"The rise of Isis is rooted in a mix of politics, a Sunni sense of
isolation and a shakeup in Salafist doctrine. Here, an analyst whose
Syrian home has seen some of its bloodiest excesses, explains its
dramatic surge"
Sorry Zeyad. You're entirely welcome to comment but there are different rules around here. Like it says above the comment box, gratuitous cussin' won't be tolerated from you or anyone else.
Great initiative Pete. If nothing else we can gather some of the regulars from Zeyad's and debate and pontificate annd whatnot.
Lynnette, that was an awful video. I watched it and I guess, apart from the cruelty, the thing that strikes you the most is the clear british accent of the murdering scumbag who killed that journalist.
The analysis at the end with regard to how ISIS is affecting various countries in the region was interesting. This still reminds me of the spread of Nazism in Europe. And as long as good people do nothing it will only get worse. Turkey is a member of NATO. Jordan is an ally. Iraq is a basket case that we bear some responsibility for. The US is in this for the long haul. Some people just may not be aware of it yet.
I haven't watched the video. I understand the seriousness of the situation without having to.
As you pointed out the British accent is significant. ISIS is not just a regional Middle Eastern problem. It has tentacles that stretch to other countries.
Lynnette, don't watch it if you don't wish to see some disturbing images. Then again, I've seen even worse from those ISIS scumbags before.
The news today said ISIS gained 6.000 new members up from about 20.000 to 26.000 in July alone. The bulk are said to be from Syria.
From Sweden our "CIA/FBI" SÄPO claims knowledge of 80 "swedes" who went there to fight for ISIS. About 20 of them are believed to have been killed aleady. But the thing is the numbers are a guesswork, it could be several times that many in reality. No one knows for sure.
I also read that the US are actually bombing them for real now and that that helped the Pesh Merga secure that dam outside Mosul.
If only, if only you hadn't been so stupid to let the Neoconmen con you into that quagmire back in 2003 we'd have been spared so much of this awfulness. The Iraqis more than any of us.
Keep that in mind now that they're spoiling for a war with Russia. I mean, you've seen the blowcack even from folks with hardly any real military powers - ragtag insurgents as Cheney called them. So imagine the blowback from a nation with 10.000 thermo-nuclear missiles, many ballistic and able to reach every corner of the US.
Hi Marcus! Congrats on noticing the "no gratuitous cussin'" rule which you managed not to violate until your second word. You get a let off this time because it can be counted as self-deprecating :)
I don't watch beheading videos. I've already looked at more ISIS-related images/videos than I would normally allow myself -- just to remind myself what the world is up against.
Has anyone else seen the nonsense rumours circulating, and being lapped up by conspiracy nuts, that ISIS is a creation of the CIA and Mossad. Al-Baghdadi himself is supposed to be a Mossad agent. As far as I can tell, the rumour originates in Iran, and is supposed to involve an interview with Eric Snowden (which never happened). Has been picked up by David Icke and spread like wildfire.
Has anyone else seen the nonsense rumours circulating, and being lapped up by conspiracy nuts, that ISIS is a creation of the CIA and Mossad. Al-Baghdadi himself is supposed to be a Mossad agent.
Nope, I haven't seen that yet, but I'm not surprised. When in doubt weasel out of any responsibility and blame Israel or the US. While I can understand the anger directed at Al-Maliki or Assad which gave rise to rebellion within both countries, the actions of ISIS are so beyond the pale that it is hard to understand the people who support them. How can they complain about dictators and then turn around and support people who are just as extreme in their own way?
The conversation quickly turned to Hollywood films in general, with one 19-year-old ISIS supporter - who calls himself 'Abdullah' and uses the Twiiter handle @Mujahid4life - declaring his love for all 'Disney Renaissance' films and revealing himself to be a fan of Star Wars.
Now if this isn't bizarre. Their beliefs are the complete antithesis of what the founding fathers in the United States espoused, yet they are fans of the culture those beliefs helped produce.
Btw, don't like Nutella. It's too sweet. I am more of a dark chocolate person myself. :) I noticed they talked in the article about the coming cocoa shortage. That sounds almost as bad as burning books!
For comments, the only way I know is to submit a comment while logged into a Google account -- I think it gives you the option to be notified of follow-up comments. For articles, there may be an RSS/Atom feed, and if there isn't I'm pretty sure I can add one.
"Is there a way to get email notifications for this blog?"
Blogtrotter will give you e-mail notices of new “articles” i.e. new posts to the main page. Firefox and Opera browsers will then offer the option of following new posts to the comments' sections via incorporated RSS type feeds to either the Firefox browser (via Google) or to Opera Mail (incorporated into the Opera browser), respectively, albeit with some minor delay (usually under two hours).
