@ e7bc35f8:3ed2a7cf
2025-02-27 07:46:26
This is a fascinating question, indeed.
But first of all, why is this important?
Why should we be concerned about the goings-on of this group?
Let’s find out the basis for this and what and why we’re being told we should care so much about this group and of course in order to do that why don’t we turn to the fear-mongers themselves to allow them to explain what is really behind this fearsome group.
[RT, September 2014]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140905125241/https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9JXUX32yfc)
> ISIS, an al-Qaeda-bred terrorist group spreading its wings online. Savvier than its predecessors with a new array of tricks up its sleeves. Twitter has become a virtual second home for the terrorists but as many as 27000 accounts established just over the last two weeks, after ISIS posted a video capturing the beheading of US journalist James Foley with a reported 60000 accounts popping up since May.
[CNN, August 2014]( https://youtu.be/H7J_c0XTP0A)
> Douglas MacArthur McCain, a young American, killed while fighting with the terrorist group ISIS. US officials say they believe he died in Syria. He’s thought to have been killed in a battle between rival extremist groups near the city of Aleppo according to a human rights group.
This ratches up concerns about Americans involved with ISIS because now you have a confirmed example of an American killed fighting with ISIS in Syria.
[SBS News, June 2014]( https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australian-brothers-call-in-isis-video/va2ucv9u3)
> Hello my brothers in Australia. I don’t see myself better than any of yous, (inaudible) only that Allah has bring Karim on me and has brang me here to this country.
Two men who identify themselves as Australian appear in a recruitment video called 'There is no life without jihad'. It’s believed up to 150 Australians have joined rebels fighting in Iraq and Syria.
[DAVID CAMERON]( https://youtu.be/aXLUHdSmyAg)
> Earlier today the Home Secretary confirmed that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center has increased the threat level in the United Kingdom from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’. This is the first time in three years that the threat to our country has been at this level.
[USA TODAY, August 2014]( https://youtu.be/aclWTg05FAM)
> They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. Oh this is beyond anything we’ve seen so we must prepare for everything and the only way you do that is you take a cold steely hard look at it and get ready.
Yes as **the usual gaggle of fear-mongers** in government and the mainstream media will no doubt tell you "_Yes ISIS is coming and you’d better be afraid in fact the only thing you can do is take a cold steely hard look at it and get ready because apparently there’s really nothing that can be done to avoid whatever horrible, horrific, 911-like attack they’re planning on the US Heartland, or so we’re being told._"
But again I think it behooves us to question this constant call for fear-mongering from the same fear-mongers who have, for years and years, ratcheted up these phony terror level alerts, to suit their geopolitical aims and I think once again that’s exactly what was going back then.
Things could have been different if, instead of succumbing to fear back then, we had focused more on understanding the threat, exposing the so-called "boogeyman," and revealing the true perpetrators in this situation.
**This group was created in Iraq** by a Jordanian Sunni **back in 1999.**
It was formerly the official al-Qaeda franchise, in Iraq since it broke with al-Qaeda ideologically.
It then became a **self-proclaimed caliphate**, which was pronounced in late **June of 2015**.
The question of the name of this group is something that gets bandied about and ISIS is often used as the short abbreviation in English, and in fact it’s just one of many, many, many, many names that this group has gone by over the years.
**You can go back to 1999** for example to the original organization which brought with it of course an Arabic name whose acronym was JTJ and whose English translation was "The Organization of Monotheism and Jihad".
**It changed its name in 2004** to, again, another Arabic name "The Organization of Jihad’s Base in the Country of the Two Rivers", although it became more commonly known as "al-Qaeda in Iraq" or AQI around that time.
Then in 2006 it became the "Islamic State of Iraq". In 2013 it became the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" or "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham", aka ISL and ISIS. **Then in 2014 "Islamic State"**.
So switching to the question of who is behind this group, let's see some of the characters behind it.
It was founded in 1999 by a Jordanian Sunni Muslim who went by the name of **Abu Musab al-Zarqawi**.
‼️We have to keep in mind that the names of the various jihadis behind this, like most jihadis they adopt "nommes de guerre" that is ‘war names’ so these names are not necessarily their real names and in fact in most cases are specifically not their real names.
