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Just last month, Secretary of State John Kerry quietly sent Egypt an additional $1.3 billion, even though Egypt has failed to live up to democracy standards. That largesse didn’t stop a prominent Egyptian politician from talking about Egypt’s “enemy” the United States in what some pundits are classifying as a classic and embarrassing “hot mic” moment...

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) -- The photocopies of the manual lay in heaps on the floor, in stacks that scaled one wall, like Xeroxed, stapled handouts for a class. Except that the students in this case were al-Qaida fighters in Mali. And the manual was a detailed guide, with diagrams and photographs, on how to use a weapon that particularly concerns the United States: A surface-to-air missile capable of taking down a commercial airplane. The 26-page document in Arabic, recovered by The Associated Press in a building that had been occupied by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Timbuktu, strongly suggests...

The war on terror is long over. U.S. Army attorney Lt. Gen. Dana Chipman declared last week that the Fort Hood jihad massacre was a “criminal act of a single individual,” not an act of international terrorism. Barack Obama declared the war on terror over yet again last Thursday, saying, “Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” Obama announced the beginning of a glorious time of peace: “Today, Osama bin Laden is...

A curious idea of justice, have these Islamists. From The Australian: TWENTY people have received a two-year suspended prison sentence for their part in a deadly attack on the US embassy in Tunisia last year, their lawyer said. "They all got a two-year suspended sentence," said lawyer Anouar Ouled Ali. "We will see with their families if they want to appeal. If they want to, we will do it," he added. The verdict, which was not made public, came after only half a day, an unusually short trial in the north African country. Hundreds of angry Islamist protesters attacked the...

One stark change, for me, is the graffiti on the wall of the American University just off the square. The wall once carried motivational slogans, nationalistic song lyrics and poems. Now, all I can see there are the faces of dead people, of those killed during the two years of the revolution. Some of them are quite disturbing. The faces have been deformed, apparently beaten up. Police brutality is alleged. Most of the faces on the wall are those of young people. … Of all Egypt’s problems, mass unemployment is the most pressing, and it is the young who are...

Robert Malley, a top Middle East advisor that US President-elect Barack Obama promised months ago would play no role in his administration due to ties to Hamas, has reportedly been sent out on the next administration's first diplomatic mission. According to a report in Middle East Newsline, Obama dispatched Malley to Egypt and Syria late last week with a message that the he intends to mend and bolster relations with both nations, and to give greater weight to their concerns regarding regional conflicts than did President George W. Bush. During the Democratic Party primaries, Obama was lashed by critics for...

In March, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service announced that a growing number of jihadists are being recruited in Switzerland. The number of robberies and assaults on Swiss trains has skyrocketed to such an extent that the Swiss government recently opted to equip transport police with firearms, and at least 1,400 women in Switzerland have been victims of forced marriages. A controversial new report by the Swiss government claims that Muslim immigrants are so well integrated into Swiss society that no further federal policies or programs are needed to promote Muslim integration or to counter Islamic extremism. ... since the beginning...

May 16, 2013 Column One: Obama and the ‘official truth’ Caroline B. Glick Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sitting in a US federal prison in Texas since his photographed midnight arrest by half a dozen deputy sheriffs at his home in California for violating the terms of his parole. As many reporters have noted, the parole violation in question would not generally lead to anything more than a court hearing. But in Nakoula’s case, it led to a year in a federal penitentiary. Because he wasn’t really arrested for violating the terms of his parole. Nakoula was arrested for producing...

Joseph Kony 2012: filmmaker Jason Russell arrested on suspicion of masturbating in public One of the creators of the “Kony 2012” film about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony has been arrested for allegedly being drunk and masturbating in public. Jason Russell, 33, was also accused of stripping off his clothes and vandalising cars before he was detained in San Diego. Russell, an evangelical Christian, is a co-founder of the American advocacy group Invisible Children. Their 29-minute film has been watched by more than 100 million people and become the fastest spreading video ever.

US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime. The main Syrian opposition coalition said he would be put on trial. The video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show him cutting out the heart. "I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog," the man says referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier's corpse. Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Abu Sakkar is the leader of a group called...

