When Islamic is not Islamic. Links post 2 for Sept. 11 – 2014

President Obama appears more and more shrill and more and more suspect as he continues to insist that everything Islamic is not Islamic in front of audiences that are increasingly aware, and perhaps more importantly, increasingly willing to open their eyes and look at what is in front of them. At the end of the day, one has to wonder if Obama’s presidency was bought for him by Saudi interests on the condition that he continue to shill for Islam even while fighting all its various components which are a direct threat to the Saudi royals. It sure would explain a lot about his obscene denials of reality as well as his bizarre energy policies that seem designed to crush North American energy independence to the benefit of the Saudis.

1. SUN media puzzled over Obama’s speech.

2. A fairly funny ice bucket challenge in the UK;

It is worth trying to follow what happens to this man. I wager the police will use public resources to find him, arrest and charge him for some kind of race crime. The channel it is up on is clearly publicizing the event as if it was a bad thing and added titles to say that even though technically the act wasn’t racist, its still racist. When it isn’t.

I need to say that thing that needs saying at this point.

The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to criticize religious and political authority. In fact it is the only  aspect of freedom of speech that matters at all.

3. UK forces want three new bases to fight Isis

The enhanced presence in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain would enable the armed forces to conduct more training exercises with friendly militaries in the region as part of a long-term plan to stabilise an area that is considered a growing threat to the West.

4. Stabbing with syringe in Nigeria raises fears of Ebola as weapon

5. Sam Harris: Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon

(Sam Harris is a wonderful thinker and deserves to be read and considered even if you don’t agree with him. There is value even in his process. He is also one of the few outspoken atheists who is sufficiently nuanced that he understands that while many things  may be equally untrue, this does not make them have equal affect.)

As an atheist, I cannot help wondering when this scrim of pretense and delusion will be finally burned away—either by the clear light of reason or by a surfeit of horror meted out to innocents by the parties of God. Which will come first, flying cars and vacations to Mars, or a simple acknowledgment that beliefs guide behavior and that certain religious ideas—jihad, martyrdom, blasphemy, apostasy—reliably lead to oppression and murder? It may be true that no faith teaches people to massacre innocents exactly—but innocence, as the President surely knows, is in the eye of the beholder. Are apostates “innocent”? Blasphemers? Polytheists? Islam has the answer, and the answer is “no.”

More British Muslims have joined the ranks of ISIS than have volunteered to serve in the British armed forces. In fact, this group has managed to attract thousands of recruits from free societies throughout the world to help build a paradise of repression and sectarian slaughter in Syria and Iraq. This is an astonishing phenomenon, and it reveals some very uncomfortable truths about the failures of multiculturalism, the inherent vulnerability of open societies, and the terrifying power of bad ideas.

6. I don’t post music videos as a rule but it is the anniversary of the 911 attacks and I think this expresses something that needs expressing.

7. U.S. threatened massive fine to force Yahoo to release data

The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user data that the company believed was unconstitutional, according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the NSA’s controversial PRISM program.

8. Yes, A Stand-Down Order Was Given In Benghazi Attack

Scandal: Despite the administration’s claim, the CIA operatives who fought for their lives and others’ from a rooftop say that a stand-down order may have cost four Americans their lives while their ignoring it saved others.

Kris Paronto, Mark Geist and John Tiegen, three CIA contractors who on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, battled with terrorists from the roof of the CIA’s Benghazi annex building, would beg to differ with the Obama administration, the CIA and several congressional committees. They say there was an order to stand down that delayed their response and possibly cost the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

9. Frankly I am pretty sick of Choudary. I have however, wanted to see him interviewed by someone who actually was on to him instead of smug arrogant either leftist media who just want to force Choudary into their mold of Islam or attack him as not genuinely Islamic when they realized he isn’t what they need him to be, or smug right wing media celebrities who know nothing of Islam or Choudary and end up letting him use their platform for Choudary’s own purposes to great advantage.

Ezra does much better than other interviewers but Anjem recognizes the optics of potential answers he gives to Ezra’s, better-than-average questions and slides out of them like ball bearings on a hockey rink.

 

Thank you M, Yucki, Richard, Wrath of Khan, actually a large number of people who I have lost track of frankly, sorry about that, over the day in Email, twitter feeds and so on.

More to come.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

7 Replies to “When Islamic is not Islamic. Links post 2 for Sept. 11 – 2014”

  1. ISIS has 30,000 soldiers, says CIA

    Monitoring Desk: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spokesman believes the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) can get between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria, CNN reports.

    “This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence,” a CIA spokesperson told CNN.

    In addition to updating its estimates regarding the Islamic State’s fighting force, a separate US official also told the news channel that the US government is already conducting surveillance flights within Syria’s borders. The United States is looking to collect information that would help it determine when and whether to launch airstrikes in Syria, in order to degrade the group’s ability to fight and maneuver.

