Apparently, none of you find this funny either because the hits here have cratered. I put all this time and energy into collecting these and no one gives a damn. Maybe it is silly to keep on blogging about the Boston Globe.
"Islamic State executes Jordanian pilot; Prisoner burned to death in his cell; Hostage sought in swap is killed" by Rod Nordland and Ranya Kadri, New York Times February 04, 2015
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordanian fighter pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh’s tormentors apparently burned him alive inside a cage, a killing that was soon described as the most brutal in the group’s bloody history.
Related: The Muath Al-Kaseasbeh Immolation Video: ISIS™ Uniforms Look a Lot Like Jordanian Military
I'm glad he is feeling better because he is a tremendous investigator.
The video, with its references to the Islamic State’s punishment of nations like Jordan that joined the US-led coalition against it, appeared to be an attempt to cow the Arab state and others that have agreed to battle the militants in Syria. So far, it appears to have had the opposite effect in Jordan, which suggested its resolve had been stiffened.
That was the point of this propaganda.
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Even by Islamic State standards, the latest propaganda video was particularly gruesome.
Meaning all the fakes and frauds are not working. Thus the propagandists employed by the U.S. government must come up with even more creative methods to regenerate war fever in you.
The footage alternates images of the pilot while he was alive with segments showing the rubble of destroyed buildings and the burned bodies of Syrians allegedly killed in coalition airstrikes. Islamic State members took to Twitter to applaud the pilot’s death, calling it an eye for an eye.
At the end of the 22-minute video, an Islamic State fighter sets a fuse alight as Kaseasbeh watches, his clothes drenched in fuel. The flames race into the cage and engulf him. The camera lingers, showing close-ups of his agony, before concluding with pictures of what the Islamic State claimed were other Jordanian pilots and the offer of a reward of 100 gold coins for whoever kills one of them.
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are among several Arab countries taking part in US-led air raids against Islamic State positions in Syria; two other Arab states, plus Iraq, are members of the coalition in other capacities.
The United Arab Emirates suspended airstrikes against the Sunni extremist group in December, citing fears for its pilots’ safety.
Related:
"Dubai World, the state-owned company that roiled global markets with a near-default in 2009, may complete its reorganization of about $14.6 billion of debt in as soon as four weeks now that all creditors have agreed to the plan. Dubai and its companies accumulated more than $100 billion of debt as the emirate sought to transform itself into a trade, tourism, and financial services hub. Dubai World, which owns stakes in the port operator DP World Ltd. and shipyard Drydocks World LLC, was one of several companies in the sheikhdom to delay debt payments when credit markets froze and asset prices slumped during the financial crisis. Terms of the agreement are for full, early prepayment of 2015 maturities of $2.92 billion, the extension of 2018 maturities to 2022, increased pricing, the introduction of amortization targets, and additional collateral, Dubai World said."
Then the deal went up in flames before collapsing into its own footprint like a WTC tower on September 11, 2001.
The UAE is demanding that the Pentagon improve its search-and-rescue efforts, including the use of V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, in northern Iraq, closer to the battleground, instead of basing the missions in Kuwait, administration officials said. The country’s pilots will not rejoin the fight until the Ospreys, which can take off and land like helicopters but fly like planes, are put in place in northern Iraq.
The Emirates notified the US Central Command that they were suspending flights, Obama administration officials said, after Kaseasbeh was captured.
Kaseasbeh was allegedly shot down in his F-16 fighter bomber on Dec. 24 during an air operation against Islamic State positions not far from their stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria.
He cut a dashing figure in uniform, with green eyes, black hair, and a slim build, and he had a significant social media following.
His capture transfixed the nation.
I'm sorry I no longer believe, folks. I wanted to so badly, and did when I started blogging.
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Kaseasbeh’s captivity at first aroused anticoalition sentiment among many in Jordan, but public opinion shifted dramatically as the Islamic State issued videos showing what it said were the beheadings of two Japanese hostages, including the one the Islamic State had wanted to trade. By last week, critics of the coalition and the government had come under fire for trying to turn the pilot’s plight to political advantage.
OMG!
Okay, we are told the Jordanian people swung around on it (I doubt it), and then the antiwar crowd is criticized for taking political advantage of the situation.
WOW!
Never you mind that it is politicians and the agenda-pushing mouthpiece media that does every time they promote these frauds and fictions.
Readers, this is disgusting "journalism" and nothing more than rank rot prop.
For someone in the elite forefront of Jordan’s air force — its 60 or more F-16s are its most important aircraft — Kaseasbeh had not shown any early interest in the military or in flying, his family said.
“It was just by happenstance,” his father, Safi Youssef al-Kaseasbeh, said Sunday. During his last year in high school, his son, the fourth of eight children and the third son, had been planning to go to medical school in Russia, as his mother had long encouraged. But they saw a notice in a Jordanian newspaper inviting candidates to see if they qualified for the air force, and, on a lark, Kaseasbeh applied for what would be a prestigious position.
