Video: US Marines in Afghanistan

The United Nations Building in New York City - Before and After

BEFORE

AFTER

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Obama's Last 25 Days

How George Soros Destroyed the Democratic Party

A remarkable account on the demise of the Democrat party from Front Page Magazine and Daniel Greenfield.

How George Soros Destroyed the Democratic Party

It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.

What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.

It was 2004. The poncho was the hottest fashion trend, there were 5 million new cases of AIDS and a former Nazi collaborator had bought the Democrat Party using the spare change in his sofa cushions.

And gone to war against the will of the people. This was what he modestly called his own “Soros Doctrine”.

“It is the central focus of my life,” George Soros declared. It was “a matter of life and death.” He vowed that he would become poor if it meant defeating the President of the United States.

Instead of going to the poorhouse, he threw in at least $15 million, all the spare change in the billionaire’s sofa cushions, dedicated to beating President Bush.

In his best lisping James Bond villain accent, Soros strode into the National Press Club and declared that he had “an important message to deliver to the American Public before the election” that was contained in a pamphlet and a book that he waved in front of the camera. Despite his “I expect you to die, Mr. Bond” voice, the international villain’s delivery was underwhelming. He couldn’t have sold brownies to potheads at four in the morning. He couldn’t even sell Bush-bashing to a roomful of left-wing reporters.

But he could certainly fund those who would. And that’s exactly what he did.

Money poured into the fringe organizations of the left like MoveOn, which had moved on from a petition site to a PAC. In 2004, Soros was its biggest donor. He didn’t manage to bring down Bush, but he helped buy the Democratic Party as a toy for his yowling dorm room of left-wing activists to play with.

Soros hasn’t had a great track record at buying presidential elections. The official $25 million he poured into this one bought him his worst defeat since 2004. But his money did transform the Democrat Party.

And killed it.

Next year the Democracy Alliance was born. A muddy river of cash from Soros and his pals flowed into the organizations of the left. Soros had helped turn Howard Dean, a Vermont politician once as obscure as this cycle’s radical Vermont Socialist, into a contender and a national figure. Dean didn’t get the nomination, but he did get to remake the DNC. Podesta’s Center for American Progress swung the Democrats even further to the left. And it would be Podesta who helped bring Hillary down.

The Democrats became a radical left-wing organization and unviable as a national political party. The Party of Jefferson had become the Party of Soros. And only one of those was up on Mount Rushmore.

Obama’s wins concealed the scale and scope of the disaster. Then the party woke up after Obama to realize that it had lost its old bases in the South and the Rust Belt. The left had hollowed it out and transformed it into a party of coastal urban elites, angry college crybullies and minority coalitions.

Republicans control twice as many state legislative chambers as the Democrats. They boast 25 trifectas , controlling both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion. Trifectas had gone from being something that wasn’t seen much outside of a few hard red states like Texas to covering much of the South, the Midwest and the West.

The Democrats have a solid lock on the West Coast and a narrow corridor of the Northeast, and little else. The vast majority of the country’s legislatures are in Republican hands. The Democrat Governor’s Association has a membership in the teens. In former strongholds like Arkansas, Dems are going extinct. The party has gone from holding national legislative majorities to becoming a marginal movement.

And the Democrats don’t intend to change course. The way is being cleared for Keith Ellison, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus with an ugly racist past, to head the DNC. Pelosi will oversee the disaster in the House. And Obama will remain the party’s highest profile national figure.

There could hardly be a clearer signal that the left intends to retain its donkey herding rights. Soros and his ilk have paid for the reins. That is why Pelosi, with her access to donors, will retain her position.

The left had recreated the Democrat Party and marginalized it. Much of this disaster had been funded with Soros money. Like many a theatrical villain, the old monster had been undone by his own hubris. Had Soros aided the Democrats without trying to control them, he would have gained a seat at the table in a national party. Instead he spent a fortune destroying the very thing he was trying to control.

George Soros saw America in terms of its centers of economic and political power. He didn’t care about the vast stretches of small towns and villages, of the more modest cities that he might fly over in his jet but never visit, and the people who lived in them. Like so many globalists who believe that borders shouldn’t exist because the luxury hotels and airports they pass through are interchangeable, the parts of America that mattered to him were in the glittering left-wing bubble inhabited by his fellow elitists.

Trump’s victory, like Brexit, came because the left had left the white working class behind. Its vision of the future as glamorous multicultural city states was overturned in a single night. The idea that Soros had committed so much power and wealth to was of a struggle between populist nationalists and responsible internationalists. But, in a great irony, Bush was hardly the nationalist that Soros believed. Instead Soros spent a great deal of time and wealth to unintentionally elect a populist nationalist.

Leftists used Soros money to focus on their own identity politics obsessions leaving the Dems with little ability to interact with white working class voters. The Ivy and urban leftists who made up the core of the left had come to exist in a narrow world with little room for anything and anyone else.

Soros turned over the Democrats to political fanatics least likely to be able to recognize their own errors. His protégés repeated the great self-destruction of the Soviet Union on a more limited scale

Soros fed a political polarization while assuming, wrongly, that the centers of power mattered, and their outskirts did not. He was proven wrong in both the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. He had made many gambles that paid off. But his biggest gamble took everything with it.

"I don’t believe in standing in the way of an avalanche," Soros complained of the Republican wave in 2010.

But he has been trying to do just that. And failing.

"There should be consequences for the outrageous statements and proposals that we've regularly heard from candidates Trump and Cruz," Soros threatened this time around. He predicted a Hillary landslide.

He was wrong.

