Muslim Brotherhood Presidency in Egypt......Democracy or Theocracy?

Egypt's newly elected president, Mohammed Mursi  has said he wants talks with other institutions to resolve a constitutional crisis stemming from  his attempts to reinstate the previously elected and disbanded parliament.  This has set off a standoff with  judges and the military over this past  weekend.

We may recall the parliamentary chamber was dominated by Mr. Mursi's Islamist allies which were shut down by the military before he took power.  Some feel this dispute could threaten to throw Egypt back into political chaos.

The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court had initially ruled that some of the seats in parliament's lower house were unconstitutional because (election) rules had been breached leading the military to then dissolve the whole chamber. But it was unclear whether the military had the authority to shut the parliament.

Mr. Mursi reignited the dispute Sunday when he ordered parliament to reconvene, a decree that was later overruled by the court.  Today, Mr. Mursi's office said the decision to reopen parliament was intended to fill a power-vacuum claiming, he is "committed to the rulings of Egyptian judges and very keen to manage state powers and prevent any confrontation.  There will be consultations among all political forces, institutions and the supreme council of judicial authorities to find the best way out of this situation in order to overcome this stage together”.

Mohammed Mursi, of the Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) Freedom and Justice Party, was elected in June in the country's first ever freely contested leadership vote after the fall of Hosni Mubarak nearly 17 months ago. Mursi captured 52 percent of the vote while Ahmed Shafiq, the preferred candidate of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and former Mubarak, Prime Minister, got 48 percent of the vote.  The military elbowed their way into a power-sharing pact by dissolving the parliament after the MB won most of the seats of any group in the late 2011/early 2012 parliamentary elections and then ostensibly changed the Constitution guaranteeing a power-sharing relationship.

Imagine the feeling of Mohammed Mursi sitting in the Presidential palace this past month trying to comprehend how he occupies an office held by his arch-nemesis for three decades.  It is the bewilderment of many in the West too; how could an avowed member of the Muslim Brotherhood, so feared under the Mubarak and Sadat presidencies wrest power from the status quo after months of turmoil throughout the Arab Spring?

As I walked the streets of Cairo this past winter and asked the same questions of the average Egyptian, a common theme seemed to surface…Egyptians crave and need change.  Many told me, in spite of the radical concerns, the MB offered change; food in the bellies of the poor, improved health care for all and hope for the highly educated and unemployed masses that feel the 21^st century has left them behind.  Mursi has his work cut out for him; taking on the task of restoring a country ravaged by political upheaval but more importantly turning around a staggering economy in the Arab world’s most populous nation.  To a large extent, the high unemployment, rising prices and shortages in basic needs and commodities drove folks to the polls begging for hope and change. When I asked people about concerns they may have had about the loss of secularism through the implementation of an Islamic government, many just shook their heads and told me the masses are uneducated and many are illiterate, they get their information at their local mosque and the MB “promised the world”.  Equally perplexing is the radical Islamic Salafist party candidate came away with over 20 percent of the vote.  Coptic Christians make up only 10% of the Egyptian population and many have concerns with the new MB-led presidency.  We have seen the increased violence against the Christian population in Egypt as well as in other dominantly Muslim countries in recent months and so what does the new MB presidency portend for the future of the Coptic Christian minority?  (See January 7, 2001 WIRETAP BLOG, The Silence is Deafening)  Some of the young Christian participants in the Arab Spring, Tahrir Square uprisings now wonder, what has our fight brought us, have we “shot ourselves in the foot”?  Some have expressed concern in tweets, asking about rumors circulating that Christians may have to pay a “jizya”, a tax that early Islamic rulers demanded form non-Muslim subjects.  Even Tariq Ali, the British Pakistani activist posted on Facebook, “Congratulations to the Sunni version of Iran”.

But then it should come as no surprise, as we have seen in other places such as the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and now, Egypt, “democratic” elections don’t always bring “democratic” institutions or democratic-leaning parties to power.  Jeffersonian democracies don’t spring to life without certain pre-existing political, social, judicial and economic conditions.

