BS: Caliphate

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 03:33 AM

And now the USA officially agrees with me - air power alone cannot stop Isis. Come on armchair warriors - how about a battle plan for a solution rather than simply saying "they are Muslims".

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 04:20 AM

If air power can not do it, and the Iraqi and Kurdish forces can not do it, what else is there?

By its charter the UN is bound to intervene to stop genocide.
Sadly, it never has before.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 04:29 AM

On paper US (and allied) ground forces might be some use - after all they spifflicated Saddam Hussein's ground forces who had something of a reputation as desert warriors - but there are several buts. First they would properly need the permission of the legitimate governments of all the territories involved, and second that is likely to involve a deal with Assad (devil, long spoon, etc), and third - is it not going to create more martyrs?

Second option, not an offensive ground war but simply a defensive one - but I am pressed to think of times this has been successful.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 04:31 AM

"By its charter the UN is bound to intervene to stop genocide."
There's always someone ready with a veto, used extensively by the U.s. and Russia, to stop such things happening if it doesn't suit them - maybe it's time they scrapped that right.
Still doesn't acknowledge the 'catch-all' rider added by the U.S. to protect its own interests
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Teribus
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 04:34 AM

I think Richard President Obama was saying that IS in Iraq is an Iraqi problem that they {The Iraqi Government} will have to come up with a solution to that problem - in the meantime the US will respond to the Iraqi Government's request for assistance in the form of supplying air power in support of both military and humanitarian operations.

Interesting map shown on the Beeb yesterday it showed IS "controlled" areas in Syria and in Western Iraq. It would appear that all they really control are lines along certain roads, and that apart from Aleppo in Syria they must be getting tanked there - Assad's forces are winning their battle.

Now should I find myself at the receiving end of the effects of "air power", the very last country I would want to have on my case would be the USA. Using certain parts of Iraq as a live firing area bit by bit over the coming days and weeks IS will find itself paralysed, unable to move anything by road or deploy and use any of these "toys" they have picked up along the way. The reverse will be true for their opponents. Hopefully there will be no intention of capturing the members of this Islamic State they need to be killed, the sooner the better.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 06:16 AM

"they need to be killed, the sooner the better"
What a mind-numbing piece of neanderthal stupidity on all counts
I would have thought that we could have learned from history that executing leaders has the reverse effect of what is trying to be achieved - 1916 Ireland should have thought Britain that
A bunch of religion-driven fanatics just need a bunch of martyrs to pour some petrol into their tank, and the world just needs to see the U.S, behaving just as brutally as Isis.
The Isis leadership should be put on trial bu the International Court of Human Rights, charged with war crimes and when found guilty, sentenced accordingly.
I do hope you wear gloves Terpsichore otherwise your knuckles must get very sore being dragged along the ground.
By the way - if that's what Obama meant, he should have said it and not have us all worrying when the next bunch of Marines were going to parachute into our back gardens
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Teribus
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 06:55 AM

"A bunch of religion-driven fanatics just need a bunch of martyrs to pour some petrol into their tank, and the world just needs to see the U.S, behaving just as brutally as Isis.
The Isis leadership should be put on trial bu the International Court of Human Rights, charged with war crimes and when found guilty, sentenced accordingly."

Kill every single IS "fighter" in existence and not one single person would rise up to avenge them - they are complete scum that not even their own co-religionists want any association with.

Why go to the trouble and expense of trials and incarceration they wish for, above anything else in the world, a "martyrs death" - every possible means in the world should be used to aid them in achieving that goal.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 08:12 AM

"Kill every single IS "fighter" in existence and not one single person would rise up to avenge them"
Yeah sure - just like happened in Ireland!!
You really are a brain-dead thus, aren't you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 08:38 AM

I don't see that one can execute prisoner ex-combatants without due process, but I don't see much alternative to blasting the crap out of Isis from the air and on land. Air power only will not do the job, and so far local ground forces have proved ineffective.

