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US Shipment of F-16s to Post-Morsi Egypt Hits Delay

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Photo Credit: U.S. AIR FORCE / VAL GEMPISFour F-16 fighter jets were scheduled to fly to Egypt on Tuesday morning as part of a U.S. military aid package worth more than $1 billion a year — but the shipment has run into delays over apparent “political” issues.

If the Obama administration is able to send the planes, it will mark the first known military aid to Egypt since millions of Egyptians protested the rule of Mohammed Morsi, leading the Egyptian military to remove him from power earlier this month.

Supporters say that such aid is critical because it gives the U.S. influence over the Egyptian military. But critics say it is a waste of money, or worse — a gift of weapons that could later be turned against American interests.

The shipment has now been delayed at least 24 hours due to “political reasons,” according to a source who works on the naval air base in Fort Worth, Texas, from where the planes were being sent.

Officials at the U.S. Department of State, asked by FoxNews.com about the unexpected delay, explained that “we are reviewing our obligations and are consulting with Congress about the way forward.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Islamic Extremists Attacking Egypt’s Christian Community Over Morsi Ouster (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe Muslim Brotherhood reportedly is attempting to blame Egypt’s Coptic Christian community for the recent ousting of President Mohammed Morsi and even resorting to violent tactics in an effort to gain back power.

Reports have surfaced out of Egypt that sectarian attacks against Copts by Islamic extremists are on the rise since Morsi was ousted July 3. Copts, who make up about 9% of Egypt’s population, have said they consistently have been targeted by Islamic radicals for campaigning against the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president.

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s regime caused a split in Egyptian unity on the basis of religious affiliations,” Nabil Abdel Fattah, political analyst and researcher for the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said in a recent interview with Mid-East Christian news.

“The sectarian attacks against Copts are one of the controversial strategies pursued by Islamic extremist currents in their bid to intimidate Christians,” he added. “Whether it is out of revenge for participating in the political process or as a result of the radical ideologies these groups have, [they are] creating a stae of anarchy and insecurity across the Egyptian streets, turning current issues into a sectarian conflict to mobilize neutral citizens against their fellow countrymen.”

Nine Christians have been killed throughout the country, including one priest in the Sinai Peninsula, according a report in the Financial Times. The fatal shooting of priest Mina Aboud Sharween has led many other Coptic clergy to go into hiding.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dangerous Times: When America Supports Evil

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Photo Credit: Mad Mike 3000Obama is the most cynical and amoral president we have ever had, if you look at his actions and not at his words.

In Egypt both sides are now blaming us for their near-civil war, and they are both right. Obama lost the moral high ground when he destabilized Egypt, the greatest Arab pillar of Middle Eastern peace, by forcing Hosni Mubarak to resign. To make it worse, Obama then supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which immediately introduced their own Shari’ah-leaning constitution, squeezing out political rivals, ignored the judiciary, and took over the armed forces.

There is a reason why Brother Morsi was just thrown out of power. Nobody in Egypt trusted him. He received 51% percent of the vote, but he was trying to grab 100% of the power.

In Egypt we are now caught between one kind of evil — the kind that kills young girls who meet boys without the father’s permission — and another kind of evil, a coup d’etat. Thank you, Mr. Obama.

In Syria this administration is doing even worse things, because now we are supporting Al Qaida rebels against the Assad regime. At least 100,000 Arabs have killed each other in Syria, and there is no end in sight. And we knowingly empowered the worst kinds of Islamic terrorists.

Read more from the story HERE.

Egypt’s Christians Face Backlash for Morsi Ouster

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Photo Credit: APWith a mob of Muslim extremists on his tail, the Christian businessman and his nephew climbed up on the roof and ran for their lives, jumping from building to building in their southern Egyptian village. Finally they ran out of rooftops.

Forced back onto the street, they were overwhelmed by several dozen men. The attackers hacked them with axes and beat them with clubs and tree limbs, killing Emile Naseem, 41. The nephew survived with wounds to his shoulders and head and recounted the chase to The Associated Press.

The mob’s rampage through the village of Nagaa Hassan, burning dozens of Christian houses and stabbing to death three other Christians as well, came two days after the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi from power. It was no coincidence the attackers focused on Naseem and his family: He was the village’s most prominent campaigner calling for Morsi’s removal.

Some Christians are paying the price for their activism against Morsi and his Islamist allies in a backlash over his ouster last week.