To everyone’s surprise, he was chosen over hundreds of other applicants and went straight to flight school instead of to college.
His eldest brother, Jawad Safi al-Kaseasbeh, an engineer seven years older than Muath, has been taking his captivity particularly hard....
Hard enough to call for war?
--more--"
"Arab nations join in disgust over pilot’s death; Calls for revenge in Jordanian’s cage burning" by Rod Nordland and Anne Barnard, New York Times February 05, 2015
AMMAN, Jordan — There was one feeling that many of the Middle East’s fractious clerics, competing ethnic groups, and warring sects could agree on Wednesday: a shared sense of revulsion at the Islamic State’s latest excess, its video showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive inside a cage.
But that is how they are winning people over and bringing a sense of normalcy to the area.
In Syria, the government denounced the group that has been fighting it for months, but so did Al Qaeda fighters who oppose both the government and the Islamic State.
Ooops. Looks like the propagandists went a bit too far on this one. Even Al-CIA-Duh is disowning IS.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian government for once agreed on something, the barbarity of the militant group for the way it murdered the Jordanian, First Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh. Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Cairo’s thousand-year-old Al Azhar institute and a leading Sunni scholar, was so angered that he called for the Islamic State’s extremists to be “killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off.”
The false flag was only meant to get Jordan and other reluctant kingdoms on board, not unify the Muslim world.
In a way that the beheadings of hostages had not, the immolation of Kaseasbeh united the Arab world in an explosion of anger and disgust at the extremists, also known as ISIS, or to most Arabs by the word “Daesh,” derived from the extremists’ Arabic acronym.
Accompanied with suicide car bombs?
The sense of anti-Daesh unity made for strange scenes throughout the region. Jordan’s King Abdullah II, caught by surprise in Washington when the video was released, returned home not to anger at his absence, but to a hero’s welcome. Crowds lined his route from the airport to cheer Jordan’s decision to promptly retaliate by executing two convicted terrorists, both with connections to the Islamic State, only hours earlier.
Never known as a charismatic leader, Abdullah got rave reviews at home for his tough talk in Washington, where in a meeting with congressional leaders he said his retribution would remind people of the Clint Eastwood movie “Unforgiven.”
(Sigh)
While the propaganda video, with its vows to kill other fighter pilots bombing Islamic State positions, was clearly aimed at trying to scare Jordan out of the US-led coalition fighting the extremists, it seems to have had the opposite effect among many Jordanians.
You know, it really is silly to continue doing this once you see and know what it is.
Jordan is one of a half-dozen Arab countries actively participating in the coalition, in addition to Iraq, and Jordan’s government spokesman said the kingdom would now step up its involvement.
Huh.
“I guess in a way we lost a pilot, but at the same time I think the government gained a collective support for fighting them, in Jordan and from all around too,” said Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former head of Jordan’s intelligence service.
OMG!
We have seen this so often in AmeriKa, this manipulation of the public emotion -- often built on a foundation of total lies.
In Syria, where a chaotic four-year insurgency provided the Islamic State with an incubator, both those supporting President Bashar Assad and those opposing him condemned the act, as did their foreign backers.
And that enabled them to grow!
Iran, the Syrian government’s most important ally, called the pilot’s killing “inhumane and un-Islamic.”
It was. I don't believe Muslims did it. All these videos are a product of CIA studios.
Al Manar, the television station of another ally of the Syrian government, the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, called it “the most gruesome” of many atrocities committed by the Islamic State.
Qatar likewise condemned the killing as “contravening the tolerant principles” of Islam. Turkey also chimed in. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it an act of savagery that had no place in Islam.
Look at who it is bringing together!
--more--"
Now back to the agenda:
"Jordanians expand campaign, jets attack ISIS" by Karin Laub and Mohammed Daraghmeh, Associated Press February 06, 2015
AMMAN, Jordan — Dozens of Jordanian fighter jets bombed Islamic State training centers and weapons storage sites Thursday, intensifying attacks after the militants burned a Jordanian pilot to death.
As part of the campaign, Jordan is also attacking targets in Iraq, said Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh. Up to now, Jordan had struck targets in Syria but not Iraq, as part of a US-led military coalition.
The pilot burning really lit a fire under them, so to speak.
‘‘We said we are going to take this all the way, we are going to go after them wherever they are, and we’re doing that,’’ Judeh told Fox News.
Asked if Jordan is carrying out attacks in both countries, he said: ‘‘That’s right. Today more Syria than Iraq, but like I said, it’s an ongoing effort.
‘‘They’re in Iraq and they are in Syria and therefore you have to target them wherever they are,’’ he added.