You might as well drop the seconds designation from your display of posting times. Blogger obviously doesn't track the seconds of Greenwich time to fill in the blank you put there. (That or you mucked up the template.)
Picky! But I hadn't noticed that. Seconds dropped. And I've set it back to Eastern Time. I'd gotten so used to having to mentally convert that GMT looks wrong to me! And on Eastern, everybody's in the wrong time zone... at least until Jeffrey comes home from the far east.
You're probably going to have to revert to short month designation when you hit longer months, like soon to be upon you ‘September’. Or maybe change the year format.
The choice of month formats is limited. There's no Mmm. And I refuse to use that US abomination, mm/dd... Churchill was only half right when he said we were separated by a common language.
Not sure if you're familiar with the Blogger dashboard. I don't get to type in a format string. There's a choice of half a dozen specific example timestamps and I get to pick one. Only three have both dates and times -- the one I'm using and the mm/dd one (plus a variant with seconds, as you saw).
Finished the ISIL article. Sounds reasonable. By any imagining, IS seems here to stay. I wonder what happens, though, when their borders are more clearly delineated (by a line of bomb craters?), and they have to operate a state. I know they control a number of oil fields but I don't yet have a clear picture of where they are. If those were either retaken or rendered inoperable, where does the new state's revenue come from? And oil infrastructure is surely the vulnerable weak spot, a fact well know to the terrorists when they disrupt other people's.
I also wonder what happens when jihadis come home to the US and Europe as some surely will. The UK alone has sent at least 500 so far, although some estimates say 1,500. Those are orders of magnitude greater than the number of active IRA personnel than ever operated in Britain at the height of their bombing campaigns. If a fraction of them come home, it will be a major thorn in the side for the west.
A French journalist held with Foley for seven months has given an interesting interview. Their captors told them that they were waging a military, economic and information war. Journalists, as opinion makers, were part of the information war and responsible for the bad image of Muslims in Europe.
Yeah, cos choppin' his head off was a real image booster! Methinks they have a few problems in their PR department.
Pete: "Has anyone else seen the nonsense rumours circulating, and being lapped up by conspiracy nuts, that ISIS is a creation of the CIA and Mossad. Al-Baghdadi himself is supposed to be a Mossad agent."
I saw that mentioned in a swedish discussion forum. My comment was something along these lines:
If you want to create a successful conspiracy theory one thing to keep in mind would be: don't overdo it.
You couldn't just make ISIS a CIA and/or Mossad creation. You just had to go on and make Al-Baghdadi a Mossad agent and a jew himself.
But of course we're not the target audience for that "rumor". The target audience is one much more inclined to believe anything bad said about a sneaky jew without second thoughts.
If those were either retaken or rendered inoperable, where does the new state's revenue come from? And oil infrastructure is surely the vulnerable weak spot,...
Yes. That is something someone may have to think about in the future. Right now they seem to be ignoring this rather large source of ISIS funding. The money ISIS is getting through theft is far greater than anything we have seen in the past by a terrorist group. It makes anything they may get through internet portals look like chump change. They are more likely to be funding others, which brings up the danger to the rest of the world, and the west specifically. To defeat them we will need to cut off their funds, wherever they may find them. That will include the oil wells.
^I agree with that Lynnette. But with 20-30 thousand fighters they also face the problem of paying them all.
When they are on the move, like a locust swarm they can feed off the land. But once they try to impose statehood on the lands they have conquered they will face the same budgetary issues that any other state does. And I believe they are very ill equippeed when it comes to running the finances of a state.
My hunch is that they will continue to wreak havoc for some time but will sooner or later implode. Certainly their dream of a sustainable "caliphate" is a pipe dream only.
You may have a point but I wouldn't be quite so sure Marcus. From what I read, their level of internal organisation is very good. You've gotta remember all those head-chopping vids are just from the PR department. They're the Islamic State's tourism board, as it were. That said, it is a tad hard to see all those head-choppers demobbed and working as bank clerks etc. But the oil revenue is the big issue I feel. Cut that off and there is no viable state.
But there is a longer term problem, no matter what. So suppose the IS head-choppers get deposed from within. Now you've got the Ba'athis and disenchanted tribal leaders and what not. It's not like the Sunni factions are suddenly going to be back at a negotiating table in Baghdad anytime soon. The prospect of regional instability may be a long term one, even if there was a more conciliatory government in Baghdad (and their probably won't be).
Sorry to say but the Baath ideology that could have served both sects well is now so tainted and seen as "sunni" that it's a path impossible to take. Regrettably.
