"The Uprising has been Made Possible by Funds from the United States Government"

Al Jazeera English reporter Emad Mekay seems to have been spending a lot of time at the Investigative Reporting Program based at the University of California at Berkeley. The result has been a rather extensive article, which appeared this morning, trying assiduously to follow State Department funding channeled through an initiative informally known as "democracy assistance." Those who have observed the massive public gatherings demanding the removal of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and though it was all too good to be true may well have been right. Mekay's article involves detailed pursuit of the follow-the-money strategy, including elaborate diversionary paths when the use of that money was legally questionable, if not by United State law than by Egyptian law (and, perhaps, sometimes both). If all of these money trails are accurate, then "democracy assistance" is already a running candidate for the most deceptive (and perhaps disgusting) euphemism of the century. If this story "has legs," then we had best brace ourselves for one ugly blowback.