operatingsystem:isis

Did IDF admit giving weapons to Islamists in Syria? Explosive Israeli news report vanishes — RT World News
▻https://www.rt.com/news/437677-israel-weapons-jerusalem-post-idf
▻https://cdni.rt.com/files/2018.09/article/5b8fec8ffc7e937a6a8b45a4.png

One of at least seven groups believed to have received weapons from Israel, Fursan al-Joulan, or ‘Knights of Golan,’ reportedly participated in the Israeli-led operation to evacuate hundreds of members of the controversial White Helmets group out of Syria. The group is also believed to have received upwards of $5,000 per month from Israel.

The deleted report comes on the heels of another major disclosure: On Monday the IDF announced that Israel has carried out more than 200 strikes in Syria in the past year and half.

The Israeli military usually declines to comment on missile strikes attributed to Israel, although Tel Aviv has repeatedly claimed that it has the right to attack Hezbollah and Iranian military targets inside Syria. Damascus has repeatedly claimed that Israel uses Hezbollah as a pretext to attack Syrian military formations and installations, accusing Tel Aviv of “directly supporting ISIS and other terror organizations.”

Le lien vers l’article en cache : ▻https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5JDOiVV-EgUJ:https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/IDF-confirms-Israel-provided-light-weapons-to-Syrian-reb

#israël #syrie

MI5 head Andrew Parker summons Jeremy Corbyn for ‘facts of life’ talk on terror | News | The Sunday Times
▻https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mi5-head-andrew-parker-summons-jeremy-corbyn-for-facts-of-life-talk-on-t

Jeremy Corbyn has been summoned for a personal briefing by the head of MI5 on the terrorist threat to Britain amid questions about his approach to national security.

Andrew Parker, the director-general of the Security Service, is expected to give the Labour leader a “full briefing” on the threat from Islamists in Britain and Isis jihadists returning from the Middle East to plot atrocities on home soil.

The MI5 boss also wants to prime Corbyn on the extent of hostile Russian espionage activity and the growing threat from far-right extremists.

Two senior government sources said the meeting was scheduled for Tuesday so that Corbyn could “begin to understand the facts of life” about threats he has a habit of playing down.

Tricks in using #javascript Apply function
▻https://hackernoon.com/tricks-in-using-javascript-apply-function-148b1dcb9503?source=rss----3a8

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*3zYTUIh2topd2PPqfpsN9A.jpeg

Photo by Isis França on UnsplashDid you ever feel cumbersome when you use the built in JavaScript Functions Math.max and Math.min?Image from google.comWe already know that this two built functions accepts a variable argument-list. For instance when using the Math.max to get the highest value it may be written in this wayMath.max(5,2,1,3,4) // Outputs 5. Works pretty well. How about if we’re dealing with array of values we might write our code in this way.const list = [5,2,1,3,4];Math.max(list[0],list[1],list[2],list[3],list[4],list[5]);What’s wrong in this Implementation?I guess you know what’s wrong in this. As you may notice this implementation is not flexible. What if the size of array grows? We add more values in Math.max argument. As a developer we didn’t want to do that we do hard code (...)

#javascript-tips #es6 #javascript-development #es5

The Fake-News Fallacy | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-fallacy

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/599df7de04f6416db174780a/16:9/w_1200,h_630,c_limit/170904_r30462.jpg

Not so very long ago, it was thought that the tension between commercial pressure and the public interest would be one of the many things made obsolete by the Internet. In the mid-aughts, during the height of the Web 2.0 boom, the pundit Henry Jenkins declared that the Internet was creating a “participatory culture” where the top-down hegemony of greedy media corporations would be replaced by a horizontal network of amateur “prosumers” engaged in a wonderfully democratic exchange of information in cyberspace—an epistemic agora that would allow the whole globe to come together on a level playing field. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest attained their paradoxical gatekeeper status by positioning themselves as neutral platforms that unlocked the Internet’s democratic potential by empowering users. It was on a private platform, Twitter, where pro-democracy protesters organized, and on another private platform, Google, where the knowledge of a million public libraries could be accessed for free. These companies would develop into what the tech guru Jeff Jarvis termed “radically public companies,” which operate more like public utilities than like businesses.

But there has been a growing sense among mostly liberal-minded observers that the platforms’ championing of openness is at odds with the public interest. The image of Arab Spring activists using Twitter to challenge repressive dictators has been replaced, in the public imagination, by that of ISIS propagandists luring vulnerable Western teen-agers to Syria via YouTube videos and Facebook chats. The openness that was said to bring about a democratic revolution instead seems to have torn a hole in the social fabric. Today, online misinformation, hate speech, and propaganda are seen as the front line of a reactionary populist upsurge threatening liberal democracy. Once held back by democratic institutions, the bad stuff is now sluicing through a digital breach with the help of irresponsible tech companies. Stanching the torrent of fake news has become a trial by which the digital giants can prove their commitment to democracy. The effort has reignited a debate over the role of mass communication that goes back to the early days of radio.

The debate around radio at the time of “The War of the Worlds” was informed by a similar fall from utopian hopes to dystopian fears. Although radio can seem like an unremarkable medium—audio wallpaper pasted over the most boring parts of your day—the historian David Goodman’s book “Radio’s Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s” makes it clear that the birth of the technology brought about a communications revolution comparable to that of the Internet. For the first time, radio allowed a mass audience to experience the same thing simultaneously from the comfort of their homes. Early radio pioneers imagined that this unprecedented blurring of public and private space might become a sort of ethereal forum that would uplift the nation, from the urban slum dweller to the remote Montana rancher. John Dewey called radio “the most powerful instrument of social education the world has ever seen.” Populist reformers demanded that radio be treated as a common carrier and give airtime to anyone who paid a fee. Were this to have come about, it would have been very much like the early online-bulletin-board systems where strangers could come together and leave a message for any passing online wanderer. Instead, in the regulatory struggles of the twenties and thirties, the commercial networks won out.