Is Mohammed Mursi a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”?  Only time will tell. The MB has a worrisome history going back to 1929 fomenting violence, terrorism and an extremist Islamic agenda.  They were responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat and hold or have held many leadership positions in Al-Qaeda.  Their published motto is as follows, “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."  Their links to Hamas in Gaza, near the Egyptian Sinai border, and the West Bank is of significant concern to U.S. and Israeli security services.  Mursi himself stated in the first days of his presidency that he gets his “power from God”, a chant we’ve heard before from the radical Sh’ia-backed theocracy of Iran.  I also found another statement made in his first days in office somewhat troubling, inappropriate and “stick in the eye” to America.  Mursi stated that the “Blind Sheik”, Omar Abdel Rahman, responsible for the deaths and injuries of numerous Americans in the 1993, World Trade Center bombing, should be freed.  The Blind Sheik is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his part in the attack on the World Trade Center as well as his conspiracy to bomb and destroy other New York landmarks such as the Lincoln Tunnel, the United Nations and 26 Federal Plaza.  Abdel Rahman headed up a Muslim Brotherhood cell of the very extreme Egyptian terrorist group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya which took over a Hoboken, New Jersey mosque in the early 1990’s.  From there, Rahman, along with Ramzi Yousef (also serving life in federal prison) and their cohorts plotted and carried out their death and destruction plan against New York City targets.  Why would Mursi make such an outlandish statement although, when pressed, he quickly backed away and went mum on the subject?  As an engineer with a degree from USC in Los Angeles, Mursi also claimed that 9/11 was some type of “conspiracy” claiming his engineering “expertise” doesn’t allow him to believe airplanes could have taken down both towers.

The U.S. gives Egypt $1.2 Billion (yes, with a B!) each year.  The basis of that generous aid package goes back to the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords when we brokered an Israeli, Egyptian, Middle-East peace deal that Egypt signed off on and quickly took to the bank.  Heretofore, the military has benefitted from the bulk of that money.  Will the current power-sharing arrangement between the MB and the military keep the radical elements within Mursi’s party at bay or will we have to reassess our relationship with Egypt and our yearly “foreign aid” package?  Only time will tell.

“D-Day or DSN Changer Day”

Today’s the day the court order expires and the safety net in the form of replacement servers shuts down. This safety net has been protecting computers around the world from the DNS CHANGER MALWARE over the past 6 months. Let’s examine what this means for folks around the globe who surf the internet each day as well as how this came about.

Starting back in 2007, a group of sophisticated cyber-criminals in the small Baltic country of Estonia along with a Russian compatriot conspired and put together one of the most massive and complex internet fraud schemes we’ve witnessed in our time. Through the implementation and global distribution of malware, these bad guys were able to hijack the Domain Name System or DNS; hence the name DNS Changer. The Domain Name System is the basic component of internet communication. It converts data, such as Web-sites into numerical addresses allowing computers to “talk” to one another. Through the infection of millions of computers around the world with DNS Changer, these criminals were able to control DSN servers. Once accomplished, they ostensibly had control, hijacking their victim’s web browsing and directing their web traffic to fraudulent web-sites and advertisements. Over the next five years, these cyber criminals infected nearly four million computers in over a hundred countries around the world realizing over $14 million dollars in a sophisticated “click fraud” scheme! On-line advertising has become a multi-billion dollar business and the crooks exploited it and stole millions through the use of malware.

Fortunately, through international cooperation by police, affected government agencies, the private sector and internet security firms around the globe, the bad guys were identified, charged and arrested for committing serious federal crimes this past November. The charges include a multitude of wire fraud and computer intrusion violations and they were extradited to the U.S. to face those charges where they face over 30 years in prison if found guilty. The FBI in the United States worked closely with both their Estonian partners as well and the Dutch national police identifying the bad guys and gathering the evidence in preparation for indictments and arrests. But the job wasn’t done with the charges and arrests. The FBI and the Internet Systems Consortium realized that a “safety net” had to be activated to protect folks. The servers that the bad guys were using were taken offline and replacement servers were put into place to prevent folks from losing Internet access. All this was done under a court order…and that court order expires today, July 8, 2012.