As Soros plowed more money into the left, its escalating radicalism alienated more of the country. Each “avalanche” was a reaction to the abuses of his radicals. It wasn't Trump or Cruz who suffered the consequences. It wasn't even his own leftists. Rather it was the conservative and eventually the moderate wings of the Democrat party who were swept away by his left-wing avalanches.

The left did not mourn the mass destruction of the moderates. Instead it celebrated the growing purity of the Democrats as a movement of the hard left. It did not notice or care that it was no longer a political force outside a limited number of cities. It anticipated that voters would have no choice but to choose it over the "extremist" Republicans.

It proved to be very, very wrong.

George Soros spent a fortune to turn a national party favorable to the left into an organization that has difficulty appealing to anyone not on the left. He wanted to control a country he did not understand. And, as the left so often does, he achieved his goals and in doing so destroyed them.

Video: Why Spaghetti Should Be Halal

China tests new fighter jet prototype, aiming to end West's monopoly in warplanes

But hey, don't forget that Barack Obama's America has brought us the newest of innovations - interfaith councils, fur-lined bluetooths and revolutionary new lubes for the LGBT community.

The story comes from DAWN.

China tests new fighter jet prototype, aiming to end West's monopoly in warplanes

China has tested the latest version of its fifth-generation stealth fighter, state media reported on Monday, as it tries to end the West's monopoly on the world's most advanced warplanes.

The test comes as the nation flexes its military muscles, sending its sole aircraft carrier the Liaoning into the western Pacific in recent days to lead drills there for the first time.

The newest version of the J-31 — now renamed the FC-31 Gyrfalcon — took to the air for the first time Friday, the China Daily reported.

The so-called “fifth-generation” twin-engine jet is China's answer to the US F-35, the world's most technically advanced fighter.

The new FC-31 has “better stealth capabilities, improved electronic equipment and a larger payload capacity” than the previous version which debuted in October 2012, the newspaper said, quoting aviation expert Wu Peixin.

“Changes were made to the airframe, wings and vertical tails which make it leaner, lighter and more manoeuvrable,” Wu told the paper.

The jet is manufactured by Shenyang Aircraft Corp., a subsidiary of the Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC).

The fighter is expected to sell for around $70 million, the article said, aiming to take market share away from more expensive fourth-generation fighters like the Eurofighter Typhoon.

AVIC has said that the FC-31 will “put an end to some nations' monopolies on the fifth-generation fighter jet”, the China Daily reported.

China is aggressively moving to develop its domestic weapons industry, from drones and anti-aircraft systems to homegrown jet engines.

In the past it has been accused of copying designs from Russian fighters, and some analysts say the FC-31 bears a close resemblance to the F-35.

When completed the FC-31 will become the country's second fifth-generation fighter after the J-20, which put on its first public performance at the Zhuhai Air Show in November.

Hillary Clinton - Nothing But Cutting Edge, People

So, Hillary Clinton hasn't sent out a tweet on Twitter for nearly a month - I guess that's understandable due to the manic depression and 2 or 3 quarts of liquid courage she's ingesting each day, but she's broken the standoff with her first tweet since the end of November.

Now, the reason I put "cutting edge" in the post title here is because sarcasm was one of my favorite Christmas presents this year and it just seemed appropriate that I point out that "edgy" Hillary, you know, the woman who was to break the glass ceiling...the woman who had the dream team campaign force behind her....well, you see, Hillary tweeted out her "Holiday" tweet below - have a look:

The holidays are a time to be thankful for our blessings. Let's rejoice in this season & look forward with renewed hope & determination. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 26, 2016

Now, look at the DATE of that tweet.  The day AFTER Christmas, Hillary Clinton sends out her holiday well wishes and observance.

And pundits and media heads are STILL trying to figure out why she lost?


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Video: When a Brave People Weather the Nazi Blitzkrieg Then Bow To the Muslim Menace

Nigeria: Boko Haram crushed, forced out of last enclave

Pardon me while I remain skeptical of this...

The story comes from USA Today.

Nigeria: Boko Haram crushed, forced out of last enclave

Nigeria’s president said Saturday that his forces had crushed the notorious Boko Haram extremist group and driven them out of their forest encampment, but have yet to locate scores of Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants in 2014.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s victorious announcement Saturday also indicated Nigerian forces need to remain vigilant to fight off individual suicide bombings, village attacks and assaults on remote military outposts by remnants of the homegrown Islamist group.

Still, Buhari's announcement expressed relief that army and security forces had broken the back of the organization. He said Nigeria's “gallant troops” on Friday drove the insurgents out of their “Camp Zero” deep in the northeastern Sambisa Forest.

The forest is believed to hold more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram from a school in the town of Chibok. The mass abductions sparked international outcry, and prompted the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

“Further efforts should be intensified to locate and free our remaining Chibok girls still in captivity," he said. "May God be with them."

Nigerian troops have freed thousands of Boko Haram captives this year, including some of the Chibok girls among 276 seized from a government boarding school.

In October, 21 Chibok girls were freed through negotiations between the government and Boko Haram, brokered by the Swiss government and the International Red Cross. In May, one Chibok girl escaped on her own.

The freed girls have indicated several others died in captivity from things like malaria and snake bites.

Boko Haram, which means "Western Education Is Forbidden," has been around since the late 1990s but declared its solidarity with al-Qaeda in 2010 and launched a series of suicide bombings and attacks on Western facilities, including a vehicle-bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja that killed 23 people in 2011.

It has sought to overthrow the Nigerian government and replace it with a regime based on Islamic law.

