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commander and key Israel target killed in Syria

That message was a long attack, not on liberalism per se, but on the bipartisan post-Cold War elite consensus on foreign policy, mass immigration, free trade. It was an attack on George W. Bush’s Iraq war and Hillary Clinton’s Libya incursion both, on Nafta and every trade deal negotiated since, on the perpetual Beltway push for increased immigration, on the entire elite vision of an increasingly borderless globe.

it gave full voice to sentiments that are widely held on both sides of the Atlantic — sentiments rooted in the broken promises of both right and left, in 15 years of economic disappointment and military quagmire, in the percolating threat of globalized jihad, in an ever-more-balkanized culture governed by an ever-more-insulated elite.

Europe has a history of bloody conflict stretching back many centuries. The only period of continental peace came when the nations of Europe combined in a community and then a union. Even to risk the future of that union is to risk the return of war in Europe.

Both these shifts would be damaging enough, but the combination is a true menace. It’s not just that Trump’s proposed EU envoy actively looks forward to the unravelling of the EU, hoping it goes the way of the Soviet Union. It’s that Trump sees multilateral cooperation as a limp-wristed strategy for losers, preferring to make bilateral deals that work for him. That triggers a Darwinian scramble, in which every nation looks out only for itself – and damn the arrangements that previously held the world together.

And of course all this has an effect on those actors outside the west, as they respond to these shifts. With a swooning admirer in the White House, Vladimir Putin now feels free to flex his muscles: witness this week’s offensive in eastern Ukraine. China is girding itself for a trade war, or worse, with Trump’s America. Meanwhile global jihadism rubs its hands as Trump, with his refugee ban, all but vindicates their warped vision – signalling to the world’s Muslims that, yes, Islamic State is right and there is no place for you in the west.

Islamic State (IS) is a radical Islamist group that has seized large swathes of territory in eastern Syria and across northern and western Iraq.

The group aims to establish a "caliphate", a state ruled by a single political and religious leader according to Islamic law, or Sharia.

IS can trace its roots back to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who set up Tawhid wa al-Jihad in 2002.

In a surprise choice that bodes poorly for proposed peace talks, the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday appointed as its new leader the hard-line commander responsible for last year’s attack on Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist.

Mullah Fazlullah, the head of a militant faction in the northwestern Swat Valley,

Mr. Fazlullah is best known for ordering public beatings, executions and beheadings, and delivering thunderous radio broadcasts — in which he denounced polio vaccinations, among other topics

but after surviving a beheading attempt and witnessing true moments of horror, he began to feel complicit in the violence around him.

The Australian journalist is the only war correspondent to survive being kidnapped by al-Qaeda in Iraq, and became obsessed with its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He has opened up about his experiences in the film Only The Dead, which is showing at the Sydney Film Festival.

He now believes it was the first-ever attack by what the world now knows as the Islamic State.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan fears he may have misread electorate’s mood as polls show strong support for opposition parties

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s long-running feud with Turkey’s feisty opposition media has descended into open warfare ahead of Sunday’s general election, amid claims that his ruling neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP) is plotting to fix the results and shrill threats to lock up journalists and editors en masse.

But Erdogan’s livid fury with the press may be rooted in a deeper, personal unease

Israeli warplanes struck three training facilities in the Gaza Strip early Thursday after rockets were fired into Israel from the coastal enclave, witnesses and security officials said

Security officials said several missiles were fired at a training facility that belongs to Hamas' armed wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade, and to Islamic Jihad, another militant group.

The airstrikes on Gaza last week and Thursday were the most intense since the end of a 50-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip last summer.

Burning books is a lousy idea. Heinrich Heine, the German poet, foresaw the worst early in the 19th century: “Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people.” Less than a decade separated the Nazi book burning of 1933 from the crematoria of the Final Solution.

Why is America now bitterly divided over plans to build a mosque and Islamic center in the immediate vicinity of ground zero, and Europeans almost equally split over the growing Muslim presence in their societies?

The Sept. 11 attacks, seen now with a little perspective, shattered America’s self-image. A continent-sized sanctuary, flanked by the shining waters of two oceans, was no longer. A hideous neologism, the “homeland,” was coined to describe a country that now needed vigilant protection from within and without. Two wars, one longer than any in the nation’s history, deepened the trauma.

The family did not consider staying in Zaatari, which, as the refugees agency itself has acknowledged, is lawless in many ways, with criminal and rebel groups operating beyond the control of agency officials.

As the United Nations and regional governments work on the assumption that Syria’s civil war will last years and are ready to open new camps or expand existing ones, many worry that the worst camps are becoming incubators of despair and Islamic extremism. “If I were in Zaatari, I’d become a jihadist,” said Hassan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian expert on Salafist jihadism.

Tightly controlled by the Turkish government, which backs the rebel movement against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, they effectively serve as rear bases for Syrian rebels and have few, if any, Alawites, members of the Shiite offshoot who tend to support Mr. Assad.

these midterms mean nothing? That can’t be right either. They seem to me to be reflecting at the very least a sour and dyspeptic mood in the country at large, a well of deepening discontent and concern, and a national funk that remains very potent as a narrative, even if it has become, in my view, close to circular and more than a little hysterical.

what is the reason for this mood – and why has Obama taken the biggest dive because of it?

