Armed Drones Of The Islamic State In Syria And Iraq
The open-source analysis site, Bellingcat, has published a detailed article on the use of improvised armed drones by the Islamic State (IS) inContinue Reading
Tag: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – ISIL
The War On Terror Has Simply Generated More Terror
From the excellent TomDispatch, this analysis of the so-called “War on Terror” in the Middle East by the United StatesContinue Reading
An Islamic State Drone Bombs An M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank In Iraq
Talking of the Islamic State (IS), this recent propaganda video released by the group highlights its deployment of improvised drones in theContinue Reading
From Margaret Thatcher And The Valiant UVF, To WebOps And Palestinian Salad
By the late 1960s over four decades had passed since the United Kingdom had given concerted attention to the internal affairs ofContinue Reading
The Digital Tech Of The Islamic State And Others
Bellingcat has an interesting article by Jett Goldsmith summarising some of the online techniques used by adherents of violent political Islam toContinue Reading
How One Turbulent City In Iraq Can Stand For The Whole Country
With some sections of the Western news media proclaiming imminent victory over the Islamic State (an entirely nebulous concept given theContinue Reading
American Weapons And Equipment Among Syria’s Opposition Factions
During the hot years of the Cold War one of the few things the opposing superpowers of the USSR andContinue Reading
Two Documentaries On The Kurdish War, Plus The Russians Get A Fright
A couple of recent video documentaries on the Kurdish struggle in Syria and Iraq. The first, “Kurdistan: Girls at War“, wasContinue Reading
Michael Ware On The Iraq War And The Islamic State
These two interviews with the Australian war correspondent, Michael Ware, highlighting his traumatic experiences reporting on the conflict in Iraq, nowContinue Reading
The British SAS And The Exploding Heads Of The Islamic State In Syria
Ah, war stories. They grow with every telling. To wit, take this tale of daring-do from battle-torn Syria where Britain’sContinue Reading
Syria In 2015 And The Murder Of Ruqia Hassan
Joshua Landis, the Director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of the ever reliable Syrian CommentContinue Reading
The Tangled Politics Of The Iraqi Kurdistan Region
A fair degree of simplistic thinking exists in the Western news media and political classes when it comes to the position ofContinue Reading
British Airstrikes In Syria, Action Without Purpose
Two bravura opinion pieces from the Celtic world protesting the bellicosity of Greater England’s morally bankrupt political classes and their determination to condemnContinue Reading
Former US Intelligence Director Regrets Iraq War
The German news and current affairs magazine Der Spiegel has an informative and surprisingly forthright interview with Michael Flynn, the former director of the DefenseContinue Reading
Irish Neutrality Versus The Anti-Islamist Armchair Generals
A bleak headline from a story in the Irish Independent, reporting the words of the Fine Gael minister of justice, FrancesContinue Reading
Whacking Jihadi John For The Pure Pleasure Of It
So this is the reaction of the “West” to the rise of the Islamic State and the growing conflict inContinue Reading
The Real Islamic State Is The Child-Crucifying Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia
As the United States and its allies (and foes) continue to dither over the expansion of ISIS/ISIL in the Syrian-Iraq borderlands andContinue Reading
They Are Raping The Women
“Evil” is an adjective that has been much used and abused down through the years, being subject to hyperbole, partisanshipContinue Reading
Kurdish Victories In Syria And Iraq Make For Nervous Turks
Just as things were beginning to look up for the various Kurdish factions fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, reports out ofContinue Reading
Substituting Numbers For Results In Iraq And Syria
From a report last week by Reuters, republished throughout the “Western” news media: “More than 10,000 Islamic State militants haveContinue Reading
La Rebelle De Raqqa
From France 24, the story of Haya El Ali, a young Syrian woman who befriended female members of the Islamic StateContinue Reading
Barack Obama: ISIL… Grew Out Of Our Invasion
Related to my post on the rise of Iran as a regional superpower in the Middle East as a consequenceContinue Reading
AN SIONNACH FIONN 