Since then, there has been a string of attacks on Christians in provinces that are strongholds of hard-liners. In the Sinai Peninsula, where militant groups run rampant, militants gunned down a priest in a drive-by shooting as he walked in a public market.

Read more from this story HERE.

Libyan Official Ties Egypt’s Morsi to Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Jerome R. Corsi. A letter by a top Libyan official blames the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens on Mohamed Morsi, the now deposed president of Egypt.

WND has verified the authenticity of the letter by Col. Mahmoud al-Sharif, the chief of the Department of Security of the Libyan government in Tripoli, written four days after the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

The letter mentions Morsi as being implicated in the planning that led to the Benghazi attack and identifies the Egyptian jihadist group Ansar Sharia as the group responsible.

The letter discloses that the bodies of three Americans killed in the attack along with Ambassador Stevens were desecrated in revenge for the production of an anti-Islam film, assumed to be “Innocence of the Muslims.” The film was produced by the imprisoned Mark Basseley Yousef, the person the Obama administration erroneously claimed was responsible for triggering for attack itself.

White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed Wednesday the Obama administration has no change in plans to deliver F-16s to the Egyptian military. The U.S. most likely will deliver four F-16s in August, with another eight slated for December. The deliveries are part of the continuing U.S. $1.5 billion in aid scheduled to be dispersed to Egypt in the current fiscal year, despite the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi. Read more from this story HERE.

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Egypt Orders Arrest of Brotherhood Leaders

By Thomson/Reuters. Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered the arrest on Wednesday of the leaders of ousted President Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, charging them with inciting violence in a clash that saw troops shoot dozens of his supporters dead.

A week after the army toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, bloodshed has opened deep fissures in the Arab world’s most populous country, with bitterness at levels unseen in its modern history.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the announcement of charges against leader Mohamed Badie and several other senior Islamists was a bid by authorities to break up a vigil by thousands of Mursi supporters demanding his reinstatement.

This week’s unrest has alarmed Western donors and Israel, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Washington, treading a careful line, has neither welcomed Mursi’s removal nor denounced it as a “coup”. Under U.S. law, a coup would require it to halt aid, including the $1.3 billion it gives the army each year.

The Brotherhood’s downfall has, however, been warmly welcomed by three of the rich Arab monarchies of the Gulf, who showered Cairo with aid to prop up the collapsing economy. Read more from this story HERE.

Journalist Shot in Head, Egyptian Christian Church Attacked, Muslim Brotherhood Posts Fake Photos of Dead ‘Egyptian’ Children (+videos)

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Photo Credit: Mohamed RashedBy MENA. Masked gunmen opened fire at Mar Mina Church in Port Said’s al-Manakh early Tuesday and managed to get away, according to state-run news agency MENA. No casualties were reported.

Army and police squads arrived at the scene of the attack and efforts are being undertaken to identify the perpetrators.

This is the third such attack in 24 hours. Yesterday, unknown attackers assaulted Port Said’s western seaport and the province’s traffic police department.

A priest was killed Saturday in Masaeed in North Sinai. Read more from this story HERE.

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BBC Reporter Shot in the Head

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Muslim Brotherhood Using Old Photo’s of Dead Syrian Children, Claiming Egyptian Army Killed Them

Still Time to Stop al-Jazeera U.S. Launch in August

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Photo Credit: AIMAl Jazeera is under scrutiny for subversion in Egypt, and facing a mutiny from its own reporters over supporting the Muslim Brotherhood there. But The Washington Post assures us in a story that the channel’s official launch in the United States is on August 20, and its coverage, will be different.

Philip Seib, author of The Al Jazeera Effect, is quoted as saying, “I don’t think you’ll see al-Jazeera America touting the Muslim Brotherhood. It will be more like CNN.”

But the foreign owners in Qatar will remain the same, and that is part of the problem. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has said that Al Jazeera’s purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV should be the subject of a congressional inquiry because of the channel’s foreign sponsorship.

As Accuracy in Media has been reporting for over six years, the anti-American channel works hand-in-glove with the Muslim Brotherhood and its associated terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and Hamas. Nothing has changed. In fact, Al Jazeera has become more open about its work as a foreign policy instrument of Qatar, including the promotion of al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in Syria…

The Muslim Brotherhood website still carries a story referring to Al Jazeera as “the greatest Arab media organization.” The channel originally made a name for itself by airing al-Qaeda videos, and one of its correspondents was convicted of being an agent of the terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Rape Culture’ vs. ‘Islamophobia’

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Photo Credit: Hiro Komae/APThe weathermen at Twitchy.com report that novelist Joyce Carol Oates set off a twit-storm Friday with a pair of tweets about sexual violence in Egypt: The first coyly referred to recently deposed president Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood: “Something dispiriting about ‘Brotherhood’ political parties–wonder what it is.” The second was explicit: “Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemic–Egypt–natural to inquire: what’s the predominant religion?”

