The Academy of Change

The first mention of the Academy of Change (AOC) in relation to the Egyptian Revolution of 25 January, came in a Reuters report published on 13 April 2011, under the title of “Inside the Egyptian Revolution”.

In the report, Reuters stated that the Academy of Change was founded in London in 2005 by  Hisham Morsy, Wael Adel, and Adel’s cousin Ahmed Adel, and that the Academy moved to Qatar later on. Reuters claims that the AOC was involved in training Egyptian dissidents (Kefaya and April 6 Youth among others) ever since 2005. Reuters also claims that the Academy is one of those involved in the planning of the events that took place Tahrir, and the training of the revolutionaries, through a vague character with the name “Saad Bahaar“.

Reuters report wrote: 

“Inspired by the way Serbian group Otpor had brought down Slobodan Milosevic through non-violent protests in 2000, the trio studied previous struggles. One of their favorite thinkers was Gene Sharp, a Boston-based academic who was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. The group had set up a webpage in 2004 to propagate civil disobedience ideas in Arabic.

At first, the three young Egyptians’ activities were purely theoretical. But in November 2005, Wael Adel came to Cairo to give a three-day training session on civil disobedience. In the audience were about 30 members of Kefaya, an anti-Mubarak protest group whose name means “enough” in Arabic. Kefaya had gained prominence during the September 2005 presidential elections which Mubarak won by a landslide. During these protests, they had been attacked by thugs and some women members had been stripped naked. Bahaar joined Adel on the course and his career as an underground trainer in non-violent activism was born.

So you want a revolution: Meet the man who gives you the revolution!

Question: what do the so-called “colour” revolutions – Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), and

the rest – have in common with the uprising that drove Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak from power? Answer: the great majority of the people involved avoided committing acts of violence; and the organisers took advice from a young Serbianrevolutionary called Srdja Popovic and his colleagues.

For many of us, the way that one deeply embedded Middle Eastern dictatorship after another has collapsed this year is a baffling mystery. But for Popovic, tall, lean and brimming with vitality, it was no great surprise. “How do we see political power?” he asks. “Mainly we see power as the state wants us to, as a monolith. So we believe power is fixed; and nothing can change except the people at the top.” But at an age when he was still tender enough to do something with the information, Popovic (pictured right) discovered that power is not like that. “The true nature of power is very different. In a society, power can change very swiftly. It can become fragile and can be redistributed, especially in non-democratic regimes… Ultimately, power in society comes from the obedience of the people. And those people – each of whom is individually a small source of power – can change their minds, and refuse to follow commands.”

Cooptation of April6 Youth & Opposition Leaders

by Michel Chossudovsky 

The cooptation of the leaders of major opposition parties and civil society organizations in anticipation of the collapse of an authoritarian puppet government is part of Washington’s design, applied in different regions of the World.

The process of cooptation is implemented and financed by US based foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and  Freedom House (FH). Both FH and the NED have links to the US Congress. the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the US business establishment. Both the NED and FH are known to have ties to the CIA.

The NED is actively involved in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria. Freedom House supports several civil society organizations in Egypt.

“The NED was established by the Reagan administration after the CIA’s role in covertly funding efforts to overthrow foreign governments was brought to light, leading to the discrediting of the parties, movements, journals, books, newspapers and individuals that received CIA funding. … As a bipartisan endowment, with participation from the two major parties, as well as the AFL-CIO and US Chamber of Commerce, the NED took over the financing of foreign overthrow movements, but overtly and under the rubric of “democracy promotion.” (Stephen Gowans, January « 2011 “What’s left“)

While the US has supported the Mubarak government for the last thirty years, US foundations with ties to the US State department and the Pentagon have actively supported the political opposition including the civil society movement.  According to Freedom House: “Egyptian civil society is both vibrant and constrained. There are hundreds of non-governmental organizations devoted to expanding civil and political rights in the country, operating in a highly regulated environment.”

In a bitter irony, Washington supports the Mubarak dictatorship, including its atrocities, while also backing and financing its detractors, through the activities of FH, the NED, among others.

Freedom House: Freedom Maps & meddling with the Middle East

Freedom House publishes an annual report assessing the degree of perceived democratic freedoms in each country.

Freedom House is supposedly an international non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Washington, D.C. which conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights, but it is accused by a lot of analysts and activists to be a front for the American Council on Foreign Relations and its British counterpart the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Noam Chomsky has criticized Freedom House for receiving funding from and allegedly furthering the interests of the U.S. government.

In it’s annual report, titled “Freedom in the World”, Freedom House claims to evaluate  the state of global freedom. The report is published with illustrated maps, titled the “Freedom Maps”.

Here are the maps of the last 3 years alongside their charts:

As you can see from the maps above and charts below, according to “Freedom House” most of the Middle East countries are labeled as NOT FREE, while three countries only (Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait) are labeled as PARTLY FREE, and ONE Country only is FREE, and that’s ISRAEL!