The Baath, regardless of what YOU seem to think of it, was from the beginning a quite successful and non-sectarian movement.
Pan-arab secular socialism was the aim. OK it was hijacked by Saddam, but the ideology lives on without him. And it's quite sound at its core.
It's not like the Sunni factions are suddenly going to be back at a negotiating table in Baghdad anytime soon.
Never say never. They are not stupid. They understand what ISIS is.
But the question is what is Iraq to become? For heaven's sake, we sent weapons to the government in Baghdad with the hope they would be passed on to the Kurds, but that didn't happen. So we have had to send supplies directly. Revenue sharing has been a non-starter apparently because the government has been skimming. The Kurds started pumping their own oil, but even that has hit snags. There is an oil tanker anchored off the coast of Texas waiting for a buyer, but it is held up in our courts by Baghdad because of the dispute over who the revenue belongs to. This all the while that ISIS is crawling all over their country. They need to get their act together.
58 comments:
ISIS Beheads American
Sorry Zeyad. You're entirely welcome to comment but there are different rules around here. Like it says above the comment box, gratuitous cussin' won't be tolerated from you or anyone else.
Well fuck me sideways, Pete set up a blog for us!
Great initiative Pete. If nothing else we can gather some of the regulars from Zeyad's and debate and pontificate annd whatnot.
Lynnette, that was an awful video. I watched it and I guess, apart from the cruelty, the thing that strikes you the most is the clear british accent of the murdering scumbag who killed that journalist.
We all have our little quirks, Petes. :)
I just finished the article. It was very good.
The analysis at the end with regard to how ISIS is affecting various countries in the region was interesting. This still reminds me of the spread of Nazism in Europe. And as long as good people do nothing it will only get worse. Turkey is a member of NATO. Jordan is an ally. Iraq is a basket case that we bear some responsibility for. The US is in this for the long haul. Some people just may not be aware of it yet.
Marucs!
You finally got the message. :)
I haven't watched the video. I understand the seriousness of the situation without having to.
As you pointed out the British accent is significant. ISIS is not just a regional Middle Eastern problem. It has tentacles that stretch to other countries.
Lynnette, don't watch it if you don't wish to see some disturbing images. Then again, I've seen even worse from those ISIS scumbags before.
The news today said ISIS gained 6.000 new members up from about 20.000 to 26.000 in July alone. The bulk are said to be from Syria.
From Sweden our "CIA/FBI" SÄPO claims knowledge of 80 "swedes" who went there to fight for ISIS. About 20 of them are believed to have been killed aleady. But the thing is the numbers are a guesswork, it could be several times that many in reality. No one knows for sure.
I also read that the US are actually bombing them for real now and that that helped the Pesh Merga secure that dam outside Mosul.
If only, if only you hadn't been so stupid to let the Neoconmen con you into that quagmire back in 2003 we'd have been spared so much of this awfulness. The Iraqis more than any of us.
Keep that in mind now that they're spoiling for a war with Russia. I mean, you've seen the blowcack even from folks with hardly any real military powers - ragtag insurgents as Cheney called them. So imagine the blowback from a nation with 10.000 thermo-nuclear missiles, many ballistic and able to reach every corner of the US.
Hi Marcus! Congrats on noticing the "no gratuitous cussin'" rule which you managed not to violate until your second word. You get a let off this time because it can be counted as self-deprecating :)
lol!
He's a stringent blog master, is Petes.
I don't watch beheading videos. I've already looked at more ISIS-related images/videos than I would normally allow myself -- just to remind myself what the world is up against.
Has anyone else seen the nonsense rumours circulating, and being lapped up by conspiracy nuts, that ISIS is a creation of the CIA and Mossad. Al-Baghdadi himself is supposed to be a Mossad agent. As far as I can tell, the rumour originates in Iran, and is supposed to involve an interview with Eric Snowden (which never happened). Has been picked up by David Icke and spread like wildfire.
Marcus,
It would be hard for us to enter into a war with Russia without European involvement. It's kind of hard to skip over you, you know. :)
And I will remind you that there were other countries involved in the Iraq war besides us.
Has anyone else seen the nonsense rumours circulating, and being lapped up by conspiracy nuts, that ISIS is a creation of the CIA and Mossad. Al-Baghdadi himself is supposed to be a Mossad agent.
Nope, I haven't seen that yet, but I'm not surprised. When in doubt weasel out of any responsibility and blame Israel or the US. While I can understand the anger directed at Al-Maliki or Assad which gave rise to rebellion within both countries, the actions of ISIS are so beyond the pale that it is hard to understand the people who support them. How can they complain about dictators and then turn around and support people who are just as extreme in their own way?