Corporate networks were supported by advertising, and what many progressives had envisaged as the ideal democratic forum began to seem more like Times Square, cluttered with ads for soap and coffee. Rather than elevating public opinion, advertisers pioneered techniques of manipulating it. Who else might be able to exploit such techniques? Many saw a link between the domestic on-air advertising boom and the rise of Fascist dictators like Hitler abroad.

Today, when we speak about people’s relationship to the Internet, we tend to adopt the nonjudgmental language of computer science. Fake news was described as a “virus” spreading among users who have been “exposed” to online misinformation. The proposed solutions to the fake-news problem typically resemble antivirus programs: their aim is to identify and quarantine all the dangerous nonfacts throughout the Web before they can infect their prospective hosts. One venture capitalist, writing on the tech blog Venture Beat, imagined deploying artificial intelligence as a “media cop,” protecting users from malicious content. “Imagine a world where every article could be assessed based on its level of sound discourse,” he wrote. The vision here was of the news consumers of the future turning the discourse setting on their browser up to eleven and soaking in pure fact. It’s possible, though, that this approach comes with its own form of myopia. Neil Postman, writing a couple of decades ago, warned of a growing tendency to view people as computers, and a corresponding devaluation of the “singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional and moral dimensions.” A person does not process information the way a computer does, flipping a switch of “true” or “false.” One rarely cited Pew statistic shows that only four per cent of American Internet users trust social media “a lot,” which suggests a greater resilience against online misinformation than overheated editorials might lead us to expect. Most people seem to understand that their social-media streams represent a heady mixture of gossip, political activism, news, and entertainment. You might see this as a problem, but turning to Big Data-driven algorithms to fix it will only further entrench our reliance on code to tell us what is important about the world—which is what led to the problem in the first place. Plus, it doesn’t sound very fun.

In recent times, Donald Trump supporters are the ones who have most effectively applied Grierson’s insight to the digital age. Young Trump enthusiasts turned Internet trolling into a potent political tool, deploying the “folk stuff” of the Web—memes, slang, the nihilistic humor of a certain subculture of Web-native gamer—to give a subversive, cyberpunk sheen to a movement that might otherwise look like a stale reactionary blend of white nationalism and anti-feminism. As crusaders against fake news push technology companies to “defend the truth,” they face a backlash from a conservative movement, retooled for the digital age, which sees claims for objectivity as a smoke screen for bias.

For conservatives, the rise of online gatekeepers may be a blessing in disguise. Throwing the charge of “liberal media bias” against powerful institutions has always provided an energizing force for the conservative movement, as the historian Nicole Hemmer shows in her new book, “Messengers of the Right.” Instead of focussing on ideas, Hemmer focusses on the galvanizing struggle over the means of distributing those ideas. The first modern conservatives were members of the America First movement, who found their isolationist views marginalized in the lead-up to the Second World War and vowed to fight back by forming the first conservative media outlets. A “vague claim of exclusion” sharpened into a “powerful and effective ideological arrow in the conservative quiver,” Hemmer argues, through battles that conservative radio broadcasters had with the F.C.C. in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. Their main obstacle was the F.C.C.’s Fairness Doctrine, which sought to protect public discourse by requiring controversial opinions to be balanced by opposing viewpoints. Since attacks on the mid-century liberal consensus were inherently controversial, conservatives found themselves constantly in regulators’ sights. In 1961, a watershed moment occurred with the leak of a memo from labor leaders to the Kennedy Administration which suggested using the Fairness Doctrine to suppress right-wing viewpoints. To many conservatives, the memo proved the existence of the vast conspiracy they had long suspected. A fund-raising letter for a prominent conservative radio show railed against the doctrine, calling it “the most dastardly collateral attack on freedom of speech in the history of the country.” Thus was born the character of the persecuted truthteller standing up to a tyrannical government—a trope on which a billion-dollar conservative-media juggernaut has been built.

The online tumult of the 2016 election fed into a growing suspicion of Silicon Valley’s dominance over the public sphere. Across the political spectrum, people have become less trusting of the Big Tech companies that govern most online political expression. Calls for civic responsibility on the part of Silicon Valley companies have replaced the hope that technological innovation alone might bring about a democratic revolution. Despite the focus on algorithms, A.I., filter bubbles, and Big Data, these questions are political as much as technical.

#Démocratie #Science_information #Fake_news #Regulation

The Islamic fundamentalist Jeremy Corbyn should be ashamed of himself – if only he’d behaved more like Margaret Thatcher | The Independent
►https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-islam-jewish-antisemitism-israel-labour-party-margaret-

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/08/13/14/POLITICS-Corbyn-155578.jpg

Un peu d’humour (anglais) ne fait jamais de mal en politique.

It gets worse and worse for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. There’s a rumour that photos have emerged of a courgette grown on his allotment which is a similar shape to a rocket propeller used by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

This comes on top of revelations that he has a beard, much like Palestinian terrorists, and his constituency is Islington, which starts with IS, or Islamic State. As a vegetarian he doesn’t eat pork, his friend John McDonnell’s initials are JM – that stands for Jihadist Muslim – and he travels on underground trains, that are under the ground, just like the basements in which Isis make their little films.

