­shop, among the papers it dis­trib­uted was Mr. Sharp’s “198 Meth­ods of Non­vi­o­lent Action,” a list of tac­tics that range from hunger strikes to “protest dis­rob­ing” to “dis­clos­ing iden­ti­ties of secret agents.”

Dalia Zia­da, an Egypt­ian blog­ger and activist who attend­ed the work­shop and lat­er orga­nized sim­i­lar ses­sions on her own, said trainees were active in both the Tunisia and Egypt revolts. She said that some activists trans­lated excerpts of Mr. Sharp’s work into Ara­bic, and that his mes­sage of “attack­ing weak­nesses of dic­ta­tors” stuck with them.

Peter Ack­er­man, a one­time stu­dent of Mr. Sharp who found­ed the non­vi­o­lence cen­ter and ran the Cairo work­shop, cites his for­mer men­tor as proof that “ideas have pow­er.”

Mr. Sharp . . . . has had no con­tact with the Egypt­ian pro­test­ers, he said, although he recent­ly learned that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood had “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­racy” post­ed on its Web site. . . .

. . . . Mr. Ack­er­man, who became wealthy as an invest­ment banker after study­ing under Mr. Sharp, con­tributed mil­lions of dol­lars and kept it afloat for years. But about a decade ago, Mr. Ack­er­man want­ed to dis­sem­i­nate Mr. Sharp’s ideas more aggres­sively, as well as his own. He put his mon­ey into his own cen­ter, which also pro­duces movies and even a video game to train dis­si­dents. An annu­ity he pur­chased still helps pay Mr. Sharp’s salary. . .

1b. Sharp has enjoyed appoint­ments at Har­vard University’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies.

“Gene Sharp”; wikipedia.org

. . . . . Sharp has been a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts Dart­mouth since 1972. He simul­ta­ne­ously held research appoint­ments at Har­vard University’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Affairs since 1965.[1] . . . .

1c. The Har­vard Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies was found­ed by Robert R. Bowie, an indi­vid­ual with numer­ous con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

“Robert R. Bowie”; wikipedia.org.

Robert R. Bowie (born August 24, 1909) is an Amer­i­can diplo­mat and schol­ar who served as CIA Deputy Direc­tor from 1977–1979. . . .

. . . . .  The youngest pro­fes­sor of the school, he was a trust­ed con­fi­dant to John J. McCloy the “unof­fi­cial chair­man of the Amer­i­can estab­lish­ment”. Dur­ing peri­ods of leave from Har­vard between 1950 and 1952 Bowie worked for McCloy as one of his legal advis­ers in Germany.[1]

He served as Direc­tor of Pol­icy Plan­ning from 1953–1957; co-founder of Harvard’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Affairs (1958); Coun­selor for the State Depart­ment from 1966–1968. He is a mem­ber of the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Diplo­macy. He is a recip­i­ent of the Legion of Mer­it and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Mer­it of the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many. . . .

1d. Ack­er­man has served as an advi­sor to the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace, whose Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive has  been cit­ed by crit­ics as a the­ater of Islam­ic extrem­ist pen­e­tra­tion and activ­i­ty.

“Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace”; Source­watch.

Peter Ack­er­man is on “the U.S. Advi­sory Coun­cil of the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace.” [4]

1e.  Ackerman’s resume is inter­est­ing, for a pro­moter of social jus­tice.

“Peter Ack­er­man”; Source­watch.

. . . . After his grad­u­a­tion he joined the junk-bond deal­ers, Drex­el Burn­ham Lam­bert, and for most of the next fif­teen years, he was the right-hand man to Michael Milken the “Junk-Bond King”. He became the key deal-mak­er and strate­gist for the com­pany, and his inno­v­a­tive approach to deal-mak­ing, togeth­er with his unusu­al aca­d­e­mic qual­i­fi­ca­tions, earned him the nick­name “the absent­minded pro­fes­sor”. But the record shows that he was far from absent mind­ed. . . .

1f. Gene Sharp’s ide­o­log­i­cal jot­tings played a key role in the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.” His ide­ol­o­gy also was uti­lized else­where in the for­mer Sovi­et Union, co-habit­ing that polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal land­scape with the fas­cists of the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion.

