Happy birthday Stephen and Ayman

Today, it's my birthday! It's also Ayman al-Zawahiri's birthday – my favorite Islamic jihadist. He merged his terrorist organization Egyptian Islamic Jihad with bin Laden's al-Qaeda throughout the nineties. Osama bin Laden's favored biographer, Hamid Mir, believes that al-Zawahiri is the "real brains of the outfit" once said that "[h]e is the person who can do the things that happened on Sept. 11" Assassinated former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko claimed that right before the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, al-Zawahiri was trained for six months in an FSB camp in Dagestan. The FSB's ties to al-Zawahiri are just another example of Russian sponsorship of most major terrorist groups and rogue nations. In my opinion, it's a way to drive up oil prices (which Putin's cronies' pockets, give them popular support, and threaten Western economies) and thwart the West's liberalization by making totalitarianism more fashionable.

Anyway, for my birthday present, I want anyone who's a regular reader (or, hell, anyone who's reading this) to leave a comment (anonymously will do) saying hello and telling me what they like and dislike about the blog. And, for those who don't know me (don't ruin it!), guess how old I turned today. If not an exact age, then at least a decade.