However, we don't really want most of Iraq and Syria turned into fused glass, and Vietnam for example tends to show that where the enemy can hide in plain sight it can easily strike, vanish, and reappear to strike at will. Yes, I accept there are more trees in Vietnam.

I'm not at all sure that Ireland is an exact parallel, Jim. There the UK was vastly outnumbered on the ground AND the enemy could hide in plain sight. If one put enough forces on the ground against Isis it would probably be possible to take territory - but keeping it and keeping the occupying force safe could easily get a bit like Afghanistan - where I do not doubt that most people would dearly love to be rid of the Taliban and Taliban-alike but are oppressed by the greater firepower and inhuman viciousness that the religious fanatics can muster. Yes, there is some similarity to the IRA but not a huge amount.

What would you suggest, Jim, if land and air firepower cannot largely exterminate Isis?

The situation bears some resemblance to a parent with a delinquent child. How hard do you beat him or her and will it work?

I'd like to see that map, Terribilis. Have you a link?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 10:25 AM

Islamic State insurgents who seized a Lebanese border town this month planned to turn Lebanon into another Iraq by unleashing sectarian war between Sunnis and Shi'ites that would have endangered the nation's very existence, the army commander said.

General Jean Kahwaji told Reuters that radical Islamists on the march in Iraq and Syria still posed a "great threat" to Lebanon, which was torn apart by a 1975-90 civil war and has been badly buffeted by the Syrian conflict.

"The army hit them and continues to, smashing their plan," said Kahwaji, 37 of whose soldiers were either killed or captured in the battle for the border town of Arsal. "But this does not mean that the story is over," he said.

"They might think of another plan and try another time to cause Sunni-Shi'ite strife," said Kahwaji, 60.

The Aug. 2 attack marked the most serious spillover to date of Syria's three-year-old civil war into Lebanon and the first time a foreign invader has taken Lebanese territory since Israel entered the south during its 2006 war with Hezbollah.

Battle-hardened in Syria, the insurgents were members of radical Sunni groups including the Islamic State, which has redrawn the borders of the Middle East by seizing territory in Syria and Iraq. The group's advance has accelerated since it seized the Iraqi city of Mosul in June.

Dozens of the militants were killed in Arsal during a five-day battle with the Lebanese army, according to army estimates. The militants withdrew into the mountainous border zone last Thursday, taking with them 19 captive soldiers.

Kahwaji, dressed in military fatigues, said the Islamists' aim had been to turn the Sunni Muslim town of Arsal into a bridgehead from which to advance on surrounding Shi'ite villages, igniting a sectarian fire storm he said would have destroyed Lebanon.

"The strife in Iraq would have moved to Lebanon - 100 percent," said Kahwaji, a Maronite Christian.

He said he was basing his assessment on the confessions of an Islamist commander whose detention on Aug. 2 was the immediate trigger for the battle. The commander, Emad Gomaa, had been "fine tuning" the plan at the time of his arrest, Kahwaji said.

Gomaa, 30, was a member of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's affiliate in the conflict, but had recently switched allegiance to the Islamic State. He had previously worked as a purveyor of dairy products, Kahwaji said.

His confessions had led to the arrest of a number of militant cells in different parts of Lebanon, he added.

"Would there have remained a state? It is a battle for the survival of the Lebanese entity," Kahwaji said.

Tensions between Lebanese Shi'ites and Sunnis are already running high, exacerbated by the role played by the powerful Shi'ite group Hezbollah fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria.

Lebanese Sunnis have broadly been supportive of the uprising against Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Lebanon is also now home to an estimated 1.6 million Syrian refugees, most of them Sunnis.

Though its arsenal is more powerful than the Lebanese army's, Hezbollah stayed out of the Arsal battle, wary of wider sectarian strife in a country already hit by suicide bombings, gun battles and rocket attacks linked to the Syrian war.