“Gene Sharp”; Wikipedia

. . . . Sharp’s 1993 hand­book From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy^[29] was first pub­lished in Bur­ma, fourth edi­tion in 2010. It has since been trans­lat­ed into at least 31 oth­er lan­guages.^[30] It has served as a basis for the cam­paigns of Ser­bia’s Otpor (who were also direct­ly trained by the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tute), Geor­gia’s Kmara, Ukraine’s Pora, Kyr­gyzs­tan’s KelKel and Belarus’ Zubr. Pora’s Oleh Kyriyenko said in a 2004 inter­view with Radio Nether­lands,

“The bible of Pora has been the book of Gene Sharp, also used by Otpor, it’s called: From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy. Pora activists have trans­lat­ed it by them­selves. We have writ­ten to Mr Sharp and to the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tute in the Unit­ed States, and he became very sym­pa­thet­ic towards our ini­tia­tive, and the Insti­tu­tion pro­vid­ed fund­ing to print over 12,000 copies of this book for free.”^[31]

Sharp’s writ­ings on “Civil­ian-Based Defense”^[32] were used by the Lithuan­ian, Lat­vian, and Eston­ian gov­ern­ments dur­ing their sep­a­ra­tion from the Sovi­et Union in 1991. Lithuan­ian Defence Min­is­ter Audrius Butke­vi­cius declared at the time, “I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb”.^[16] . . . .

 1g. After review­ing infor­ma­tion about non­vi­o­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp, the pro­gram notes that the PORA move­ment in the Ukraine was one of the insti­tu­tions that took their cues from Sharp’s writ­ings. Ini­tially a big sup­porter of Vladimir Yuschenko, PORA turned against him.

As not­ed in FTR #529, Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­rina Chu­machenko, the point per­son for the OUN/B. Lat­er, Yuschenko named Ban­dera a hero of the Ukraine and reshaped the Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal land­scape to accom­mo­date the OUN/B.

It now appears that the Pirate Bay/Pirate Party/Anonymous milieu will turn out to be sim­i­larly, cyn­i­cally manip­u­lated in the case of the Pig­gy-Back Coup in the Mid­dle East. Youth­ful ide­al­ists, that milieu helped install the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Egypt and  else­where in the Mid­dle East.

“Is PORA Turn­ing Against Yuschenko”; The Kiev Ukraine News Blog; 9/24/2005.

PORA, the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that played a deci­sive role in Ukraine’s Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, has adopt­ed a high­ly crit­i­cal stance towards the ten-point mem­o­ran­dum signed last week by Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko and the leader of the Par­ty of Regions, for­mer prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Yanukovych. . . .

2. An arti­cle in The Dai­ly News Egypt pro­vides us with an accu­rate sum­ma­tion of the events in Egypt that led to the coup by the Egypt­ian army in the sum­mer of 2013.

“Imag­ine” by Mah­moud Salem; Dai­ly News Egypt; 12/10/2012.

Imag­ine sit­ting at a friend’s house, watch­ing the pres­i­dent address the nation after a week long cri­sis, with his sup­port­ers just the night before open­ing fire on civil­ian pro­test­ers in Heliopo­lis in hor­ri­fy­ing clash­es that spanned the whole day. Imag­ine find­ing out that he issued the ille­gal con­sti­tu­tional dec­la­ra­tion that enflamed and divid­ed the entire coun­try, because– and I quote– one of the sus­pects in the Camel inci­dents, who was declared inno­cent by the courts, had a meet­ing with 3 oth­er unnamed peo­ple in his office.

The pres­i­dent that has under him state secu­rity, gen­eral intel­li­gence, mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the police and the gen­eral prosecutor’s office declar­ing that he had no choice but to issue this dec­la­ra­tion because four peo­ple had a meet­ing. And then, as he swipes the page of his speech on his IPad, he instinc­tively licks his fin­ger first as if he is turn­ing a paper page. Imag­ine.

