Author: Jason Ditz

Suggesting he neither understands what happened to Iraq in 2014 or what is happening in Iraq right now, Vice President Joe Biden claimed the ISIS war is going very well, and that it had ultimately been a net positive that “unified” the country against a common enemy.

The claim was made in spite of increasingly divided nation, particularly on a sectarian basis, as pro-government Shi’ite militias loot and lynch civilians in Sunni towns along the front lines, and fewer and fewer of the Sunni tribal allies remain to support the Abadi government.

Biden’s comments seem to center around the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) not explicitly talking about secession from Iraq as much as they were in mid-2014, though that seems to be at best a temporary decision, with the same disputes over oil revenues and autonomy as unresolved as ever.

How hollow Biden’s claims of progress in the war ring is a reflection not only of his stark disconnect with reality in general, but that there is very little basis upon which to claim the war has been anything but an abject failure so far.

Everyone needs a hobby. For most reporters, it seems to be freaking out about anything even vaguely ISIS-seeming.

That’s where CaliphateBook comes in, which is supposed Facebook, but for ISIS. Cute, right?

The site itself started as an incomplete CMS site, then crashed, (attacked by Anonymous, according to some) and now merely posts a single English-language message denying ties to ISIS.

The registrar information from the site claims the site administrator is in “Mosul, Islamic State.” That anyone can put anything they want in their registrar information seems to be lost on most. While it’s impossible to conclusively disprove that this site is even a thing, the fact that it was registered at GoDaddy certainly points toward it being a hoax.

Western media are constantly reporting a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine as an undisputed fact. That no one ever sees these troops is just one of life’s little mysteries, as seemingly ever article just shows a couple of pictures of single unidentified camouflage vehicles or a handful of random people with the caption “pro-Russian separatists.”

DW.de is going for the gold with their latest “evidence mounting” about Russian troops today, which reports some putative fighters from the eastern Ukrainian rebel factions were miners who claimed they’d been paid by the Russian government.

Even if we take this claim as absolute fact, calling out-of-work miners who are paid to fight “troops” is a big stretch, and calling Ukrainians “Russians” is an even bigger stretch.

Though there have been cases of actual Russians with actual military backgrounds going to eastern Ukraine to fight, these are isolated cases, and the ongoing claims of direct Russian military involvement remain unproven.

If we’re using this standard set by this claim, we might as well call Ukraine’s military “US troops,” since the US helped bankroll the bailout of the Ukrainian government, and has been providing military aid to them.

The Interview wasn’t exactly a great movie. The hype surrounding the Sony Pictures hack was by far its most memorable aspect. It did include a scene showing the death of Kim Jong Un, however, and that’s pretty great from the UN point of view.

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea Marzuki Darusman praised the movie for “putting pressure” on Kim, saying the film “hit a raw nerve” and that more films of that sort are what is needed right now.

“This is a new thing, spotlighting the leadership and ridiculing the leadership. In any authoritarian, totalitarian system, that is an Achilles’ heel,” Darusman insisted, saying that if the ridicule from such movies seeps into the North Korean public “it could be lethal for the regime.”

Of course, Darusman is still doing his occasional report on human rights violations in North Korea, but he’s not putting his eggs in that basket, not when there are mid-budget Seth Rogen vehicles to be made.

It’s not really “news” at this point, but every couple of weeks a new IAEA report comes out confirming that Iran is abiding by the terms of the interim nuclear agreement. It’s a good reminder, because after a couple weeks of not hearing about it the hawks start beating the drums.

For the AP, however, it’s just more fuel for scaremongering, as the inimitable George Jahn describes the exact same program as a “nuke program” centering on weapons.

Which, of course, it’s not. The interim deal centers on Iran’s civilian program, limiting enrichment that was already at levels far too low for an atomic weapon. The AP ignores the facts, once again, and keeps insinuating there are weapons being made.