ISIS

Submitted by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,

The Islamic State (ISIS) has been making up for its oil profit losses by increasing the taxes it levies on the people living on territory it still controls.

Terrorism experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez from the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism concluded in their report on Wednesday that "ISIS's military defeat is not imminent... as things stand, ISIS economic collapse remains some way off in the mid-term."

Last month, several Baghdad bombings attributed to ISIS killed more than a hundred civilians and wounded hundreds more. The attacks are a tragic reminder that Iraq is still a nation in turmoil. But they should also be a reason—more than 13 years after the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and undertake nation-building in Mesopotamia—to reevaluate U.S. policy in Iraq.

Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

First, let's look at where we stand in each of Obama's current 'missions'...

LIBYA

The Syrian army have captured the 20 stone ISIS executioner dubbed “The Bulldozer.” The obese jihadi once chopped off the arm and leg of a teenager for refusing to enlist with the terror group. He is famous for chopping off the heads of his victims with a three-foot sword and carrying around a five-foot-long, 52kg Browning machine gun. Video shows the terrifying man hand-cuffed and half-naked in the back of a truck, grimacing as he is driven away.

An top ISIS commander, thought to have been killed by U.S. forces, has been filmed recently in Iraq, showing that he is very much alive and well.  Despite claims by the U.S. government that they had killed ISIS operative Abu Omar al-Shishani last March, the commander was caught on camera in Iraq’s Fallujah battlefield fighting the Iraqi army. Almasdarnews.com reports: The red-beard Georgian veteran was reported dead several times; most recently last March when the Pentagon announced that al-Shishani was killed in an airstrike near the town of al-Shaddadi in eastern Syria.