Published by The Black Sphere  March 14, 2013

First day of CPAC Kevin Jackson interviewed me, and it has been one of the most fun interviews I had! KJ is awesome! Listen to the full interview here.

We discussed Egypt, U.S. foreign policy and how I left Egypt to America.

This is the first personal blogpost I write.

I spent the past few days reunited with two of my best friends from Egypt, who visited me after almost two years of separation… many of us were forced out of our homes in Egypt – yet they were not really our homes, as you never actually fully legally or psychologically own anything under tyranny- many of my friends and I are now scattered on 3 different continents, and still no home…

Sometimes we envied those who died in battle among us, only to shortly reaffirm our stance, and remember that our victories were worth our losses; our vigilance prevails beyond our despair.

Yesterday was our last night together; the three of us were sipping single malt and laughing at ourselves, each other and the world, and one of them paused and told me: “Last time I met you in Cairo I feared that I might never see you again.”

We often wondered when we saw the people we cared about if this was the last time we’ll ever see them… What does this do to you? When the only place you’ve ever known is where young men leave their homes with their hand written wills in their pockets…

He then asked me, “What did it feel like? To be forced to pack your life and identity in a suitcase, go to a continent you’ve never visited before, and not sure where you’ll spend the night upon your arrival… What do you pack? What was going through your mind?”

I told him I just sat silent in every corner where I had great memories trying to imprint every detail in my mind… I was aware that I might never see it again, going alone to a place I’ve never seen before.

I sat on the dining table where we worked on monitoring state-run media coverage of elections.

I had a drink on the bar I designed where I often hosted parties during the month of Ramadan, when serving alcohol was banned.

I touched the books in my library. I listened to Bach in the living room that was bugged and our conversations were recorded by state security, and smiled as I remembered how we laughed and trashed them as they listened.

I sat for hours in my study and sanctuary that smelled like tobacco, vanilla-scented candles, single malt and mahogany, my bedroom, my antiques, my mother’s white-washed bedroom that always smelled like fresh laundry, soap and perfume. The kitchen where my grandmother, my mother and I cooked great food, my art … the family pictures on the walls…That’s what I took with me, and a coat, some clothes and underwear.

The suitcase is now empty, but I still haven’t unpacked…

Posted by allenwestrepublic on February 16, 2013

My interview with Lt. Col. Allen West on Next Generation, PJTV.

The Arab Spring began two years ago and was supposed to usher in a new era of democracy in the Middle East. While Egyptians were able to oust Mubarak and install new leadership, can we really call their coup a success? Find out as Col. Allen B. West talks to Egyptian political activist and Middle East Forum associate Cynthia Farahat.

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=517

The Algerian bloodbath that left 32 terrorists and 23 captives dead has to be viewed in the light of Algerian history.

The Algerian military just like the Egyptian army, is an Islamic military  and not a secular one. The modern Algerian army emerged from the FLN (Front de libération nationale) established in 1954, which is the political wing of the national salvation army that basis its values on Pan Arabism and Islamic socialism.

While jihadists and Algerian military definitely have  different methodologies, they don’t have very different ideologies when it comes armed Arab jihad against Western forces, and the situation should be looked in the light of the military’s history and involvement and backing of jihadist elements previously in a Dirty War (1993-1997) just to discredit them, and not be taken at face value as an isolated incident.

A BBC article  touched on their history stating: “The army, and the governments it supports, derive much of their legitimacy from largely winning the military battle against Islamist insurgents in the 1990s, during a vicious conflict that left as many as 150,000 people dead.”

But what the article doesn’t mention is that the army backed terrorist elements in the GIA  (the Muslim Brotherhood’s Algerian Islamic insurgency wing) and elevated them just to discredit them later in 1997, an action by which the military acquired its “legitimacy” to justify their seizure of power in a Soviet style Dirty War.

Numerous claims have been made that Algerian military intially backed GIA terrorists; from Andrew Wilson, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations; to former GIA member Ahmed Al-Mora’ai, who stated GIA were directly involved with Algerian intelligence and that its leader and founder Abbas Medani, and it’s other two leaders Bashir Faqih, and Hashimi Sahnouni, were appointed in high ranking government positions prior to the parliamentary elections under Saiid Ahmed Ghazaly’s government (1991-1992).

