US targets Syrian oil field in anti-ISIS air strike

The United States and its partners launched a new round of strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria on Wednesday.

According to Agency France-Presse, strikes involved targeting an oil field in Syria near the towns of Al-Omar and Deir ez-Zor, journalist Zaid Benjamin reported.

“I can confirm that US military and Arab partner forces are undertaking additional strikes today against ISIL terrorists in Syria,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said on Wednesday, using the Obama-administration’s preferred language for the group formerly known as ISIS that today identifies as the Islamic State. “These operations are ongoing, so we will not provide additional details at this time. We will do so later as operationally appropriate.”

Later, the Pentagon confirmed that less than a dozen aircraft are involved in the latest attack. US Central Command (CENTCOM), meanwhile, confirmed that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also participated.

The latest round of strikes was acknowledged on Wednesday just shy of 12 a.m. local time in Syria and marks at least the third consecutive wave of attacks launched by the US and allied partners since Monday. Prior to then, the US had only attacked Islamic State militants in neighboring Iraq.

Israel downs Syrian warplane

Israel shot down a Syrian warplane on Tuesday.

The incident coincided with air strikes the United States and client states have mounted on ISIS strongholds in Syria. It has been three decades since Israel downed a Syrian fighter plane.

The aggression, incidentally, was not against ISIS, but Assad’s regime itself, which seems to be what Obama’s latest operation is all about: Regime change in Syria, using ISIS as a pretext.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the civil war, said the warplane had been bombing areas outside Quneitra, a Syrian town near the Israeli-held side of the frontier, at the time it was shot down. It said the pilot had bailed out. Syria described the downing of the aircraft as an act of aggression.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, commenting on the incident, said Israel “will not allow any element – neither a state nor a terrorist group – to threaten our security and violate our sovereignty”.

Israeli military sources said the plane apparently crossed by accident into Israeli-controlled airspace.

In his statement, Yaalon also seemed to raise that possibility, saying Israel would respond strongly to perceived threats “whether they stemmed from a mistake or were deliberate”.

The incident seemed to be aimed at escalating the conflict.

Leave ISIS to the homies

There was a great cry throughout the land. Non-stop propaganda from a monolithic media-military- congressional complex had convinced a petrified people of the need for a military offensive in Iraq and Syria, in pursuit of a pack of wild dogs: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL). A plurality of Americans canvassed has indicated that it is in the United States’ interest to take military action against ISIS.

ilana_nuut2The people wailed and railed. The Leader, they complained, lacked a plan to combat this force, which, they had been told, posed a grave existential threat to them. The war network led in jingoism. What precisely did President Barack Obama say that had Chucky Krauthammer and the chicken hawks in the Fox News coop so exercised? He told reporters that he didn’t have a strategy yet for confronting ISIS “on a regional level.” Anchor Megyn Kelly—her show has degenerated into a rah-rah, flag-waving, hour-long session, bemoaning diminished US world hegemony—poured scorn on one wag’s non-combative suggestion: Let the Arab League deal with ISIS.

Throughout, ISIS’s neighbors, Israel included, didn’t seem particularly concerned about the barbarians at the gate. The promise of eternal American intervention had, likely, enabled inertia and apathy among regional players.

Despotism and populism finally coalesced. Driven by polls and craving plaudits from the pundits, the president cobbled together a strategy. Within hours, love was in the air again. Members of a lovelorn liberal media scurried about like teens on prom night. It had been a long time since they felt the same rush about Obama. In his televised address to the nation, the president committed to increasing the ongoing airstrikes in Iraq; said he would take the fight to ISIL in Syria, too. The hormonal monitors at CNN spiked with each paternal promise of protection. “If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” roared Big Daddy.

Gullible Americans did not seem to compute that King Hussein’s commitment to take care of them was preposterous. Consider: “The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism” did not even mention the threat of Islamist terror. Like his predecessor, this president and his malevolent minions consider the signal danger to the homeland (i.e. to their reign) to emanate from local yokels: “anti-government militia groups,” “white supremacy extremists,” “sovereign citizen nationalists,” and, naturally, “Puerto Rican nationalists.” And, while He has thrown a bone to the ISIS-obsessed boneheads at home, the homeland’s southern border remains, by His decree, open to all.

