A really insightful paper written about the current status of Kobane Syria.  Quite a remarkable glimpse into the status, thoughts, hopes and prayers of those who are there. I hope you find it both reflective and enlightening…

Planting Trees In Kobane

After two months of restless nights, we are all finally starting to sleep a little better.  The siege of Kobane is drawing to a close in the form of an historic and complete victory for the towns undaunted defenders.

The Daesh gangsters are exhausted, demoralised, and cut off from their supply routes.  The road from Kobane to Raqqa is severed now, and the 200 or so daeshbags remaining in southern and eastern Kobane are short of food and ammunition, and their morale is failing.

Those remaining have descended into the sewers “literally, on this occasion”. (more…)

BREAKING NEWS: New ISIS video purportedly shows beheading of American hostage http://t.co/3pyj3Tc8fU

— Fox News Alert (@foxnewsalert) November 16, 2014

Before becoming an aid worker, Kassig was an Army Ranger. He was deployed to Iraq in 2007, and later honorably discharged for medical reasons.

The video shows a black-clad man with a British accent standing over a severed head.

“This is Peter Edward Kassig, a U.S. citizen of your country,” the man says to the camera. “Peter, who fought against the Muslims in Iraq while serving as a soldier under the American army doesn’t have much to say.”

Kassig is a humanitarian aid worker who converted to Islam while in captivity. He also changed his name from Peter to Abdul-Rahman. He was en route to Deir Ezzour, in Syria, while working for his aid organzation when he was first “detained.”
[…]  The new video is both longer and far more gruesome than others released by the terror organization. (more…)

Update below (more…)

EGYPT – Under increasing pressure from the military, Egypt’s deadliest jihadist group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organisation in a bid to boost recruitment and bolster its fight against the army, analysts say.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) has waged an insurgency from its Sinai Peninsula stronghold that has killed scores of Egyptian police and soldiers since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year.
In response, the army has launched a huge operation in Sinai targeting jihadists and last month began building a buffer zone on the border with Gaza to stem the flow of militants and weapons from the strip. (more…)

The concept of bullion gold dinars and silver dirhams has long been part of the ethos of those who struggle to re-establish another “Golden Age of Islam” and a modern age pan-Levant Caliphate.
This belief system is deeply held and always simmering below the surface in Islamic majority nations. An entire rumor industry sprung forth that Gaddafi’s demise was due to his declared intention to issue pan-African bullion gold dinars and silver dirhams and his political statement that Libya would begin rejecting fiat currency (ie: “Petro dollars”) as payment for Libyan export oil sales as part of a long standing desire to – if not outright undermine, – then at least chip away at, – the global economic hegemony of the US.
(more…)

Here’s The Full Benghazi Brief

Grab a cup of coffee because it’s a long read with over 350 citations and reference source links for confirmational material. We think you’ll get hooked and find 95% of your Benghazi questions answered. And if you can find a factual flaw I’ll buy the coffee.. SD

We know from the Bret Baier interview with Hillary Clinton that she was physically located at her 7th floor office in Washington DC on the night of the attack. Unfortunately we also know during the November 2012 Thanksgiving holiday a mysterious fire took place in that building. Well, actually directly above her exact office – cause undetermined.
A “fire” which preceded an unfortunate slip and fall for the Secretary, resulting in a concussion, which led to the discovery of a blood clot, that ultimately delayed her congressional testimony before a Senate Hearing into the events of the night in question.
We know the Libyan uprising began on February 10th of 2011, and we also know that sometime around the end of February 2011 President Obama signed a presidential directive authorizing the State Dept and CIA to begin a covert operation to arm the Libyan “rebels”.
We also know of a Second Presidential Finding Memo authorizing additional CIA covert action in 2012, this time in Syria. However, unlike the 2011 Libyan operation we do not know the operational name of the second action in 2012 Syria.
We know the Libyan “rebels” were positioned in two strategic places. Benghazi, and the port city of Darnah, both located in Northeastern Libya.
We know this 2011 Libyan covert operation came to be known as “Operation Zero Footprint“, and fell under the military command authority of NATO not (important to repeat), NOT, the U.S. Military. (more…)

Gee, you mean other than the Kurds the administration can’t actually locate the Syrian “moderates”?  Ya don’t say…

(CNSNews.com) – An Islamist rebel group that has been fighting both the Assad regime and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) said Thursday that its base in western Syria had been targeted in an overnight U.S. airstrike.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, made the same claim about a strike on the headquarters of Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib province. (more…)

It is well known and accepted in international circles that President Obama’s BFF is President Recep Erdogan of Turkey.
It is also reasonably accepted that Erdogan is a Sunni Islamist and power thirsty Marxist who views his job to resurrect the ottoman empire.
Those of you who have followed our research into the psyche and ideology of Erdogan might be interested in the newly finished palace he built for himself.
At a cost of over $500,000,000.00 (£384,000,000.00) and boasting 1,000 rooms covering a total floor area of 3.1 million square feet, the palace is four times the size of Versailles, allowing Mr Erdogan to exceed the residential grandeur of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” of France.

Inside the palace, a majestic hallway leads up to a sweeping staircase. The quixotic architectural style seems to cross the Ottoman and Seljuk traditions with that of a modern Chinese railway station.  (see more pics and details)

Last week a U.S. journalist, Serena Shim, was murdered in Turkey for exposing the truth of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan allowing and facilitating ISIS militants going to and from Turkey into strategic positions around Kobane (Kobani).
Now an independent journalist team have used video to show Turkish police and military meeting with ISIS militants on the Turkish border.

Obviously the brutal reality of this expose’ is dangerous to Erdogan’s deceptive claims to the contrary. (more…)

Given all previous outlines this would not be a surprise….
WASHINGTON – The death of an American journalist who worked in the Middle East has come under suspicion because she had claimed days before her death that the Turkish intelligence services had threatened her over her coverage of the siege of the Syrian city of Kobani.

[…]  “We were some of the first people on the ground – if not the first people – to get that story of … militants going in through the Turkish border. … I’ve got images of them in World Food Organization trucks. It was very apparent that they were militants by their beards, by the clothes they wore, and they were going in there with NGO trucks.”

Serena Shim, an American citizen of Lebanese origin, was a journalist for Iran’s state-owned Press TV. She was killed in a car crash in the city of Suruc after she reportedly collided with a “heavy vehicle.”
She was in a rental car returning from her assignment when the crash occurred. Neither the “heavy vehicle” nor its driver has been located, although her driver reportedly was arrested. (more…)