In 2014, under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, it launched almost daily attacks on Christians, police, the media, schools and Muslims it perceived as collaborators, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.

In 2015, it declared allegiance with the Islamic State. The group has also conducted attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

. . . thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

Matthew 1:23

 

Berlin truck terrorist pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in video

The story comes from The Long War Journal.

Berlin truck terrorist pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in video

The Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency has released a video of Anis Amri, the Tunisian man suspected of driving a large lorry into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19. Twelve people were killed and dozens more injured in the attack. Amri was reportedly killed in a shootout with police in Milan, Italy earlier today.

Prior to his demise, Amri recorded a video in which he swore bayah (oath of allegiance) to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, describing Baghdadi as the “Emir ul-Mu’minin” (“Emir of the Faithful”), a title usually reserved for an Islamic Caliph.

Amri went on to denounce the “crusader” bombings in the territories controlled by the Islamic State. He also called on Muslims to exact retribution by attacking inside the West.

Amri’s video was sent to Amaq, which posted the clip on its official website and social media after he was shot dead. Amaq also released a statement noting Amri’s death.

Amaq’s release of the video is consistent with the pattern followed after other Islamic State-claimed operations in 2016.

The terrorists responsible for small-scale attacks in Würzburg, Germany (July 18), Ansbach, Germany (July 24), Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, France (July 26), and Balashikha (east of Moscow), Russia (Aug. 17) all recorded videos of themselves pledging allegiance to Baghdadi before their hour of terror.

Their videos were sent to Amaq, which made minor additions (such as a title screen) and then released them online shortly thereafter. Screen shots from each of these videos can be seen below.

In other cases, terrorists have professed their fealty to Baghdadi and his so-called caliphate online or in phone calls, but their stated allegiance was not first released by Amaq.

For example, Omar Mateen, who massacred 49 people at an Orlando nightclub in June, repeatedly swore his allegiance to Baghdadi during conversations with authorities on the night of his attack. The couple responsible for the Dec. 2015 San Bernardino killings also referenced their bayah to Baghdadi on social media.

The Islamic State has claimed that its “soldier(s)” have been responsible for other attacks inside the US as well. Unlike in Europe, however, Amaq has not released videos from any of the attackers inside America.

There are multiple ways a jihadist can be affiliated with the Islamic State, or another terrorist organization. In some cases, such as the attack on Paris in Nov. 2015, the terrorists are dispatched by a group. In other instances, they receive some direction, either online or in person. European officials have described a series of plots in their countries as being “remote-controlled” by Islamic State handlers online. The aforementioned attacks in Ansbach and Würzburg, as well as others, fall into this category.

In still other scenarios, it appears the attacker was merely inspired by the jihadists’ propaganda. It often takes time for authorities to determine where a terrorist falls in this spectrum of connections, ranging from dispatched, to “remote-controlled,” to inspired.

Amaq’s release of the terrorists’ videos demonstrates that they are anything but “lone” actors. The videos suggest that the jihadists responsible for each of these attacks had at least one tie to the Islamic State, even if it was only a digital one. Other biographical details for at least some of the jihadists who have struck inside Europe demonstrate additional connections as well. For instance, the man who detonated his backpack bomb in Ansbach, Germany earlier this year had fought for the Islamic State in Syria.

Amri had his own ties to the Islamic State’s network and was on the US government’s no-fly list.

Citing “American officials,” The New York Times first reported that Amri had already “appeared on the radar of United States agencies.” Amri “had done online research on how to make explosive devices and had communicated with the Islamic State at least once, via Telegram Messenger,” the Times reported.

CNN reported that Amri “was known to German security services as someone in contact with radical Islamist groups, and had been assessed as posing a risk.”

Authorities tied Amri to Abu Walaa, an extremist preacher who was arrested in November. Abu Walaa, a native Iraqi, is a well-known, yet somewhat mysterious, preacher who indoctrinated Muslims in the ways of jihad. Some of his recruits are thought to have traveled abroad to wage jihad, including on behalf of the Islamic State. CNN’s Paul Cruickshank found that “as many as 20 Germans who have joined” the Islamic State had ties to Abu Walaa’s network.

However, Amri did not migrate to the lands of the so-called caliphate. Instead, he decided to lash out inside the West. The Islamic State has repeatedly told its followers that such plots are better than fighting in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere, as they do more damage to the jihadists’ enemies.

Five Finger Death Punch Video - Watch For the Salute to Troops and Veterans

ISIS video shows Turkish troops ‘burned alive’

I dunno.  It's like watching the Packers play the Bears.

The story comes from Al Arabiya.

ISIS video shows Turkish troops ‘burned alive’

ISIS militants on Thursday released a video purporting to show two captured Turkish soldiers being burned alive. The video, showing two uniformed men being hauled from a cage before being bound and torched, was posted on militant websites.

The 19-minute footage was purportedly shot in the ISIS-declared “Aleppo Province” in northern Syria. Speaking in Turkish, the killer of the two men verbally attacks Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and calls for “destruction to be sowed” in Turkey.

The shock images recall the killing of Maaz al-Kassasbeh, a Jordanian fighter pilot, who was captured by the militants when his plane went down in Syria in December 2014, and was later burned alive in a cage. The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq said last month that the militants had kidnapped two Turkish soldiers, and the Turkish army separately said it had lost contact with two of its men.

The video’s release came a day after 16 Turkish soldiers were killed by ISIS militants, in Ankara’s biggest loss so far in its unprecedented incursion into Syria. They were killed in a succession of attacks around the Syrian town of Al-Bab on Wednesday that included three suicide car bombings.

