American Journalist Beheaded by ISIS.

[darkhorse85]

Interesting.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/sas-special-forces-forming-hunter-4097083

[BigRedBuster]

LINK

Security services are close to identifying the British man dubbed "Jihadi John", who is suspected of beheading the American journalist James Foley, the British ambassador to the US has said .

Sir Peter Westmacott said voice recognition technology had been used to pin down the identity of the man, believed to be a British-born militant from London.

"We are not far away from that [identifying the man who beheaded Foley]," Westmacott said in an interview on US television. "[W]e are putting a lot into it, using voice recognition technology to try to identify him. I cannot say more than this but I know we are close."

The masked militant, who was shown on video beheading Foley, has threatened to kill a second US hostage, journalist Steven Sotloff. Intelligence and security sources declined to comment on weekend reports that a key suspect was Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 23, who left his home in Maida Vale, west London, last year and recently tweeted a picture of himself holding up a severed head.

Westmacott said the fighter in the video was just one of many militants – hundreds of them from the UK – prepared to murder and die for Islamic State, formerly known as Isis.

 

[BigRedBuster]

I found several things in this article fascinating and disturbing at the same time.

 

LINK

 

First....

 

It's easy to understand why Europe isn't just jumping in and joining the fight against ISIS when 16% of France supports ISIS.

 

This part, however, is what I really found interesting...

 

This is alarming, in part because a growing number of Europeans, often from predominantly Muslim immigrant communities, are not just expressing their support for ISIS in polls: they are traveling to Syria and Iraq to join up. The ISIS fighter who killed American journalist James Foley on video last week spoke with a strong London accent. European governments are rightly worried about the implications of this for their own national security.

But there's more going on here. It's no secret that far-right politics have been on the rise in Western Europe, which includes a growing willingness to embrace extremism and greater intolerance of all kinds. It is ironic but by no means impossible that far-right Islamophobia would rise in Europe alongside a greater approval of the Islamist group ISIS. Extremism is often reactive and ideologically contradictory.

The growth of European intolerance has brought a rise in hate toward Jews in Europe, as well as Muslims. It's more complicated than extremism festering within predominantly Muslim immigrant communities. "There is no clear correlation in Europe between the level of popular anti-Semitism and the size of the Muslim population," the British writer Kenan Malik explained recently in the New York Times. He went on:

The rise of identity politics has helped create a more fragmented, tribal society, and made sectarian hatred more acceptable generally.

At the same time, the emergence of "anti-politics," the growing contempt for mainstream politics and politicians noticeable throughout Europe, has laid the groundwork for a melding of radicalism and bigotry. Many perceive a world out of control and driven by malign forces; conspiracy theories, once confined to the fringes of politics, have become mainstream.

 

 

 

 

I guess I'm surprised at how similar this describes politics in Europe as it what we all feel it is like now in the US. I had always blamed the situation in the US on the radical politicalized media outlets. Do these also exist in Europe? If not, then why is it happening in Europe also?

 

.....but....then again, it says the poll was produced by a Russian organization so I'm not sure what to make of that.

[carlfense]

Oh, Fox you just can't help yourself:

 

"INFLUENTIAL LAWMAKERS from both sides of the aisle are pushing the Obama administration to seek an up-or-down vote in Congress on military action against ISIS militants. . ."

 

 

 

Damn you Obama! Why aren't you pushing us to do what we want to do?!

[BigRedBuster]

Oh, Fox you just can't help yourself:

 

"INFLUENTIAL LAWMAKERS from both sides of the aisle are pushing the Obama administration to seek an up-or-down vote in Congress on military action against ISIS militants. . ."

 

 

 

Damn you Obama! Why aren't you pushing us to do what we want to do?!

Being that I am basically against any military involvement, I don't have a problem with as many politicians as possible put their vote of "yes" or "no" on this before it starts just so we have record of where they stand.

[carlfense]

Being that I am basically against any military involvement, I don't have a problem with as many politicians as possible put their vote of "yes" or "no" on this before it starts just so we have record of where they stand.

I agree on both counts. It was the Fox attempted spin that had me rolling my eyes. Congress is pressuring Obama to pressure Congress to vote. Obama doesn't belong in that equation.

 

I think that Congress should vote. I'm also against more military involvement.

[carlfense]

Best (long) description of ISIS that I've seen to date:

 

As the Scriptures remind us, “Do not believe the hype.” The hype of the moment is ISIS, the Sunni militia that just drove the so-called Iraqi Army out of Mosul, Tikrit, and other Iraqi cities.

 

This is one of those dramatic military reverses that mean a lot less than meets the eye. The “Iraqi Army” routed by ISIS wasn’t really a national army, and ISIS isn’t really a dominant military force. It was able to occupy those cities because they were vacuums, abandoned by a weak, sectarian force. Moving into vacuums like this is what ISIS is good at. And that’s the only thing ISIS is good at.

 

ISIS is a sectarian Sunni militia—that’s all. A big one, as militias go, with something like 10,000 fighters. Most of them are Iraqi, a few are Syrian, and a few hundred are those famous “European jihadis” who draw press attention out of all relation to their negligible combat value. The real strength of ISIS comes from its Chechen fighters, up to a thousand of them. A thousand Chechens is a serious force, and a terrifying one if they’re bearing down on your neighborhood. Chechens are the scariest fighters, pound-for-pound, in the world.

 

. . .

 

http://pando.com/2014/06/16/the-war-nerd-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-too-extreme-for-al-qaeda-i-s-i-s/