Militant Islamists

[SanteeFats]

BEIRUT
The destruction of the nearly 2,000-year-old temple of Baalshamin by Islamic State militants erased a symbol of the once rich religious life of Syria’s ancient caravan city of Palmyra and left residents, archaeologists and historians fearful that the extremists will destroy more of the rich site, including an even larger ancient temple nearby.
The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO on Monday called the destruction of the temple a war crime. For archaeologists, it deepened their despair and frustration over the systematic destruction of Syria’s heritage in the country’s civil war, not only by the extremists but by government forces, who have bombed and looted historic sites since the conflict began in 2011.
No pictures have yet emerged of the extent of the destruction of the temple. One resident told The Associated Press he saw it after it was blown up Sunday and said it was reduced to “rocks on the ground, nothing more.”
The witness, who goes by the name Nasser al-Thaer, said the bombing took place Sunday shortly after 4 p.m. The militants had lined the inner and outer walls of the temple with bottles of explosives more than a month ago, he said.
“I went to see it, not from very close because ISIS (militants) were there and because I was worried for myself and afraid they will ask me what are you doing here. So I saw it from a distance,” al-Thaer told the AP.
The temple, a structure of giant stone blocks several stories high fronted by six towering columns, was dedicated to a god of storm and rain— the name means literally “Lord of the Heavens.” U-T NEWS SERVICES

[Wendigo]

Spain and Morocco make 'Islamic State' arrests
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34049586

"Spain and Morocco have arrested 14 people in a joint operation targeting suspected recruiters for the so-called Islamic State (IS) group"

You have to wonder if anyone who wants to go and join IS ever tries to imagine what a state operating under the IS regime would be like.
It would have nothing to offer any other nation apart from a seemingly endless supply of fanatical homicidal zealots.
No sensible person in any Western country would want to buy anything they produce knowing the nature of their leaders, other possibles like China or India would think very hard before they traded with such a state.
They are so insular that they won't give a damn what others think.
Airlines would probably operate no fly zones over any IS state.
Tourism .... yeah right !!!! They love foreigners don't they
When I go to Turkey or any foreign land I like to see things like Ephesus - I want to imagine how things were thousands of years ago. not to live like that now.

They would be international pariahs and when things turned sour as happens to all countries over time then living lifestyles that make the Amish seem to be at the cutting edge of technology they would no doubt plead for aid from the very people they despise, and our leaders would probably be daft enough to provide it.

On a slightly related note look at the economy of the Palestinian territories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econom...an_territories

Even with international aid and tourism as well as more forward thinking leaders unemployment in the Palestinian territories is high.
Try to imagine life in some weird Daeshtopia and you wouldn't be far off this.

[chris chunt]

I think the point of IS is they would like to turn the clock back to the stone age .
Everybody just lives their lives governed by religious superstition .
They don't want to trade with nobody all the majority would do is live a god fearing peasant life .
How the hirearchy would pay for their Toyota pick ups and weaponary and all important internet access would be through crooked oil deals i suppose .

[SanteeFats]

Another nice sentiment IMO.

[Decadence]

For once, there's really nothing I can add to this..

[SanteeFats]

Daesh doing as Assad has done. No red line for them though.

BEIRUT
Doctors and an aid organization said this week that the Islamic State appears to have used mustard gas during an attack last week in northern Syria, a claim that intensifies fears that the extremist group has obtained banned chemical weapons.
The incident on Friday apparently involved dozens of mortar rounds that struck a village north of Aleppo called Marea, where the militant group is battling other armed opponents of the Syrian government. In video testimony, a doctor from the area said the Islamic State appears to have used mustard gas in the attack, which affected mostly “women and children.”
The Syrian American Medical Society said it treated 50 people who showed signs of exposure to chemical agents, including symptoms such as wheezing, skin irritation and severe itching. The humanitarian group, which operates a field clinic in the area, said 30 of those people developed severe blisters that doctors linked to mustard gas. The group said “local sources” blamed the attack on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.
Evidence is mounting that the Islamic State has used mustard agent in recent attacks in Syria and Iraq, countries where the group controls vast territory. The access to and weaponization of such banned chemical agents would mark a serious escalation in the threat posed by the group, which is being targeted by a U.S.-led coalition.
U.S. military officials said recently that Islamic State militants used mustard gas during an attack last month on Kurdish forces elsewhere in Syria. U.S. officials also have linked the group to an attack on Kurdish forces in Iraq that appeared to involve mustard gas.
Generally, Syria’s government has been accused of using chemical weapons over the course of the country’s 4-year-old conflict, including a recent spate of attacks in the north involving chlorine gas, a choking agent.
THE WASHINGTON POST

[SanteeFats]

KABUL
Two American service members were killed Wednesday in an apparent “insider” attack by an Afghan soldier at a military base in Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmand province, U.S. and Afghan officials reported.
In another development in Helmand, Taliban insurgents captured the province’s Musa Qala district after a heavy clash with Afghan government forces, local officials said. They said 25 members of the security forces were killed in the fighting in the northern part of the province.
The attack on the foreign troops, members of a U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, was carried out by one person in an Afghan army uniform who opened fire on a vehicle on an Afghan base in Helmand, the coalition said in a statement.
U.S. officials in Afghanistan did not immediately disclose the nationalities of the two coalition members killed in the attack. But a defense official in the United States confirmed that both were Americans.
Other service members returned fire, wounding the assailant and another individual wearing an Afghan army uniform, the coalition statement said. THE WASHINGTON POST

[chris chunt]

Its being reported this Hussein guy has been killed .
A computer hacker and husband of that sally Jones .
He looks a right cnut in that photo without the gun .
Oh well he's dead .
Goodbye to bad rubbish etc .
Another jihad gap year ends in tears .

[SanteeFats]

LONDON
A 21-year-old hacker from Birmingham, England, who tapped into U.S. military networks and was a central figure in the Islamic State militant group’s online recruitment campaign has been killed in Syria by a U.S. airstrike, according to three senior U.S. officials.
The hacker, Junaid Hussain, was a leading member of the CyberCaliphate, an Islamic State unit that broke into the U.S. Central Military Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts this year. He was considered to be the second-most prominent British member of the Islamic State, after Mohammed Emwazi, a fighter often referred to as “Jihadi John” because of his role in the videotaped killings of Western hostages.
The U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence reports, said Hussain had been killed in an airstrike Tuesday outside Raqqa, Syria.
Hussain’s unit has been credited with the Islamic State’s adept manipulation of social media to recruit fighters and spread propaganda, and his online activity was increasingly linked to plots carried out far from the battlefields in Syria and Iraq, experts said. NYT NEWS SERVICE

[Decadence]

And then there's the state sponsors of this scourge:

http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...as-terrorists/

Secretary of State John Kerry says we're supposed to trust these people.