The militant group controls about one-third of Syria and Iraq, both neighbors of Jordan.
That narrative survives even after months of "we're winning!"
In September, Jordan joined the US-led military alliance that has been carrying out airstrikes against the militants.
The Jordanian military said dozens of fighter jets were involved in Thursday’s strikes.
State television showed footage of the attacks, including fighter jets taking off from an air base and bombs setting of large balls of fire and smoke after impact. It showed that Jordanian troops scribbled messages in chalk on the missiles. ‘‘For you, the enemies of Islam,’’ read one message.
With love, it said.
The military’s statement, read on state television, was titled, ‘‘This is the beginning and you will get to know the Jordanians’’ — an apparent warning to the Islamic State. It said the strikes will continue ‘‘until we eliminate them.’’
Jordan’s King Abdullah II was paying a condolence visit to the family of the pilot, Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh, in southern Jordan when the fighter jets roared overhead.
The king pointed toward the planes, as he sat next to the pilot’s father, Safi.
Kaseasbeh told the mourners that the planes had returned from strikes over Raqqa, the de facto capital of the militants’ self-declared caliphate. His son had been captured near Raqqa after his F-16 plane went down in December.
Earlier this week, Islamic State displayed the video of the killing of the pilot on outdoor screens in Raqqa, to chants of ‘‘God is Great’’ from some in the audience, according to another video posted by the militants.
I'm sorry, but I no longer believe in videos cited by my war-promoting paper.
Also Thursday, Jordan released a jihadi cleric, Abu Mohammed al-Maqdesi, detained in October after speaking out against Jordan’s participation in the coalition.
They did that very quietly and without much press other than a damn sentence.
Jordan’s militants are split between supporters of Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, the branch of Al Qaeda in Syria.
After Jordan joined the coalition, Maqdesi called for Muslim unity against a ‘‘crusader war.’’
--more--"
The UAE can start flying missions again:
"US adds helicopters in Iraq for rescue" New York Times February 06, 2015
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon sent additional Black Hawk helicopters this week to Erbil in northern Iraq to reduce the time needed to rescue pilots who may go down conducting airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Defense Department officials said Thursday.
It happens that often? I thought our gear was better than that.
The move followed a demand from a crucial Arab ally that the United States place more effective search-and-rescue teams in northern Iraq, closer to the battleground, rather than basing aircraft for such missions much farther south in Kuwait. The United Arab Emirates suspended combat missions in late December, citing fear for the safety of its pilots after a Jordanian pilot was captured — and later burned to death by militants — after his F-16 went down in northern Syria.
US military officials said that Islamic State fighters captured the Jordanian pilot, First Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh, within minutes after his plane went down, and said that search teams did not even have time to locate him before he was captured.
A senior military official said Kaseasbeh’s parachute had been spotted quickly by the militants and he had landed in their midst.
But his capture raised questions about whether rescuers would have been able to get to Kaseasbeh within the so-called golden hour, after which chances of survival from a crash or injury drop sharply. When United Arab Emirates officials found that most rescue teams and aircraft were based in Kuwait, they said that their pilots would not fly until there was a system in place for more rapid search and rescue.
Okay. Start flying again.
--more--"
Just watch where you send those missiles:
"Islamic State claims airstrike killed US hostage; Revelation takes shroud off story of aid worker" by Rukmini Callimachi and Rick Gladstone, New York Times February 07, 2015
I'm smelling propaganda!
NEW YORK — She had always been the unidentified, lone female American hostage of the Islamic State. For nearly 17 months, while her fellow American captives were beheaded one after another in serial executions posted on YouTube, Kayla Mueller’s name remained a closely guarded secret, whispered among reporters, government officials, and hostage negotiators — all fearing any public mention might imperil her life.
On Friday, the Islamic State confirmed her identity, revealing that Mueller, a 26-year-old aid worker from Prescott, Ariz., had been killed in the falling rubble of a building in northern Syria that it said had been flattened by bombs from a Jordanian warplane. Both the Jordanian and US governments said there was no proof, even as they rushed to deplore her possible death. Top Jordan officials said the announcement was cynical propaganda.
It's at the newsstand every day.
But the group’s use of her name for the first time prompted her family and its advisers to confirm her prolonged captivity in a statement and changed the calculus about what could be reported about her life.
The timing of this sure is suspicious!
It threw a spotlight on a hostage ordeal that befell an eager and idealistic young woman who had ventured into one of the most dangerous parts of Syria, apparently without the backing of an aid organization, according to interviews with advisers to the family and employees of Doctors Without Borders, the international medical charity that hosted Mueller during her brief stay in one of Syria’s ravaged cities.
