ISIS, Syria, and where Loyalties and Islam Factor in

ISIS is Sunni and they hate the Shiites
The Iraq government is mostly Shiite.
The government in Iran is Shiite.
The Assad government in Syria is fighting both ISIS and the Free Syrian Army.
ISIS is fighting the Free Syrian Army and Assad.
The Free Syrian Army is fighting Assad and ISIS.
The Free Syrian Army is not really an army, but hundreds of militias with varying loyalties and leaders, consisting of a myriad group of nationalists, radical Islamists, and some common Syrian folk with no other motivation than to live in freedom.
ISIS consists of the most ruthless of Islamic Sunni terrorists
The Shiites in Iraq would want us to kill ISIS because ISIS is Sunni.
The government in Iraq would want us to kill ISIS because it threatens the country's existence.
Many Sunnis in Iraq do not want us to kill ISIS, no matter how bad they are, because ISIS is also Sunni.
Assad, the bad-guy dictator in Iraq has no religion other than his own power.
Syria is about 75% Sunni so they would hate the Iraq government and Iran which would align them with ISIS, but ISIS is fighting Syria and the Free Syrian Army.
Governments, even Sunni governments see ISIS as a threat to their existence as ISIS wants to establish a caliphate, fundamental Islamic state from sovereign territories.

In the year 682 AD, Muhammad died and left no clear succession wishes.  In an argument over how leaders or caliphs, should be assigned, the Sunni and Shia split began.  This led to a series of tribal wars.  The Shia and the Sunni have been killing each other ever since with short periods of cooperation to work for Islam World domination.

If this seems too simple so far, the Shia and Sunni are subdivided into tribes which also fight each other over long forgotten and steel trapped remembered grievances.

It's a bloody fight over dogma.  In today's American culture, it would be similar to the Presbyterians having periods of wars with the Lutherans over cut bread or wafers, with short periods of cooperation for Christian World domination.

The Free Syrian Army and the rest of the rebels in Syria are no match in a fight with ISIS.  The rebels' mission is to take over the Syrian government and depose Assad and ISIS is an annoyance that is getting in the way of that mission.  The rebels are ill-equipped, lack training, funding and are not fighting for God.  The US has been training them and can get them all the equipment they need to win, but we cannot give them the united motivation that fighting for God can give ISIS.  Besides, they would rather somebody else take care of ISIS so they can get back to taking over the Syrian government.

Syrian rebels and Iraqi soldiers will fail as our air-supported cannon fodder, and ISIS will get a new batch of American ordnance and ammo.

You are a One Percenter - Income Equality and Wealth Redistribution Starts with you

If fairness in income and the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor is something that is important to you, don't think that those who are leading this effort have limited it to within the borders of the United States.  In their eyes, people are people and the lesser ones all across the globe need to be lifted and that can only be done by redistribution.

By some measures the top 1 percent looking earthward reveals an income of $34,000 or more per person per year.  With the global median income estimated to be between $10,000 and $18,000 in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars per person per year, income equality worldwide, according to these folks, will have to come from the top one percent - those making $34,000 or more.

Purchasing Power Parity dollars are an equalizing calculation based upon the cost of living in different countries.   Since an American Dollar will buy more in Chad than it would in Luxembourg, to compare income from country to country parities have to be made.  Comparisons are made based upon what $1 will buy you in the USA.

The numbers and the parity calculations, which certainly could be questioned, have been compiled by the United Nations' International Labour Organization (ILO) and only wage earners in 72 countries were counted.  But the discrepancy between the top one percent and the lower 99 percent in earnings no matter how they are compiled and analyzed, and the average wage determined in this study in the US at $37,000, puts most Americans well above the top one percent.

The $37,000 average for Americans is twice that of the higher end of the estimated average, putting even those who are defined by the Federal Poverty Levels as poor well above the median for the world ($10,000 to $18,000 per person per year) make our poor, in a global sense, if not rich, upper middle class, indeed.

To think that the income equality people are limited to Americans, or that the Americans who advocate this kind of fairness will not expand their sense of fairness globally is, of course, shortsighted. If you are one of these, but do not think that it would be fair to share your income with the rest of the world, your hypocrisy may exceed the premise of my writings.

There are a number of initiatives underway to accomplish this equality, but they will take time.  The agents of change have learned that people will accept the most radical of changes if they are imposed gradually as small cultural steps under the guise of kindness.

1. Opening our borders, first to Mexico, Central, and South America, and eventually accepting the poor as refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and other depressed income regions.  
2. Create labor, regulation, trade, and tax policies that make it attractive for American corporations to leave the country to provide jobs and income in poorer nations.
3. Support and pass global regulation treaties and accords that favor leniency for lessor income nations and come down expensively hard on the US.
4. Divert the corporate welfare to off-shore corporations that transfers wealth from the US taxpayers to underdeveloped countries.

In the time that these factors have been in place, global income inequality has successfully fallen somewhat, but remembering the essential definition of equality, much more will need to be done.  At the same time these factors have increased income inequality within the US, an acceptable side affect for the egalitarians for the time being.  As the wealth is transferred from the American poor and middle class to the poor of other nations, the rich in the US will get richer, see here.

But, if you take the opposition's approach of wealth not being a zero sum calculation, there is hope only in the creation of additional wealth worldwide.  From a redistribution aspect, if there is more wealth worldwide, even in the hands of the rich, there is more wealth to redistribute.