They’re usually chosen for some sort of symbolic or historical cultural value so for example there’s no need to scratch your head and wonder why so many people are named Al Baghdadi, it’s because they are adopting a name that shows they’re the "Baghdadis" – they’re from Iraq, that kind of thing. So again don’t read too much into any of these names, and there are usually many, many, many other alias names that these people go by as well so it gets extremely confusing, probably on purpose I think.
I think the people controlling the terrorists also **have reasons for having extremely confusing ways** of referring to these people and multiple ways of referring so that if one of their memes or ideas or stories gets out of control they can spin them off as a completely different human being.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a Sunni militant from Jordan and he had what can only be described as a remarkable career that brought with it many lives apparently.
So, again this all sources from mainstream reporting. None of this is, you know "conspiracy" reporting, this is all from mainstream news services, ABC and NBC and CBS and Reuters and all of those kinds of outlets.
For example **back in 2004** it was reported that [he was arrested in Fallujah]( https://www.cbsnews.com/news/official-al-zarqawi-caught-freed/).
**Then in 2005**, without reports in the meantime indicating how or when or why he was released from – or escaped from – custody in Fallujah, or how he was never arrested in Fallujah in the first place [he got wounded in Baquba]( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/5/25/us-al-zarqawi-aides-arrested).
**Then in 2005** he was reported [as being killed]( https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1340972&page=1) in fighting in Iraq.
**And then in 2006** [he was killed]( https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060608.html) in fighting once again.
Presumably for the last time this time.
But it gets even stranger. **Back in 2006** the [Washington Post published]( https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900890_pf.html) an article entitled "**Military plays up role of Zarqawi**" in which they reported:
> The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program.
and that same article went on to say:
> One internal briefing produced by the US military headquarters in Iraq said that Kimmitt (one of the generals that oversaw this program) had concluded that the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date.
So once again the Washington Post got its hands on internal briefing documents that the Pentagon was using, to talk about al-Qaeda in Iraq and their propaganda campaign in Iraq, and these documents prove that **the Pentagon was absolutely 100 percent**, self-consciously engaged in a PSYOP operation to make Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq seem more important than it was, and they have their own twisted internal logic that was reported on at the time as to why they wanted to do this and why they wanted to build up AQi in the minds of the Iraqi people and the people of the United States.
And of course I think obviously the main part of that was to keep the American people involved and interested in keeping their troops in harm’s way there in Iraq, even long after Bush declared "mission accomplished".
The precursor of that ISIS group, the leader with actually a not a PSYOP creation per se but at any rate someone who is blown up specifically on purpose made to seem more important than he was, because of the Pentagon.
And it gets even stranger than that when we look at **the person who took over from Zarqawi** after his final, supposedly, reported death **in 2006**, someone going by the name of Baghdadi, one of many people going by the name of Baghdadi, this one **Abu Omar al-Baghdadi** but again it’s a nom de guerre, it’s not his real name. Apparently his real name is Hamid Dawud Mohamed Khalil al-Zawi, he’s also known as Abu Omar al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Baghdadi so we should not, again, put too much faith, stock, interest or energy into parsing these various names, just to know that this is someone who is referred to as al-Baghdadi and who took over from al-Zarqawi as leader of what was at the time "al-Qaeda in Iraq" in 2006.
He took over the group and again, like Zarqawi, had a remarkable career that involved being **reported as [captured in 2007**]( https://web.archive.org/web/20070314153618/http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/09/iraq.main/index.html?eref=rss_latest) and then [**killed in 2007**]( https://web.archive.org/web/20100424215412/https://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/03/iraq.main/) then [**arrested in 2009**]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140911051541/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23/baghdad-suicide-bomber-ki_0_n_190455.html) and then throughout that period of his arrest or the period that we are supposed to be led to believe that he was under arrest, [he was releasing recordings]( https://web.archive.org/web/20090801010037/http://worldanalysis.net/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=19), obviously not from prison but from wherever he really was, that were being identified and authenticated.
**And then in 2010** he was [reported as being killed]( https://web.archive.org/web/20150924144937/http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/19/us-iraq-violence-alqaeda-idUSTRE63I3CL20100419) once again.
So again we have multiple reportings of captures and killings and arrests that don’t seem to make any logical sense, but just as in the case of Zarqawi, in the case of Baghdadi it becomes that much more strange when we find out that the fictional ISI leader – Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was identified as such by the US Pentagon.
