BS: Caliphate

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 02:49 PM

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State militants are massing near the Iraqi town of Qara Tappa, 122 km (73 miles) north of Baghdad, security sources and a local official said, in an apparent bid to broaden their front with Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

The Sunni militants have made a dramatic push through the north to a position near Arbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The movement around Qara Tappa suggests they are getting more confident and seeking to grab more territory closer to the capital after stalling in that region.

"The Islamic State is massing its militants near Qara Tappa," said one of the security sources. "It seems they are going to broaden their front with the Kurdish fighters."

Islamic State has also been using tunnels built by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s to secretly move fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq to towns just south of Baghdad.

The group, made up of Iraqis, other Arabs and foreign fighters has threatened to march on Baghdad, part of its ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East and impose its radical version of Islam.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 06:25 PM

An employee of the Dutch Justice Ministry said the jihadist group ISIS was created by Zionists seeking to give Islam a bad reputation.

Yasmina Haifi, a project leader at the ministry's National Cyber Security Center, made the assertion Wednesday on Twitter, the De Telegraaf daily reported.

"ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It's part of a plan by Zionists who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam's name," wrote Haifi, who described herself on the social network LinkedIn as an activist for the Dutch Labor party, or PvdA.

She later removed her original message, explaining, "I realize the political sensitivity in connection with my work. That was not my intention."

Two right-wing lawmakers have asked the ministry how a person with such views reached a prominent position within the ministry. The lawmakers, Joram van Klaveren and Louis Bontes of the VNL faction, asked whether the minister thought Haifi's employment constituted a security risk.

ISIS, which is considered a terrorist organization in many Western countries, has been in the news in the Netherlands because of a series of pro-ISIS demonstrations in the Hague in July and earlier this month. Some demonstrators called for violence.

Two of the demonstrations, on July 2 and 24, featured calls to kill Jews. When anti-ISIS demonstrators tried to march through the heavily-Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk on August 10 to express their disapproval, a crowd of approximately 200 men barricaded the neighborhood's main street and staged an illegal counter-demonstration in support of ISIS.

When riot police tried to remove the obstacles, some of the local protesters hurled stones at them. Six people were arrested.

Dutch Justice Ministry Employees Claims ISIS is a Zionist Conspiracy

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 06:52 PM

Wouldn't it be interesting to know what proportion of minnow-bobad's and prancing-clown bb's posts are nothing but copy 'n' pastes? It is not debate, gents. It is lazy and tiresome and meaningless unless you have something to say about your links. Not to speak of biased, as, clearly, you select only sources that reinforce your own prejudices. You're doing what the Russians and Chinese used to do in the bad old days, dropping propaganda leaflets on their people or pasting posters up on street walls. Try standing on your own two feet. Your e-leaflets are no more than e-bumwipes.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 07:00 PM

And your opinions are what is harvested by the bumwipes and flushed to where you and your kind dwell.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: bobad
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 07:06 PM

Yazidi Kurdish girls being sold by ISIS jihadis for $10. Unbelievable, but Sharia permits taking non-Muslim female POWs as sex slaves.

Yazidis tormented by fears for women and girls kidnapped by Isis jihadis

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 07:19 PM

Posted in two threads, I note, minnow. You should have worked in Stalin's propaganda department. I won't honour you by also putting in my response twice. There for the finding.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Aug 14 - 07:20 PM

And your opinions are what is harvested by the bumwipes and flushed to where you and your kind dwell.

Even I can't be in two places at once.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 04:52 AM

Steve,
Not to speak of biased, as, clearly, you select only sources that reinforce your own prejudices.

That last quote about ISIS taking women and girls as sex slaves was from the Guardian on Monday.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 05:44 AM

Made to do it unpaid at gunpoint, was she, do you think? Then what has sex-slavery got to do with it, you foolish jumped-up little oik? Take your unwanted self off this decent forum, you hear? We don't need stupid smartarses like WendellBum or whevs your stupid name snarling it up. If ever I read a fatuous irrelevant post, that one has to take the all-timeprize.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 06:27 AM

What! At my age? Nice of you to say so.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 06:38 AM

Was your last comment a bow drawn at a venture, BTW? Or do you know about my first wife's death?* In which case, what your point, exactly, I wonder?

≈M≈

*If not, google - grosvenor myer suicide -

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 08:05 AM

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of Lebanese group Hezbollah described the radical Islamist movement that has seized territory in Iraq and Syria as a growing "monster" that could threaten Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group has been helping Syria's President Bashar al-Assad fight a Sunni Islamist-dominated insurgency, said Islamic State could easily recruit in other areas where its hardline ideology exists.

