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<p>Warplanes have carried out air strikes in Hama, Homs and Latakia in what Russia's powerful Orthodox Church has termed a "holy battle".</p> <p>“Russian and Syrian airplanes carried out numerous strikes today against terrorist positions in Hama, Homs and Latakia provinces,” according to a Syrian security source.</p>

President Obama and Russian Czar President Vladimir Putin went into a room at UN headquarters mano a mano and whatever happened behind those closed doors, one man came out the victor.  And it wasn’t Obama. Putin took over Syria, and that’s that. Charles Krauthammer blamed it on the “utter passivity of the United States,” that has allowed ISIS to attract 7,000 new jihadis in the last few months alone.  Some of them are from the U.S., and some of them are from Russia.  While we hand-wring our way into irrelevance, Russia is determined never to let ISIS fighters back into their country. "The irony...

NEW YORK -- Defending Bashar Assad as the only "legitimate" leader of the Syrian state, Russian President Vladimir Putin recommitted Moscow's support to his government on Monday in a speech to the United Nations. In his first address to the assembly hall in a decade, Putin chided western powers for their efforts to undermine Assad, who has presided over a country now four and a half years enmeshed in violent civil war. According to the UN, over 210,000 Syrians have died since 2011, and half of the country's population has been displaced. "We should finally acknowledge that no one but...

The table festooned with red “Carly for America” placards arrived hours before the candidate. Political operatives took up positions outside the front door to catch supporters of Carly Fiorina, the corporate executive-turned-Republican contender, and gather their contact information before steering them inside to the room where she would speak. But the table, the placards and the workers didn’t belong to Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign. They were there thanks to the “super PAC” supporting her run for president. The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani is publicly holding American Pastor Saeed Abedini and the other wrongfully imprisoned Americans as hostages, demanding ransom for their freedom. Yesterday, Rouhani told CNN: “If the Americans take the appropriate steps and set [a number of Iranians in the United States who are imprisoned] free, certainly the right environment will be open and the right circumstances will be created for us to do everything within our power and our purview to bring about the swiftest freedom for the Americans held in Iran as well. . . . If the Americans take the appropriate actions vis-a-vis Iranian...

"There cannot be a return to the prewar status quo. Let's remember how this started. Assad reacted to peaceful protests by escalating repression and killing that in turn created the environment for the current strife." "When a dictator slaughters tens of thousands of his own people, that is not one nation's internal affairs - it affects us all," Obama said, before turning his fire on IS. "Likewise, when a terror group beheads captives, slaughters innocents and enslaves women… it is an assault on all our humanity."

Says Iowahawk, “To be fair, it did create jobs for Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.” Via the Free Beacon, here’s the professor-in-chief doing what he loves to do, lecturing other regimes that he understands their national priorities better than they do. In a way, this reminds me of his infamous bitter-clingers comment during the 2008 campaign: In both cases, he resorted to economics to try to understand cultures that were antagonistic to him (albeit in very different ways). There’s a hint here that “death to America” is less a sincerely held worldivew among Iran’s rulers than a convenient scapegoat used...

President Obama chided Iran for focusing on violent rhetoric rather than doing work to advance its economic interests during his speech Monday before the United Nations General Assembly, saying that “chanting ‘death to America’ does not create jobs or make Iran more secure.” “That path is now available to a nation like Iran, which, as of this moment, continues to deploy violent proxies to advance its interests,” Obama said. “These efforts may appear to give Iran leverage in disputes with neighbors, but they fuel sectarian conflict that endangers the entire region and isolates Iran from the promise of trade and...

If ever there was proof of Russia’s intentions in the Middle East, it can be seen in a just announced 4 nation pact there: Iraq joined Russia, Iran and Syria in a new agreement to strengthen cooperation against extremist group Islamic State, extending the Kremlin’s reach in the Middle East as it rivals Washington for influence.[…]Iraq’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that the country had signed an intelligence and security cooperation pact with Russia, Iran and Syria, pledging to cooperate in collecting information about Islamic State. The deal effectively formalizes years of military collaboration among the four nations, which have...