Iranian Qods Force Commander Takes Us Behind the Curtain To See Iran's Expansionist Goals

For 8 years, the Iranian plans to expand their reach, their influence and their control have gone completely unchecked by a feeble and complicit Barack Hussein Obama - some would say it's too late now, that there is no putting the genie back in the bottle or in this case, the satanic force back in Hell.

The story comes from The Long War Journal.

Iraq’s PMF is IRGC’s “next step,” senior Qods Force commander says

The establishment of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) is an extension of Iran’s plan to export the revolution, which keeps war against Sunni extremists from reaching the country’s borders, argued Brigadier General Iraj Masjedi, senior adviser to the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force.

Masjedi was speaking to an Iranian audience at a ceremony commemorating an IRGC commander killed in combat in Syria last year, which was held in Iran’s northern province of Mazandaran on Dec. 14, according to Fars News. He spoke at length about the sacrifices of Iranian military personnel in Iraq and Syria. The martyrs extend Iran’s strategic depth, uphold revolutionary values, defend holy Shiite shrines, and keep the homeland safe, proclaimed the Qods Force commander.

Senior Iranian officials and commanders have repeatedly made this line of argument, especially about peace at home, as the IRGC’s involvements have become increasingly open since the Islamic State’s incursion into Iraq in 2014 and the IRGC’s military escalation in Syria in 2015.

Masjedi warned that war would continue in Syria following Aleppo and Mosul, even as “takfiri and Salafi groups” are in decline. He argued that the only way “all of the Islamic community” would be at peace is to “destroy the takfir front.”

“They will show mercy to none, and this is not exclusive to Shiites,” Masjedi warned.

The Qods Force commander tied the mission of fighting Salafi jihadist groups on their turf and away from Iran’s border to the the export of the revolution. That has been the IRGC’s mission since 1979.

When “Iraqi and Syrian forces saw your children among themselves,” their morals heightened, he said. Masjedi then subtly made the shift from the sacrifices of Iranians to exporting the revolution.

“The next step of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been the formation of the massive basij [mobilization] force that is faithful and a friend of Islamic Iran, such as the Iraqi Hashd al Shabi [PMF], which has been established as a powerful army with our organizing and our experience in the Sacred Defense [Iran-Iraq War],” Masjedi said.

FDD’s Long War Journal has argued that Iran helped nurture the PMF in Iraq as part of its efforts to extend its influence in the country and create an Iraqi version of the IRGC. [See FDD’s Long War Journal reports, Iraq’s prime minister establishes Popular Mobilization Forces as a permanent ‘independent military formation’ and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces in Iran’s game plan.]

Meanwhile, the expansionism, abuses, and destruction wrought by IRGC and its supported militias on the ground – on display in Aleppo – feed into sectarianism and Sunni anger. That perpetuates radical environments fertile for Salafi jihadism and lethal anti-Shiism, feeding into a vicious cycle of sectarian violence. The war against the Islamic State and al Qaeda is inextricably linked with the IRGC.

Masjedi’s statement about Iraq’s PMF comes less than three weeks after Iraq’s parliament passed a law that established the PMF as an independent security force supposedly answerable only to Iraq’s prime minister, according to the The Washington Post. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Hayder al Abadi issued an order that established the PMF as a permanent “independent military formation.”

The law passed by Iraq’s parliament was greeted warmly in Iran. Earlier this week, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei received Ammar Hakim, head of the Shiite National Alliance party that helped passed the PMF law. The PMF is “a great wealth, a major resource for today and the future of Iraq,” Khamenei said, “they should be supported and consolidated.” Khamenei’s office publicized the meeting.

The top political office in the Islamic Republic also advised Hakim: “Do not trust the Americans at all.”

Hakim called the Iraqi parliament’s passing of the PMF law one of the party’s “important” achievements, in which the National Alliance was able to secure the votes of other movements and groups.

The PMF was established in June 2014 after the Iraqi military and police forces were overwhelmed by the Islamic State in northern, central, and western Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a fatwa for Iraq to support the collapsing security forces and drive the Islamic State from the country.

Militias that are supported by Iran which openly fought US and British troops during the occupation answered the call. These militias are responsible for killing hundreds of US, British, and other allied troops during the occupation of Iraq.

IRGC-backed militias that dominate the PMF have been infiltrating the Iraqi government for year, occupying important government posts. The recent law enshrines their militia formations as permanent fabric of the Iraqi state. These actors are open about their ideology, promotion of the IRGC’s brand of Islamic identity, and links with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Without serious overhaul and dissolution of these formations as currently constituted, it would be difficult to imagine the Iraqi Prime Minister wrestling these groups under his command and control in practice.

Many of the militias that are part of the PMF remain hostile to the United States, and some have threatened to attack US interests in the region. One of the more influential militias within the PMF, Hezbollah Brigades, is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Several influential PMF leaders, including the operational leader of the PMF, are listed by the US as global terrorists.

WATCH: Shooter detained at US embassy in Ankara

The story comes from Al Arabiya.

WATCH: Shooter detained at US embassy in Ankara

Turkish police have detained a man who fired shots in front of the US embassy in Ankara, several hours after the Russian ambassador to Turkey was killed in an attack.

The state-run Anadolu Agency says the man took out a pump action shotgun he hid in his coat and fired around eight shots in the air early Tuesday. He was overpowered by the embassy’s security guards.

No one was hurt in the incident which occurred hours after a Turkish policeman, appearing to condemn Russia’s military role in Syria, fatally shot Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in front of a shocked gathering at a photo exhibit in Ankara.

