Reuters reports that the Islamic State has taken over most of the Western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, putting them dangerously close to the Ain al-Asad air base, where 320 U.S. Marines are engaged in training soldiers from the Iraqi 7th Division.
A new report details the horrific exploits of “Unit 190,” an even more shadowy unit of the already-shady Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Unit 190, according to Western intelligence sources quoted by Fox News, has for many years been smuggling arms to terrorist groups in conflict zones across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the new masters of Yemen, the Houthis.
Perhaps I’m placing too much topical significance on one barely-noticed movie, but the new fantasy film “Seventh Son” is an example of everything that’s wrong with bloated, out-of-control Hollywood. It’s not offensively horrible or anything – if you like swordfights,
Ever since the holiday season, the White House has made a variety of vague assurances that ISIS recruitment is ramping down, the flow of fighters into the Islamic State has been choked off, and the weakened terror state is on the run. This is certainly a development to be hoped for, but it does not seem to have happened yet. A burst of news reports over the last few days state that, on the contrary, ISIS recruiting is still going distressingly well, both in the Middle East and West. The Pentagon has also conceded that ISIS is expanding into Afghanistan, with some success at convincing Taliban groups to swear fealty to them.
Most experts observing the meeting in Cairo between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi this week are interpreting it as Egypt’s way of letting the Obama Administration know there are other super-power fish in the sea. Judging by the report published in the State-run Xinhua press, China thinks something a bit more serious is going on: sunset for America’s status as the premiere world power.
The CyberCaliphate, an ISIS-affiliated hacker group, is sure to make a great deal of American blood boil with their latest stunt: they hijacked the Twitter account of a support group for called Military Spouses of Strength, which “aims to improve mental health awareness by providing resources and knowledge through tangible programming” in the words of their mission statement.
After a day spent in denial, the Obama administration finally seems ready to admit that an attack in Paris last month was anti-Semitic. But the denials were fun while they lasted.
If there is no way to keep government honest, then it is incumbent upon us to keep it weak. Right now, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: Strong, yet too often dishonest, government.
For the tenth time since taking him hostage, the Islamic State (ISIS) has paraded British journalist John Cantlie as the “host” of one of its propaganda videos, this time giving a guided tour of the contested Syrian city of Aleppo, which ISIS seeks to portray as functional and productive under its control.
The people of Sydney, Australia, dodged a bullet–or, more accurately, a machete and a hunting knife–on Tuesday, as the authorities moved against a pair of alleged Islamist terrorists on the very day they reportedly planned to carry out an assault on police officers, according to the UK Daily Mail.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been hounded by not one, but two open-ended “John Doe” probes of his campaign finances, which invited criticisms of politically-motivated abuse by Democrat officials as they ground pointlessly along for years. The first of those investigations went
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave a half-hour interview to the BBC on Tuesday in which he discussed, among other things, just how much his government is cooperating with the United States and its anti-ISIS coalition.
The easy joke to make, upon learning that China’s authoritarian rulers are trying to ban Western ideas (other than communism, of course) from college campuses, is to say that they are only trying to accomplish what American universities already did forty years ago.
It’s not surprising that the legal defense team of Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev would play up his youth and “vulnerability” to save him from the death penalty, but it’s downright amazing to watch the media swoon over him.
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the hacker collective known as “Anonymous” vowed to destroy terrorist websites.
ISIS has been catching hell from hackers, especially after the slaughter of Charlie Hebdo magazine staffers in Paris, but the Islamic State has not been without its own cyber-war victories. On Tuesday, as the Washington Examiner reports, hackers claiming to work for the Islamic State managed to gain control of the Twitter account for Newsweek, using it to post enemy propaganda, documents ostensibly stolen from the U.S. military, threats of further “cyber jihad,” and even a blood-curdling threat against the Obama family.
According to comments from a U.S. Central Command official to CNN, a major ground offensive to dislodge ISIS from Mosul could be coming in April, and American ground forces could be part of it.
Over the weekend, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan predicted that Greece will end up leaving the eurozone and that the euro will not long survive its departure.
The “Reformocon” movement won’t gain ground unless it realizes that the market is the best way to help people. The poor don’t need handouts from a more efficient version of the Mommy State to “reap the benefits of competition” – the incredibly low cost and high quality of the goods and services they enjoy, from inexpensive and abundant food to the low-cost shopping experience of Wal-Mart, have done more to improve their lives than easily-abused Big Government welfare programs.
After surviving a “spill motion” that could have seen disgruntled members of his own Liberal Party knock him out of his seat, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott lashed Labor as hard as he struck back at opponents within his own party, in an evidently successful bid to contrast himself with the chaos of Labor government.
Tom Brokaw is the highest-profile dissenter to call for the ouster of Brian Williams over his stolen valor helicopter story, but he’s not the only one.
Jordan has responded to a claim by the Islamic State (ISIS) on Friday that American hostage Kayla Jean Mueller was killed by collateral damage from Jordanian airstrikes, saying that ISIS has provided no proof of Mueller’s death, and is lying about either the fact or manner of her death. American officials also said they had seen no evidence that Mueller was killed.
Liberals would do well to listen to Gov. Bobby Jindal, rather than continuing to attempt to defend President Obama’s anti-Christian comments at the National Prayer Breakfast.
Xinhua, China’s state news outlet, has published a scathing rebuke of Human Rights Watch following HRW’s criticism of Chinese authoritarianism, and its opinion that a proposed Chinese counter-terrorism law would “legitimate ongoing human rights violations and facilitate future abuses.”
The unemployment rate is up. But there are more jobs. Is that good or bad? It’s complicated, and that shows how misleading media coverage of the monthly unemployment rate number has become.
