The Islamic State (2003- ) or IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria/Levant), has taken over much of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In Arabic it is called Daesh.
From ISIS to IS: It dropped the bit about “Iraq and Greater Syria” on June 29th 2014, the first day of Ramadan 1435 AH. Setting its sights higher, it declared its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to be caliph, the “leader for Muslims everywhere”, and itself a caliphate:
“the legality of all emirates, groups, states and organisations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority and the arrival of its troops to their areas.”
It was founded in 2003 to fight the US in the Iraq War, joining forces with al-Qaeda a year later.
In 2011 the US had nearly crushed their forces in Iraq but then pulled out of the country.
In 2013 ISIS and al-Qaeda parted ways. Al-Qaeda said ISIS was too violent, that beheading people and posting it on video was giving al-Qaeda a bad name. ISIS said al-Qaeda leaders had “deviated from the correct paths.” (The Taliban has also warned the IS to avoid extremism.)
ISIS set about creating a caliphate, a dream of Osama bin Laden’s that al-Qaeda no longer seemed interested in. It took advantage of:
- Syria’s civil war.
- Iraq’s disintegration along religious and ethnic lines into a Kurdish north-east, and Arabs into a Shia south and a Sunni west. (Shia and Sunni are the two main branches of Islam.)
- Arab Sunni discontent with both governments, which give them little say, even though Syria and Iraq are 75% and 35% Sunni.
The IS has been taking over the Sunni parts of both countries.
Jihad: The IS is fighting a holy war against Shia Muslims, Christians and Yazidis:
- Christians have been living in Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, for 1,600 years. After the IS took over, it told them to convert, leave or be killed. A hundred thousand have fled.
- Yazidis, who have been in the region 4,000 years, are not even allowed to convert: they are shot on sight. That counts as genocide. They worship seven angels, which the IS sees as seven devils.
The US: In August 2014, after Christians were threatened, the US sent its air force back into Iraq, bombing IS positions.
IS practices: beheadings, suicide bombing, kidnapping, torture, death penalty, assassination and genocide.
Rule: It rules 6 million people. It is appointing preachers at mosques. Its sort of Islam is more extreme than that of the region. The IS does not allow music, smoking, unveiled women or football. It has won few hearts and minds. Like Saudi Arabia, they push Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam.
Income: kidnappings, oil fields, selling electricity, taxes, money from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and, from the banks of Mosul, more than $400 million.
Wealth: maybe like $2 billion.
Strength: an army of maybe 20,000 men tops, many of them foreigners from Chechnya, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Britain and France.
Where are they now: IS troops now stand 30km (18 miles) north of Baghdad, holding position. Its army is far too lightweight to take over the city on its own.
Thanks to Wordynerdygirl for suggesting this post.
– Abagond, 2014.
Source: Mainly The Economist (2014), BBC (2014), FOTW (2014).
See also:
The Kurds are valiantly holding together a state they never wanted to be a part of. They are showing extraordinary generosity to hundreds of thousands. Their generosity puts us to shame, with our restrictins over allowing immigrants in. Of course, nobody is perfect and there are such things aas honour killings amongs Kurds, but I have met a lot of Kurds, and they were all briliant.
With all my heart, I hope the Yazidis-Kurds and other Kurds, as well as the minorities of Irak are able to live free in their own country soon. Bush and Blair, the curent situation is your responsibility. Hang your head in shame.
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These psychotic clowns are yet another manifestation of incompetent Islamic thugs who will butcher helpless, defenseless, non-combatants. Fortunately, they are easily defeated whenever facing a competent military. Their good fortune will last only as long as Obama remains in office.
However ISIS might do the world a favor by beheading Bashir Assad and his close associates. Meanwhile, there’s very little chance — there’s no chance — that an Islamic nation is about to counter-attack these murderous savages.
That’s Islam for you. A religion, a political doctrine and a military all rolled into one. It breeds disaster every time.
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Islam is not a religion–it’s a psychosis.
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I think we can be pretty sure who financed and helped ISIS/IS to start. It’s origins as a “rebel” group in Syria, it’s emergence out from “no where”, and now it’s relentless war against the kurds are clear signals. Funded and trained by the CIA and Saudi’s, ISIS is now doing what Turkey has been itching to do since 1991, namely wipe out any real cohesive kurdish resistance and forces.
If anyone doubts the US involvement on its actions and birth, just look at this:
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That picture and McCains visit was AFTER ISIS fighters had beheaded dozns of christians, including a 3 year old girl (there is an ISIS video in the Net about this beheading), and after they had gassed civilians in Syria, as their own videos also show. It was after those atrocities US senator and former presidential candidate John McCain met the leaders of this organisation, in very friendly atmosphere.
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@sami parokkonen
I have no doubt about “who’s” involved either.
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@Kiwi
“I’ve heard people say that about every religion.”
Indeed. Atrocities have been comitted and supported by certain interpretations of Christianity and Judaism as well. Too frequently, religion encourages the believer to suspend critical thinking in order to serve someone else’s agenda. I grew up with religion but I am no longer religious. I am just interested in how existence works. That allows for curiosity and open-mindedness instead of claiming to already know everything (and i’m equally disrespectful to scientific dogma that derives from an elitist idea that the poor, who have frequently been made so BY the very wealthy, should be allowed to die).
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kiwi writes:
Don’t you think Muslims felt the same way about Christians during the Crusades? And wouldn’t the Islamic Golden Age count as a non-disaster period of Islam?
It’s remarkable whenever the defense of an atrocity — Islam — is equated with that state of the world almost a thousand years ago. In a pathetic attempt to find moral equivalence, you have to hop in your time machine, taking it back to a relatively primitive time in Western intellectual culture to compare it with Islam, the ideology that’s pretty much the same today as it was during the Crusades.
The unintentional point you made is the point about the extraordinary gains that accrued in the Judeo-Christian culture that went through the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the evolution of democracy and capitalism while Islam did its best to stand still.
Frankly, I don’t care how muslims felt during the Crusades anymore than I care how the Papal military and other non-muslims felt. But I do care that religion was separated from government where it mattered most.
Unfortunately, there’s no evidence of any similar parting coming to Islam. Thus, the hapless, self-defeating muslims will remain captives of the 7th century and its intellectual nothingness for many more centuries.
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@ Sami
“Funded and trained by the CIA and Saudi’s, ISIS is now doing what Turkey has been itching to do since 1991, namely wipe out any real cohesive kurdish resistance and forces.”
I think you got it wrong. The Kurdish government has nowadays an excellent realtionship with Turkey. The US government until recently has been reluctant to support the Kurds too much, because they feared their secession, but these doubts have passed now. IS is most likely backed by financers in Saudi-Arabia and the Emirates, not the US or Turkey.
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@Kiwi:
“all it needs is some more time”
I’m sure all those beheaded men and raped women are thrilled to hear that in about 700 years islam will have evolved to the moral standards of the 21st century…
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kiwi writes:
Since you want to talk about time, let’s look at how long both religions have been around. The rise of Islam occurred around 1300 years ago, about the same amount of time Christianity had existed by the time of the crusades.
Irrelevant
If you’re arguing that time is needed for religion to accrue “extraordinary gains” as Christianity did, then as you said, all it needs is some more time. You could argue that Islam is just going through a phase, no different than Christianity’s history.
Nonsense. Though knowledge and enlightenment are tempered by the nature of communications, trade and contact between the Judeo-Christian world and what became the Islamic world began had begun by the time Christianity appeared. That means the evolution of the Christian world was known to the Islamic world, which, unfortunately, labored to keep external influences to a minimum.
You want to pretend that each culture has no choice, that it must exist in its own sealed environment until its own internal dynamics bring some kind of existential change. Well, no. Sadly, destructively and psychotically, Islam has tried to keep itself in the 7th century. In many ways it has succeeded, as the rise of ISIS shows.
But that wall of self-imposed ignorance is the same as pretending that a society can’t use the wheel that’s been around for centuries, unless someone in the ignorant society declares he has discovered it, and the ignorant society can then pretend it was the birthplace of something that had been in other societies for a long, long time.
If you take a look at the Islamic Golden Age, which was far from “intellectual nothingness”, you’ll see that “extraordinary gains” were made by Muslims in science, medicine, and philosophy.
If you look at the purported golden age of Islam, you will find that Islam prospered only through conquest. All its extraordinary gains — intellectual, material and otherwise — were the products of the societies conquered by muslims. Nothing attributed to muslims or Islam originated in the Islamic world, including the terminally mislabeled system of numbers referred to as Arabic Numerals.
What did the Islamic world accomplish? It forced more and more of the world to speak, and sometimes read, Arabic. By forcing one language on a large percentage of the world’s population, spreading knowledge through that Islamic world happened much faster than it happened in other areas that were divided by language differences.
The uniformity of language and religion accounted for the ascendancy of the Islamic Empire with respect to much of the rest of the world. However, when the Judeo-Christian world emerged from the Dark Ages and began its long period of enlightenment, its Renaissance, its age of Science, its Industrial Revolution, the Islamic Empire was cooked. It could no longer conquer to keep its lead. And then the usual corruption of vast bureaucracies crept in and rotted the empire at its core.
Will this change? No. It won’t. Why? Because the Quran is seen as the infallible world of their crazy god. As long as a book written by a nut is the foundation of their governments, there is no hope for intellectual gains in the Islamic world. They do not originate intellectual advances. Thus, without conquest, the Islamic world is an intellectual dead-zone, its condition for the last 500 years or so.
Only muslims who leave the Islamic nations and obtain higher education in western nations get beyond the idiocy of Islam. But those people rarely return to their native lands and if they do, there are too few of them to bring about the changes that Islam needs — an Enlightenment, a Renaissance, a Reformation.
