As for McGavin's links, I'm not a big fan of the Small Wars Journal, but Jihadica and Foreign Policy are pretty good sources.
For the most part, ISIS funds itself internally. Primary means of money are: smuggling, extortion / "taxation", kidnapping, the sale of oil both to Assad and to other parties through Iran, and the capture of monetary reserves in Mosul.
Other smaller sources include private funding (mostly from persons in Gulf States).
Thanks for the links, both of you. I was wondering what you meant by sale of oil through Iran? I have a hard time seeing IS and Iran working together on anything, really. Iran is just a smuggling route, like the Kurdish regions are. The Assad government is directly involved in buying oil straight from the ISIS, while Iran and Kurdish regions are mostly smuggling routes for black market transactions. There are already supply lines established up north through Kurdish black market deals as well that the ISIS can tap into. ISIS now also has access to significant grain resources that it can sell internally in Iraq for money. |
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As for McGavin's links, I'm not a big fan of the Small Wars Journal, but Jihadica and Foreign Policy are pretty good sources.
For the most part, ISIS funds itself internally. Primary means of money are: smuggling, extortion / "taxation", kidnapping, the sale of oil both to Assad and to other parties through Iran, and the capture of monetary reserves in Mosul.
Other smaller sources include private funding (mostly from persons in Gulf States).
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MESSAGE TO THE ISLAMIC STATE
I am not afraid of you. Neither are my friends. But you should be afraid of my friends, they are very bad men. The kind who put a bag over your head in the middle of the night. Start praying to Allah that they give you back to the U.K. Perfectly said! |
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Outside of that, most of what I have read recently has been reports released by various agencies and NGO's (Would be happy to share if you have a specific subject you wanted to read on, most are related to conflict, terrorism, economic development, or women's rights). I could also recommend fiction books like classic Sci Fi or fantasy which I also read a lot of depending on what you are interested in.
Have you read any reports on IS/ISIS that you'd recommend? I pretty much just read up on middle-east history whenever I get the chance. There are a number absolutely. I mostly get by ISIS news from the Institute for the Study of War which has published several in depth papers on the organization in both Iraq and Syria, the Combating Terrorism Center, and the Jamestown Foundation. Also for some decent (though more conservative) reading, there is the Long War Journal. Depending on how far back you'd like to go I'd be happy to suggest some specific papers that I found useful. I'm getting more interested in this. If you wouldn't mind sharing, I would like to read up. One of the reasons is I was just told something I wasn't aware of, and it conflicts with what is commonly assumed. This al Baghdadi guy...someone just suggested to me that he was formerly with Saddam, and was trained by US forces in Jordan around 2006. Now it's possible I misunderstood who was being referred to, but it certainly was someone high up in ISIS. Does that make any sense to you? I'll post some when I get home. To answer your question though: yes and no. The person talking to you got the wrong Baghdadi (if they were referring to the current caliph). They are thinking of Abu Bakr Baghdadi's predecessor: Abu Omar Baghdadi. A quazi fictional character played by an actor who was loosely associated with (operationally speaking, not in terms of acting) a man named Hamed Dawood Mohammed Khalil al Zaw. It was this guy who used to work for the Iraqi security forces. Then again they may have been thinking of someone else. Al Zaw "headed" AQI prior to Baghdadi though and seems a likely candidate given the information you presented. |
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Outside of that, most of what I have read recently has been reports released by various agencies and NGO's (Would be happy to share if you have a specific subject you wanted to read on, most are related to conflict, terrorism, economic development, or women's rights). I could also recommend fiction books like classic Sci Fi or fantasy which I also read a lot of depending on what you are interested in.
Have you read any reports on IS/ISIS that you'd recommend? I pretty much just read up on middle-east history whenever I get the chance. There are a number absolutely. I mostly get by ISIS news from the Institute for the Study of War which has published several in depth papers on the organization in both Iraq and Syria, the Combating Terrorism Center, and the Jamestown Foundation. Also for some decent (though more conservative) reading, there is the Long War Journal. Depending on how far back you'd like to go I'd be happy to suggest some specific papers that I found useful. |
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Of all the things I've heard said about GWB, timid responses were not among them. I doubt anyone considered him overly cautious. He certainly believed in American military adventurism. However, the basis of Obama's foreign policy seems to be that if it doesn't directly affect American interests, or American citizens, he really doesn't want to interfere too much. These people are essentially forcing him to address people getting murdered specifically because they are American. They are making it his business. I'm not moved by it. If someone comes to the US, kills a journalist on our soil, films it, posts it, then leaves, we have a problem. But in this case, I can't help but see this as an occupational hazard. This is to say, I don't think it is reasonable to expect US foreign policy to be built around the idea that anyone with an American passport can traipse around the globe and dig into the most awful places, reporting on the most awful people and events, and whoever messes with said passport-holder, that's who we go to war with. |
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Even in this our country we close our eyes to the plight of boys getting raped by men and reading this about Pakistan is horrible. Very little can be done in these countries its a different culture and quite acceptable for the boys since they get food and many are homeless orphans and street dwellers. Too awful to imagine what they will grow up to become, they are our future?
