Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

Turks actually sealing the border so the reporter jumped the gun by slagging the West too soon

[Shadowlord]

That sounds like "Obama says SEAL THE DAMN BORDER ALREADY" to me. Second article looks like gibberish.

[Loud Whispers]

Second article is translated from Greek, so that is where the gibber comes from

[Zangi]

NATO is harbouring the Islamic State
Why France’s brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke, and an insult to the victims of the Paris attacks
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/europe-is-harbouring-the-islamic-state-s-backers-d24db3a24a40#.p9evcid8d

Then in July 2011, a $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline deal was announced, and a preliminary agreement duly signed by Assad.
Later that year, the US, UK, France and Israel were ramping up covert assistance to rebel factions in Syria to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

Huh... I didn't know Assad signed an oil pipeline deal with Iran/Iraq and encouragement from Russia.
6 months later... rebels find Western backing.  I suppose that pipeline deal won't happen if Assad is out...

It would explain that blind eye from the West...  Well, the West never really did give a damn how brutal the Middle Eastern gov'ts were unless convenient.

[Loud Whispers]

NATO is harbouring the Islamic State
Why France’s brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke, and an insult to the victims of the Paris attacks
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/europe-is-harbouring-the-islamic-state-s-backers-d24db3a24a40#.p9evcid8d

Then in July 2011, a $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline deal was announced, and a preliminary agreement duly signed by Assad.
Later that year, the US, UK, France and Israel were ramping up covert assistance to rebel factions in Syria to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.”

Huh... I didn't know Assad signed an oil pipeline deal with Iran/Iraq and encouragement from Russia.
6 months later... rebels find Western backing.  I suppose that pipeline deal won't happen if Assad is out...

It would explain that blind eye from the West...  Well, the West never really did give a damn how brutal the Middle Eastern gov'ts were unless convenient.

Dammit, every time

O I  L
I     O
L O L

[martinuzz]

Two Syrians that have been arrested in the Geneva area this week in the light of an ongoing Swiss anti-terrorist investigation, have been charged with the production and distribution of not only explosives, but also of posion gas. Traces of both were found in the vehicle they were arrested in.

Both the explosives and the gas, as well as 4 more suspects are still at large. According to the Geneva newspaper, police and intelligence services are very concerned, as "more and more very concerning facts come to light".
In response to the incident, France has also increased it's police and intelligence manpower in the region near the Swiss border.

Heh, let's hope that Homeland episode where they are making Sarin gas did not give them terrorists any bright ideas.

[smjjames]

Did they say what kind of poison gas though?

[martinuzz]

Nope, at least not in the article my newspaper wrote on it.

[Strife26]

Depends how competent and ambitious they were, going from chlorine at the bottom up through sarin and various nasty things above that.

[Loud Whispers]

They could've also been such shit chemists that they made the poison gas by accident

[inteuniso]

Devil's Advocate tiem!

The Islamic State is pulling all the murderous psychopaths out of the world and putting them in one place, Syria AKA that place that used to declare war on its neighbors every year.

It's my new favorite theory that the US is just trying to make all of Carlin's dreams come true. Also, can you imagine what a shitshow the last 10 years would have been if all the oil from Iraq was under Saddam Hussein's control?

Seriously, DF community. We know how the world works. We know how we work. If the political game isn't played perfectly (which usually means devolving into sociopathic murder-approving shitbags) shit could get a whole. lot. worse.

I also realize this is slippery slope fallacy, which is why I wholeheartedly recommend that this message be sent out on an existential frequency: get your shit together. It doesn't matter if all you do today is save an earthworm: work to improve the condition of life on this planet. You get better and better opportunities the more the years advance and who knows; seven years down the line we can look back fondly at this blood-soaked point in space-time and say "Damn. I'm glad we know NEVER to do that again. Good thing we have free energy now. Food, shelter, and water are no longer concerns. Homelessness has been eradicated. Poverty no longer exists. We're living in a post-scarcity society. I'm okay with this."

[bobchaos]

People all over the western world have come to fear ISIS, but believe it or not they are not that interested in us. ISIS is a Sunni Caliphate, which means their first order of business is subduing the muslim world and "converting" Shia muslims (converting often translates to murdering ). The only reason they encourage the young to perform terrorist actions in the West is to drum up recruitment. Some random kid blows up a plane in France in the name of ISIS, NATO responds by dropping bombs on ISIS territory, and ISIS gets some great propaganda pictures for their magazine publication Dabiq. That simple.