In fact, their period of intellectualism ended with increasing fundamentalism. This just goes to show that extremist dogmatism comes and goes, and is unfixed with respect to time.
In the age of instantaneous global communications, there’s no excuse for widespread ignorance of the kind that is legitimized and empowered by the Islamic world. It opposes change, and it has the will, and the money, to continue fighting to keep itself in the 7th century.
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sb32199 conveniently ignoring that Christianity was used to justify atrocities that make anything done in the name of Islam pale right into the 20th century, and is STILL used that way today in certain backwater places, like the US. I often have a hard time seeing any real difference between, say, Saudi Arabia and the US. Replace Allah with God (or the other way round), and the similarities are… profound. Though the US kills more people around the world, true.
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naishee,
Christianity is not the culprit in any of the 20th century’s atrocities — Nazism was not Christian, as Hitler made clear in his writings. None of the communist movements, with their purges, were tied to Christianity, except possibly in the hope that the purges would eliminate a lot of people of faith.
No one commits murder while shouting “Jesus is great.”
The Bible has no connection to the principle documents of the US — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nothing like either could exist in the Islamic world.
Islam is a psychosis, a mental illness that destroys cultures and eliminates hope. Islam stands in the way of a better future for those who follow it, and for those who become victims of it.
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Kiwi,
Stop justifying bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior. Just because Christians committed atrocities hundreds of years ago doesn’t give permission to ISIL to behead children and parade severed heads. The fact of the matter is today it is Islam that is a destabilizing force. Where there is Islam, there are conflicts. They are simply unable to coexist with others and that’s the reality.
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@ sami
You have always pointed to business interests in situations such as these.
Isn’t Turkey the biggest investor in Kurdistan?
You said:
I’d agree that the Turkish govt have worked long and violently to wipe out Kurdish resistance within Turkey’s own borders. We aren’t talking about Turkish Kurdistan, after all. They want THAT Kurdistan squashed.
However, the Turkish govt are more than happy to work with Iraqi Kurds — because they have OIL.
Hence a 50 year deal is in place:
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/260220141
It’s an area worth supplying with US arms, not only for oil and gas — as US brands like “Pizza Hut, Cinnabon/Carvel Ice Cream [Marriot and Hyatt Hotels and Ace Hardware others require a foothold in this secure region of Iraq…
A US business delegation went there as early as February this year to see those deals take root…
@ Kartoffel
You said in reply to Sami:
Clearly, Iraqi Kurdistan is hardly a barefoot bride, so, an Iraq’s energy-rich Kurdish region and energy-hungry Turkey be anything makes a Perfect Marriage. Why miss out on such an opportunity for cheap oil?
Turkey is “the perfect conduit” for it.
http://www.voanews.com/content/turkey-iraqi-kurdistan-seal-50-year-energy-deal/1930721.html
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*Correction: should read —
Clearly, Iraqi Kurdistan is hardly a barefoot bride, so, an Iraq’s energy-rich Kurdish region and energy-hungry Turkey makes a Perfect Marriage.
Why miss out on such an opportunity for cheap oil?
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@ Vinatha Madhavan
Really? You mean Hindu fundamentalism doesn’t exist?
Ever heard of Ian Paisley?
And, you know, of course, that isBuddhist extremism also fast spreading its tentacles in the direction of Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand, right?
Like the 969 Buddhists in Burma, so consumed with hatred for Burma’s Muslims (who make up 4% of the population)?
Wasn’t it so, that in March of this year, Buddhists set fire to a boarding school in central Burma where The Muslim Enemy lived, killing 24 students and teachers, and a child decapitated, all whilst police stood by and onlookers gave applause?
http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/connecting-the-dots-on-buddhist-fundamentalism/
http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/myanmar-the-worsening-plight-of-the-rohingya/
*
You talk as though religious violence is NEW.
Why not have a look at what the Christian, Calvin said about iconoclasm, and match that up with what Protestant zealots did to Catholic places of worship.
*
Is it any wonder how extreme religious violence now goes “viral” so quickly with all the Social Media experts out there these days….
Religion is the new politics. And, it’s not only the making of violent fanatics.
Behind it, there are bureaucrats, wealthy supporters and politicians.
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^^ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/08/obamas-intervention-in-iraq-proves-that-religion-really-is-the-new-politics/
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Sorry for the typos in my first post. Getting emotional.
Once and for all: Islam is not a psychosis!!! Maybe it is the ability to create a dogma (religious or not) which is a psychosis…Anyway, some people have it in them to become fanatics, and they’ll use any ideology/religion to help them carry their agenda, and more often than not, they emerge at times of turmoil, when people are so desperate they will ally with anyone promising them a better future or vindication. For a long time, I thought the buddhists were immune, they are not (see what they did/are doing in Sri Lanka or Burma). The difference in the numbers of casualty seems to lie not in the degree of “badness” but in the opportunities and the environment. So I agree with @Bulanik!
Human beings have followed IS’s pattern of behaviour repeatedly through the ages, what they call themselves is irrelevant.
Now what can we do to nip it in the bud? what about not invading Iraq, Whoops, that’s too late.
Final point: each revolution I know of is followed by terrible times (the aftermath of the French revolution for one) and internecine wars between rival fractions. Why and how should we have expected anything different for Egypt etc?? And so, think before you ask for the removal of Assad. One of the reasons why he is still there has to do with the fact that his rule does have positive sides, and not just with the support he gets from abroad (it pains me to write this, but it is a fact) and the opposition to Assad is in large parts “unenlightened Islam”, which a lot of people in Syria do not agree with.
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@ naishee
It’s probably apparent to you that sb32199 will say ANYTHING, especially, fictions to broadcast his particular brand of Islam-o-phobia on Abagond’s blog.
So, saying something like: “Christianity is not the culprit in any of the 20th century’s atrocities — Nazism was not Christian, as Hitler made clear in his writings“…
….hides that Adolf Hilter’s antisemitism was grounded in his Christian belief. Before Hitler came to major power, he was in prison and whilst he was there he wrote about his struggles (Mein Kampf). In this book, he outlined that he did what did and believed what he believed because of his love and belief in God and Country. The Jew was the enemy of Christians.
Hitler was brought up a Catholic and he believed in that the way forward for German greatness was a for it to be christianized.
His Christian belief was often mentioned in speeches, and even part of the Nazi uniform (belts saying “God is with us”).
He supported the Church, and the Church supported him.
Some religious quotes of Adolf Hitler:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views
Or this other fiction: No one commits murder while shouting “Jesus is great.”
There are a few answers to this. Abagond gave this answer to previous ignorance and brainwashing shown by this commenter:
White Americans wiped out Native Americans thinking it was God’s will.
For example, here is William Bradford, a Pilgrim, at a massacre of Native Americans:
“It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”
More:
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@Bulanik: once again in the bull’s eye 🙂
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In brief, the so-called ISIS movement is simply a faction of some of the more extreme Wahhabis. By all reports, they have little support from the local people. The so-called ISIS also fits the standard modus operandi of CIA/Mossad in their effort to undermine any level of Islamic solidarity or autonomy. I don’t know how authentic the article is, but i’m seeing this a lot:
(It seems i can’t post the link: but one can google: ISIS + Mossad, and one can see that the origins of the former are not “Islamic.”)
And like i said, it fits with standard Western imperial practices. The bunny hole is a pretty deep place, and probably none of us know what is really going on behind the scenes. What one can be sure about is that those behind the curtain don’t have the best interests of humanity at heart.
As for the state of Islamic civilization, civilizations rise and fall. To pretend that Islamic civilization did not have a profound influence on the development of the “West” is simply disingenuous. It’s one thing to be a bigot and another to be a lying bigot. Another related point is how the anti-Muslim bigots speak about the condition of the Muslim lands, but then they support every form of deceit, treachery, and brutality to destabilize Muslim majority states (or else support clearly tyrannical ones–that do their bidding for them). The stench Western hypocrisy is itself revolting.
A link that explains Wahhabism and Sunni Islam are mutually exclusive. On my blog (facetofloor.wordpress.com), i have a lot of posts about Wahhabism and how it is rejected by the Sunni Muslims.
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contd
sb also has says that
I am not sure that is true at all. Anyone can look on the internet and find the Constitution and just a a cursory reading of the First Amendment tells the reader that this can’t be right. Early on in teh document it says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”
The “religion” question wasn’t Hinduism or Rastafari, Wicca or Islam!
The creators and thinkers behind this document were referring, tacitly, to Protestantism and its various denominations.
These men’s concern was to avoid one Christian denomination being put above any others and made into Religion of the State.
After all, wasn’t that what they were fleeing from under British rule?
Had the Anglican Church been the Reglion of the State of the 13 colonies?
That is BASIC in UK history, so one doesn’t have to be American to know that.
*
Then, there is this bit, from Article I, Section 7 of the document:
“If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law…
Why Sundays? Sunday is a “Christian” day. Saturdays is the “Jewish” day, Friday the “Muslim” day.
*
And what about: “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth….”
The Year of our Lord?
Like in BC or AD, AD being “anno Domini” — “year of our Lord”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini
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It seems, i got things to work. This link includes quotes from various Orientalists writers on the indebtedness Europe has to the Muslim world:
And this is a link about the so-called “ISIS” Mossad/CIA connection:
http://deadlinelive.info/2014/07/28/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-snowden-documents-reveal/
I’m not vouching for the info, but it does fit the standard pattern of “Western” foreign policy:
http://deadlinelive.info/2014/07/28/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-snowden-documents-reveal/
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*Corretion: I mean
These men’s concern was to avoid one Christian denomination being put above any others and made into Religion of the State.