Easily the most ludicrous aspect of Dr. Feelgood’s “plan” is the promise of “military assistance to the Syrian opposition”: “I again call on Congress, again, to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.”

Into the Cannibal's Pot

There is no telling the good Syrian opposition from the bad. If anything, there is a “growing preponderance of radical Islamists in the Syrian rebel force fighting Assad’s army,” seconds the outstanding intelligence provider DEBKAfile. Currently fighting ISIS is Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s embattled leader, whom Hussein, McCain and Clinton wanted to unseat.

The unseating of yet another extremely effective law-and-order leader, Saddam Hussein, is what unleashed ISIS. Despite what Delphic Oracle Dana Perino says in praise of her “prescient” boss’s “strategizing”; Bush 43 owns ISIS. Iraq has gone from a rogue state to a failed state, where mad dogs thrive. Fidelity to historical fact demands that Bush get Brownie points for that.

Mere weeks back, when Israel and Hamas were locking horns, two organic coalitions emerged in the Middle East. By DEBKAfile’s telling, the one “regional coalition” in the conflict included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, the UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and … the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. The rival axis consisted of Hamas, Qatar, Turkey and a turkey named Kerry (John). U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and “a brace of European ministers” joined this last group, known in the neighborhood as the “Save Hamas Squad.”

The first alliance was borne of “Netanyahu’s dilemma: Back Obama’s save Hamas policy, or fight for its downfall with Egypt and Saudis.”

My point? America thinks that it must and can be a force for good in the Middle East. Closer examination suggests that the region’s players march to their own drumbeat. In “Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923,” Efraim and Inari Karsh marshaled prodigious scholarship to show that, “Twentieth-century Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate.” The trend obtains.

American efforts notwithstanding, Assad is hanging on for dear life. The Israeli government is already endeavoring to “radically change its tack on Syria, reversing a policy and military strategy that were long geared to opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad.” U.S. meddlers should grow a brain too and quit degrading the Syrian Army. Leave ISIS to Syria, Tehran and Tel Aviv.

Let the locals take out their trash.

© 2014 by Ilana Mercer

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Lavrov: Syria and Iran are natural allies in fight against ISIS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iraq and Syria are natural allies in the fight against ISIS.

Lavrov spoke at the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq, in Paris on 15 September 2014.

The foreign minister warned that “aggressive actions by the terrorist organization” threaten the future of Iraq as well as neighboring Syria.

“The achievements of the “Islamic State” and many other terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere would have been impossible without financial and material support from outside, including supply of weapons and purchase of oil from fields controlled by terrorists. Shutting down all the channels of such support must become a matter of priority.”

Earlier, President Obama declared that he would bomb the forces of ISIS in Syria without Syrian participation, but Vladimir Putin has warned that any such unilateral action in Syria would be clearly seen as “an act of aggression”.

Meanwhile Syria has asked Washington to engage in military and intelligence collaboration to defeat their mutual enemy, inviting US congressmen and senators to visit Damascus to discuss joint action against the jihadis.

Lavrov urged countries in the counterterrorist coalition to “demonstrate genuine unity, not allowing disputes between them on other issues to hamper the efficiency of joint counter-terrorist efforts”.

“The extremists will try to make use of any differences in our positions to undermine the united front against them. A truly collective approach should be developed through putting our minds and potentials together. No one can pretend that he knows better than others what kind of strategy we’ll need to help the region. And of course, we must build our common action on a solid foundation of United Nations Charter and UN counter-terrorist instruments and mechanisms. We face the same enemies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, and there is no room for double standards,” Lavrov told the conference.

He said it made no sense to try and distinguish between “bad” and “good” terrorists and that such reckless policies had lead to terrible consequences in Libya and Mali.

EU members buy oil from ISIS

A senior European Union official has revealed that some EU member states have purchased oil from ISIS Takfiri militants despite their rhetoric against the group.

In a briefing to the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee, EU Ambassador to Iraq Jana Hybaskova said some European countries have purchased crude from the ISIS.

She, however, refused to disclose any names despite pressure by some Parliament members to do so.

