Politics

Over the last six or so months, it’s become abundantly clear that Turkey is home to several of the key transit and supply routes utilized by Islamic State. 

Ankara has long been suspected of turning a blind eye to the legions of foreign fighters that flow across the border into Syria and as Nafeez Ahmed noted last month, there’s voluminous evidence to support the contention that Turkey’s government is complicit in the terror group’s activities. This evidence was available long before the Russian MoD blew the whistle on Erdogan’s ties to the group’s illicit crude trade.

Submitted by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

• Earlier in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he found it difficult to understand what Russia was doing in Syria, since "it does not even border Syria."

• By that logic, Turkey should not be "doing anything" in the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan or any of the non-bordering lands into which its neo-Ottoman impulses have pushed it.

Some white Americans still try to dismiss the evils of slavery, pretending that many slaves were happy serving their white masters. But the morning of Jan. 1, 1863, showed a different reality when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and blacks celebrated, as William Loren Katz recalls. By William Loren Katz When the Emancipation Proclamation…

Elections, elections, and more elections is the 'change' meme for 2016 but, as Bloomberg details, the key events of the year ahead vary from a California marijuana referendum to Brazil's Olympics, and from Davos to SCOTUS. No matter what, 2016 holds a lot of opportunity for volatility, and without The Fed's safety net, who knows what that means for markets...

Here's a selected calendar of key events for the year.

One of the ways Donald Trump has been able to curry favor among an electorate that's increasingly fed up with business as usual inside the Beltway, is to appeal to voters’ ingrained belief that everyone in Washington is effectively beholden to outside interests and campaign donors. 

By virtue of his self-funded campaign, Trump isn’t beholden to anyone - or at least that’s what he’ll tell you.