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Bulanik,
Of course, fundamentalism exists in all religious factions but the magnitude currently is not the same. A significant percentage of Muslims think terrorism as a means is OK. For e.g., a 2004 Pew Research Center survey found that suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq were seen as “justifiable” by many Jordanians (70%), Pakistanis (46%), and Turks (31%). 36% of Arabs surveyed thought that 9/11 attacks were justified. ISIS is killing Yazidis on sight because they are “devil-worshippers.” I’m sure that would apply to me as well as a Hindu. Arab societies think it’s OK to stone a woman to death for adultery or not converting to Islam. Women were routinely beheaded in Afghanistan and the worst part of it was that it was a spectator sport that took place at a soccer stadium. All this barbarism is justified as Sharia law and done in the name of Islam.
Atrocities happen everywhere. GWB & Cheney are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraquis but they did not use Christianity as a basis for what they did.
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Kiwi,
I’m sure there are passages in the Bible that promote violence just as the Quran. The difference is that the most Christians don’t take it literally and endorse violent means to resolve conflict.
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Bulanik,
Really, I don’t have a problem with Sharia law, per se. If one is a Muslim and chooses to live under those laws, then no one else should have a problem with it. The problem is when these beliefs imposed on others such as the forcible conversion of Christians or rampant killing of Yazidis, etc. Ironically, the majority of the victims of people with this ideology are other Muslims.
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@ Vinatha Madhavan
And some people cannot understand why Hindu rape at such an alarming frequency — “another gang rape in India” — if news reports are to be believed.
“With so much crime happening everywhere, why is India being singled out and shamed with “another gang rape”, when it actually has only a fraction of the crimes other countries have in relative numbers? “
Doesn’t that focus make you stop and wonder?
If it does, then why is it IMPOSSIBLE to do that with Islam and the shaming of Muslims?
Rape is not the culture of India. But I could easily think it was…if I wanted to and point YOU to news reports about it. Even stats.
http://mariawirthblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/why-this-focus-on-rapes-in-india-by-world-media/
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@Kiwi
The reason why IS are killing Yazidis on sight while the others (Christians etc) are given the conversion alternative, is because in IS’s eyes, The Yazidis had a chance to follow the true faith and decided not to, which makes them evil by nature and unredeemable.
Seems to me this is very similar to the killing of native Americans.
What makes IS so chilling is the sheer number of people in the world, and the fact that modern coms forces us to be witnesses. Millions of native Americans died in a relatively short time, but it was far away and people in Europe did not notice.
I see no difference in the rhetorics, just like I see no difference in IS’s rhtorics with the KKKlan’s discourse on punishing blacks. If the latter had had the opportunity, they would have been on the same rampage as IS.
Frankly, being human is not pretty.
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Bulanik,
Finally, lest you think I’m anti-Muslim, I’m not. I’m originally from India and I’m proud to say we’ve had a long tradition of Hindus, Muslims and Christians peacefully coexisting for hundreds of years. There are periodic riots but they usually subside quickly. Even the suicide bombings are usually from across the border. Indian Muslims consider themselves Indians first and foremost. So the religion in and of itself is not the problem; it’s something else.
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@ Vinatha
I think you should be careful who you label with “barbarism”.
Very few of us are safe from being “othered”, and wrongly labeled.
Muslims get that a lot. Have you noticed? Could Hindus be next?
You also have stats that you feel PROVE what those awful Muslims are thinking.
A survey knows best. Let me suggest more than “significant”.
What about 1 in 10? How about one in ten Muslims are terrorists.
And, if there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, then there are about 160 million Islamic terrorists among them.
Believe it or not, there will be apparently sane people who will believe that, too.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/glenn-beck-claims-10-muslims-terrorists-cnn-fareed-zakaria-blasts-fuzzy-math-article-1.474956
Agreed, but you are very, very quick to go on the attack against Muslims in the same breath, without reflection, it seems. Why is that?
Let’s face it, haven’t Hindus just forced India’s Penguin publishing, to destroy all remaining copies of Wendy Doniger’s WThe Hindus: An Alternative History”?
Why?
It contains “heresies”! They are offended.
I also recall reading that Hindu parents in the US are taking an increasingly hardline by demanding that high school courses eliminate criticism of Hinduism.
What could THAT be the beginning of?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/12/wendy-doniger-book-hinduism-penguin-hindus
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@ Vinatha
Well, I am not a Muslim, but I although I am not directly from India myself, I understand that there is a long tradition of Hindus, Muslims and Christian coexistence for centuries.
There was co-existence among the Muslims and other Abrahamic religions in the Middle East, North Africa and Iberia for 100s of years, too, so that shows, overwhelmingly that Muslims have a remarkable historical record of co-existing with others, don’t they?
I realise where you are coming from, although you appeared to be making excuses for a line of — seemingly — bigoted thinking.
After all, isn’t what you say NOW in direct contradiction of what you said earlier, which was pretty harsh:
Where there is Islam, there are conflicts. They are simply unable to coexist with others and that’s the reality.
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^^ quoted earlier in your reply to Kiwi: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/islamic-state-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%A9/#comment-247688
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@ annef1
What an insight. Thank you.
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Wow. Such equivocation, temporizing and denial.
Islam is a religion, a political doctrine and a military. Christianity is only a religion. Individual Christians may be crazy or in some way deranged, but the belief system itself is not a call to arms or a rallying cry for those who want to rampage through the countryside in the name of Jesus forcing hapless captives to convert or die.
Islam, on the other hand, is, according to muslims, the infallible word of their god. That might seem quaint if Islam were merely a religion. But once the political system and military command are under the control of the religious leaders, the claim of infallibility can’t be ignored.
The impact on Islamic societies is painfully evident. There is no art in Islamic societies. Almost no literature. There is no creativity. No invention. No intellectual advancement.
There are no significant industries in Islamic nations. Sure, there are sites where clothing for western buyers is stitched together. But there’s no computer industry. No software. No electronics industry. No car industry. There are some factories that perform the final assembly of machinery or products shipped in from non-Islamic countries.
And the oil industry is run by non-muslims. Now the Iraqi army is in big trouble because at least half the M-1 tanks supplied to them by the US do not run because the muslims cannot perform the basic maintenance necessary to keep them operational.
No, Hitler was not a believer in Christianity. He may well have been born into a home in which there was some presence of Protestantism, but for him, religion was a tool for political manipulation. Its existence was something he exploited to gain power over his followers.
Bulanik, the First Amendment of the US Constitution prevents the US government from showing special favor to ANY religion. The precise and exact thoughts of the Founding Fathers aren’t as important as the concept they put in motion.
No religion would ever be allowed to take precedence in the US. That was a brilliant move. So to was the second part of the First Amendment that guarantees Free Speech.
NO Islamic nation would codify a principle that permitted freedom of religion or freedom of speech. Islam itself cannot tolerate such an extreme demotion.
And, as we know, there is no mechanism by which Islam can modernize and/or subordinate itself to any other ideology. So it’s obvious that Islamic fundamentalism will continue to surface, and it will surface wherever ignorant groups of muslims decide to band together to enforce their vision of a brutal 7th century dogmatic regime of terror on poor, hapless and defenseless people who can be coerced into accepting the misery of yet more psychotic Islamic thugs.
Boko Haram, ISIS, the Haqqani, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, etc. All brutal, senseless buffoons who will rampage here and there before failing and dying.
By the way, if moderate muslims exist, where are they? Who is their leader? Who speaks for them? The answer — there is no leader, no one speaks for them because there are no truly moderate muslims.
And after one set of Islamic thugs is thrown out, like the Mubarak regime in Egypt, another regime will replace the old regime. But like the old regime, the new regime will be Islamic, and therefore, almost indistinguishable from the previous regime.
New boss? Same as old boss. That’s how it goes in Muhammad-ville.
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I am off to bed.
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kiwi, perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the US and most western nations are so ethnically, racially, philosophically, economically and religiously diverse that it’s almost impossible to form a consensus on anything.
Whereas, the Islamic world is far, far more homogeneous. Yeah, the shias and sunnis like to kill each other, but they’re united in the hate for the non-Islamic world of infidels.
You do realize, don’t you, that if you’re not Islamic, you’re not welcome in Islamic nations. Hence, they lack the diversity of the west. And almost all muslims are dirt poor.
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SB,
Ask yourself, why is it that the “West” keeps supporting/inventing extremist groups? Al-Qaeda is a Western invention; Hamas, a Jewish one. The evidence points to the so-called ISIS being invented by the CIA/MOSSAD. In Libya, Wahhabi extremists were supported (by the Western regimes) to overthrow Qadhafi. On the one hand, the “West” claims to be against extremism… but it eagerly supports the Wahhabi regime in Saudi. And the list can go on… and on… and on. What does that say about the “morality” of the Western foreign policies? In essence, we are talking about a people who have no moral compass… yet are suppose to be the “champions” of “freedom.”
As for Christianity, it much later morphed into secularism after the people, in essence, rejected Christianity (or the Western elite rejected Christianity–the masses just do what they are told). The Christians–by their own admission–realized that Christianity could not meet the needs of human beings (not even theoretically). And we can see those places, like Latin America, where Christianity is still observed that they also tend to be amongst the most backwards regions on earth.
Now we are forced to live under the corporate controlled Secular Super State—which is intolerant of any other worldviews that could potentially challenge it (it wasn’t even tolerant of other secular views, for that matter). Hence, any country that tries to be independent of the usurious secular supremacist consumer culture is “bombed into ‘freedom.'”