The arrival of Islamic State fighters waving the group's black flag on the northeastern border triggered panic in a country that is home to many religious groups at risk from a movement that has beheaded and crucified its opponents.

Kahwaji said: "If the world and the people give up, then the black flag will arrive in Lebanon. But the people are with the army and they won't let them arrive."

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 11:01 AM

Source, Bullshot?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 11:05 AM

If you read it you would see that the source was Reuters Greg.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/uk-lebanon-security-arsal-idUKKBN0GC0I020140812

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 12:05 PM

Greggie doesn't bother to read things before he lies about them.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 12:07 PM

Clearly true.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 12:42 PM

"I'm not at all sure that Ireland is an exact parallel, Jim."
Sorry Richard - I assumed everyoe knows what happened on Easter Week, 1916.
At the beginning of the week a group of rebels entered the GPO in Dublin, held it for a week and, following a period of bloody fighting, surrendered.
As a national rebellion it was a non-event.
They were regarded as a bunch of eccentrics and the British soldiers had to protect the rebels from an angry crowd of Dubs demanding to know why they weren't "in the trenches, fighting alongside our lads(WW1)".
Most of the rebels were imprisoned in Frongoch, in North Wales, but the leaders were all taken out and summarily executed - the prevailing image of the period is that of James Connolly who was so badly wounded, he had to be strapped into a chair in order to be shot.      
In a matter of months, an "eccentric adventure" had been transformed into a nation-wide war of Independence (more thuggish British brutality), leading to the signing of a treaty within 6 years because of Britain's neanderthal reaction to a valid political uprising.
"When will they ever learn?"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 01:02 PM

"When will they ever learn?"
....that violence is not the best way in a democracy.

Home rule had already been agreed.
Years of bloody civil war was the only result of that "rising."

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Aug 14 - 01:28 PM

Oh, God, Jim PLEASE don't start FKWT off on his personal re-interpretation of Irish history. His bullshit about WW I was hard enough to take.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Teribus
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 02:08 AM

Sorry Richard no link the map only appeared on a report by the Beeb and has not been repeated.

Shifting ground for the Islamic State over the past few days:

1: US air support to Iraqi Government Forces and more importantly to the Kurdish Peshmerga Militia

2: US supplies of arms and ammunition to both Iraqi Government Forces and to the Kurdish Peshmerga Militia

3: Deployment of Special Advisors to Kurdish areas - As they did in Afghanistan operating with Northern Alliance forces in the period October to December 2001 they will identify, nominate and "paint" the IS targets to be hit from the air. In Afghanistan the combination of local ground forces, special advisors and air power ran the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda "guests" out of the country in seventy-one days (The Taliban had previously been unsuccessfully trying to defeat the Northern Alliance for seven years).

4: It would appear that the Iraqi Government is starting to get its act together re Nouri Al-Maliki. That will take time but it will be done and then they can proceed against IS "fighters" and any Sunni Tribes inside Iraq who support them.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Teribus
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 02:25 AM

As far as Ireland goes it would appear that Richard and Christmas are talking about two different periods in history.

Richard thought that Christmas was referring to 1969 - 2008, whereas Christmas was talking about 1916 - 1921. Neither comparison is relevant to the Caliphate or the Islamic State.

Tell me Christmas, what has been the response to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's appeal for all Muslims to flock to his newly established "country"? As far as I can see most people do their level best to flee any territory threatened by this wanker and his "forces". Unfortunately IS, who to date have not fought against any rated opposition and who are apparently fleeing the fighting in Syria, are about to come up against the Kurds backed by the best and most experienced air force in the world, it will be an experience that they will not enjoy.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 03:06 AM

So Jim in what way were the Irish events of 1916 or any other time similar to the present situation with ISIS? You seem to make my point for me that the situations are really rather different.