Yes, once again **the US military actually reported on how they believed Abu Omar al-Bagdadi didn’t even exist**. This comes from [a Reuters article]( https://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/18/us-iraq-qaeda-idUSL1820065720070718/?rpc=92), of one of many sources, but we can source it to a Reuters article '"Senior Qaeda figure in Iraq a myth" says US military', where they talk about a a senior operative for al-Qaeda in Iraq who was in custody of the US military, and was being interrogated and according to the testimony of this captured al-Qaeda in Iraq fighter:
> The Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al-Qaeda in Iraq in an attempt to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq
> U.S. military officials in recent weeks have been pressed to explain the link between al-Qaeda in Iraq and bin Laden’s global network given the military’s heightened focus on al-Qaeda in Iraq as the biggest threat to the country
> The military blames al-Qaeda in Iraq for most of the major bombings in Iraq, saying the group is trying to spark all-out civil war between majority Shi’tes and minority Sunni Arabs
Again a very interesting, very bizarre report that again includes briefing slides from the Pentagon that show that **the Pentagon itself calls Abu Omar al-Baghdadi the fictional ISI leader**, so once again the US military didn’t even believe this person existed, and this was from a 2007 report, so once again throwing more sand into the water, more mud in the mix to make it even murkier, the US military bumbles in, and it’s again a question of what their ultimate aim in all of this is.
Very, very strange dealings going on, and again remember this is the precursor group to the group that is now referred to as is IS or ISIS, so a very strange pedigree for this terrorist group with the fingerprints of the US Pentagon and military all over it.
**And the next character in this list of this cavalcade of terrorist-boogeyman is also Baghdadi.**
This one not Abu Omar al-Baghdadi but **Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi** also known as Ibrahim bin 'Awad bin Ibrahim al-Badri ar-Radawi al-Husseini as-Samara’i, who was also known as Caliph Ibrahim, the caliph of the Islamic State Caliphate.
**So what is known about this character and where he came from?**
Almost nothing, in fact almost everything that we know about the background of this character sources from an completely [unverifiable online biography]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140819085249/http://news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/entry/226-the-story-behind-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi).
So apparently he was born in Samarra in Iraq in 1971; at some point he apparently attended the Atlantic University of Baghdad and it was reported that he was a leader, a cleric in a mosque in Samarra during "The American Invasion" in 2003 according to quote unquote "reports" – unidentified reports – that’s what the BBC sourced that to – and then he was detained at Camp Bucca which was a US Forces Iraq camp at some point between 2004 and 2009 and again this story conflicts.
According to the official story he was detained from February to December of 2004, that’s what the Defense Department will admit to, before being released on the recommendation of the Combined Review and Release Board.
Why they recommended him for release I’m not sure, but at any rate that’s the official story.
However **we have Army Colonel Kenneth King** who was the former commander of Camp Bucca [who insists]( https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/isis-leaders-ominous-york-message-doubt-us-edge/story?id=24166099) that this character – this man who is now known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – was at the camp during his tenure at Camp Bucca all the way up until 2009 when the camp with turned over to the Iraqi justice system, and he insists this because he remembers this particular character saying "_We’ll see you in New York_" or something of that nature, a "_terrorist threat_", so even after the point at which the discrepancy between the Defense Department’s story that **Bagdadi was released in 2004** , and King’s story that **he was there in 2009**, even when that discrepancy became apparent and was pointed out to King he specifically said again he was sure of it.
He insists that he was there.
So, again, the official story is that he was only there for the better part of a year but at any rate he may have been there up until 2009 and then presumably released by the Iraqi authorities at some point. Again it’s a completely murky story, but at some point he was under the care and detainment of the US military.
Then, having gotten out of the camp he was **announced as leader** of the Islamic State of Iraq as it was known at that time, the AQI having morphed into the ISI in 2010 and then, once again had something of a interesting career having being [reported as **captured in 2012**]( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/12/2/iraqs-al-qaeda-chief-arrested) and then **in 2014 he was rumored as dead** but just a few days later a video of him was released, a video of him [delivering some sort of sermon]( https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/07/world/meast/iraq-crisis/), which is interesting because there are only apparently two photographs in existence of this person.
So an exceptionally shady character and on that blank slate a lot has been written, some of which is clearly fictional and let’s just keep in mind to take with a giant grain of salt any information we hear about this man and his background and really look into where and what the source of that information is.
So that’s some of the main characters behind this group.
Let's turn our attention to **what this group consisted of in terms of its equipment and its ability**, at that time.
