friends opinion on the internet kill switch in Egypt. I sure they have a good grasp on what is happening. I started looking around for info on what was going on in Egypt, or why the riots started now and why. I know you know probably better than anyone what happens when you start going down the rabbit hole in search of info, one thing leads to another. Starting with what I found at the end, and working back to how I got there, was just picking up various names along the way. I know you could do a much better job of this than me, but, here goes.

Maybe some have heard of Freedom House, based in Washington, DC, I never had. It was started in 1941, during FDR’s admin., supposedly to fight “communism.”

http://www.freedomhouse,org/template.cfm?page=600

As you can see there goal is to “promote democracy throughout the world.” According to Wiki, 80% of their funding comes from the US federal government, plus some “other private groups.” Remember that the Tunesian protests, and now the Egyptian protests were supposedly started in order to promote democracy in those countries. I never bought the story that it was started by a Tunesian that refused to be shaken down for bribes from the government, and I also didn’t buy the story that a similar situation sparked the riots in Egypt. If anything they were excuses, from those that don’t want to look any farther.

I didn’t check the date on this story, it doesn’t matter, you will see the date in the link. At The World Forum on Democracy, a joint initiative of Freedom House and the Stefan Batory Foundation, the speakers were, Kofi Annan, Alejandro Toledo, and wait for it- George Soros. Here’s the press release from Freedom House-

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=81

For funding info for Freedom House, in addition to the US government, here is the direct tie to Soros-

http://windhoekplus20.org/funding-partners/

The senior program officer for African and Middle East programs at Freedom House in DC is Sherif Mansour. During the protests, a facebook activist, Ahmed Maher, was arrested his friends said, they were frantic, so was Sherif Mansour, as he was also a friend of Maher’s.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/leading-egyptian-facebook-activist-arrested-friends-say/

Ahmed Maher was a social media activist in Egypt, and was one of the founders of the April 6 organization, which was a protest group, who were protesting police and government brutality. He has been active in trying to incite the population, and attempted a massive protest brought about because of the brutal murder of a 28 year old textile worker, Khaled Said, during the time of protesting at a Textile company, three years prior. According to eyewitnesses, he was beaten severely by the police, and died from his wounds. His friends claimed he had nothing to do with the protests, but had somehow gotten video of police with illegal drugs, and the police felt threatened. I’ll stop here and ask, if the police were not supposed to have illegal drugs, it must have been a rule of the government, right? So the problem was with the police, not the government???

Here is the site where I started looking around, and got some of the names above from here. There are certainly others, but Ahmed Maher seems to have ties to Freedom House, and to Sherif Mansour in particular.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/02/who-is-behind-egyptian-protests

I remember reading an article that claimed that the US had trained an Egyptian activist here in the US, and that his name was kept secret from the Egyptian government. He had gone back to Egypt. I don’t know if that would have been Ahmed Maher or someone else, but, here is an article speaking to that training-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandirdianoce

That’s what I found. I don’t know if it all makes any sense. I do believe that the US is behind the Egyptian unrest, and they tested it first in a smaller country to see if it would work. That was Tunesia, and the overthrow of that government worked like a charm. Too bad the former dictator of Tunesia has returned to the county, since the more current dictator has fled. The former is reported to be a radical Islamic Imam.