Incidentally, it does indeed appear to be the case that the principle of home rule for Ireland had been accepted, and that the ball was rolling, after the Parliament Acts, by say 1912, so what the 1916 uprising (about which I did know) was remove the possibility of the whole of Ireland ruling itself right to the present day, and delay the possibility of Southern Ireland ruling itself until 1922.

And in any event, across most of Ireland, from long before 1916, English troops were islands in a sea of hostility, as I said.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 03:09 AM

"PLEASE don't start FKWT off on his personal re-interpretation of Irish history"
No intention whatever of doings so Greg - my hearing is far to precarious nowadays to be able to put up with yet another display of his Lambeg drumming.
He has displayed his spectacular ignorance of Irish history enough times in the past to make that particular exercise unnecessary, and his latest offering is more than adequate proof of his partisan approach to the subject.
I raised it to point out the consequences of Terry the Trooper's brutish suggestion of "kill them all and take no prisoners men" - classic comic-book soldiering.
I agree with Richard that there is no alternative to doing what is in the process of being done at the moment, but the idea of deliberately slaughtering them all, makes anybody who would carry out or even suggest such a thing no better than the extremists and it would have the Hydra effect I suggested it would - cut of one head and another would grow.
These people are not an army, they are a dangerous idea - you don't kill them or suppress them out of existence - you make them unsustainable and unnecessary to people they are influencing and oppressing.
Create martyrs en-masse, especially where religion is concerned, and you guarantee that it will survive and spread to fight another day.
God save us all from military half-wits, especially anonymous wannabe ones, crouched behind keyboards in the comfort and safety of their own homes or holding forth at the bar around throwing-out time - peacetime Dad's Armiers all.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 03:44 AM

Report saying some things like wot I sed...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/12/iraq-militants-changing-tactics-complicating-us-airstrike-mission/

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 05:17 AM

Richard, I think Teribus' map is shown here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28222872

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 05:26 AM

across most of Ireland, from long before 1916, English troops were islands in a sea of hostility

A large proportion of the young male population volunteered for the British army from 1914 to 1916.
There were no hostilities against English soldiers before that.
Sinn Fein went broke for lack of support.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 06:06 AM

Young Irelander Rebellion?
Irish Republican Brotherhood?
Fenian Brotherhood?
1865 rebellion plans?
12 Feb 1967?
1879 Land War?
Phoenix Park Murders?


And some quotes: -

INTRODUCTION

"'Twas hard for mournful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us,

Ah but harder still to bear the shame

Of foreign chains around us.

And so I said: the mountain glen

I'll seek at morning early

And join the brave united men

While soft winds shake the barley."

Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830 - 1883) "The Wind that Shakes the Barley"

"To break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country - these were my objects."

Wolfe Tone c.1790

"The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people of Ireland; that they and none but they are the landowners and law-makers of this island."

James Fintan Lalor, 1848

"We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies...

...In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms."

Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 1916.

The English ruling class first invaded Ireland in the twelfth century, when feudal barons staked out their territory. Over the centuries English landlords grew rich at the expense of the Irish people.

A settler population to rule on behalf of the English was established and penal laws kept the Irish in subservience. As well as taxes and rents, Ireland supplied England with farm produce and cheap labour. Famine, evictions and poverty were the lot of Ireland's rural population.

The United Irishmen fought for their country's independence in the wake of the French Revolution. In the nineteenth century the Fenian Brotherhood took up the struggle. Then in the early years of the twentieth century the movement would no longer be denied, though it was fought at every turn by the British establishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Teribus
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 06:15 AM

"The English ruling class first invaded Ireland in the twelfth century" - Richard Bridge

12th Century - they would most likely speak "French" and still see themselves as Normans then Richard.

As for the rest - Jayzus ever think of writing a song about all of that?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Musket
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 06:21 AM

Took. 800 odd posts before Keith got into his "the micks loved us" routine.

