ISIS militants attack and take over Iraqi northern city of Mosul

[Antithesis]

Whoa, whoa, I thought I was making clear that it was more a playful jab than anything else.

Small chance of survival > no chance of survival, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I do pride myself on my ability to read.

Anyway, good day to you sir!

[PIMking]

Sorry I read too much into it. Context is hard on here.

[2ArmBands]

WY... Looks like a lot of cable tray still on the ground... Safe to say you're gonna be there for quite a while still? Stay safe man!

[Wastedyouth]

I will be here for a while. That was an old pic. I didn't want to post anything newer there is lots of signs on vessels and areas now and its a bit a of security threat to post that stuff online. Plus I think its against company policies.

[JiriHrdina]

Cripes man - you've got brass ones. I'll give you that.

[Wastedyouth]

I've never understood the guys that just sit there as they are getting their heads sawed off. I hypothesize that they must be drugged out of their mind.

How would you not fight to your last breath with the inevitability of death looming?

And I mean that with no disrespect to the people who this has happened to.

To reply to others. I would have a hard time getting my hands on a gun if the ####storm happened. Unless i picked it up from someone else in the fight. I try to keep the mindset that I would make them shoot me before taking me captive, but who knows. I would imagine they have plans for all types of hostages and as tough as I think I am, if they wanted to subdue me rather than shoot me I am sure it would happen.

I try to not think of it too much really. To be honest, we all just roll with some pretty crazy punches out here. When the Jordanians were bombing Mosul it sounded like it was just over the next hill, rather than 50ish Kms away. And after the first couple bombs went, we just kinda shrugged, smoked another cig and got back to work.

Its weird how numb you can become to the sound of gun shots and explosions.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Assyrians in northeastern Syria villages awoke Tuesday to ISIS militants at their doors, with the Islamist extremists abducting scores from the Christian group and forcing hundreds more to run for their lives, an advocate said.

The ISIS fighters bust past a few men guarding the village of Tal Shamiram around 4 a.m. (9 p.m. ET Monday) and abducted children, women and the elderly, said Usama Edward, the founder of the Assyrian Human Rights Network.

Talking to CNN from Stockholm, Sweden, Edward said that between 70 and 100 people total were kidnapped in that village and others in the same cluster near Tal Tamer in Al Hasakah province.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/24/world/...raq/index.html

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Rerun

I just don't understand why young girls/women would do this... its just crazy. Its like selling yourself into slavery.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...girls-29105336


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...m-fate-5203372

I question the policy used by Western governments have enacted over things like this. The goal seems to be criminalizing the men and women who go to help fight/support ISIS; or they try to prevent their leaving.

Why not allow them to leave, monitor who goes (they obviously know who does) and revoke their Canadian passports or put out a non-entry notice (if that's a thing) on them to prevent their return.

Criminalizing their departure does two things: It either has them arrested, jailed, and sooner or later released with very little rehabilitation or, worse more radicalization; or it prevents them from leaving and they will in turn seek to help the cause by wreaking havoc in that Western country.

Let them leave and, hopefully, die. If they don't die and want to come back, tough, you aren't allowed back in. They made their bed.

Has any government commented on their reasoning for policies or does criminalizing effectively create the desired scenario?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Cappy

I question the policy used by Western governments have enacted over things like this. The goal seems to be criminalizing the men and women who go to help fight/support ISIS; or they try to prevent their leaving.

Why not allow them to leave, monitor who goes (they obviously know who does) and revoke their Canadian passports or put out a non-entry notice (if that's a thing) on them to prevent their return.

Criminalizing their departure does two things: It either has them arrested, jailed, and sooner or later released with very little rehabilitation or, worse more radicalization; or it prevents them from leaving and they will in turn seek to help the cause by wreaking havoc in that Western country.

Let them leave and, hopefully, die. If they don't die and want to come back, tough, you aren't allowed back in. They made their bed.

Has any government commented on their reasoning for policies or does criminalizing effectively create the desired scenario?

I think that the idea of not letting them leave is that if they do leave and get there they get trained and experienced. So if they do manage to sneak back home you have a fully crazed and now trained jihadist.

Just putting out a stop order means very little, especially with Canadian Citizens, as many people have pointed out, as per international law you can't revoke someones citizenship if they were born here.

[undercoverbrother]

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blo...quebec-attacks





"#### yeah get some"

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Interesting article.

“They promised me I’d go straight to heaven, without being judged.”

You didn’t ask them why, if being a suicide bomber was so wonderful, they didn’t want to do it themselves?

“No.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...is-losing-iraq

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Cappy

I question the policy used by Western governments have enacted over things like this. The goal seems to be criminalizing the men and women who go to help fight/support ISIS; or they try to prevent their leaving.

Why not allow them to leave, monitor who goes (they obviously know who does) and revoke their Canadian passports or put out a non-entry notice (if that's a thing) on them to prevent their return...

Because this:

Originally Posted by John Simpson

I asked him what his father and mother would have thought about what he had become. Tears came to his eyes: he suddenly stopped being a terrorist. Now, he was just a kid who had upset his parents and didn’t know how to get home.

His IS minders took him to Baghdad, put him up at a safe house, and taught him how to use an explosive vest. He had to keep his thumb on the trigger of the bomb. Directly he raised it, the bomb would go off. And at that instant, they said, without needing to go through the process of having his life and actions judged, he would find himself in paradise. It might not have been particularly good theology, but it worked.

They gave him a pistol, in case the guards at the Shia mosque tried to stop him. He was to shoot them, then run over to where the crowd of worshippers was thickest and detonate the bomb.

You were fully prepared to kill women and children, as well as men? I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

His voice was scarcely audible now and the tears were running unchecked down his face. His eyes were fixed on his manacled hands and he spoke in whispers.