“Don’t miss @JoyceCarolOates coming out publicly as a serious bigot,” tweeted Umair Haque, an economist who writes for the Harvard Business Review. “Check out her tweets today, they’re awesomely gross!” Salon.com’s Prachi Gupta described Oates’s tweets as “Islamophobic.” Lauren Rankin–whose Twitter bio describes her as “feminist. writer. activist. graduate student. reproductive justice. sour jelly bean enthusiast”–insisted: “this is islamophobia embodied. islam doesn’t encourage rape or sexual assault. you know what does? PATRIARCHY.”

“Another day, another white woman #islamophobe,” mused Lucy Homan, another white woman “trouble-making, invisibly disabled, non-binary gender, queer, sexqueer, trans femme” whose passions include “kink, parenting, disability, polyamory, feminism, and sex talk.”

Oates defended her line of inquiry: ” ‘Rape culture’; has no relationship to any ‘religious culture’–how can this be? Religion has no effect on behavior at all? How possible?” To which Anita Felicelli responded with a tu quoque: “Do you also think that mass gun violence in schools bears a relationship to Christianity?” That turned out to be an illi quoque, for Oates answered: “Yes. There is a Christian Crusade culture. All religions are ‘militant.’ Secular law needed to restrain them.”

Here Oates goes off the rails. While the Crusades were an example of militant Christianity, there is no factual basis for asserting a connection between Christianity and “mass gun violence in schools,” whether of the psycho-killer or the street-thug kind, in 21st-century America.

Read more from this story HERE.

Egypt Continues to Spiral into Extreme Violence as Obama Fumbles Away (+videos)

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Egypt violence: Gang throws rivals to their deaths from top of a building

By A bloodthirsty gang is filmed flinging r­ivals to their deaths from the top of a building as violence spirals out of control in Egypt.

Horrific scenes captured on a mobile phone and posted on YouTube show a group of men surrounded by captors in the north-east city of Alexandria, the Sunday People can report.

Sickeningly, the victims are tossed head-first from a ledge. They land on the ­concrete roof below, where they are beaten and left for dead.

Clashes between opponents and supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi intensified yesterday, leaving 36 people dead. British tourists were feared to be at risk of terrorist attack last night after the head of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a call to arms after the military coup ousted Islamist Morsi. Read more from this story HERE.

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Sexual Assaults Reportedly Rampant During Egypt Protests

By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. From afar, Tahrir Square appears almost festive as protesters chant against the Islamist president who was overthrown by the Egyptian military last week. But inside the crushing crowds, the scene can be a lot more sinister.

In a video posted by the Muslim Brotherhood, an unidentified woman cries out as men attack her. The group, from which former President Mohammed Morsi hails, claims the attack occurred in Tahrir Square in late June.

Human Rights Watch reports a sharp rise in sexual assaults here since anti-Morsi protesters took to the streets in record numbers last week. Activists report more than 100 sexual assaults in or near Tahrir Square during the past week alone, many of them gang rapes.

Most of the victims are Egyptian, though some are Western journalists covering the protest.

The rights group says the latest attacks follow an all too familiar pattern since mass protests began in 2011: A few men force a girl or woman away from the people she’s with; rip off her clothes and assault her. Passersby join in the attacks, which range from groping to gang rapes that can last more than an hour. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Ahmed Ali/APDemocracy doesn’t on its own mean effective government

By Tony Blair. The events that led to the Egyptian army’s removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the street is not the same as an election. But it is an awesome manifestation of people power. The equivalent turnout in Britain would be around 13 million people. Just think about it for a moment. The army wouldn’t intervene here, it is true. But the government wouldn’t survive either.

