The Russian Foreign Minister just had this to say in regards:

Ok...

Many years ago I talked to an older gentlemen from the USSR. He was a pilot and told me a story about trying to intercept the SR-71:

You aren’t impressed enough with the engineering that makes islands appear from nowhere that magically impart sovereignty rights over others?

It is, however, primarily in the civilian sector where significant changes are afoot. Just as in Damascus, Latakia and Jabla, increasing numbers of hosseiniehs — Shiite religious teaching centers — are opening. The centers are aimed at converting Sunnis, and even the Alawites, the denomination to which the Assads…

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upf…

Forgot to link to original article:

Here’s something from today/yesterday about the ongoing oil price battle. Links to another current article (on Bloomberg Business) that goes into a little more detail:

If SA starts to feel any pressure at all, they’ll just reduce production and drive the price of oil up a bit.

Long story short: Pakistan is a nuclear power. Pakistan has terrorist groups that want to overthrow the country. The US doesn’t want a Taliban type jihadist group to gain nukes.

I’ll bet we start to see Iran shift more towards China and away from Russia.

The USSR, the Cold War, and oil. The USSR collapsed just 25'ish years ago...

“Additionally, Iran will now be able to freely sell oil on the open market, which will mean more income to the Iranian government and potentially even more crude oil inventory being tossed onto the world market which could negatively effect already shattered prices. This is something the increasingly economically…

That’s not true in the least and ISIS has to be dealt with in Syria even if you view them solely and incorrectly as being a problem in Iraq. If you would like to point out something specific I said as being a falsehood, please feel free to do so.

“In 2006, the U.S. killed Zarqawi in an airstrike. A year later, the American surge began as U.S. troops joined forces with Iraqi Sunnis who had grown disillusioned with Zarqawi’s brutal, fundamentalist ideas. By 2008, the surge and the Awakening—as the Iraqi effort is commonly known—had driven Al-Qaeda militants into…

I’ve repeated that I’m aware of AQI and the offshoot origins of IS. If that were the end of the story about how ISIS came to be, Raqqa wouldn’t have been free for the taking and it wouldn’t likely have been in Syria at all. There was about a year before they started plundering in Iraq.

Here’s an interesting comment section to look at there:

No, not consumer branding. It wasn’t just an arbitrary renaming - it was a change from just being a a group or an offshoot of a group and forming a caliphate with a standing army, infrastructure, public services, sharia law enforcement, etc.

Just for you LoiusTheroux

I’m not American and don’t understand tea partner’s reference in regards to Desert Storm - but the US didn’t invade Iraq or try to overthrow Saddam during Desert Storm. The Baathist were firmly still in power except for Kurdish areas then.