"Wherever there are followers of the ideology there is ground for (Islamic State), and this exists in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, and the Gulf states," Nasrallah said in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar published on Friday.

Nasrallah, whose group is backed by Shi'ite Muslim power Iran, said Islamic State was encountering resistance in some parts of Iraq and Syria. But he added: "It appears that the capabilities, numbers and capacities available to (Islamic State) are vast and large. This is what is worrying everyone, and everyone should be worried."

Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim monarchy that has been in a state of cold war with Shi'ite Iran and its allies, has shown growing signs of alarm about the spread of Islamic State. Last month, it deployed 30,000 soldiers at its border with Iraq.

Saudi Arabia has also been a major sponsor of the anti-Assad uprising.

Hezbollah's role in Syria has helped Assad beat back the rebellion against his rule in critical areas of the country including Damascus and a corridor of territory stretching north from the capital. But large parts of Syria's less densely populated north and east have fallen to Islamic State.

"This danger does not recognise Shi'ites, Sunnis, Muslims, Christians or Druze or Yazidis or Arabs or Kurds. This monster is growing and getting bigger," said Nasrallah.

Nasrallah reiterated his defence of Hezbollah's role in the Syrian conflict, the focus of criticism from Lebanese opponents who say the group has provoked Sunni militant attacks in Lebanon.

Most recently, insurgents including members of Islamic State seized the town of Arsal at the Syrian border, battling the Lebanese army for five days before withdrawing with 19 soldiers and 17 policemen as captives.

Nasrallah said the insurgents would have advanced as far as the Lebanese coast were it not for Hezbollah's role fighting them in areas of Syria just east of the Lebanese border.

"Going to fight in Syria was, in the first degree, to defend Lebanon, the resistance in Lebanon, and all Lebanese," he said.

A Hezbollah commander was last month killed in Iraq near Mosul, a city seized by Islamic State in June, suggesting the group may also be helping pro-government forces there.

Hezbollah has not officially announced any role in Iraq.

Nasrallah linked the threat posed by Islamic State to the spread of Wahhabism, a puritanical school of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia that demands obedience to the ruler but which has been widely blamed for fuelling Sunni radicalism.

"(Islamic State) does not have borders. There is a real danger and a real fear among many states and authorities, because one of the advantages of this organisation is its capacity to recruit among followers of al Qaeda-Wahhabi thought," he said.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 08:14 AM

Utah Muslim leaders condemn extremism as Iraqi fears mount
Religion » Islam requires moderation, compassion and tolerance, they say.

By Peggy Fletcher Stack | The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Aug 14 2014 06:55 pm • Last Updated Aug 14 2014 09:37 pm

Islam is a compassionate and tolerant religion, Utah Muslim leaders say, so any group that terrorizes minorities, beheads children or kidnaps women while claiming to be Muslim would be violating tenets of the faith.

But that is what various news agencies have said Islamic State militants are doing in northern Iraq — attacking Christians and Yazidis (a Kurdish-speaking minority whose faith is linked to ancient Zoroastrianism), while driving thousands from their homes.

The Islamic State has been accused of attempting genocide against the area's religious minorities and committing untold atrocities in its attempt to take over the region.

"If they are persecuting minorities, religious or ethnic, then it is a bogus group and we have no sympathy for it," says Imam Shuaib Din, leader of Utah Islamic Center in Sandy. "If they are killing or allowing the suffering of people who don't agree with them, that goes against the common core of Islam."

The religion would not condone killing anyone, he says, especially for nonbelief.

Din stopped short of outright condemnation of the extremist group by name. He says he doesn't have enough "credible information" about the Islamic State to either critique or condemn it.

Imam Muhammed Mehtar, of the Khadeeja Islamic Center in West Valley City, was also circumspect in assessing the Islamic State's reported actions in Iraq.

Islam is "a moderate religion and a moderate group of people. Moderation is in everything we do," Mehtar says. "To do things that are extreme — whether in manner of hate or love — that is not in Islam."

Moderation, the imam reiterates, "represents our true values, our Muslimness."

Reports from the region around Kurdistan say that Islamic State militants have demanded that Christians and Yazidis either convert to Islam, pay a tax, leave or be killed.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 08:20 AM

That last quote about ISIS taking women and girls as sex slaves was from the Guardian on Monday.