    Still, these flights do not indicate that airstrikes will be launched soon, another unnamed official added.

    Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby said that whenever the US does take military action against the group – also known as ISIS or ISIL – it will also consider targeting individuals in leadership positions.

    “One of the ways you get at and you destroy the capabilities of an enemy like (ISIS) is to be pretty aggressive against them, and that does include disrupting their ability to command and control and to lead their own forces,” Kirby said.

    http://www.dispatchnewsdesk.com/isis-30000-soldiers-says-cia/

    =========================================================

    ISIS May Have 30,000+ Fighters, Kerry Says U.S. Not At War With ISIS

    ISIS, the terror group that calls itself the Islamic State, “can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria,” a CIA spokesman told CNN on Thursday.

    That is two to three times more than the 10,000 fighters previously estimated by the CIA.

    “This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence,” the spokesman said.

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration’s strategy includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.”

    “What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation,” Kerry told CNN’s Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.”

    Kerry made a distinction between ISIS and terror groups operating in Somalia and Yemen.

    “ISIL is an animal unto itself,” he said. “And it is significantly such a threat because of the foreign fighters that are attracted to it — which you don’t see in Somalia or … Yemen.” Most importantly, Kerry said, ISIL has attracted a “significant coalition” that is determined to go and destroy it.

    Kerry, in Jeddah for meetings with Arab leaders to enlist regional support for a coalition to defeat ISIS, defended the administration’s insistence that the 2001 authority to go after al Qaeda and affiliates applies to ISIS. He insisted that, despite the split between jihadist groups, the origin of ISIS as an al Qaeda affiliate is enough to consider them connected.

    “This group is and has been al Qaeda,” Kerry said. “By trying to change its name, it doesn’t change who it is, what it does.”

    Asked how much of the interpretation lets Congress get away from a vote on going after ISIS — a scenario lawmakers would like to avoid in an election year — Kerry responded “none.”

    Kerry said the opposition battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria has been outgunned and outmanned, but the administration believes that equation can change “if they receive proper training, if there are recruits that come in, and if it grows over a period of time.”

    The regime’s legitimacy could never be restored, Kerry said.

    “It is going to be our policy to separate (al-Assad), who is mostly in the western part of Syria, in a certain corridor from the eastern part of Syria, which he doesn’t control,” Kerry said. “ISIL controls that part. So it is clearly … not a very difficult task to target ISIL.”

    The talks in Jeddah come a day after U.S. President Barack Obama outlined a plan to “dismantle and ultimately destroy” the Sunni extremist group that has seized a swath of territory across Iraq and Syria.

    Videotaped beheadings, including two murders of American journalists, have led to the push for a broader counterterrorism mission, including possible airstrikes in civil war-torn Syria. But the United States has ruled out sending American troops for a ground offensive.

    On Thursday, Kerry met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in Jeddah before wider talks with other regional leaders.

    Asked whether Saudi Arabia supports the extremist expressions of the Wahhabism version of Islam espoused by some terror groups, Kerry told CNN that the nation is “deeply committed to the effort to terminate ISIL.”

    “They have never funded the kind of effort you’re talking about with respect to ISIL,” Kerry said, adding that a significant part of the counterterrorism effort will include stemming fundraising for terror groups.

    After Saudi Arabia, Kerry will visit Turkey and Egypt for meetings with senior officials, state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

    In a statement after Obama’s prime-time speech Wednesday, Kerry said the President’s strategy would succeed “because doing it with allies and partners isn’t just smart, it’s strong.”

    Kerry said his travels through the Middle East and Europe over the coming days were an effort to “meet a unifying threat with a unified response.”

    While American leadership is “indispensable,” he said, “we cannot destroy this group on our own. Defeating this common enemy calls for a common cause, and we’re taking it on to succeed together.”

    Obama spoke Wednesday with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, a senior administration official told journalists. “The Saudis made very clear that they support this mission, they will join us in this mission,” the official said.

    The backing of Sunni-dominated nations such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey will lend support to any campaign to contain the spread of ISIS.

    Turkey’s capacity or willingness to act may be limited by the fact that ISIS continues to hold 47 Turkish hostages seized from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

    So far, Shiite-majority Iran has played the biggest role on the ground in northern Iraq, where its militias have been helping Iraqi forces.

    ISIS, which now calls itself the “Islamic State,” has said it is bent on creating an Islamic “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria where harsh Sharia law governs every aspect of life.

    Iraqi leader: ‘Everybody’s on board’

    Baghdad was the first stop on Kerry’s tour, where he met with Iraq’s new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

    In a joint news conference with Kerry on Wednesday, al-Abadi said the international community had a responsibility to help defend Iraqis from the threat posed by ISIS.