In the midst of the political shuffling in the North Africa and regime changes from Islamic military oligarchies to Islamic Iran style theocracies in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and probably Syria, it would not be a surprise if the Algerian military regime felt threatened and compelled to continue Dirty War tactics to justify seizure of power. But it can equally also be that Islamists felt empowered with their retention of power in North Africa and the terrorist attack could be aimed to embarrass and discredit the regime, and the incident could invite other militaries inside Algeria. But whether this was an Algerian military exercise of power of or an Islamic terrorist attack aimed to discredit the Algerian military regime; both Islamists wings won and the West lost in this battle.

Al-Qaeda proudly took credit for this “blessed operation” where terrorists won by taking down the hostages in a mass suicide terrorist attack, and the military regime won by its strike that could also be viewed as a retaliation against terrorists, but also against France intervention in Mali and against the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement to ABC News, when he said how the U.S. can “bring our military assets to bear in order to deal with it and also basically talk with the other countries that are involved here. There are a number of other countries that are in the same situation with these individuals” prior to the Algerian military’s attack.

But after the military attack Mr. Panetta and Mr. Hammond took a step back with their statement clearing the military by saying that “terrorists bear sole responsibility for it”. The Algerian military dealt with it situation recklessly at best, and equally responsible for the deaths of hostages at worst.

Published on Friday, 04 January 2013, Coptic Solidarity 

By Cynthia Farahat

Horrific reports from Cairo prove that not only Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is involved in mass killings, established torture chambers around Egyptian presidential palace, they also established torture chambers in Al-Azhar controlled mosques.

But of course, the MB doesn’t stop there, they go as far as attempting to steal corpses of the victims they kill and torture to use their pictures and dead bodies for propaganda purposes to lie and claim that they victims were members of the MB!

Here are three documented incidences, out of many:

- Al-Nahar TV channel reports that during a conference held by the supreme guide of the MB Mohammed Badei on December 8, 2012. Badei was giving his speech with a picture of a wounded man behind him called Mohammed Faisal, while stating that he is one of the Muslim Brotherhood martyrs! The truth was Faisal was injured and not killed, and not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and moreover a member of an opposition movement against the MB!

- Dr Emad Gad, renowned Egyptian researcher stated on Egyptian TV, that the Muslim Brotherhood militia performs “beating parties” where they gather around children or boys and beat them after abducting and interrogating them.

Mr. Gad told the TV host: “Here is the number of the former member of parliament, Khalid Abdul Aziz Shaaban, please call him, he has a victim in his neighborhood from the civil opposition movement, the (Muslim Brotherhood) visited his family and offered to bribe them to say that their dead son was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

- The Muslim Brotherhood killed a 15-year-old child, protesting against the Muslim Brotherhood called Islam Massoud, after abducting him and swearing he will never return. The MB later claimed that the child was a martyr of the Brotherhood!

- The MB militia killed the journalist Al-Husseini Abou Addif, while protesting against them according to renowned Egyptian TV presenter Wael Al-Ibrashi, than later the MB claimed he was one of their martyrs!

The Muslim Brotherhood international terrorist organization makes the American science fiction horror movie look like a children’s movie.

______________________________

Coptic Solidarity

13.12.2012

أعربت واشنطن من خلال المتحدثة بأسم الخارجية الاميركية فكتوريا نولاند, ووسائل إعلام, ومعاهد بحوث, عن قلقها إزاء التطورات المتلاحقة في مصر, في حين أُرجأت الزيارة المقررة للرئيس محمد مرسي الى واشنطن إلى أواخر  كانون الثاني المقبل, إلى جانب تخوف علني من أعضاء في الكونغرس, لما قد يحدث في المرحلة الأتية وعشية الإستفتاء.
الناطقة بلسان المعارضة المصرية بواشنطن سينتيا فرحات, تحدثت عن ذلك في حوار مع إذاعة العراق الحر, ورفضت جميع المحاولات لأعطاء صفة الشرعية للإستفتاء على مسودة الدستور, لأنه  في الأساس غير شرعي وغير دستوري, مطالبة بإلغائه, وتشكيل لجنة جديدة لصياغة دستور يمثل كل المصريين.
وأضافت فرحات أن إرسال 20 طائرة حربية لمصر, من قبل الولايات المتحدة, لا تدل على قلق الإدارة الأميركية, بل على مباركتها, كما قالت. أما بالنسبة للكونغرس فالوضع يختلف, لأن الكونغرس وضع شروطا على المعونة العسكرية لمصر, إلا أن الرئيس أوباما, يستخدم صلاحياته الرئاسية, لتجاوز هذه الشروط, على حد تعبيرها.