The EU official also warned against any support by the West for separatist Kurdish groups who, she said, would destabilize the Middle East.

Earlier reports accused Turkey of buying and transporting oil from both the ISIS and Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. According to the reports, Western intelligence agencies could track ISIS oil shipments as they moved across Iraq and Turkey.

ISIS reportedly controls eleven oil fields in northern Iraq as well as Syria’s Raqqa province.

US intelligence officials estimate that the Takfiri militants earn more than USD 3 million a day from oil profit, theft, human trafficking and ransom. They say the militants sell oil and other products via established networks in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Turkey has denied reports of involvement in ISIS’s oil smuggling operations.

About 40 countries to take part in US anti-ISIS campaign

The US is keeping quiet about which countries are taking part in the fight against ISIS.

Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS that nearly 40 nations have agreed to contribute to the fight, but “it’s not appropriate to start announcing” what roles each will play.

However, an international conference on the ISIS situation took place in Paris on Monday, with world leaders set to debate the anti-ISIS coalition. The meeting includes representatives of some 30 countries, but excludes Iraq’s neighbors Syria and Iran.

Turkey and Jordan, key US allies in the region, are thought to be reluctant to intervene directly.

Turkey is a NATO member, and borders both Syria and Iraq from the north. Despite this, it won’t let the US use its facilities in the mission against the IS, a government official in Ankara told AFP.

Turkey was also absent during the signing of a joint communiqué on the situation in Iraq on Thursday.

The US State Department meanwhile praised The Netherlands for “leading an effort” to stop the foreign fighters supporting terrorism from arriving in the country.

Britain became the first country to officially join the military operation. UK Prime Minister David Cameron called IS “the embodiment of evil” on Sunday, following the group’s beheading of its third Western hostage, this time British citizen David Haines. Earlier, IS killed two US journalists in the same manner.

Germany, Australia, France and Canada are also part of the campaign.

Iranian commander says Islamic State is US creation

The commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi lashed out at the US and Israel for sponsoring the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

He said the US created, equipped and armed the ISIL terrorist group with the help of Britain, Israel and oil-rich countries.

Western countries ordered ISIL to carry out “crimes and large-scale massacre of Shiites and Sunnis on the pretext of a sectarian Sunni war on Shiites” General Naqdi said, addressing a gathering of thousands of Basijis in Lorestan province.

He noted that Western countries wanted to introduce a tainted image of Islam to the world by displaying horrible crimes and savage wickedness against children, women and innocent people with extreme brutality and savagery.

General Naqdi said every now and then the Western powers attack the terrorists to pretend that they are fighting terrorism while American, British and Israeli military advisors are supporting them in the battlefield.

“The outcome of the actions of this terrorist current in Syria was unprecedented as it caused people’s high turnout in that country’s presidential election, which set as yet another example of the inefficiency of weapons and the victory of the resistance movement against the global arrogance,” he added.

Also, in similar remarks in August General Naqdi held the US and certain European states responsible for providing logistics for the terrorist ISIL to find an alibi to boost its buildup in the region.

“American’s intangible presence in the region has been a major cause for the creation of the terrorist ISIL group,” Naqdi said, addressing people in a city near Tehran last month.

He also condemned the US Congress for approving an aid budget for the ISIL, and said, “The European countries, including France, arm the ISIL and the US and the West’s attempts are not aimed at any goal but getting closer to Iran” borders.

On Monday, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri warned of the malicious spread of Islamophobia.

“The world public opinion is aware that the phenomena such as the al-Nusrah Front, the ISIL, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the region, have been created by the intelligence services of the US and the White House’s allies and have a mission to defame Islam to prevent the people’s conversion to the real Islam and to spread Islamophobia and weaken the regional resistance front,” General Massoud Jazayeri said.

Source: farsnews.com

SA Muslims reject ISIS

The Islamic Unity Convention (IUC) has joined several South African Muslim bodies in condemning the actions of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis).

It said on Wednesday that core tenets of Islam included love, peace and unity and justice and that these values were not reserved only for Muslims. “It is therefore with abhorrence that the Islamic Unity Convention witnesses the crimes of the so-called ‘Islamic State’,” it said.

“How can a group claiming to act in the name of Islam … build a caliphate on mass murders and human rights abuses?”

