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U.S. sources told the Reuters news agency on Monday that congressional committees are holding up a plan to send U.S. weapons to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The delay is over fears that such deliveries will not be decisive and the arms might end up in the hands of Islamist rebel groups. Both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees have expressed reservations behind closed doors at the effort by President Barack Obama's administration to support the insurgents by sending them military hardware, the sources told Reuters. There has been growing pressure to arm the Syrian rebels, particularly...

Pro- and anti-Morsi factions staged competing rallies in Cairo, with those who supported last week's military intervention attacking US President Barack Obama for his alleged support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian activists circulated on Saturday an online video showing what appeared to be Islamist supporters of ousted president Mohammad Mursi throwing two young men off a building during clashes in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. On Friday, clashes between opponents and supporters of Mursi flared in Egypt, killing at least 46 people nationwide, with the heaviest death toll registered in Alexandria. The footage of the young men thrown off a building in Alexandria’s Sidi Jaber has been widely circulated. One of the young men was killed; he was identified as Hamada Badr and activists say he was celebrating Mursi’s ouster...

Looks like Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists are still throwing their tantrum in Egypt after Mohamed Morsi got his ass kicked yesterday. Islamists have reportedly openned fire on an airport and three military checkpoints in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

SNIPPET: "Today the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrest of two Canadian-born citizens, John Stuart Nuttall and Amanda Marie Korody, in a terror plot targeting a public gathering at the British Columbia Legislature in Victoria on Canada Day, July 1. According to online court records, Nuttall and Korody appeared at the Surrey Provincial Court this morning. The two suspects face charges that include "conspiring to place an explosive in or against a place of public use, a government or public facility, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, for the benefit of, at the direction...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Army concern about the way President Mohamed Mursi was governing Egypt reached tipping point when the head of state attended a rally packed with hardline fellow Islamists calling for holy war in Syria, military sources said. At the June 15 rally, Sunni Muslim clerics used the word "infidels" to denounce both the Shi'ites fighting to protect Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the non-Islamists that oppose Mursi at home. Mursi himself called for foreign intervention in Syria against Assad, leading to a veiled rebuke from the army, which issued an apparently bland but sharp-edged statement the next day...

The Egyptian army has set a deadline of 4 p.m. Cairo time for the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Morsi to compromise with the people of Egypt (by stepping down.) Morsi refuses. 18 people were killed and 200 were wounded in clashes at Cairo University last night.A Washington Post report from Cairo on dueling statements from Morsi and the army: Waving his hands and shaking his fists in a 45-minute speech on national television late Tuesday, Morsi swore that he was committed to the democratic process that brought him to power and said that any attempts to subvert the constitution...

The Muslim Brotherhood's Connection to Benghazi Kevin McCullough | Jul 01, 2013 On Wednesday June 26, 2013 reports began to pop up across the Arabic world citing an internal Libyan government memo that has not yet been acknowledged in the American press. The memo is pictured here: *Photo Courtesy of Raymond Ibrahim Multiple sources have confirmed this document details several confessions of the six Egyptians in Libyan custody for the 9.11.12 bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. The document details the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi as being involved with and in the funding,...

Catholic Priest Beheaded in Syria by Al-Qaeda-Linked Rebels as Men and Children Take Pictures and Cheer Jun. 30, 2013 7:37am Sharona Schwartz Syrian Catholic priest Francois Murad killed last weekend by jihadi fighters was beheaded, according to a report by Catholic Online which is linking to video purportedly showing the brutal murder. As TheBlaze reported last week, Murad, 49, was setting up a monastery in Gassanieh, northern Syria. Last Sunday, on the Christian leader’s Sabbath, extremist militants trying to topple President Bashar Assad breached the monastery and grabbed Murad. While earlier reports suggested Murad may have been shot to death,...

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) on Wednesday sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller urging him to stop using “offensive” bus ads that show sixteen faces of wanted terrorists.