Imag­ine that this pres­i­dent saw that the sit­u­a­tion was so urgent, he called for a nation­al dia­logue meet­ing with the oppo­si­tion in two days to resolve the cri­sis, one that all of his allies and none of the oppo­si­tion attend, and he walks in, talks for 5 min­utes, then leaves the dia­logue he called for imme­di­ately, telling peo­ple to talk to his VP and that he is leav­ing to guar­an­tee the “neu­tral­ity of the dia­logue”.

Imag­ine that his group’s uber-intel­lec­tu­al, Fah­my Howei­dy, short­ly after also leaves because he had anoth­er impor­tant meet­ing to attend, and that this group of clowns come with a solu­tion after mid­night that isn’t a solu­tion, draft­ed by ex-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Selim Al-Aawa, who wrote the Sudanese con­sti­tu­tion that even­tu­ally led to Sudan get­ting divid­ed into two coun­tries. They front­ed that guy. Just Imag­ine.

Imag­ine that the next day, you are no longer greet­ed with the president’s face, but with those of the Supreme Guide of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and his sec­ond man Khairat El-Shater, who both hold press con­fer­ences defend­ing the pres­i­dent in hid­ing, while the army builds walls around the Pres­i­den­tial Palace.

Imag­ine watch­ing the Supreme Guide claim­ing that all who died in the clash­es are Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, despite there being dead Chris­tians in the clash­es, and El-Shater talk­ing about how hard it is to get invest­ment into this coun­try and blam­ing the whole cri­sis on the Chris­tians and the Church. Imag­ine know­ing that those are the peo­ple who run the Order that is run­ning your coun­try at the moment. Imag­ine.

Imag­ine know­ing that your pres­i­dent, the first civil­ian demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elect­ed post-rev­o­lu­tion pres­i­dent is a pup­pet for that group, and his pup­peteer is the sec­ond man in this order, and not even the first. Imag­ine that this group has its peo­ple, for two weeks, won­der­ing open­ly on TV talk shows about why the peo­ple, after a rev­o­lu­tion, can­not tol­er­ate hav­ing a tem­po­rary dic­ta­tor­ship for a few months, since they endured it under Mubarak for 30 years.

Imag­ine them being unable to com­pre­hend that because you sim­ply won an elec­tion by 1%, you can’t just do any­thing you damn please in the name of democ­racy because you are the major­ity. Imag­ine them open­ly stat­ing that this con­sti­tu­tion, since it sup­ports Shari’a, will have 90% sup­port in terms of votes and that the oppo­si­tion are all Chris­tians and agents and no more than 40,000 in the entire coun­try and want to repeat the con­sti­tu­tion writ­ing process to allow gay mar­riage. Imagine.Imagine that this group is still push­ing for a ref­er­en­dum over a con­sti­tu­tional draft that is cre­ated by an ille­gal Con­stituent Assem­bly that a third of its mem­bers with­drew, while an entire coun­try goes in flames over it, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of Egyp­tians in the gov­er­norates are protest­ing and clash­ing with this group’s sup­port­ers.

Imag­ine that with this ref­er­en­dum being 4 days away, and the pres­i­dency has no judges to super­vise it, doesn’t have the schools to host it, did not open the door for jour­nal­ists or observers to go in and observe the process, and gave no way for the vot­ers to find out where they are sup­posed to vote. Your country’s con­sti­tu­tion. Imag­ine.

Imag­ine that the sec­u­lar side is the major­ity for the first time, with peo­ple in the streets all over Egypt view­ing this as a ref­er­en­dum on the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Morsy and want to vote No on both and teach them a les­son.

Imag­ine them final­ly ral­ly­ing behind a uni­fied oppo­si­tion front, called the Nation­al Sal­va­tion coun­cil, who just yes­ter­day issued that they will boy­cott the first ref­er­en­dum they actu­ally have a great shot of win­ning, because they think it’s an ille­git­i­mate ref­er­en­dum and we shouldn’t dig­nify it with our votes, despite it being the country’s con­sti­tu­tion and every­thing. . . .

3. A CNN sto­ry fur­ther under­scores the fas­cist nature of the Mor­si gov­ern­ment.

“Bloody Clash­es around Egypt­ian Pres­i­den­tial Palace” by Hasan Amin; CNN; 12/5/12.