Last week the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) urged the United Nations to put an end to atrocities in the region. The MJC is a faith-based organisation, which was established in 1945. It is one of the oldest religious organisations in South Africa.

“The Muslim Judicial Council unequivocally condemns the group … for the mass murder and destruction committed against innocent civilians, religious minorities, scholars and places of worship,” it said.

“We reject this murderous group, which seeks legitimacy among Muslims by claiming the noble title of the caliphate while it violates Islamic sharia [law] and brings disrepute to the noble legacy of the house of Islam.”

In August, the scholarly body Jamiatul Ulama SA, a body comprising more than 900 Islamic scholars and guides and represents the majority of SA’s Muslims, condemned Isis.

“Warfare does not absolve the members of any Islamic caliphate, state or entity from the responsibility of observance of human rights and the rules of engagement where women, children and the elderly as well as all civilian non-combatants, their lives and property, are never targeted but safeguarded,” it said.

“It therefore comes strange to us that an Islamic state would be founded on atrocities, massacres and extrajudicial punishments that include summary executions of individuals suspected of crimes.”

Source: M&G

The Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate vs BRICS

By Peter Koenig

Ever since the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) expressed their unison through the formation of a joint Development Bank – Durban, South Africa on 27 March 2013 – the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate attempted to divide them. The BRICS constitute some 45% of the world population and close to 30% of global GDP. The BRICS idea is to issue a joint alternative currency, fully detached from the US dollar and its greed economy.

In the meantime a number of other countries would like to join the BRICS, including Argentina, Venezuela, Iran, Mongolia, Malaysia and others, which would result in about one third of the world’s economic output and half of the global inhabitants.

This gives the BRICS a profile of strength surpassing that of the United States and Europe together. China alone is not only already the world’s largest economy, China is also dominating the Asian market of some 4.2 billion people, 60% of the world populations and a combined GDP of about US$ 20 trillion, equivalent to about US$ 25 trillion, when comparing purchasing power with the dollar based US economy of about US$ 17 trillion. Asia registered an average growth rate of almost 8% over the past few years, compared to that of the western world, hovering around 1%.

There is no need for the BRICS to fear US interference – divide to rein – if they are able to solidify their union with solidarity – political and monetary solidarity, as well as common trade policies – and if they have the political will to decouple their economies from the dollar – which is key for the BRICS success.

Sir Obama – here also called the western caliphate – has multiple self-assumed capacities. He creates new caliphates at his service, like the ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Syria); then he bombs them making the world believe they are enemies, condones their beheading of western journalists and clandestinely funds their Middle East crusade for energy and world dominance, a crusade the ISIS are carrying out for the supreme caliphate in the White House.

Washington’s caliphate also has a small army of ‘martyr nations’ fighting (and suffering) for him, like the 28 members of the European Union, led (sic) by a like-minded group of Washington-submissive neoliberal Zionist- Christian puppets. They do what Washington says. Most of them are also pro-forma members of the White House caliphate-driven worldwide war machine, called NATO, and ape the war cries of (the) Fogh (of war) Rasmussen, who is Obama’s master puppet in Europe.

Of course, the caliphate is always ready with sanctions for those who don’t behave, especially sanctions which backfire on others. The latest sanctions on Russia follow a series of billion dollar propaganda of lies and outright falsehoods, demonizing Vladimir Putin and Russia. Interestingly the ‘sanctions’ imposed on Russia by Washington’s supreme warrior – and submissively carried out by his European minions, have been retaliated by Russia by blocking most of agro-trading with Europe, leaving European farmers with rotting vegetables and fruit – billion dollar losses, estimated at a multiple of the ‘sanctions’ costs to Russia.

Neoliberals are short-sighted. They are overwhelmed by greed, instant gratification, and a dream of Full Spectrum Dominance, meaning controlling the world’s resources, money and people. But their caliphate empire is doomed, since lies and deceptions work some of the time with some of the people, but not all the time with all of the people. In fact, the tide is shifting – which is the silver lining of the dark cloud shed by the monstrous, murderous western war machine. The larger of the European minions, Germany and France, and some of the newer ones, Poland, Hungary the Czech Republic, to name but a few, become doubting and hesitating on the way of sanctions. They start feeling the hurt.