Even though the economic signals in the US are stronger than anywhere else in the developed world, even as unemployment has fallen, and as energy independence has come closer than anyone recently expected, the underlying structure of the economy remains punishing for the middle class. This, in some ways, can be just as dispiriting as lower levels of growth – because it appears that even when we have a recovery, it will not make things any better for most people.

“There are three threats,” says Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear weapons who directs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The first is “a terrorist theft of a nuclear weapon, which they take to Mumbai or New York for a nuclear 9/11. The second is a transfer of a nuclear weapon to a state like Iran. The third is a takeover of nuclear weapons by a militant group during a period of instability or splintering of the state.”

There is evidence to suggest that neither the Pakistani army, nor the SPD itself, considers jihadism the most immediate threat to the security of its nuclear weapons; indeed, General Kayani’s worry, as expressed to General Kidwai after Abbottabad, was focused on the United States. According to sources in Pakistan, General Kayani believes that the U.S. has designs on the Pakistani nuclear program, and that the Abbottabad raid suggested that the U.S. has developed the technical means to stage simultaneous raids on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.

According to both Pakistani and American sources, vans with a modest security profile are sometimes the preferred conveyance. And according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, the Pakistanis have begun using this low-security method to transfer not merely the “de-mated” component nuclear parts but “mated” nuclear weapons. Western nuclear experts have feared that Pakistan is building small, “tactical” nuclear weapons for quick deployment on the battlefield. In fact, not only is Pakistan building these devices, it is also now moving them over roads.

PARIS — Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared Saturday that France was at war with radical Islam after the harrowing sieges that led to the deaths of three gunmen and four hostages the day before. New details emerged about the bloody final confrontations, and security forces remained on high alert.

It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,”

The French government said it would put 500 additional troops on the streets over the weekend amid preparations for a giant unity rally in Paris on Sunday.

In an unusual turn of events last week, a terror plot suspect's desire to talk to local media put him at odds with his attorneys and landed a Cincinnati television station in federal court.

Cornell is accused of plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol. The 20-year-old -- who claims in the interview that he is affiliated with ISIS -- was arrested on January 14, months after his social media habits and talk of jihad put him on the FBI's radar, according to court documents obtained by CNN at the time of his arrest.

"I would have took my gun," he said. "I would have put it to Obama's head. I would have pulled the trigger. Then I would unleash more bullets on the Senate and House of Representative members. And I would have attacked the Israeli Embassy and various other buildings full of Kafir who want to wage war against us Muslims."

And in New York City, a man wielding a hatchet attacks four police officers in Queens, slashing one in the head and another in the arm.

The series of episodes over just the last four weeks is raising new fears about the capacity of the extremists who call themselves the Islamic State

“the ISIS guys are just really energized,” Mr. McCants said, using an alternate name for the group, the Islamic State.

There is no evidence so far that a gunman who attacked Canada's parliament had links to Middle Eastern Islamist extremists, the government has said.

It has also emerged that Prime Minister Stephen Harper hid in a cupboard in parliament for about 15 minutes during Wednesday's attack as MPs sharpened flagpoles to use as spears against the gunman.

"Reports suggest that well in excess of 100 Canadians have gone to fight jihad in the Middle East and that's a huge concern," he said.

Let me put this as baldly as I can. The US fought two long, brutal wars in its response to the atrocity of September 11, 2001. We lost both of them – revealing the biggest military machine in the history of the planet as essentially useless in advancing American objectives through war and occupation. Attempts to quash Islamist extremism through democracy were complete failures. The Taliban still has enormous sway in Afghanistan and the only way to prevent the entire Potemkin democracy from imploding is a permanent US troop presence. In Iraq, we are now confronting the very same Sunni insurgency the invasion created in 2003 – just even more murderous. The Jihadism there has only become more extreme under a democratic veneer. And in all this, the U.S. didn’t just lose the wars; it lost the moral high-ground as well. The <img class="alignright wp-image-138319" src="https://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/troopsjoeraedlegetty1.jpg?w=398&h=265" alt="" width="398" height="265" />president himself unleashed brutal torture across all theaters of war – effectively ending any moral authority the US has in international human rights.

These are difficult truths to handle. They reveal that so many brave men and women died for nothing. And so we have to construct myths or bury facts to ensure that we maintain face. But these myths and amnesia have a consequence: they only serve to encourage Washington to make exactly the same mistakes again

This is not just a Republican fixation. It’s a function of the hegemony reflexively sought by liberal internationalists as well.

From the mild-mannered Danes to crazed soccer fans, people all over the world go nuts for their national colors

People across Europe also have a passionate relationship with their flying colors, even if they are less conscious of it, and don’t normally fly the flag at fast food joints.

Think back to the dramatic Mohammed cartoon controversy of 2006, when Danish flags joined American flags in flag-burning rallies across the Muslim world after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon depicting the prophet.

ISIS Gains a Foothold in Gaza

GAZA CITY — The early hours of the morning of Nov. 24 began with a boom. The Israeli Air Force was hitting targets here in the Gaza Strip, shattering the pre-dawn quiet of this besieged coastal enclave.

Though some, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may want you to believe Hamas and ISIS are buddies and would work together, this isn’t the case.