Most folks have received notice from a variety of sources to include Face book, Google, Yahoo or their internet service provider to check to see if their computer is infected with the DNS Changer malware. Because the court order expires today and the safety net goes away, everyone should check their computers as soon as possible if they have not yet done so. The process is simple and no software has to be downloaded nor is any kind of a scan necessary. One merely needs to go to www.dcwg.org and click on the Detect icon. You will then have to select the country where you live from a provided list. This second simple click will result in either a green or red colored logo. If it’s green, “life is good”, you’re not infected; if it’s red, you have been infected with DNS Changer and will be instructed how to rid your computer of the malware. It’s important to have updated, working anti-virus protection and to educate yourself about how to use the scanning and cleanup tools.

Often, it’s best to back up your data and just consult with a computer technical professional. It’s also important to notify your Internet service provider for help in reconnecting to the Internet. If you don’t fully detect and rid your computer of the malware, it can continue to control your machine and wreak havoc with other computer functions.

This case, codename, “Operation Ghost Click” involving six Estonian cyber-crooks is just the tip of the iceberg according to international security experts around the globe. We are stepping into new and frightening territory representing a new stage in international crime and terrorism. Cyber criminals operating in China, Russia and throughout the globe are “pinging” on our military, government, space industry, corporate and IT sector all day every day trying to penetrate, steal, degrade and “hijack” our most sensitive, valuable and proprietary systems. A Chinese cyber-spy, called “Night Dragon” has attacked our oil and gas sector. Another Chinese cyber-spy, “Ghost Net” conducts what are called, “spear fishing” expeditions against corporate executives and employees by identifying them and their email addresses and then emailing them unsuspecting attachments containing malware which quickly penetrates, infects and compromises their systems. Concerns we hear from the corporate security sector is that we are “shooting ourselves in the foot” by buying cheaper hardware from Asia that is infecting us with “Trojan Horses” allowing the bad guys to get into our systems by merely selling us their products. The tech sector ran to Asia years back to open up the market there and the bad guys quickly co-opted out technology and are now selling it back to us, sometimes with mal intent.

In 2007, the Zeus virus targeted and victimized financial institution worldwide. This particularly pervasive virus automatically transferred millions of dollars out of bank accounts worldwide. As the virus constantly mutated, it was nearly impossible to detect. The resulting investigation, surfaced an underground criminal economy selling stolen identities, credit cards and sensitive account information. With over 75,000 Wi-Fi networks throughout the U.S., a pervasive and growing on-line banking and commercial sector, our vulnerability seems to ever increase while security and prevention technologies just can’t keep up with the bad guys.

From a national security perspective, a computer virus or compromise could be the new “super bomb” planted by terrorists or a rogue nation against us. The “Stuxnet” virus, which shut down the Iranian nuclear centrifuge project last year, clearly exemplified the ability of a computer virus to bring a critical national infrastructure to its knees. We have seen in our nation the havoc that can be wrought when automated computer systems fail. In San Bruno, California gas explosions and in Washington, DC area train wrecks in recent years, automated computer systems caused death and destruction brought on, in these sad cases, purely because of human error. How do we cope or prepare for the intentional compromise of computer systems controlling our sensitive infrastructure components – nuclear power plants, air traffic control, water, gas, banking, and communications by international terrorists or rogue nations acting unilaterally or on behalf of terrorists? We know hackers, believed to be acting on directions of rogue nations have already penetrated and compromised portions of our military complex and our transportation systems. We are entering into an age where a “Cyber 9/11” could be beyond our darkest nightmares. The global cooperation we saw in the DSN Changer case is the template for the future if we are to protect our national, economic and personal security. A bonafide global coalescence of police, intelligence services, private corporate and technical sectors will have to join forces against an enemy far greater than anything we’ve seen in history…and the threat will conceive, grow and conduct its nefarious activity in cyber-space.

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