The Zionist Anglo-Saxon caliphate needs conflicts and wars in order to survive. Its economy is based on producing weapons and on destruction. World peace would make it collapse.

To attain their objective, the western caliphate is using a thousands-of-year-old wisdom – dividing to rein. By a multi-billion dollar driven worldwide propaganda and lie campaign, Obama and his European bootlickers first confuse the people of nations and continents, distort their common sense, then they drive a wedge between them, between allies, neighbors, common cultures, families – turning friends into foes.

Remember, the dollar is fiat money, not worth the paper it’s printed on. It is produced at will and is called Quantitative Easing (QE), a conveniently confusing euphemism for creating debt held as monetary reserves by nations’ treasuries around the globe.

The same happens with funding of the eternal war machine. Printing money at will has become a pastime justifying wars, mass killings for conquering the world’s resources and people. It will last as long as the rest of the world permits it. It’s already a fading phenomenon. Ten to fifteen years ago close to 90% of the world’s reserves were denominated in US dollars. Today that figure has shrunk to about 60%.

Dividing to rein is precisely what the western caliphate intends to do with the BRICS. Starting with Brazil, Washington attempts through an ugly smear campaign to slander Brazil’s leader, Dilma Rousseff and to defame Brazil’s economy. The former is accused of corruption and nepotism and Brazil’s economy is admonished for runaway private debt that supposedly stands at 80% of GDP. However, the smear-campaigners do not explain that thanks to the increase in private debt Brazil’s GDP has grown by 30% in the last decade. They don’t explain either that Brazil’s foreign debt to GDP ratio stands at less than 57%, compared with that of the US of almost 101.5% and of Germany’s, 82%.

In short, Brazil is doing well. But the presstitute media propaganda masters have managed to lower President Rousseff’s popularity to the point where her re-election in the forthcoming ballot is questionable. Precisely what the Washington caliphate wants.

Imagine an economy-based real contest between the western caliphate and the BRICS. With a GDP of about 30% of the world’s economic output, covering almost 50% of the globe’s population, the BRICS have an average debt to GDP ratio of less than 45 % (2014 estimates) – Brazil (56.8%), Russia (13.4%) India (67.7%), China (22.4%), South Africa (46.1%) – compared to that of the US (101.5%) and of the Eurozone (92.6%).

It is clear that the BRICS have nothing to fear from the western caliphate – and its possible slew of sanctions. However – and this is key – the western Zionist-Anglo-Saxon empire controls the current western monetary system. The FED, Wall Street, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF, an extension of the US Treasury and the FED, as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank of central banks, the privately owned chief manipulator of gold and currencies – hold the western economies hostage. They finance the US/NATO war machine. The western Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled financial system has the same objective of Full Spectrum Dominance, as does the supreme caliphate and assassin-in-chief, Obama, who currently serves the western arms manufacturing and banking oligarchy.

It is therefore high time that the BRICS proceed to reality with their intended alternative currency, completely detached from the dollar and the Wall Street clearing system. The economic viability of such an alternative system stands about 2 to 3 times higher than that of the UD dollar.

An interim measure to stop the western bulldozer may be necessary. Russia and China and a number of other countries have already agreed to trade in their respective currencies and, in particular, to trade hydrocarbons in non-dollar denominated moneys, a measure that will considerably lower demand for the dollar, hence, further lower the dollars viability as a reserve currency. Russia and China are poised to issue a common currency, a basket of currencies that may be joined by other countries willing to detach themselves from the fangs of the western abusive monetary caliphate.

On 3 and 4 September, NATO, the military arm of the western caliphate met in Wales, UK – to discuss its raison d’être. By NATO’s own admission, this was the most important meeting since the collapse of the Soviet Union, attended by 60 heads of state, including the 28 NATO members. As expected the focus of the meeting was to demonize Russia, a key member of the BRICS, with lies and slanders that know hardly any competition in the world of deception. The final briefing report is so full of nonsense and unproven accusations – similar to those continuously aped by Fogh Rasmussen – that Russia doesn’t even need to counter them. The NATO declarations drown in their own lies and deceptions.