Yes Keith, and, just last week, the Guardian was rightly vilified for publishing a foul, lying, full-page ad bearing the name of Elie Wiesel. Gosh, nearly typed "weasel" there.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 08:24 AM

Any more copy 'n' pastes to add, naturally without comment from you, prancing clown?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 09:03 AM

Former Florida Rep. Allen West declared President Obama an Islamist who is intentionally working against the security of the United States.

"The only plausible explanation for many actions taken by President Obama and his administration is that they are working counter to the security of the United States of America," the former Florida congressman and retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel wrote in the post published Wednesday.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/14/allen-west-declares-obama-an-islamist/#ixzz3ASvF6qjQ

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 09:15 AM

Which lunatic asylum does he live in, Greg?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 09:18 AM

Michael, thank you for sharing your story.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 09:28 AM

Steve,

Sorry if you don't like cut and pastes- Maybe if you were interested in FACTS instead of your own opinion being discussed you would think otherwise.

If you cannot refute the FACTS that are presented, you are NOT entitled to think your opinion has any more value than anyone else-

If you have NO facts to support your opinion, it's value is far less than those of us who look at the facts FIRST, and THEN have an opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 10:02 AM

Steve,

"naturally without comment from you, prancing clown?"


SOME of us think that presenting facts AND LETTING THE READER THINK WHAT IT MEANS is more important than telling other what they are supposed to think about some topic.

Too bad you are not among that group. Some of your posts show intelligence- But you fail to use it for any worthwhile purpose.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 10:22 AM

Welcome, Keith. I actually put it there in response to a further post from that Wendell character, but he appears to have been a troll & his posts have been deleted, so my brief correspondence with him is rather floating there in a vacuum.

Heigh-ho.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 12:19 PM

Which lunatic asylum does he live in, Greg?

Same one as the Three Mudcat Stooges; BooBad, FKWT & Bullshot.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 12:21 PM

Sorry, The Islamists ate my cookie; last was me.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 12:50 PM

Religion...full stop!
Is the problem!

And, the decision to keep "In God We Trust" on your bank notes, will back-fire dreadfully somewhere down the line!

Don't forget the "God in which you trust" is the same God that Muslims prays to!

Referring to ancient texts - in any way - is not the way for a healthy society to run its affairs!

The West will pay dearly for not completely severing all ties with all - and every - religion.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 02:52 PM

Given what awaits them under ISIS control, no wonder they are taking up arms.





"Hundreds of women stand armed and ready to bring the fight to the Islamic State on behalf of Iraq's Kurdish population.

The women peshmerga of the 2nd Battalion is a group of 550 women led by Col. Nahida Ahmad Rashid, the New York Post reports, which has been preparing for battle.

"It's an honor to be part of a modern Muslim country that allows women to defend the homeland," an unidentified mother in the battalion told the New York Post.

The battalion has not yet faced IS, but has been training in the Kurd city Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq.

Another member of the battalion, who is four months pregnant and has a 5-year-old daughter, told the Post she will go to the front lines if called. "This is my duty, no matter if I am bearing a child or not," she said.

According to the New York Post, peshmerga translates to "those who confront death."

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 03:02 PM

"Don't forget the "God in which you trust" is the same God that Muslims prays to!"

.,,.,.

No. Or, anyhow, not necessarily. This is, in the true sense, begging the question. Whether Allah & Yahweh/Jehovah are to be regarded as cognate/identical, or separate entities at odds with one another, is the question to be established. Remember that to his worshippers, Yahweh is to be revered but loved; while to his, Allah is to be worshipped but feared. Same benign old guy with the long white beard? Shouldn't think so...

So assuming the answer is beginning at the wrong end -- "begging the question", that is, in philosophical terms. This has been a matter of some controversy for quite a long time now -- like 1500+ years.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 04:15 PM

Well, prancing clown, anyone can copy 'n' paste and leave it without comment and claim it as "fact". But that is just lazy. I'd rather hear people's opinions, frankly. But we might have to let you off in your case, as you're clearly far too bigoted and inarticulate to actually possess an opinion about anything. And that's my opinion, beardie-weirdie goblin.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 04:22 PM

In 1974, in the pub at Broadford on the Isle of Skye, I saw a circular sign propped up behind the bar, done in faux-yank style, which said around its edge "In God We Trust. The Rest Pay Cash." There was another sign in there that said "Credit available here to over-90s who are accompanied by both parents".