The best evidence of the unlamented death of the Arab Spring (2010-2013) was the nervous response in Washington D.C. to the Syrian crossing of the Red Line. The Red Line had been set up so that Assad would eventually run afoul of it, whether by using chemical weapons or by taking the blame for chemical weapons use by the rebels; as the UN alleges happened. Once the Red Line was crossed, the Liberators of Libya would use the opportunity to enforce the will of the people; at least those people with Qatari RPGs and Turkish machine guns. But instead of...

Syrian Rebel Bites Heart of Dead Soldier: Video BEIRUT (Reuters) - A video of a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting into is emblematic of a civil war that has rapidly descended into sectarian hatred and revenge killings, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. The New York-based group said an amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday shows Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade who is well known to journalists as an insurgent from Homs, cutting into the torso of a dead soldier. The video has caused outrage among both...

Mithal Al-Alusi, whose two sons were killed in a Baghdad ambush soon after he visited Israel, tells The Times of Israel he feels betrayed by the superpower which allowed him to return to his homeland Mithal Al-Alusi is angry. He is angry with Iran for supporting global terrorism. He is angry with Syrian President Bashar Assad for oppressing and killing his own people. He is angry with his own prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, for colluding with the two. But most of all, he is angry with US President Barack Obama for allowing this all to happen. “Obama has...

At least nine people have been killed in a car bomb explosion near a hospital in the Libyan city of Benghazi, an official has told the BBC. "I saw people running and some of them were collecting parts of bodies," a witness said. This follows a string of bombings in the eastern city in recent days. Security remains precarious in Libya since the uprising against long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, with protests by militias and attacks by Islamists. At the end of April, a car bomb exploded outside the French embassy in the capital, Tripoli, wounding two French guards and several...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

TWO years of political upheaval have battered tourism, a motor of Egypt’s economy. Much of the Nile cruise fleet lies idle. Trinket-sellers and would-be guides at the Giza pyramids are so hungry for custom that they often mob or simply jump aboard approaching taxis. And though the damage has been patchy, with beach resorts still thriving even as visitors shun the ancient monuments, lingering uncertainty over the future means it may be years before Egypt regains its place in the sun. In 2010, the last year before Egypt’s revolution, a record 14m tourists arrived. The industry was 13% of GDP...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Obama’s Benghazi PropagandistPosted By Matthew Vadum On May 8, 2013 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments A young White House speechwriter may be responsible for concocting the official lies about last September’s deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.The Obama administration’s rapidly unravelling narrative about what happened at the U.S. consulate in Libya’s second-largest city may have been cooked up by creative writer Ben Rhodes, the president’s 30-something Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.The origin of the administration’s desperate election-season fabrications may come up today as a congressional committee...

News services in Israel are on fire with talk that Barack Obama has just sent a supporter of the terror group Hamas as his envoy to Syria and Egypt to relay news of his policies to come. .... ..... In September of this year, Robert Malley caused consternation among people that stand against the terror group Hamas when he went to Syria to work for a group called the International Crisis Group — a George Soros funded NGO also chaired by other doyens the far left. ...

The United States will "shortly" begin arming Syrian rebels, looking to boost moderate factions over al Qaida-affiliated extremists whose rise would be a national security "nightmare," the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told CBS News on Tuesday.

The Benghazi scandal is easy to understand, and that’s what makes it so dangerous for the White House. Simply, the Obama administration’s narrative — that al-Qaeda was on the run, that Hosni Mubarak had to go, and that the Arab Spring was a good thing — was proven false when four brave Americans were killed. Because the administration was a slave to their own narrative, rather than aggressively fighting al-Qaeda, rather than recognizing the $50 billion investment in Mubarak’s stability, and rather than realizing that the upheaval they sponsored in the Middle East empowered Muslim Brotherhood radicals, they lied repeatedly...

Democrats on Sunday morning's news shows appeared to back away from President Barack Obama on his administration's response to the Benghazi terror attack and his blurry "red line" on Syria's chemical weapons. On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) admitted that the Obama administration's talking points on Benghazi, edited to remove references to extremism and blaming protests against an anti-Islamic YouTube video for the violence, were "false. They were wrong. There were no protests outside the Benghazi compound." On CBS News' Face the Nation, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, also admitted that...

