Pan-Islamic merged mega thread

[Robert0288]

I don't like where this is going. Let's see if the neighboring countries step up their efforts.
And where is the 'anonymous' group? Didn't they declare 'war' on the caliphate after the killings in France? I would have expected something by now.

Last I saw they hacked and took down about 200 twitter feeds, facebook groups and individual users. 

 

[Kat Stevens]

Last I saw they hacked and took down about 200 twitter feeds, facebook groups and individual users.

Yeah, just imagine the carnage that caused;
"Dammit, Mohammed, I've had enough of this jihad shit, I'm going back to Missisauga!"
"What's the matter Mohammed, don't you want your 70 virgins?"
"Look Mohammed, I can handle squatting in this cave wearing Michelin tire sandals, eating hummus three meals a day, and humping this damn rifle around everywhere, but I draw the line at no more twitter feeds about Vampire Diaries."
"Hey Mohammed, wait for me!"

The domino effect will be crippling.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I get what you're saying, but just wanted to add that the cyber battlespace is becoming more and more prevalent and important.  Cyber warfare is not something to be ignored and a capable enemy can do as much damage there as they can in the kinetic one.

:2c:

 

[Kat Stevens]

My point was that the mighty fearsome Anonymous has managed to shut down the twittersphere to a couple hundred cell phones.  Not quite the crippling blow they promised.

 

[CougarKing]

One source of ISIS recruits drying up?

Reuters

European jihadis unable to join Islamic State, locked at home
Fri Feb 20, 2015 1:13pm EST Email This Article |

By Mariam Karouny

BEIRUT(Reuters) - The flow of European fighters from Europe to territory held by the ultra-hardline Islamic State is drying up due to tighter restrictions imposed by European states that have prevented would-be jihadis from traveling, fighters from the group said.

Fighters in Syria and Iraq contacted by Reuters said the impact was limited on the battlefield since European fighters make up only a fraction of the forces of Islamic State.

"Now most of the (foreign) fighters are coming from Asian countries, like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. They are tough fighters," an Islamic State militant who fought with the group in both Syria and Iraq, told Reuters via the internet.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[cupper]

One source of ISIS recruits drying up?

Reuters

All that has really accomplished is keeping a group of frustrated radicals away from a place where the chances of them getting killed before they can do any real significant harm.

Now they are sitting, pissed off that they can't reach their destiny, and now have to look at home to make their name in the radicalized terrorist world.

 

[jollyjacktar]

So it was for our two terrorists.

 

[cupper]

I'm torn as to which is the better option.

Let them go and die in some foreign land remaining completely unknown by anyone who really matters. If they survive and decide to come back, deny them entry, or lock them up.

or

Keep them here where they can cause trouble domestically, use up critical resources keeping them under surveillance to ensure they walk the straight line. Short of setting up some form of detention, there isn't a whole hell of a lot we can do on that side of the equation.

:dunno:

 

[jollyjacktar]

What I would like to see happen and what will happen are so far apart they'll never meet in the middle. 

 

[a_majoor]

Frankly, I would be very open to the idea of sending every radical wannabe on a one way flight straight to Syria, where they can fight the Syrians, Iranians and Hezbollah to their heart's content. Indeed, if it were possible to crank out the would be radicals from Europe and North America in a solid block, Iran would be forced to spend a huge amount of blood and treasure to fight them.

We, of course, should simply stay home and let the Iranians and their proxies do the fighting against ISIS. It would be nice to see both or all the various sides lose, and I'm sure that the crippling effects of the drop in oil prices combined with large military expenditures to support whatever faction the Iranians/Gulf States/Saudi Arabia want to succeed will have a great effect on their ability to spread trouble beyond the Middle East.

 

[cupper]

ISIS / ISIL threatens Italy, says they are coming to Rome. How do Italians respond? With travel advice. :nod:

The Islamic State threatens to come to Rome; Italians respond with travel advice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/20/the-islamic-state-threatens-to-come-to-rome-italians-respond-with-travel-advice/

In a recently released video that showed the killing of 21 Christians in Libya, all but one of them Egyptian, the Islamic State issued an ominous warning: “Today we are south of Rome,” one masked militant said. “We will conquer Rome with Allah’s permission.”

To make matters worse, Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, pointed out that supporters of the Islamic State have begun using a hashtag to warn of their plan to reach "Rome."

