Politics

Actor and producer Sacha Noam Baron Cohen, aka ‘Ali-G’, and his wife are to donate $1 million (900,000 euros) to charities helping the Syrian refugees. British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has been responsible for introducing and playing outrageous and cool characters in film, such as Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard and many others. Raw Story reports: The “Borat” star and actress wife Isla Fisher are giving $500,000 to Save the Children to pay for measles vaccinations for children in northern Syria. Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat, a popular reporter from Kazakhstan.

On Saturday, Bakr al-Baghdadi released a rare audio recording in which the ISIS leader threatened Israel (“we are getting closer to you everyday”), insisted that the Russian air campaign had not weakened the group (“hear the good news that our state is doing well"), and called upon Muslims to join the caliphate and take up arms against its enemies. 

Authored by Pepe Escobar, Op-Ed via RT.com,

In his seminal 'Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization,' Bryan Ward-Perkins writes, "Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue forever... They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.”

Over the past five weeks, Turkey’s role in facilitating the trafficking of illicit Islamic State crude has been exposed for the world to see. Ankara’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 near the Syrian border prompted a media blitz from Moscow, which has variously accused the Erdogan government of being complicit in a business that nets Bakr al-Baghdadi between $500 million and $1 billion per year in revenue.