Canada and the United States foiled an attempted attack by al Qaeda today, arresting Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser. Among other things, Esseghaier, it has been learned, was a PhD student at INRS University in Quebec. On Esseghaier's Linkedin profile, he posted this picture as his profile: His profile lists various colleges that he has attended, including INRS, Université de Sherbrooke, and IPEST in Tunis. Esseghaier states that he is able to speak Arabic, French, and English. Esseghaier explains in a short biography he wrote on a personal website: Born in Tunis, Tunisia. I got Engineer degree in Industrial Biology...

A former Muslim Brotherhood terrorist claims a bizarre video released out of Egypt demonstrates the “demonic” spirit that has gripped the nation since its 2011 Islamic revolution. The video shows a wedding celebration in which a group of men in a frenzy tear apart a live chicken by hand, then scrabble over its pieces to eat its raw flesh. “The video is a glimpse into the dark and incomprehensible spirit that has possessed the souls of Egypt,” claims Walid Shoebat, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization operative who has since renounced his terrorist ways. “Lawlessness has abounded, excesses have gone unrestricted...

Given the long history of Muslim Brotherhood activity in this country, its declared objective to "destroy the Western civilization from within," and the extensive evidence of successful influence operations at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it is urgent that we recognize this clear and present danger that threatens not only our Republic but the values of Western civilization. ... Since its inception in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood consistently has championed the cause of global jihad ... Aside from its ideology, if there is a single characteristic that defines the Brotherhood, it is organization. From its earliest days, the...

Egyptian doctors 'ordered to operate on protesters without anaesthetic' Exclusive: Leaked presidential report recommends an investigation into the highest echelons of the army leadership Senior Egyptian army doctors were ordered to operate without anaesthetic on wounded protesters at a military hospital in Cairo during protests against military rule, according to an investigation commissioned by president Mohamed Morsi. The report into military and police malpractice since 2011 also alleges that doctors, soldiers and medics assaulted protesters inside the hospital. The findings, which relate to the army's behaviour during the Abbassiya clashes in May 2012, are the latest leak to the Guardian...

Deep Thoughts by Thomas Friedman But don’t worry, the term “admits” is a bit strong. It’s more like the weatherman who predicted there wouldn’t be a flood for a month straight clinging to an antenna on the roof of his house and trying to find reasons why he was right all along even while the sharks are circling his chimney. The standard fallback position for Tahrir’s international cheerleaders is to argue that we were expecting positive results too quickly. The term “Arab Spring” has to be retired. There is nothing springlike going on,” Friedman says. “It’s best we now speak...

After beheading Sheikh Hasan Saif Addien, the armed groups hanged his head atop the minaret of al-Hasan Mosque in the strategic town of Sheikh Maksoud in northern Aleppo, the report said. Some pro-government media accused al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front of killing the imam whose lectures and preaches had focused on national unity and denounced the "huge conspiracy" plotted against Syria. Arabi Press' website said the rebels stormed Sheikh Maksoud but were later driven out by the Syrian army. Attacks on pro-government clerics have recently become rampant in the rebels' two-year-old revolt against President Bashar al- Assad. On March 21, prominent Muslim...

Judicial sources told AFP that several complaints had been filed against Youssef, whose razor-sharp humour -- delivered on his weekly television programme Albernameg (The Show) -- has spared few public figures. The soaring number of legal complaints against journalists has cast doubt on Morsi's commitments to freedom of expression...

TRIPOLI, Libya — Three female British activists of Pakistani origin were raped by Libyan pro-government militiamen in the eastern city of Benghazi, after joining an aid convoy bound for Gaza to break an Israeli blockade, officials from several countries confirmed on Friday. ...

ItÂ’s often said that Republicans are the Daddy Party in American politics, while the Democrats stand in for Mom. Mom is about putting nice meals on the table, pushing us to do well in school and teaching us to be kind to other kids; Dad worries about the budget, enforces the rules, teaches us to be self reliant, and is the one you look to when bullies or criminals threaten. Naturally in these enlightened times we reject all such sexist rhetoric; we are all Coneheads now with interchangeable, unisex parental units instead of mothers and fathers. Still, the old description...