Exactly what "Rome" means to the Islamic State is unclear -- some experts say it may actually be a reference to the United States or Turkey, or even the West in general. But Italy is worried. Libya is just a short boat ride across the Mediterranean. Thousands of refugees already make this journey to Italian shores every year. What's to stop the Islamic State?

As word of #We_Are_Coming_O_Rome spread across the Italian media, Rome residents took the opportunity to respond to the Islamic State. And they did so in an especially Roman way.

With warnings about the traffic.

With food recommendations.

A whole load of general complaints about their domestic woes.

And plenty of references to a recent soccer match against a Dutch team.

By this point, the Italian responses to the hashtag far outweigh any from Islamic State supporters, and some Italian publications are beginning to wonder how notable the hashtag was to begin with.

But the response does serve as a useful reminder: Italians may be scared of apocalyptic Islamic State warnings, but in their day-to-day life, they have many other issues on their minds.

The Twitter reads are quite funny and can be seen at the link.

 

[cryco]

that is so funny, great way to deal with the threat.
I remember being chastised several months ago when I was all for sending out the homegrown extremists so that they may go kill themselves in the middle east.

 

[cupper]

The man is cruel. No Powerpoint? How does he expect them to win this thing? ;D

Carter summons U.S. military commanders, diplomats to Kuwait

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/carter-summons-us-military-commanders-diplomats-to-kuwait/2015/02/22/0d06c36e-baab-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html?hpid=z5

KUWAIT CITY — New Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, seeking to put his imprimatur on the U.S. fight against the Islamic State, has summoned about 30 high-ranking military commanders and diplomats to Kuwait for an unusual session to review war plans and strategy.

The summit, which is scheduled to take place Monday, will include the U.S. military’s combatant commanders for the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the three-star Army general in charge of the war in Iraq and Syria, the head of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, several ambassadors in the region and other key players from Washington.

Defense officials said Carter called the gathering immediately upon taking office last week so he could more fully familiarize himself with the strategic underpinnings of the U.S.-led international campaign against the Islamic State. They said Carter was not necessarily seeking to change the fundamentals of the strategy, but they made clear that he would ask hard questions and press commanders and diplomats to justify their current approach.

“This is absolutely not coming from a place of his concern about the strategy,” said a senior defense official involved in planning the summit, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon. “He’s just the kind of guy who likes to dig.”

The senior official said the summit will focus less on basic military operations and more on complex issues such as sectarian political divisions in Iraq, the spread of Islamic State affiliates into North Africa and Afghanistan, the slow pace of training and equipping Syrian rebels, and fissures within the U.S.-led military coalition.

In a sign of how Carter intends to challenge his commanders’ thinking, he has banned them from making any PowerPoint presentations — a backbone feature of most U.S. military briefings.

Carter arrived in Kuwait after a two-day visit to Afghanistan, where he met with President Ashraf Ghani and toured U.S. bases in Kabul and Kandahar. He said he will soon make recommendations to President Obama about possibly slowing the pace of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan over the next two years.

Although the war against the Islamic State will occupy much of Carter’s agenda as defense secretary, he is not scheduled to visit Iraq during his inaugural trip as Pentagon chief.

About 2,600 U.S. troops have deployed to Iraq since last summer. Thousands more are based at permanent military installations in Kuwait, including Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base.

Speaking to reporters en route to the region, Carter said he wanted to visit some of the 10,600 U.S. troops in Afghanistan as quickly as he could after taking office, while also squeezing in time to meet in the field with commanders and diplomats involved in the campaign against the Islamic State. He is scheduled to return to Washington on Tuesday.

“This is my first week, and I’ve got a lot to do back in Washington,” he said. “And I wanted to go and return as quickly as I could and still learn what I think I needed to learn, and this is the way to do it.”

 

[a_majoor]

One thing about extremists is they tend to get everyone else organized to stop them. Christian militias are now springing up to fight ISIS, and evidently are quite happy to cooperate with the Kurds. Of course, until they get the same levels of funding and support ISIS got (or Hezbollah to represent the "other side") they will not be able to create a significant effect on the battlefield:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11430961/Christian-militia-takes-the-war-to-Islamic-State-in-Syria.html

Christian militia takes the war to Islamic State in Syria
Richard Spencer By Richard Spencer, Middle East Editor10:29PM GMT 23 Feb 2015

A Christian militia formed to protect the community as Syria falls apart is fighting its first major battle against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), attacking across a front in the north-east of the country before being driven back again in a fierce counter-blow.
Christian groups said they were checking a report that up to 200 civilians had been kidnapped by Isil jihadists in the fighting and were being held as hostages.

