Free Republic

BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 22 (Reuters) - An Islamist militia was driven out of the city of Benghazi early on Saturday in a surge of anger against the armed groups that control large parts of Libya more than a year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. A spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia, which some U.S. and Libya officials blame for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last week in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, said it had evacuated its bases "to preserve security in the city". In a dramatic sign of Libya's fragility, after sweeping...

The military commander of Tripoli, a key figure in the revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, called on other militias to pull their weapons out of Tripoli, accusing them of terrorizing the city's population. The remarks by Abdulhakim Belhadj, whose Tripoli Military Council claims a mandate from Libya's new rulers, follow rising concern about potential conflict among armed groups that converged on Tripoli to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and have stayed on to demand stakes in a future government. They also follow the announcement a day earlier of another group that it would collect weapons and provide security in the name of...

Reuters) - U.S. authorities are investigating possible collusion between militants who launched a deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and locally hired Libyan personnel guarding the facility, three U.S. officials said. So far there is no proof that the attackers, who killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials, were helped by Libyan security personnel hired by the consulate. One official said the Obama administration was playing down this possibility.However, all the officials said that the question of whether the attackers had inside help or advice was a serious issue in the U.S. investigation into...

TEL AVIV – A staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya. As WND first reported, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world's leading organization pushing the military doctrine. Several of the doctrine's main founders sit on multiple boards with Soros. The doctrine and its founders, as WND reported, have been deeply tied...

The Obama administration was caught by surprise by the ferocity of the Sept. 11 attack against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. Now it is bracing for another potential eruption of violent demonstrations in parts of the Muslim world after Friday's weekly prayers — traditionally a time of protest in the Middle East and North Africa... "The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video," [Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton] said before a meeting with the foreign minister of Morocco at the State Department. "We absolutely reject its...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Islamist and leftist students fought running battles at a Tunisian university Wednesday in the latest incident involving rising religious sentiment in the North African country. Competing demonstrations in the morning by hundreds of conservative students, known as Salafis, and leftist members of the national students' union erupted into violence when the former tore down the national flag flying at the university entrance.

After months of reassuring secularist critics, Islamist politicians in Tunisia and Egypt have begun to lay down markers about how Muslim their states should be -- and first signs show they want more religion than previously admitted. Islamist parties swept the first free elections in both countries in recent months after campaigns that stressed their readiness to work with the secularists they struggled with in the Arab Spring revolts against decades-long dictatorships. With political deadlines looming, the Tunisian coalition led by the reformist Islamist Ennahda party and the head of Egypt's influential Muslim Brotherhood both made statements this week revealing...

Tunisia’s western city of Sidi Bouzid is now dry... Chanting “al-Charab haram” (“alcohol is sin”), dozens of Salafists burst into Sidi Bouzid’s Horchani hotel on Monday, September 3. The throng of men quickly homed in on the hotel’s liquor stock, seizing bottles of alcohol and throwing them against the walls or smashing them on the floor. The incident comes around four months after the city’s Salafist community first launched a war against alcohol consumption, pressuring or intimidating several bars into shutting down. Those who tried to resist saw their businesses come under attack, much like the Horchani hotel. ... I...

Once Lush Sahara Dried Up Over Millennia, Study SaysJames Owen for National Geographic NewsMay 8, 2008 The grassy prehistoric Sahara turned into Earth's largest hot desert more slowly than previously thought, a new report says—and some say global warming may turn the desert green once again. The new research is based on deposits from a unique desert lake in remote northern Chad. Lake Yoa, sustained by prehistoric groundwater, has survived for millennia despite constant drought and searing heat. The body of water contains an unbroken climate record going back at least 6,000 years, said study lead author Stefan Kröpelin of...

Islamic SocialismFrom the CIA factbook: Following a 1969 military coup, Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-QADHAFI began to espouse his own political system, the Third Universal Theory. The system was a combination of socialism and Islam derived in part from tribal practices and was supposed to be implemented by the Libyan people themselves in a unique form of "direct democracy.[1] The "Green Book" - Arabism, Islam & socialism, with Islam the main line Author John L. Esposito: Under Qaddafi three interrelated ideas were woven into Libya's ideological identity: Pan-Arabism, socialism, and Islam. Qaddafi's appeals to Islam were influenced by his...