As for the condition of the Muslim world, MANY of the problems are due to the on-going colonial and neo-colonial policies in those countries (any honest person would admit that). Other problems stem from tribalism, nationalism, lack of education (both religious and secular), social atrophy, etc. Like it was said, civilizations rise and fall and are sometimes revived. We see the same in much of the “West.” Christianity is fading fast and the corporate consumer culture is leaving the masses empty and feeling that there is no purpose to their lives (add to that, immigration policies, low birthrates, loss of civilizational confidence, massive employment downturns b/c of technological innovations, and it won’t be too long into the future (if we are still are around), when we can speak of the backwardness and failure of the “West”–or at least, the masses of its populations).
http://facetofloor.wordpress.com/
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Grossly oversimplified
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King, it’s a blog response and not a Ph. D. dissertation. But in a nutshell that’s it. The Euros got tired of slaughtering each other over a doctrine that they admitted did not making any sense. Hence, they agreed that religion would play a decreasingly important role in how the regimes would be run. And that continued and continued until you have what you have today: a largely atheistic (or at least non-Christian) Western Europe.
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You know, I am actually surprised by the amount of equivocation this issue has generated.
For goodness’ sake, ISIS is beheading CHILDREN. Another commenter mentioned an incident where children were beheaded in Myanmar – that is terrible. But why not straight out condemn the mass slaughter of innocents (a 3 year old was beheaded a fortnight ago) in this case???!!!!
What’s more, an Australian ISIS member last week tweeted a photograph of his 7-year old son brandishing the heads of two people he had slaughtered. (Warning: This image is very disturbing) (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/thats-my-boy-sharrouf-kids-witness-wars-horror/story-e6frg8yo-1227019872823)
The reason why I suggested this post is because it is astounding that the US is arming ISIS fighters in Syria, then pretending to be surprised when the ISIS members use the weapons to massacre non combatants in Iraq.
There is also near total silence in the West about the historic victimisation of Shia Muslims by Sunnis, not only in Iraq but elsewhere in Afghanistant and other countries. Why? Because it doesn’t suit the agenda of the US/UK/Australia, which depend on the goodwill of Saudi Arabia (Sunni majority) to maintain the flow of oil in the Middle East.
Not a single person mentioned this angle. Instead, you’re as usual engaging in a ‘who did it worse’ argument.
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@ inthisjournal
I wish I had the time at the moment to truly argue the pout, but suffice to say that there was never and mass Christian agreement to prefer secularism because they got tired of fighting over doctrines. When exactly did this occur? Site for me the actual history for it.
My personal belief is that this is something that you yourself have surmised.
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I, for one, have no problem or hesitation in openly condemning ISIS for their atrocities.
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King, you can check the history of Europe and the Protestant-Catholic wars.
Wordy, the Saudi regime is Wahhabi and NOT Sunni. The goal of the “West” is to simply destabilize the entire region—with the exception of the Jewish state.
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^ inthisjournal
Wrong. Saudi Arabia is majority Sunni – and yes, most Sunnis in SA follow Wahabism, which is a Sunni sect.
Please don’t pass on Alan Jones inspired conspiracy theories. Israel did not ‘create’ Hamas.
Sure, you can criticise Israel’s conduct. But please don’t go down the rabbit hole of prejudice against Jews.
Whether you like it or not the Jewish people have a continuous history of thousands of years in the Middle East. That is the truth, no matter what webs you or the people on stormfront want to weave.
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Well, since we are discussing about “religions” it would be good to remember that all of these three religions worship the same god: the god of Abraham.
Muhammed saw himself as the purger of judaism, as a person who cleans spoiled religion, wipes it clean and return it back to its roots. But he was still thinking about judaism, in its purest form according to him. The same god. A bit like Martin Luther in christianity.
Christianity has also the same god. The god of Abraham. All these three religions have the same one god. Thus, is it wonder, they are jealous of each other, they hate each other, and compete, just like kids fighting for attention of their parents.
Combined these religions have caused millions of deaths, hundreds of wars, destruction, slaughters of the innocent, massacres and genocides. That is a fact. There is enough crimes and horros to go all around. For the same one god, in the name of the same one god.
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Right thank god someone can explain this shit i tried like last week
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At sb that is fuckin retarded judeo christian just got nukes
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Cia invented Al Quaeda ? Im with you , Wordy, people are running down the rabbit hole…the cia did not invent Al Quaeda ,they sent them stingers , trained them how to use them against the Soviet Union , and threw money at them
I brought in clear links about how Al Quaeda was formed, they go back to Saudi Arabia , and Zawahari in the Muslim Brotherhood , inspired by the writings of Sayyam Quitb and In the Shadow of the Quoran…..yet these cookie cutter lies are bandied about like facts , in broken record mantras
The USA has been playing the suunies against the shiites against each other in the past , very blatent in the Iran Contra arms deals while supporting Hussein also , in what I consider weak logic , but they dont invent these groups…what silliness , and inability to look at the truth…this is what went down in Syria, the USA wants to get involved with the opisition to Assad , ISIS is not the only group oposing Assad, dont you get that? The USA doesnt want to look left out or they are afraid the extremists will take over….but , badly thought out policies come back to bite the USA in the rear….people making anything more out if that , saying the cia invented these groups , are in fantacy land ….and those groups would be insulted…they would put their feet up the rear end of anyone saying the cia invented them…people can only get away running this crap they read from third hand sources , on ignorant people
Abagond , excelent writing on this , without bias…I apreciete this thread you wrote….
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kiwi writes:
Historically, more non-Muslims have lived longer under Muslim rule than non-Christians have lived under Christian rule.
I suppose, if you torture the limited data, there’s some goofy way of making this pointless claim appear to be accurate. However, due to the obvious lack of available information, the pointless claim is un-provable.
Your false assertion that Islamic societies are homogenous only reinforces my statement that you see Christians as individuals and Muslims as a monolith
What percentage of the population in each of the world’s Islamic nations is non-Islamic? Egypt may well be home to the highest, with Coptic Christians accounting for 10 percent of Egypt’s population. Indonesia is probably in second place.
As for most other Islamic nations, the percentage of non-Islamic residents hovers at close to ZERO percent. And in those Islamic nations where non-Islamic populations live, they live with their own forms of Jim Crow abuses and restrictions. Or worse. Now ISIS is slaughtering Christians in Iraq.
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inthisjournal:
In short, you really do live in a fantasy land of conspiracy theories and cartoon madness. Apparently you also enjoy the company of the other people who share space in your head.
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Majority Muslim countries more diverse than Egypt:
Turkmenistan
Syria
Mali
Kosovo
Bangladesh
Kyrgyzstan
Oman
Kuwait
Guinea
Indonesia
Albania
Bahrain
Qatar
United Arab Emirates
Sierra Leone
Sudan
Malaysia
Lebanon
Burkina Faso
Kazakhstan
Chad
Brunei
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
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Wordy, The Sunnis regard the Wahhabis as an anathema. They are a sect that was started 250 years ago and has always been considered beyond the pale of Islam.
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Also, Wordy, Hamas was supported by Israel to oppose the PLO. The region is filled with examples of double-dealing from the Jewish state and the “West.” These same regimes lie to their own people and conceal their agendas; hence, i think “conspiracy” is a pretty accurate way to describe American/Israeli foreign policy. Iran-Contra and Wikileaks are in all likelihood a SMALL sample of what is going on.
From the link: “So there’s plenty of evidence that the Israeli intelligence services, especially Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities, encouraged the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and the founding of Hamas. There are many examples and incidents of that.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/26/how_israel_and_the_united_states
I don’t think anyone denies the existence of Jews in the region. The problem is having a Jewish state in the region, which is, only going to generate growing levels of tension and hostility.
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abagond, most of the nations you listed include their non-citizen, foreign-workers in their demographic profiles. Every oil country, for example. Kuwait has to import household workers to handle the cooking, cleaning etc, because, by birth, every Kuwaiti is rich due to the oil, and therefore they pay poor foreigners to tidy up their homes and to manage the oil business,
Many of the other nations combine Islam with nativist religions. By the way, the non-Islamic population of Indonesia is less than 10 percent. Close to 10, but less.
Meanwhile, in those countries where minority non-Islamic populations exist, the muslims are increasing their reach and increasing the percentages of those who follow Islam.
Regarding Lebanon, despite the existence of a recognized government, the true power is held by Hezbollah, which is funded, armed and assisted by Tehran.
In short, wherever Islam can gain the upper hand, it does, and it does so with brutality and no concern for the misery and degradation the Islamic will deliver.
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SB,
Help me understand. Do you think that the US does not lie to the American public about its foreign policy in the Mid-East (and elsewhere)? Has not the US funded groups that they later deem to be terrorists… and sometimes fund the groups that at the time they deem to be terrorists? If one sees a consistent pattern of lies and treachery (that is made known), is it a far stretch to conclude that such a regime is lying about and concealing other matters as well? No tinfoil hat is needed to just observe patterns of behavior/policy and understand that lying, deceitful (and murderous) people lie, deceive, and murder.
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SB,
Most of the “Islamic states” don’t govern by Islam (or even claim to). Rather, they govern by some aspects of Islam AND ideas derived from the secular West–and just plain ole brutal tyranny (but then, more often than not, those tyrants are trained, or at least supported by, the West). The Shi`ah of Iran and the Wahhabis of Saudi are the only major regimes that claim to govern by “Islamic Law.”
As far as reach is concerned, the Western secular usurious corporate consumer complex is (currently) the dominant socio-political system on earth. It’s spread thereupon has been by open violence and relentless corporate propaganda. And it has brought misery to thousands of millions of people… in the name of consumerism.
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@Bulanik,
“I also recall reading that Hindu parents in the US are taking an increasingly hardline by demanding that high school courses eliminate criticism of Hinduism.”