Initially based in southern Turkey, where she had worked for at least two aid organizations assisting Syrian refugees, Mueller appears to have driven into the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Aug. 3, 2013, alongside a man who has been described by some as her Syrian friend or colleague and by others as either her boyfriend or her fiancé. He had been invited to travel to the city to help fix the Internet connection for a compound run by the Spanish chapter of Doctors Without Borders, known in Spanish as Médicos Sin Fronteras, or MSF. Employees of the charity said they were surprised when Mueller arrived with the young Syrian man.
***************
It took longer than expected to finish the repair work, and as night approached, MSF agreed to let the two stay overnight, out of concern for their safety, the group’s spokesman, Tim Shenk, said in a statement. The next day, the charity arranged to transport them to an Aleppo bus stop, where they planned to catch a bus back to Turkey.
They never made it. They were abducted on the road, the statement said.
Although Mueller had moved to Turkey in December 2012 to work with the two refugee organizations — including the Danish Refugee Council — she was not employed by either of those groups when she entered Syria, at a time when numerous foreigners had been kidnapped inside the country, the Mueller family advisers said.
Her companion, who was released after several months, declined to be interviewed.
This stinks.
“There is a lot of murkiness about what she was doing there. That’s been the problem — no one really knows,” one adviser of the Muellers said.
Murkiness means cover up in newspaper-speak, leading me to believe she was an intelligence agent or asset.
In the statement released Friday, the family said it had received the first message from Mueller’s captors in May 2014 — nine months after her disappearance.
Then on July 12, 2014, the Islamic State announced that it would kill her within 30 days unless the family provided a ransom of $5.6 million or exchanged her for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who was educated in the Boston area before being convicted of trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2008. She is serving a sentence in a Texas jail, according to an e-mail explaining the demands forwarded to The New York Times by an acquaintance of the Muellers’.
See: Siddiqui and Friends
Also related: Plea deal nets 25-year term in 1998 embassy bombings
When the deadline passed, nothing happened, prompting the family to hope that she might be spared.
They feared the worst after the Islamic State released a video Tuesday showing the immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot, a killing that shocked the world and infuriated Jordan. In retaliation, Jordan executed two prisoners convicted of terrorism, including an Al Qaeda-linked woman who had tried to blow up a hotel in Amman. The Jordanians then began their own extensive bombings of Islamic State targets in Syria.
Not to make a big stink of it, but the government retaliates by acting like ISIS?
It was one of those attacks, the Islamic State said in its message Friday, that killed Mueller.
--more--"
Maybe I'm in denial:
"Parents of Islamic State hostage resist claim of her death" by Felicia Fonseca and Brian Skoloff, Associated Press February 08, 2015
PRESCOTT, Ariz. — The parents of a 26-year-old American who Islamic State extremists say was killed in an airstrike in Syria said in a statement addressed to group leaders that the claim of their daughter’s death concerned them but they remained hopeful she is alive.
The Islamic State group said on Friday that Kayla Jean Mueller of Prescott died in a Jordanian airstrike, but the government of Jordan dismissed the statement as propaganda.
The United States said it had not seen any evidence to corroborate the report.
Okay.
‘‘Their nerves are absolutely frayed,’’ family friend Todd Geiler said Saturday after leaving the Mueller home.
Mueller is the only known remaining US hostage held by the Islamic State group.
If the death is confirmed, she would be the fourth American to die while being held by Islamic State forces. Journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and aid worker Peter Kassig were beheaded by the group.
All those videos were fakes, so.... I'm supposed to believe in the story of little Ms. Mueller here?
‘‘You told us that you treated Kayla as your guest; as your guest her safety and well-being remains your responsibility,’’ Mueller’s family said in a short statement released Friday.
The road to the family home in Prescott remained blocked by authorities Saturday.
FBI agents also have been with the family and remain at their home, Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Dwight D’Evelyn said.
I don't like this.
Mueller is an aid worker who previously volunteered with groups in India, Israel, and the Palestinian territories.
Yeah, I saw something online where Zionist Israelis hated her for her criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian positions. You put that together with the strange US and Jordan government denials and I'm starting to think she did die in an airstrike.
‘‘The common thread of Kayla’s life has been her quiet leadership and strong desire to serve others,’’ her family said.
Mueller’s identity had not been disclosed until now out of fears for her safety.
Her family said she was taken hostage by the Islamic State group on Aug. 4, 2013, while leaving a hospital in Syria.
‘‘The secrecy issue was at the demand of her captors,’’ Geiler said. ‘‘There were just a few of us around town who knew, for lack of better words, the living hell the family was going through.’’
He said the family planned to release another statement sometime Saturday. However, a family spokesman said there were no plans to do so.
‘‘Kayla was a wonderful young lady,’’ Geiler said. ‘‘She was not one to sit in the back and take a back seat on issues, and she truly thought she could make a difference.’’
A Rachel Corrie-type?