. . . . Haunt­ed by Islam­ic Fas­cist

After the huge peace­ful protest yes­ter­day against Mor­si, today it turned to a bloody bat­tle between the pro­test­ers and Mor­si sup­port­ers (Islamists and Pro-Islamists main­ly) . . . .

. . . . Islamists thugs beat the pro­test­ers who said “No” [to the] Mor­si dic­ta­to­r­ial decree–exactly what hap­pened dur­ing the Egypt­ian rev­o­lu­tion, when Mubarak sent his thugs to attack the pro­test­ers in Tahrir Sq.

Now, Mor­si is a text­book Islam­ic fas­cist, who elim­i­nates the oppo­si­tion or unleash­es his thugs to attack them. [Ital­ics added.]

It’s remark­able that no one in the police or the army was involved in this bat­tle, it’s sus­pi­cious, the absence of secu­rity forces in this crit­i­cal area (the pres­i­den­tial palace diam­e­ter.)

The sit­u­a­tion in Egypt is get­ting ugli­er with time. . . .

4. Some fea­tures of the Draft Con­sti­tu­tion that helped to pre­cip­i­tate the coup in the sum­mer of 2013.

“High­lights from Egypt’s Draft Con­sti­tu­tion”; Asso­ci­ated Press; 12/01/2012.

An Islamist-dom­i­nat­ed pan­el is vot­ing on Egypt’s draft con­sti­tu­tion, the country’s first char­ter after the upris­ing that top­pled Hos­ni Mubarak. The draft large­ly reflects the con­ser­v­a­tive vision of the Islamists, with arti­cles that rights activists, lib­er­als and Chris­tians fear will lead to restric­tions on the rights of women and minori­ties and civ­il lib­er­ties in gen­er­al.

Omis­sions of cer­tain arti­cles, such as bans on slav­ery or promis­es to adhere to inter­na­tional rights treaties, were equal­ly wor­ry­ing to crit­ics of the new draft, who pulled out from the pan­el before the vote. [This pas­sage was omit­ted from sub­se­quent ver­sions of the post.]

Here are some of the dis­puted arti­cles:

- As in past con­sti­tu­tions, the new draft says that the “prin­ci­ples of Islam­ic law” will be the basis of law. Pre­vi­ously, the term “prin­ci­ples” allowed wide lee­way in inter­pret­ing Shari­ah. But in the draft, a sep­a­rate new arti­cle is added that seeks to define “prin­ci­ples” by point­ing to par­tic­u­lar the­o­log­i­cal doc­trines and their rules. That could give Islamists the tool for insist­ing on stricter imple­men­ta­tion of rul­ings of Shari­ah.

- A new arti­cle states that Egypt’s most respect­ed Islam­ic insti­tu­tion, Al-Azhar, must be con­sulted on any mat­ters relat­ed to Shari­ah, a mea­sure crit­ics fear will lead to over­sight of leg­is­la­tion by cler­ics.

- An arti­cle under­lines that the state will pro­tect “the true nature of the Egypt­ian fam­ily ... and pro­mote its morals and val­ues,” phras­ing that is vague and sug­gests state con­trol over the con­tents of such arts forms as books and films.

- The draft con­tains no arti­cle specif­i­cally estab­lish­ing equal­ity between men and women because of dis­putes over the phras­ing. How­ever, it main­tains that a woman must bal­ance her duties toward fam­ily and out­side work, sug­gest­ing that she can be held account­able if her pub­lic role con­flicts with her fam­ily duties. No such arti­cle is men­tioned for men.

- An arti­cle bans insult­ing or defam­ing the prophet and mes­sen­gers, but is vague about what con­sti­tutes an insult, rais­ing con­cerns of restric­tions to free­dom of expres­sion.

- An arti­cle seek­ing to ensure people’s dig­nity bans “insult­ing humans”, a vague phras­ing that rights activists say con­tra­dicts free­dom of expres­sion.

- An arti­cle main­tains that the state sup­ports the arts, sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture and works to imple­ment them in a way that serves soci­ety. That has raised con­cerns that some arts deemed not in the ser­vice of soci­ety may be restrict­ed or cen­sored.