I suppose I should congratulate his restraint.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 09:46 AM

Indeed, today's global events seem surreal and fictional in their evilness. The Yazidis of Iraq are facing genocide. Boko Haram and the Taliban continue their reign of terror: Horrifying, brutal, cruel and inhuman terror from beheadings to rape. Where is the outrage in the Muslim world over these atrocities?

I ask this as a Muslim activist who's exhausted, not from defending my faith, but from asking the same question over and over again for the past two decades. When I asked this question in the aftermath of 9/11, I was criticized for being a "fear-monger." Following the 7/7 terrorist attacks in the U.K., I called on the larger Muslim community to "wake up and smell the coffee before it's too late." For this, I was labelled a traitor. Later — as I uncovered and exposed the subversive agendas of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah — I was labelled a heretic.

Raheel Raza: In the Muslim world, silence falls

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 10:17 AM

Should some of that be in quotes? My quotes were specified to be so.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 10:35 AM

"We unequivocally condemn the violence committed by ISIS/L (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)."

from here

http://www.mcb.org.uk/muslim-council-of-britain-comments-on-the-situation-in-iraq/

Bigot, Poo-bad?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 10:38 AM

Hopefully there will be no intention of capturing the members of this Islamic State they need to be killed, the sooner the better.

Hmm. I seem to recall people saying similar things about the Taliban a few years ago. Then we found out that many members of the Taliban were actually young men who didn't have a clue about "the politics" who couldn't make money to send to their families any other way. Death is so bloody final, isn't it, in the immortal words of Basil Fawlty. It's always a shame when you kill someone then find out you might have made a mistake.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 12:23 PM

Extremist supporters of Islamic State have been handing out leaflets promoting the establishment of a "Kahlifah" and calling on Muslims to "obey the Kahleef", on the streets central London this week, becoming threatening and abusive when challenged, according to witnesses.

One of the leaflets given out by the supporters calls for Muslims to "spread the Khalifah [caliphate] across the world," forming a new Islamic State governed by an Imam executing Islamic Sharia law.

Asmaa Al-Kufaishi, a British-Iraqi doctor, tweeted images she said were of the group canvassing around the busy shopping area of Oxford Street on Saturday, with materials using symbolism associated with the fundamentalist militant group Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, which has declared a "caliphate" across parts of Syria and Iraq.

"My sister noticed the circle logo ISIS use on its flags and we then asked them why they were using it," Al-Kufaishi told Newsweek. "Initially they were cagey but then a guy with the ginger beard said there was nothing wrong with ISIS or anything they were doing in Iraq and Syria. That's how it started because I took offence to that and when we questioned him and his colleagues we were abused regarding our Iraqi nationality and the fact we were a different Islamic sect to them. We were told that we were kuffar (non believers) and that we should be killed like those Christians and Muslims in Iraq."

"When asked basic Islamic knowledge they had no idea. They are just a bunch of ignorant people who have used Islam as a way of terrorising others. they honestly didn't have a clue about the basic Islamic teachings and history," she added.

The leaflet says it is the responsibility of Muslims from around the world to pledge "Bayah [religious oath of allegiance] to the Khaleef" and "obey the Khaleef according to the Shariah". The leaflet goes on to argue "all those who can migrate and resettle should migrate", as "Muslims with the help of Allah have announced the re-establishment of the Khalifah".

Ghaffar Hussain, managing director at the Quilliam Foundation told Newsweek that the men handing out the leaflets were well-known extremists from Luton, probably associated with the al-Muhajiroun extremist network.

Hussain, who had spoken to someone who had witnessed the group distributing the leaflets near Oxford Circus on Tuesday but didn't want to speak to journalists, named one of the men as Ibrahim Anderson, formerly known as Roger Anderson, a white British convert to Islam. He said that the group had responded with abuse when challenged by passers-by. Newsweek could not independently verify the identities of those present at the protest.

