"Italian mobsters take secret oath in police video" Associated Press November 19, 2014
ROME — Recruits for Italy’s ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate have been caught on video taking a loyalty oath, swearing ‘‘under the splendor of the moon,’’ in a ceremony secretly recorded by police in what investigators called authorities’ first such glimpse of the ritual.
Carabinieri paramilitary police in Milan on Tuesday released video of what they said were two ‘‘convivial’’ get-togethers of suspected mobsters at a farmhouse in Castello di Brianza, northern Italy, with one recruit as young as 17.
The oath reminds the recruits that traitors are expected to kill themselves and to keep an extra bullet handy in case it comes to that.
Investigators didn’t explain how they managed to film the ceremony.
Uh-oh.
Prosecutors said it was the first time authorities have obtained video of an ’Ndrangheta initiation ritual. The same investigation led to 38 arrests.
The probe concentrated on loans mobsters made to businesses in northern Italy and Switzerland that were unable to get credit otherwise.
In a separate intercepted phone call, one suspect says to tell someone reluctant to repay money, ‘‘I will cut his head off.’’
Related:
"With terrorists beheading Americans, President Obama has ordered a review of how the United States responds when citizens are taken hostage overseas. The review comes as some family members of those killed have complained that the United States did not take enough action in an attempt to save their loved ones."
Just pay the money before they lop off another one.
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Also see:
Peter Kassig: A different kind of hero
This is madness.
British intelligence agencies knew about 2 who killed soldier
That makes me laugh!
2d Frenchman ID’d in video of slaying of US aid worker
Bunch of white guys with beards? Sure smells like actors to me.
"Deaths linked to terrorism rose 61 percent, study finds" by Alan Cowell, New York Times November 19, 2014
LONDON — Amid the West’s heightened apprehension about the spread of Islamic militancy, an independent study Tuesday offered little solace, saying the number of fatalities related to terrorism soared 61 percent last year.
The report by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace said five countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria — accounted for four-fifths of the almost 18,000 fatalities attributed to terrorism last year. Iraq had the bloodiest record, with more than 6,300 fatalities.
Where the war was supposed to be over.
At the same time, the statistics in the organization’s Global Terrorism Index suggested that the world’s industrialized nations — often the target of threats by groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State — had suffered relatively few attacks on their soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, onslaught in the United States and the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London.
Both false flag inside jobs piggybacked on top of drills.
Four groups — the Islamic State, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the Taliban, which is active in Pakistan and Afghanistan — took credit for two-thirds of worldwide deaths related to terrorism in 2013, the report said, describing radical variants of Islam as “the key commonality for all four groups.”
Yeah, agenda-pushing message from my Zionist war pri$m known as a paper received.
The Institute for Economics and Peace is a registered charity in Australia with offices in New York, Mexico City, and Oxford, England.
“In 2013, terrorist activity increased substantially with the total number of deaths rising from 11,133 in 2012 to 17,958 in 2013, a 61 percent increase,” the report said. “Over the same period, the number of countries that experienced more than 50 deaths rose from 15 to 24. This highlights that not only is the intensity of terrorism increasing, its breadth is increasing as well.”
“Terrorism is both highly concentrated as well as a globally distributed phenomenon,” it added. But the report said only 5 percent of fatalities ascribed to terrorism had occurred in the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes some of the world’s wealthiest, industrialized economies.
So where do all the drone missiles and airstrikes factor into this?
The report seemed to indicate that, for four years beginning in 2007, efforts to confront terrorism had resulted in “modest decreases.” But in 2011, the year a Navy SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden at his hide-out in Pakistan, and when Syria’s civil war began, the number of terrorism-related deaths began to rise sharply.
The bin Laden thing is another silly bunch of BS.
The impact of the turmoil in Syria has spread across the region, strengthening Islamist groups opposed to the government of President Bashar Assad, including the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
That would be "Al-CIA-Duh" for those not in the know.
The report tallied fatalities to the end of 2013 and did not therefore reflect the rise in killings since Islamic State forces in June spilled from Syria into Iraq with the intention of creating an Islamic caliphate, provoking a US-led air campaign.
The Islamic State advance has been marked by ever more brutal tactics including the beheading of captured soldiers and of five Western hostages, the most recent last weekend when the death of Peter Kassig, a 26-year-old US aid worker and former Army Ranger, was depicted in grisly images showing his severed head at the feet of a black-robed executioner.
