By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 6 May 2018
Al-Naba 130, page 3
The 130th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) newsletter, was published on 4 May 2018. On page 3, there was an article about IS’s position on democracy, which is reproduced below. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 May 2017
Sinam Mohamad
The New York Times on 11 May carried an op-ed entitled, “Once We Beat ISIS, Don’t Abandon Us,” by Sinam Mohamad, the effective foreign minister of the governance structure in northern Syria administered by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian departments of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). This comes just over two weeks after another senior PYD/PKK official, Ilham Ahmed, was given space to disseminate the group’s messaging in The Washington Post, and the problems remain the same.
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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on February 14, 2015
The National Security Strategy is never a riveting read, and the NSS put out by the Obama administration on Feb. 6, only their second (the last in May 2010), was no exception. “Strategic patience” was the mantra with which this NSS was launched, to fairly wide derision as a rationalisation of the last six years of hesitancy and retrenchment. It was a criticism with some basis in fact. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 28, 2014
There has been much gloating from the U.S. government in the last few weeks about the damage the sanctions have done to the value of the Russian ruble, including a rather strange episode when President Obama adopted the third person to deny that he had been “rolled” by Vladimir Putin, and to take credit for the “financial crisis” Putin was now faced with.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 6, 2014
Jean-Claude Duvalier in 2011
It might have come as a shock to some that a dictator who took power in 1971 and was deposed in 1986 was even still alive, but such is the case with Jean-Claude Duvalier, who died on Saturday. The fact that Duvalier took power in Haiti at the age of 19 was only the least of the weirdness of the dynasty established by his father, Francois, who had been a medical doctor and fashioned himself “Papa Doc” in official propaganda (an honorific passed to Jean-Claude in the succession, hence “Baby Doc”). Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 5, 2014
Another grisly week in the Holy Land. On Monday, three Jewish teenagers—Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frankel, and Gilad Shaar—who had been kidnapped three weeks ago were found murdered on the West Bank. The studious attention to not releasing details suggests that something horrific was done. As they were being laid to rest on Wednesday, a Palestinian boy, Mohamed Abu Khudeir, either 16 or 17, was kidnapped in a revenge-attack, and burned alive.
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