Jordan has been launching airstrikes against the extremist group in response to a video released last week that shows a Jordanian pilot being held by the Islamic State forces, Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh, being burned to death in a cage.
Kaseasbeh, who was captured after his F-16 went down in December while conducting airstrikes as part of a campaign against the militants by a US-led coalition, was believed to have been killed last month.
The Islamic State group said in a statement that Mueller was killed in the militants’ stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria during midday prayers in airstrikes that targeted ‘‘the same location for more than an hour.’’
It published photos purportedly showing the bombed site, a severely damaged three-story building, but offered no images of Mueller or proof of her death.
Neither does the propaganda pre$$, but it never seems to be a big deal. All we see on video is some folks dressed in orange jumpsuits and a guy with a black mask.
The statement said no Islamic State militants were killed in the airstrikes, raising further questions about the veracity of the claim.
The hypocritical propaganda pre$$ is really something else, huh?
Mueller had been working in Turkey assisting Syrian refugees, according to a 2013 article in The Daily Courier, her hometown newspaper.
--more--"
Okay, enough mourning. Back to the airstrikes, with no worry of killing an American woman now:
"Strikes hit 56 Islamic State targets, Jordan says" by Mohammed Daraghmeh, Associated Press February 09, 2015
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordanian airstrikes hit 56 Islamic State targets over the last three days, including weapons depots, training centers, and military barracks, in response to a video showing the militant group burning a Jordanian pilot to death, Jordan’s air force chief said Sunday.
They are beating this bit a little too much.
Meanwhile, a squadron of F-16 jets from the United Arab Emirates arrived in Jordan. The UAE has said it sent the warplanes to support the kingdom, and a Jordanian government official has said the planes would be used in the airstrikes on Islamic State group targets.
Who didn't see that coming?
Jordanian officials vowed to harshly retaliate for the slaying of the pilot, Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh, who was set ablaze while trapped in a cage.
The Jordanian air force attacked and destroyed 19 targets on Thursday, the first day of attacks, 18 on Friday, and 19 on Saturday, the air force chief, Gen. Mansour al-Jabour, told reporters.
‘‘We achieved what we were looking for: revenge for Muath,’’ the general said. ‘‘And this is not the end. This is the beginning.’’
In recent days, Jordanian officials have delivered tough warnings to Islamic State, saying the retaliation campaign would not stop until the group has been destroyed.
Then Jordan is in for the next 100 years or so as the war planners intend.
The United States and several Arab allies, including Jordan, have been striking the Islamic State group in Syria since Sept. 23, while warplanes from the United States and other countries have been waging an air campaign against the extremists in Iraq for longer. The campaign aims to push back the jihadi organization after it took large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a ‘‘caliphate’’ nation.
Jabour said coalition planes have flown 5,500 sorties since the beginning of the air campaign, including 2,000 reconnaissance flights. He did not say whether this included flights over both Syria and Iraq. He said Jordan’s air force participated in 946 sorties.
The general said about 7,000 Islamic State group militants have been killed since the beginning of the coalition airstrikes, without elaborating.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates have been participating in the Syria airstrikes, with logistical support from Qatar.
Also Sunday, Prince Charles toured a large camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan, chatting with residents and sampling tea and bread on a walk down the main road.
The prince was accompanied by Britain’s international development minister, Justine Greening, who said Britain will pay an additional $150 million to help displaced Syrians and their host communities in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.
More than 3 million Syrians have fled their war-torn country since 2011. About 80,000 live in the Zaatari refugee camp Prince Charles visited Sunday. Later, he also met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Related: US must help Jordan with Syrian refugee crisis
That is sort of SILLI when one considers that they created the crisis through their attempts at covert overthrow of a legitimate government.
The heir to the British throne is on a six-day Middle East trip. He told the BBC that the plight of Middle Eastern Christians being persecuted by Islamic extremists is ‘‘a most agonizing situation.’’
BBC stands for Brits Buggering Children.
Prince Charles said he fears there will be ‘‘very, very few’’ Christians left in the Middle East after the turmoil wracking the region.
Hundreds of people from Britain have joined militants in Syria. Prince Charles said the number of young Britons turning to extremism was alarming, although ‘‘some aspect of this radicalization is a search for adventure and excitement at a particular age.’’
‘‘The frightening part,’’ he said, was how many people became radicalized through ‘‘the extraordinary amount of crazy stuff’’ on the Internet.
With all due respect, I don't need to here from royal $cum through the propaganda pre$$ mouthpiece when the whole bunch of them are nothing more than a group of murderous elite pedophiles.
Or you can believe in their goodness promoted through their ma$$ media (while ignore the shambles the world is in as the same cla$$ has enriched itself via policy promotions).
In Prescott, Ariz., the parents of a 26-year-old American who has been held hostage for more than a year by Islamic State extremists were clinging to hope Sunday that their daughter is alive, having yet to receive confirmation of her death.
