Free Republic

Egypt’s foreign minister says Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Cairo this week, marking the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian leader in decades. … Iran and Egypt, both regional heavyweights, once had strong ties. Diplomatic relations deteriorated after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. Relations remained cold until Egypt’s 2011 uprising. …

Egyptian activists released a brutally frank video on Friday, using images recorded during the mass sexual assault of a woman last week in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to urge volunteers to join their campaign against attacks during demonstrations. The video, created by the filmmakers Aida Elkashef and Salam Yousry, uses disturbing overhead images of a crowd of men swarming around a woman being assaulted just out of view to explain the work of Op Anti-SH, one of two new initiatives to combat the sexual harassment and rape of female protesters. While the video includes no graphic images and shows that volunteers...

A banner showing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and former emir Osama bin Laden is placed outside the French Embassy in Cairo, Egypt during a protest organized by Mohammed al Zawahiri. Image from Euronews. Within the past few days, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, has threatened France and the West while condemning the intervention in Mali. The younger Zawahiri promised that if France and its allies continue to fight in Mali, then Westerners will be the "first to burn." During an interview broadcast by Euronews on Jan. 22, Mohammed al...

The coming new year brings intensified shipping difficulties for barge operators on the stretch of the Mississippi River just south of St. Louis. With ice on the river's northernmost stretch reducing water levels already seriously affected by the drought, traffic on the nation's largest waterway could come to a halt by Friday of next week. "While the drought is at the core of the current issues on the Mississippi, this situation also highlights the dire need for infrastructure improvements," said National Corn Growers Association Chairman Garry Niemeyer, a grower from Auburn, Ill. "At NCGA, we have been pushing for upgrades...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

Instability in Egypt, where a newly-elected Islamic government teeters over an angry population, isn´t enough to stop the U.S. from sending more than 20 F-16 fighter jets, as part of a $1 billion foreign aid package. The first four jets are to be delivered to Egypt beginning Jan. 22, a source at the naval air base in Fort Worth, where the planes have been undergoing testing, told FoxNews.com. The North African nation already has a fleet of more than 200 of the planes and the latest shipment merely fulfills an order placed two years ago.

The Egyptian army has set up barricades outside the presidential palace, after ordering protesters to leave the area. It follows violent overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi that left five people dead and 644 injured. Most protesters left the palace by the 15:00 (13:00 GMT) deadline, though some opposition activists remained. Meanwhile, Egypt's top Islamic body has called on the president to suspend his decree claiming sweeping powers. The Al-Azhar institution also demanded an unconditional dialogue between the president and his opponents. The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says this move by one of the most...

In Cairo, Morsi scribbles his decrees and in Washington DC, Obama scribbles his. There is an ocean between the two men, but there is a good deal that they have in common. Both are ideologues who piggybacked on public outrage over the national impact of international economic declines to climb to power and pursue their true agendas. Without worries about the price of bread, the odds are good that Mubarak would be sitting in his old place and Morsi would be looking over the latest economic reports from the Brotherhood's business networks and front groups. And without a sharp decline...

(Reuters) - Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi's palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, two presidential sources said. Police fired teargas at demonstrators angered by Mursi's drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall. Several thousand people had gathered nearby in what they dubbed "last warning" protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. "The people want the downfall of the regime," the...

Mississippi River barge operators and shipping groups on Tuesday asked U.S. President Barack Obama to declare a state of emergency on the river and direct the Army Corps of Engineers to keep the drought-lowered waterway open to commercial traffic to avert an "economic catastrophe." Water on the Mississippi River along the busy stretch from St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois was expected to recede to record-low levels by mid-December, effectively halting the flow of barges that carry billions of dollars worth of grain, coal, steel, fuel and other products. In a letter to the White House and the Federal Emergency Management...

CAIRO: The United States Embassy in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, said in a statement on Monday that it would not offer services on Tuesday ahead of planned large demonstrations in Tahrir Square near the embassy in light of security concerns. “Due to the security situation around the US Embassy, there will be no visa or American citizen services tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov 27,” the embassy posted on its official Twitter account. Liberal and secular groups have called for a “million person march” on Tuesday to continue their protests against President Mohamed Morsi and a presidential decree that gives him near absolute...