A number of fighters from the militia, the Syriac Military Council, were also said to be missing.
The council, known by the initials MFS from its title in Aramaic, the ancient language of the Christian church, was founded in 2013 as jihadists began to dominate more of northern Syria.

It is allied to the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia involved in the defence of the town of Kobane, and on Sunday joined it in a drive against Isil in the north-eastern province of Hassakeh.

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On Sunday night, it claimed to have driven the jihadists out of 22 villages, including a string of settlements occupied by the Assyrian Catholic minority between Hassakeh town and the Turkish border.

The attack was backed by bombing raids from the US-led coalition against Isil, which said it had carried out 11 air strikes in Hassakeh on Sunday, hitting 10 Isil tactical units and destroying two Isil vehicles, a bunker and a “fighting position”.

The coalition has been working closely with the YPG since the battle for Kobane, with YPG units phoning in combat positions to the jets, despite its being closely affiliated to the PKK, the Turkey-based Kurdish guerrilla group proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the US and UN.

It is not clear what control in the area Isil had previously, but the villages had been subject to repeated attack, including at least one case where jihadists had entered the the village of Tel Hormizd and forced villagers to remove the cross from the church.

However, on Monday morning, Isil struck back, fighting its way into Tel Hormizd, nearby Tel Shamiran and Tel Tawil, and several other villages, according to a statement. According to one report, the Isil fighters were led by the infamous Chechen jihadist Omar al-Shishani.
A separate statement issued on the Facebook page of a group set up to campaign for Christians under threat from Isil said a large number of Christians had been seized by the group in yesterday morning’s attack.

“The men were later brought to a mountain called Abd al Aziz to be held as hostages,” it said. “The women and children were left in the village with Isil guards controlling them.

“A witness left behind due to his poor health was able to raise the alarm and informed his family member in Canada who then spread the word about the latest atrocities of Isil.”

The witness could not be immediately contacted and there was no separate confirmation. A spokesman for the MFS said that Isil had kidnapped many residents from Christian villages recently but did not confirm this incident.

One man, who asked not to be named, told the Telegraph two of his mother’s uncles and several cousins had been seized. “My mother called the mobile phone of her cousins,” he said.

“They were answered by a man who said we have taken these people. Do not call again. We are afraid they have been taken as hostages,” he said.

Other Christians took refuge in the town of Tel Temir on the River Khabur. Andy Darmoo, who runs a London-based charity for the Assyrian Christian community, said he was also trying to investigate the report.

The MFS statement added that four of its soldiers had disappeared in Tel Hormizd, after staying to fight to the end.
The growing alliance between the Kurds and other minority groups, along with some Free Syrian Army factions, is a recent development, likely to have been encouraged by America and its Western allies desperate for a solid fighting group it can back in the multi-sided battle for Syria.

The YPG has been especially distrusted by Turkey because of its links to the PKK, and in turn has accused the Turks of openly collaborating with Isil against it.

However, as Turkey becomes more concerned with the threat to its own population from Isil, that may be starting to change. It was confirmed on Monday that the YPG had helped Turkish armed forces extract troops guarding the shrine of Suleyman Shah, an enclave of Turkish territory inside Syria, through Kobane.

The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, said that 1,465 Isil fighters had been killed by coalition air strikes since they started in September.
In addition, they had killed 73 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, and 62 civilians.

 

[CougarKing]

It's about time a drone or a JDAM targetted his a**.

Reuters via Yahoo News

'Jihadi John' killer from Islamic State beheading videos named by media

Reuters – 1 hour 48 minutes ago

By Michael Holden and Stephen Addison
LONDON (Reuters) - Investigators believe that the "Jihadi John" masked fighter who fronted Islamic State beheading videos is a British man named Mohammed Emwazi, two U.S. government sources said on Thursday.

He was born in Kuwait and comes from a prosperous family in London, where he grew up and graduated with a computer programming degree, according to the Washington Post.