- An arti­cle pre­serves the right of the mil­i­tary to try civil­ians before mil­i­tary tri­bunals in cas­es for crimes that harm the armed forces with­out restric­tions, despite an out­cry from activists who were call­ing for the abol­ish­ing of such tri­bunals. More than 11,000 civil­ians were tried before mil­i­tary tri­bunals dur­ing the post-Mubarak tran­si­tion over­seen by the mil­i­tary. . . .

5a. An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record. Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison, as well as the alleged links between the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood and the cells involved in attack­ing the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment recent­ly sen­tenced more than 500 mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, to the resound­ing con­dem­na­tion of West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S. What we were not told was why. THIS appears to be why.

“Exposed: The Mus­lim Brotherhood/Al Qae­da Con­nec­tion” by Ray­mond Ibrahim; Ray­mond Ibrahim: Islam Trans­lat­ed; 2/4/2014.

. . . . Con­cern­ing some of the more severe alle­ga­tions, one of Egypt’s most wide­ly dis­trib­uted and read news­pa­pers, Al Watan, recent­ly pub­lished what it said were record­ed con­ver­sa­tions between Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri, al-Qae­da leader Ayman Zawahiri’s broth­er.

In these reports, Watan repeat­ed­ly asserts that Egypt­ian secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence agen­cies con­firmed (or per­haps leaked out) the record­ings.

Much of the sub­stance of the alleged con­ver­sa­tions is fur­ther cor­rob­o­rat­ed by events that occurred dur­ing Morsi’s one-year-rule, most of which were report­ed by a vari­ety of Ara­bic media out­lets, though not by West­ern media.

In what fol­lows, I relay, sum­ma­rize, and trans­late some of the more sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the Watan reports (ver­ba­tim state­ments are in quo­ta­tion marks).  In between, I com­ment on var­i­ous anec­dotes and events—many of which were first bro­ken on my web­site—that now, in light of these phone con­ver­sa­tions, make per­fect sense and inde­pen­dent­ly help con­firm the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ings.

—–

The first record­ed call  between Muham­mad Mor­si  and  Muham­mad Zawahiri last­ed for 59 sec­onds. Mor­si con­grat­u­lat­ed Zawahiri on his release from prison, where he had been incar­cer­at­ed for jihadi/terrorist activ­i­ties against Egypt, and assured him that he would not be fol­lowed or observed by any Egypt­ian author­i­ties, and that he, Mor­si, was plan­ning on meet­ing with him soon.  Pri­or to this first call, Refa’ al-Tahtawy, then Chief of Staff, medi­at­ed and arranged mat­ters.

The pres­i­den­tial palace con­tin­ued to com­mu­ni­cate reg­u­lar­ly with Muham­mad Zawahiri, and sources con­firm that he was the link between the Egypt­ian pres­i­den­cy and his broth­er, Ayman Zawahiri, the Egypt­ian-born leader of al-Qae­da.

It should be not­ed that, once released, the pre­vi­ous­ly lit­tle-known Muham­mad Zawahiri did become very vis­i­ble and vocal in Egypt, at times spear­head­ing the Islamist move­ment.

The next record­ing between Mor­si and Zawahiri last­ed for 2 min­utes and 56 sec­onds and took place one month after Mor­si became pres­i­dent.  Mor­si informed Zawahiri that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­ports the mujahidin (jihadis) and that the mujahidin should sup­port the Broth­er­hood in order for them both, and the Islamist agen­da, to pre­vail in Egypt.

This makes sense in the con­text that, soon after Mor­si came to pow­er, the gen­er­al pub­lic did become increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of him and his poli­cies, includ­ing the fact that he was plac­ing only Broth­er­hood mem­bers in Egypt’s most impor­tant posts, try­ing quick­ly to push through a pro-Islamist con­sti­tu­tion, and, as Egyp­tians called it, try­ing in gen­er­al to “Broth­er­hood­ize” Egypt.

This sec­ond phone call being longer than the first, Zawahiri took it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late Mor­si on his recent pres­i­den­tial victory—which, inci­den­tal­ly, from the start, was por­trayed by some as fraud­u­lent—and expressed his joy that Morsi’s pres­i­den­cy could only mean that “all sec­u­lar infi­dels would be removed from Egypt.”

