Al Quaeda splinter group sweeping through Iraq

Latest news on the Caliphate - they've redrawn their borders again.

Last week, India, and, bizarrely, Australia were showing as part of their new empire:



Today, they seem to have given up on India and Australia...



and have annexed the Balkans, Portugal and Spain instead.

Good luck with that one, chums.

If it wasn't for the civil war, the beheadings, crucifixions and other atrocities, this particular bunch of Snackbars would be rather entertaining...Something tells me they're, well, delusional. They're going to go nowhere except their paradise fairly rapidly, providing the Saudis and US stop funding and arming them to fight proxy wars.

Best of luck is right, Bonny.   

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/iraq-parliament-adjourns-as-rebellion-mounts-20147192740887897.html

Iraq parliament adjourns as rebellion mounts
MPs fail to agree on new speaker, halting a process that would swear in new administration to face Sunni rebels.

Iraq's parliament has been adjouned for a week, hours into its first session, after it failed to reach agreement on senior appointments as the country grapples with an onslaught from Sunni rebels.


The acting speaker said on Tuesday that no agreement had been reached on naming a new speaker and that the parliament had no quorum, and must be adjourned.

Parliament convened with 255 deputies out of 328, but only 75 returned after a recess to discuss candidates.

The Reuters news agency quoted al-Hafidh as saying that the adjournment would last a week.

The parliament was due to elect a new president after confirming the speaker. The president would then charge the leader of the biggest parliamentary bloc with forming a government as prime minister.

The Shia political block of Nouri al-Maliki, the incumbent, won by far the most seats in the April polls, but his reaffirmation as prime minister is being opposed by Sunni opponents, and even some allies who want a less divisive leader.

Maliki has himself said any attempt to override his authority would be attempting a coup.

The forming of a new government comes as the UN said more than 2,417 Iraqis had been killed in June alone, making the current violence the most deadly since the height of sectarian warfare in 2007.

The Islamic State, the pre-eminent force in the rebellion formerly known as ISIL, on Sunday said its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was now the ruler of a new Islamic caliphate stretching across areas under his control nothern Syria and Iraq.

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I suspect the lack of outrage from AJ over ISIS, IS, ISIL, or whatever their name is today is because AJ is based in Qatar....

I suspect the lack of outrage from AJ over ISIS, IS, ISIL, or whatever their name is today is because AJ is based in Qatar....

AlJazeera prides itself on impartiality so I think they are being just that. They give no preference to anyone, they report the news. Remember they have journalists now jailed in Egypt for doing just that, reporting facts, not fiction. LL

I don't think there is a single news organisation that doesn't have some kind of bias, LL, be it minor or major - as with RT, Fox and Press TV.

Actually, the winner for censorship is currently the BBC.

There was a HUGE anti-austerity, anti-war demo literally on the BBC's doorstep a week or so ago. It went unreported.

Yesterday, there was a big demo, again on the BBC's doorstep, this time in Glasgow, about their shocking bias in the referendum. It too went unreported.

Not a word about any of this on the BBC, but naturally, RT lapped it all up. It loves Unrest in the West stories.

RT? Radio Times? LL   

Russia Today, LL. One of the reasons it's gained so many viewers is not so much the words, which are obviously pro-Kremlin, as the fact that its reporters do go charging into battle zones so are sending back real-time images, and other raw material is YouTube'd within minutes of incidents occurring. It has much in common with old-fashioned war correspondents, instead of these neutered 'embedded correspondents' that are heavily censored.

Thanks, I will stick to the Radio Times. Sorry, but I wouldn't trust anything out of Russia. personal view. LL

I don't trust anything out of anywhere these days, LL.   

http://news.sky.com/story/1293113/isis-urges-muslims-to-immigrate-to-new-state

The leader of ISIS has told Muslims it is their "duty" to immigrate to his newly-declared "Islamic State" in Iraq and Syria.

In a 19-minute audiotape, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi specifically appealed to those with practical skills - such as scholars judges, doctors, engineers and others with military or administrative expertise - to come help build the caliphate.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria declared it was establishing a state across the territory in has seized in northern Syria and western and northern Iraq on Sunday.

Mr Baghdadi also appealed to ISIS militants to step up their fighting dring the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"So to arms, to arms, soldiers of the Islamic state, fight, fight," he said.