[We were told]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_Islamic_State) that the arsenal of jihad contained and wielded by this shadowy deadly terrorist-boogeyman group consists of: 30 T 55 tanks; 10 T72 tanks; Blackhawks; cargo planes; Humvees; Toyota trucks; AK47s; M79s; RBG-6s; RPG-7s; Howitzers; field guns; AACs; Stinger manpads; scud missiles and a low-grade nuclear material of unknown origin.
Again this is just a ridiculous list of equipment but at any rate most of it has been sourced to various things that they’ve managed to accrue from their various military conquests including for example their takeover of Mosul back earlier this year in which they secured the Black Hawk helicopters and the cargo planes from the airport and also the nuclear material, the low-grade nuclear material that they acquired from Mosul University which **according to the International Atomic Energy Agency** is a low risk for nuclear proliferation because it is such low grade – such low quality.
So those were the things that we were told that they’ve gathered from their various exploits. Some of the interesting items in there I think are for example the **Toyota trucks**, which have become something of a hallmark of jihadis in various contacts.
There are reasons for that, Toyotas of course being quite ubiquitous in that region of the world since Japanese aid to the Middle East generally comes in the form of equipment and various products and so Toyotas are among the types of things that find their way to the Middle East, and because of their ubiquity the parts and servicing for them are widely available so they’re quite useful for any group that wants to have sort of mobile access to the area, including the jihadis, and the **Toyotas in possession of ISIS** in particular seem to have come courtesy of, surprise surprise, [Uncle Sam]( https://youtu.be/TOLJh1toIjg).
According to a [report]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140831003141/http://www.truthandaction.org/isis-enjoys-new-toyota-trucks-courtesy-usa/) which includes some audio footage about the Toyotas in the Middle East, and it also says that the "wish list" of the so-called moderate Syrians that was handed to the US military back in 2014 when the US was handing out supplies included Toyota Hiluxes, the Toyota trucks that are now in the possession of ISIS, so, surprise surprise you give to the moderates and who ends up getting them?
**Well the non-moderates.**
As if there were really any moderates there in the terrorist group trying to take over Syria in the first place.
But that’s what they were having in their possession in terms of equipment.
Where they actually get the money to do what they do… well according to what we’re being told they looted the Iraqi army. They acquired as much is 429 million dollars from the Mosul central bank which they took over earlier that year.
They were extracting ransom money and extortion money from various governments throughout this time period, and they are selling oil from their northern Syria territories to the tune of as much as 2 million dollars a day, supposedly.
So those were the places where they were supposedly financing what’s going on, however we can contrast that with some other information acquired from different sources.
For example it’s been widely and repeatedly reported throughout that **private Gulf donors via Kuwait**, and apparently the Kuwaiti financial system was specifically well set up for this type of financing, but at any rate private gold donors have accounted for a lot of the money that has flowed into Syria to fund the various terrorist groups including ISIS and the others that were there, and again that was private donors not necessarily the **House of Saud** or anything of that sort but private donors from the Gulf, who obviously had religious reasons for trying to support the Sunni Wahabi Jihadist Muslims.
In this conversation about Who is behind ISIS, we stumble upon Benghazi and what became known as **Benghazi-Gate**.
**Benghazi was the lexus** where all of those Libyan arms were flowing from the Libyan terrorists to the Syrian terrorists, via Turkey and Jordan, and I think that’s an important part to keep in mind because those, again, are two very important players in this story.
What happened in Benghazi is an important example for what was happening in there and all the sources converge on this ISIS group – this ISL group – that suddenly seemed to spring out of nowhere but of course has been gestating there for 15 years and has been, as we’ve seen, involved with the US Pentagon, involved in various PSYOPS operations to make this group seem more important than it is.
**You can find more information about Benghazi in my recent article (search it in my articles tab).**
So that brings us to some of the questions of "Well where are these funds coming from and how are these troops being trained?" and as always, all roads lead to…Washington?
Here is an enlightening [broadcast of "Democracy Now!"]( https://youtu.be/dqtSaIikQ-o), with Amy Goodman and Adam Entous.
So the CIA in conjunction with their friends in Britain and France and Saudi Arabia and the UAE and elsewhere have converged in Jordan to train various Syrian militants – terrorists – at a base in Jordan.
Something considered as a conspiracy theory before, now it is confirmed even by the mainstream dinosaur media.
