Young Boy Escapes ISIS by Becoming a Suicide Bomber

/0 Comments/in , , /by

ISIS BeheadingBy Nicholas Kurch. Fourteen-year-old Usaid Barho of Syria was just like any other kid: He loved playing sports, listening to music and wanted to one day become a doctor.

Then he was thrust into the world of ISIS, who pressured him to become a member by using his Islamic faith. When he realized that ISIS was not for him, he escaped the terror group the only way he knew how.

He volunteered himself to become a suicide bomber.

Rather than killing himself and many others at a mosque in Baghdad, Barho immediately surrendered himself to authorities. The bomb-vest was disarmed and the boy was taken into custody:

“’If I were a fighter and tried to surrender to security forces they might kill me, with my gun in my hand,’ he said explaining how he used the opportunity as a suicide bomber to escape ISIS.” (Read more about how the young boy escapes ISIS HERE)

________________________________________________

Nearly 2,000 Executed by ISIS Since June

By Newsmax. Islamic State group jihadists have murdered nearly 2,000 people in Syria — half of them from an important Sunni tribe — since announcing their “caliphate” in June, a monitoring group said Sunday.

“The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented the execution by the Islamic State of 1,878 people in Syria between June 28 when it announced its ‘caliphate’ and December 27,” the group said in a statement. . .

It said the victims were shot dead, beheaded or stoned to death in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Hama, Homs, Hasakeh and Raqa.

Of those killed, 1,175 were civilians who included four children and eight women.

The dead included 930 members of the Shaitat tribe which rose up against IS in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor in the summer. (Read more from this story HERE)

_______________________________________________

ISIS Goes to Twitter to Ask how Fighter Pilot Should be Killed

By Justen Charters. Following the capture of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasba by ISIS terrorists, the Islamic State and its followers have taken to Twitter to show the world that depravity is just a game to them.

While ISIS is infamous for beheading its captives, some of their suggestions on what to do with al-Kasaba are even more barbaric than beheading. According to Voactiv:

ISIS supporters are having the morbid debate predominantly on Twitter, using the hashtag “Suggest a Way to Kill the Jordanian Pilot Pig”. With over a thousand retweets, the hashtag is gaining popularity.

One terrorist recommends to use a bulldozer to run over al-Kasaba. (Read more from this story HERE)

Obama Admin. Spends Christmas Helping Islamists Get Off Terror List

/14 Comments/in , , /by

Muslim BillboardsBy Patrick Howley. The Obama administration spent Christmas week trying to get two Islamist organizations off a foreign country’s terror list.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society are both listed as Islamist organizations by the Islamist Money In Politics database, which tracks copious political spending by figures linked to the groups. The Muslim American Society was founded as an American-based Muslim Brotherhood front group.

CAIR and MAS representatives met with “senior U.S. government officials” just days before Christmas to discuss the groups’ inclusion on the United Arab Emirates’ official list of terrorist organizations.

Read more about how the Obama Administration was helping Islamists with their terror problems HERE.
__________________________________________________________________

Bachmann: Obama Has Embraced “Islamic Jihad” at Every Turn

By David McCabe. Outgoing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama has embraced the “agenda of Islamic jihad” at every turn.

“I have been very surprised, to answer your question, to see the president of the United States, at every turn, cut the legs off of our ally Israel, and in fact embrace and lift up the agenda of Islamic jihad,” she said in an interview released Wednesday with “Washington Watch,” a radio show produced by the socially conservative Family Research Council.

Bachmann criticized the president for writing to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to encourage a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.

“This really is a spiritual battle that we’re dealing with,” she added. “And while the president continues to say that this is not about the religion of Islam, I beg to differ.” Read more from this story HERE.

North Korean Internet "Erased From the Global Map"; US Attack Suspected

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo credit: kalleboo

Photo credit: kalleboo

By Dana Ford. North Korea’s Internet was back up Tuesday after a more than nine-hour outage, according to Dyn Research, a company that monitors Internet performance.

The disruption came amid an escalating war of words between the United States and North Korea over a massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

“Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently,” Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, said when the Internet was down.

Matthew Prince, president of CloudFlare, a performance and security company, described the disruption as if “all the routes to get to North Korea just disappeared.

“It’s as if North Korea got erased from the global map of the Internet,” he said.

___________________________________________________________

Canadians Fight Back Against North Korea, Plan ‘The Interview’ Showings

By Natalie Johnson. Sony Pictures’ controversial cancellation of a new movie, “The Interview,” following North Korean terrorist threats has inspired planned independent screenings in Toronto and Montreal.

Taylor Scollon’s Toronto Facebook event “The Interview Screening/Suck It, Kim Jong Un/Liberty in North Korea Fundraiser” launched Dec. 19 and has already garnered 4,400 “attending” responses.

“The North Korean regime maintains power through fear, and I think it’s troubling that they are (successfully at this point) using fear to suppress criticism and satire, even outside their borders,” Scollon told Mashable.

He added that the movie’s cancellation is a “good opportunity to raise awareness about the ongoing plight of the North Korean people.” Read more from this story HERE.

