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Islamic State vs. Qaeda: Declaration of Caliphate may set off dangerous competition Desperate to retain its preeminent role, Qaeda may be driven to carry out fresh attacks on Western targets to prove it remains relevant. Middle East Online By Michel Moutot and Michael Mainville – PARIS Inevitable confrontation looms in the horizon The declaration of an Islamic caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria is a direct challenge to Al-Qaeda and could set off a dangerous contest for the leadership of the global jihadist movement, experts say. Desperate to retain its preeminent role, the movement behind September 11 may be...

A leaked memorandum from the RAND corporation think tank suggests that Kiev should engage in an all-out war in the eastern regions, including shutting down all communications, putting citizens in internment camps and killing all who resist. The RAND Corporation is non-profit global think tank which offers research and analysis to the US armed forces. In the shocking letter, which has been leaked by the media, the advice offers a step by step brutal guide in how to deal with the population in eastern Ukraine. ‘Military op’s advantages overweigh disadvantage’ In the first line the memorandum notes that the peace...

The Islamic terrorist army often referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has made a faster womb-to-superstardom ascension than Justin Bieber. Largely unheard of just a few weeks ago, the group is now the self-proclaimed new ruler of an Islamic caliphate, or republic, extending across Iraq and Syria. These countries currently have internationally recognized heads of state -- but, you know, whatever, man. It's not like U.S. President Barack Obama is going to stop ISIL. In fact, he's asking Congress to give it $500 million, under the guise of funding the "Syrian opposition." Recipients...

A victory beyond the wildest dreams of Osama bin Laden is within reach of fighters from ISIL, a group of which he would likely approve regardless of what current Al Qaeda leadership says about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. And it's all Obama's fault. “Iraqi troops battled to dislodge an al Qaeda splinter group from the city of Tikrit on Monday,” reports the Hindustan Times, “after its leader was declared caliph of a new Islamic state in lands seized this month across a swathe of Iraq and Syria.” The caliphate claims worldwide authority over all Muslims, and...

Representatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) stated that they will ruin the Kaaba after capturing Saudi Arabia. APA reports quoting Turkish media that ISIS wants to take control of Arar city of Saudi Arabia and start operations here. ISIS member Abu Turab Al Mugaddasi said that they would destroy the Kaaba in Mecca: “If Allah wills, we will kill those who worship stones in Mecca and destroy the Kaaba. People go to Mecca to touch the stones, not for Allah.”

Americans have no more faith in the presidency under President Obama than they did under George W. Bush, a new Gallup Poll finds. After just his first year in office, the number of Americans who said they felt either a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the presidency began to drop under Obama, and it hasn't turned around since. Confidence in the presidency did start off at a relatively high 51 percent in Obama's first year. But it didn't take long for confidence to dive. Although there was a similar decline in presidential confidence under both Obama...

A black Mississippi pastor has emerged to claim Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) campaign paid “thousands” of Democrats $15 each to vote in the June 24 GOP runoff – and that he was part of the scheme. Rev. Stevie Fielder, an associate pastor at First Union Missionary Baptist Church in Meridan, Mississippi, says Cochran's campaign “told me to offer blacks $15 each and to vote for Thad.” Fielder, who was paid by freelance journalist Charles C. Johnson for the story, provided a new outlet launched by Johnson—GotNews.com—with four text messages from a person purporting to be Cochran campaign staffer Saleem Baird....

As ISIS, a group thought to consist of only a few thousand people led by a shadowy figurehead, defeats forces many times its size to capture a large part of Iraq, RT looks into what is ISIS, and how has it achieved its terrifying triumphs. Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on ISIS offensive in Iraq So, what is ISIS? And is it even ISIS, or is it ISIL? The world’s most committed and fanatical radical organization has only recently gone by its current name, after the unrecognized Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was proclaimed in April last year. Al-Sham...

Israel trying to incite Palestinians against Hamas with sweeping raidsIsraeli occupation forces distributed huge quantities of matchboxes at the entrances of mosques and houses in the West Bank city of Nablus in an effort to intimidate residents. Written on the matchbox is a warning: “Hamas is putting the West Bank in flames”. Israel has been on a rampage in the West Bank in recent weeks, supposedly in an effort to look for three kidnapped Israelis. However, observers believe occupation forces are clearly using the kidnappings as an excuse to incite Palestinians against Hamas. Meanwhile, an elderly woman was declared dead...