The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and various others have also published a photo of him folding his thumb while holding up his fingers, in a way they describe as a salute to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. That settles it. If you don’t constantly check the shape of your thumb to make sure it’s not folded in a way similar to the way it’s folded by Muslim groups in Egypt, you might as well strap Semtex to your chest and get a bus to Syria.

Thankfully there are some brave journalists who discovered the truth: that Corbyn laid a wreath in Tunisia at a memorial for civilians who were bombed, but also buried in that cemetery are the “Munich terrorists”. It turned out that the terrorists are not buried there at all, as they’re buried in Libya, but you can’t expect those journalists to get bogged down in insignificant details like that.

We’ve all turned up for a funeral to be told we’re in the wrong country. “I’m afraid the service for your Uncle Derek is in Eltham Crematorium,” we’re told, “and you’ve come to Argentina.” It doesn’t make any difference to the overall story.

Because there are Palestinian leaders who may have been terrorists in that cemetery. And when you attend a memorial service, you are clearly commemorating everyone in the cemetery, and the fact that you’ve probably never heard of most of them is no excuse.
Corbyn takes on Margaret Thatcher over homelessness in Parliament in 1990

If it’s possible to bring comfort to all those shocked by this outrage, it may be worth recalling that one of the first scandals about Corbyn after he became leader was that he wasn’t dressed smartly enough when he laid a wreath at the Cenotaph, which was an insult to our war dead. He’s just as scruffy in the pictures from Tunisia, so perhaps what he’s actually doing is insulting the terrorists, by laying a wreath near them while his coat is rumpled.

I suppose it may just be possible that the wreath he laid at an event organised to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985 was actually put there to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985.

But it’s much more likely that secretly, Jeremy Corbyn supports Palestinian terrorists who murder athletes. You may think that if you hold such an unusual point of view, it might have slipped out in conversation here and there. But the fact he’s never said or done anything to suggest he backs the brutal murder of civilians only shows how clever he is at hiding his true thoughts.

This must be why he’s always been a keen supporter of causes beloved by Islamic jihadists, such as gay rights. For example, Jeremy Corbyn was a passionate opponent of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 law that banned the mention of homosexuality in schools. He supported every gay rights campaign at a time when it was considered extremist to do so. And the way he managed to be an extremist Islamic fundamentalist and an extremist gay rights fanatic at the same time only shows how dangerous he is.

One person who appears especially upset by all this is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s always distressing when someone that sensitive gets dragged into an issue.

Sadly he’s going to be even more aghast when he reads about another event in which wreaths were laid for terrorists. Because a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, in which 91 people died, mostly civilians and 28 of them British. This was carried out by the Irgun, an Israeli terror gang, and one man, who by coincidence was also called Benjamin Netanyahu, declared the bombing was “a legitimate act with a military target”.
The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn
He called Hezbollah and Hamas ‘friends’
‘Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy’
He is ‘haunted’ by the legacy of his ‘evil’ great-great-grandfather
Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about ‘pigeon bombs’ in Parliament

When Benjamin Netanyahu hears about this other Benjamin Netanyahu he’ll be furious.

The Labour MPs who pine for Tony Blair are even more enraged, and you have to sympathise. Because when Blair supported murderers, such as Gaddafi and Asad, he did it while they were still alive, which is much more acceptable.

So you can see why Conservative politicians and newspapers are so disgusted. If you subjected the Conservative Party to a similar level of scrutiny, you’d find nothing comparable. There might be the odd link to torturers, such as their ex-leader Margaret Thatcher describing General Pinochet, who herded opponents into a football stadium and had them shot, as a close and dear friend. Or supporting apartheid because “Nelson Mandela is a terrorist”. But she was only being polite.

We can only guess what the next revelation will be. My guess is “Corbyn supported snakes against iguanas in Attenborough’s film. Footage has emerged of the Labour leader speaking alongside a snake, and praising his efforts to catch the iguana and poison and swallow him. One iguana said he was ‘shocked and horrified’ at the story, told in this 340-page special edition, and one anti-Corbyn Labour MP said, ‘I don’t know anything about this whatsoever, which is why I call on Mr Corbyn to do the decent thing and kill himself.’”

#Jeremy_Corbin #Fake_news #Calomnies #Violence

The Islamic fundamentalist Jeremy Corbyn should be ashamed of himself – if only he’d behaved more like Margaret Thatcher | The Independent
►https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-islam-jewish-antisemitism-israel-labour-party-margaret-

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/08/13/14/POLITICS-Corbyn-155578.jpg

It gets worse and worse for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. There’s a rumour that photos have emerged of a courgette grown on his allotment which is a similar shape to a rocket propeller used by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

This comes on top of revelations that he has a beard, much like Palestinian terrorists, and his constituency is Islington, which starts with IS, or Islamic State. As a vegetarian he doesn’t eat pork, his friend John McDonnell’s initials are JM – that stands for Jihadist Muslim – and he travels on underground trains, that are under the ground, just like the basements in which Isis make their little films.

The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and various others have also published a photo of him folding his thumb while holding up his fingers, in a way they describe as a salute to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. That settles it. If you don’t constantly check the shape of your thumb to make sure it’s not folded in a way similar to the way it’s folded by Muslim groups in Egypt, you might as well strap Semtex to your chest and get a bus to Syria.

