By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 8, 2014
Before the account, first published in April 2014, by an ostensible Islamic State (IS) defector, “Abu Ahmad”, there was the Twitter account @WikiBaghdady, which released a lot of information in the same vein about the alleged impiousness of the jihadist organization. @WikiBaghdady’s testimony, as collected by Yousef Bin Tashfin, is republished below, with some editions for transliteration and syntax, to ensure its preservation. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 9, 2014
Released on December 21, 2007, twenty-eight years to the month after the Soviet Union launched Operation STORM 333, decapitating the Afghan government and plunging the country into a decade-long war, Charlie Wilson’s War tells a story centred on Representative Charles Wilson of Texas (Tom Hanks), a conservative Democrat, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a Right-wing Christian socialite in Houston who has taken the Afghans to her bosom because of her hatred for communism, and Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a blue-collar case officer at the CIA who is the epitome of the adage that one can get anything done in Washington so long as one does not care who gets the credit. Between them they cajole Congress into moving its appropriations from $5 million to $500 million, which will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Saudis, to help the Afghan resistance combat the Red Army’s occupation of their country. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 29, 2014
Jordan’s King Abdullah: The West’s closest Arab ally—but for how long?
It has been a rough fortnight for Jordan. After the fall of Mosul, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) announced an “unofficial” branch in Jordan and the Iraqi government surrendered its only legal border-crossing on the 110-mile frontier to tribal insurgents—opposed to ISIS, so far as can be told, but not without the danger they will be overwhelmed as has previously happened in areas like Fallujah, where the dam initially fell to local insurgents (albeit Ba’athists) and ISIS then pushed them out. Jordan has beefed up its border-defences but this has not stopped the speculation on whether Jordan, the “jewel in the ISIS crown,” will be the next domino to fall to the takfiris. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 21, 2014
Rich Leech
Following Robb Leech, whose step-brother, Rich, has been converted to Islam, the film shows the path of the “white,” middle-class (in the British sense), apparently-irreligious Westerner who succumbs to the call of faith. T Continue reading
Kyle Orton's Blog 