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Hmmmmmm...I cannot believe that someone would contribute that much money for someone who may have perpetrated a murder. Brown was not only unarmed, but, according to medical examiners, he appeared to be in surrender mode when the 6 ft. 4 inch tall young man was shot on top of his head, killing him.
You don't suppose that the possible murderer got a step ladder to stand on to aim the gun over the top of Brown's head to shoot him from that angle, do you?
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Looking into the matter further, I am seeing a lot of similarities between software piracy and electricity "theft". When you look at the amount of electricity flowing in those power wires up in the sky, this is what it might look like. Of course, utility companies are itching to sell more power during the low use. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...-year-1.969837It looks like cost of theft is blown way out of proportion as a justification for their rates and war on drugs. Unlike theft of durable goods, they aren't always real cost. If you tag along a paying customer on a bus without paying the fare and you get off with him, they will claim you "cost" them the fare, but the incremental cost is so small that it is not measurable. It is along the same idea as someone downloading a software cost the developer their asking retail price. The above is only true if it was completely full and you caused a fare paying customer to get turned away. "BC Hydro says the theft of electricity — mostly from marijuana grow operations — now costs $100 million every year. Hydro spokesperson Cindy Verschoor said that's a significant increase from the estimated $30-million revenue loss from electricity theft in 2006, the last time Hydro calculated the loss." So, who is it really costing if they're only sipping from HYDRO's power during low usage? Especially if they're tapping into medium voltage with their own transproducer without taking away capacity from anyone. I somehow doubt the hydro's paying anyone for the use of water and it's not actually costing them anything for the kWh taken. This is as opposed to plugging into someone's generator and causing the throttle to open up more and consume more gas that they have to pay for. A convincing tattle meter protest YouTube video that gets a large number of hydro's customer to set the thermostat in the house to switch on at exactly 6PM, switch on every thing in the house for 5 minutes from 6PM to 6:05PM and shift as much of power use to between 5 and 7PM while avoiding use between 10PM and 4AM in will cost them a lot more than all the theft http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...-year-1.969837http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdet...han-you-think/Stop trying to justify theft. If you use a service, you need to pay for it or get permission.Also it's annoying as fuck that canadians call electricity hydro. I agree. They need to stop presenting what they "would've earned" in what was stolen if they sold at their retail price as a justification when pleading rate hike permissions. The cost is the difference in what they spent minus what they would have spent if the theft didn't happen at all. When someone shop lifts something, what the store paid to get the item is the loss. A theft $20 bill from cash register doesn't cost the same as something they retail for $20 but got for $5 from wholesaler. Pretty much a lot of their power is made from hydroelectric, so that's why they call it "hydro". |
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Outside of that, most of what I have read recently has been reports released by various agencies and NGO's (Would be happy to share if you have a specific subject you wanted to read on, most are related to conflict, terrorism, economic development, or women's rights). I could also recommend fiction books like classic Sci Fi or fantasy which I also read a lot of depending on what you are interested in.
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Now of course that doesn't mean that Israel did what we were pressuring them to do (engage in a peace process), instead they unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in order to end peace talks with Abbas.
Dov Weisglass (the aid) went on to explain:
"The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."
If there was any ambiguity in that he also stated:
"The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
That's fairly cut and dry, so no i'm not just proverbially speaking talking out of my ass, rather I say those things because I have paid attention to internal Israeli political dialogue. I make those claims specifically because I have direct supporting evidence for them.
This actually isn't true either, we see pressures occur all of the time in the absence of security council agreement.
sana8410, have you read any interesting books lately? i'm in the mood to read something not work related for once . Depends on what you do for work and what genres you like to read. I tend to like history books or classic sci fi and fantasy when I want something lighter. The last couple of history books that I have read over the summer have been: Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster by Robert O. Collins and Millard Burr, which is primarily a book about Chad, and the conflict dynamics that have existed between Chad, Sudan, Libya and Egypt since independence. It's only really in the last chapter or two that he really gets into Darfur. Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns, a book about the conflict in the DR Congo since the early 90s. It looks at both Congolese wars and the stage setting for the Mai Mai militias and jungle rebel groups that still exist today. This book isn't as dry of reading as the Darfur one, it has good facts, but also a lot of interviews and human testimonies. So he won't just name a massacre give some numbers and a date and move on (Like the French political Scientist Gerard Prunier does in his telling of the conflict in Africa's World War) but he'll do that and then couple it with a personal account from someone he interviewed. On Saudi Arabia:Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines, and Future by Karen Elliott House, title is pretty self descriptive. It lacks the research levels and details that I tend to like in books and is mostly an account of her personal experiences and fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and observations of Saudi culture. It isn't too long though. Radical Religious and Violent by Eli Berman, written by an economist it is an examination of the behavior of religious radical groups (both violent and non-violent) and how they operate, and why they are so much better at terrorism when they do turn violent relative to non-religious radicals. He mostly examines the Taliban, Hamas, and ultra Orthodox Jewish communities. Though other groups make appearances as well and he even examines (briefly) the growth of Christian radical movements in historical Europe. Boko Haram: Islamism, Politics, Security and the State in Nigeria, It is a collection of academic works and analyses on different aspects of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. I read this one in PDF form and it can be found for free online. Some essays are better written and more interesting than others, but all in all it has good content. If you read this one I'd suggest probably reading Curbing Violence in Nigeria (II): The Boko Haram Insurgency published by the International Crisis Group first. it gives a more generalized historical overview of the movement which would be helpful to have before tackling the more specific looks at the insurgency that the above listed paper does. The Crisis Group's Boko Haram report can also be found online for free in PDF form. