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Following the U.S. Civil War, Japan’s emergence in the Far Pacific, and the unification of Germany and Italy, (and Canadian Confederation), the powers bunched up and it all became more complicated in the Twentieth Century. The British and French in World War I and the British and Russians in World War II only narrowly defeated the Germans with the help of the Americans, and Germany and Japan were occupied by the Western powers in 1945 and wisely managed into flourishing, democratic allies. It was unclear whether Germany was a western or eastern-facing country until the Western Allied armies occupied three quarters of it and 10-million Germans walked or came in ox-carts to the West to escape the Red Army.

This was and ultimately remains the issue, including in Ukraine and the Middle East: the Western countries are really trying, gently and gradually, to promote the Westernization of the world.

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New evidence shows a number of British female recruits to the Al-Khanssaa brigade, an all-women militia set up by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS).

The Al-Khanssaa brigade is operating in Raqqa, the city where ISIS has set up its Syrian headquarters.

Security services believe that the American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff were both beheaded in the desert surrounding Raqqa. It is possible that the British women involved in the Al-Khanssaa brigade will know the identity of the man – nicknamed “Jihadi John” and thought to be from south-east England – who executed them.