The embassy said its missions in Ankara, Istanbul and the southern city of Adana would be “closed for normal operations on Tuesday.”

At least nine dead as truck plows into crowd at Berlin Christmas market

Nothing says Merry Christmas like an Islamic invader (refugee) driving a truck through a crowd in Berlin and killing 9 people.

"But Holger, they don't know it's a Muslim or a refugee" - right.  Yeah, right.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Right?

The story comes from DAWN.

At least nine dead as truck plows into crowd at Berlin Christmas market

A lorry ploughed into a busy Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, killing at least nine people and wounding 50 more in what police said was a possible terror attack.

Ambulances and police rushed to the area after the driver drove up the pavement of the market in a central square popular with tourists, in scenes reminiscent of the deadly truck attack in the French city of Nice in July.

“There are at least 50 injured... some seriously. Some are dead,” a police spokeswoman told AFP. Police subsequently said nine had been killed and that one person has been detained over the incident -- which comes less than a week before Christmas.

"We are investigating whether it was a terror attack but do not yet know what was behind it,” a police spokesman said.

Germany has been shaken this year by several assaults claimed by the Islamic State group and carried out by asylum-seekers.

An axe rampage on a train in the southern state of Bavaria in July injured five people, and a suicide bombing wounded 15 people in the same state six days later.

In another case, a 16-year-old German-Moroccan girl in February stabbed a police officer in the neck with a kitchen knife, wounding him badly, allegedly on IS orders.
Attacks rock France

The arrival of 890,000 refugees last year has polarised Germany and misgivings run particularly deep in the ex-communist east, even more so since IS-linked attacks in July carried out by Syrian asylum-seekers.

The attack in Berlin also comes five months after Tunisian extremist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a 19-tonne truck into a crowd on the Nice seafront, killing 86 people.

The bloodshed -- as people were watching a fireworks display on the Bastille Day public holiday on July 14 -- further traumatised a France already reeling from a series of jihadist attacks.

Six people have been charged so far over alleged links to the 31-year-old killer but investigators have yet to prove that any of them knew what he was planning.

IS moved quickly after the attack to claim Bouhlel as one of its followers.

Investigators said he suffered from depression and appeared to have become radicalised very quickly.

The massacre on the palm-fringed Promenade des Anglais was the latest in a series of jihadist attacks that have rocked France over the past two years.

The violence began with the January 2015 attacks on a satirical newspaper and a Jewish supermarket in Paris and continued 10 months later with coordinated strikes on the capital's Bataclan concert hall, national stadium and cafe terraces.

The attacks have hardened attitudes on security and immigration, fuelling the rise of the far-right ahead of next year's presidential election Another 11 people were arrested lat week in France suspected of helping to arm Bouhlel.

Happy Holidays From the Boys at ISIS - 49 Yemeni Soldiers Blown to Bits in Yemen

The story comes from The Jerusalem Post.

Islamic State claims Yemen suicide attack that killed 49

CAIRO - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Sunday that killed up to 49 Yemeni soldiers in the southern port city of Aden, the group said in a statement.


Islamic State said more than 70 "apostates" were killed in the attack carried out by a suicide bomber it identified as Abu Hashem al-Radfani.

The Holger Poll: Why Did Hillary Lose the Election?

THE HOLGER POLL

Why did Hillary Clinton Lose the 2016 Presidential Election?

A)  She murdered 4 Americans in Benghazi, Libya then orchestrated the coverup

B)  She set up her own email server and email accounts that were hacked and she put the country's defense and security secrets at risk

C)  She was not trusted by most Americans and thus did nothing in the campaign but sit home and send surrogates out to campaign for her

D)  She never verified that she was healthy enough to be President

E)  She never put out a single campaign message on how she would turn the economy around

F)  She had John Podesta and Robby Mook running her campaign

G)  She entrusted her biggest secrets to a Muslim Brotherhood operative posing as her closest aide

I)  The Russians hacked the voting machines

Tweet of the Week

Politicians are like sperm. One in a million turn out to be an actual human being. - https://t.co/MFQyEOo0UW

— Get Off My Lawn (@MeosoFunny) December 17, 2016

US military: 250 al Qaeda operatives killed or captured in Afghanistan this year

The story comes from The Long War Journal.

US military: 250 al Qaeda operatives killed or captured in Afghanistan this year

American counterterrorism forces have killed or captured approximately 250 al Qaeda operatives in 2016, according to US military officials.

The jihadists taken off the battlefield include 50 leaders and 200 other members of al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which is the newest regional branch of Ayman al Zawahiri’s global network.

The figures were first announced by General John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support and US Forces Afghanistan, during a briefing on Dec. 2. FDD’s Long War Journal followed up with some additional questions regarding the number of al Qaeda and Islamic State jihadists targeted.

For more than six years, FDD’s Long War Journal has warned that official estimates of al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan were too low and inconsistent with publicly available evidence. Officials finally conceded earlier this year that the number of al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan exceeds the US government’s longstanding claim.

Longstanding lowball estimate at odds with evidence

In June 2010, then CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC’s This Week that the number of al Qaeda members in Afghanistan was “relatively small.” “At most, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less,” Panetta said. “It’s in that vicinity. There’s no question that the main location of al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan.”

FDD’s Long War Journal described this figure as fallacious at the time. An analysis of the raids conducted between 2007 and 2013 indicated that al Qaeda and its closest allies maintained a far deeper and broader presence. [For more information on the number of al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan see FDD’s Long War Journal report: US military admits al Qaeda is stronger in Afghanistan than previously estimated.]