It is clear, after 65 years of existence and chaotic disasters all over the world, NATO needs a new identity, a new Cold War, or, better even, a new direct war with Russia – for ‘the security’ of Europe. Therefore, the caliphate Obama, in hopefully one of his last unabashed moves, is requesting that Europe ups its ante – that the European members contribute at least 2% of their GDP to NATO – and let the military industrial complex move more weapons into the European NATO bases. In other words, making Europe more vulnerable to Russian defense attacks, putting the peoples of Europe once again in the firing line. The European leaders (sic) seem to be oblivious to such dangers.

However, there is hope. As said by Pepe Escobar, “The real deal this September is not NATO. It’s the SCO’s summit. Expect the proverbial tectonic shifts of geopolitical plaques in the upcoming meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a shift as far-reaching as when the Ottoman Empire failed at the gates of Vienna in 1683. On the initiative of Russia and China, at the SCO summit, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia will be invited to become permanent members.”

The SCO summit could be the first step towards a new world order – not the notorious “One World Order” proclaimed by the empire of the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate – but a new direction of the world, away from an usurious, abusive financial and monetary system, away from Washington’s objective of Full Spectrum Dominance – towards a new world of sovereign states.

Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.

ISIS a disgrace to true fundamentalism

The problem with terrorist fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior

By Slavoj Žižek.

It has become a commonplace in recent months to observe that the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is the latest chapter in the long story of the anticolonial awakening — the arbitrary borders drawn after World War I by the great powers being redrawn — and simultaneously a chapter in the struggle against the way global capital undermines the power of nation states. But what causes such fear and consternation is another feature of the ISIS regime: The public statements of the ISIS authorities make it clear that the principal task of state power is not the regulation of the welfare of the state’s population (health, the fight against hunger) — what really matters is religious life and the concern that all public life obey religious laws.

This is why ISIS remains more or less indifferent toward humanitarian catastrophes within its domain — its motto is roughly “take care of religion and welfare will take care of itself.” Therein resides the gap that separates the notion of power practiced by ISIS from the modern Western notion of what Michel Foucault called “biopower,” which regulates life in order to guarantee general welfare: the ISIS caliphate totally rejects the notion of biopower.

Does this make ISIS premodern? Instead of seeing in ISIS a case of extreme resistance to modernization, one should rather conceive of it as a case of perverted modernization and locate it into the series of conservative modernizations which began with the Meiji restoration in 19th-century Japan (rapid industrial modernization assumed the ideological form of “restoration,” or the return to the full authority of the emperor).

http://tlaxcala-int.org/upload/gal_8886.gif

The Caliph and his flashy wristwatch, as seen by Carlos Latuff

The well-known photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, with an exquisite Swiss watch on his arm, is here emblematic: ISIS is well organized in web propaganda as well as financial dealings, although these ultra-modern practices are used to propagate and enforce an ideologico-political vision that is not so much conservative as a desperate move to fix clear hierarchic delimitations. However, we should not forget that even this image of a strictly disciplined and regulated fundamentalist organization is not without its ambiguities: is religious oppression not (more than) supplemented by the way local ISIS military units seem to function? While the official ISIS ideology rails against Western permissiveness, the daily practice of the ISIS gangs includes full-scale grotesque orgies, including robberies, gang rapes, torture and murder of infidels.

Upon a closer look, the apparent heroic readiness of ISIS to risk everything also appears more ambiguous. Long ago Friedrich Nietzsche perceived how Western civilization was moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion or commitment. Unable to dream, tired of life, he takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security: “A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. ‘We have discovered happiness,’ say the Last Men, and they blink.”

It may appear that the split between the permissive First World and the fundamentalist reaction to it runs more and more along the lines of the opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural wealth and dedicating one’s life to some transcendent cause. Is this antagonism not the one between what Nietzsche called “passive” and “active” nihilism? We in the West are the Nietzschean Last Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the struggle up to their self-destruction. William Butler Yeats’ “Second Coming” seems perfectly to render our present predicament: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This is an excellent description of the current split between anemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. “The best” are no longer able fully to engage, while “the worst” engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism.

