War

Two Salafi-jihadi factions in Syria's Idlib province have been engaged in a brutal inter-"rebel" (or rather inter-jihadist) war this week, prompting Turkey to prepare a potential invasion to protect its favored factions on the ground. On Thursday, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS/Al-Qaeda) continued to capture towns in Idlib's countryside from rival Ahrar al-Sham and Turkish backed FSA groups after an uneasy truce between the rebel factions quickly collapsed days prior, causing the weaker Ahrar al-Sham to call in Turkish support.

Authored by Nauman Sadiq vis OrientalReview.org,

Bitcoin is up 40% from its weekend lows as the combination of a bullish Goldman Sachs note on the virtual currency and a major sigh of relief that the potential 'civil war' over cryptocurrency's scaling solutions appears to be over (with over 80% of the hashrate currently voting for the protocol upgrade).

The entire cryptcurrency space is surging today...

KeepTalkingGreece.com reports that Greek president Prokopis Pavlopoulos sent a sharp worded message to his Turkish counter Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following a series of provocations accompanying his tour to the islands of the eastern Aegean Sea.

“The brave do not provoke,” President Pavlopoulos told Greek soldiers safeguarding the remote island of Ai Stratis. “Provocations, especially provocations without a reason, are characteristic signs of  weakness and insecurity.”

 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/3CRPgOMdHWA

According to a report cited by veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn, the nine month siege of Mosul may have cost as many as 40,000 civilian lives. Many thousands were killed when bombs buried them in rubble. Is this a victory?