 I guess the main story of the weekend was the attack on a Russian theater by four terrorists who basically shot up the place. I mean, the videos are pretty horrific. There were videos making the rounds. I think they were taken down on X, but on Telegram and other places, literally showing these terrorists just killing people point blank while yelling Allah Akbar as they were doing this. And, you know, they killed 137 people. Hundreds, others are injured. They threw bombs. They shot them point blank. They sprayed bullets into the crowd. Just devastating. Just again, another one of these horrific acts of nihilism done in the name of the great religion of peace, Islam. And, you know, while shouting Allah Akbar and all the rest of it. The four people responsible for this have been arrested by the Russian authorities. They are all from Tajikistan origin. Tajikistan is in the southeast of Russia and a place where, you know, there's not too far from Afghanistan, not too far from kind of the base of where this particular group of ISIS, which took responsibility for this, is based. ISIS took responsibility for this. We'll talk about ISIS in a moment and declared it in a letter or in a post online. They also ISIS then published videos of the attack. So whatever the attackers were wearing cameras and they streamed it to whatever ISIS server and ISIS had access to it and then posted it on various channels. I mean, it really is horrific and disturbing. Again, the kind of just complete and utter disregard for human life, the complete and utter barbarity of it and the nihilism of it. The I saw, you know, the Russians posted interrogations of these people. Hard to tell with these kind of things if they're real or not. One video was real where they literally, the Russians caught one of them and they literally cut off his ear and fed it to him. He had to eat it. I mean, the video was taken off X after a while, but it was there for a little while. I didn't watch the whole thing. I just believed the description after I saw the ear cutting off. I didn't watch to see if he actually ate it, but that was what the description said. So a number of different angles here that we have to discuss here is one is the effect on Russia and the way Russia is kind of spinning this. That's only one aspect of this. Another is ISIS, who they are, where they are, and what their ambitions are and what's next, I guess. Yeah, I think those are the two angles we want to attack. So let's start with Russia. Of course, the first instinct that Russia had was to blame Ukraine and to claim that the Ukrainians were evolved supposedly, again, according to Russian authorities. I don't know if we can really trust Russian authorities, but according to them, the terrorists had a car and they were driving towards the Ukrainian border and were stopped at a check post heading towards Ukraine. So yeah, I don't know if we can trust that. I don't know if you can believe it, but that is at least the Russian's argument for why the claiming Ukraine was involved. No other evidence has been presented for Ukrainian involvement in this. Again, ISIS took credit from this. Putin did a five minute, I think, little talk on television about this to the Russian people. Didn't mention ISIS, didn't mention Ukraine. So clearly they're trying to spin this. Putin, on the one hand, this makes him look weak as a president who can't protect his own people, but on the other hand, this could play into his hands in the sense of his willingness, his, I don't know, argument to do a much bigger mobilization of the Russian armed forces for battle with Ukraine and to the extent that he can blame the Ukrainians for this and that the Russian people will buy that to that extent he is, you know, that helps him and with Russians, with common people in Russia. Russia, I mean, one of the great, one of the tragedies here and one of the indications of kind of Russia's complete corruptness. About two weeks ago, the United States told Russia that they had intelligence suggesting that ISIS or an Islamist group was planning an attack on Moscow and warned the Russians that this was coming. The Russians not only ignored this, but Putin in a public statement about a week ago, a week and a half ago, literally said, this is just the West wanting us to feel afraid. This is just the West fear mongering. There's nothing to this. Trust me, don't believe what you're hearing from the West. And he looks like an idiot, given that the United States, the intelligence the US had turned out to be incredibly accurate. The United States heavily monitors ISIS, has been at war with ISIS in one way or the other, kind of a soft war, warm war, not a hot war since, what, the 20 teens, since the Obama administration and in Iraq and Syria and is at war with them also in Afghanistan. This particular attack is the ISIS of Afghanistan, the ISIS group that's in Afghanistan, training in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility. ISIS and interestingly enough, let's talk about ISIS. So ISIS of Afghanistan is at odds with the Taliban. They don't like the Taliban. And the Taliban are too moderate and too appeasing. ISIS is more radical and more consistent. And although I don't know how you can be more consistent than the Taliban, but I think ISIS, Taliban has mainly devoted themselves to subjugating their own people. They allow terrorists who want to expand Islam to the rest of the world to function there. But they leave it as is, right? They leave it as is. But right now, the ISIS, on the other hand, is dedicated to worldwide jihad, the dedicated to converting the rest of the world to the jihadi cause. And so that is what animates them and that's what motivates them. And I think that is the source of their resistance, of their conflict with the Taliban. It's great. I mean, one of the good things about evil people is that they don't get along, that they hate each other and they fight constantly. I think in World War II, we had the Nazis and the communists who cut a deal early in the war, at the beginning of the war, and then the Nazis were negged on it. And you've got, in the Islamic world, pretty much all the different terrorist organizations to one extent or another hate each other and fight each other constantly, which is lucky for us. ISIS from Afghanistan was responsible for the killing of 13 Americans. Do you remember the frantic evacuation of Kabul in the, as the United States, when was it, last year, the year before that, when the United States left Afghanistan? Well, if you remember, there was a bomb, a suicide bomb, a series of suicide bombings that killed 13, I think there were Marines during the evacuation. Well, those suicide bombs were not the Taliban, they were ISIS, ISIS Afghanistan. Then a few months ago, there was a massive explosion in Iran during a commemoration for Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Republican