In videos released by Islamic State (IS), the black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent appears to have decapitated hostages including Americans, Britons and Syrians.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[a_majoor]

Now that there is a name, we can only hope that was passed on to the SAS/SBS for action.....

 

[jollyjacktar]

I am speechless.  The Muslim Bros. want to do the same in Egypt too.  Photos and video at the story link below.  :rage:

ISIS thugs take a hammer to civilisation: Priceless 3,000-year-old artworks smashed to pieces in minutes as militants destroy Mosul museum
Extremists used power drills and sledgehammers to smash ancient items
They wrecked a series of 3,000-year-old statues at museum in Mosul, Iraq
One vandal says items being destroyed because they promoted idolatry
Comes after thugs destroyed thousands of books at Mosul Public Library

ByJulian Robinson for MailOnline

Published: 12:38 GMT, 26 February 2015 | Updated: 16:20 GMT, 26 February 2015

Islamic State thugs have destroyed a collection of priceless statues and sculptures in Iraq dating back thousands of years.

Extremists used sledgehammers and power drills to smash ancient artwork as they rampaged through a museum in the northern city of Mosul.

Video footage shows a group of bearded men in the Nineveh Museum using tools to wreck 3,000-year-old statues after pushing them over.

One of the items, depicting a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity, dates back to the 9th century B.C.

A man shown in the video said the items were being destroyed because they promoted idolatry.

'The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics, and his companions did the same when they conquered countries after him,' the unidentified man said.

The articles destroyed appeared to come from an antiquities museum in the northern city of Mosul, which was overrun by Islamic State last June, a former employee at the museum told Reuters.

The extremist group has destroyed a number of shrines - including Muslim holy sites - in a bid to eliminate what it views as heresy.

Militants are also believed to have sold ancient artwork on the black market in order to finance their bloody campaign across the region.

The video bore the logo of the ISIS group's media arm and was posted on a Twitter account used by the group.

Yesterday it was revealed how terrorists had blown up the Mosul Public Library, sending 10,000 books and more than 700 rare manuscripts up in flames.

Leading members of Mosul society reportedly tried to stop the fanatics destroying the building, but failed.

The director of the library, Ghanim al-Ta'an, said that the extremists used homemade bombs in the attack, which took place on Sunday.

He told Middle Eastern website Geran: 'ISIS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library. They used improvised explosive devices.'

Presumed destroyed are the Central Library's collection of Iraqi newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire and book collections contributed by around 100 of Mosul's establishment families.

Isis first invaded the Central Library in January. Residents say the extremists smashed the locks that had protected the biggest repository of learning in the northern Iraq town, and loaded around 2,000 books - including children's stories, poetry, philosophy and tomes on sports, health, culture and science - into six pickup trucks. They left only Islamic texts.

'These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned,' a bearded militant in traditional Afghani two-piece clothing told residents, according to one man living nearby who spoke to The Associated Press.

The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation, said the Islamic State group official made his impromptu address as others stuffed books into empty flour bags.

Since the Islamic State group seized a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria, they have sought to purge society of everything that doesn't conform to their violent interpretation of Islam.

They have already destroyed many archaeological relics, deeming them pagan, and even Islamic sites considered idolatrous. Increasingly books are in the firing line.

Mosul, the biggest city in the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate, boasts a relatively educated, diverse population that seeks to preserve its heritage sites and libraries.

In the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, residents near the Central Library hid some of its centuries-old manuscripts in their own homes to prevent their theft or destruction by looters.

But this time, the Islamic State group has made the penalty for such actions death.

A University of Mosul history professor, who spoke on condition he not be named because of his fear of the Islamic State group, said the extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries in December.

He reported particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 BC.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2970270/Islamic-State-fighters-destroy-antiquities-Iraq-video.html#ixzz3Ss8SWDga
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

[cupper]

It's about time a drone or a JDAM targetted his a**.

Reuters via Yahoo News

It will be a shame when he finds out that the 72 virgins are guys.

 

[OldSolduer]

It will be a shame when he finds out that the 72 virgins are guys.

And may love bacon.

One can only hope that karma bites them.....hard.....and I am sure it will.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

It's about time a drone or a JDAM targetted his a**.

Reuters via Yahoo News

There are many weapons out there that can deliver the proper effect.  Don't limit yourself to one.