The Muslim Brotherhood was unable to shift from being an opposition movement to being a government. Of course governments govern badly or well or averagely. But this is different. The economy is tanking. Ordinary law and order has virtually disappeared. Services aren’t functioning properly. Individual ministers did their best. A few weeks back, I met the tourism minister, who I thought was excellent, with a sensible plan to revive Egypt’s tourist sector. A few days ago, he resigned, when the president took the mind-boggling step of appointing as governor of Luxor (a key tourist destination) someone who was affiliated to the group responsible for Egypt’s worst-ever terror attack, in Luxor, which killed more than 60 tourists in 1997.

Now the army is faced with the delicate and arduous task of steering the country back on to a path towards elections and a rapid return to democratic rule. We must hope that they can do this without further bloodshed. Meanwhile, however, someone is going to have to run things and govern. This will mean taking some very tough, even unpopular decisions. It is not going to be easy.

What is happening in Egypt is the latest example of the interplay, visible the world over, between democracy, protest and government efficacy. Democracy is a way of deciding the decision-makers, but it is not a substitute for making the decision. I remember an early conversation with some young Egyptians shortly after President Mubarak’s downfall. They believed that, with democracy, problems would be solved. When I probed on the right economic policy for Egypt, they simply said that it would all be fine because now they had democracy; and, in so far as they had an economic idea, it was well to the old left of anything that had a chance of working.

I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn’t on its own mean effective government. Read more from this story HERE.

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Disgraced Senator Menendez Agrees with Obama: Muslim Brotherhood Should Be Part of Egypt’s Government

Disgraced Senator Bob Menendez believes – as does Obama – that the Muslim Brotherhood should have an active role in the next Egyptian government:

…an Egypt for all includes in my mind, participation from the Muslim Brotherhood. But, you know, President Morsi himself acted rather dictatorially back in November when he said that his decrees were not subject to judicial review, when he said the constitutional assembly was not subject to judicial review. So at the end of the day, while I would have liked to have seen early elections and then see him test his support among the people and the people would have had a choice and, therefore, less likely to have them be further … radicalized, at the end of the day, that’s not what happened. So now the question is can we bring everybody together to create a more inclusive society in terms of the representation that it has in government? If we can do that, then Egypt has a possibility.

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Photo Credit: APRep. Mike Rogers: Egyptian military deserves continued U.S. support

By David Sherfinski and David Eldridge. Rep. Mike Rogers said Sunday that the Egyptian military is a stabilizing force and should continue to receive U.S. aid, despite its role in deposing a democratically elected government.

Mr. Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House intelligence committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he would support making an exception to U.S. law that calls for the suspension of U.S. aid in the case of a military coup.

“We should continue to support the military, the one stabilizing force that can temper down the political feuding that you’re seeing going on now,” he said. Read more from this story HERE.

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Egyptian military supporters flood Tahrir Square

By Ghazi Balkiz and Andrew Rafferty. Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Sunday filled with supporters of the Egyptian military, demonstrating in favor of the army’s actions to remove President Mohammed Morsi and blasting those who have called the leader’s ouster a military coup and not a revolution.

Street clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents in recent days have claimed more than 30 lives.

On Sunday, it was tens of thousands of people gathered in the infamous focal point of the Arab Spring to voice support for the military, whose leaders removed the democratically elected president Morsi last week and put him under house arrest.

“It’s not an army decision it’s our revolution, this is the way that we choose it and we thank the army for supporting us for this decision,” Nasham Basharah told NBC News while demonstrating in the square. Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama Golfing, Kerry Boating, “Terrible Optics” for Administration

If Muslim Brotherhood Chooses War in Egypt, It Will Lose Badly

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Krauthammer: Muslim Brotherhood ‘will lose badly’ if it battles Egyptian military

By Jeff Poor. On Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer predicted that if the Mohamed Morsi regime and the Muslim Brotherhood chose the route of going to war by creating its own military and fighting Egyptian forces instead of seeking a peaceful solution, the Muslim Brotherhood will lose.

“[The Muslim Brotherhood] is obviously the largest, the most organized and disciplined of all the elements, all the parties in Egypt,” Krauthammer said. “However, it is not a majority. It isn’t even close to a majority. And what was so remarkable about the demonstrations that led to the overthrow of the government and about the people standing behind the chief of staff when he announced the coup, where you had representatives of the Christians, of the largest and most respected Sunni Muslim mosque and university, where you had even a representative of a far more radical Islamist movement, a newer party. So you had all the elements of society lined up against the Brotherhood, each with their own grievances. So, if the Brotherhood decides that it’s going to turn to violence, it’s going to lose because you have a wall-to-wall coalition against it.”