How am I to believe them when the constantly cite fakes?
Honestly, I'm sick of being lied to about wars. Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?
The rise of the Islamic State has also been marked by an increase in the number of foreign jihadis — many from Western nations — joining its ranks.
The latest evidence of the role of foreigners emerged Monday when a Briton and a Frenchman were tentatively identified among a group of executioners seen in video clips announcing Kassig’s death.
Like I'm going to believe "evidence" cited in this NYT slop!
On Tuesday, however, The Times of London reported that an expert’s analysis showed that the Briton had not been among the uniformed militants shown in the images. Initially, a British father had said he believed his son, Nasser Muthana, had been one of the bearded men standing over a row of kneeling Syrian captives.
But The Times quoted the father, Ahmed Muthana, as retracting his earlier remarks. “I looked at the lineup and I didn’t recognize my son. One of them looked like him but the eyes and nose are different,” he was quoted as saying.
(Blog editor simply sighs)
On Monday, Yvette Cooper, the Labour spokeswoman on home affairs in Britain, accused the government of “completely” failing to manage terrorism suspects lured by the Islamic State.
Speaking in Parliament, she said that a 26-year-old man from North London whose passport had been confiscated by authorities was able to board a truck, leave the country, and acquire fake travel documents in Belgium that enabled him to travel to Syria.
I'm sure he had MI5 and MI6 help all the way along.
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"Ruthless ‘reign of terror’ of Islamic State detailed" by Nick Cumming-Bruce, New York Times January 21, 2015
I was told it was bringing a sense of normalcy.
GENEVA — Islamic State extremists have carried out scores of execution-style killings in Iraq this month, the United Nations said Tuesday in alleging “cruel and inhuman” punishment of adults and children in areas under their control.
In the northern city of Mosul, two men believed to be members of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, who were accused of banditry were tied by their arms to a cross and then shot; also, two men who had been accused of homosexual acts were thrown off a rooftop in Mosul after a summary hearing by an ad hoc court, the UN human rights office said.
Their “ruthless murder” provided “another terrible example of the kind of monstrous disregard for human life that characterizes ISIL’s reign of terror over areas of Iraq that are under the group’s control,” the UN said.
What about governments and their leaders that wage wars based on lies that continue to kill millions?
The killings often followed summary proceedings by a court in which the accused were brought in, told the offense they were being accused of, pronounced guilty, and taken away to be executed, a UN human rights official said.
In other cases in Mosul, four doctors were killed for refusing to treat Islamic State fighters; three lawyers in the city were reportedly executed; and a woman was stoned to death after being accused of adultery, the human rights monitors said.
“We have received numerous other reports of women who have been executed by ISIL in Mosul and other areas under the group’s control, often immediately following sentences passed by its so-called Shariah courts,” the UN stated. “Educated, professional women, particularly women who have run as candidates in elections for public office, seem to be particularly at risk.”
When they start waving the women around you know they are losing the propaganda war.
UN officials said they could not confirm accounts circulated by an anti-Islamic State group that 13 teenage boys had been caught and machine-gunned in public for watching a soccer match between Iraq and Jordan on television last week, but they cited other instances of mass executions of civilians.
Is that how you win a people over, or is this all bullshit?
Islamic State gunmen killed 15 civilian members of a Sunni tribe accused of cooperating with Iraqi security forces in the area of Fallujah, shooting them in front of a large crowd, according to the officials.
In another town near Tikrit, Islamic State gunmen killed 14 civilians who had refused to pledge allegiance to the group, the UN said, bringing the total of verified executions in recent weeks to 41.
I did that my last year of high school because there is not liberty and justice for all.
Many other execution-style killings were under investigation, the UN said, including husbands reportedly killed as punishment for their wives’ failure or refusal to adhere to dress codes, while women have been subjected to beatings for dressing improperly.
Even Islam has a domestic violence problem.
A $200 million ransom demanded by the Islamic State on Tuesday for two Japanese hostages dramatically highlighted another reportedly widespread practice, the UN said.
They did not pay it, and it really shook the Japanese.
Taking hostages and demanding ransom payments from families has flourished with the mounting sectarian conflict and lawlessness in Iraq and Syria, officials said.
That is how the propaganda pre$$ explains the secret funding of these groups -- if they even exist.