Why are you crying?

“Because I’m so sorry for all this.”

You’re ashamed of what you were going to do?

“Yes, sir.”

Before he could leave for his mission, the safe house was raided and he was captured. He wasn’t beaten or threatened; there was no need. The interrogators treated him kindly and showed him that Shia Muslims were much the same as the Sunnis he had grown up with. He’ll get a short prison sentence; after that, he’ll be free to make something of his dysfunctional life. If he can...

(See the article KFF posted above).

Originally Posted by Cappy

Criminalizing their departure does two things: It either has them arrested, jailed, and sooner or later released with very little rehabilitation or, worse more radicalization; or it prevents them from leaving and they will in turn seek to help the cause by wreaking havoc in that Western country.

Let them leave and, hopefully, die. If they don't die and want to come back, tough, you aren't allowed back in. They made their bed.

The vast majority of ISIL recruits are not psychotic or sociopathic madmen. They are victims of theology, propaganda, and often despair and disillusionment. Your reaction here strikes me as pretty callous, and is ironically a passive reflection of a major part of the problem. Reinforcing the differences between "us" and "them" is never a good solution to cultural conflicts.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Because this:

Originally Posted by John Simpson
I asked him what his father and mother would have thought about what he had become. Tears came to his eyes: he suddenly stopped being a terrorist. Now, he was just a kid who had upset his parents and didn’t know how to get home.

His IS minders took him to Baghdad, put him up at a safe house, and taught him how to use an explosive vest. He had to keep his thumb on the trigger of the bomb. Directly he raised it, the bomb would go off. And at that instant, they said, without needing to go through the process of having his life and actions judged, he would find himself in paradise. It might not have been particularly good theology, but it worked.

They gave him a pistol, in case the guards at the Shia mosque tried to stop him. He was to shoot them, then run over to where the crowd of worshippers was thickest and detonate the bomb.

You were fully prepared to kill women and children, as well as men? I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

His voice was scarcely audible now and the tears were running unchecked down his face. His eyes were fixed on his manacled hands and he spoke in whispers.

Why are you crying?

“Because I’m so sorry for all this.”

You’re ashamed of what you were going to do?

“Yes, sir.”

Before he could leave for his mission, the safe house was raided and he was captured. He wasn’t beaten or threatened; there was no need. The interrogators treated him kindly and showed him that Shia Muslims were much the same as the Sunnis he had grown up with. He’ll get a short prison sentence; after that, he’ll be free to make something of his dysfunctional life. If he can...

That's a story about a local though–a kid who has spent his life in a country at war.

He's not some moron from a Canadian suburb who was convinced by youtube videos to travel across the world so he can join a bunch of crazies and kill people.

I'm not saying "revoke passports and let them deal with the consequences of their actions", but I'm not really saying don't do that either. Although I don't even know if that kind of thing is legal in Canada.

Someone like that is dangerous, easily duped and manipulated by criminals, and a serious threat if he's allowed to come back. Even if he does cry in the interrogation room.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

That's a story about a local though–a kid who has spent his life in a country at war.

He's not some moron from a Canadian suburb who was convinced by youtube videos to travel across the world so he can join a bunch of crazies and kill people.

It's not entirely that simple. As was noted in the other thread which includes a very good article about the apocalyptic roots of this crisis, there is a theological point of manipulation here that transcends crazy. Perfectly sane people will feel obligation to duty if they perceive a well founded theological warrant for it. When al-Baghdadi proclaimed a Caliphate in Mosul, this created precisely the sort of theological imperative that would be impossible for a great number of Salafi Muslims to simply ignore.

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

...Someone like that is dangerous, easily duped and manipulated by criminals, and a serious threat if he's allowed to come back. Even if he does cry in the interrogation room.

It's pretty arrogant to assume that you—unlike probably every member of the human race—are immune to "manipulation by criminals."

Individuals in these situations are not on their own dangerous. They are dangerous only as part of the movement. If you remove them from the movement, or if you remove the threat of the movement, then I am convinced that the vast majority of these people go back to their mundane existence.

I'm not sure one can fully comprehend this unless he has been part of a fundamentalist religious movement.

[nik-]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-isis-t...-video-1489616

Is it messed up that this angers me as much as beheadings and burnings?

These ####ing cavemen.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

It's sad to see stuff like that.

I still find it fascinating that as anti-West as these people are they sure like their cell phones and twitter accounts and other modern technology to tell us all about their prophet and what he apparently wants them to do.

[Jacks]

Read a comment somewhere. They aren't content with destroying the present and the future, now they want to destroy the past.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

ISIS has seized even more Assyrian Christian hostages after taking over nearly a dozen Assyrian villages in northeastern Syria in the past few days, an activist said Thursday.

The Sunni extremist group now holds 262 Assyrians captive, said Osama Edward, founder of the Assyrian Human Rights Network.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/middle...raq/index.html

[KootenayFlamesFan]

A man with a British accent seen in ISIS videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages was identified Thursday as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born Londoner, according to two U.S. officials and two U.S. congressional sources briefed on the matter.

The Washington Post earlier reported that Emwazi is "Jihadi John," citing one of Emwazi's close friends.

The reporting in the Washington Post, and subsequently reported by Reuters, suggests Emwazi was from a middle-class family and grew up in London. He reportedly graduated from the University of Westminster in London with a degree in computer programming.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/middle...ity/index.html

[nik-]

As twisted as it sounds I would like to see, for one day, a major Western force fight ISIS with the same rules of engagement that ISIS fights will. Ignore popular opinion, ignore international law, ignore moral stances. Just one day, to see what would happen.

/morbidcuriosity