ISIS

The Pentagon has released a video showing a B-52 bomber eliminating ISIS targets in Iraq. While the US and its coalition partners have waged war on ISIS from the air and the ground, only recently did the legendary B-52 bomber join the fight Business Insider reports: The first video released from the Combined Joint Task Force’s Operation Inherent Resolve shows a departure from the B-52’s carpet bombing strategy of old. Instead, this video shows precision munitions hammering individual targets.

Several weeks ago when we reported on the latest territorial losses by ISIS and the curious disappearance of the "war against ISIS" from the media's front pages, we said that this was the expected outcome of the recent Russian airborne military operations over northern Syria which had destroyed much of the Islamic State's oil infrastructure and, more importantly, had cutoff key ISIS oil transit lines to Turkey.

This dramatically reduced ISIS' inbound cash from oil sales, which had previously been estimated to amount to over a billion dollars annually.

Political philosopher John Gray says that we are deceiving ourselves if we think that ISIS is a medieval throwback. Every barbaric act and strategy it employs have also been employed by modern states. In fact, an eschatological cult like ISIS could only have emerged in modernity; fundamentalism, he says, emerges and thrives in societies in which long-settled customs and traditions have been disrupted. And for that matter, movements like Communism and Nazism were simply secular versions of the same millenarian vision. More:

A group of authors claim they have evidence that proves ISIS were created by NATO and then handed over to be militarily led by Turkey, in order to destabilize the Middle East and allow Western leaders to dominate the region. According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, ISIS began as a rebel group under the US occupation of Iraq which then grew as they ravaged Libya and Syria. Saudi Arabia and Turkey funded the group so they could fulfil the orders coming from the US to fight proxy wars, in order to acquire oil, gas, and land for the West.

ISIS militants have executed 250 women for refusing to engage in ‘sexual jihad’ with their fighters since Iraq’s largest city Mosul fell into their hands in early June 2014. Under the pretext of Shariah law women are forced to submit to sexual slavery through temporary marriage otherwise they could face harsh penalties for refusing. Abna24 reports: A Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official from Mosul, Said Mamuzini, said that life is too hard for the women in Mosul due to the ISIS strict rules imposed on them.