There is no moral equivalence between the above and suicide bombings or issuing fatwas.
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@ Vinatha
A recollection is not a call to a moral equivalence.
If you are going to quote me, please do so putting it in its original context.
I would appreciate that kind of honesty.
Thank you.
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As for Christians not engaging in military violence (in the name of Christianity), well, i had actually forgotten about these guys:
There was/is a significant number of Christians who advocated the various wars in the Mid-East/Muslim world, for they see it (in their minds) as a means to accelerate the return of Jesus.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/08/erik_prince_and_the_last_crusa
There was a documentary (full length-mainstream) that spoke about the Christian zealots within the US military who saw themselves as doing their bidding for the sake of their religion.
By and large, however, the Christians (nowadays, that is) don’t operate on the frontline of Western aggression. Usually the Christian missionaries are sent in to soften up a populace with the talk of “peace” and “turn the other cheek.” Once, the people are hooked on the Christianity, they aren’t in a position to resist the global corporate consumer gangsters. We all here are familiar with the saying to the effect that the Christians gave the Africans (and others) the Bible, while the Christians took the land.
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inthisjournal,
Until 9/11, it looked as though support from the US for al-Qaeda was one of the brilliant moves in geo-politics. For a small investment, Osama bin Laden and his idiotic followers battled the Soviets to the point that the Soviet Union was exhausted.
The interminable fighting in Afghanistan was the key to the failure and collapse of the Soviet Union. By simply paying those al-Qaeda thugs, the US knocked off the Soviet Union without firing a shot. Neither side launched any atomic weapons, and after the fall, the world became a safer place — for a while.
Unfortunately, al-Qaeda took itself a little too seriously and since 9/11 we’re involved in an open war with Islam. Whether the fighters call themselves al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, Boko Haram, or dozens of other names, it makes no difference. They all represent Islam.
As for Christian zealots in the US military, sorry, none of them are calling the shots. The US military operates only where the Commander in Chief wants them operating, and we know Obama would prefer have the US military return home and do nothing. He tried that by declaring the war in Iraq over.
Hmmm, that didn’t work, so now a number of Americans are back in Iraq. There are 30,000 US troops on the border between North and South Korea. Due to their presence, there has been virtually no violence between the two nations for the last 60 years. Just having US troops in place is a huge deterrent.
You wrote:
Once, the people are hooked on the Christianity, they aren’t in a position to resist the global corporate consumer gangsters.
Yeah, that explains why Vietnam is desperate to sell more goods in the US. They beg for greater access to US markets. They sell clothes, shoes, accessories, etc here in the US. They discovered capitalism is good, but they want to pretend they are communists while pleading for more opportunities to sell American their products.
Haven’t you noticed that EVERY nation in the world wants access to US markets? Every nation. That includes all the African nations. That includes Africans themselves who I see every day selling knock-off handbags and other “designer” fashion goods on the sidewalks of NY City.
You truly need some lessons in basic economics.
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Does anyone know why the IS is looking for Western women to be brides to its Jihadists? Wouldn’t it make more since to choose from the women in the area whose families have been Muslims for generations? There are multi-generational Muslims in the West, but a good majority of the women there writing blogs are recent converts. It just makes no sense….
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@ inthisjournal
So, in other words, you don’t have any historic moment that you can point to when Christians agreed that they were tired of fighting over doctrines and summarily proclaimed that expanding the power of secularism was the answer.
Why? because it never happened.
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@ inthisjournal (or @ abagond)
Can you remind me please which thread(s?) you commented on the last time you visited Aba’s corner of the net?
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@ Wordynerdygirl
Wordy, I am totally uninformed about what is happening in Syria; it has not been an interest of mine. Can you point me to the information that shows the US were arming ISIS in the Syrian conflict?
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I read these links , and they have nothing to do with cia inventing, or mossad inventing, they say encouraged…
Yet I see people making these accuasations with absolutly no context to what was happening in history then…
If Hamas was at odds with the PLO back then , its logical Israel would encourage them, since the PLO was involved in the 72 Olympics fiasco , and violent assassinations of israeli citizens in various situations….
If Anwar Sadat originaly encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood , they eventualy assasinated him…what does that tell you ?
Nasser was aligning with the Soviet Union, so , if the Brotherhood was going against him , at that time , its logical the anti Soviet forces would encouraged them…dont people understand the cold war? Obviously not…
Ayatollah Khomeini , was part of the demonstrators who ousted the Prime Minister of Iran , colaborating with the cia…dont you get it? Britain fooled the cia into thinking the prime minister was communist
Its stupid complex out here…..look at World War 2 , the treaties between Hitler and Stalin , the treaty with Hitler and Great Britain, the picture of Stalin with Churchill and Roosevelt…are people serious on here?
They want to make the cia the all ominous boogey man who runs everything, but in reality, in the global political vollying for power , is so complex, that forces are in a never ending flow of coming together and pulling apart…if people cant get these dynamics going down , they are naive…dont get in my fox hole, you dont know about life , its not like you cant find these kind of coming together then breaking apart as enemies dynamics playing out in everyday life and relationships in business and freinds….
There are really naive , agendised attemps on here to paint a fantacy picture
You know , in Brazil and other South American countries , the cia didnt overthrow presidents.They just gave support to already existing parties in conflict who were doing what they did anyway….only naive people throw it off like the usa and cia invented , created and implimented everything
This really is a low leval American foreign policy commentary discusion
It only emoldens my gut feelings to trust my instincts, and what I have learned and experianced , instead of shallow politicly agendised half truths , distortions and lies….
God , its not like I dont know my country lies and plays dirty out in this world , its just when I see how really dirty this world is , I accept my country is playing dirty to …I also see my country , through its collective will , has changed its policies also
Imagine five decades of Castros ? A religious fundimentalist government?
And seriously , to Hades with all fundimental religions and their dogmas…I support all people anywhere who stand up against any fundimentalist religion from trying to govern peoples lives and who use violence…Chritian , Muslim or Jewish
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…about christians and war…
In the medieval times Christ was a War God in whose name all sorts of atrocities could be and were done. In the reneissance years even the Pope was war lord fighting against his enemies, litterally. During the 30 years war, it was almost about nothing but christianity. During the colonisation period, christianity gave the moral backbone for all that. Christ and church were all involved in all european wars since those times up all the way to the Yugoslavian wars. And if my memory does not fail me, George W. Bush said that God told him to go to war in Irak. So…
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@ Legion
Sorry I missed your question – I’ve been really slack on follow ups here and elsewhere. Started a new job a couple of months ago so a bit distracted with other things.
The US claims to have armed ‘moderate’ members of the Syrian opposition. These same so-called moderates are now fighting in Iraq under the black flag. The US has also turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia, which is training, arming and whose citizens form the bulk of the IS leadership.
I don’t like Rand Paul or his father but he’s on the money with this:
(http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/republic-senator-rand-paul-accuses-us-arming-isis-terrorists-1453714)
Here’s McCain hanging out with ‘freedom fighters’ who have now publicly emerged as ISIS members:
(http://wonkette.com/552931/heres-a-picture-of-john-mccain-hanging-out-with-isis-freedom-fighters-in-2013)
Why would the US do this? Because (I think) it serves US interests to have a divided Iraq. They want the Islamic Caliphate to spread and then weaken Syria and finally Iran – the only countries to oppose the US’s geopolitical interests in the region.
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@ Abagond
By the way, thanks for a top post. Brilliant, as always.
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Thanks Wordy.
Kick ass at the new job!
🙂
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@ Legion
Thanks! Really enjoying it but super busy.
Off topic but hope all is well with you too 🙂
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I’ve heard there are only 6 Jews left. They killed and displaced so many Christians, whoever they consider to be the wrong kind of Muslim. With Muslim extremism now spreading into Africa I feel the war on terror is not working. A family member told me a Muslim collegue informed my family member she’d k¡ll my family at the drop of a hat if she was told to for her religion, and they’re supposed to be friends. They work with kids to boot. I have a feeling extremists are more prevalent than what the Western government is willing to admit. I hope it doesn’t start another war. I’ve long been against the drones, but this situation with ISIS is beginning to soften my views towards their use in certain circumstances.
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Hi Ebony.
Did you read Abagond’s thread about drones?
What do you think of the view that drones lead to a more unstable, violent world?
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/26/5845354/americas-drone-program-risks-longer-more-frequent-wars-report-says
Could waging war by drone (which I’ve heard called a form of “terrorism”, too) create more terrorists?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/how-drones-create-more-terrorists/278743/
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Bulaniiiiik!!!
I did read the post, indeed. They say the drones used in desert storm created Bin Laden. I absolutely agree it’s a form of terrorism and agree with Matt Damon on the fact that they’re surely illegal. I’m against the casual use of drones in war, I understand they may seem more convenient because they require less men on the ground, but they’re terroristic and there’s no two ways about it. With that said, in a circumstance like ISIS’ reign of terror surfacing and instances of religious and ethnic cleansing, if the US can find many members in one or a few isolated areas where they could be taken out at once to save the lives and well being of an entire country, if that country’s leader gave the US the go ahead I believe that could be one rare defensive example where drones could be a good thing.
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Abagond, you are right, to keep my statement in moderation, it shouldnt come on , and be deleted….
This is a conversatiin that would not be a good one for me on this blog…and , I could get banned
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@ sami
I was rushing and simply didn’t see your comments at the very beginning of the thread, when you said:
“I think we can be pretty sure who financed and helped ISIS/IS to start.
It’s origins as a “rebel” group in Syria, it’s emergence out from “no where”, and now it’s relentless war against the kurds are clear signals.