    He also said Iraqis had worked hard recently to form an inclusive government where “everybody’s on board” to fight the militants.

    In a separate news conference, Kerry said the U.S. was already coordinating with some 40 other nations to provide humanitarian, military and other assistance to Iraqis to fight ISIS.

    The United States has so far launched more than 150 airstrikes to weaken the militants in Iraq, Kerry said.

    Syria airstrikes

    Obama said Wednesday that 475 more U.S. military advisers will head to Iraq, raising the total of American forces there to 1,700 for a mission originally described as limited.

    He also shifted $25 million in military aid to Iraqi forces, including Kurdish fighters in the north combating the ISIS extremists. The aid could include ammunition, small arms and vehicles, as well as military education and training, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

    It’s not clear how soon U.S. forces will launch operations in Syria.

    Senior administration officials who briefed reporters before Obama’s speech on condition of not being identified said airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria would occur “at a time and place of our choosing.”

    “We’re not going to telegraph our punches by being specific about the time and nature of the targets,” one official said, adding that “we will do that as necessary as we develop targets.”

    ‘Very difficult, long road’

    Kerry met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Jordan before leaving Thursday morning for the Saudi seaside city of Jeddah, where he was scheduled to meet with the leaders of half a dozen Persian Gulf states.

    In addition to support for a military campaign against ISIS, administration officials said the United States would be looking to its Gulf allies to crack down on ISIS funding and stop the flow of foreign fighters, both seen as the lifeblood of the jihadist group.

    The United States also wants Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, to counter ISIS by helping to persuade other Sunnis to eschew its ideology.

    “It’s going to be a very difficult, long road to get there, but it’s something that the region and our partners in the Gulf can play a really important role in,” a senior State Department official traveling with Kerry said.

    “And there’s a number of different ways that they can do that, both in terms of just their relationships, in terms of their encouragement, in terms of their financial contributions, in terms of lifting the burden that the government here has.”

    After Saudi Arabia, Kerry will travel to Paris to attend an international conference on Iraq, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

    Obama will chair a meeting later this month at the U.N. General Assembly, where the global strategy is expected to be hammered out.

    http://foxct.com/2014/09/11/isis-may-have-30000-fighters-kerry-says-u-s-not-at-war-with-isis/

  2. While Obama may be taking money from Saudi I still maintain that his attempts to destroy the US are founded in his life long training as a Marxist and his early training as a Moslem. Everyone seems to be ignoring his upbringing, he was taught to hate the US by his mother and Grandparents, and his own statements about Islam make it clear that he is Moslem to one degree or another. He has said that he considers the Moslem call to prayer the most beautiful sound on earth and he has stated that he will side with Islam every time. His actions and statements prove that he hates the US and will stop at nothing to destroy us.

  3. #1 “It’s about a religion that has been hijacked… 08:40

    Liberals claiming to know Islam again.

  4. You can know if you read the Quran. Below is an interesting passage, Quran Chapter 59.

    21. Had We sent this Quran down on a mountain, you would have seen it trembling, crumbling in awe of God. These parables We cite for the people, so that they may reflect.

    22. He is God. There is no god but He, the Knower of secrets and declarations. He is the Compassionate, the Merciful.

    23. He is God; besides Whom there is no god; the Sovereign, the Holy, the Peace-Giver, the Faith-Giver, the Overseer, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Overwhelming. Glory be to God, beyond what they associate.

    24. He is God; the Creator, the Maker, the Designer. His are the Most Beautiful Names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Him. He is the Majestic, the Wise.

    source http://www.clearquran.com/059.html

  5. Talal:

    I typically do not bother arguing with salesmen for ideologies anymore. After all, a thing is either reasonable or it isn’t and Islam is especially dogmatic and based on forced assumptions as opposed to any kind of chain of reason. You will never find an ‘islamic debate’ room on the internet by the faithful as the mere idea that islam is debatable is anathema to those people.

    But I thought I would take a moment to explain the difference between a statement and an argument to you.

    A statement is where you just say something and expect people to act as if its true. This is separate from an axiom where you start an argument with a statement which has the presumption of truth, such as ‘The Sun warms the Earth’. A following argument might be, ‘Therefore when the sun is not energetic the earth cools and when the Sun is energetic the earth is warmer and this accounts for observable climactic change’.

    This is an example of an argument based on a premise and interestingly is also true.

    What you stated above is a set of statements. They are grounded in nothing except tautological circular nonsense. They have as much validity as the following statements:

    ‘This comment is the direct word of god. You can be assured that this is true as it says so right here in this comment.”

    Now you, or your fellow faithful would respond by accusing me of blasphemy and killing me. But this would not make you correct. Only in control. Till reasonable people get sick of you. Reasonable people, you know, the people who design and build the weapons you and your coreligionists steal from nation states to attack us all, and then we design another weapon and stop you for now, or once and for all.