Then Zawahiri told Mor­si: “Rule accord­ing to the Sharia of Allah [or “Islam­ic law”], and we will stand next to you.  Know that, from the start, there is no so-called democ­ra­cy, so get rid of your oppo­si­tion.”

This asser­tion com­ports extreme­ly well with his broth­er Ayman Zawahiri’s views.  A for­mer Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­ber him­self, some thir­ty years ago, the al-Qae­da leader wrote Al Hissad Al Murr (“The Bit­ter Har­vest”), a scathing book con­demn­ing the Broth­er­hood for “tak­ing advan­tage of the Mus­lim youths’ fer­vor by … steer[ing] their one­time pas­sion­ate, Islam­ic zeal for jihad to con­fer­ences and elec­tions.” An entire sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to show­ing that Islam­ic Sharia can­not coex­ist with democ­ra­cy even appears in Ayman Zawahiri’s book (see “Sharia and Democ­ra­cy,” The Al Qae­da Read­er, pgs. 116–136).

The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly.

It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him.

The next call, record­ed rough­ly six weeks after this last one, again revolved around the theme of solid­i­fy­ing com­mon coop­er­a­tion between the Egypt­ian pres­i­den­cy and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood on the one hand, and al-Qae­da and its jiha­di off­shoots on the oth­er, specif­i­cal­ly in the con­text of cre­at­ing jiha­di cells inside Egypt devot­ed to pro­tect­ing the increas­ing­ly unpop­u­lar Broth­er­hood-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment.

As I report­ed back in Decem­ber 2012, Egypt­ian media were say­ing that for­eign jiha­di fight­ers were appear­ing in large numbers—one said 3,000 fighters—especially in Sinai.  And, since the over­throw of the Broth­er­hood and the mil­i­tary crack­down on its sup­port­ers, many of those detained have been exposed speak­ing non-Egypt­ian dialects of Ara­bic.

Dur­ing this same call, Zawahiri was also crit­i­cal of the Mor­si gov­ern­ment for still not apply­ing Islam­ic Sharia through­out Egypt, which, as men­tioned, was one of the pre­req­ui­sites for al-Qae­da sup­port.

Mor­si respond­ed by say­ing “We are cur­rent­ly in the stage of con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er and need the help of all parties—and we can­not at this time apply the Iran­ian mod­el or Tal­iban rule in Egypt; it is impos­si­ble to do so now.”

In fact, while the Broth­er­hood has repeat­ed­ly declared its aspi­ra­tions for world dom­i­na­tion, from its ori­gins, it has always relied on a “grad­ual” approach, mov­ing only in stages, with the idea of cul­mi­nat­ing its full vision only when enough pow­er has been con­sol­i­dat­ed.

In response, Zawahiri told Mor­si that, as a show of good will, he must “at least release the mujahidin who were impris­oned dur­ing the Mubarak era as well as all Islamists, as an assur­ance and pact of coop­er­a­tion and proof that the old page has turned to a new one.”

After that call, and as con­firmed by a gov­ern­men­tal source, Mor­si received a list from Zawahiri con­tain­ing the names of the most dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ists in Egypt­ian jails, some of whom were on death row due to the enor­mi­ty of their crimes.

In fact, as I report­ed back in August 2012, many impris­oned ter­ror­ists, includ­ing from Egypt’s noto­ri­ous Islam­ic Jihad organization—which was once led by Ayman Zawahiri—were released under Mor­si.

One year lat­er, in August 2013, soon after the removal of Mor­si, Egypt’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry announced that Egypt was “prepar­ing to can­cel any pres­i­den­tial par­dons issued dur­ing Morsi’s era to ter­ror­ists or crim­i­nals.”

Dur­ing this same call, and in the con­text of par­dons, Mor­si said he would do his best to facil­i­tate the return of Muhammad’s infa­mous broth­er and al-Qae­da leader, Ayman Zawahiri, back to Egypt—“with his head held high,” in accor­dance with Islamist wishes—as well as urge the U.S. to release the “Blind Sheikh” and ter­ror­ist mas­ter­mind, Omar Abdul Rah­man.