In early May 2011, the US killed Osama bin Laden in a daring raid. The Americans recovered a large cache of files in bin Laden’s compound. One of the files was a memo written by Atiyah Abd al Rahman, who was subsequently killed in a drone strike, to bin Laden. The memo was dated June 19, 2010 — the same month that the CIA’s Panetta announced there were just 50 to 100 al Qaeda operatives, or “maybe less,” in all of Afghanistan.

Rahman’s memo told a different story. He reported to bin Laden that al Qaeda had “very strong military activity in Afghanistan,” and had conducted “many special operations” that were hitting the Americans and NATO “hard.” Rahman explained that al Qaeda was closely cooperating with Siraj Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani Network. Siraj was named one of the Taliban’s top two deputies in 2015 and he continues to serve in that role today.

Rahman explained that al Qaeda was operating in at least eight of Afghanistan’s provinces as of June 2010. In addition, just one al Qaeda “battalion” based in Kunar and Nuristan had 70 members by itself. That is, this one “battalion” had more fighters than the lower bound of the CIA’s figures for all of Afghanistan.

The lowball guess stuck, however, despite the recovery of this primary source evidence.

The US military claimed as recently as June 2015, in its biannual Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan report, that al Qaeda “has a sustained presence in Afghanistan of probably fewer than 100 operatives concentrated largely in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces, where they remain year-round.”

Another Defense Department report, published in Dec. 2015, claimed that al Qaeda is “primarily concentrated in the east and northeast.” This erroneous assessment was published despite the fact that US and Afghan forces raided two large al Qaeda camps in the Shorabak district of the southern Kandahar province just two months earlier, in Oct. 2015. More than 150 al Qaeda operatives were found at one of the two camps.

US officials walk back previous assessment

Earlier this year, US generals began to walk back the consistently low estimate of al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan.

In April, Major General Jeff Buchanan, Resolute Support’s deputy chief of staff, discussed al Qaeda’s footprint in the country and warned that previous US estimates on al Qaeda’s strength were wrong.

“If you go back to last year, there were a lot of intel estimates that said within Afghanistan al Qaeda probably has 50 to 100 members, but in this one camp we found more than 150,” Buchanan told CNN, referring to one of the camps discovered in Shorabak. US officials revised the estimate to upwards of 300 al Qaeda operatives in the country, “but that number does include other facilitators and sympathizers in their network,” CNN reported.

In addition to revising al Qaeda’s estimated strength upwards, US commanders in Afghanistan began to detail the scope of al Qaeda’s presence. In Sept. 2016, General Nicholson Jr. told the press that the US was hunting al Qaeda members in at least seven provinces.

However, less than seven months after US officials revised al Qaeda’s strength to upwards of 300 operatives, some US officials began to lowball al Qaeda’s numbers in Afghanistan once again.

“American officials estimate that both the core Qaeda group and the new branch [AQIS] number fewer than 200 total operatives in Afghanistan,” The New York Times reported on Dec. 2. The Times added: “Afghan officials put the number at 300 to 500.”

Obviously, there are more than 200 al Qaeda and AQIS members in Afghanistan (as some officials told the Times), because the US killed or captured 250 in the first eleven months of 2016.

After years of undercounting the members of al Qaeda’s network inside Afghanistan, US intelligence is due for a fresh assessment.

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The Aleppo Massacres - Has Anyone Cornered Obama?

Okay, so the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad seems to be painting the streets of Aleppo red with blood and while everyone seems to be trying to find solutions, I would like to know WTF Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have to say about it.

Here's where I'm coming from - Barack and Hillary called out the forces of the U.S. and NATO to take out Ghaddafi in Libya awhile back ....why?  Because of the THREAT of violence and death to civilians.  Remember, there were NO attacks on civilians by Ghaddafi...we went to war ONLY because there MIGHT be threats to civilians.  But now, with documentation of civilians in Aleppo being slaughtered, Barack Obama is sitting in a corner sucking his thumb or off golfing. 

Hillary's probably too drunk to remember Libya.

The story comes from Haaretz.

Analysis:  Aleppo Massacre: U.S. and World Failed Syrians, Giving Assad His Greatest Military Achievement

Bashar Assad's regime is currently in the process of realizing its greatest military achievement in its battle against Syrian rebels: the re-conquest of the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, following four years of continuous war there.

The Syrian tyrant has focused his efforts on that northern city in the last few months, and it is now buckling under the enormous pressure it has been subjected to. Since Monday, reports have been streaming in of atrocities in the streets, as forces identified with the regime (including Hezbollah fighters, according to some sources) are executing civilians and medical personnel in the neighborhoods the forces are taking over. It’s likely that such incidents will only increase in the coming days and weeks.

The fall of Aleppo comes as the result of a well-planned campaign based on laying siege and systematically starving its inhabitants, as well as exhausting and deliberately killing civilians among whom rebel fighters had dug in. What started with the dropping of barrel bombs containing fuel and explosives on the city's neighborhoods – carried out by outdated Syrian air force planes – was complemented by precision bombing by Russian fighter jets. And the strategy and brutal methods remained the same: Moscow also did not shrink from deliberate targeting of civilians, and according to human rights groups and Western governments, it even marked clinics, hospitals, schools and lines of people outside bakeries as targets.

