What? You said you want Dumbocracy. We give!
Today, more than 43 NGO representatives were found guilty of operating illegally in Egypt and the organizations offices will be closed immediately and their assets seized. Among them, 16 are Americans, according to the report from USA Today. The State Department has deemed the trial as “politically motivated” and running counter to their “transition to democracy” in a statement from John Kerry. More proof that our State Dept was, and still is, out of touch, since they believed that Egypt was ever considering transitioning into a democracy.
The problem of NGO’s operating illegally in Egypt goes back to before the Arab Spring and the jumping off of protests in Cairo and Alexandria in 2011. The crackdown on NGO’s started in Egypt a year earlier when youth groups first tried to set-off their revolutionary movement. It was then that the government of Egypt reacted and started gathering information on the groups operating inside of Egypt whose goal it was to depose then President Hosni Mubarak.
In 2009-2010, it was learned that many NGO’s had not been registered, or their registration had expired. The Mubarak government wanted to deport all of the unlicensed groups and their members. But urging from the Clinton State Department, and implied threats of reducing foreign aid if Mubarak did deport them, forced the Egyptian government to find another way to deal with the problem. Of course, Mubarak had no idea that the revolution was planned and executed by the State Department. Time was short, and they (State Dept) only needed to buy a few more months…then the NGO’s would be rallying everyone to gather in protest forcing the leaders out of power.
This is the beginning of what is going to unfold into an interesting and fairly complex story. And it will be interesting to watch how the NGO’s rally their minions. Stay tuned. When the Egypt revolution kicked off I created a multiple part series revealing details that, had they not been confirmed by State Dept officials (including Clinton herself), would’ve been brushed off as crazy conspiracy theory. This decision has the potential to launch and even crazier series of events; especially now that there are massive amounts of high-powered weaponry floating around N. Africa and the Middle East. (i.e Libya’s stolen SAMs, Russia arms going to Syria, Iranian arms going to Syria and Yemen, etc)
I will be updating this post shortly with a bunch of interesting links below. There are many interesting stories of NGO’s and how they are woven into the Arab Spring. Like, the AFL-CIO training the youth protesters and then bringing those people back over and creating a little group called “Occupy Wall Street”. Check back and watch my Twitter.
