EGYPT – Under increasing pressure from the military, Egypt’s deadliest jihadist group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organisation in a bid to boost recruitment and bolster its fight against the army, analysts say.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) has waged an insurgency from its Sinai Peninsula stronghold that has killed scores of Egyptian police and soldiers since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year.
In response, the army has launched a huge operation in Sinai targeting jihadists and last month began building a buffer zone on the border with Gaza to stem the flow of militants and weapons from the strip. (more…)

In this brief exchange on Bloomberg news the discussion highlights the current Democrat problem for 2016. Behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton there is no-one. Watch video:

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Here’s The Full Benghazi Brief

Grab a cup of coffee because it’s a long read with over 350 citations and reference source links for confirmational material. We think you’ll get hooked and find 95% of your Benghazi questions answered. And if you can find a factual flaw I’ll buy the coffee.. SD

We know from the Bret Baier interview with Hillary Clinton that she was physically located at her 7th floor office in Washington DC on the night of the attack. Unfortunately we also know during the November 2012 Thanksgiving holiday a mysterious fire took place in that building. Well, actually directly above her exact office – cause undetermined.
A “fire” which preceded an unfortunate slip and fall for the Secretary, resulting in a concussion, which led to the discovery of a blood clot, that ultimately delayed her congressional testimony before a Senate Hearing into the events of the night in question.
We know the Libyan uprising began on February 10th of 2011, and we also know that sometime around the end of February 2011 President Obama signed a presidential directive authorizing the State Dept and CIA to begin a covert operation to arm the Libyan “rebels”.
We also know of a Second Presidential Finding Memo authorizing additional CIA covert action in 2012, this time in Syria. However, unlike the 2011 Libyan operation we do not know the operational name of the second action in 2012 Syria.
We know the Libyan “rebels” were positioned in two strategic places. Benghazi, and the port city of Darnah, both located in Northeastern Libya.
We know this 2011 Libyan covert operation came to be known as “Operation Zero Footprint“, and fell under the military command authority of NATO not (important to repeat), NOT, the U.S. Military. (more…)

Somehow I doubt Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton thought things out this far…  Just a hunch.

(Via Front Page Mag) A new generation of the Libyan army was supposed to be trained in the West as part of international efforts to rebuild the country after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. Hand-picked recruits were invited to rural England for basic infantry and junior command training.

On Tuesday, however, the British Ministry of Defense announced that all 300 trainees would be sent home early after a string of sexual assaults were perpetrated against the residents of Cambridgeshire, culminating in the alleged gang rape of a young man.[…]
Two of the recruits have admitted to two sexual assaults and a bicycle theft in Market Square right at the center of the old town. They also pleaded guilty to threatening a police office. Another cadet, aged 18, has been charged with three sexual assaults.
In total, police have investigated reports of 11 sexual assaults in central Cambridge within nine days. (more…)

This is a pretty sobering statistic.   Last week in response to continued terrorist attacks in the Sinai region, Egypt began to widen the border between Gaza and Egypt.  A “buffer zone” is being built and homes on the border are being removed.  A “border wall” is currently being considered.
So far around 200 homes have been bulldozed or destroyed as Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi and his government begin the process.  Of the 200 homes removed, 78 have been found to house tunnels from Egypt into Gaza, that’s 39%.  These tunnels are used by Hamas to smuggle arms and rockets into the Gaza strip – the target of the rockets is Israel.

EGYPT – North Sinai Governor General Abdel-Fattah Harhour said owners of houses on the border line with the Gaza Strip will not receive any compensation for their demolished houses if smuggling tunnels were discovered inside their homes.
“The number of these homes whose owners will not receive compensation is 78, no compensation because these houses have smuggling tunnels,” he told local CBC television.
On Wednesday, the army began demolishing homes along the border line with the Gaza Strip to create a buffer zone which aims at preventing weapons smuggling. (more…)

LIBYA – Dozens of residents of a town in eastern Libya have pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Islamic State militants fighting in Syria and Iraq, according to a video and a resident.
Around 50 young people could be seen in a video posted on social media gathering in Derna to support Baghdadi, who calls himself “caliph”, or Muslim leader, of Islamic State, an Al Qaeda offshoot.

A Derna resident confirmed the authenticity of the video, taken late on Friday. (more…)

Allow me to present the counter point after John Kerry’s initial point:

(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry argued Thursday that the United States cannot push its weight around in a changing and “complicated” world, and implied that the previous administration having done so had led to today’s security crisis in Iraq.
In an appearance at the Washington Ideas Forum, Kerry said that although the Obama administration wanted to see a less sectarian government in Iraq – a prerequisite for tackling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) threat – it could not have simply demanded that former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki be replaced.
“The United States couldn’t just crash in and say, ‘Hey, you’re out. Here are the guys that are in.’ That’s not our – it would be playing into all of the worst stereotypes that have brought us to the difficulties we’re living with today.”  (link)

Here’s the counter point:

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For all intents and purposes Libya is the forgotten mess created by President Obama’s team and their insufferable incompetence.   Perhaps a time will surface when someone in the Western media will actually call Obama or Hillary Clinton to account for the mess they have created, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Imagine if Islamists were raging a power struggle throughout Canada while a Russian armed civil war was taking place in Mexico ~ imagine the position of our country in the face of such a problem.  That’s the analogy to a situation faced by Egypt as a consequence of our 2011 action, ISIS in Syria (with their eyes on Jordan), and neighboring Libya simultaneously in a civil war.
It’s easy to cast aspersions to the heavy-handed decision making of Fatah el-Sisi as he deals with the Sinai highway between Hamas (East) and the Muslim Brotherhood factions, which include ISIS, (West) along his borders with Gaza and Libya respectively.

President Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Susan Rice and Samantha Power deconstructed the governing authority of Libya under the auspices of a “Responsibility to Protect“.   All of those “good intentions” went to a land of perpetual FUBAR once Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed and it all, well, needed to be brushed under the proverbial rug. (more…)

YOU BREAK IT – YOU OWN IT

ISIS is active in Libya under the new assembly of “Libyan Dawn”; a collective of groups formerly within the various islamist Libyan Fighting Groups.  ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood financed, supported and evolved the various militia factions into this central body, Libyan Dawn, to defeat the extremely weak Libyan National Government.

Libya – Factional warfare in Libya is pushing the oil producer “very close to the point of no return”, the UN special envoy to the country said on Tuesday with efforts to bring about a ceasefire and political dialogue showing no result.
The death toll from two weeks of street fighting between pro-government forces and Islamist armed groups in the eastern city of Benghazi has risen to 170, medics said. Seven people were killed alone on Tuesday, 15 on Monday.
The North African country has had two governments and parliaments since a militia group from the western city of Misrata seized the capital Tripoli in August, setting up its own cabinet and assembly. (more…)

Last week a U.S. journalist, Serena Shim, was murdered in Turkey for exposing the truth of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan allowing and facilitating ISIS militants going to and from Turkey into strategic positions around Kobane (Kobani).
Now an independent journalist team have used video to show Turkish police and military meeting with ISIS militants on the Turkish border.

Obviously the brutal reality of this expose’ is dangerous to Erdogan’s deceptive claims to the contrary. (more…)