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ISIS Tag

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on April 14, 2016 7 Comments
Infiltration of German Army by Islamic State (ISIS) and other Jihadists has reached an alarming level, German media reports suggest. Some 29 former German Army soldiers have joined the ranks of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, reveals a newly surfaced German military intelligence report. Additionally, the military is investigating 65 suspected jihadist serving as active duty German soldiers. According to German newspaper Handelsblatt, since 2007 German Military Counter-Intelligence Agency (MAD) has investigated 320 active duty soldiers for having suspected links to Jihadist circles. The newspaper also confirmed that until recently no backgrounds checks were done on soldiers handling sensitive combat equipment. The screening was only limited to soldiers accessing classified material. German government is trying to downplay the level of Islamist infiltration of country’s defense establishment. According to Parliament's commissioner for the military, Hans-Peter Bartels, there is no clear evidence of ‘Islamist organisation attempting to systematically infiltrate’ the German military.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 10, 2016 7 Comments
The battle for the Democratic nomination is finally getting very interesting. Bernie Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver recently appeared on CNN and while host Carol Costello was (of course) defending Hillary Clinton's record, Weaver dropped some heavy criticism. Weaver went after Hillary for her ties to corporate cash, a usual tactic for the Sanders camp, and then blamed her for the rise and spread of ISIS.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 06, 2016 18 Comments
President Obama announced Tuesday that he's planning to bring a greater fight to the terror group ISIS, saying he plans to "scale-up" the fight. CNN reported:
Obama looks to scale up ISIS fight President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he was looking for ways to scale up the battle against militants in Iraq and Syria ahead of a White House meeting with top U.S. military brass. The planning session on combating the terror group was not expected to yield major shifts of strategy.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 31, 2016 6 Comments
British intelligence agency MI5 is reportedly tracking up to 25 ISIS terror plots threatening to bring Brussels-style devastation on to British streets. Security forces have increased surveillance on as many as 50 Islamists believed to be planning eminent terror attacks in the country. Despite ramped up counter-terrorism measures, senior security officials fear that there might be other undetected sleeper cells in the country capable of carrying out terror attacks without prior warning. In a related development, British government has raised concerns over a potential attack on country's nuclear power plants. Officials warned that ISIS terrorists operating on British soil could try to get hold of nuclear material or carry out cyber-attacks on nuclear reactors.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 29, 2016 17 Comments
Despite the attacks in Brussels just days ago, Obama is still pushing for the U.S. to accept thousands of refugees from Syria and other countries. In his four minute weekly address which you can watch below, Obama spends the first two and a half minutes talking about the Brussels attack and his efforts to defeat ISIS. He uses the remaining time to argue that if we don't accept refugees, the terrorists have somehow won.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 24, 2016 31 Comments
A series of bomb attacks that rocked Belgium’s capital on Tuesday, targeting Brussels airport and subway system, has now claimed more than 34 lives. Police are still hunting for suspects and just like November’s deadly Paris terror attacks, the trail once again leads to the notorious Molenbeek district of Brussels. Just last week, the Belgian Police nabbed Salah Abdeslam, the suspect of November’s Paris Attacks from this very suburb of Brussels. The fact that Europe’s most wanted terrorist could be hiding in the heart of Europe without being detected for 4 month, highlights the extend of the problem Belgium and Europe face in combatting Islamist terrorism. Belgium, with a population of 11 million, has send 440 Islamists to fight on behalf of Isis in Syria and Iraq -- highest per capita in Europe. Most of these Isis recruits come from Molenbeek district.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 22, 2016 90 Comments
Brussel's, the capital of Belgium, has been rocked by a series of deadly blasts this morning. According to latest reports, 23 people have been killed and 55 injured after explosions at three locations around the city. 13 people have reportedly been killed in the blasts at the Brussels’ Zaventem airport and 10 others at a blast near an EU building in the city. The casualty figure are expected to rise as fresh explosions have been reported and first responders are still engaged in relief and rescue operations.  Belgian authorities closed the Airport and suspended train services. The details are still scanty, but this could be seen as a retaliatory attacks in response to counter-terrorism raid being conducted by the Belgian Police. The timing coincides with the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the terrorist behind November’s Paris attacks that left 130 dead. Islamic State had taken responsibility for those attacks. Belgian officials have confirmed that the attack on Brussels Airport was carried out by a suicide bomber. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports:

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 20, 2016 11 Comments
If you've ever wondered what could make an American join the terror group ISIS, we can now confirm one reason is plain old-fashioned stupidity. Mohamad Khweis of Virginia doesn't seem to know what he was getting himself into. Mark Zapotosky reports at the Washington Post:
American ISIS fighter captured by Kurds: ‘I found it hard’ The 26-year-old Virginia man who was taken into custody in Iraq after he purportedly deserted the Islamic State told a Kurdish TV station Thursday that he decided to escape after he grew dissatisfied during intensive religious training in Mosul.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on March 18, 2016 8 Comments
The subtext in Secretary of State Kerry's agonizing over whether to label ISIS's systematic, premeditated rape and slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shi'ites in Syria is what it means for the million-and-a-half skeletons in Turkey's closet.  There is little objective doubt that during World War I, Turkey murdered around 1.5 million Armenians, but Turkey cannot abide the least suggestion that it engaged in genocide, and the US has thus far deferred to Turkish sensibilities. The US's failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide and Turkey's culpability, and to induce Turkey to learn from that dark period in its history undermines the US's ability to identify and condemn genocide elsewhere.  This is the undercurrent in Secretary of State Kerry's bizarre inability to call a spade a spade in Northern Syria. In brief, the 2015 omnibus spending bill included a requirement that the State Department make a determination of whether ISIS was engaged in genocide.  Anticipating and perhaps hoping to guide the results of that State Department review, on Monday the House of Representatives passed an unanimous resolution declaring that ISIS's actions are genocide.  That resolution has no legal effect.