The collapse of Aleppo would not have happened without massive Russian support. Russia’s military intervention, which began in September 2015, stabilized the Syrian regime’s defensive lines, subsequently enabling Assad to recover control over areas he had lost. His greatest gain so far is Aleppo, and the Russian-Iranian-Syrian alliance may now turn towards Idlib, west of Aleppo. Taking complete control of this city will remove the ongoing threat to the Alawite enclave in the Western part of the country – indeed, it is particularly important for the regime and its Russian patrons, who have a naval and air base there.

This is the same Russia that Israel has been trying to getting along with, over the last year and a half, during which four meetings have taken place between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin. Israel, of course, is not responsible for the horrific massacres in Aleppo, other than by being part of the international community that has displayed total impotence in face of these brutal bombings.

Netanyahu is playing the cards he has and so far it seems he’s been doing this well. Israel has managed to avoid getting embroiled in the civil war and to a large extent has managed to stick to the red lines it has defined during this conflict (i.e., immediate responses to firing into Israel's territory, efforts to prevent the smuggling of chemical weapons and advanced fighting capabilities to Hezbollah in Lebanon). At the same time it has avoided getting into aerial battles with the Russians over Syria.

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Another ISIS Bad Guy Is Dead, Dead, Dead

Hopefully, the year 2017 will bring four or five of these types of posts per week instead of one every few months.

Anyway, good riddance Boubaker al-Hakim - say howdy to Lucifer for us.

The story comes from The Long War Journal.

US confirms death of high-profile Tunisian Islamic State assassin

The US Defense Department has confirmed that Boubaker al-Hakim, a French-Tunisian Islamic State leader pictured above, was killed in airstrikes carried out in Raqqa, Syria on Nov. 26.

In a statement on Dec. 10, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook described al-Hakim as a “longtime terrorist with deep ties to French and Tunisian Jihadist elements.” Cook tied al-Hakim to the so-called caliphate’s external operations arm, saying his death “degrades” the Islamic State’s “ability to conduct further attacks in the West” and denies the group “a veteran extremist with extensive ties.”

Cook also noted that al-Hakim is “suspected of involvement” in terrorist attacks against “Tunisian political leadership” in 2013. Indeed, al-Hakim admitted in an interview with the Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine in early 2015 that he assassinated one Tunisian politician and knew the jihadists responsible for killing a second.

Interview with Dabiq

Al-Hakim was identified as Abū Muqātil at-Tūnusī in the 8th issue of Dabiq, which was released online in March 2015. He bragged about killing Mohammed Brahmi, the leader of the People’s Movement party, on July 25, 2013.

“We stayed four hours in front of the home of this tyrant, waiting, until he left the home and entered his car,” al-Hakim told Dabiq. “I then moved towards him and killed him by shooting ten bullets at him.”

“We wanted to cause chaos…in the lands by killing Brahmi so as to facilitate the brothers’ movements and so that we would be able to bring in weapons and liberate our brothers from prisons,” al-Hakim said, explaining the rationale behind Brahmi’s slaying. “This was the main goal behind killing Brahmi in addition to the fact that he worked in [Tunisia’s] Constituent Assembly making him from the tawāghīt [apostate rulers] of the country.”

Al-Hakim also identified three jihadists who were responsible for the assassination of another Tunisian politician, Chokri Belaid, on Feb. 6, 2013. One of them was known as Ahmad ar-Ruwaysī. According to al-Hakim, ar-Ruwaysī escaped from prison following the uprising in Tunisia in 2011 and fled to Libya, where he helped run a training camp and smuggle arms back into Tunisia. After Belaid was killed, ar-Ruwaysī became a wanted man and so he stayed in Libya. Al-Hakim told Dabiq that ar-Ruwaysī joined the Islamic State in Sirte, which was the group’s stronghold in North Africa from mid-2015 until earlier this year. It was in Sirte that ar-Ruwaysī swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s operation before dying in battle.

His interview with Dabiq wasn’t the first time al-Hakim admitted a role in the assassinations of Brahmi and Belaid.

In Dec. 2014, the Islamic State released a video calling on Muslims to support the group’s jihad in Tunisia. Al-Hakim starred in the production.

“Yes, O tyrants, we are the ones who assassinated Chokri Belaid and Brahmi, and, Allah permitting, we will return,” al-Hakim said, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Al-Hakim announced his fealty to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and encouraged Tunisians to pledge their own allegiance to the Islamic State’s master. He also threatened France. “We will tear apart that flag that was raised by the grandchildren of Charles de Gaulle” and “the grandchildren of Napoleon,” raising the black banner of monotheism in its place, al-Hakim said.

A veteran jihadist

Al-Hakim briefly recounted additional biographical details in his interview with Dabiq. He said that his “religious practice started in 2002” when he traveled “to Sham,” meaning the Levant (Syria), “to study the Sharia.” After the Americans entered Iraq in 2003, al-Hakim briefly joined the jihad there for “about a month” before being “betrayed by some of the hypocrites” and “forced to leave.”

Al-Hakim then went to France, where he “prepared for another journey” to Iraq. He joined Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s group. He met up with Zarqawi and his men in Fallujah, staying in the city for “about six or seven months.” Al-Hakim said he left Iraq for Syria “to receive my family,” but “was arrested there.” He was then imprisoned in Bashar al Assad’s notorious and controversial Far’ Falastin prison, which housed other well-known jihadists, “for nine months.” He was deported to France and “imprisoned there for seven years.”

Al-Hakim said his time in a French prison was “difficult,” but it was also “a great gate for da’wah [proselytization] to Allah” and a “school” for indoctrinating others in the jihadist ideology.