CAIRO - In his first public speech addressing tens of thousands of mostly Islamist supporters, Egypt's president-elect Mohammed Morsi has vowed to free the blind sheik jailed in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks. Morsi, Egypt's first Islamist and civilian president-elect, promised Friday to work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He also promised to free detained Egyptian protesters facing military tribunals.

WWII fighter plane hailed the 'aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun's Tomb' found preserved in the Sahara A Second World War aeroplane that crash landed in the Sahara Desert before the British pilot walked to his death has been found almost perfectly preserved 70 years later. Most of its cockpit instruments are intact and it still had it guns and ammunition before they were seized by the Egyptian military. There are also signs of the makeshift camp the pilot made alongside the fuselage. No human remains have been found but it is thought the pilot may lie within a 20 mile radius...

Here is a straight forward map of the results that the Obama foreign policy has had in North Africa and the Middle East. BARACK OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY ON DISPLAY The so-called "Arab Spring" has been nothing more than the abject spread of fundamental, extreme Islamic Jihad in these regions, threatening US interests and allies. When there was a chance for true liberty and an end to militant islam during the protests and rebellion in Iran, Obama sat back and let them be slaughtered. When there was an opportunity to have islamic jihad and militancy spread further in Egypt, Libya, Tunesia,...

Beginning in June of 1940, the North African Campaign took place over the course of three years, as Axis and Allied forces pushed each other back and forth across the desert in a series of attacks and counterattacks. Libya had been an Italian colony for several decades and British forces had been in neighboring Egypt since 1882. When Italy declared war on the Allied Nations in 1940, the two armies began skirmishing almost immediately. An Italian invasion of Egypt in September of 1940 was followed by a December counterattack where British and Indian forces captured some 130,000 Italians. Hitler's response...

“Stop bombing Libya! U.S. out of Africa!” echoed throughout San Francisco’s major intersection at Powell and Market as more than 125 activists and supporters gathered to demand an end to the U.S./NATO bombing of Libya and call for the money spent on war to instead provide for people’s needs. The demonstration was sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). While participants picketed, a number of people spoke. A common thread throughout the speeches was that the U.S. government claim of “humanitarian intervention” is a lie. Antoinette Marquez, an elementary school teacher and member of...

"Refugees ought not to come to Germany," announces Die Welt. The position that Berlin is expected to adopt when European interior ministers meet to discuss immigration on 11 April is unlikely to be welcomed by Italy which has called for solidarity in the drive to cope with thousands of immigrants who have recently arrived from North Africa. “Italy’s dirty tricks amount to unacceptable blackmail," remarks the conservative daily, which nonetheless acknowledges that "it is inadmissible that Italy and Malta pay the price for changes that are in all of Europe’s interest." For Die Welt, Europe should come together to invest...

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers. Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed...

Saying that Muammar Gadhafi “has lost the confidence of his people,” (ya think?) the White House announced “sweeping unilateral sanctions” against the dictator’s regime today. Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney explained that the following “crippling measures” will go into effect “more or less” immediately: Gadhafi must refrain from blaming the United States and al Qaeda for the Libyan uprising IN THE SAME SENTENCE. Beginning immediately, the colonel must only accuse one or the other at a time. Carney explained that since left-wing pundits have started to refer to Obama as an “Arabist,” the continued linkage of America and al Qaeda...

Ongoing live thread for developments in North Africa and the Middle East. Twitter: Libyan justice minister resigns in protest at 'excessive use of violence against protesters,' Quryna newspaper says - Reuters 6 minutes ago via breakingnews.com Group of Libyan Muslim leaders says rebelling against Libyan regime is everyone's divine duty - Reuters 33 minutes ago via breakingnews.com Anti-government protests break out in Libyan oil town of Ras Lanuf, Libya's Quryna newspaper says - Reuters about 1 hour ago via breakingnews.com Police station in suburb of Libyan capital of Tripoli is on fire, according to a Reuters reporter on the scene...

The early weeks of 2011 have been marked by a surge of protests in the Middle East and North Africa have now overturned two longstanding autocratic regimes, in Tunisia and Egypt. However, the wave of democratic protests have not been contained to the Maghreb, even if the entrenched regimes of the Gulf and Levant do not appear under immediate threat. One country being watched very closely by Washington is Jordan, which ranks as one of America’s staunchest allies in the region. Jordan looked an unlikely target for the kind of social unrest found elsewhere in the region, with a more...