Is it awful of me to say I don't care? Or that I care more about the people under those missiles?
The Islamic State group said Friday that Kayla Jean Mueller died in a Jordanian airstrike. The government of Jordan dismissed the statement as propaganda.
Okay.
‘‘The strain of not knowing where their daughter is at and whether or not she is alive or not is something that is starting to wear on them,’’ Todd Geiler, a family friend, said. ‘‘But if we had to go on ahead and say in a word how they’re doing, they’re hopeful for her safe return.’’
--more--"
I'm dismissing that as propaganda.
"Syria tells Jordan, coalition to keep out" by Zeina Karam, Associated Press February 10, 2015
BEIRUT — Syria’s foreign minister on Monday criticized neighboring Jordan, which recently stepped up airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, and said his country does not need outside help in battling militants.
Walid al-Moallem also told reporters that Damascus will not accept Jordanian or other foreign ground troops crossing into Syria to fight.
There has been no mention of any international troops being sent to Syria to fight the Islamic State group. Jordan has, however, vowed to retaliate harshly for the slaying of one of its pilots, who was burned alive by the Islamic State militants last week.
They are getting ready to do such.
‘‘We will not allow anyone to violate our national sovereignty and we do not need any ground troops to fight Daesh,’’ Moallem said, using the Arabic acronym for the extremist group. ‘‘The Syrian Arab government is fully capable of fighting Daesh valiantly, and we don’t need any other troops.’’
Except Israel, from time to time.
Jordan is a member of a US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria. The Syrian government describes the airstrike campaign as illegitimate because it has not been coordinated with the Syrian government.
Syrian government forces are fighting Islamic State militants on the ground but have lost about a third of the country to them.
Government troops are also battling opposition fighters from an array of rebel groups fighting to oust Syria’s president, Bashar Assad.
I wonder who is helping him.
Moallem said Syria offered to coordinate with the Jordanian government in fighting terrorism but received no response.
He accused Jordan of allowing ‘‘terrorists’’ — a government term for all opposition fighters seeking to topple Assad — to cross into Syria after training them in camps in Jordan overseen by the United States.
The CIA has said it is running a rebel training program in Jordan.
Again, it's an open secret but rarely promoted in the pre$$.
Moallem asserted that Jordan, ‘‘which fights the Islamic State group along with the international coalition, doesn’t fight’’ against Syria’s main Al Qaeda branch, called the Nusra Front, along its borders.
The Nusra Front is fighting with Syrian rebel groups in southern Syria, near Jordan.
The Jordanian Air Force said Sunday it had carried out 56 airstrikes against Islamic State weapons depots and training camps in Syria and Iraq in the days since the extremist group revealed it had executed the Jordanian pilot.
The kingdom had quietly participated in the US-led air campaign against the Islamic State since September, but after a video was released last week of the pilot being burned alive in a cage, the Jordanian public has called for blood, and King Abdullah II and his military have promised vengeance.
Yeah, this whole thing is stinking.
So what's next, ISIS throwing babies from incubators onto the cold floor?
And now sea are told Jordanians fell for it like a downed jet!
The Jordanians want to kill the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to Major General Mansour Jabour of the royal Jordanian air force, the Washington Post reported. ‘‘We are hitting them where they eat and sleep,’’ he said.
Related: ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi Trained by Israeli Mossad, NSA Documents Reveal
The general said that since August, US-led coalition bombing has killed ‘‘around 7,000 fighters’’ from the Islamic State, the Post said. That assertion could not be immediately verified.
In September, the CIA reported that the Islamic State’s ranks ranged between 20,000 and 31,500 across Iraq and Syria. That was before the formation of the wider coalition that brought additional fighters under the group’s umbrella.
The secondary goal of the airstrikes is ‘‘to disrupt and destroy’’ the Islamic State’s economic and financial sources, according to Jordanian officials, who claim to have successfully ‘‘disrupted’’ the group’s ability to sell black market oil by destroying 18 key ‘‘logistic centers.’’
Then what is the primary goal? Overthrow Assad?
The Jordanian military officials rejected an assertion by the Islamic State that the airstrikes had killed an American hostage, as well as other civilians.
On Friday, the group said that Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old Arizona woman it had taken hostage in Syria, was killed when a Jordanian fighter plane bombed a building where she was being held.
The claim could not be immediately verified, nor was it clear that Jordanian planes had bombed the location.
Now not only is she alive, they didn't even bomb there. WOW!
The Islamic State has not produced her body or other evidence that she was killed in the strike.
Related: Bin Laden Stories Show AmeriKan Media Not to be Believed
Was Ms. Mueller also dumped into the sea?