It appears that al-Hakim returned to Tunisia around the time of the Arab uprisings in 2011. “I then left back to Tunisia and started planning on establishing jihād in Tunisia with my brothers,” al-Hakim told Dabiq. “Libya was next to us and weapons were widespread there,” al-Hakim continued. “So we went to Libya and established a training camp there” and “would work to smuggle weapons into Tunisia.”

Al-Hakim portrayed the assassinations of Belaid and Brahmi as a strategic failure, admitting that the slayings did not spark a broader jihadi revolution. “The matter succeeded but some of those associated with jihād there, may Allah guide them, went out and defended the former government institutions and thereby ruined our mission,” al-Hakim told Dabiq. “After all these attempts I decided to go to Shām and join the Islamic State there.”

The French-Tunisian jihadist was also especially critical of the Islamists in Tunisia who failed to support the supposed caliphate’s cause. Al-Hakim called on Tunisia’s Islamists to “repent,” arguing that their “ideas” and participation in elections “have not brought you any results.” Only armed jihad was sufficient, from al-Hakim’s perspective.

In his interview with Dabiq, al-Hakim praised the March 18, 2015 attack on the Bardo National Museum. Dozens of people, mainly foreign tourists, were killed or wounded in the massacre. Al-Hakim said this “delighted us and healed our hearts,” adding that other “brothers” should carry out similar operations. CNN reported that he is also suspected of having connections to the jihadi gunman who killed 38 people at a tourist beach near Sousse, Tunisia on June 26, 2015.

Tied to Ansar al Sharia Tunisia, European jihadists

Al-Hakim was designated as a terrorist by both the United Nations and the US State Department in Sept. 2015. Both designations noted al-Hakim’s reported “ties” to Ansar al Sharia Tunisia, which was orchestrated the Sept. 14, 2012 assault on the US Embassy in Tunis.

The designations noted that al-Hakim “worked with related associates to target Western diplomats in North Africa,” but didn’t specifically tie him to the ransacking of the American embassy. Just days earlier, Ansar al Sharia Libya was part of a coalition of al Qaeda groups that attacked and killed four Americans in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.

The Tunisian government first reported al-Hakim’s connections with Ansar al Sharia Tunisia in 2013. Officials accused Ansar al Sharia’s leader, Seifallah Ben Hassine (also known as Abu Iyad al Tunisi), of ordering the hit on Belaid. Tunisian authorities also reported that a forensic investigation tied the killings of Belaid and Brahmi to the same jihadi network and even the same weapon. [See FDD’s Long War Journal reports: Tunisian government alleges longtime jihadist involved in assassinations and Ansar al Sharia responds to Tunisian government.]

After the Ansar al Sharia groups gained international infamy in 2012, many accounts sought to distance them from al Qaeda’s network. However, as The Long War Journal reported at the time, the Ansar al Sharia organizations in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen all had demonstrable ties to al Qaeda. The Long War Journal’s analysis was subsequently confirmed by the details reported in UN and American designations, as well as other evidence.

The rise of the Islamic State in 2013 and 2014 led some jihadists, such as al-Hakim, to defect to the self-declared caliphate’s cause. Others, including Ansar al Sharia Tunisia leader Hassine, remained loyal to the al Qaeda network. According to letters that were released via social media, Hassine initially urged Ayman al Zawahiri to join the Islamic State’s then surging effort. But Hassine quickly did an about-face, concluding that Baghdadi and his followers were too extreme even for al Qaeda. Some sources have reported that Hassine was killed in 2015, but his demise was never confirmed.

Al-Hakim and his comrades went all in for the Islamic State. In the Dec. 2014 video, he called on jihadists in Tunisia to defect to Baghdadi’s enterprise en masse. “I call on my brothers in Tunisia in general and my brothers in the mountains in particular to follow their brothers in Libya, Algeria, the Land of the Two Holy Mosques [Saudi Arabia], Yemen, and Sinai, and pledge allegiance to the Emir of the Believers,” al-Hakim said, according SITE’s translation. While some answered the call, others didn’t. For instance, the Uqba bin Nafi battalion in the Mount Chaambi region remained loyal to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The divide among al-Hakim’s jihadi friends extended all the way into Europe. When al-Hakim’s death was widely reported earlier this month, some accounts linked him to the mass murder at Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris in Jan. 2015. That operation was carried out by two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi. It is likely that al-Hakim, who was born in Paris, knew one or both of the Kouachi brothers in France. Al-Hakim was a key figure in a recruiting cell based in the 19th Arrondisement of Paris. Al-Hakim’s network sent aspiring jihadists off to fight in Iraq and the Kouachis were tied to this same operation.

However, al-Hakim did not specifically mention the Charlie Hebdo attack in his interview with Dabiq, which was posted online more than two months after the fact. The Kouachis carried out the assault on behalf of al Qaeda and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A friend of the Kouachis, Amedy Coulibaly, murdered others in the name of the Islamic State. But the Kouachis did not follow Coulibaly into the caliphate’s camp. In reality, while their specific allegiances differed, they were all jihadis and knew each others years beforehand.

While al Qaeda is still capable of plotting a mass-casualty attack and celebrates indiscriminate killings in the West, the group has also experimented with more targeted slayings, such as the Charlie Hebdo operation. An AQAP analysis, for example, explained that al Qaeda’s central leadership had selected “particular target[s]” to strike.

Al-Hakim was less interested in this style of terror. In Dabiq, he called on jihadis in France to lash out. “I also say to them, do not look for specific targets,” al-Hakim stressed. “Kill anybody. All the kuffār [unbelievers] over there are targets. Don’t tire yourself and look for difficult targets. Kill whoever is over there from the kuffār.”