God, who had Iranian revolutionary God, who had been killed by the Trump administration and killed like 80 people in Iran. And the first instinct the Iranians had, just like the Russians, was to blame Israel and to blame the United States. Only it was soon discovered and acknowledged that ISIS, Afghanistan was responsible. The Iranians then bought Pakistan and Afghanistan and Syria, Iraq or Iraq as a response to it, trying to hit ISIS, I guess, based in those three states. And indeed, ISIS is prevalent in Afghanistan. It has basis in Pakistan. And of course, ISIS was born in Iraq and on the, particularly in the Iraqi-Syrian border, where during the peak of the ISIS, so-called Caliphate, they actually controlled land, both much of northern Iraq and much of northeast Syria were controlled by ISIS. The Americans and then the Russians basically and the Kurds and basically pushed ISIS back and defeated them to the point where ISIS controls no real territory in that part of the world. But they're still there. They're still alive and well. They're still functioning. And it's one of the reasons or one of the excuses, depending on how you want to think about it, that the United States still has troops in Iran and in Iraq and Syria is because of the ISIS is still there and ISIS could regroup so that, you know, they're still there in order to make sure that doesn't happen. Let's see. What else was there? So, yes, ISIS also controls large swaths of land and is very active in North Africa. The Sahel, the region in North Africa between the Sahara Desert and kind of the sub-Saharan Africa, there was a strip of land in the news recently was the fact that Niger, you remember months ago we talked about the Niger coup where the military took over the Niger, not the Nigerian, the Niger government. And then the Niger government kicked out the French and then about a week ago the Niger government decided to kick out the Americans. The United States has a military base from which they fly drones that they spent a hundred million dollars building in Niger. Well, they've just been kicked out of that base and it's dubious whether they can use it. The base, the drones were all there in order to combat ISIS of North Africa. So, ISIS is still around, still prevalent, still interested in killing non-Muslims and as we can see has extensive reach into Russia. Tajikistan, there are many Tajikistanis who live in Russia so there is a fairly open border between Tajikistan and Russia. Tajikistanis, Tajiks, I guess they called, come to Russia to work. I think they're over a million and a half of them in Russia. And so it's relatively easy for terrorists to come across from Tajikistan. These four, they have said, again under interrogation, that they were paid $5,000 to do this. So this is interesting. Most ISIS attacks, at least most ISIS attacks and scale outside of the territory they supposedly control, almost all of them are suicide bombings. So if you, or suicide attacks, ISIS responsible for many terrorist attacks in Europe during the mid-20 teens, those were all suicide or mostly suicide or they knew they would die even if they didn't commit suicide themselves. They knew somebody would kill them, where there was the cars ramming into people, knife attacks or just gunfire. They all knew they would be killed. Here it at least appears that they thought they might be able to get away. They had a getaway car, they drove off, which is a little atypical of ISIS. So that's one consideration to think, well, what exactly is going on here? Could it be something else? It's not something else. It's pretty clear ISIS. Other than that, it's got their remote on it. And again, they've admitted it and US warned in advance that it would happen. And what this suggests to us, ISIS has now struck Iran, it's struck Russia. It's not taking sides in the Ukraine war. What it is doing is it's testing out its reach. And the more terrorist attacks like this, they are. The more prevalent they are, the more widespread they are, the more they make the headlines. The more likely it is that ISIS can recruit people in Europe and maybe even the United States to commit terrorist attacks in their name in those regions. So it wouldn't be surprising at all if ISIS attempted some terrorist attacks in Europe. There is a large Muslim population, a tiny fraction of whom are susceptible to ISIS. And again, as soon as ISIS lost territory and lost the momentum and wasn't in the news and wasn't being portrayed as winning, terrorism in Europe disappeared. But now they're back, they've attacked Russia, they've attacked Iran and they could do a lot more damage. They're in the news, they're getting headlines. There is a real possibility of terrorist attacks in Europe and even the United States. So I'm sure the intelligence agencies on top of this, it is somewhat reassuring that the American intelligence services knew that something was brewing and warned the Russians. One would hope they would know something is brewing if something was going to hit Europe or something was going to hit the United States. And as a consequence, could take it seriously and actually stop it. But anyway, tragic but ominous, ominous in terms of kind of the rebirth of ISIS and their willingness to attack and attack far away from their base. Again, their basis today, Afghanistan, because of the United States exiting Afghanistan, they are free to train. The Taliban don't like them. But I don't think the Taliban are going to go out of their way in particular to fight them off. So they train in Afghanistan. They are also in Pakistan and in the eastern part of Iran. And Iraq and Syria, they're in, even though they don't control territory, they're there as well. And then maybe the place where they control the most territory, where they have the most mobility is in North Africa. And all the U.S., European allies and countries that were helping them fight ISIS in North Africa, they have all turned against the U.S. and Europe. And while they haven't exactly sided with ISIS, they're going to be a lot less effective in fighting ISIS without U.S. support and without European support. So ISIS will only, from this point on, get stronger. And I don't know that Russia will do anything to stop them. I don't know who they attack, where they attack. Does Russia really want to do something in Afghanistan? It tried that once, didn't go very well for the Russians. I don't think they want to get involved in that. Maybe they'll launch a missile like the U.S. always did into some random ISIS camp in Afghanistan and leave it at that. I just don't think Russia is going to do anything of substance here. It has, it did. When it was, when they were functioning in Syria, they did attack ISIS pretty harshly in Syria. Maybe the Russians in Africa, maybe they would attack ISIS in Africa. Hard to tell what the Russian response will be.