Thankfully there are some brave journalists who discovered the truth: that Corbyn laid a wreath in Tunisia at a memorial for civilians who were bombed, but also buried in that cemetery are the “Munich terrorists”. It turned out that the terrorists are not buried there at all, as they’re buried in Libya, but you can’t expect those journalists to get bogged down in insignificant details like that.

We’ve all turned up for a funeral to be told we’re in the wrong country. “I’m afraid the service for your Uncle Derek is in Eltham Crematorium,” we’re told, “and you’ve come to Argentina.” It doesn’t make any difference to the overall story.

Because there are Palestinian leaders who may have been terrorists in that cemetery. And when you attend a memorial service, you are clearly commemorating everyone in the cemetery, and the fact that you’ve probably never heard of most of them is no excuse.
Corbyn takes on Margaret Thatcher over homelessness in Parliament in 1990

If it’s possible to bring comfort to all those shocked by this outrage, it may be worth recalling that one of the first scandals about Corbyn after he became leader was that he wasn’t dressed smartly enough when he laid a wreath at the Cenotaph, which was an insult to our war dead. He’s just as scruffy in the pictures from Tunisia, so perhaps what he’s actually doing is insulting the terrorists, by laying a wreath near them while his coat is rumpled.
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I suppose it may just be possible that the wreath he laid at an event organised to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985 was actually put there to mark the bombing of civilians in 1985.

But it’s much more likely that secretly, Jeremy Corbyn supports Palestinian terrorists who murder athletes. You may think that if you hold such an unusual point of view, it might have slipped out in conversation here and there. But the fact he’s never said or done anything to suggest he backs the brutal murder of civilians only shows how clever he is at hiding his true thoughts.

This must be why he’s always been a keen supporter of causes beloved by Islamic jihadists, such as gay rights. For example, Jeremy Corbyn was a passionate opponent of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 law that banned the mention of homosexuality in schools. He supported every gay rights campaign at a time when it was considered extremist to do so. And the way he managed to be an extremist Islamic fundamentalist and an extremist gay rights fanatic at the same time only shows how dangerous he is.

One person who appears especially upset by all this is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s always distressing when someone that sensitive gets dragged into an issue.

Sadly he’s going to be even more aghast when he reads about another event in which wreaths were laid for terrorists. Because a plaque was unveiled to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, in which 91 people died, mostly civilians and 28 of them British. This was carried out by the Irgun, an Israeli terror gang, and one man, who by coincidence was also called Benjamin Netanyahu, declared the bombing was “a legitimate act with a military target”.
The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn
He called Hezbollah and Hamas ‘friends’
‘Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy’
He is ‘haunted’ by the legacy of his ‘evil’ great-great-grandfather
Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about ‘pigeon bombs’ in Parliament

When Benjamin Netanyahu hears about this other Benjamin Netanyahu he’ll be furious.

The Labour MPs who pine for Tony Blair are even more enraged, and you have to sympathise. Because when Blair supported murderers, such as Gaddafi and Asad, he did it while they were still alive, which is much more acceptable.

So you can see why Conservative politicians and newspapers are so disgusted. If you subjected the Conservative Party to a similar level of scrutiny, you’d find nothing comparable. There might be the odd link to torturers, such as their ex-leader Margaret Thatcher describing General Pinochet, who herded opponents into a football stadium and had them shot, as a close and dear friend. Or supporting apartheid because “Nelson Mandela is a terrorist”. But she was only being polite.

We can only guess what the next revelation will be. My guess is “Corbyn supported snakes against iguanas in Attenborough’s film. Footage has emerged of the Labour leader speaking alongside a snake, and praising his efforts to catch the iguana and poison and swallow him. One iguana said he was ‘shocked and horrified’ at the story, told in this 340-page special edition, and one anti-Corbyn Labour MP said, ‘I don’t know anything about this whatsoever, which is why I call on Mr Corbyn to do the decent thing and kill himself.’”

The Islamic fundamentalist Jeremy Corbyn should be ashamed of himself – if only he’d behaved more like Margaret Thatcher
►https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-islam-jewish-antisemitism-israel-labour-party-margaret-

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/08/13/14/POLITICS-Corbyn-155578.jpg

This comes on top of revelations that he has a beard, much like Palestinian terrorists, and his constituency is Islington, which starts with IS, or Islamic State. As a vegetarian he doesn’t eat pork, his friend John McDonnell’s initials are JM – that stands for Jihadist Muslim – and he travels on underground trains, that are under the ground, just like the basements in which Isis make their little films.

Alleged ISIS Member Arrested in Spain in Collaboration with Morocco
▻https://www.emouaten.com/Alleged-ISIS-Member-Arrested-in-Spain-in-Collaboration-with-Morocco_a12628

...

#English

Russia. Winning in Syria and the Middle East - By David W. Lesch and Kamal Alam - Syria Comment

▻https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/25520-2

Winning in Syria and the Middle East
By David W. Lesch and Kamal Alam
For Syria Comment – July 16, 2018

The common perception today is that Russia has won in Syria, having supported the government of Bashar al-Assad, which is now steadily reasserting its control over previously lost territory. As a result, Russia has inserted itself as the power broker in Syria, if not the entire Middle East. The summit between Presidents Trump and Putin on Monday in Helsinki, where the subject of Syria was high on the agenda, seems to have consecrated Russia’s victory. Countries tend to gravitate toward winners, not losers.

