Another scene from the ongoing collapse of President Obama’s Iraq policy comes to us from the crucial Iraqi oil refinery of Beiji, where Iranian artillery and heavy weapons are backing Iraqi forces against ISIS, while the Obama Administration watches helplessly and hopes the media doesn’t notice.
Charting President Obama’s relationship with the media that passively-aggressively adores him is tricky. More than once, he’s seemingly angered or dismayed them enough to trigger a paradigm shift, only to have the paradigm slip right back to the usual worship of a titan striding across history.
ISIS has reportedly commenced beheading prisoners immediately in the captured Syrian city of Palmyra.
It must be stressed repeatedly – as the mainstream media will be extremely reluctant to do – that absolutely none of this information was provided voluntarily by Hillary Clinton or the Obama Administration. Every last drop of it was cudgeled out of them with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and congressional investigations, over a span of years.
The endless sectarian bloodshed between militant Islamists continues, with a deadly suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia that killed over a dozen people. According to the BBC, the Sunni fanatics of the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attack, with a Twitter message that included an image of the bomber.
NBC News reports that the FBI has arrested two men in Southern California on terrorism-related charges, specifically a plan to hook up with ISIS in Syria.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) continues to exploit the disastrous aftermath of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy in Libya, establishing a presence in what India Today calls “the third big stronghold for the Sunni Islamist group.” Over the past four months, ISIS has largely taken control of Sirte, hometown of late dictator Moammar Qaddafi.
Let me propose an idea for both sides in the poverty debate to consider: the true significance of work is not that it brings “dignity” to the poor, because they don’t consider themselves undignified now, and the welfare state goes to great lengths to reinforce that sense of entitlement instead of humbly accepting temporary charity. Work provides two concrete benefits more important than dignity: value and purpose.
In a disturbing sign of the Islamic State’s expanding influence, Israeli customs officials at Ben Gurion Airport have intercepted a suspicious package from Turkey that turned out to be packed with 120 shiny new ISIS rings, adorned with ISIS logos and slogans in Arabic, bound for Palestinian Authority customers.
The ultimate political organism doesn’t have to worry about winning elections, and is only modestly concerned about the possibility of losing one. American politics is no longer a question of what the people support, but what we can marshal the combined willpower to stop.
Just two days after Islamic State fighters were supposedly routed and driven into the desert by Syrian government troops, ISIS has reportedly taken the entire city of Palmyra, placing both its population and historical treasures in grave peril.
Many experts reckon the first cyberwar is already well under way. It’s not exactly a “cold war,” as the previous generation understood the term, because serious damage valued in millions of dollars has been done, and there’s nothing masked about the hostile intent of state-sponsored hackers. What has been masked is the sponsorship.
The long, ugly farce of President Obama’s “nuclear deal” with Iran drags on, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei essentially voided the entire agreement on Wednesday, declaring Iran would not give international inspectors access to its nuclear sites or nuclear scientists. “A
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a genial interview to Der Spiegel this week, with the German magazine describing him as “relaxed and cheerful” throughout. In his relaxed and cheerful way, Zarif continued Iran’s practice of making the Obama administration look foolish, rewriting the so-called “nuclear deal” on the fly and scoffing at the administration’s talking points.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un always gets fidgety when some other global supervillain hogs the spotlight. Having watched Iran mop the floor with President Barack Obama and ISIS turn cities into torture chambers for long enough, Kim decided to announce that his arsenal now includes submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune brings us the infuriating story of Hamaz Ahmed, 20, and Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19, two Twin Cities college students who allegedly used federal student loan money to buy plane tickets to the Middle East to join ISIS.
Sen. Marco Rubio’s interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday was supposedly a disaster for the GOP presidential candidate.
The New York Times offers a dismaying look at the Islamic State’s financial situation by Sarah Almukhtar: She looks at data from the RAND Corporation and judges that the modern-day Mordor “has revenue and assets that are more than enough to cover its current expenses despite expectations that airstrikes and falling oil prices would hurt the group’s finances.”
No Demoocrat seems willing to commit to much, yet. But if Hillary Clinton survives her scandals, Elizabeth Warren isn’t going to marginalize herself in the party by acting obstinate. She knows Democrat voters will march out for whoever the Party candidate is, whether alleged populist rising stars endorse them or not… but if the Party candidate goes on to defeat, they’ll be looking for scapegoats.
After American-armed troops from the American-supported Iraqi central government were routed from the city of Ramadi by an inferior ISIS force, the head-choppers embarked on what the Kurdish Rudaw news service describes as a “bloody purge.”
As even supportive media figures are beginning to grumble about Clinton’s refusal to answer questions, or make any public appearance less tightly scripted than Kim Jong Un’s birthday parties, here she is smacking down an impertinent reporter who dares to ask whether Her Majesty would care to field a few inquiries from the press.
Over the weekend, the Associated Press, along with virtually every other major media outlet in America, reported that Pope Francis declared Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be an “angel of peace.” The remark prompted outrage because Abbas’ past conduct, and political corruption, did not in any way qualify him for such a lofty description.
The Islamic State was supposedly in a defensive crouch after its defeat in the Iraqi city of Tikrit, but in fact it’s lashed out aggressively on both Iraqi and Syrian fronts, with disastrous consequences in the fallen city of Ramadi.
How’s the White House spinning the sack of Ramadi? You’ll be sorry you asked.
As a character notes in the new film Mad Max: Fury Road, everything hurts out in the Wasteland. That which does not kill you makes you stronger… and then something even stronger kills you. In that spirit, I’m going to lay my razor-edged cards on the table and say it straight: this is a very good sci-fi action film that was brutally murdered at the box office by its own glowing reviews.