So "Well yes actually, [the US has been intimately involved]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140702140057/http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/); the CIA has been intimately involved in training a lot of the people who went on to become the top ISIS fighters".
And then the ""[corrected]( https://www.wnd.com/2014/06/officials-u-s-trained-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan/)"" version.
So if this sounds surprising well you haven’t been paying attention, not only to the Syrian story but really to any of these stories going back decades and decades, with the most famous of course being the US involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s back when they were helping the Freedom Fighters – the Taliban before they started going after the evil terrorists – the Taliban.
Unfortunately a script we know all too well and when it comes to how these groups are armed and trained it just continues.
[LT. GENERAL MCINERNEY]( https://youtu.be/elPBhP0mZTI):
> Syria we backed, I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people, and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that’s a little confusing to people, so I’ve always maintained and go back quite some time that we were backing the wrong types.
> I think it’s gonna turn out maybe this weekend, in a new special that Brett Baer’s gonna have Friday, it’s gonna show some of those weapons from Benghazi ended up in the hands of ISIS.
So we helped build ISIS. Now there’s a danger there and I’m with you.
So "we kind of build up ISIS oh and let’s go to the next news story." 😶
So again this is not controversial.
This is not something that we have to speculate about.
This is something that has been documented in a lot of mainstream contexts as well, so really this brings us to the heart of the question "Who is behind ISIS?"
There are at least 6 groups.
Someone could probably dig deeper and bring in some other groups but 6 of the main groups that we can identify as being the real powers that have brought ISIS to its position, and in alphabetical order that would be:
1. Israel,
2. NATO,
3. Qatar,
4. Saudi Arabia,
5. Turkey and
6. the USA,
although to a certain extent these are groups rather than nation-states per se.
Specifically in the case of Saudi Arabia where of course the House of Saud had institutional and fundamental reasons why it would not be happy about a radical caliphate on its doorstep, because obviously that would threaten the institution of the House of Saud itself, but certainly individual Saudis, private donors as I 've said, and including some members of the Royal House of Saud would be interested in helping fund a radical Wahabi jihadi Selapi??? group...
Take Turkey for example.
Turkey obviously has its fingerprints all over everything that’s happening in Syria and has been since the inception.
Turkey has a lot of different reasons for being involved that range from its constant requests to keep its neighbors fighting with each other and destabilized, using Islam as a weapon, Turkey is happy to do so.
I think the Turkish leadership has no allegiance really to Islam except for the fact that it’s a useful political tool for the largely Islamic Turkish population, and also it can be used in fights like this to keep its neighbors destabilized and to keep Turkey an important foothold for Europe and NATO in the region, and I think that’s one of the reasons.
I think they’re also obviously always looking to repress and find ways to stamp out their Kurdish population problem so I think this is one extension of that, and we’ve seen for example the false-flag recordings that were released with the high-ranking Turkish officials under Erdogan talking openly about how they wanted to stage an attack on Turkish targets in Syria in order to justify Turkish incursion into Syria, which of course brings with it the specter of NATO because of the mutual self-defense clause in the NATO article – the treaty – so Turkey a very, very menacing prospect/player in all of this and someone who is again been admittedly and documentably linked to the transfer of funds and arms to the terrorist groups in Syria.
Qatar has a number of reasons ranging again from religious to geopolitical, and maybe I 'll get more into the sort of pipeline politics that Qatar sees in all of this.
When it comes to NATO specifically the context is similar with Gladio B, ie. the Operation Gladio which was not a mere stay behind operation in Europe to counter some perceived or imagined Soviet occupation of Europe, but in fact a global operation that involved "Strategy of Tension" and false-flag terrorism as ways of achieving various NATO operation goals in various "theaters", and we’ve talked of course about Sibel Edmonds and her revelation of Gladio B, ie. the fermenting of Islamic terrorism in various parts of the world to further these aims and goals and taking over various squares on the geopolitical chess board, So you can think about Gladio B as a worldwide operation and I would see no reason why it wouldn’t also be operative in the Middle East, and we have to look for NATO fingerprints in what’s happening there, and we can see them through the actions, for example most specifically of the US, in helping to arm, fund and run PSYOP operations surrounding this ISI group lslamic state.
Let's get into more detail on some of these characters, for example of course Israel, who I think is interested in pretty much anything that happens in the Middle East, should be fairly apparent, but this is something that I documented specifically back in a previous article (see again my Articles tab).