Kamal Alam

The United States, on the other hand, directly and indirectly intervened in multiple conflicts in the Middle East since 9/11, first in Afghanistan, then Iraq, followed by involvement in a series of upheavals brought on by the Arab Spring: Libya and Syria most notably. No one would say the US has won in any of these cases—far from it.

On the surface, this is difficult to comprehend. After all, the US has by far the most powerful military on earth. The image of Russia’s only aircraft carrier limping toward, breaking down, and being towed in the eastern Mediterranean in support of Assad’s forces was a stark reminder of this reality. So how did Russia win—and why did the US fail over and over again?

There is one outstanding difference in the Russian versus American military interventions in internal national conflicts in the Middle East: in Syria, the Kremlin supported the entrenched state. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the US supported opposition forces seeking the overthrow of the entrenched state.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the US and NATO reversed their policy and actually wanted Libyan President Muammar Gadafi to remain in power against the opposition forces unleashed by the Arab spring. Is there any doubt that with US military support he would still be in power today? Perhaps he too would be mopping up pockets of resistance much as Assad is doing today in Syria. However illogical or immoral it may have seemed at the time to most in the West, let’s say Washington wanted Assad to stay in power seven years ago when the Arab spring hit Syria. Would not the US be the one crowning its success there, not Russia? Ironically, the US supported the Iraqi state against ISIS—and won. But the US is not going to get much credit for solving a problem it largely created when it dissolved the state via the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its chaotic aftermath.

’This is Iraq’: Rapper decries US legacy in Iraq in bitter parody of Childish Gambino (VIDEO) — RT World News
▻https://www.rt.com/news/433651-iraq-rapper-us-torture-video
▻https://cdni.rt.com/files/2018.07/article/5b4fdc93fc7e9352138b4605.png

A musical video by an Iraqi rapper calling out the US on its abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in the war-ravaged country following the 2003 invasion has gone viral, racking up over 500,000 views.

The video was filmed by rapper I-NZ as another parody of Childish Gambino’s ’This is America.’ While Gambino took on police brutality and racial bias in his acclaimed work, the Iraqi rapper chose to cast the light on the ugly results of the Iraq War, with its well-documented instances of maltreatment and humiliation of detainees by US soldiers. The name of the former US military prison, Abu Ghraib, the video’s supposed set, became synonymous with abuse after harrowing images and accounts of physical and psychological torture within its walls became public in 2004.

(...) The rapper, who was born to Iraqi parents and grew up in New Zealand and has never actually been to Iraq in his life, highlights the lack of coverage on the issue and the impunity of foreign forces and local corrupt elites with the line: “They’re immune, this is telly, that’s the news, media blackout, then it’s lights out, keep sniffin’ the tar.” The video also mocks former US President George W Bush for his infamous May 2003 speech, which he delivered under a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and after which the war continued for eight more years, arguably paving the way for the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and for leaving the country in economic and political disarray.

The video was released on July 4, and it has been watched over 500,000 times on YouTube since. Speaking to VICE Arabic, the rapper said that he did not initially plan for it to coincide with the US Independence Day, however, he then decided to speed up the release to draw more attention to the issue.

►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvxZLKtkgiM

#irak #rap

Bolton : US Will Keep Its Troops in Syria Until ’Iranian Menace’ Eliminated - Sputnik International
▻https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201807161066395610-us-troops-syria-iranian-menace

“But I think the president has made it clear that we are there until the ISIS* [Daesh] territorial caliphate is removed and as long as the Iranian menace continues throughout the Middle East,” he said.

On se perd un peu dans les déclarations US sur le Moyen-Orient mais on est malgré tout content d’apprendre que les USA interviennent officiellement en Syrie pour « contrer la menace iranienne ».

#syrie #propagande

How a ragtag crew of leftist revolutionaries and soldiers of fortune helped defeat ISIS

▻https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/untold-story-syria-antifa-platoon-666159

How a ragtag crew of leftist revolutionaries and soldiers of fortune helped defeat ISIS

https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/RAQQA-201707-7-After-the-car-bomb-Guevara-and-Andok-are-evacuating-arab-soldiers.jpg

I first met Karim Franceschi in November 2016, in the hills of northeastern Syria, at a remote compound everyone called the Academy. It was a former oil facility that had been turned into a training camp for the volunteers from the U.S. and Europe who were coming to battle the Islamic State with the Kurds. A lot of the fighters were soldier-of-fortune types, veterans of the French Foreign Legion or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at least half were militant leftists like Franceschi, an avowed communist who wore a Mao pin on the lapel of his camouflage uniform. He had been one of the first to arrive, in October 2014, and by the time we met, he had seen more combat than any other Westerner around.

listening to Franceschi’s disquisitions on late capitalism, spiced with mordant asides on the Syrian Civil War, it was easy to fall under the sway of his charisma.

“A capitalist society is a shit society,” he said, “just as Egyptian society with the pyramids and pharaohs was a shit society. What we’re fighting for in Rojava is a socialist alternative.”

Franceschi was one of a motley mix of anarchists, Marxists and eccentric humanitarians who had come to take part in an obscure armed struggle known as the Rojava Revolution, the Kurds’ improbable attempt to establish an egalitarian democracy in a Belgium-size region just south of Turkey, known as Rojava. Like a lot of the volunteers, he saw it as his generation’s version of the Spanish Civil War, another conflict that attracted radical leftists from all over the world. But while tens of thousands of foreigners fought in the anti-fascist International Brigades between 1936 and 1938, 500 at most had showed up to defend the Kurds against the Islamic State, their chief nemesis. “In this revolution, the Western volunteers are basically a joke,”Franceschi told me. “A historic moment is being lost.”