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954 - 1962 by Alistair Horne, About the Algerian struggle for independence from France. Probably the best written book on this list. Easy to read with good selections of quotes like Stearns work on the Congo (so it isn't too dry), but very well researched and detailed in its facts (like Collin's work on Chad). It covers pre-war, different ethnic, cultural, and political factions, the entire conflict, and sets the stage for understanding the subsequent civil war and the formation of the GSPC (which would eventually become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). Next on the list is: A History of Modern Sudan by Robert O. Collins, Collins is a well respected expert on Sudanese history, since the first book of his that I read on Darfur ended up being more about Chad, I looked up his other works and picked this one up on Sudan. It is shorter than his more regional work (listed above) and I expect it to be somewhat dry reading like his other book, but also very well researched. |
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Even Wikileaks has made available reports detailing Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan's post-US Ambassador directives to work with US administrations to strengthen Salafist jihadis against foreign Iranian-supported elements. That doesn't necessarily mean support for the IS. There is a myriad of solid circumstantial evidence for someone not to presume that the Saudi-Salafist network is not active in Syria or not being supported by official al-Saud arms. Of course they've supported Salafist organizations, all Salafists aren't the same though (all Salafist groups aren't even violent) and the question isn't do they support Salafists, its do they support the IS. |
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Notice how you keep dodging that question When was the last time that you participated in a march against Islamic extremism? How about radical Christian groups that engage in violence? How about against terrorist organizations that the US has supported like Jundallah? It's interesting that you keep dodging THAT question. The simple fact is that you have a clear double standard and expect others to do something that you can't even be bothered to get up and do yourself. Are you eve qualified to make these assertions about the unavailability of public data? Even Wikileaks has made available reports detailing Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan's post-US Ambassador directives to work with US administrations to strengthen Salafist jihadis against foreign Iranian-supported elements. There is a myriad of solid circumstantial evidence for someone not to presume that the Saudi-Salafist network is not active in Syria or not being supported by official al-Saud arms. Yes. Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE less so than Saudi Arabia. Us pressure has been pretty instrumental in the past couple months in terms of cracking down on financial chains coming from Gulf States. |
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Indeed, the Grand Mufi of Saudi Arabia, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, and the head of turkey's Islamic community have all publicly condemned the ISIS which rounds out the big Sunni three. Throw on top of that the condemnations by the Arab League, and Iran and pretty much all of the big official bases are covered.
would be interesting to see what PREVIOUS denouncements of Islamic extremism that did NOT directly threaten THEM that they made. And by the way since you like to ignore things like this can you point out anything like that from the Islamic communities in the US or UK or anyplaces like that? OR actually any marches protesting Islamic extremism in the West? Notice how you keep dodging that question A lot. Just because you never pay attention doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. There were strong condemnations of 9/11, of Al Qaeda, of extremism in general, we see Islamic clerics assassinated all of the time for espousing moderate views in the face of radicals. Dozens this year alone. We've even seen considerable progress in the area of womens rights over the last several years within mainstream theological views including a denouncement of female genital mutilation from the head of the four main schools of Islamic Sunni though (which is based out of Egypt). The Saudi governmental decision to designate the aforementioned groups as terror organizations is an implicit acknowledgment that the removal of al-Assad's regime by violence was no longer possible. Not because of US pressure. The Saudis (and Qataris) only made those designations out of necessity to formally address the inadvertent threat from Syria, which is the hyper influx of jihadi combatants returning from there. Incorrect, it was largely because of the threat that Saudi Arabia felt that such groups posed to its own governing abilities domestically. Your assertion also assumes that Saudi Arabia only would have an interest in completely removing Assad, while ignoring the potential political benefits of simply promoting instability through protracted conflict even if the supported side ended up losing (a pretty common tactic used within realist policy making). |
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actually come to think of it, up until 9/11 youngsters could fly planes as young as 12 or under ? that was the case in the UK anyways
the ease of getting young hands on guns in the US though, as if the gun problem there was not bad enough !
it is like ...
"hey ma, fer ma 5th birthday i wanna let loose with a bazooka and some pump action shotguns down that Burgers and Bullets"
"no son, that place got shut down when a 3 year old drove a Sherman tank over 50 customers in the parking lot"
"but ma, ah wanna shoots me some guns good"
"no son, instead ya all can get yo ass down to Gators and Gatling Guns, its a safer gun shootin' park in Pensacola, you can dress up full metal jacket and wrestle small crocs while shootin gatlins all day, long as yer not in diapers and don't poop yer pants"
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