"This is a very disturbing development but one that should not come as a surprise since we are aware that around 500 British nationals have joined up with ISIS already, said Hussain. "We need to have a zero tolerance policy towards ISIS supporters and recruiters in the UK."

The Metropolitan Police said that they were looking investigating whether the leaflets contained any criminal material but said they were not aware of any threats made against members of the public.

Last month pro-Islamic State supporters were filmed protesting in the Netherlands on two separate occasions in the Hague. This marked the first time the group's black flags were flown in Europe. The Dutch government has since made public displays of the flag illegal.

Last Thursday a banner bearing similar insignia to ISIS was hoisted off the gates of London's Will Crooks estate on Poplar High Street, the Guardian reported.

Islamic State now controls large parts of north and eastern Syria and northern Iraq, and have recently clashed with the Lebanese army, briefly taking a border town in Lebanon. The US has recently launched air strikes against the group to attempt to free thousands of Yazidis that Islamic State had surrounded on a mountain in Iraq, telling them they must convert to Islam or face death.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 01:03 PM

The IS should provoke profound introspection in the Sunni Arab world. Instead, various forms of Baghdadi Denial Syndrome are getting all the attention.

One of the most alarming features of Arab responses to the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq is a persistent pattern of neurotic denial in the form of conspiracy theories and other escapist fantasies. But running away from the truth will only complicate the ability of Arab states and societies to comprehend where the IS came from, how it has unexpectedly managed to surge into so much power so quickly, and how it can be effectively countered.

One of the most persistent and widespread delusions is that the IS did not, in fact, emerge from Sunni Muslim communities in Iraq and Syria over the course of the wars there in the past decade. Instead, it is increasingly asserted, the IS is a creature of, and was established by, intelligence services such as the CIA or the Israeli Mossad. An extraordinarily large number of Arabs, Muslims and others appear to have taken refuge in these conspiracy theories. Call it Baghdadi Denial Syndrome.

The most outlandish version circulating online holds that IS leader and "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is, in fact, a Jewish actor named Elliot Shimon, or some such plausibly-Jewish name. Shimon, it's laughably alleged, was trained for a year by the Mossad in various skills, including theology and rhetoric.

Even some who don't embrace this detailed self-parody are still clinging to the notion that Baghdadi and the IS are, somehow, foreign impositions on the Sunni Muslim social and political landscape of Syria and Iraq. An astounding number and range of Arabs, in my own experience in recent weeks, embrace some version of a conspiracy theory holding that the IS and Baghdadi are not what they seem and are, in fact, the creations of Western or Israeli intelligence services.

In a way, this thinking reflects a positive impulse. There is a desire to reject Baghdadi and the IS, and an unwillingness to accept the fact that such vicious malefactors could actually have been organically produced by elements of Syrian and Iraqi society under extreme pressures. Like Arab and Muslim 9/11 conspiracy theories, it begins with a disavowal – "that can't have had anything to do with any of us" – that, rather than producing serious introspection, gives way to denial through conspiracy theory and a terror of the truth.

Hussein Ibish: Baghdadi Denial Syndrome

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 01:17 PM

Source of 13 Aug 14 - 12:23 PM , Bullshot?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 01:19 PM

Faysh Khabur, Iraq (CNN) -- In an exodus of almost biblical proportions, thousands trudge across a river to escape killers belonging to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Entire families carry nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some are barefoot.

Jamal Jamir, a 23-year-old university student from Sinjar, told CNN his family fled to the barren and windswept Mount Sinjar more than a week ago after ISIS captured their town. The group, which calls itself the Islamic State, has been on a rampage, killing members of various minorities, including Yazidis.

Jamir said after ISIS arrived in his town, Arab neighbors of his turned on the minorities and helped ISIS kill. "They join them, and actually they kill us."

"People you know?" CNN asked.

"Yes," he responded. "People -- our neighbors!"