Funded and trained by the CIA and Saudi’s, ISIS is now doing what Turkey has been itching to do since 1991, namely wipe out any real cohesive kurdish resistance and forces.
If anyone doubts the US involvement on its actions and birth, just look at this:
That picture ^^ and McCains visit was AFTER ISIS fighters had beheaded dozens of christians, including a 3 year old girl (there is an ISIS video in the Net about this beheading), and after they had gassed civilians in Syria, as their own videos also show. It was after those atrocities US senator and former presidential candidate John McCain met the leaders of this organisation, in very friendly atmosphere.”
*
Wordynerdy also posted similar photos of John McCain with members of Isis,(including al qaeda operative), from 2013.
Wordy also asked this question and presented a possible theory:
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@bulanik:
At this very moment US state department is run by the neo conservatives, according to whom the new strategy is no longer winning wars or conflicts but to de-stabilize countries which they wish to exploit or eliminate. This has been the strategy for some time and if we look at Lubya, Syria, Irak, Ukraine and now African nations, we can see that this policy is actually going on.
Africa is specially interesting because of Boko Haram, which is also creation of US operatives and which has the same function there as ISIS has in the Mid East.
So all of this is US power politics which exploits local situation and/or keep the local states and infrastructures in chaos. Notice that the ISIS attacked against the kurds, took over the oil fields from then and now US and its allies want to get there?? Hmm, convinient.
Also keep in mind that just few days ago one US general said that it is useless to bomb ISIS in Irak, we have to attack them on Syria too. Well, how convinient too. US has been itching to go to war in Syria but Assad regime has been proven to be too popular there. So now ISIS provides the “explanation” why US airforce begins operations in Syria. Also in Syria, ISIS has been taking over oil and gas fields.
Also, how on earth this extremist islamistic terror organisation is sellin oil to Israel? It is a kind of similar question that was asked about Al Qaida. How many times Al Qaida attacked Israel or israeli targets? Right. How many times ISIS has attacked Israel or israeli targets? Excately.
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sorry: Lubya is naturally Libya
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@sam
Maybe IS’s high command stand for all the machivellian stuff you described…However, this is not what they have sold/are selling the young idealists who are joining them from all over the world. Considering the extraordinary enthusiasm with which said young idealists are going at it, chances are that they will also maintain IS on the course it is pretending to be on, and they are not very likely to suddenly agree to help the US no matter what the High Command will demand.
Plus: the most horrendous wars seem to be civil wars. European wars of religion were just as bad as what IS are doing to, mostly, other Muslims.
If the CIA has two brain cells to rub together, they will not have bothered to try and destabilise Lybia and Co: History has always demonstrated that things do not get better after a revolution. They actually get worse for a while as scores are settled etc etc.
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This is why I enjoy this site. @Sam, Wordy and Bulanik, what a profound conversation.
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@annef1:
Well, Adolf Hitler used his idealistic youth well, from the Night of the Long Knives to the Barbarossa and holocaust. USA has used idealistic youth from Vietnam to the war in Irak. Generals in the past called them openly as Cannon fodder. Lenin and Stalin used to call them “Well intending fools”.
The trick is that ISIS, like all of these movements and armies, demand unquestioning obidience. You obey the high command. Once you suscribe that, you get in. And once you get in, you will be used. One way or the other.
For example, the recent ISIS attack: if you are a rank and file member, you propably believe that you are truly creating an Islamic caliphate. In reality you are doing two things: 1. You are stopping the kurds from creating their own country, national state, which suits for everybody: Iran, Turkey, Irak, Syria, USA, Israel etc. You are also taking away the oil fields from them. And 2: You are creating a new reason for the USA to start new military involvement in the region and give the USA the new and more widely accepted reason to attack Syria directly. And this will happen.
So as an idealistic youth serving your “cause” blindly, you will believe that this is for the better. Just like those hundreds of thousands of brave american soldiers who went to war in Irak believing they were fighting against those who attacked in 911 when in reality they fought for something else. In reality Saddam Hussein had been fighting against Al Qaida for years. But USA attacked him instead of Al Qaida. There was no Al Qaida in Irak before US occupation. So…
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@ Ebonymonroe
Thanks – me too. Not to be a fangirl but I always read and enjoy your comments.
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@ Bulanik
I really don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theories about this. IS emerged organically and from the wreckage of Al-Q – I don’t believe the US had a hand in creating it at all.
What I do think is that the US was quite happy for the IS to topple the Assad regime, which is why US weapons found their way to IS in Syria. I think the US is also quite happy to see Iraq split along sectarian lines, because the Sunni portion would be brought under the influence of Saudi Arabia.
What the US did not expect (in my opinion) is how quickly IS would rise and how brutal its tactics would be. This is a huge reputational hit for the US and other countries that just a few months ago were touting the ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria.
Anyway, this is one time where the US SHOULD intervene in a decisive way but I don’t believe it will.
I am profoundly disappointed with President Obama in all of this. I’ve never liked Rand Paul but I find I’m warming to him more and more every day now.
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@wordynerdygirl:
Well, ISIS did not grow out from the ruins of Al Qaida. Al Qaida was never finished, it is and was a network of cells. The first generation of its leaders were eliminated, but the network remained/remains still.
Al Qaida was born in Afganistan from the extremist mujahedin in 1980’s when CIA was supporting them with missles, guns, ammo and money. They did this despite the fact that one of the mujahedin leaders, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told americans: First we destroy USSR and then we destroy USA. One of the key guys in the US-Mujahedin connection was a young guy from a wealthy saudi family, which was in various businesses with the Bush family: Osama bin Laden. He created Al Qaida and his family kept close connection to the Bush family all the way up untill 911.
ISIS on the other hand came out from nowhere, all of sudden, all trained, all armed, wealthy, prepared, everything set, and just check out whom they have attacked. Yeah, strange that they are fighting all those whom US, NATO or Israel wish to see diminished or destroyed.
I think one has to be extremely naive to think that ISIS was created in the chaos of Syrian civil war or Irak, simply by local outcasts. No, it has all the signs of an proxy army, a force to be manipulated and used anyway the financiers wish.
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I do not agree with this site on everything nor I support its politics but here is a nice bit about ISIS.
http://www.infowars.com/nsa-doc-reveals-isis-leader-al-baghdadi-is-u-s-british-and-israeli-intelligence-asset/
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@ sam
Sorry, I don’t agree. And I don’t think that the infowars site is a good (or valid) source for information.
We will have to agree to disagree.
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.. and to claim that IS emerged ‘all of a sudden’ is to mischaracterise my argument. I said that IS emerged ‘organically’ – that is, naturally from the conflict.
Not everything can be traced back to some global conspiracy with the US at its head. Sometimes groups form because they’re discontented or they are mobilised by a common cause. I think both of these factors were at play in the creation of IS.
It’s tempting to ascribe it to some larger cause/conspiracy simply because the actions of the ISIS fighters are so very gruesome and abhorrent. Usually the simplest explanation is the correct one, and I believe this to be the case with IS. They really do want to murder Shia, Christians and anyone for that matter standing in the way of the establishment of the Caliphate.
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@ Wordy
Thanks for your POV.
Thanks also for the links your provided.
I haven’t yet formed a personal conclusion on what IS emerged from, and have not expressed that here, on this thread or anywhere on Abagond’s blog.
Actually the truth is that I’m considering a number of angles — not just what is available in the news, etc., because when I do visit places like Turkey, my opinion becomes more nuanced or contradicted.
Therefore it p!sses me off that you now address me by beginning thus:
So far my comments on this thread have:
– answered the Islamaphobic, and,
– discussed Turkey and oil.
Even though you may wish to undermine my PoV by calling me a “conspiracy theorist”, to my mind,my comments do not constitute a theory about ISIS.
Earlier this year, you mentioned “conspiracy theories”, in relation to my comments on the “Boko Haram” thread.
I didnt’ appreciate that then and nor do I appreciate it now.
Why are you able to just disagree with someone without labelling them?
I am sure it would sit well with you if I did the same to your PoVs!
You’d be annoyed, and we’d certainly hear about it!
Therefore, Wordy, I ask again to refrain from calling my point of view on ISIS a “conspiracy theory” BEFORE I have even formed one!
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I mean: I am sure it would NOT sit well with you if I did the same to your PoVs!
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@ Wordy,
Please can you explain the mechanism of IS emerging “naturally from the conflict”?
I would interested in funding and organisational elements in particular.
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@ Wordy
Are you describing A Psychology? What is YOURS?
I am wondering about why you need to call others “conspiracy theorists”.
Is it because they point out and see what you don’t want to see or think about, and don’t want others, in turn, to see, entertain or think about?
It strikes me that you use this label Conspiracy Theory as a way to undermine and “terminate” other points of view, and actually embarrass the stragglers who persist in that kind of silliness to accept “the simplest explanation {as} the correct one”.
Yes, definitely.
Frankly, if I believed everything mainstream media, governments and Hollywood told me — where would I be? Is the simplest explanation another way of saying: the most RATIONAL explanaton?
Would I have my finger on the pulse if I believed and trusted ALL explanation handed out to me?
Would I also be saying the people in Ferguson just aren’t giving Peace a chance? ….”because” if black men weren’t so inherently criminal (!)none of this would be happening! If they were law-abiding no one would be shooting them! The police are just trying to do a job, for goodness sake! Blahblahblahblah.
NO.
I don’t subscribe to that and believe NONE of that — because I learned not to.
I remember, for one, Germans in Germany telling me that racism and xenophobia didn’t exist in their country, because noticing that it did was an Einbildung, a conceit of the imagination, even though what I saw with my own eyes was that Turks and Kurds there were being systematically discriminated against, or brutalised.