Why The Palestinians Have Better PR Than IsraelBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem --- June 28, 2014 ... If you asked me this question a year ago or ten years ago, my knee jerk response would be money. The Palestinians and the Arab world have oil dollars, millions of them to make us look bad while slamming our towns and cities with rockets and missiles. But the real answer is actually two fold. Yes, money is one part. But we also have access to money. The Palestinians (when I say the Palestinians it means the Arab world) are more creative...

What transpired in the Mississippi Senate run-off is a red line for many conservatives across the country, because the Republican Party establishment essentially took a civil war and escalated it to a war for independence.

With tear-gas flying in the streets of Turkey, Ukraine's civil-war raging in the south and east, US drones based in Japan to oversee the South China Sea, and Europe's extremist parties gaining significant traction, today we get one more piece of considerably worrisome geopolitical news that global stock markets must ignore. The Sunday Times reports that Israel is to deploy three submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf that are meant to act as a deterrent, gather intelligence and potentially to land Mossad agents. Iran is not happy, warning that "anyone who wishes to do an evil...

“I will set no base thing before mine eyes; I hate the doing of things crooked; it shall not cleave unto me.” (Psalms 101:3) he New York Metropolitan Opera has decided to cancel the simultaneous broadcast of controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” during its upcoming season but has agreed to host the show in the upcoming season. The American opera, by composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman, portrays the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger liner by the Palestine Liberation Front, during which Jewish-American hostage Leon Klinghoffer was murdered and thrown overboard. The English-language opera has been...

Militants from Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, are being lured by ISIS's hard-line Sunni extremism.Men in balaclavas are cradling Kalashnikovs as they look into a camera, somewhere in Syria. They are university students, businessmen, former soldiers and even teenagers. One by one, they urge their fellow countrymen to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the jihadist group so extreme that it has been denounced by al-Qaeda. But these aren’t Syrians, or Uzbeks, or Chechens. They are Indonesian. “Let us fight in the path of Allah because it is our duty to do jihad in the...

Was just this morning checking the story on the South Korean soldier who went bezerk and shot five of his fellow troops yesterday, and upon arriving at the specific Reuters article page, was promptly diverted to the screen above.  The URL they sent me to was 'http://sea.sy/indexs/', and is obviously aimed at Nmr 10 Downing as well as the UK press in-general. No small task, hacking reuters, tho- rather impressive, and quite coincidentally comes the day after I was reading a piece about the original news report hacker, Chicago's version of Max Headroom. But the thing is, the crime...

KUALA LUMPUR: The captain of Flight MH370 has been identified as the prime suspect by a Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of the plane after checks cleared all other people on board, a media report said today. The criminal inquiry does not rule out the possibility the Boeing 777-200 plane was lost due to mechanical failure or terrorism, but the police view is that if it was the result of human action, the captain was the most likely perpetrator, The Sunday Times reported. Malaysia's special branch focused the inquiry on Captain Zaharie Shah, 53, after intelligence checks failed to...

<p>Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, generally viewed as a leading ally of the United States in Europe, said in a mysteriously-leaked recording Sunday that the alliance between the two countries is “not worth anything.”</p> <p>“We are gonna conflict with both Russians and Germans, and we’re going to think that everything is great, because we gave the Americans a blowjob. Suckers. Total suckers,” Sikorski says, according to a translation of the account for BuzzFeed.</p>

MH370 Captain Plotted Route To Southern Indian Ocean On Home Simulator Detectives investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 three months ago discover new evidence which has renewed suspicions about its pilot 22 Jun 2014 The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane which disappeared in March with 239 people on board had plotted a flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean where the search is now focused, investigators have discovered. The route, which was deleted before MH370 disappeared on March 8, was made on a home flight simulator machine used for practice by...

Mouaz Moustafa is a Palestinian Arab and the Executive Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force which arranged for McCain’s visit. Senator McCain called Moustafa a “patriot”, but it’s not clear which country he’s a patriot of, since it’s not Mouaz Moustafa’s first time around on the regime change bus tour. Before the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Moustafa was the Executive Director of the Libyan Council of North America, which like the SETF existed to help push regime change. Before that, he mentions working with “rebels” in Egypt. On his Twitter feed, he denounces the overthrow of Morsi making it...

JERUSALEM – Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials. The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq. The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any...