CNN

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 01:35 PM

I really didn't intend to let Keith loose with his re-written version of Irish history
My example still stands - Irish leadership executed following an unpopular uprising - immediate war of Independence lasting five years up to an unsatisfactory treaty being signed, leading to 70 years of culminating in a bloodbath
Your dates are right Richard - Siege of Waterford.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 01:52 PM

http://www.newsweek.com/islamic-state-supporters-hand-out-leaflets-central-london-promising-dawn-new-era-264158


OK, Greggie boy.

Now YOU can provide the source of YOUR comments.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 02:29 PM

Here it is Greg.
Newsweek 1 day ago.
http://www.newsweek.com/islamic-state-supporters-hand-out-leaflets-central-london-promising-dawn-new-era-264158

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 02:43 PM

Sorry for duplication.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 05:04 PM

Hardly.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 05:24 PM

Hardly what Greg?
You asked for the source, and were given it.
What is your point?
What is the point of you?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 06:12 PM

Top Cat calling, Greg! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 08:12 PM

Breaking News: Defense officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, allowing thousands of Yazidis trapped there to escape.

NY Times

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 09:25 PM

Muslims Demonstrating Against ISIS

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 14 - 11:43 PM

Tut tut, bigot. I gave you the official UK Muslim condemnation of Isis, above.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 04:42 AM

Yes, you are much better at playground name calling than debating.
If you could argue, you would.
You have nothing to say so its back to naughty words and names, as if you just learned them from the big boys.
You lose.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 07:33 AM

U.S. air strikes continue against the terrorists of the so-called "Islamic State" -- formerly the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" or ISIS -- in the borderlands of Iraqi Kurdistan. American military action has been impelled by the genocidal ISIS threat to Christians and various small Kurdish and other religious minorities, including Yazidis, whose faith is linked to Zoroastrianism, and the ancient monotheistic community of Mandaeans. Meanwhile, questions about the extremist movement and its foreign recruits have spread throughout the Muslim lands and the Muslim minority communities in the West, from Belgium to Australia.

On Monday, August 11, authorities in the Kosovo Republic -- among the most pro-Western Muslim-majority states in the world -- announced the detention of 40 Kosovar citizens suspected of participation in terrorism in Iraq and Syria. The arrests came after raids at 60 locations in the Balkan country, and were carried out under procedures established by the Kosovo Penal Code protecting "constitutional order and security in the Republic."

The individuals jailed were identified only by initials and ages, and comprised eight in the Kosovo capital, Prishtina; seven in the eastern town of Gjilan, near the Serbian border; 11 from Ferizaj in the southeast; five from Prizren in the south; four from Peja in the northwest, and five from Mitrovica in the extreme north. The latter city is divided between Albanians and Serbs. Dates of birth ranged from 1962 to 1994.

Evidence seized included explosives, weapons and ammunition. Kosovo police noted that 16 Kosovar Albanians have been reported killed in fighting in Syria.

According to the Kosovar newspaper of record, Koha Ditore (Daily Times), police said the sweep followed a two-year investigation, which is ongoing. Koha Ditore quoted Sevdije Morina, Kosovo's acting chief special prosecutor, who declared that several local Muslim clerics are also under scrutiny. The same newspaper cited Blerim Isufaj, the prosecutor of the case, saying the majority of the suspects were affiliated with ISIS or Jabhat Al-Nusra, rival splinter groups from al Qaeda.

In Western Europe, alarm over ISIS and its appeal to the local Muslim diaspora emerged after the Brussels attack on the city's Jewish Museum on May 24. Four people were killed in that incident, allegedly by Mehdi Nemmouche, a French Muslim who had fought in Syria. French interior minister Manuel Valls had warned in January that the return of jihadists from distant combat zones to Europe is "the greatest danger that we must face in the coming years." Valls referred to ISIS influence in Muslim minorities as "a phenomenon of unprecedented size."

On August 11, Australia was shocked as its media reported that Khaled Sharrouf, a convicted terror conspirator in that country, who went to Syria last year, had posted an image on his Twitter account of a child believed to be Sharrouf's son holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier.