Rule in areas under Islamic State control was “characterized by the sheer brutality of its attacks on the most vulnerable sectors of society, including women, children, and ethnic and religious communities,” the UN said.
Over-the-top prop!
The panel investigating human rights in Syria had previously described how women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority who were captured by Islamic State fighters last year had been sold as war booty into sexual slavery.
A pamphlet made available by human rights officials, and purported to have come from the Islamic State’s “Research and Fatwa Department” in November, laid out justification for taking women captive, and stated it is “permissible to buy, sell, or give as gifts female captives and slaves, as they are merely property that can be disposed of.”
The propaganda doesn't get any sillier than that!
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"Islamic State group releases 200 captive Yazidis in Iraq" Associated Press, January 19, 2015
ALTON KUPRI, Iraq — Almost all of the freed prisoners were in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect, officials said.
General Shirko Fatih, commander of Kurdish peshmerga forces in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said it appears the militants released the prisoners because they were too much of a burden.
‘‘It probably became too expensive to feed them and care for them,’’ he said.
????????
Then why didn't they just execute them, the bloodthirsty bastards?
Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled in August when the Islamic State captured the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border. But hundreds were taken captive by the group, with some Yazidi women forced into slavery, according to international rights groups and Iraqi officials.
Damn bastards lying again!
The militants transported the mainly elderly captives from the northern town of Tal Afar and dropped them off Saturday at the Khazer Bridge, near the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil.
‘‘Their situation is very bad, especially the psychological condition,’’ said Hersh Hussein, a representative from the Erbil governor’s office who was in Alton Kupri. ‘‘Regarding other diseases we provide first aid and the most important medical treatment.’’
I think I've scratched the surface of a psyop campaign of propaganda.
Maha Faris Qassem, 35, was released with her two young sons, both of whom were covered in bug bites that appeared to be infected. She said the conditions of their captivity were so dire that infection was inevitable.
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Hey, ladies, ISIS wants to talk to you:
"Islamic State recruits more than just fighters" by Eric Tucker, Associated Press December 17, 2014
WASHINGTON — As it looks to expand its territorial base across broad swaths of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is recruiting for more than just fighters.
The extremist organization also using its sophisticated propaganda around the world to seek potential wives and professionals such as doctors, accountants, and engineers in its efforts to build a new society.
I get a sophisticated propaganda network delivered to my newsstand every day:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Yeah, that's them.
Among those it has attracted were three teenage girls from Colorado, who set out for Syria this fall after swapping Twitter messages about marriage and religion with Islamic State recruiters, and a young woman who sought to fight there — or failing that, to use her nursing skills. It’s a diverse pool of recruits whose motives perplex Western governments.
They are obviously not seeing the U.N. or other human rights reports.
They are obviously not seeing the U.N. or other human rights reports.
The group ‘‘is issuing a bit of a siren song through social media, trying to attract people to their so-called caliphate,’’ FBI Director James Comey told reporters. ‘‘And among the people they’re trying to attract are young women to be brides for these jihadis.’’
Or adhān, as it were.
The group conscripts children for battle, recruits Westerners for acts of jihad, and releases videos of beheadings. But it also uses propaganda with a humanitarian appeal, such as photos of bombed-out Syrian villages coupled with pleas for help.
Video images of smiling children being given treats and enjoying stuffed animals paint a family-friendly portrait that suggests roles within the proto-state for wives and mothers.
Even as they preach violence, ‘‘they’ll do the warm and fuzzy . . . the gun in one hand and the kitten in the other,’’ said Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the Justice Department’s national security division.
‘‘They’re seducing them with promises about how wonderful it will be,’’ said Mia Bloom, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
This really is getting silly because it turns out ISIS is the US government and its mouthpieces!!
Separately, Spanish and Moroccan police said Tuesday that they had arrested seven suspected members of a terror network spread across their two countries aimed at recruiting women for the Islamic State.
The Moroccan Interior Ministry said two heads of the group were based in Fnideq, just outside the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, where women were brought from Spain and indoctrinated with jihadi thought.
European authorities have noticed a sharp increase in the recruitment of women from Europe for the Islamic State in the past year, with at least 100 from France. The women were to be used as suicide bombers or married off to jihadi fighters, said the Moroccan statement.
Yeah, sure, whatever.
US Justice Department officials say people aiding the Islamic State understand what they’re getting into and risk prosecution, whether or not they venture to Syria, and even if they don’t plan to take up arms.