--more--"
"Death of US aid worker in Syria is confirmed; Evidence leaves questions about when she died" by Rukmini Callimachi and Eric Schmitt, New York Times February 11, 2015
The parents of Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker abducted in 2013 by the Islamic State, said Tuesday that they now had proof from the militant group that she was dead, four days after it claimed she had been killed in a Jordanian airstrike.
The parents, who had publicly maintained hope that she was still alive, did not specify the proof furnished to them, saying only that US intelligence officials had confirmed the authenticity. The White House also announced that it had confirmed Mueller was dead.
After all the denials, da-da-da??
Confirmed off what? What US intelligence officials said?
PFFFFFFT!
They get a body back or what?
But two people who had been briefed on the proof said it consisted of at least three photographs, all headshots. These people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said two photos showed Mueller in a black Muslim head covering, but that contusions to her face were visible. The third photo, they said, showed Mueller wrapped in a white burial shroud.
PFFFFFFFFFFTTT!
It was unclear whether the injuries seen in the photographs were consistent with the Islamic State’s assertion that Mueller, 26, died last Friday when Jordanian bombs flattened a structure in northern Syria where it said she had been held. Jordanian and US officials have challenged that assertion.
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President Obama defended the US government’s no ransom policy hours after Mueller’s family said it had received confirmation of her death from her Islamic State captors. The president said that by paying ransom, the United States would be strengthening terror groups and putting Americans at greater risk for future kidnappings.
I'm sorry, folks, but this whole thing is stinking like a psyop. Maybe I'm just being silly.
The president said in an interview Tuesday with BuzzFeed News [that] a rescue mission to recover Mueller and other hostages last summer probably missed them by ‘‘a day or two.’’
Had better results in Yemen.
Questions remain over whether Mueller, the last known US hostage of the Islamic State, was indeed killed in northern Syria last Friday in the rubble of a building that the group said had been destroyed in a Jordanian airstrike.
A family representative said the Muellers had received a message from their daughter’s captors over the weekend containing “additional information which the intelligence community authenticated and deemed credible.” The representative declined to give more details.
Yeah, okay.
Mueller, who had been working in Turkey for several organizations helping refugees from Syria’s civil war, drove into Syria on Aug. 3, 2013, and was abducted a day later.
She appears to have driven in with a Syrian man, who has been described as her boyfriend and had been hired as a contractor to repair an Internet connection at the Doctors Without Borders compound in the war-struck city of Aleppo.
Employees of Doctors Without Borders, an international medical charity, said they had been surprised to see Mueller arrive alongside the contractor. At the time, Western employees of international aid groups were restricting their travel into Syria because of the heightened risks of kidnapping.
That is very suspicious.
The pair stayed overnight at the Doctors Without Borders compound, and were kidnapped the next day on their way to the Aleppo bus depot for their return journey to Turkey, according to a statement issued by the group. Mueller’s companion was released after several months.
The details of her captivity remain blurry.
Or murky.
European and Syrian hostages who have been released by the Islamic State said they had been held in cells adjoining hers in a former potato chip factory north of Aleppo, as well as in at least two locations in Raqqa, the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate. Men and women were held in separate cells in both locations, they said, but in at least one compound they were able to communicate with Mueller through the wall.
At the height of the hostage crisis in early 2014, she was one of at least 23 Western hostages held by the Islamic State. Mueller and the three medical charity workers were the only women among them.
“The women were, in general, treated well,” said a former European hostage, and were not overtly abused the way male hostages were.
At a White House news conference, spokesman Josh Earnest said the information received by the Mueller family, as analyzed by intelligence officials, did not provide any insight into how she had died.
I never expect to get any from them anyway.
However, Earnest disputed the Islamic State’s assertion that Mueller was killed in an airstrike. There was no evidence, Earnest said, “of civilians in the target area prior to the coalition strike.” And in any case, he said, the Islamic State militants who were holding Mueller “were responsible for her safety and well-being.”
“Therefore,” he said, “they are responsible for her death.”
That is what Israel says when they butcher Palestinians.
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Related: Kayla Mueller’s family release 2014 letter from captivity
First I get fake videos and now I get fake letters from my pre$$.
"In Kayla Mueller’s Ariz. hometown, grief strikes again" by Rick Rojas, New York Times February 12, 2015
PRESCOTT, Ariz. — At the heart of this city is a gathering place, a square with a Western-wear boutique and, on the lawn of the old courthouse, a scene playing out that is sadly familiar to many people here.
Sure is.
It had been confirmed that Kayla Mueller, the aid worker long held captive by the Islamic State and a native of this city, was dead. And now, once again, Prescott — a community all too familiar with suffering loss — had drawn the attention of outsiders because of tragedy.
In June 2013, the grief was over 19 firefighters lost as they battled a wildfire. This week, it was for a woman who had gone abroad to help war refugees.