The Washington Post reports that “the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view” of September 11, 2012, “suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.”  What the Post doesn’t say is that the Cairo protest was itself an al Qaeda-infused, if not outright orchestrated, event.The “hybrid” explanation is a compromise, of sorts, between two competing narratives. The first suggested that a protest against an anti-Islam film in Benghazi led to a “spontaneous” assault on the US consulate there. We know that version...

Why so much violence against the tongue? As the Sheikh of Islam himself: Ibn Tamiyyah, once wrote, "Waging war verbally against Islam might be worse than waging war against it physically." A professor of Islamic exegesis at Cairo's preeminent Islamic university, Al Ahzar, Dr. Abdullah Badr, recently proclaimed on Egyptian television that a new day has arrived: apparently from now on, there will be absolutely no more toleration for anyone who speaks against Islam—including people who speak against the implementation of Sharia law and its seventh century punishments. Badr is currently on trial for possibly libeling and defaming a female...

It seems interesting this CBS scoop comes shortly before both the current and former directors of the CIA will testify as to what they know about the terrorist attack on our consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi.  Why, it’s almost as if someone at the White House or State Department wanted to follow up on Barack Obama’s defense of Susan Rice during yesterday’s press conference and pre-empt any potential fallout from whatever Mike Morell and David Petraeus have to say today and tomorrow.Naah.  I’m sure this is just another in the series of amazing coincidences regarding timing of revelations over...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain between lawyers for Mark Bassely Youssef and federal prosecutors. Youssef admitted in open court that he had used several false names in violation of his probation order and obtained a driver's license under a false name. He was on probation for a bank fraud case....

We now have a firsthand account that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged the Innocence of Muslims filmmaker (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) would be “arrested and prosecuted” for making the video the administration spent weeks blaming for the Benghazi attack. That means Hillary outwardly expressed a desire to make Nakoula a political prisoner. There is another individual in Hillary’s past who appears to be living the life of a political prisoner right this very second; his name is Peter Paul and his ordeal began in the year 2000. Paul was the individual behind a completely different video trailer. In 2007, a...

The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that roiled the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for violating his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction by lying about his identity. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder immediately sentenced Mark Basseley Youssef after he admitted to four of the eight alleged violations, including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license. Prosecutors agreed to drop the other four allegations under an agreement with Youssef's attorneys, which also included more probation. None of the violations had to do with the content of "Innocence of Muslims," a film that...

We know that the Muslim Brotherhood supports the uprising in Egypt. The Obama administration does as well. Based on the release of a secret document, it’s been learned that the United States government supported the April 6 Youth Movement – a group that played a key role in the uprising – in the form of a summit in Washington, D.C. That summit took place from December 3-5, 2008. We also know that Bill Ayers and Bernandine Dohrn were in Cairo a little more than one year later, engaging in protests while attempting to show solidarity with Hamas by entering Gaza...

An Egyptian suspected of involvement in last month’s attack on the US mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was slain in Cairo yesterday, Wednesday. According to the Egyptian Interior Ministry, the man — named only as Hazem — died in a shoot-out with security forces at an apartment in Nasr City, northeast Cairo. They had been sent to arrest him following information received implicating him in the Benghazi attack. He is said to have recently returned from Libya. Security sources say he threw a bomb from the ground floor apartment but it bounced back into the building. Police...

PARIS (AP) — A correspondent for France 24 TV was "savagely attacked" near Cairo's Tahrir Square after being seized by a crowd, the network said Saturday. It was the latest case of violence against women at the epicenter of Egypt's restive protests. The news channel said in a statement that Sonia Dridi was attacked around 10:30 p.m. Friday after a live broadcast on a protest at the square and was later rescued by a colleague and other witnesses. France 24 did not give further details about the attack, but it said its employees were safe and sound, though "extremely shocked,"...