Posted by Miriam Elman on March 17, 2016 7 Comments
At a 9:00am press conference this morning, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the Islamic State’s actions perpetrated against ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, are “genocidal” and constitute crimes against humanity. In the brief (10 minute) statement, Kerry refers throughout to the Islamic State (ISIS) as Daesh, its Arabic acronym. https://twitter.com/Malinowski/status/710456022247280640

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 17, 2016 6 Comments
On Wednesday, French Police arrested four suspected Islamists for planning yet another terrorist attack in Central Paris. French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, confirmed that at least one of the attested suspect was about to “undertake violent actions in France.” According French government more than 8,ooo French citizens have been identified as “radicalised.” The arrests in France come on the same day as the police in Belgium arrested two suspected ISIS terrorists in connection with the November Paris attacks that killed 130 people. British newspaper The Express reports:
The suspects are said to include two French brothers of Turkish origin, referred to as ‘Aytac and Ercan B.’ as well as ‘Youssef E.’, who TF1 reports is an Islamist well known to counter-terrorist services. Police arrested Youssef two years ago with two accomplices as they were preparing to leave to wage jihad in Syria, TF1 said. He was released from the prison in October 2015 and kept under house arrest since February 29, 2016 under France’s new state of emergency, which was brought in in the wake of the November 13 massacre.
Belgian Police also shot dead a gunman during its ongoing anti-terrorism raids. The gunman was identified as an illegal Algerian immigrant, Mohamed Belkaïd. Investigators found a Kalashnikov rifle, a book on Radical Islam (Salafism) and a flag of the Islamic State next to Belkaïd's body.

Posted by Miriam Elman on March 16, 2016 4 Comments
This past Monday, in a rare example of bipartisanship, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously (393 to 0) passed a non-binding resolution declaring the horrors committed by the Islamic State against Christians and other religious monitories to be genocide and crimes against humanity. The State Department has until tomorrow (March 17) to decide whether it wants to make a similar classification of ISIS’s atrocities, as required by Congress. Written into the omnibus spending bill passed in December, the deadline is congressionally mandated. But, as of this writing, it would appear that Secretary of State John Kerry is still having some difficulty seeing what everybody else sees.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 10, 2016 4 Comments
An American Air Force veteran from New Jersey has been found guilty of trying to join the terror group ISIS. It's upsetting when anyone does this but particularly when it's someone who served in our armed forces. FOX News has the story:
US Air Force vet found guilty of trying to join ISIS A federal jury on Wednesday found an Air Force veteran guilty of trying to join the Islamic State, in one of the first U.S. terror trials involving suspected ISIS ties.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 03, 2016 9 Comments
In the midst of the political circus, I missed this important testimony by the U.S.Commander of NATO about how ISIS has thoroughly infiltrated refugees, and how Russia is using the refugee crisis to undermine Europe. The Guardian reports:
Refugees from the Middle East and north Africa are “masking the movement” of terrorists and criminals, Nato’s top commander told Congress on Tuesday, despite the protests of human rights groups who say that refugees overwhelmingly have no ulterior motive but escape. In testimony to the Senate armed services committee, US general Philip Breedlove said that the Islamic State terror group is “spreading like a cancer” among refugees. The group’s members are “taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations and our own”, he added. Breedlove also blamed Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, in support of autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad, for having “wildly exacerbated the problem”.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 01, 2016 7 Comments
According to recent news reports, the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria seems to have intensified its efforts to build a “dirty” bomb. The reports coming from Iraq indicate that the terrorist group might already be in the possession of required radioactive material. The material was reportedly stolen from an oil facility in southern Iraq and was part a monitoring system used to detect structural flaws in oil and gas pipelines. Reuters news agency writes:
Iraq is searching for "highly dangerous" radioactive material whose theft last year has raised fears among Iraqi officials that it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State. (...) The [UN nuclear watchdog] IAEA said the material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.
Radioactive material is often part of diagnostic tools used in medical treatments and industrial monitoring around the world. The same material however can be used by terrorists to make a “dirty” bomb capable of contaminating several city blocks, causing wide-scale fatal radiation sickness and financial losses worth billions.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 10, 2016 6 Comments
The U.S. move to boost NATO forces in Eastern Europe is another black mark on President Obama and Hillary Clinton's foreign policy.  The decision to strengthen NATO's bulwark against further Russian adventurism is sound in itself, but it further exposes the 2009 Russia Reset as a naive, amateurish blunder.  The cost for the mistake - a mistake many recognized and warned against at the time - is still being reckoned on battlefields in Eastern Ukraine. President Obama entered office determined to distance himself from U.S. foreign policy that made no sense to his ideological view.  Among the anachronisms he identified was the tense U.S.-Russia relationship.  Relations with Russia degraded through President Bush's second term, and than cratered when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and President Bush responded by deploying U.S. warships to the Black Sea and airlifting Georgian troops home from Afghanistan. Two months after taking office, Obama dispatched his newly-appointed Secretary of State - Hillary Clinton - to reset relations with Russia.  In March, 2009, Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland, and gave him a big, red, plastic button with the Russian word "peregruzka" on it.  Clinton thought it meant "reset;" it actually meant "overcharge."
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