US Embassy Cables: US planning for Mubarak succession since 2006

NEXT STEPS FOR ADVANCING DEMOCRACY IN EGYPT

Ref ID: 06CAIRO1351
Date: 2006-03-06 12:41
Origin: Embassy Cairo
Classification: CONFIDENTIAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 CAIRO 001351

SIPDIS

NEA FOR A/S WELCH, PDAS CHENEY, DAS CARPENTER
NEA FOR ELA
NSC FOR DNSA ABRAMS
TUNIS FOR MEPI (MULREAN)

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/06/2016
TAGS: PGOV KDEM EG
SUBJECT: NEXT STEPS FOR ADVANCING DEMOCRACY IN EGYPT

Classified by Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone for reasons

1.4 (b) and (d).

1. (C) Summary and Introduction: Sometime in the next six years, Egypt will undergo a leadership succession. The United States’ goals for this succession should be to promote an opening to establish a representative government that will secure Egyptian stability, prosperity, and friendship for a generation. There is scant movement in that direction now. Whether or not 77-year old Hosni Mubarak survives his six-year term, his regime is ossifying and increasingly out of touch. His enlightened economic cabinet has a negligible political base and gets little credit outside of elite circles. The National Democratic Party’s popularity is in decline. The military still expects to inherit the Presidency. But the Muslim Brotherhood’s confidence is growing.

Condoleezza’s New Middle East is at hand

By Elias A. Shaaya, February 18, 2011

An international relations theory professor once compared President Woodrow Wilson’s approach to democracy with that of President George W. Bush. Post-World War I, Wilson advocated for the self-governance of the peoples that were liberated from Ottoman rule. His approach could be compared to planting a tree:  You introduce the seed of democracy, nurture it, and then watch it flourish. On the other hand, Bush’s post-9/11 approach to democracy was to remove any existing autocratic governing system that harbored hostility toward the U.S.—using force if needed—and replace it with a democracy. This is analogous to digging a hole and then planting a full-grown tree in it. Recent events in Tunis and Egypt, however, show how much better Wilson’s approach to instating democracy was Bush’s approach. Although the damage in Iraq and Afghanistan has been done, there still needs to be a change in policy concerning other autocratic regimes in the area.American foreign policy had little to do with the Jasmine revolution in Egypt. In fact, the American government was caught off guard and had barely any time to assess the situation. Joe Biden first expressed that he wouldn’t call Mubarak a dictator, but an ally;he later called Mubarak’s resignation a pivotal moment in history. The ambivalence of the American position might just have been the best thing that happened to the revolution. The movement was relatively peaceful—except for violent stunts instigated by Mubarak’s henchmen—and showcased the power of the people to initiate change.As with Tunisia, the events in Egypt are inciting other grassroots movements toward democracy in the Arab world, and the American government should welcome that. Demonstrations are taking place in Jordan, Bahrain, and Yemen, just to name a few. The State Department should pressure its autocratic allies into instituting fundamental changes to their oppressive regimes. If true democracy were to flourish in the Middle East, U.S.-friendly dictators cannot count on their Western allies to keep them in power, but need to become responsible toward their people.

The main excuse that kept Mubarak—and countless others—in power for three decades was that he was the lesser of two evils. Americans feared the rise of an Islamist fundamentalist regime in Egypt that would undermine the Camp David Accords. Although the U.S. did lose a major ally in the region, there are no indications that any democratically elected government would be hostile toward the U.S. Even the widely feared “Muslim Brotherhood” has worked to alleviate such fears by announcing that it will not field a candidate for presidency. The Brotherhood, a non-violent conservative Islamist movement, aims to create an Islamist state, but whether it has enough popular support has yet to be determined. If all goes well, Egypt should have a democratically elected government within six months.

Such apprehensions should not stop the U.S. from pushing toward reforms in other Arab nations that are witnessing peaceful protests calling for reforms. Arabs are calling for legitimate rights that include freedom of speech, better standards of life, and a fair judicial system. If the U.S. genuinely wants to spread democracy in the world, it should start by pressuring their allies into making concessions to their oppressed peoples as a first step to long-term change.

Condoleezza Rice once explained to Arabs that “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” was Israel’s anti-Hezbollah war on Lebanon. However, the 2006 war failed to change the status quo between the two countries, and her “new Middle East” was stillborn. New birth pangs now seem to have hit that region, but they don’t include missiles, bombs, and tanks. They are the dead and injured of Tahrir Square, Pearl Square, and all pro-democracy protests, and they will bring in the birth of a new Middle East.

Source: The Harvard Crimson

Mubarak Trail in pictures

The 2nd Session of Mubarak Trail on 15/08/2011.