Excerpts: Apollo granted to his Trojan priestess Cassandra the gift of prophecy. But because she resisted his advances he punished her by ensuring that nobody would ever believe what she said. Such has been the fate of pessimists down the ages. Those who interrupt the good cheer of their fellows with the thought that the things about which they are all agreed might go badly wrong are either dismissed as madmen or condemned as fools. ... We have witnessed something similar in the so-called Arab Spring. “Unscrupulous optimism,” as Schopenhauer called it, led both the United States and the nations...

In the first meeting of its kind by Alawites who support the revolt, delegates distanced themselves from Assad's crackdown against an uprising in which 70,000 people have been killed. "We call on our brothers in the Syrian army, specifically members of our sect, not to take up arms against their people and to refuse to join the army," the delegates said in a statement after two days of meeting in the Egyptian capital. Alawite domination of the officer army corp is one of the pillars of Assad's control."The Syrian regime is not an Alawite sectarian regime ... the Alawite sect...

Social disruption, dramatic declines in mining and tourism and the Feb. 6 assassination of popular leftist leader Chokri Belaid, who was gunned down outside his home in the capital apparently by hard-line Islamists, known as Salafists, have all contributed to a darkened atmosphere inside the birthplace of the Arab Spring. There’s a sullen resentment at the failure of the Islamist government -- it is ruling with two secular center-left parties – to move the economy on.

In Russia, most analysts, politicians and ordinary citizens believe in the unlimited might of America, and thus reject the notion that the US has made, and continues to make, mistakes in the [Middle East]. Instead, they assume it’s all a part of a complex plan to restructure the world and to spread global domination,” writes Fyodor Lukyanov ... It’s instructive to view ourselves through a Russian mirror. The term “paranoid Russian” is a pleonasm. “The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication...

According to a new study jointly produced by three liberal organizations — the Center for American Progress, the Stimson Center, and the Center for Climate and Security — global warming may be destabilizing the Arab world. Entitled “The Arab Spring and Climate Change,� the study was given prominent publicity by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who put many of its words under his byline to create his op-ed column for Sunday, March 3.According to Friedman, “‘The Arab Spring and Climate Change’ doesn’t claim that climate change caused the recent wave of Arab revolutions, but, taken together, the essays...

To understand how we got to the point that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support a government run by people who have been at war with us for almost a century is a policy that most foreign policy experts endorse, it helps to take a brief trip back in time. In the last century, our big three wars, the two we fought and the one we didn’t, were against enemies who were seen as being distinguished by a lack of democracy, with the Kaiser, the Fuhrer and the Commissar embodying the antithesis of the American system.The Democratic Party,...

(CNN) -- The first Syrian rebels trained by U.S. military and intelligence officers in Jordan returned to Syria on Thursday, a senior rebel spokesman told CNN. About 300 rebel fighters received specialized training in Jordan in the use of various weapons, including anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other types of advanced systems, the spokesman said. More rebel fighters are currently undergoing training.

Both Egypt and Tunisia have looked to Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a model for the Arab Spring in their own states. In his recent book, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, Andrew C. McCarthy condemns this outlook as “perverse.” “It is perverse to regard the Islamist AKP as a ‘model for the Arab Spring,’” he argues. “The main lesson of the Arab Spring is that the mirage of Islam as a moderating force hospitable to democratic transformation exists solely in our own minds, for our own consumption.” McCarthy goes into depth about the changes in Turkey...

If the Arab Spring taught us something, it is that the effects of climate change can serve as stressors, contributing to regional instability and conflict, experts said. In a report published last week, researchers from the Center for American Progress, the Center for Climate and Security and the Stimson Center examined the role of climate change in the Middle East's upheaval during 2010 and 2011. Looking at long-term trends in rain, crops, food prices and migration, they were able to determine how these factors contributed to social instability in the region. "The Arab Spring would likely have come one way...

Jan and co-host Eric Barger talk to Dr. Erwin Lutzer about his new book, The Cross in the Shadow of the Crescent. Dr. Lutzer has hit a home run with his insights into what Islam is up to. This is a wake-up call to the church as well. Lutzer gets into "appeasement" issues by the current administration which are delusional and he talks about other current issues that trouble him concerning Islam, America, and the West. This is no ordinary book or radio discussion on this topic. The inroads of Islam are startling and Jan, Eric and Lutzer reference the...