Israel’s designs on Iraq have been well-known and well-understood for a long time but I think we have to see all of these invasions and overthrows and all of the destabilizations in the Middle East in recent years as part of a grander Zionist project for reshaping the Middle East, that we can say not only predates that five-year plan that General Wesley Clark talks about but predates it by decades at the very least, documentably and on the record.
All about the "Greater Israel", the Zionist plan for the Middle East (Oded Yinon) which was something that was developed in a document that was published in 1982 in the journal called Directions which was published by the Department of information for the World Zionist Organization, and this document was translated into English by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates you can find in my previous articles.
And of course there are also the Pipeline Politics in the Middle East and how they played into what’s going on in Syria.
Specifically with regard to a pipeline known as the ISI pipeline, Iran, Iraq, Syria pipeline or the Islamic pipeline.
The fact that there there was a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Iran, Iraq and Syria shortly before all of this kerfuffle in Syria began is again, highly telling of what this situation is at least partially about, and I think to a large extent this is a very important piece of this puzzle, and it shows why Assad suddenly became in the crosshairs despite the fact of having been a willing accomplice in the [CIA’s rendition and torture program]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Syria) for example, and sort of one of the "good boys" that the West "tolerated" for a long time, how he suddenly became enemy number one is the question, and the Islamic pipeline is one answer.
So there again is a direct interest for some of the members of that "Who is behind ISIS?" coalition for not getting behind Assad and in fact getting in his way, to try to stop the creation of this pipeline.
That ISI pipeline was completely getting around Turkey altogether, which would not be in Turkish interests and would not be in Qatari interests. Qatar of course having a gas of its own that it wants to export to Europe and wants to make part of the new European gas energy policy.
So again there are some direct motivations for why Iran, Iraq and Syria are in the target sights of these various powers that are converging on fighting the Islamic State threat.
Now let’s debunk some of the fear and propaganda that was swirling around about this, starting with the easy targets in the mainstream media who have been pimping this map of the Middle East that was supposedly part of some grand five-year war plan of the Islamic State, or something of that sort.
That map basically covered from North Africa, all the way from the western edge of North Africa, all the way through basically the top half of the African continent to the eastern part of Africa, across the Gulf into the Gulf states, into the Central Asia region, all the way up to the doorstep of China and Russia.
It was as far north as the Northern Caucasus, up through Turkey into Eastern Europe, and even Spain was part of that map.
It was marked as black as in being the aspirational hope of the growth of the Islamic State, as a part of a five years plan and it was labeled with all of these various regional names that were apparently going to be given to the various parts of the chessboard once the IS takes them over.
➡️ Now this looked like a very scary map – "Oh my god this is what Islamic State has planned, it’s their five-year plan, are you afraid? You’d better be very afraid".
Except for the fact that of course [it was all BS]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140817042320/http://aattp.org/seriously-nbc-station-posts-terrifying-isis-expanison-map-created-by-neofascists-on-twitter/).
And this has been displayed prominently all over NBC News and ABC News and of course the Daily Mail.
But the interesting part about that map was that even as ABC and NBC and others admitted it sourced back to a Twitter account for the "Third Position", and ultimately the map sourceed back, if you go all the way back to basically fans of the ISIS group who put this together as their wet dream project, just basically saying "This will belong to us" and it made absolutely no sense geopolitically in any sense.
[If you look at the map]( https://web.archive.org/web/20140707233833/http://io9.com/that-isis-caliphate-map-is-bogus-so-stop-freaking-ou-1598657469/all) it includes all sorts of areas of the map where even the Islamic areas of that map, they are completely different sorts of Islam that would not be compatible with, in any way, with the Islamic State and would have no interest or affinity to the people who supposedly comprise the Islamic State, etc.
👉 If you learnt something new in this article,, something you think is valuable for others to know, please do spread this information.
@ a262e97d:ddc3e696
2025-02-27 02:32:27
The ancient Greek tale of the ***Sword of Damocles*** tells of a Sicilian tyrant Dionysius II and his courtier Damocles. According to legend, Damocles envied Dionysius’s wealth and power, so the tyrant offered to switch places with the coutier for a day. Damocles eagerly accepted, reveling in luxury—until he noticed a sharp sword dangling above his head, held only by a single horsehair. The looming threat stripped away his enjoyment, revealing the constant peril that accompanies great power. It’s a story about the precariousness of fortune, where danger hovers just out of sight.