Their worst crime is not a handful of terrorist acts in western countries, it's the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Shia muslims that the media is mostly failing to address or even report.

[inteuniso]

Don't forget the genocide of Yazidi to Turkey's-most-definitely-did-not-genocide-Armenians joy.

[Loud Whispers]

People all over the western world have come to fear ISIS, but believe it or not they are not that interested in us.

Not interested in the USA. Western world =/= USA
Even then they still want the USA neutralized. I'd say ISIS is not interested in the USA same way it isn't interested in Israel; it's on the conquer for later list.

ISIS is a Sunni Caliphate, which means their first order of business is subduing the muslim world and "converting" Shia muslims (converting often translates to murdering ). The only reason they encourage the young to perform terrorist actions in the West is to drum up recruitment. Some random kid blows up a plane in France in the name of ISIS, NATO responds by dropping bombs on ISIS territory, and ISIS gets some great propaganda pictures for their magazine publication Dabiq. That simple.

ISIS has multiple short and long term goals with accompanying strategies to achieve them. "The only reason they encourage the young to perform terrorist actions in the West is to drum up recruitment." They are not just encouraging the young, they are sending back their veterans and telling their recruits to stop coming to Iraq and Syria and instead focus on their home front. Not just in the West, but across the world. They are increasing their recruitment efforts but you have also not asked where those recruits are going. With the coming of the new year it'll be nearing two years since Bagdhadi changed strategy from directing foreign fighters to his front to their own homefronts to create volcanoes of jihad across the world. Global influence. Since then Islamist groups that swore loyalty to ISIS like Boko Haram have gone from being tied to ISIS in name only to having ISIS send foreign fighters to train them in their tactics. Their first order of business was invading Syria, their second order of business was capturing Iraq's materiel. These victories gave them legitimacy in the Sunni world, adopting the Caliphate title and spreading the brand across the world further done so. They need to remove some very major opponents before they are capable of slaughtering the Shia who are protected by the militaries of Syria, Iran and Russia. Don't forget their ultimate dream is to fulfill Muhammed's prophecy; the city of Heraclius is already conquered and now only Julius Caesar's remains.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been deemed by his fighters to be the first Caliph since the Ottoman empire, aims to extend an ‘Islamic State’ into Europe.
Rush O Muslims to your state. It is your state. Syria is not for Syrians and Iraq is not for Iraqis. The land is for the Muslims, all Muslims. … This is my advice to you. If you hold to it you will conquer Rome and own the world, if Allah wills,”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/islamic-state-vows-conquest-rome-soldiers-islamic-/#ixzz36Q5ZI5FF

ISIS's strategy to stop focusing on Syria and Iraq and have their foreign fighters try to start global jihad on their homefronts is one of necessity; they are losing ground in Syria and Iraq and cannot hold ground there even in spite of foreign fighters. ISIS does not care about portraying themselves as victims on their magazine covers (or twitter posts in this case), they want to appear as victors - only with victory can they prove their legitimacy. Losing ground and getting reamed by aerial bombardment does not reek of victory and is not a very appealing recruitment message, one need only look on youtube to see very sad jihadists weeping as their foritified positions are vaporized by several thousand pounds of explosives to see how worried they are about demoralization. So attack everywhere across the world - cheap, governments are much less capable of air striking an enemy they must first find amongst their own subjects or citizens, and it draws attention away from the fact that the global state they're trying to build grows smaller and more broken every day.
This pattern is reflected across the world where ISIS affiliates like Boko Haram or Al-Shabab have changed strategy from holding ground to just inflicting as much damage as possible on soft targets. Think of how an invasion of Rome or Paris would be fatally impossible for ISIS, but an attack much simpler with pretty much the same morale boost to their fighters and their global image in the Sunni world. ISIS is weak, grows weaker - so it must appear strong. It's pretty much devolving back to its insurgency phase.

Their worst crime is not a handful of terrorist acts in western countries, it's the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Shia muslims that the media is mostly failing to address or even report.