“We’ve lost a daughter,” Lisa Sandberg, who has lived here for 35 years, said. “She was out there trying —” Sandberg stopped herself. “She wasn’t trying — she was making a difference in the world.”
Mueller, who was 26, was the same age as Sandberg’s daughter. “It brought this struggle right to the courthouse square,” she said.
Prescott, a 100-mile scenic drive up through rocky foothills from Phoenix, draws tourists and retirees with its quaint strip of shops and saloons and its enviable weather — a crisp 60 degrees in the middle of February.
That is enviable, but isn't it a little low for Arizona at this time of year?
Sandberg and plenty of others were quick to invoke the city’s motto: “Everybody’s Hometown.”
Prescott, however, has also known pain. Not two years has passed since residents lined up along the roadsides on a sweltering summer day as 19 hearses drove by, carrying the bodies of the firefighters killed when they were overrun by the Yarnell Hill fire.
Only you can rekindle a link to those events.
Deborah Pfingston believes that growing up in a place like Prescott helped influence Mueller, just as it had her son, Andrew Ashcraft, one of the firefighters killed. Almost three decades ago, she moved to Prescott because she wanted to raise her children in the closest approximation she could find to Andy Griffith’s Mayberry.
(Blog editor starts whistling)
“We care, and I think it’s felt by the youth,’’ she said. “If you feel you are cared for, that gives you security to go out further, and it gives you a sense of what you can do for others.”
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Time to put her to rest:
"Facebook post leads to prison in Jordan" New York Times February 16, 2015
AMMAN, Jordan — The deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was sentenced Sunday to 18 months in prison for criticizing the United Arab Emirates in a Facebook post.
Of course, one of the alleged reason the allies are fighting terror is for freedom of speech.
The state security court, a special body that has jurisdiction over Jordan’s internal and external threats, found the Brotherhood leader, Zaki Bani Rushaid, guilty of “acts harmful to the country’s relations with a friendly nation.”
On his personal Facebook page, Bani Rushaid wrote on Nov. 17 that the Emirates plays the role of the “American cop in the region, supports coups, and is a cancer in the body of the Arab world.” The Emirates is an important ally of Jordan and one of several countries in the region, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that have engaged in a campaign to wipe out the Brotherhood.
Apparently you can't tell the truth in Jordan.
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And all but forgotten now:
"The problem in Japan in some ways parallels the situation of American workers, toiling 14 hours a day for a major trading company, including early morning meetings and after-hours networking. Part of the problem has been that many people fear resentment from co-workers if they take days off, a real concern in a conformist culture that values harmony.... The economy suffered two straight quarters of contraction following a sales tax hike in April [and] contracted at a minus 0.6 percent pace for July to September, Monday’s data showed, compared to the earlier reported minus 1.9 percent pace. The April-to-July contraction was revised upward from minus 7.3 percent to minus 1.7 percent."
Hey, Heads Goto Roll unless you want to create a new culture based on lopping lies.
"Journalist says Japanese officials thwarted his Mideast trip" by Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press February 13, 2015
TOKYO — A Japanese freelance photographer said Thursday that government officials forced him to give up his passport because he planned a reporting trip to Syria, where two Japanese were killed in a recent hostage crisis.
Yuichi Sugimoto, a journalist who has covered the Middle East and other war zones periodically for the past 20 years, said the confiscation violated his constitutional right of travel and press freedom and prevented him from working.
Japan is still in shock from the recent hostage crisis, in which two Japanese were allegedly beheaded by militants from the Islamic State group. The government has raised its travel warning for Syria to its highest level, urging citizens not to visit the country, but the advisory is not legally binding.
Sugimoto, 58, told a news conference he handed over his passport after police and Foreign Ministry officials visited his home over the weekend to demand he surrender it. He said one official gave him an order signed by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, a copy of which he provided to the Associated Press.
Top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga defended the confiscation of Sugimoto’s passport, the first such case under the passport law, given the risk in Syria and the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens.
Kishida told parliament on Thursday that the government is compiling a set of measures to improve the safety of Japanese abroad, without elaborating. He said stopping extremism and restoring stability in the Middle East is imperative, and he pledged ‘‘all possible nonmilitary support to moderate Islamic nations.’’
Sugimoto said the passport confiscation was an abuse of government power and that he feared similar steps might be taken against other journalists.
‘‘Losing my passport means a loss of my work as a freelance photographer. I feel my entire life is being denied,’’ he said, adding that it would also set a ‘‘bad precedent’’ for interference in the work of journalists.
In Japan, where conformity often takes precedence over individuality and individuals are expected to act in line with national interests, Sugimoto’s case created little public outcry.
The confiscation came days after he twice rejected requests from officials to stop his planned trip. Sugimoto said he explained that he planned only to visit refugee camps near the Turkish border and had no plans to go further into militant-controlled areas.
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That was the last cry I heard from the propaganda pre$$.