I must have been imagining all that!
I don’t subscribe to the idea that what our media(s) and governments tell us simply exist for our own good. I believe that governments HAVE socially engineered socieites and do use methods to make the public believe what they want us to believe.
I don’t believe that because I find it “tempting” to think like that.
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@wordynerdygirl:
I agree that Infowars is not the source to be quoted, generally, but that just popped up as I googled and the article seemed to compress the whole thing nicely. You will find a lot of information and materiel in the Net about the birth/creation of ISIS.
Unfortunately ISIS did not emerge from Irak or Syria organically, or even locally. It appeared out from no where soon after foreign jihadists arrived in Syria, including Al Qaida operatives, despite the fact that Syria is for all practical purposes closed up. So the question is: how on earth could Al Qaida fighters from Europe, Tsetshenia, Afganistan etc. get into Syria when the country is surrounded by US and its NATO members, friendly governments like Jordan and Irak? How they could enter the country by thousands despite the arms embargo etc.?
Second question is where they got their weapons and the funds? Just one round, one shot with an AK47 costs in Syria some fifty cents a pop. One guy shoots usually few thousand rounds in few days, depending the ferocity of the fighting. Now, you have thousands of men shooting thousands of rounds worth of thousands of thousands of dollars in few days. Where they get the money for that?
Where they get their food? Water? Vehicles? Logistics? Radios? Communications? Satellite dishes which they use to access the Internet? Computers? Where do they get their medical facilities? Medicines and drugs? All these in a country that is litterally shot to pieces and smashed and looted empty. A country with two million refugees. From a corner store? From local supporters? Local syrians have enough fight just to survive a day by day.
Where they get their maps and who tells them not to blow up this oil pipe and blow up these? Why would they care? Why they direct their Holy War on targets which happen to be the ones USA, Turkey, Israel etc. would deal with too?
Like the John McCain phographs show, american personel have good friendly relationships with ISIS. They were US allies just days ago, few weeks ago, Remember “The Syrian rebels”? And if we are talking about the US fighting now against them: as always it is the peshmerga, the kurds who do the actual fighting.
The well repeated and showed US boming of ISIS target was in reality one single field gun position. Hardly a massive air stricke planned to wipe out everybody. See, that would have been a piece of cake for US air power. They could have destroyed all ISIS forces around that mountain if they would have wanted. One strike with B-52 wing would have killed them all. USA did not do that. Why?
You said: “Not everything can be traced back to some global conspiracy with the US at its head.”
You are right. But here is the thing: there is no conspiracy. All of this pretty common knowledge in Asia, in arab countries, in China, in Russia, in India and where the media is not controlled by the US+the wests interests.
The birth of ISIS, the composition of it, the funding of it are all out in the open. And you forget that something like ISIS works because of the manipulation: all you have to do is give the guns and point direction. All you need is the few leaders working for you and it is done deal. And in the case of ISIS, the caliph of the whole show worked for Mossad/Shin Beth in 1990’s. Net nerds even found his ID tags and picture of his ID card issued by Israel. So…
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Abagond, please post this comment, the one above is full of typos.
@ sam
Wordy is absolutely correct when she say that “Not everything can be traced back to some global conspiracy with the US at its head.”
Of course not every thing can be traced back to that!
But, so far, I don’t believe that that is what has been said by either of us.
(Ever.)
I also believe there is no conspiracy.
That is my believ because whenever I am out of the “Western” zone, in Western Asian, it is pretty much common knowledge what is going on because the media runs differently.
Therefore it’s true when you say:
Are we mindful enough of that manipulation?
Back in the early 1990s, the Public Relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, received $12 million in fees for the campaign to convince the public in the West that:
Iraqi babies were being thrown out of incubators by Iraqi troops.
That ^^ was The Nayirah Testimony: it was a strongly emotional appeal, and it was cited over and over by US senators and the President in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War.
The detail about the PR company or that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family was NOT part of the disclosure at the time.
(Lobbyists can, and will disguise their true colours.
An article from early 1990s: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-12-10/news/9204220370_1_sam-zakhem-grand-jury-saddam-hussein/2)
Here is Nayirah’s emotional testimony before the US Senate:
Or, what about the chemical attack waged by Syria’s government?
When it was studied, it turned out to be a untrue, a hoax.
(http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/01/18/346314/mit-challenges-us-syria-claim/)
This one reason why I take a dim view of “conspiracy theory” labelling being bandied about in this way.
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@bulanik:
Yes, there was an perfect example even before the ones you mentioned. During the Vietnam war US was also fighting what was dubbed later on as a “secret war in Laos”. In that mainly CIA run war american planes dropped more bombs in Laos than in the whole WW2 combined. And that war was not secret even in Europe. The only place were it was “secret” was USA.
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Take a look at this article on the Voltaire Network.
John McCain, Conductor of the “Arab Spring” and the Caliph
by Thierry Meyssan
http://www.voltairenet.org/article185085.html
It sports a picture of John McCain with the “Caliph” aka Baghdadi of ISIS.
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where’s br at?
This seems fairly common knowledge (well amongst people I know on the web)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-nsa-documents-reveal/5391593
“ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi Trained by Israeli Mossad, NSA Documents Reveal”
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https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art7.html
“CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974”
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Wtf do you mean where am I at? I said above Im not participating in this bs discusion, because of the low leval blame the cia on everything , head up the rear end depictions, because I would just end up getting banned…
And , sure enough, the low leval discussion is happening
It not people inventing conspiracy theory, its people buying into it like suckers you could sell a used lemon on a car lot…you chumps
Oh , so people in other countries dont think the same way , huh? How about the anti Americans in South America thinking the cia is in everything , and wants to invade the Amazon and get the oil, you know they do have a lot of oil in South America…these people think differant…and their heads are up their rear ends…just because they think differant doesnt mean they have a clue
The lack of being able to look at the complex reality in what happened in how this developed is a deafening roar…
V8 , I suggest you research the history of your follow countryman who was beheaded by these sob scum , and see how complex the situation in Syria was and is, the hundreds of opisition groups , and the many who werent extremist , fighting against the brutality of Assad…and the less extremist groups was who they were trying to help….
Get some kind of feel for the complexity of the whole situation , that is severly lacking here
And how the USA has no real control of the situation anyway, most recently , extremist Islam fighters were bombed in Lybia by the coalition of Egypt and the Arab Emirate , against the wishes of American diplomats , showing things evolve at a dizzying pace , and there is big conflict now between old guard , and the extreme Islam, and it happens at a pace no American interests can even keep up with
You need to research that…someone trained years ago for a certain conflict could be operating on a differant side now….what is so got dam hard about that to understand ? A want to be chump rapper from Britain is now cutting peoples heads off
I mean , use your head, mccain lost , he is an out of touch politition who doesnt represent America, and for sure , who he represents is the most ridiculous side of American thought
So , Im not interested in coming down to this petty shallow discusion, it can kiss my rear end , and that is why Im not posting…I would just get banned at my disgust…
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Here is another take on ISIS and its caliph.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-nsa-documents-reveal/5391593
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@BR:
Well, it seems that the ISIS guy who beheaded the american journalist in Syria was a brittish citizen. Not syrian, nor an iraki, not a mid eastern at all. but from the most pro US country of them all.
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@ Sam, it makes sense that the murderer is a Brit: a lot of Brits are quite frustrated that the UK always does what the US tell them to do, while the US does not always agree to help the UK.
(Not that I think it excuses the act)
Snowden may be scraping he bottom of the barrel, but if you think the CIA is rotten and have no moral compass, they might very well do that! I worked for IBM when I first came to the UK, and quite a few of my colleagues were wtching porn and thought nothing of it. It got them sacked when they were found out by the way.
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@B R
I agree with you, it is very complex…it is fine that you disagree with the conspiracy theories (personally, I think it is a mixture: The CIA will jump on any opportunity)…you devalue your arguments a bit by using what grannies call “language” though! 🙂
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https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10204432756447531&id=1489932727&refid=17&_ft_=app_id.350685531728
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Abagond…yes , I see you have one of my comments in moderation…since 99 percent fits into acceptable diologue on this blog, Im kind of at a loss at what has to be changed to have my excelent points made on here….at least I thought I used clinical terms as metaphors…
Annef1 , you certainly deserve an explanation for my way of expressing myself on these matters..because I have lived close to thirty years in a country , that has some people in influential political power , and ,them manipulating attitudes of how history went down, I have heard exactly the same cia is the boogey man, manipulating every political turn of events , while these hypocrites are hiding behind this to gain political powers , and wealth …these people run outright lies and hypocriticle distortions about America and the cia , most often , leaving out the whole truth and all the parties involved playing dirty…it borders on the obscene , and deserves that kind of responce, because at that point, truth doesnt matter….its an insult to my intelligence , and Im not Fox News or that mentality…I see though it…
In all frank reality, I can sum up the visceral crux of the truth of Isis based on just my last two weeks tour of the USA, coming as an American living in Brazil for thirty years…,
I just played a show in New York , where our Afro Brazilian dancer floored the crowd in the Village , you can see it at www,facebook.com/bonsritmos
Im not selling this , its in the past, the point being 4 Afro Bahian dance and rhythms were on display …I just got back from Mango club in Ocean Drive in South Beach , Miami, with Stringed bikinied passistas on display, and then people dancing hot mambo with women in spandex leopard tights with men as close partners…I recorded jazz and naniga with local Cuban musicians
To top it off , I saw the VMA awards , and Im so pleased to anounce that for people who love full figured women in the American gaze, the worm has turned for you….enjoy it while it lasts, please dont do a post , Abagond, so I have to endure the frustration of that…and , i look forward to going back to Brazil , for the warm weather to bring the string bikinis and incredible Brazilian sensuality out…
All this is in the moment reality in my life , bringing sensuality , and well being into my life , making me a more fullfilled and healthiar person…
All this near and dear to me , is despised by the followers of Isis….and they come from America, Britain, Europe , also by the thousands….people who could cross my and the path of the wonderful artists I have performed with and seen performing , with their inner disgruntled , self hating dogmad mandates….not only them , its not as if I dont have the same disgusting obstacles with fundimental religions of all stripes…its a disease…I support anyone who will stand up to this crud.
