Afghanistan

"...the march towards secularism and freedom is not inevitable. In fact, it’s problematic because we have a situation where every year the West becomes more secular, open, tolerant and liberal while many parts of the Muslim world are going the other way. So it would seem that we might be moving towards a head-on collision of some sort... In most Muslim countries the majority of people are tolerant. They want to live in a more inclusive society and have a more liberal religious doctrine. The problem is that Islam seems to have been hijacked by a vocal minority of people who are prepared to use violence to advance their very intolerant and conservative version of Islam."

U.S. Senator Rand Paul today released a special ‘Festivus: Airing of Grievances for 2015’ edition of ‘The Waste Report,’ - an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.

The fight against ISIS makes for some strange bedfellows. “The Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours. We've already said earlier that we and the Taliban have channels for exchanging information."

An analysis of terror attacks since 2002 suggests U.S. efforts to combat terrorism - i.e., the "War on Terror" - have led to a dramatic increase in death and suffering from terrorism.

In a shocking new report, Seymour Hersh reveals what he says was a covert operation run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who sought to undermine the Obama administration and the CIA's goal of overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria. "If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic."

"I hope I'm wrong but I fear Washington is trying to provoke a war in the Middle East to cover the coming collapse of the Petrodollar system and the American economy when the dollar is no longer the world reserve currency. The war is necessary to blame the coming dollar and debt collapse on Russia and China rather where it belongs on Wall Street, the central banking cartel and Washington political establishment. Remember while a Washington provoked war or conflict is likely to start in the Shia Crescent; it could spread across the Middle East and into Europe."

“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here ... and ... around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.'” So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate. Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard’s famed Samuel Huntington. That Clinton is unaware of the thesis, or dismisses it, does not speak well of the depth of her understanding of our world.

The main shortcoming of today’s militarized approach to fighting terrorism is simple - unless the expansion of dangerous ideologies like Wahhabism is stopped, the global war on terror, now almost a generation old, will never be won. No matter how many bombs the US and its allies drop, the Saudi-financed madrassas will continue to indoctrinate tomorrow’s jihadists.

Britain is set to deploy additional troops to the fight in Afghanistan after a suicide bomber on a motorbike killed six US troops near Bagram. The Taliban advance in Helmand underscores the country's worsening security situation and suggests that in relatively short order, Afghanistan will once again become a key battleground in what has become a multi-state regional proxy war.

The evidence continues to pile up implicating NATO's own Turkey in Islamic State's lucrative oil trade but the UN doesn't seem to care despite bold rhetoric from the Security Council and empty promises to "cut off" terrorist funding and access to the international financial system.

Just last week, controversial Shiite lawmaker Hanan Fatlawi suggested that John McCain was planning to coordinate with the Saudis, Qatar, the UAE, and Turkey on a troop deployment to number 100,000 in Iraq. With the announcement of a new, 34 country military alliance, deputy crown prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman might have just verified Fatlawi's claims.

"The truth is that persons with evil intent know exactly what to do when they come here. That information spreads like wildfire. These new border controls are there for the sole purpose of reassuring the public. They have absolutely no effect on the influx of migrants."

What stinks in Saudi Arabia ain’t the camel dung. It’s the monarchy of King Salman and his hot-headed son, Prince Salman. For decades they have financed terrorism under a fake religious disguise, to advance their private plutocratic agenda. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money and oil. Saudi control of that oil wealth (from Iraq to Syria) via their ISIS agents, along with her clear plan to take out the US shale oil competition, or so Riyadh reckons, would make the Saudi monarchy a vastly richer state.

Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words - xenophobe, racist, bigot - have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to Hitler and Mussolini. Why the hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration tramples all over “American values” and everything we stand for, including the Constitution. But is this really true? In fact, is this move a well thought out cunning plan?

The spread of extremist Islamist ideology is as much a result of Western foreign policy as of Saudi machinations. It is no coincidence that ISIS is adopting Saudi religious textbooks in its schools, killing Shia in Saudi Arabia just like the early Wahhabi zealots wanted to, and generally garnering much support on a popular level in the kingdom.