ISIS

A suspected Russian airstrike east of Damascus has killed Jaysh al Islam chief Zahran Alloush, Retuers reports.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (so, according to Rami Abdulrahman's on the ground sources), five other commanders were also killed when Moscow's warplanes targeted one of the group's meetings in Eastern Ghouta, the site of the infamous chemical attack of 2013 that nearly resulted in the launch of a US air campaign against the Assad government.

For those who have followed the meteoric - and completely implausible - rise of Islamic State, it’s easy to become desensitized to the group’s apparent brutality. 

Turkey’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office have confirmed that ISIS militants were in communication with Turkish military officers, after wiretapping phones belonging to various Turkish military officials.  The wiretapping took part in 2014 as part of an investigation into six missing Turkish citizens who were believed to have joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Rt.com reports: An investigation was launched into as many as 27 suspects, some of them in Syria, the report revealed.

Submitted by Daniel Spaulding via 21stCenturyWine.com,

In American politics the nation of Russia, especially as personified in its leader Vladimir Putin, becomes all things to all men.

Long before Turkey was flagrantly arming and funding the CIA-created "terrorist organization" known as ISIS, there was another, far more elaborate way in which Turkey was flaunting international sanctions against an ostracized state - in this case Iran - which involved an epic gold smuggling triangle of Hollywood-thriller proportions, all made possible thanks to the United Arab Emirate city of Dubai.