واشنطن قلقة من عدم إستقرار الاوضاع في مصر

Listen :

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Mr. Mark Tapson quotes my post about the abduction of Ambassador Yahya Najm in Front Page Magazine

December 12, 2012 By Mark Tapson

As New York Times critics wring their hands over the depiction of “enhanced interrogation” in Zero Dark Thirty, the upcoming film about the raid that eliminated bin Laden, the newspaper glosses over the very real torture taking place at the hands of President Obama’s allies in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whom the Timescontinues to describe as “moderate politicians.”

There are brigades and police officers in military uniforms, as well as others in civilian clothes from al-Nozha police station, who oversee the beatings, whippings and torture. Fifteen others from the group, distinguished by their strong bodies, are supervised by three bearded and well-dressed men who decide who will be in the chamber and who may leave, even if the person is a member of the Brotherhood.

The process begins once a demonstrator, or suspected demonstrator, is arrested:

Then, the group members trade off punching, kicking and beating him with a stick on the face and all over his body. They tear off his clothes and take him to the nearest secondary torture chamber…

Before the interrogation process starts, they search him, seize his funds, cellphones or ID, all the while punching and slapping his face in order to get him to confess to being a thug and working for money… As long as this person denies the allegations, they beat him and insult his parents.

After a while, the detainee is transported from the secondary torture chamber to the central one. On his way, the beatings and insults continue. Every time the prisoner encounters a member of the Brotherhood, that person gets in his share of the insults and beatings.

Once ten people are arrested, they are taken to the nearby al-Nozha police station, and another group of prisoners is brought in. Jarehi said he observed numerous detainees whose health condition was “very bad.” Some were bleeding all over their bodies, extremely exhausted, and unable to speak. Few received any medical assistance during their ordeal.

Egyptian political activist Cynthia Farahat reports that the Brotherhood kidnapped former Egyptian Ambassador to Venezuela Yehyia Najm, who was protesting against Morsi. In Ms. Farahat’s translation of videos on her website, Najm describes his ordeal:

They attacked me and started violently beating me, there were tens of them, they stood with their shoes on my head and my chest and kept jumping crushing my chest like they were jumping on a trampoline, while calling me an agent of the U.S. and an enemy of Allah; all we want is freedom and rights, constitutional rights.

They almost killed me, until one of them sympathized with me and asked them to have mercy, but they continued and they sprayed pesticides in my eyes. While this was going on, an ambulance came that wanted to take me and the MB prohibited them… they dragged me 100 meters in the street to the fence of the presidential palace with my hands and feet tied as I bled, there were others tied and bleeding with stab wounds, including a pharmacist who was lying next to me, with a stab wound across his chest.

They kept throwing bodies at us; it was like a Nazi concentration camp, until there were 49 of us, with our hands and legs tied like hostages. A doctor came at dawn … just to put antiseptic on some of the people’s wounds, but others needed sutures and blood transfusion, and the doctor kept begging them to send us to a hospital and they refused. There was a 14-year-old child with stab wounds, there was another man whom they attempted to mutilate his hand.

The doctor left, and came another, I asked him to help me, but the doctor said: “No, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood ordered us not to nurse you.” Another doctor came, she was a woman, she kept kicking me and telling me: “You Zionist, you agent,” and the usual accusations, as she took pictures of our faces while threatening us until a guard came out of the palace and asked her to treat us with some humanity… yet they continued to insult, photograph and intimidate us.

“We were abducted and tortured by the Muslim Brotherhood, and this is my testimony before God,” said Najm. As the Muslim Brotherhood interrogators continued to abuse him and others, he said, they randomly abducted more people passing by in the street. Finally he was taken to a prison cell in the Central Security Forces prison, “where I spent the night on the floor with a blanket on Thursday, until we were released at dawn on Saturday.”

This is the same Muslim Brotherhood that Obama helped rise to power, and to which he is now sending tanks and fighter jets. Why aren’t all the leftists who denounced the waterboarding of a few terrorists under the Bush administration now directing their outrage at Obama for supporting the violently oppressive Brotherhood’s torture of protesters?

Upon leaving the Brotherhood’s torture chambers, Mohamad Jarehi and the other journalists found blood flowing on the palace sidewalk. Someone had tried to cover it up with soil. “However,” Jarehi wrote, “no one will be able to clean the image of this blood from the memory of Egyptians for hundreds of years.”

My three hour interview with Tom Trento on Trento Vision TV  on December 10, 2012

Part 1: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27634069

Part 2: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27634846

Part 3: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27635624