## Constantinople
Throughout history, there have been examples of such anxiety affecting beyond the individual onto a collective. One example that captures a society-wide sense of dread is the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This wasn’t just a city on edge; it was an entire civilization staring down its own collapse, with the tension building for decades before the final, brutal crescendo.
Picture the scene: Constantinople, the last bastion of the Eastern Roman Empire, a city of faded grandeur encircled by Ottoman forces under Mehmed II. By the mid-15th century, the empire had shrunk to a shadow of its former self, its walls battered by time and earlier sieges, its coffers nearly empty. The Byzantines knew the Turks were coming—Mehmed’s massive cannons, including the monstrous Basilica, were no secret. For years, they’d lived with the creeping certainty that their world was teetering on a knife’s edge, propped up only by fragile alliances and the hope of Western aid that never fully materialized. The city’s inhabitants—nobles, merchants, priests, and peasants alike—could feel the noose tightening as Ottoman scouts probed their defenses and trade routes withered.
A citizen of Constantinople in those final days might have said something like: “We feast on memories of glory, our golden domes gleaming still, but a shadow looms beyond the walls. Each night I hear the distant rumble of their engines, each day I count fewer ships in our harbor. Our prayers echo in Hagia Sophia, yet I wonder if God has turned His face from us. We are bound by a thread, and it frays with every passing hour.” It’s that Damocles vibe dialed up to apocalyptic levels—splendor undercut by the palpable, collective dread of annihilation.
The drama peaked on May 29, 1453, when Mehmed’s army breached the walls after a relentless 53-day siege. The city fell in a bloodbath: cannons shredded centuries-old fortifications, soldiers poured in, and the last emperor, Constantine XI, vanished into the fray, his fate unknown. Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque, and an empire that had endured for over a thousand years was snuffed out. The psychological weight beforehand—the years of knowing the end was near, yet clinging to a fraying hope—makes it a gut-punch of a historical moment. For your essay, it’s a setting that screams *inquiétude* on a grand scale, a whole society under that dangling sword until it finally dropped.
## French Revolution
More recently, consider the French Revolution. Here’s the bourgeoisie on the eve of 1789 again—wealthy but boxed in, sensing the old order’s collapse. Once the revolution ignited, everyone felt the blade: aristocrats faced the guillotine, revolutionaries feared counter-revolts, and even the masses worried about starvation or tyranny. It’s a carousel of Damocles moments—power shifted fast, and no one knew when the horsehair might snap.
Imagine, if you will, a member of France’s bourgeoisie—a well-off merchant or lawyer, say—on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789. They’ve climbed the social ladder through trade or education, but they’re still squeezed between the decadent nobility above and the restless poor below. The monarchy’s crumbling, the economy’s a mess, and whispers of revolt are growing louder. This bourgeois might describe their feelings with a nod to that old tale: “I sit at a banquet of my own making, wealth and status within reach, yet I feel a blade dangling above me. The nobles scorn us, the masses eye our gains, and the king’s faltering grip threatens to let it all fall. Every coin I’ve earned could be my undoing.” It’s a mix of pride in their rise and dread of the chaos that could snatch it away—Damocles at his feast, tasting both triumph and terror.
The French Revolution is the closest echo of Dionysius and Damocles: a society—especially the rising bourgeoisie and later revolutionary leaders—relishing newfound power (or the chance at it) while acutely aware of the fragility holding it together. The guillotine literally hung over heads, and the rapid turnover of factions (Girondins, Jacobins, Thermidorians) mirrors that precarious throne under a dangling blade. Spain’s war was too chaotic, too fractured for anyone to sit comfortably; McCarthy’s era had menace but lacked the all-encompassing upheaval. France in 1789–1799 is the banquet with the sword swaying overhead—everyone’s a guest, and no one’s safe.
## the Chainsaw of Donacles
In a gray, fluorescent-lit cubicle maze straight out of a dystopian *Office Space* reimagined as a euro-steampunk nightmare, the United States of 2025 hums with the dissonance of 1789 pre-revolutionary fervor. The air smells of burnt coffee and gear grease, the dull drone of bureaucracy punctuated by the hiss of steam pipes snaking along the walls above an endless sprawl of cubicles and flickering gas lamps. The air thick with wifi radiation and desperation.