In March 2013, I wrote about how Mor­si, dur­ing his Pak­istan vis­it, had report­ed­ly met with Ayman Zawahiri  and made arrange­ments to smug­gle him back to Sinai.  Accord­ing to a Pak­istan source, the meet­ing was “facil­i­tat­ed by ele­ments of Pak­istani intel­li­gence [ISI] and influ­en­tial mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.”

The gist of the next two calls between Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri was that, so long as the for­mer is pres­i­dent, he would see to it that all released jihadis and al-Qae­da oper­a­tives are allowed to move freely through­out Egypt and the Sinai, and that the pres­i­den­tial palace would remain in con­stant con­tact with Zawahiri, to make sure every­thing is mov­ing to the sat­is­fac­tion of both par­ties.

Zawahiri fur­ther request­ed that Mor­si allow them to devel­op train­ing camps in Sinai in order to sup­port the Broth­er­hood through trained mil­i­tants. Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard” to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der.

That Libya is men­tioned is inter­est­ing.  Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices.

More evi­dence—includ­ing some that impli­cates the U.S. administration—has mount­ed since then.

Next, Watan makes sev­er­al more asser­tions, all of which are pre­ced­ed by “accord­ing to security/intelligence agen­cies.”  They are:

• That Mor­si did indeed as he promised, and that he facil­i­tat­ed the estab­lish­ment of four jiha­di train­ing camps.  Mor­si was then Chief in Com­mand of Egypt’s Armed Forces, and through his pow­er of author­i­ty, stopped the mil­i­tary from launch­ing any oper­a­tions includ­ing in the by now al-Qae­da over­run Sinai.
• That, after Mor­si reached Pak­istan, he had a one-and-a-half hour meet­ing with an asso­ciate of Ayman Zawahiri in a hotel and pos­si­bly spoke with him.
• That, after Mor­si returned to Egypt from his trip to Pak­istan, he issued anoth­er  list con­tain­ing the names of 20 more con­vict­ed ter­ror­ists con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Egypt, giv­ing them all pres­i­den­tial pardons—despite the fact that nation­al secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed that they not be released on grounds of the threat they posed.
• That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt.

One of the longer con­ver­sa­tions between Mor­si and Zawahiri report­ed by Watan is espe­cial­ly telling of al-Qaeda’s enmi­ty for sec­u­lar­ist Mus­lims and Cop­tic Christians—whose church­es, some 80, were attacked, burned, and destroyed, some with the al-Qae­da flag furled above them, soon after the oust­ing of Mor­si.  I trans­late por­tions below:

Zawahiri: “The teach­ings of Allah need to be applied and enforced; the sec­u­lar­ists have stopped the Islam­ic Sharia, and the response must be a stop to the build­ing of church­es.” (An odd asser­tion con­sid­er­ing how dif­fi­cult it already is for Copts to acquire a repair per­mit for their church­es in Egypt.)

Zawahiri also added that “All those who reject the Sharia must be exe­cut­ed, and all those belong­ing to the sec­u­lar media which work to dis­sem­i­nate debauch­ery and help deviants and Chris­tians to vio­late the Sharia, must be exe­cut­ed.”

Mor­si report­ed­ly replied: “We have tak­en deter­rent mea­sures to com­bat those few, and new leg­isla­tive mea­sures to lim­it their media, and in the near future, we will shut down these media sta­tions and launch large Islam­ic media out­lets.  We are even plan­ning a big bud­get from the [Broth­er­hood] Inter­na­tion­al Group  to launch Islam­ic and jiha­di satel­lite sta­tions  to urge on the jihad. There will be a chan­nel for you and the men of al-Qae­da, and it can be broad­cast from Afghanistan.”

Unde­terred, Zawahiri respond­ed by say­ing, “This [is a] Chris­t­ian media—and some of the media per­son­nel are paid by the [Cop­tic] Church and they work with those who oppose the Sharia… sec­u­lar­ist forces are allied with Chris­t­ian forces, among them Naguib Sawiris, the Chris­t­ian-Jew.”

Mor­si: “Soon we will uphold our promis­es to you.”