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 15 Aug 14 - 04:31 PM

MGM-Lion, don't talk nonsense!

"Yahweh is to be revered but loved"

Oh yes, this is the God who drowns the whole world ( apart from the Noah's clan) women, babies, innocents!

If anyone is not afraid of that megalomaniac, then they should be!!!!

But, good news, this God is just a fictional character created by ignorant, primitive people!

AND, followed by modern people who can't separate fact from fiction!

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 12:40 AM

You might be a good Tunesmith, Tunesmith.

But any sort of a theologian is what you are not.

So let it go. You are just making a fool of yourself.

I shall not return to this topic. There is some nice new paint a few doors down for me to go and watch drying.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 10:32 AM

I shall not return to this topic.

Promise?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 10:50 AM

I only meant the topic of the relationship, if any, of the variously named deities.

No further promises.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 01:29 PM

Another massacre of a minority people is reported today.
"At least eighty men" executed, and the women and children dragged off into slavery, victims of cruel, intolerant fanatics whose intention is to expand their caliphate ever wider.

Hundreds of thousands are fleeing for their lives from these brutal killers and slavers.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 01:36 PM

Hundreds of British people are with Isis.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 02:01 PM

Some reports say 350 Yazidis massacred and a thousand women and children abducted.
Also reports of seven hundred executed by ISIS in Syria.

The horror goes on.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 02:32 PM

FKWT sems to have caught Bullshot's serial postarrhoea. Didn't realize it was communicable.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 04:10 PM

Greg F. - About a month or so ago you asked me, in essence, why I seemed to pick more on your posts as opposed to those of others. I didn't answer then, because I didn't want to get into a peeing contest with you, although I thought and and still think, I had good reason for calling you out. I have now decided to answer your complaint.

I have just finished reviewing all of your posts, to date, for the month of August. While I did not actually quantify them, it appears that the overwhelming majority (perhaps up to 90%) do not add to the discussions, or in anyway move them forward. You primarily try obstruct discussion by getting in zingers and snide remarks. Most of us, from time to, have done so; but with you it is a 'modus operandus'.

So as my grandmother (of blessed memory) might have said, "Stop being a 'nudge', be a 'mensch'."
Nudge (pronounced 'noodj') is a pest. Mensch is a gentleman (or a good boy in her Yiddish world.).

With all respect due, JotSC

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: pdq
Date: 16 Aug 14 - 04:42 PM

"all respect due"


That's not enough to fill the bladder of a piss ant.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:49 AM

Cameron, the British Prime Minister has said that "The West is embroiled in a generational struggle against a poisonous brand of Islamic extremism that will bring terror to the streets of Britain unless urgent action is taken to defeat it,"

He warns that Britain will have to use its "military prowess" to help defeat "this exceptionally dangerous" movement, or else terrorists with "murderous intent" will target people in Britain.


The Prime Minister says he fears the struggle will last "the rest of my political lifetime".

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:57 AM

And yet boobies of the likes of Mr Mouthie-Mather keep posting mockery of me, for saying that I am not an 'Islamophobe' but am just plain scared of Islamism — silly comments like how I had better go to bed with the sheet over my head, or such, just in case the might be a Muslim in the vicinity.

Well, my dears: if it's good enough for our Prime Minister to be scared...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 08:27 AM

About a month or so ago you asked me, in essence, why I seemed to pick more on your posts as opposed to those of others.

No John, I did not. I really don't give a fart in a high wind about you and/or your opinion way or the other. As MY grandmother WOULD have said: You're a real a putz.

Have a nice day.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 03:48 PM

"No John, I did not."--Greg F.

Well, as they say in sports, "Let's roll the tape."

*****
Subject: RE: BS: Small hope for Israel/Palestine
From: Greg F. - PM
Date: 23 Jun 14 - 02:46 PM

Funny you don't get on your high horse when FW Keith & BooBad do this; its their stock & trade.
[this response to my criticism of your earlier post]
*****

So, Greg F, you did not ASK me anything...my bad. But your comment implies that I pick on you, and had I looked up your actual post prior to my comment of yesterday, I would have phrased mine differently. Otherwise I stand by what I wrote.