ISIS says its leader Baghdadi’s son was killed battling Syrians and Russians
▻https://www.emouaten.com/ISIS-says-its-leader-Baghdadi-s-son-was-killed-battling-Syrians-and-Russia

Th...

#Le_Fil

Qatar attends meeting of Global Coalition against ISIS group
▻https://www.emouaten.com/Qatar-attends-meeting-of-Global-Coalition-against-ISIS-group_a123956.html
#Le_Fil

THE BATTLE OF DARAA IS HAPPENING : AL-RIDWAN, HEZBOLLAH’S SPECIAL FORCES WILL PARTICIPATE.
▻https://ejmagnier.com/2018/06/19/the-battle-of-daraa-is-happening-al-ridwan-hezbollahs-special-forces-will

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The Syrian command ignored the US and the Israeli requests to exclude Hezbollah and the Iranian allies from being present in Daraa. Thus, the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asked Hezbollah al-Ridwan Special Forces to take positions in Daraa and around it to participate in the forthcoming attack.

Sources on the ground believe the US is not expected to pull out of al-Tanf crossing between Syria and Iraq – as requested by Damascus in exchange of Hezbollah and Iran absence in Daraa – because Israel believes the battle is not going to take place. Therefore, the Syrian government has decided to engage in the Daraa’ battle and remove all jihadists from the south to regain total control of the territory or even impose a negotiation by force to reached a withdrawal of the US forces from al-Tanf.

The Syrian Army is also aiming to end the southern battle so it can move all offensive forces to the north and al-Badiya afterwards, to attack the remaining ISIS forces present in that part of Syria.

The US faces a dilemma with thousands of trained, supported and funded Syrian proxies militias in the border area between Syria and Iraq. These militias can be a burden if the US decides to withdraw because they are Arab and non-Kurdish forces.

’Nothing is ours anymore’: Kurds forced out of #Afrin after Turkish assault

Many who fled the violence January say their homes have been given to Arabs.
When Areen and her clan fled the Turkish assault on Afrin in January, they feared they may never return.

Six months later, the Kurdish family remain in nearby villages with other Afrin locals who left as the conquering Turks and their Arab proxies swept in, exiling nearly all its residents.

Recently, strangers from the opposite end of Syria have moved into Areen’s home and those of her family. The few relatives who have made it back for fleeting visits say the numbers of new arrivals – all Arabs – are rising each week. So too is a resentment towards the newcomers, and a fear that the steady, attritional changes may herald yet another flashpoint in the seven-year conflict.

Unscathed through much of the Syrian war, and a sanctuary for refugees, Afrin has become a focal point of a new and pivotal phase, where the ambitions of regional powers are being laid bare and a coexistence between Arabs and Kurds – delicately poised over decades – is increasingly being threatened.

The small enclave in northwestern Syria directly reflects the competing agendas of four countries, Turkey, Syria, Russia and the US – though none more so than Ankara, whose creeping influence in the war is anchored in Afrin and the fate of its peoples.

Turkey’s newfound stake has given it more control over its nearby border and leverage over its arch foe, the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which had used its presence in Afrin to project its influence northwards.

But the campaign to oust Kurdish militias has raised allegations that Ankara is quietly orchestrating a demographic shift, changing the balance of Afrin’s population from predominantly Kurdish to majority Arab, and – more importantly to Turkish leaders – changing the composition of its 500-mile border with Syria.

Ahead of the January assault, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said: “We will return Afrin to its rightful owners.”

Erdoğan’s comments followed a claim by US officials that it would help transform a Kurdish militia it had raised to fight Islamic State in northeastern Syria into a more permanent border force. The announcement incensed Turkish leaders, who had long feared that Syria’s Kurds would use the chaos of war to advance their ambitions – and to move into a 60-mile area between Afrin and the Euphrates river, which was the only part of the border they didn’t inhabit.

Ankara denies it is attempting to choreograph a demographic shift in Afrin, insisting it aimed only to drive out the PKK, not unaffiliated Kurdish locals.

“The people of Afrin didn’t choose to live under the PKK,” said a senior Turkish official. “Like Isis, the PKK installed a terrorist administration there by force. Under that administration, rival Kurdish factions were silenced violently. [The military campaign] resulted in the removal of terrorists from Afrin and made it possible for the local population to govern themselves. The vast majority of the new local council consists of Kurds and the council’s chairperson is also Kurdish.”

Many who remain unable to return to Afrin are unconvinced, particularly as the influx from elsewhere in Syria continues. Both exiles and newcomers confirmed to the Guardian that large numbers of those settling in Afrin came from the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where an anti-regime opposition surrendered to Russian and Syrian forces in April, and accepted being transferred to northern Syria

Between bandits, militiamen, and wayfarers, Afrin is barely recognisable, say Kurdish locals who have made it back. “It’s not the Afrin we know,” said Areen, 34. “Too many strange faces. Businesses have been taken over by the Syrians, stores changed to Damascene names, properties gone. We feel like the Palestinians.

“The Syrian government couldn’t care less to help us reclaim our property, they won’t even help us get back into Afrin. We want to go back, we couldn’t care less if we’re governed by the Kurds or Turks or Assad, we just want our land back.”