* Shift would help fighters with non-lethal assistance * Steps intended to show greater support to Syria opposition * State Department has no comment; no monetary figures given (Adds quotes, background) WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The United States is expected to provide medical supplies and food aid to Syrian fighters, a policy shift to directly help those opposing President Bashar al-Assad's forces on the ground, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States continues to oppose providing lethal assistance and said it also will not provide such...

BEIRUT – The battle for Syria's second-largest airport intensified on Saturday as government troops tried to reverse recent strategic gains the rebels have made in the northeast in their quest to topple President Bashar Assad. Assad's troops have been locked in a stalemate with rebels in Aleppo since July when the city, the largest in Syria, became a major battlefield in the 2-year-old conflict the United Nations says has killed at least 70,000 people. Rebels have been trying to capture the international airport for months. Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the...

Well, well, well, so Obama has embarked on his third war in little more than two years. You've got to admit that "flexibility" is his middle name. Or at least one of his middle names: Barack Barry Hussein "Flexibility" Soetoro Obama, Jr. Those are the names we know so far, but The Donald thinks there might be more. Whodda thunk? Here we are barely into the first week of what started out as a "No-Fly Zone" and it is now turning out to be Air Al Qaida. Ten years ago, AQ had a mere four civilian airplanes to crash into...

MUNICH — The leader of the Syrian opposition council, Mouaz al-Khatib, met here today with key representatives of the United States and Russia — who fundamentally disagree on how to resolve Syria's civil war — but the meetings were separate and there was no indication, officials said, that any progress had been made toward a workable plan to bring the violence to an end. snip Senior European officials here said Britain and France were both urging the Obama administration to stop blocking allies in the Persian Gulf, like Qatar, from providing rebels with more sophisticated arms and intelligence assistance. snip...

As dozens of riot police fired volleys of tear gas towards crowds of angry youths on Bourghiba Avenue this week, the scene was disturbingly reminiscent of what happened on this very avenue two years ago. Even the chanting was the same: "We want the downfall of the regime!" The target of the crowd's anger may be a different government, but many here feel their efforts in 2011, when they succeeded in removing Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, may have been for nought. Many outsiders, myself included, always believed the Tunisian "Jasmine" uprising had the best chance of succeeding, of building a...

Late last year, largely unnoticed in the West, Tunisia's president, Moncef Marzouki, gave an interview to Chatham House's The World Today. Commenting on a recent attack by Salafists—ultra-conservative Sunnis—on the United States embassy in Tunis, he remarked in an unguarded moment: "We didn't realise how dangerous and violent these Salafists could be ... They are a tiny minority within a tiny minority. They don't represent society or the state. They cannot be a real danger to society or government, but they can be very harmful to the image of the government." It appears that Marzouki was wrong. Following the assassination...

Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid was buried as a martyr for freedom and democracy in a country that is threatened with the loss of both, as an uprising against the ruling Islamist party gained momentum. Mr. Belaid’s assassination triggered a ferocious backlash against the main Islamist party, Ennahda, one that continued during the funeral Friday, attended by as many as 100,000 people. The midafternoon funeral on Friday was a largely peaceful event marred by bouts of violence – and brief periods of panic – as crowds tried to outrun billowing clouds of tear gas aimed at demonstrators and looters on...

They're having to completely clear the Chamber. Priceless lol!!!!!

WASHINGTON — Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States’ inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two officials were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance. The idea was to vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons. The plan had risks, but it also offered the potential reward of creating Syrian allies with whom the United States could work, both during the conflict and after President Bashar al-Assad’s eventual removal. Mrs....

Obama's epic foreign policy failure: Rape squads of Tahrir Square: Marauding 'state-backed gangs' are still terrorising female protesters two years after revolution Daily Mail, 29 January 2013 | Reports of 19 group sexual assaults logged on Friday in Tahrir Square Claims that attacks are state-backed to deter women from protesting Egypt's head of army warns the country is facing collapse Sex attacks on female protesters in Egypt's Tahrir Square are premeditated and state-backed, claims an organisation that rescues sexually assaulted female activists. Last Friday marked the second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution and the highest number of sexual crimes against...