But are the terrorist fundamentalists really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the United States — the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the nonbelievers’ way of life. If today’s so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by nonbelievers. Why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist’s search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued and fascinated by the sinful life of the nonbelievers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation. This is why the so-called fundamentalists of ISIS are a disgrace to true fundamentalism.

It is here that Yeats’ diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: The passionate intensity of a mob bears witness to a lack of true conviction. Deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction — their violent outbursts are a proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper. The fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization.

The problem with terrorist fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority toward them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that they already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists of ISIS and those like them really lack is precisely a dose of that true conviction of one’s own superiority.

Source: Tlaxcala

White House says beheading video authentic

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that a video showing the beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants was authentic.

“The US Intelligence Community has analyzed the recently released video showing US citizen Steven Sotloff and has reached the judgment that it is authentic,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

The video showing Sotloff’s beheading was released on Tuesday, just two weeks after the ISIS militants released a video showing the murder of another American journalist, James Foley.

Sotloff, 31, went missing in Syria a year ago.

Source: Itar TASS

ISIS video a fake say experts

We have been fed so much fake government war propaganda in recent decades

Video experts observed that the video showing the actual beheading of US journalist James Foley was so professionally produced and well-scripted, to the extent that portions of it appeared to be just being acted out.
Two video experts were one in observing that portions of the purported video were give-aways that the beheading video was intended primarily for propaganda purposes.

One security expert, who had credible experience of scrutinizing videos of beheading, noted a very strange thing about Foley’s video – in the seconds before the executioner jab the knife into Foley’s neck, there was no single sign that he was terrified.

“My experience of these things is when the knife gets close the knees buckle and you become like a rag doll, whereas this guy seemed to sit upright. It could be that that particular knife wasn’t the one that killed him, that that was a play-acting thing,” the expert told The Times.

After the part where the executioner was shown cutting Foley’s head, the video fades.

The next part of the video already showed Foley’s decapitated head while he was upturned back. His hands were handcuffed. But his right ankle already had bruises hinting that he had been kneeling on the ground longer than what was shown in the video. And most importantly, a different looking knife lies on the ground, next to Foley’s corpse.

“The guy is obviously dead but it may be that particular scene was acted and that was why he is staying stiff,” the security expert noted.

Joe Fields, of Breakthru Productions, a recording studio in London, on the other hand noted that the video was well-produced as both Foley and the masked man appeared to be speaking following well-scripted lines.

What was noticeable for Fields was the battery-powered microphone clipped to the front of Foley’s robe. He said that the microphone looks like a professional one used in television studios so as the audio can be recorded without the need of editing or sound dubbing.

With all these elements present, it could be considered that the man masked in black, speaking with a British accent, was not the one who killed Foley. Rather, the man was just acting out the part.

Source: ibitimes.com

FBI, DHS says ISIS no threat

The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the U.S. homeland from the Islamic State militant group.

An intelligence bulletin, issued to state and local law enforcement, says while there’s no credible threat to the U.S. as a result of recent American airstrikes in Iraq, officials remain concerned that Islamic State supporters could attack overseas targets with little warning.

U.S. law enforcement has been trying to identify Islamic State sympathizers who could help export the group’s brand of violent jihad to the United States.

U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State group intensified after militants appeared to behead American journalist James Foley. The group called Foley’s killing revenge for previous strikes against militants in Iraq.

It is not sure if the decapitation was real or faked.

A Western intelligence agency has been assisting the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad fight militants of Isis (now called the ‘Islamic State’), by providing details on the location of militant leaders for targeted air strikes.

The information was passed to Assad’s government by German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which acted as an intermediary, a source told the Independent.

Source: www.local12.com/ibitimes.com

Isis is Islam

“ISIL” is how President Barack Obama refers to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He pronounces it as one would the last syllable in “Moishel,” giving it the ring of a Yiddish diminutive. Yiddish adds an “-l or –ele” suffix to signify affection. “ISIL,” the more expansive appellation preferred by the president, stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

ilanaObama was set to tee off on the golf course, when the outfit released footage of its latest bloodletting in Iraq: a video clip depicting the handsome head of American photojournalist James Foley being sawed off by a masked man with a British accent – yes, the West either admits these Muhammadans through mass immigration, or grows them at home in hothouses of multiculturalism.