A second Afrin exile, Salah Mohammed, 40, said: “Lands are being confiscated, farms, wheat, furniture, nothing is ours anymore; it’s us versus their guns. It’s difficult to come back, you have to prove the property is yours and get evidence and other nearly impossible papers to reclaim it.

“There is definitely a demographic change, a lot of Kurds have been forcibly displaced on the count that they’re with the PKK when in fact they weren’t. There are barely any Kurds left in Afrin, no one is helping us go back.”

Another Afrin local, Shiyar Khalil, 32, said: “When the Kurds try to get back to their house they have to jump through hoops. You cannot deny a demographic change, Kurds are not able to go back. Women are veiled, bars are closed; it’s a deliberate erasing of Kurdish culture.”

Umm Abdallah, 25, a new arrival from Ghouta said some Kurds had returned to Afrin, but anyone affiliated with Kurdish militias had been denied entry. “I’ve seen about 300 Kurds come back to Afrin with their families in the past month or so. I don’t know whose house I am living in honestly, but it’s been registered at the police station.”

She said Afrin was lawless and dangerous, with Arab militias whom Turkey had used to lead the assault now holding aegis over the town. “The Turks try to stop the looting but some militias are very malicious,” she said. “They mess with us and the Kurds, it’s not stable here.”

Both Umm Abdallah and another Ghouta resident, Abu Khaled Abbas, 23, had their homes confiscated by the Assad regime before fleeing to the north. “The Assad army stole everything, even the sinks,” said Abbas.

“These militias now are not leaving anyone alone [in Afrin], how do you think they will treat the Kurds? There are bad things happening, murder, harassment, rapes, and theft. They believe they ‘freed’ the land so they own it now.”

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Pentagon Warns Syria’s Assad against Attacking Washington Allies | Asharq AL-awsat
▻https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1287576/pentagon-warns-syria%E2%80%99s-assad-against-attacking-washington-allies

The Pentagon on Thursday warned Head of Syrian regime Bashar al-Assad not to carry out an offensive against Kurdish and Arab forces backed by the Washington that control the country’s north-east.

Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, director of the joint staff, said during a press conference on Thursday: “Any interested party in Syria should understand that attacking US Forces or our coalition partners will be a bad policy.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White later stated that US is in Syria only to fight ISIS.

She added that the “US did not want to get involved in Syria’s civil war.”

Assad told Russian broadcaster RT in an interview that the “only problem left in Syria is the SDF.”

Assad said there were only “two options" to deal with SDF.

“The first one: we started now opening doors for negotiations. Because the majority of them are Syrians."

Otherwise, "we’re going to resort... to liberating those areas by force,” he added.

SDF continue to fight against ISIS in part of oil-rich province of Deir Al Zour.

Russia says only Syrian army should be on country’s southern border with Israel

Israel believes Russia may agree to withdrawing Iranian forces and allied Shi’ite militias from Israel-Syria border

Noa Landau and Reuters May 28, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/russia-says-only-syrian-army-should-be-on-country-s-southern-border-1.61198

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that only Syrian government troops should have a presence on the country’s southern border which is close to Jordan and Israel, the RIA news agency reported.
Lavrov was cited as making the comments at a joint news conference in Moscow with Jose Condungua Pacheco, his counterpart from Mozambique.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman will leave on Wednesday for a short visit to Russia. He is scheduled to meet with his counterpart, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shvigo, the ministry said in a statement on Monday. Lieberman is expected to discuss with his hosts the recent events in the Middle East, primarily the tension between Israel and Iran over the Iranian military presence in Syria.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the Knesset Monday, saying that “there is no room for any Iranian military presence in any part of Syria.”
Lieberman said that “these things, of course, reflect not only our position, I can safely say that they reflect the positions of others in the Middle East and beyond the Middle East.”
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On Sunday, Haaretz reported that Israeli political and military officials believe Russia is willing to discuss a significant distancing of Iranian forces and allied Shi’ite militias from the Israel-Syria border, according to Israeli officials.
The change in Russia’s position has become clearer since Israel’s May 10 military clash with Iran in Syria and amid Moscow’s concerns that further Israeli moves would threaten the stability of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Russia recently renewed efforts to try to get the United States involved in agreements that would stabilize Syria. The Russians might be willing to remove the Iranians from the Israeli border, though not necessarily remove the forces linked to them from the whole country.
Last November, Russia and the United States, in coordination with Jordan, forged an agreement to decrease the possibility of friction in southern Syria, after the Assad regime defeated rebel groups in the center of the country. Israel sought to keep the Iranians and Shi’ite militias at least 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Israeli border in the Golan Heights, east of the Damascus-Daraa road (or, according to another version, east of the Damascus-Suwayda road, about 70 kilometers from the border).

FILE – Iran’s Army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, left, in Aleppo, Syria, in photo provided October 20, 2017/AP
According to Israeli intelligence, in Syria there are now around 2,000 Iranian officers and advisers, members of the Revolutionary Guards, around 9,000 Shi’ite militiamen from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and around 7,000 Hezbollah fighters. Israel believes that the Americans are now in a good position to reach a more effective arrangement in Syria in coordination with the Russians under the slogan “Without Iran and without ISIS.”
The United States warned Syria on Friday it would take “firm and appropriate measures” in response to ceasefire violations, saying it was concerned about reports of an impending military operation in a de-escalation zone in the country’s southwest.
Washington also cautioned Assad against broadening the conflict.
“As a guarantor of this de-escalation area with Russia and Jordan, the United States will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Assad regime violations,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement late on Friday.
A war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported on Wednesday that Syrian government forces fresh from their victory this week against an Islamic State pocket in south Damascus were moving into the southern province of Deraa.
Syrian state-run media have reported that government aircraft have dropped leaflets on rebel-held areas in Deraa urging fighters to disarm.
The U.S. warning comes weeks after a similar attack on a de-escalation zone in northeastern Syria held by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. U.S. ground and air forces repelled the more than four-hour attack, killing perhaps as many as 300 pro-Assad militia members, many of them Russian mercenaries.
Backed by Russian warplanes, ground forces from Iran and allied militia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have helped Assad drive rebels from Syria’s biggest cities, putting him in an unassailable military position.