Prosecutors have criminally charged more than 15 people in connection with supporting Islamic militant groups.
A Rochester, N.Y., food store owner stands accused of trying to arrange for others to travel to Syria and of plotting to kill members of the US military.
Most charges are brought under a statute that makes it illegal to provide ‘‘material support’’ — including money, training or a false identity — to a designated terrorist group.
‘‘We need to make clear that if you want to go over there and join a terrorist group, you’re likely to end up instead in jail,’’ Carlin said.
Justice Department officials say they are also trying strategies other than prosecution, including trying to identify potential recruits before they go.
Shouldn't the NSA be all over them? Or is that a silly question?
FBI agents in Colorado met repeatedly with Shannon Conley, a 19-year-old nurse’s aide who had converted to Islam, hoping to dissuade her from traveling to Syria to marry a militant suitor she met online. Agents suggested she try humanitarian work instead of jihad, but she told them that if she couldn’t fight, she would use her skills as a nurse’s aide to help militant fighters, according to court documents.
As a prelude to the wider invasion of the Middle East.
Conley pleaded guilty in September and faces sentencing next month. Her lawyer, Robert Pepin, has said she was ‘‘led terribly astray’’ while pursuing her religion.
By which FBI instigators?
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"Rights group blasts IS for atrocities" by Bassem Mroue, Associated Press January 30, 2015
BEIRUT — Human Rights Watch on Thursday blasted Islamic State militants over their atrocities, while also saying that the ‘‘sectarian and abusive’’ policies of the Syrian and Iraqi governments fuel extremism.
Who is Human Rights Watch anyway (grain of salt, please)?
The criticism came in a 656-page annual report that reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries.
In the report, the organization said the Islamic State group spreading terror in the Middle East partly results from the US-led war in Iraq and detainee abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and other detention centers run by US forces during the eight-year conflict.
Now, now!
The report said human rights violations in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria have also radicalized Muslims, boosting recruitment to extremist groups that present themselves as defenders of the region’s Sunnis.
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said that as long as Iraq continues to rely on Shi’ite militias, and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s military bombards rebel-held areas, some Sunnis will prefer to live under the Islamic State group’s brutal rule.
‘‘So long as the Shi’ite militias are targeting Sunnis because they are Sunni, it’s making the Sunni population feel actually safer with ISIS than it would under rule by Baghdad, and that is a disaster for any effort to counter the severe atrocities by ISIS,’’ Roth said in Beirut after release of the report.
‘‘We hope that the international community will focus not only on ISIS’s atrocities but on Assad’s atrocities,’’ he said.
And there you go. Agenda-pushing all the way, which is why they are cited in my war promoter.
For the record, and I said this years back, I no longer believe sectarianism as presented through my Zionist pri$m of a paper, either, not when it comes to people who have spent centuries living together and intermarrying without all the carnage -- until USrael shows up.
The report said funding of extremist groups by Persian Gulf states and their citizens also played a role in stoking militancy across the volatile region.
The United States and several Arab allies have been striking the Islamic State in Syria since September, and US and other allies have been waging a similar air campaign against the extremists in Iraq for even longer.
I was told we were pushing them back and winning, and yet the narrative is still the same month after month.
But Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the international campaign against ISIS could fall short if action is not taken to halt abuses carried out by Assad’s government.
‘‘This selective concern allows ISIS recruiters to portray themselves to potential supporters as the only force willing to stand up to Assad’s atrocities,’’ the report said.
Looks like he has some of his own there.
‘‘If the conditions that led to ISIS are left to fester, the group could deepen its hold on the two countries and expand into Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, and beyond,’’ the report warned.
They will be above as I am currently in the middle of a series (in case you couldn't tell).
Human Rights Watch also said that Egypt was in a human rights crisis that is ‘‘the most serious in the country’s modern history.’’ It said the government consolidated control through ‘‘constriction of basic freedoms and a stifling campaign of arrests targeting political opponents.’’
I'm all done with Egypt for a while.
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Related:
"The group has drawn focus by killing hostages in brutal fashion, as in the burning to death of a Jordanian pilot last week, and then releasing videos of the acts on the Internet. Although groups like Human Rights Watch have condemned the Islamic State, they note that far more civilians have been killed in the government airstrikes and bombardments that have faded into the background of news reports."
So have the EUSraeli airstrikes.
And this is the history of terror, pffftt!