The mainstream American right has remained almost entirely silent about the recent suicide of the French historian, Dominique Venner. The reasons for this, I do not know—perhaps it is a squeamishness about the symbolism of his final act, or a lack of understanding of it. Perhaps it is a refusal to see what the people of France already see, and are rising up against.Venner shot himself on the altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame on May 21st, 2013. The image of this act ought to make us pause in awe. The American left immediately dismissed him as a...

Far fewer prisoners will be tried in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals than the Obama administration originally planned after a recent court ruling cast doubt on the viability of some charges, the chief prosecutor for the tribunals told Reuters. U.S. President Barack Obama's Guantanamo Review Task Force had said 36 detainees could be prosecuted, but the tribunal's chief prosecutor put the figure at 20 at most. The drastic scaling back of the prosecutions comes after a U.S. appeals court threw out the conviction of Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, who was found guilty in 2008 of providing material...

For years, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was generally considered an example of “moderate Islamism”, a loose label that was generally based on a comparison with other Islamist dictatorships, like Iran, or with the various semi-secular autocratic regimes that dot the Arab and Muslim world. There was never a comparison with a liberal Muslim democracy, simply because none existed. In other words, Erdogan earned his credential as the moderate, Islamist democrat in the Middle East, partly because of his success in Turkey, but also due to the lack of any democratic competitors. Admittedly, it was not just the west that...

US Secretary of State John Kerry looks like a bit of an idiot these days. On Monday he announced that he will be returning to Israel and the Palestinian Authority and Jordan for the fifth time since he was sworn into office on February 1. That is an average of more than one visit a month. And aside from frequent flier miles, the only thing he has to show for it is a big black eye from PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. When Kerry was here last month he unveiled a stunning plan to bring $4 billion...

It’s never too early for Washington, D.C., politicians to dampen the holiday spirit. The House Agriculture Committee approved an amendment to its farm bill that would lift the stay blocking implementation of Obama’s Christmas tree tax. We should be thankful the Agriculture Committee doesn’t have jurisdiction over toys. The Christmas Tree Tax Some in the Christmas tree industry sought to develop a promotional program to assist its industry. After three failed attempts to set up a voluntary system, they turned to the federal government to do what it couldn’t: Force Christmas tree producers and importers to pay for a Christmas...

[more background info on events in turkey; read the article at WSJ.Com, with the link provided]

The...escalation of...... protests in Turkey in recent days has exposed...... fault lines in the country's ...political landscape. ...as the appeal of..... ruling Justice and Development Party ....is beginning to erode, it will remain a powerful force in Turkish politics......, with its still-significant base .....throughout the country and.... lack of.. credible political alternative in the next elections. {snip] The.... protesters were joined.... by high-level representatives of the....main opposition, the secular Republican People's Party..... The message of the protests... evolved...to condemning Erdogan and his party..... Anti-government chants included "Down with the dictator," "Tayyip, resign," and "Unite against fascism." [snip] Erdogan's Limits [snip]...

<p>Council bosses have abandoned attempts to move Abu Hamza’s wife from her £1million taxpayer-funded house.</p> <p>Officials admitted yesterday they are ‘powerless’ to throw out Najat Mostafa, the hook-handed cleric’s second wife, from the five-bedroom property in an exclusive west London street.</p>

What infuses British governments with a mania for thrusting their sticky hands into other people’s messes that are absolutely no responsibility of ours? Foreign Secretary William Hague spent the Bank Holiday at an EU meeting in Brussels, striving to persuade his European colleagues not to renew their arms embargo against Syria, and instead ship weapons to the anti-Assad rebels. Hague, like the Prime Minister, is panting to do a good deed in a wicked world. Enthusiastically backed by the Old Etonian boy scout troop that passes for Downing Street policy advisers, they are eager to follow their 2011 ‘success’ in...

The supplies of French and British weapons to Syrian rebels will not only lead to the expansion of the conflict all over the region. Sooner or later these weapons will fire at Europe. The lift of embargo on arms supplies to the Syrian opposition won’t make anyone happier. Even the Syrian rebels are disappointed. Louay Safi, a spokesman with the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces said the lift of embargo was a positive step but very insignificant and belated. In his turn, Russia’s permanent envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko said that the lift of embargo would only...