"It would be hard for us to enter into a war with Russia without European involvement. It's kind of hard to skip over you, you know. :)"
Hey, I know a handy shortcut across the north pole :)
Let us know how it goes. Try not to disturb our lucrative Oirish cheese business, and I'm sure Frau Merkel would say the same for machine tools et al.
The Daily Mail really is such a rag.
Hey, I know a handy shortcut across the north pole :)
Well, if you're going to be literal. ;)
The conversation quickly turned to Hollywood films in general, with one 19-year-old ISIS supporter - who calls himself 'Abdullah' and uses the Twiiter handle @Mujahid4life - declaring his love for all 'Disney Renaissance' films and revealing himself to be a fan of Star Wars.
Now if this isn't bizarre. Their beliefs are the complete antithesis of what the founding fathers in the United States espoused, yet they are fans of the culture those beliefs helped produce.
Btw, don't like Nutella. It's too sweet. I am more of a dark chocolate person myself. :) I noticed they talked in the article about the coming cocoa shortage. That sounds almost as bad as burning books!
Is there a way to get email notifications for this blog?
For comments, the only way I know is to submit a comment while logged into a Google account -- I think it gives you the option to be notified of follow-up comments. For articles, there may be an RSS/Atom feed, and if there isn't I'm pretty sure I can add one.
They have started airlifting supplies for the displaced families.
"Is there a way to get email notifications for this blog?"
Blogtrotter will give you e-mail notices of new “articles” i.e. new posts to the main page. Firefox and Opera browsers will then offer the option of following new posts to the comments' sections via incorporated RSS type feeds to either the Firefox browser (via Google) or to Opera Mail (incorporated into the Opera browser), respectively, albeit with some minor delay (usually under two hours).
What *is* this Daily Mail obsession with Nutella ??
Post Script:
Internet Explorer 8.0 and up also will subscribe to "feeds" of the comments' sections. (Under the ‘Tools’ tab; presumably through Bing.)
Heh! I'm quite sure I recognise y'all's impeccably matched inverted commas.
You might as well drop the seconds designation from your display of posting times. Blogger obviously doesn't track the seconds of Greenwich time to fill in the blank you put there. (That or you mucked up the template.)
Only 2 posts and they're already giving you flack. :) Oh what have we gotten ourselves into...
I blame Zeyad, it's all his fault. :)
Picky! But I hadn't noticed that. Seconds dropped. And I've set it back to Eastern Time. I'd gotten so used to having to mentally convert that GMT looks wrong to me! And on Eastern, everybody's in the wrong time zone... at least until Jeffrey comes home from the far east.
Yes I saw that :)
I do believe it's on EDT.
Certainly seems to be the requisite five hours behind me, and I'm on IST (Irish Summer Time) = GMT + 1.
Interesting analysis of ISIL and American policy.
[Hat tip Lee C.]
You're probably going to have to revert to short month designation when you hit longer months, like soon to be upon you ‘September’. Or maybe change the year format.
Which word was determined to be cussin’?
The choice of month formats is limited. There's no Mmm. And I refuse to use that US abomination, mm/dd... Churchill was only half right when he said we were separated by a common language.
"There's no Mmm"
Try mm or MM.
Or ‘mmm’....
Not sure if you're familiar with the Blogger dashboard. I don't get to type in a format string. There's a choice of half a dozen specific example timestamps and I get to pick one. Only three have both dates and times -- the one I'm using and the mm/dd one (plus a variant with seconds, as you saw).
"Not sure if you're familiar with the Blogger dashboard."
Not anytime lately.
"…plus a variant with seconds…"
That one had a short month format. (i.e. ‘Aug’)
And that last would've been fine if ya hadna pointed out the zeroed seconds. Now it's too annoying. So we're going with what we've got.
Cancel that. I'll live with the zero seconds. And I like the day name. But then I have to lose the year. &*$&%.
Finished the ISIL article. Sounds reasonable. By any imagining, IS seems here to stay. I wonder what happens, though, when their borders are more clearly delineated (by a line of bomb craters?), and they have to operate a state. I know they control a number of oil fields but I don't yet have a clear picture of where they are. If those were either retaken or rendered inoperable, where does the new state's revenue come from? And oil infrastructure is surely the vulnerable weak spot, a fact well know to the terrorists when they disrupt other people's.
I also wonder what happens when jihadis come home to the US and Europe as some surely will. The UK alone has sent at least 500 so far, although some estimates say 1,500. Those are orders of magnitude greater than the number of active IRA personnel than ever operated in Britain at the height of their bombing campaigns. If a fraction of them come home, it will be a major thorn in the side for the west.
