Take away the media group watermarks, and mute the spoken anti-Western propaganda, and the Islamic State's (IS) most recent video featuring John Cantlie might look more like a VICE News story: a brave, skinny jean-wearing journalist documenting a rubble-covered warzone. The video, titled "From Inside Aleppo," marks yet another step in one of history's most bizarre climbs to superstardom. In a matter of months, Cantlie, whom IS had originally intended to be a conduit into Western discourse, has surprised both himself and his captors by becoming a champion of the jihadist movement.

After a gap of almost six weeks, the Islamic State (IS) released a video yesterday showing, along with the brutal simultaneous beheading of almost two dozen Syrian pilots, the head of American citizen Peter Kassig after it was severed from his body. Standing above his head was the British executor, known as "Jihad John," who killed other American and British citizens, challenging the US to send ground troops into Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic State (IS) released a one-minute and eleven-second video titled "Another Message to America and its Allies" on October 3, 2014 showing the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning and introduced another hostage, Peter Edward Kassig, an American aid worker.

The Islamic State (IS) released the first episode in which a British captive, John Cantlie, speaks on the alleged truth about the group that is hidden by the Western media. The 3 minute, 21 second video, entitled, "Lend Me Your Ears: Messages from the British Detainee John Cantlie," was produced by the group's al-Furqan Media Foundation, and distributed on Twitter on September 18, 2014.

On August 16, 2014, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released an English-language publication calling for lone wolf jihadi attacks, targeting American, British, and Israeli interests. Among the most striking new elements in the publication, titled "Palestine: Betrayal of the Guilty Conscience," is the introduction of new attack targets for lone wolves in the United States and the United Kingdom within its reissue of AQAP's 2010 car bomb manual, "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."