In between, both in time and space, Albanians were repelled when, on July 31, a Kosovar in the ranks of ISIS, Lavdrim Muhaxheri, posted photographs on his Facebook page of himself decapitating a Syrian soldier.

Muhaxheri has a history in Kosovo of supporting extremists in Syria. On May 12, the Kosovo daily web-portal Express, in a reportage signed by its intrepid investigator of radical Islam, Visar Duriqi, said that Muhaxheri had worked in the official Kosovo Islamic Community apparatus in Kacanik, a city near the southern Kosovo border with Macedonia. In Facebook posts before his atrocity photo was posted, Muhaxheri claimed he controlled the appointment of the imam at the Central Mosque in Kacanik, which has become a center of conflict between Islamist radicals and local traditional Muslims.

Muhaxheri threatened to kill Kacanik clerics as well as politicians and public figures in Kosovo who denounced incitement of young Albanian Muslims to fight in Syria.

As described by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) on its portal, Balkan Insight, for July 31, Kosovo president Atifete Jahjaga summoned a meeting with security officials of the Balkan republic the day Muhaxheri's Facebook images appeared. She called for "treating this threat to the security of Kosovo as a priority." Jahjaga said, "It is our responsibility as institutions and as a society to condemn these ugly phenomena. We must distance ourselves from these brutal acts of criminals, and we must denounce and treat them as such."

Kosovo justice minister Bajram Rexhepi stated that an international arrest warrant had been issued for Muhaxheri.

The involvement of Albanians in ISIS has not escaped the attention of more influential global commentators. On August 7, David Gardner, a Middle East expert and reporter for the London Financial Times, pointed out that when, at the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, corresponding with the end of June, the "Islamic State" proclaimed its authority over all the Sunni Muslim believers in the world, the text was "translated into English, French, German, Turkish, Russian - and Albanian." Gardner asked, "Why... take the trouble?"

Gardner attributed the appeal of the "Islamic State" for Albanian Muslims to penetration of the Muslim communities in the Western Balkans by Wahhabism, the fundamentalist doctrine originating in Saudi Arabia.

Radio Free Europe reported on August 8 that Naim Maloku, a prominent veteran of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1998-99 war for the territory, and now a military and security expert, said that Kosovo legal institutions must prevent local citizens from fighting abroad and that the official Islamic Community must be more involved in countering jihadist propaganda. "In their preaching, [Muslim] religious leaders should be more active in their statements," Maloku said.

During the fighting in Gaza, radical voices were heard in Kosovo demanding that Albanians support Hamas. On August 1, the "Islamic Movement to Unite," also known as "Join!," and by its Albanian initials as LISBA, was supported by fewer than 100 people in a pro-Gaza protest held in Prishtina.

Kosovar Albanians are sympathetic, within limits, to the Palestinians. Many Kosovars are bitter about close relations between Serbia and Palestine. Muhammad Nabhan, ambassador of the Palestinian Authority in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, since 1974, has stated repeatedly that Palestinians support Serbian claims to rule in Kosovo and has even denied that Serbia - which invaded and annexed Kosovo in 1912 -- ever "occupied" Kosovo. In 1999, the Palestinian Authority invited the late Slobodan Milosevic to visit Bethlehem for Orthodox Christian Christmas in January 2000. Israel then warned that if the Serbian dictator attempted to cross its borders, he would be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. The visit never took place.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Musket
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 09:17 AM

I take it the cap fits?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 11:38 AM

Why?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 01:51 PM

Brilliant piece about the second democracy in the Middle East that is just around the corner. It also talks about what Israel should do in reaching out to this new democracy.

The author of the article, Ofra Bengio, is an Israeli professor at Tel Aviv University, and she's an expert on Kurdish studies.

Why the Kurds will become the second non Arab state in the Middle East