Probably because Western media also wants to drum up support for military action versus Syria and Iran who both have protecting Shiites as one of their goals in the war. Their cleansing of the Christians is even more total and complete; at least the Yazidis have found respite in the Kurds and the Shiites found some protection from foreign powers. People are forecasting that Christianity itself will be dead in the middle east within two generations, destroyed in the place of its birth.

Spoiler: Spoiler because very long (click to show/hide)

From 1910 to 2010, the percentage of the Middle Eastern population that was Christian — in countries like Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan — continued to decline; once 14 percent of the population, Christians now make up roughly 4 percent. (In Iran and Turkey, they’re all but gone.) In Lebanon, the only country in the region where Christians hold significant political power, their numbers have shrunk over the past century, to 34 percent from 78 percent of the population. Low birthrates have contributed to this decline, as well as hostile political environments and economic crisis. Fear is also a driver. The rise of extremist groups, as well as the perception that their communities are vanishing, causes people to leave.

For more than a decade, extremists have targeted Christians and other minorities, who often serve as stand-ins for the West. This was especially true in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, which caused hundreds of thousands to flee. ‘‘Since 2003, we’ve lost priests, bishops and more than 60 churches were bombed,’’ Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil, said. With the fall of Saddam Hussein, Christians began to leave Iraq in large numbers, and the population shrank to less than 500,000 today from as many as 1.5 million in 2003.

The Arab Spring only made things worse. As dictators like Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya were toppled, their longstanding protection of minorities also ended. Now, ISIS is looking to eradicate Christians and other minorities altogether. The group twists the early history of Christians in the region — their subjugation by the sword — to legitimize its millenarian enterprise. Recently, ISIS posted videos delineating the second-class status of Christians in the caliphate. Those unwilling to pay the jizya tax or to convert would be destroyed, the narrator warned, as the videos culminated in the now-­infamous scenes of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians in Libya being marched onto the beach and beheaded, their blood running into the surf.

The future of Christianity in the region of its birth is now uncertain. ‘‘How much longer can we flee before we and other minorities become a story in a history book?’’ says Nuri Kino, a journalist and founder of the advocacy group Demand for Action. According to a Pew study, Christians face religious persecution in more countries than any other religious group. ‘‘ISIL has put a spotlight on the issue,’’ says Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, whose parents are from the region and who advocates on behalf of Eastern Christians. ‘‘Christianity is under an existential threat.’’

[...] Like most of the refugees in the parish house, Bassam wasn’t planning on returning to Syria. He was searching for a way to the West. His brother Yussef moved to Chicago two years earlier. He didn’t have a job yet, but his wife worked at Walmart. Maybe they would help. He wanted to leave like everyone else, although it would hasten the end of Christianity in Syria. No one would go home after what ISIS had done. ‘‘Christians will all leave,’’ he said. ‘‘What can I do? I have four kids, I can’t leave them here to die.’’

[..]It has been nearly impossible for two U.S. presidents — Bush, a conservative evangelical; and Obama, a progressive liberal — to address the plight of Christians explicitly for fear of appearing to play into the crusader and ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ narratives the West is accused of embracing. In 2007, when Al Qaeda was kidnapping and killing priests in Mosul, Nina Shea, who was then a U.S. commissioner for religious freedom, says she approached the secretary of state at the time, Condoleezza Rice, who told her the United States didn’t intervene in ‘‘sectarian’’ issues. Rice now says that protecting religious freedom in Iraq was a priority both for her and for the Bush administration. But the targeted violence and mass Christian exodus remained unaddressed. ‘‘One of the blind spots of the Bush administration was the inability to grapple with this as a direct byproduct of the invasion,’’ says Timothy Shah, the associate director of Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project.

More recently, the White House has been criticized for eschewing the term ‘‘Christian’’ altogether. The issue of Christian persecution is politically charged; the Christian right has long used the idea that Christianity is imperiled to rally its base. When ISIS massacred Egyptian Copts in Libya this winter, the State Department came under fire for referring to the victims merely as ‘‘Egyptian citizens.’’ Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, says, ‘‘When ISIS is no longer said to have religious motivations nor the minorities it attacks to have religious identities, the Obama administration’s caution about religion becomes excessive.’’