“The irony here is that the two most disciplined institutions in the country are the ones who will decide where this goes,” Krauthammer continued. “The army has discipline, and the Brotherhood. And that’s why I think up until now the violence has been relatively restrained. The Brotherhood leadership, I think, understands that if it does an Algeria and decides it’s going to go and make war on the army, it’s going to lose and it will lose badly and be imprisoned and disperse or go back to the 1950s. If there is an outbreak, it’s going to come from a fringe of a fringe who are not under the discipline of the party. And that, I think, is possible. But that would be radical sort of al Qaida types who want to make this into a bloodbath. And they, if there are enough of them, it could actually provoke a bloodbath.”


Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerFears of radicalization rise as Egypt descends into chaos

By Charles Rollet. Essam el-Haddad, Morsi’s foreign policy advisor, warned on his website that the toppling of elected Islamists in Egypt would spark more terrorism than the Western-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No major acts of terrorism have occurred so far, but the violence is worse than ever. At least 20 were killed on Friday alone as pro- and anti-Morsi protestors clashed across Egypt.

That includes four Christian Copts in the Delta town of Khosous, who were machine-gunned during sectarian clashes.

As the military arrests leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Morsi journalists, disturbing videos have turned up showing Islamists threatening mass violence.

“I want to say to [General] al-Sisi: Beware! Know that you have created a new Taliban and Al Qaeda in Egypt,” said a bearded man in one video. Read more from this story HERE.

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Coptic priest shot dead in Egypt attack: sources

By Reuters. Gunmen shot dead a Coptic Christian priest in Egypt’s lawless Northern Sinai on Saturday in what could be the first sectarian attack since the military overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, security sources said.

The priest, Mina Aboud Sharween, was attacked in the early afternoon while walking in the Masaeed area in El Arish.

The shooting in the coastal city was one of several attacks believed to be by Islamist insurgents that included firing at four military checkpoints in the region, the sources said. Read more from this story HERE.

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Egypt’s new regime born in chaos as violence spreads

By Kim Sengupta. There was confusion last night after Mohamed ElBaradei was authoritatively reported to have been appointed as Egypt’s interim prime minister by the acting president, Adly Mansour. He was expected take the country along a military-imposed political roadmap amid vicious strife, including growing sectarian attacks and a rising death toll.

However, this was contradicted late last night by Egyptian state television, which denied any such appointment had been made.

The former head of the International Atomic Energy Commission met the armed forces chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, yesterday and, according to officials, agreed to act as executive head of a new “salvation government” until fresh elections can be held.

But shortly afterwards the Muslim Brotherhood declared that the appointment of Mr ElBaradei, who had led a coalition of left-wing groups, was “illegitimate”. “We reject this coup and all that results from it, including ElBaradei,” a senior representative of the Brotherhood was reported to have told an Islamist gathering in Cairo.

Mr ElBaradei was among liberal leaders who opposed the Islamist President Morsi, ousted by the military on Wednesday. Thousands of Brotherhood supporters in Cairo yesterday were preparing to march to a military base where the deposed president is thought to be held. Read more from this story HERE.

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Egypt’s New President Asserts Authority

By Associated Press. Egypt’s new president moved to assert his authority and regain control of the streets Saturday even as his Islamist opponents declared his powers illegitimate and issued blood oaths to reinstate Mohammed Morsi, whose ouster by the military has led to dueling protests and deadly street battles between rival sides.

But underscoring the sharp divisions facing the untested leader, Adly Mansour, his office said pro-reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei had been named as interim prime minister but later backtracked on the decision saying consultations were continuing. A politician close to ElBaradei said the reversal was due to objections by an ultraconservative Islamist party with which the new administration wants to cooperate.

Mansour’s administration, meanwhile, has begun trying to dismantle Morsi’s legacy. He fired Morsi’s intelligence chief and the presidential palace’s chief of staff. Prosecutors, meanwhile, ordered four detained stalwarts of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood held for 15 days pending an investigation into the shooting deaths of eight protesters last week.

No major violence was reported between supporters and opponents of Morsi as the two sides sought to regroup after a night of fierce clashes that turned downtown Cairo into a battlefield. Clashes were also fierce in the port city of Alexandria, where thousands from both sides fought each other with automatic rifles, firebombs and clubs.

Friday’s violence left 36 dead, taking to at least 75 the number of people killed since the unrest began on June 30, when millions of protesters took to the streets on the anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration as Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Read more from this story HERE.