Top five countries of origin of Foreign Terrorist Fighters who joined the conflict zones in Syria and Iraq
Tiré du #rapport #Frontex Annual Risk Analysis 2018 (à partir de la page 30):

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#Yazidis who suffered under Isis face forced conversion to Islam amid fresh persecution in Afrin
▻https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-yazidis-isis-islam-conversion-afrin-persecution-kurdish-a831069

The Yazidis, who were recently the target of massacre, rape and sex slavery by Isis, are now facing forcible conversion to Islam under the threat of death from Turkish-backed forces which captured the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on 18 March. Islamist rebel fighters, who are allied to Turkey and have occupied Yazidi villages in the area, have destroyed the temples and places of worship the Kurdish-speaking non-Islamic sect according to local people.

“#modérés” #Syrie

Hamid Dabashi: “One more time: two former European colonial powers France and UK join the US imperial warmongering to attack an Arab country — for the full advantage of their collective settler colony in the region Israel —

Their Zionist implant in the region had been paving the way for their invasion by systematic bombing of the selfsame Arab country —

What will this invasion achieve? Exactly the opposite of its stated objectives— it will strengthen the bloody ruling regime in Syria, it will expand the insidious power of its supporters Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, as Turkey will use this smokescreen to target more Kurdish enclaves — all of which will create yet another fertile ground for the resurrection of ISIS —

The Zionist counterpart of ISIS will meanwhile do what it always does under these circumstances: kill more Palestinians and steal more of Palestine— Netanyahu’s corrupt racist to the core rule over the Israeli garrison state will linger even more — liberal Zionists at Haaretz will join the bandwagon and shed crocodile tears for the Syrian civilians—

Trump will look presidential hoping this war will ward off Mueller investigation and weaken the impact of Comey’s new book on his charlatanism, as Niki Haley exudes humanitarian air of caring for Syrians, as she prepares her next career move drafting her speech for the forthcoming AIPAC conference —

The cost? Even more death, destruction, mayhem, and refugees in Syria —exposing the vulgar hypocrisy of Trump who bans Syrian refugees to come to US, and even uglier duplicity of the despicable Haley defending Syrian civilians at the UN while vetoing any investigation into the Israeli crimes against humanity in Palestine—”
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/syria-air-strikes-key-quotes-trump-address-180414022429316.html

Le premier soldat britannique mort en Syrie pourrait avoir été tué par une bombe d’une milice de l’armée syrienne libre, « soutenue par la Turquie » : MoD names British Para who was killed during anti-ISIS operation
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5565191/MoD-names-British-Para-killed-roadside-bomb-anti-ISIS-operation.html

SAS sources also revealed last night how the terrorists who planted the bomb could belong to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an affiliation of militia, including jihadi elements, which is backed by Turkey. If the investigation into the incident concludes this was the case, it could lead to a diplomatic row with Turkey, a Nato member.

A source added: ‘Matt was part of a joint UK-US Special Forces team which was working with local Kurdish troops in a bid to stabilise the city. Manbij was liberated from Islamic State in 2016 but jihadis aligned with the Free Syrian Army are seeking to take over.

The main reason behind the SAS getting out of there is the fear of a proxy conflict between fellow Nato members.’

(Après, c’est le Daily Mail… Il faudra surveiller si l’info est confirmée par d’autres sources un peu plus crédibles.)

How ISIS Broke My Questionnaire - Issue 58 : Self
▻http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/the-isis-in-the-room-rp

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I walk into Starbucks in Achrafieh, Beirut and feel all eyes on me. I tug at my top self-consciously, probably making things worse, and wonder a) do I look like an easy Westerner; b) do I look like a ragamuffin (in comparison to the groomed Lebanese); c) are my shoes weird for this country (I think so); or d) have I got something on my face? This feeling says as much about my state of mind as it does about anyone’s judgement, and I know from past fieldwork that the self-consciousness lessens over time. But it’s early days, so even my order is whispered and has to be repeated, shrivelling inside. Then I find an empty seat too quickly, so that I don’t notice I’m actually boxed in and can’t easily approach anyone at all. This is all going fairly disastrously. Coffee will surely help, I (...)

The Emergence of Violent Extremism in Northern #Mozambique

The emergence of a new militant Islamist group in northern Mozambique raises a host of concerns over the influence of international jihadist ideology, social and economic marginalization of local Muslim communities, and a heavy-handed security response.

▻https://africacenter.org/spotlight/the-emergence-of-violent-extremism-in-northern-mozambique
#djihadisme #ISIS #EI #islamisme

@reka : faut mettre à jour la carte ?

Raytheon-Jordan Border Defense Against ISIS Enters Final Phase

A US-funded partnership between Jordan and #Raytheon is entering the final phase of a nearly $100 million program to guard the Hashemite Kingdom against infiltrators from the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations operating beyond its border with Syria and Iraq.

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