Donald Trump, newly mandated by a roaring electorate to “drain the swamp,” roams between Mar-a-Lago’s opulent halls, the White House’s command center, and Air Force One’s plush skies. His *arme de prédilection*: a ostentatious gold-tipped pen, wielded like a guillotine’s decree. Trump grins, orange hair wild, and with a flourish, he signs resounding executive orders—EOs that thunder through the bureaucracy — smirking, “The swamp’s toast, folks.”
Enter Elon Musk, tasked with leading the DOGE task force—Department of Government Efficiency. He grips a gleaming chainsaw, a gift from Argentine firebrand Javier Milei, its blade etched with “Libertad o Muerte.”
His Zoomerwaffen—a brigade of Gen Z disruptors in brass goggles and hoodies—are the revolution’s shock troops in hoodies and brass goggles, armed with bare steel laptops and savage memes. These digital sans-culottes wield laptops like muskets, flooding X with memes that mock the Karens (“OK Boomer, meet the blockchain”), crashing servers with decentralized audits, and rigging AI bots to shred red tape faster than a guillotine drops. One Zoomer, vape cloud swirling, hacks a payroll database while blasting dubstep; another livestreams a *“Karen Meltdown Compilation”* as morale bombs. They’re the grease in Elon’s machine, turning DOGE into a viral uprising.
Elon’s Herculean task: slash the bloated federal beast down to size. From a Cybertruck-turned-mobile-HQ, smokestack puffing, Elon adjusts his top hat, a single LED flickering on its brim. “Time to saw through the bloat,” he quips and revs the beast, slashing budgets with a mad inventor’s glee. “Efficiency is the new Reign of Terror. Let's disrupt the guillotine’s monopoly on downsizing.” The zoomers cheer, their screens flashing with blockchain audits and TikTok takedowns of red tape as they slash budgets with blockchain precision, livestreaming the carnage on X.
But beyond the glass-walled boardrooms and armored Cybertrucks, the cubicles stretch into a Bastille of beige despair. Here reign the deep-staters — legions of federal lifers grown plump on decades of taxpayer largesse. They’re the ancient régime of red tape, peering over partition walls with powdered wigs askew, muttering about “due process” while clutching dog-eared manuals of byzantine regulations.
Picture these thousand Karens, each clutching a *“Manager of My Own Destiny”* mug, their lanyards clinking with pronoun pins and union badges; each a snowflake of entitled fury.
And above every sweat-stenched cubicle, a miniature chainsaw dangles by a fraying hemp thread.
One wretched teet-sucking swamp creature, a portly GS-14 named Linda, slams her “TPS Reports” onto a desk, her wig askew, shrieking, “I’ve earned my pension, you fascists! I've earned everything, fair and square!” Linda's personal Chainsaw of Donacles sways with every EO and Zoomer hack. Her ink-stained hands tremble as her steam-powered iPhone wheezes out another ding decrying ever more *“DOGE tyranny.”*
Across the floor, lanyards jangle — pronoun pins flashing — as Karens plot over stale croissants, whispering of jammed printers and leaked memos to fight back.
Trump’s banquet is victory, savored from Mar-a-Lago’s terraces or 30,000 feet up, untouchable. His mighty pen perpetually slashing through the old order.
Elon’s chainsaw roars, Zoomerwaffen dancing in its sparks, dismantling decades of excess.
The Karens sit under their blades — relics of a bloated regime, their banquet of entitlement souring as the threads fray and the swamp drains.
The Revolution’s *inquiétude* steams through: they built this world, gorged on its perks; and now the power they hoarded hangs by a hair Every Musk rev, every Trump signature, every Zoomer meme cuts closer.
“Efficiency’s here. Let them eat efficiency!” Elon tweets, and a chainsaw twitches.
A Karen shrieks. A rope snaps.
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Hope you enjoyed this steampunk *Office Space*-meets-1789, lovingly crafted by Grok and myself.
One final note on the Zoomerwaffen (a term I picked up from @realKingpilled): They’re the patriotic engine of this upheaval — tech-native, irreverent, and relentless. Think of them as the street agitators of 1789, but with code instead of pitchforks. They hack legacy systems to expose waste, flood social media with viral takedowns, and turn DOGE’s mission into a cultural juggernaut. Their focussed autism amplifies Elon’s chainsaw and Trump’s pen, making the Karens’ downfall a public spectacle. They’re the ones fraying those threads, one savage meme at a time.