The life of another journalist, Steven Sotloff, now hangs by a thread.

Unlike our Israeli and European allies, the U.S. government does not haggle for the lives of its countrymen. In fairness, Obama had at least made attempts to rescue poor Mr. Foley. His predecessor, Genghis Bush, sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to spare Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, of blessed memory, who also met the most ghastly fate imaginable: beheading.

Even before these men were headless, they were faceless to Bush and his followers.

From Martha’s Vineyard, Obama addressed the media. His response to the beheading of Mr. Foley exhilarated the groupies at CNN. “The entire world is appalled,” the president intoned solemnly. It shocks the conscience of the world. Foley was a good man who stood for “hope and civility.” The killers are craven cowards. They have no ideology, only an “empty vision.” They offer their neighbors nothing but “nihilistic” horror.

“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. No faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day,” asserted Obama, before scampering back to his game.

Don’t be too harsh on the White House’s current occupant for symbolically severing the ISIS snake head from its Islamic body and tail. His predecessor was as devoted to promoting the Religion of Peace pie-in-the-sky. When it comes to anodyne assurances about Islam’s compatibility with diversity and democracy, Bush was every bit the delusional dhimmi Obama is.

As Paul Sperry documented in “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington,” Bush inaugurated the practice of always mentioning the nation’s churches and synagogues in tandem with its mosques. As did he promise Muslim leaders never to pair “Islam” with “terrorism,” a promise he kept. And never did Bush utter a peep about “Islamic terrorism,” emphasizing only equal-opportunity terrorism.

Bush hosted regular iftaar fast breakers and had selected as his “expert” on Islam a dabbler – a law professor called David Forte who doubled up as a “religious pluralist.” Forte crafted one of the Bush administration’s central stupidities: the notion that the essential Islam has been hijacked by a few bad-a–ed Arabs. Bush was forever offering incantations about Islam’s compatibility with liberty and tolerance; a faith based on love, not hate, ad nauseam.
Into the Cannibal's Pot

As the ideologues that purport to be saving us from the scourge of Islamic terrorism see it, the Religion of Peace was doing what it does best – inspire peace and prosperity – when, out of nowhere, radicals materialized and derailed it. This is contradicted by history as well as an important primary source: the Quran.

The first attests that the sword has always been integral to Islam, and that conversion has invariably meant conquest and carnage. The second proves that Islam’s alleged “hijackers” have done no more than heed their scriptures. The soldiers of ISIS or ISIL are obedient Muslim. They’ve obeyed the Quran. “The Call to Jihad” instructs Muslims: “When you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till you have killed and wounded many of them.”

“Holy war, which is demanded in Islamic law, is not defensive war as the Western students of Islam would like to tell us,” cautions Serge Trifkovic, author of “The Sword of the Prophet.” Even apologists for Islam à la John Esposito admit that murderous missionizing is a filament of the Islamic faith: “Jihad means to fight to spread Islam, not just to defend it, and to wage war against [Jews and Christians] who refuse Muslim rule.”

What can the aspiring dhimmi anticipate? Peace has its place in Islam, promises Sperry, who has mined the Quran, but “only after the entire world is conquered in the name of Allah.” And even then, peace is the province of Muslims, mainly, while others are subdued and must pay for protection.

The Quran’s ruthless particularism runs counter to the universal concepts of justice and love of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. The tenet of religious literalism, moreover, explains why Islam has changed little over 1,400 years. Unlike the Jewish (and no doubt Christian) holy texts that have been reinterpreted by the sages over the centuries, the Quran has not – its decrees are not debatable and are to be taken literally.

Before being hushed, the greatest theologian alive – no, he’s not Pope Francis I – worried out loud that Islam was a closed and irrational system, impermeable to reform. Pope Benedict XVI was threatened, in 2006, for marshaling yet more primary sources to show that Islam does not brook reason or reformation and is commanded to will the world to its ways.

You might say that the term “radical Islam” is something of a redundancy. Islam is radical, and by extension, so are its true believers. Some, like ISIS or ISIL, are simply more devoted than others.

© 2014 by Ilana Mercer

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