Watch a Green Comet Streak Across the Sky for Christmas

/7 Comments/in , /by

green cometDiscovered only this past August, comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) is now quickly brightening to naked-eye visibility as it moves from the deep southern sky into prime viewing location for observers throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The comet is already putting on a Christmas show, glowing green thanks to molecules that glow when hit by the sun’s solar wind.

This icy visitor to the inner solar system was first spotted by its namesake, Terry Lovejoy, an Australian astronomer using a common backyard telescope with only an eight-inch mirror. He spotted the comet while it was still a very faint 15th magnitude.

The comet wasn’t predicted to become visible with the unaided eye until late January or February 2015. But comets can be unpredictable, with chaotic surface activity as they heat up and melt while nearing the sun during orbit. Since summer, the comet’s brightness has shot up by hundreds of times.

In fact, some observers in the Southern Hemisphere are reporting that it has brightened to magnitude 6, meaning that it has technically reached naked-eye levels already. It’s now an easy target to find with binoculars, showing up as a distinct hazy ball.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Preacher Who Brought Down a Dictator

/2 Comments/in , /by

Romanian Pastor[H]ow many of us know the story of Laszlo Tokes, a Protestant pastor who in December 1989 stood up to the Romanian communist despot Nicolae Ceausescu and sparked a people’s revolution that freed Romania from a tyranny the equal of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin?

In the spring of 1989, while other Soviet satellites were challenging their communist leaders, Romania remained in the iron grip of the totalitarian Ceausescu regime. Few dared to speak out against “President” Ceausescu and his Stalinist secret police, the Securitate.

A notable exception was 37-year-old Laszlo Tokes, the assistant pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church in the Transylvanian town of Timisoara. The theme of his sermons was simple but arresting: “We do not have to support the dictatorship and the dictator Ceausescu.” No one had dared utter such a public challenge.

Ordered to stop preaching, Tokes refused. Directed to leave the apartment in which he and his family were living and move to a distant isolated town, he refused. In November, attackers armed with knives broke into his church apartment, but Tokes and friends fought them off. In mid-December when an eviction order was issued, members of Tokes’s congregation began a vigil outside his lodging, and a human chain formed around the block. . .

Two days later, on direct orders from Ceausescu, communist troops fired on a large crowd gathered in the town center of Timisoara, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocents. This cowardly bloody act was the catalyst for a spontaneous people’s revolt that quickly spread across the country and to the capital city of Bucharest.

Read more about how this preacher brought down a dictator HERE.

North Korea Blames US For Internet Outage, Calls Obama a "Monkey Inhabiting a Tropical Rainforest"

/5 Comments/in , , /by

NKoreaLeaderBy FoxNews.com. North Korea blames the U.S. for the country’s internet shutdown amid allegations of the country hacking Sony Pictures as retaliation for releasing a movie featuring the assassination of the Kim Jong-un.

The country’s National Defense Commission also hurled a racial insult toward President Obama calling him a “monkey inhabiting a tropical forest.”

The regime has vehemently denied any involvement in the cyberattack on Sony, but has expressed its displeasure of the movie.

It is not the first time North Korea has hurled insults toward Washington. Earlier this year, the North called U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a wolf with a “hideous” lantern jaw and then called South Korean President Park Guen-hye a prostitute. (Read more about how North Korea blames US HERE)
________________________________________________________________________

FBI’s Claim that North Korea Hacked Sony Faces Criticism

By Judson Berger. It’s been a week since the U.S. government blamed North Korea for the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment — and many security experts still aren’t convinced Kim Jong-un is the culprit.

The FBI’s announcement, rather than settling the debate, has only fueled widespread speculation over the source of the attack.

Skeptics claim the evidence the FBI cited is flimsy and inconclusive. They question whether Pyongyang really had the motive, or the ability, to scramble Sony’s systems.

And they’re pushing a range of alternative theories.

Could it have been a disgruntled former Sony employee? Another, more technologically savvy, foreign government? A private band of hackers? (Read more from this story HERE)
________________________________________________________________________

Some Speculate that North Korean Hackers are Behind Fatal Accident at South Korean Nuclear Plant

By John Hayward. South Korea’s government-run hydroelectric and nuclear power company was threatened by an enigmatic group of hackers last week, at the same time the North Korean government was threatening to attack the United States and its allies for daring to suggest that Kim Jong Un’s regime might be behind the attack on Sony Pictures. South Korea puts up with a steady stream of mischief from hackers who profess varying degrees of separation from the North Korean government, but this latest threat was taken very seriously.

The mysterious attackers stole and published blueprints of South Korean nuclear reactors and personal data on plant employees, along with some ominous technical data related to accidental radiation exposure, and suggested something bad would happen if at least three of the country’s 23 reactors were not shut down by Christmas Day. As the UK Independent reported, anti-nuke radicals in Hawaii claimed responsibility for the data leak, but their culpability was not firmly established. Students of the First Cyber War should by now be familiar with the shadow dances of deniability and separation conducted by hostile regimes, and the converse possibility that the work of independent digital vandals could be mistakenly attributed to foreign powers with aligned interests… especially if said foreign powers make a point of applauding when something goes kablooey. Nobody’s wearing a uniform or marching under a flag in this new brand of warfare.