Finally, if your grandmother really would have used the P word, well I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Hope you're having (you've had) a good Sunday.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 07:43 PM

Tunesmith is right on target. Archeologists and Oceanographers have studied the Persian Gulf north of the Strait of Hormuz and find evidence of settlements that were submerged after the glacial debris that had piled up at Hormuz eroded through and allowed water to rush into the marshy lowlands. I imagine the effect was rather the reverse of the draining of Lake Bonneville down the now Snake River (leaving behind the Great Salt Lake). Water moves into areas and floods (and becomes the thing of epic stories, like Noah's Arc) or it opens up regions (like scouring huge valleys and now-dry waterfalls in the Columbia River basin). Science often comes along and fills in the gaps where imagination and religion filled the void until the truth was discovered.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Aug 14 - 09:40 PM

But your comment implies that I pick on you,

No, John it does not - or perhaps it does only in what passes for your mind.

What it DOES do is highlight your willingness to look the other way when idiots post nonsense that agrees with your mindset.

And hey, a putz is a putz. Andyou obviously qualify

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 12:26 AM

I don't usually read Greg.F's posts on principle -- life just too short for such a malevolent little gnome to impinge on any decent person's consciousness. But I happen to have read this last one (I'm no more obliged to be entirely consistent than anyone else), which confirms the views expressed by several above: that he is all bland self-satisfied assertiveness with not a jot or scintilla of any sort of intellectual argument, and can safely be ignored to go on chuntering away to himself. Why any sensible person wastes time trying to engage him in rational argument [a concept entirely alien to what passes for his 'intelligence'], I cannot imagine.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 09:49 AM

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group and activists said on Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said reliable sources reported beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province.

The conflict between Islamic State and the al-Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after the militants took over two oil fields in July.

"Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat," Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said by telephone from Britain. "Some were arrested, judged and killed."

Reuters cannot independently verify reports from Syria due to security conditions and reporting restrictions.

Proclaiming a 'caliphate' straddling parts of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State has swept across northern Iraq in recent weeks, pushing back Kurdish regional forces and driving tens of thousands of Muslims, Christians and members of the Yazidi religious minority from their homes, prompting the first U.S. air strikes in Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops in 2011.

The insurgents are also tightening their grip in Syria, of which they now control roughly a third, mostly rural areas in the north and east.

An activist in Deir al-Zor who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters that 300 men were executed in one day in the town of Ghraneij, one of the three main towns of the al-Sheitaat tribal heartland, when Islamic State stormed the town earlier this week.

Another opposition activist from Deir al-Zor said residents of al-Sheitaat towns had been given three days to leave.

"Those who were executed during the storming of the al-Sheitaat area are around 300. The rest were killed in the course of the battles," he told Reuters on condition of anonymity to protect his identity.

Civilians fleeing al-Sheitaat towns had either taken sanctuary in other villages or travelled to Iraq, he said.

More than 170,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, which pits overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority, backed by Shi'ite militias from Iraq and Lebanon.

The insurgency is split between competing factions in Syria, with Islamic State emerging as the most powerful.

Tribal powers in Syria and Iraq have had to make the choice between fighting Islamic State or pledging allegiance.

On Friday, a video posted on YouTube showed men who said they were from the al-Sheitaat towns of Kishkeih and Abu Hammam pledging full support for Islamic State.

"We say that what Islamic State stands for is justice," a tribal member sitting in a room with dozens of other men said in a statement that was read out.

The head of the al-Sheitaat tribe, Sheikh Rafaa Aakla al-Raju, called in a video message for other tribes to join them in the fight against the militants.

"We appeal to the other tribes to stand by us because it will be their turn next ... If (Islamic State) are done with us the other tribes will be targeted after al-Sheitaat. They are the next target," he said in the video, posted on YouTube.

Islamic State was condemned on Friday in a U.N. Security Council resolution for "gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law."

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 10:45 AM

Is Noah's arc the direction thread drift is taking?

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 10:47 AM

I hope not. That deserves it's own thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 10:55 AM

Stevie boy,

And MY opinion is that you have not been able to FIND any facts that support your stated viewpoint, and thus object when others do so.


If you don't like the contents of my posts, PROVIDE US WITH SUPPORTED FACTS to support YOUR viewpoint, or admit you are making judgements in the absence of evidence.

Calling names does NOT prove that your opinion has any wrath at all- Just that you have failed to provide any basis other than your bigotry to support it.

Subject: RE: BS: Caliphate
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Aug 14 - 12:25 PM

So, Keith, now you have heard it twice. Responsible Islam condemns the actions of ISIS. Why do you carry on trying to tar all Muslims with the same brush? Is there a reason other than bigotry?