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Foreign Policy: How CANVAS & Otpor trained April 6

Under the title “Revolution U: What Egypt learned from the students who overthrew Milosevic”, Foreign Policy published an 8 pages investigation about the History of CANVAS, Otpor & their relation to April 6 Movement in Egypt,  written by Tina Rosenberg in February 16, 2011.

The pages referring to Otpor’s relation with April 6 Movement and Mohamed Adel are Pages 1, 2 & 8.

Revolution U

Early in 2008, workers at a government-owned textile factory in the Egyptian mill town of El-Mahalla el-Kubra announced that they were going on strike on the first Sunday in April to protest high food prices and low wages. They caught the attention of a group of tech-savvy young people an hour’s drive to the south in the capital city of Cairo, who started a Facebook group to organize protests and strikes on April 6 throughout Egypt in solidarity with the mill workers. To their shock, the page quickly acquired some 70,000 followers.

Saad Bahaar

In a report titled “Inside the Egyptian revolution” published on 13 April 2011, Reuters wrote of a character that was never mentioned before in the media in relation to the January 25th Revolution, and whom Reuters claim was involved in the planning process, this candid character is; Saad Bahaar – سعد بحار.

Reuters wrote:

In early 2005, Cairo-based computer engineer Saad Bahaar was trawling the internet when he came across a trio of Egyptian expatriates who advocated the use of non-violent techniques to overthrow strongman Hosni Mubarak. Bahaar, then 32 and interested in politics and how Egypt might change, was intrigued by the idea. He contacted the group, lighting one of the fuses that would end in freedom in Tahrir Square six years later.

The report goes on to detail how Saad and three of his friends have setup the “Academy of Change”: أكاديمية التغيير

In the meantime, the trio of thinkers had morphed into an organization called the Academy of Change — based in London and ultimately moving to Qatar. The Academy became a window for Egypt’s activists into civil disobedience movements outside the Arab world. To disseminate the new methods of resistance, it wrote books about nonviolent activism with a focus on the Arab world: “Civil Disobedience,” “Nonviolent War the 3rd Choice” and “AOC MindQuake” that were published in 2007.

A year later the Academy published “Shields to Protect Against Fear”, a manual on techniques to protect one’s body against attacks by security services during a protest. “The idea of non-violent protest is not martyrdom,” Adel said. “We knew to get ordinary Egyptians, and Arabs, to face their governments and security, they have to have tools to protect themselves. This boosts the morale and enthusiasm to go to the street.”

The ideas espoused by the Academy spread through Egypt. 

Reuters’ report continues to reveal Saad’s Academy relation to Kefaya, Ahmed Maher, & April 6 Youth, but then Reuters details another very worrying aspect, which is: “Saad Bahaar’s relation with Mohamed ElBaradei!!!

The Great Deception Addendum English Version Released

The Great Deception Addendum: Inside the Egyptian Revolution

TGD Addendum, is a short documentary, following up on TGD 2011 الخداع الأكبر, and expanding on the questions raised about the Arab Uprising and the Middle East [Democracy] Project.

But actually TGD Addendum Tackles the bigger questions, which are:

What is Color Revolutions?
What is International Crisis Group?
Who is George Soros???
What is his relationship with ElBraradei & April 6 Youth?
Does he have role in the Egyptian Revolution?
Who is Saad Bahaar???
What is his relationship with ElBraradei & April 6 Youth?
Does he have role in the Egyptian Revolution?

All these questions and many more must be answered before embracing those who lecture us about freedom and democracy in post revolution Egypt.

However, this video is not an attack on any particular person of the ones mentioned, nor is it an attack on Egypt Freedom Revolution, whom we are most proud that we were part of it, since the first days.

But this video is an invitation to open your mind to broader ideas, to research and to question and not to be a follower to any one person or one entity.

“Question Authority, Think for yourself”

The Links:

Mohamed ElBaradei
ElBaradei & Soros
Saad Bahaar

George Soros:
NS Profile: George Soros
Meet George Soros
What is a “Color” Revolution???

April 6th Movement:
WikiLeaks: APRIL 6 Activist met with US officials in 2008 & discussed Regime Change “Plan” in EGYPT by 2011
US Department of State: Press Release on Alliance of Youth Movements Summit
NY Times: U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings
Reuters Special Report: Inside the Egyptian revolution

Disclaimer about “The Great Deception 2011″

To make one thing clear:

Anarchitext is not Pro Mubarak,

Anarchitext is not Pro NDP,

Anarchitext is not Pro Dictatorship in anyway shape or form…

Quite the opposite, Anarchitext is against Mubarak, his corrupt faction, his corrupt government, his corrupt parliament, his corrupt election and his 30 years rule of torture and oppression…

We are with the calls for his prosecution and trial…

AND we are proud that we have taken part of the glorious Egyptian Revolution…

“The Great Deception 2011″ is not about defending Mubarak, and those who understand it that way are ill-advised and misinformed.