President Obama took on a confrontational tone in his speech this morning to the United Nations General Assembly, specifically calling out Russia, China and Iran for destabilizing activities in various world conflicts. Obama opened his speech directly decrying "strong states that seek to impose their will on weaker ones," then alluded to Russian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "On this basis, we see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law," Obama said. "We're told that such retrenchment is required to beat back disorder, that it's the only way to stamp out terrorism. In accordance with...

Just saw him speaking while at a rest stop. Word has it he was calling out 0 by name. Is the translated text available yet?

A senior Saudi prince has launched an unprecedented call for change in the country’s leadership, as it faces its biggest challenge in years in the form of war, plummeting oil prices and criticism of its management of Mecca, scene of last week’s hajj tragedy. The prince, one of the grandsons of the state’s founder, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, has told the Guardian that there is disquiet among the royal family – and among the wider public – at the leadership of King Salman, who acceded the throne in January.

American intelligence analysts have been pressured into giving a more positive assessment of the progress of the war against ISIS, it has been reported, confirming what was obvious to everyone not subject to influence from the White House: the anti-ISIS campaign is failing. To devise an effective strategy involves understanding where ISIS came from, and that involves examining the Saddam Hussein regime. Saddam is commonly regarded as the quintessential secularist, and he was initially. But the Saddam regime Islamized over its last 15 years, effectively creating a religious movement under Saddam's leadership, giving additional space and power to the non-governmental...

Putin to UN: let us help you crush ISIS MARK FRANCHETTI, DAMIEN MCELROY The Times September 28, 201512:00AM Vladimir Putin is to use his speech to the UN tonight — his first in a decade — to insert Russia into the Syrian conflict by offering Moscow’s firepower to break the stalemate in the West’s fight against Islamic State. The Russian push comes as Iraq announced late last night it would begin sharing “security and intelligence” information with Russia, Syria and Iran in a bid to combat the terrorist group. The countries would “help and co-operate in collecting information about the...

Russian Media Abuzz With Anticipation of Putin's UN Speech By The Associated Press MOSCOW — Sep 28, 2015, 9:05 AM ET Russian media are abuzz with anticipation of President Vladimir Putin's speech at the UN. Putin is in the United States for the first time since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and threw its support behind separatist rebels in Ukraine. What is more, Russia's recent military buildup in Syria has raised concern in the West about Putin's future steps there. A state-owned news channel has run a countdown to the opening of the UN General Assembly on...

President Obama late Sunday predicted marriage equality probably won’t be an issue in the 2016 presidential race, saying the U.S. has “come too far” since the 2004 campaign. "Tonight we live in an America where 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' is something that 'don't exist,' " he said to cheers and applause at the beginning of his remarks to a Democratic National Committee LGBT gala in New York, according to a reporter traveling with the president. The president told the audience that cynics who said change is “too messy” have been proven wrong time after time. Obama also said that 2016...

Russia Surprises U.S. With Accord on Battling ISIS By MICHAEL R. GORDONSEPT. 27, 2015 UNITED NATIONS — For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State. Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew...

Yes, black lives taken by cops matter. But so do black lives taken by other blacks. BLM won’t win over America until it acknowledges this. It is considered the height of sophistication to declare that “America doesn’t want to talk about race.” I say it’s time to retire this phrase. Imagine being from a foreign country and hearing that phrase, watching a room full of earnest people nodding warmly, after just the first eight months of this year. Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Sam Dubose, Sandra Bland, the Justice Department’s report on Ferguson, the Charleston shootings, Rachel Dolezal, Bill Cosby, Ta-Nehisi...

In a Sunday speech on racial inequality, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for broad policing reform — including de-escalation training and body cameras for all police officers — and likened the current Black Lives Matter movement to the civil rights movement that won black Americans the right to vote in the 1960s. "None of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets." Warren said. "This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us...

... Today’s disastrously punitive criminal justice system is actually rooted in the postwar social and economic demise of urban black communities. It is, in part, the unintended consequence of African-Americans’ own hard-fought battle against the crime and violence inside their own communities. To ignore that history is to disregard the agency of black people and minimize their grievances, and to risk making the same mistake again. The draconian Rockefeller drug laws, for example, the model for much of our current drug policies, were promoted and supported by an African-American leadership trying to save black lives. During the 1960s, concentrated poverty...