Although the authenticity of the tape could not be independently confirmed, it was posted on a site previously used by the group and experts said the voice was similar to that on other recording purported to be Mr Baghdadi.

It was released as the group paraded through the Syrian town of Raqa, riding on tanks and pickup trucks as they waved ISIS's black flag.

Among the military hardware on display there also appeared to be a captured Scud missile with the group's name scrawled on the side.

More follows...

Well, that should cheer up UKIP, anyway....

Oh my!!   

I saw an interview today on German TV with an ex-member of ISIS, hiding out somewhere, who says the leader is stark raving mad, and has little or no knowledge of the Koran, just a bloodlust and a wish to rule the world,  See a lot of those kind of people over the last 3,000 years.  LL

Yes, they do seem a bit ambitious...well, megalomaniacs is probably a better word.

They've done another video, and issued another map:



Caliphate: A map purportedly showing the areas ISIS plans to have under its control within five years has been widely shared online. As well as the Middle East, North Africa and large areas of Asia, it also reveals ISIS' ambition to extend into Europe. Spain, which was Muslim-ruled until the late 15th Century, would form part of the caliphate, as would the Balkan states and eastern Europe, up to and including Austria

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2676582/Obama-did-prepare-diapers-soldiers-Boastful-ISIS-video-mocks-US-President-reveals-plans-expand-territory.html#ixzz36FZttB8G
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Looks like India's back in again. And I can't see Spain and Greece being any too happy, it will do nothing for the holiday business.

That shows how barmy they are.  Europe chased the Ottoman Caliphs out, it will do it again, if push comes to shove.  They have included Austria and Hungary in there, I see.  LL     

Yes, I noticed that, LL. Maybe those in the Balkans, etc, area should get together and stage re-enactments of Vlad's unique methods of dealing with invading muslim hordes?

There are going to be a few more angry people, LL. Oh my.....  

ETA: Nice one Bonny.   

Quite a lot of Turks stayed behind when the Ottomans retreated back to what is now Turkey.  There are villages in Hungary which are mainly populated by their descendants.  There is no discrimination regarding them or their beliefs.   This is the memorial to a famous Hungarian-Ottoman battle in a place called Szigetvar.   LL

The whole Middle East needs a few Kemal Ataturks to put a stop to this nonsense.

I'll say, Bonny.

Kemel Ataturk was unique, they broke the mould when he was born and I doubt there is anyone in the Muslim world who could ever achieve what he did.  For a Muslim to be able to separate Mosque and State, give equal rights to all citizens of all faiths, rights to woman for them to choose style of dress and also get a good education was incredible in those days and are just a few of his achievements,and there's no-one with his vision to achieve the same. The Imams have skowly crept into everything and now they have incredible power which si why we have radicalized children fights wars they don't actually understand. LL

I would also suggest that meddling by Westerners over the last 100 years has made things even worse, as far from helping, the West has presented the various factions with an outside enemy for the imams to point at as evil personified.

Also the lack of a hierarchy, as in the various branches of Christianity?

It all goes back to who is the true successor of the Prophet (PGUH), the reason for the almost non-stop slaughter of sunnis by shias and vice versa. The only real way is to make a concrete decision on who is the true heir, and I can't see that happening any time soon, can you? LL

About this very matter - somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but interesting:

http://www.infowars.com/isis-is-hiring-judges-doctors-and-engineers-as-al-qaeda-prepares-for-war-against-caliphate/


Finally, in what could be the coup de grace in its recruitment efforts, the Islamic State is allowing its cannibal terrorists to use FaceBook and Twitter. In other words, the original Al Qaeda will have to blow up some really big and really symbolic buildings to regain its coolness factor from its much younger and much hipper Islamic State terrorist competition.

Good point - the Al Quaeda franchise is being associated with old dead blokes with grey beards, towels on their heads and raggedy clothes.

ISIS, meanwhile, is posing around in black gear and sunglasses, showing off with SCUDS and convoys of looted US vehicles, and making emotional videos.

The ideal, of course, would be for ISIS and Al Quaeda to slug it out, preferably in some unihabited, God-forsaken desert and leave the rest of the world in semi-peace.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/02/opinion/ww1-no-end-furedi/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Opinion: ISIS caliphate shows there's still no end in sight to World War I

And that's one of the most accurate headlines I've seen for a long time.