A French journalist held with Foley for seven months has given an interesting interview. Their captors told them that they were waging a military, economic and information war. Journalists, as opinion makers, were part of the information war and responsible for the bad image of Muslims in Europe.
Yeah, cos choppin' his head off was a real image booster! Methinks they have a few problems in their PR department.
Pete: "Has anyone else seen the nonsense rumours circulating, and being lapped up by conspiracy nuts, that ISIS is a creation of the CIA and Mossad. Al-Baghdadi himself is supposed to be a Mossad agent."
I saw that mentioned in a swedish discussion forum. My comment was something along these lines:
If you want to create a successful conspiracy theory one thing to keep in mind would be: don't overdo it.
You couldn't just make ISIS a CIA and/or Mossad creation. You just had to go on and make Al-Baghdadi a Mossad agent and a jew himself.
But of course we're not the target audience for that "rumor". The target audience is one much more inclined to believe anything bad said about a sneaky jew without second thoughts.
Petes,
If those were either retaken or rendered inoperable, where does the new state's revenue come from? And oil infrastructure is surely the vulnerable weak spot,...
Yes. That is something someone may have to think about in the future. Right now they seem to be ignoring this rather large source of ISIS funding. The money ISIS is getting through theft is far greater than anything we have seen in the past by a terrorist group. It makes anything they may get through internet portals look like chump change. They are more likely to be funding others, which brings up the danger to the rest of the world, and the west specifically. To defeat them we will need to cut off their funds, wherever they may find them. That will include the oil wells.
^I agree with that Lynnette. But with 20-30 thousand fighters they also face the problem of paying them all.
When they are on the move, like a locust swarm they can feed off the land. But once they try to impose statehood on the lands they have conquered they will face the same budgetary issues that any other state does. And I believe they are very ill equippeed when it comes to running the finances of a state.
My hunch is that they will continue to wreak havoc for some time but will sooner or later implode. Certainly their dream of a sustainable "caliphate" is a pipe dream only.
You may have a point but I wouldn't be quite so sure Marcus. From what I read, their level of internal organisation is very good. You've gotta remember all those head-chopping vids are just from the PR department. They're the Islamic State's tourism board, as it were. That said, it is a tad hard to see all those head-choppers demobbed and working as bank clerks etc. But the oil revenue is the big issue I feel. Cut that off and there is no viable state.
But there is a longer term problem, no matter what. So suppose the IS head-choppers get deposed from within. Now you've got the Ba'athis and disenchanted tribal leaders and what not. It's not like the Sunni factions are suddenly going to be back at a negotiating table in Baghdad anytime soon. The prospect of regional instability may be a long term one, even if there was a more conciliatory government in Baghdad (and their probably won't be).
Sorry to say but the Baath ideology that could have served both sects well is now so tainted and seen as "sunni" that it's a path impossible to take. Regrettably.
The Baath, regardless of what YOU seem to think of it, was from the beginning a quite successful and non-sectarian movement.
Pan-arab secular socialism was the aim. OK it was hijacked by Saddam, but the ideology lives on without him. And it's quite sound at its core.
That sounds a bit like the old saying that Communism would've been fine except for Stalin.
How can you say Ba'athism is sound without any examples of a successful state? And does it not sound suspiciously close to Fascism anyway?
It's not like the Sunni factions are suddenly going to be back at a negotiating table in Baghdad anytime soon.
Never say never. They are not stupid. They understand what ISIS is.
But the question is what is Iraq to become? For heaven's sake, we sent weapons to the government in Baghdad with the hope they would be passed on to the Kurds, but that didn't happen. So we have had to send supplies directly. Revenue sharing has been a non-starter apparently because the government has been skimming. The Kurds started pumping their own oil, but even that has hit snags. There is an oil tanker anchored off the coast of Texas waiting for a buyer, but it is held up in our courts by Baghdad because of the dispute over who the revenue belongs to. This all the while that ISIS is crawling all over their country. They need to get their act together.
The Baath, regardless of what YOU seem to think of it, was from the beginning a quite successful and non-sectarian movement.
Wasn't their ideology inspired by the Nazi party in Germany?
I think what Chikitita from Iraq has to say on Ba'ath regimes is not quotable here, considering the rules... ;)
Oh, cussin' is perfectly fine as long as you attribute it to someone else! ;)
(Hmmm... there might have to be restrictions on statements like: "hey, my dog says you're an a&shole").
So how 'bout "the voices in my head say..."?
I think the voices are laughing....
Not sure if we have an official blog psychiatrist ...
You could always ask Lynnette.
Hmmm...are those little voices psychic? :p
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