Isis nowtheatens people at gunpoint if they dont convert…and brutaly assasinates them if they dont convert..the visceral truth is all too apherant to me about Isis intentions…
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@ B.R,
Please remove the toilet references.
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ISIS is a mystery to me. About a year ago John McCain and the NEOcons were pushing for a war with the Syrian government, who are in a war with part of what is now called ISIS , ISIL, and used to be called al qaeda. So we were arming these “rebels” and the american people said no to bombing the Assad regime. Even republican senators like Rand Paul questioned why we would bomb the syrian government when independent reports and the russian government said that the rebels “isis” (they weren’t called that yet) were responsible for the gas attacks. Many american military voiced opinions on social media with # I didn’t sign up to fight along side al qaeda.
Then some of these same rebels we were funding just walked into iraq with no opposition and took over like they were the roman army reincarnated.
All of the sudden we want to fight them in Syria, without the Syrian government’s blessing. To me this stinks to high heaven.
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Dave
Something is not right, but for those of us in the know people want to point us to our foil hats and call us conspiracy theorist.
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Ok Abagond , here is the responce with the toilet referance removed, but make no mistake, the bs people are so eager to buy into , is obscene to me, and might as well have been pulules from a toilet , its so flimsy and misinformed..why dont some of you follow the tragectory if Foley in Syria , to understand the truth if the complexity….the willingness to stick heads in the sand and only watch usa policy with backwards binoculars , us bracing
Sam , I know that ….I know the guy is British, now they say maybe the guy doing the cutting is someone else, in an edit, but the suspect bragged about cutting heads off on some social network…its not just about Foley, its about hundreds and thousands being executed by these scum , it makes Abu Grabi look like a fraternity hazing
Man , Sam , Global Research has a very flimsy article there, before I give it any credit, I need to see exactly what Snowden is reffering to …latly , since people have started losing interest in him, , he started saying NSA workers are looking for porno pictures in e mails….kind of stooping low there…this is the same Global Research that was reffered to about CIA LSD sponcered suicide missions in Nigéria, its really hard to take them seriously
I mean Israel is always trying to get spies to work for it, Assad was an enemy, so , they might have thought they had someone working for them…they dont have to invent an enemy…Hamas already exists
My gosh , these events transpired rapidly in the mid east in the last two years…people may have been one thing two years ago , and now its differant
Hundreds are flocking there from Europe , Britain and America….are they all cia recruits? They would be insulted to suggest that…like saying the KKK was invented by bankers to create racial division…their determination and religios ferver is much deeper than a cia organised effort could reach…are people going to be in that much denial about the fundimental militant Islamic slaughters in African countries and the middle east, because they see a picture of Mccain with an Isis leader before they really started their caliphate campain?
With such blatent lessons in history about Stalin signing a Peace treaty with Hitler, then sitting with Churchill and Rooseveldt, then being enemies with them , I dont get this strange notion someone cant be an ally first , then an enemy
…I mean give me a break…at least put on your thinking caps…or you might as well have tin foil dunce hats…Im so glad I understand the cultural ramifications on a visceral leval…
The cia is blundering its way through these messes, and making mistakes big time , but they didnt invent Isis or Boko Harem….they just dont have a clue, id agree with anyone on that…but people dont have a clue if they think the usa is behind them…thank gosh for my on the ground thourough education on how these lies and half truths get put out there for suckers to buy into
I learned more about the absolute complexity and crazyness in Syria from one five minute report on what beheaded American Foley was doing in Syria , than anything anybody has said here….the absolute chaos and complexity of the situation….
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http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-28977365
“Obama’s ‘no strategy’ gaffe reveals political truth”
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/isis-deal-syria_n_5814128.html
Geeses h krist , for gots sake read this article to get an idea of the complexity in Syria, and how the USA was always trying to support moderate groups fighting Assad….they effing didnt invent Isis , and it insults my intelligence to hear the cookie cutter crap claiming the USA invented Isis ..there were various groups fighting the brutal Assad responce
What is obvious is the USA is stumbling and bungaling around the middle east, not knowing what they are doing , throwing money and weapons around, and not really understanding fundimentalist Islam
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I don’t know about this one, Abagond. It seems like you’re being kind of chiding about ISIS or whatever they’re calling themselves like Obama was saying today. I think that’s a bad idea considering all they’ve managed to do.
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What is the scoop about this alleged plot to attack the US Capitol?
Was someone arrested even before anything occurred? And he was discovered on social media?
Does this say anything about Freedom of Speech?
Looking for sources of information now.
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To Jefe:
What is the scoop about this alleged plot to attack the US Capitol?
Was someone arrested even before anything occurred? And he was discovered on social media?
Does this say anything about Freedom of Speech?
Well if the link below is accurate it sounds as if he was putting into action a plan to kill people. Conspiracy to commit murder is not protected speech. although it does sound as if attention was brought to him by past comments on social media.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ohio-man-arrested-alleged-isis-inspired-attack-us/story?id=28227724
“Cornell and the informant met in Cincinnati over two days in October, and then another two days in November. During the last meeting, Cornell told an FBI informant that members of Congress were enemies and that he wanted to launch an attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., according to charging documents.
Cornell then allegedly saved money to finance the attack and researched how to build bombs, the FBI said.
Earlier today, while also taking “final steps” to travel to Washington for the attack, Cornell allegedly bought two semi-automatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition from a store in Ohio, authorities said.”
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It seems that mainstream news reports suggest that ISIS had something to do with this, but his social media record suggests that he is an “ISIS supporter”. So far I did not find anything confirming that ISIS had anything to do with it.
I would like to know where to draw the line on legal Freedom of Speech. For example, is it OK to publicly support ISIS? At what point does it become unprotected speech?
@UM,
but governments do this all the time. The plot to kill Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, invasion and war in general is an action plan to kill people.
Are governments allowed to proclaim such plots? But not organizations? What about if a lower level of government (eg, municipal), devised an action plan to kill someone.
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@UM
But this is not an illegal act, correct? In fact, doesn’t Ohio permit one to “open-carry” firearms?
If this is indeed a legal act, it should not be used to prove any guilt. The most it can do is confirm that he possessed some firearms which may have made him capable to orchestrate an attack. It would be like bringing up someone purchasing legal medication that he later planned to use to force someone else to take an overdose (without actually having done it).
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To Jefe:
But this is not an illegal act, correct?
By itself.. no…. but if someone has conveyed desires to kill people with such weapons to a government informant then I would suggest that one shouldn’t be surprised if they are arrested:
The most it can do is confirm that he possessed some firearms which may have made him capable to orchestrate an attack.
He could try to argue that in court but it has been used for years against right wing anti-government types. (See link above..)
And random nut cases:
http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/deer-park/michael-hoyt-john-boehner-update-boehner-on-poison-plot-cant-make-this-stuff-up
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To Jefe:
File this one under quite bizarre… two men arrested by the FBI for planning to make a “death ray” to kill muslims… Note the FBI was tipped off by a Jewish synagogue and the KKK.
http://www.denverpost.com/digitalfirstmedia/ci_23498741/fbi-assist-from-kkk-arrests-two-men-foiled
“According to the indictment, the investigators had a confidential undercover source in place within weeks after learning of Crawford’s attempts to solicit money, and later an undercover investigator was introduced by the confidential source.”
“Last June, the undercover investigator brought Crawford X-ray tubes to examine for possible use in the weapon, followed by their technical specifications a month later. At a November meeting in an Albany coffee shop with undercover investigators, Crawford brought Feight. Both said they were committed to building the device and named the group “the guild,” the indictment said. Investigators gave Feight $1,000 to build the control device and showed the men pictures of industrial X-ray machines they said they could obtain. They planned to provide him access to an actual X-ray system to assemble with the remote control Tuesday.”
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This is interesting.
By itself, performing behaviour under Freedom of Speech as well as behaviour under the right to bear arms independently do not constitute illegal activity.
Firearms can be purchased as long there is no plan to use them.
Voicing support for groups branded (by law enforcement or governments) as terrorist organizations (eg, ISIS) is OK as long as there is no evidence of action taken.
But combining both together at the same time can lead to arrest.
But … to some extent I wonder about political motives – using the arrest of this Ohio man to garner public support against ISIS, esp. when iconic buildings as near and dear as the US Capitol are implicated.
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@UM
From your cited news report
So 2 instances of the expression of “Free Speech”
– the discussion of a plan to build heretofore non extant weapons (ie, ray guns)
– Anti- Muslim rhetoric
which, theoretically should be allowed to be conducted separately
However, if done at the same time, then there is some sort of crime committed.
Indeed, bizarre.
Even more bizarre – collaboration between the FBI and the KKK.
Or is this really all bizarre?
Given what has been happening in my current location, I am interested in learning what constitutes “freedom of speech”, as those instances where government supports it, where they turn a blind eye towards infringements of it and where they actually try to stop it.
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The talking heads on Fox News see the Islamic State as representative of Islam because it has the word “Islamic” in its name. So, does that mean North Korea, aka the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is representative of democracy?
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