Even if ISIS is defeated, the fate of religious minorities in Syria and Iraq remains bleak. Unless minorities are given some measure of security, those who can leave are likely to do so. Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute, a conservative policy center, says that the situation has grown so dire that Iraqi Christians must either be allowed full residency in Kurdistan, including the right to work, or helped to leave. Others argue that it is essential that minorities have their own autonomous region. Exile is a death knell for these communities, activists say. ‘‘We’ve been here as an ethnicity for 6,000 years and as Christians for 1,700 years,’’ says Dr. Srood Maqdasy, a member of the Kurdish Parliament. ‘‘We have our own culture, language and tradition. If we live within other communities, all of this will be dissolved within two generations.’’

From this article, even longer than the excerpts I posted

They're fucked basically. They no longer have a homeland, no great powers have any vested interest in them, even if they escape to friendly countries there's no longer enough of them that they are now doomed to die out over time by process of assimilation. Haha, in my lifetime I'd never thought it'd get this bad this quickly. I suppose this is what a long future of defeats looks like.

[bobchaos]

*snip*

While I agree that they would want the US neutralized, it's because it's a strong opponent and pretty universally hated by ISIS's target audience. They would have a hard time putting any religious spin on the conquest of the US. It's not exactly loaded with Muslim holy sites o.O I'd also think that if there was any way they could avoid getting in a fight with the US they would. No one want to pick a fight with the guy that can field more carriers than most of the rest of the world combined o.O That said, if you wanna play on the world stage, you gotta play with the superpower, no going around it. I think if they could defeat them in the field or home front (in some hypothetical scenario where they actually become a significant military threat capable of projecting power globally like most NATO countries), they would not attempt an invasion of the US mainland. Perhaps a few symbolic conquests of extraterritorial possessions. That said, successful conquerors usually don't stop just because they don't have a claim to the next land in line XD Historically they keep going until they reach the limit of their logistical/military capacities or get violently thrown back. Once you get powerful enough, generally speaking your goals and long term plans can be summarized as "maintain and/or expand power".

Guess my point is (and the point of my previous post) is people are allowing themselves to be terrified by people halfway across the world who really have a whole lot more to think about than actually causing them harm. US citizens (and other western countries too) are allowing terrible things to happen to them (like mass surveillance programs!) because they are scared of folks half a world away who don't really care that much about them.

Israel is another business tho, they're sitting on half the Abrahamic holy sites, are also a strong and much hated opponent and they're geographically close and more threatening. If I was living anywhere close to Israel I might be a little bit worried, but then again I'd be sitting on top of one of the most impressive conventional weapon stash in the world and I'd have some powerful friends like the US. If ISIS wants to pick a straight up fight with Israel they need to start eating their bread crusts

Regarding Rome, I'ma go ahead and guess it's further down the line, somewhere between Israel and the US. While they sorta have to do it (or at least say they'll do it) in order to maintain legitimacy as a Caliphate, it's a logistical and strategical nightmare. Rome is in Italy, and Italy has some pretty powerful (read "nuclear armed") friends. I'm not sure how the mass invasion of a NATO country would play out but it's a safe bet it would get ridiculously nasty for the aggressor. If nukes don't go flying they sure as hell will be prepped inside delivery system. They either have to fight through half the world navies in the Mediterranean or sneak in the army over land or air, in which case its difficult to sneak in the weapons along with it. I guess they could openly march through half the christian world but that sounds like a pretty terrible idea too XD
 If ISIS wants to make a grab for Rome, they'll need to wait for a more suitable political climate, like the implosion of NATO o.O On the other hand, if Silvio Berlusconi was to take a bullet to the face during an invasion of Rome, I'm fair sure ISIS would instantly gain massive public support in Italy XD

Great analysis of their goals and current state. I was trying to keep it simple but clearly there's smart folks on these forums XD I also wasn't aware of the shift in strategy, but as you pointed out it probably won't do them much good, they're already on the decline. Good to know tho.

As for Christianity getting wiped out of the middle east, can you honestly say you are surprised? AFAIK last time Christians held territory down there was the short lived crusader states of the late middle ages. I'm surprised they lasted that long. The Jewish people were in a pretty similar position until Israel, and if they hadn't been handed a state they would likely also be facing displacement or assimilation themselves. ISIS is just one more nail in the coffin :/

Also, I'm not American, I'm one of their northern neighbors Once we get the conservatives out of office we can start putting blue berets on our soldiers again (as opposed to green helmets) and go back to being the friendly northern neighbors