In fact, there was a peri­od of time when the sec­u­lar media in Egypt—which was con­stant­ly expos­ing Broth­er­hood machinations—were under severe attack by the Broth­er­hood and Islamists of all stripes (come­di­an Bassem Youssef was the tip of the ice­berg).  In one instance, which I not­ed back in August 2012, six major media sta­tions were attacked by Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers, their employ­ees severe­ly beat.

The last call record­ed between Muham­mad Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri took place on the dawn of June 30, 2013 (the date of the June 30 Rev­o­lu­tion that oust­ed Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood).  Mor­si made the call to Zawahiri in the pres­ence of Asad al-Sheikha, Deputy Chief of Pres­i­den­tial Staff, Refa’ al-Tahtawy, Chief of Pres­i­den­tial Staff, and his per­son­al secu­ri­ty.

Dur­ing this last call, Mor­si incit­ed Zawahiri to rise against the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary in Sinai and asked Zawahiri to com­pel all jiha­di and loy­al­ist ele­ments every­where to come to the aid of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and neu­tral­ize its oppo­nents.

Zawahiri report­ed­ly respond­ed by say­ing “We will fight the mil­i­tary and the police, and we will set the Sinai aflame.

True enough, as I report­ed on July 4, quot­ing from an Ara­bic report: “Al-Qae­da, under the lead­er­ship of Muham­mad Zawahiri, is cur­rent­ly plan­ning reprisal oper­a­tions by which to attack the army and the Mor­si-oppo­si­tion all around the Repub­lic [of Egypt].”  The report added that, right before the depos­ing of Mor­si, Zawahiri had been arrest­ed and was being interrogated—only to be ordered released by yet anoth­er pres­i­den­tial order, and that he  had since fled to the Sinai.

Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood.

—–

As Morsi’s tri­al con­tin­ues, it’s only a mat­ter of time before the truth of these allegations—and their impli­ca­tions for the U.S.—is known.  But one thing is cer­tain: most of them com­port incred­i­bly well with inci­dents and events that took place under Morsi’s gov­ern­ment.

5b.Morsi’s Islam­ic fas­cist regime appoint­ed a vet­eran of the Al Gamaa al-Islamiya group to be a region­al gov­er­nor. That orga­ni­za­tion per­pe­trated the Lux­or mas­sacre. In FTR #‘s 455, 457, 402, we dis­cussed the Lux­or mas­sacre, the “Gamaa’s” links to Al-Qae­da, the bin Laden fam­ily and Sau­di mon­ey men. With the depen­dence of Egyp­t’s econ­o­my on tourism, this may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

“Egypt’s Mor­si Tight­ens Islamist Grip with Gov­er­nor Appoint­ments” [Reuters]; townhall.com; 6/16/2013.

Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mur­si named a mem­ber of an Islamist group remem­bered for a bloody attack on West­ern tourists in the ancient city of Lux­or over a decade ago as gov­er­nor of that province on Sun­day.

It was one of 17 guber­na­to­r­ial appoint­ments that put Islamist allies in key posi­tions across the coun­try as Mur­si braces for protests on the first anniver­sary of his inau­gu­ra­tion at the end of the month.

Sev­en of the new gov­er­nors list­ed by the state news agency are mem­bers of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Par­ty, which backed Mur­si in elec­tions that fol­lowed the over­throw of Hos­ni Mubarak in 2011, pro­pelling him to pow­er last year.

The new­ly appoint­ed Lux­or gov­er­nor, Adel Mohamed al-Khay­at, is a mem­ber of the Build­ing and Devel­op­ment par­ty. The par­ty was estab­lished by Al Gamaa al-Islamiya, an Islamist group that was involved in attacks in Lux­or that killed around 60 tourists in the late 90s, but lat­er renounced vio­lence. . . .

6a. Sup­pos­ed­ly a mod­el for the “mod­er­ate” Islam­ic forces that were sup­posed to assume pow­er in Egypt and else­where in the Arab world, Turkey’s Erdo­gan has turned out to be pre­cise­ly the type of Islam­ic fas­cist that we said he was.

“Turkey Moves to Silence Dis­senters, but with One Eye on Its Image Abroad” by Tim Arango and Cey­lan Yegin­su; The New York Times; 11/15/2013.