The South Korean government took the threat seriously enough to conduct emergency drills and step up cybersecurity efforts. Emergency teams were put on standby alert through New Year’s Day. . .

Today brings word that a fatal accident has occurred at the site of a nuclear plant under construction in the southeastern city of Ulsan. (Read more from this story HERE)
________________________________________________________________________

The Anti-North Korean film The Interview hit with hundreds of thousands of pirated downloads on Christmas

By Daniel Nussbaum. The Interview is a hit with pirates. The now-infamous Sony Pictures comedy has already been illegally downloaded over 750,000 times in its first 20 hours of release, file-sharing news website TorrentFreak told Breitbart News Thursday morning.

The film began popping up on illegal downloading sites about an hour after its 1 pm Eastern release on YouTube, XBox, Google Play, and other online avenues on Christmas Day. However, only U.S. residents could watch the film through those online outlets, leaving many international users out of luck.

That’s where the pirating comes in. Many commenters on the torrent’s download page indicated that they would have paid to see the film, had they been given the opportunity.

“I want to pay to see it,” wrote one commenter. “But as I’m not in the US, I can’t pay to see it or see it from where I live. It’s not even out in the cinemas where I live and probably will not be. So torrent is the only way I can see it.”

Even the torrent site The Pirate Bay, considered the largest in the world, included a link to the film on the top left corner of its site, despite the site having been down for weeks after a raid by Swedish police crippled its servers. (Read more from this story HERE)

Russia: NATO is Our Number One Military Threat

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Russia identified NATO as the nation’s number one military threat and raised the possibility of a broader use of precision conventional weapons to deter foreign aggression under a new military doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

NATO flatly denied it is a threat to Russia, and accused Moscow of undermining European security.

The new doctrine, which comes amid tensions over Ukraine, reflected the Kremlin’s readiness to take a stronger posture in response to what it sees as U.S.-led efforts to isolate and weaken Russia.

The paper maintains the provisions of the previous, 2010 edition of the military doctrine regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

It says Russia could employ nuclear weapons in retaliation for the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the country or its allies, and also in the case of aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence” of the Russian state. (Read more from this story HERE)

ISIS Can't Govern: ISIS Controlled Syria, Iraq Falling Apart

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The Independent

Photo Credit: The Independent

By Liz Sly. Isis’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling, as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules.

Residents say services are collapsing, prices are soaring and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” that Isis proclaimed in Iraq and Syria, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims.

Slick videos depicting functioning governing offices and the distribution of aid fail to match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganised, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Isis currency has not materialised, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few and disease is on the rise.

In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, according to a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Hepatitis was spreading and flour for bread was becoming increasingly scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, rubbish piles up uncollected and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps . . . (Read more about ISIS’s failures in ISIS controlled Syria and Iraq HERE)
________________________________________________________________

Despite ISIS’s Dysfunctional Self-Governance, Some Believe We’re Grossly Underestimating ISIS

By Noah Rothman. Following the news that Islamic State fighters had successfully downed a Jordanian warplane and captured its pilot, U.S. Central Command claimed that there was no evidence that ISIS was responsible for shooting that aircraft out of the sky. In a statement, CENTCOM offered glowing praise for America’s freshly demoralized regional ally and offered no alternative theory for why that aircraft was lost. Take that as you will.

For all the talk of ISIS’s military prowess, or lack thereof as the case above may be, there has until recently been a dearth of substantive discussion about the state of affairs in the areas occupied by ISIS. The dangerous campaign being waged by coalition forces on the fringes of the so-called Islamic State has only just begun, and it is already claiming American and coalition assets and lives. Eventually, that campaign will need to press on into the state’s interior.

But “eventually” seems farther and farther off as the weeks go by. . .

This situation brought to mind recent comments from . In an interview following his return from ISIS-controlled areas, the intrepid reporter wondered if Western leaders were not seriously underestimating the danger posed by ISIS’s brutish militants.

In an interview with CNN, [Juergen Todenhoefer, a journalist who recently toured areas under Islamic State control] told familiar tales of the horrors of child soldiers, systematic beheadings, and foreign fighters with an unshakable loyalty to ISIS’s cause for whom the word “zealotry” seems an insufficient description. He also told, however, of the status of the “state” aspects of the Islamic State. Perhaps Todenhoefer’s most terrifying revelation was his claim that a sense of routine is beginning to take hold amongst the remaining residents of the cities flying an ISIS banner. (Read more from this story HERE)

Asia Marks 10th Anniversary of Worst Natural Disaster in Modern History

/0 Comments/in , /by

tsunamiBeachside memorials and religious services were held across Asia on Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami that left more than a quarter million people dead in one of modern history’s worst natural disasters.

The devastating Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean rim. It eradicated entire coastal communities, decimated families and crashed over tourist-filled beaches the morning after Christmas. Survivors waded through a horror show of corpse-filled waters . . .

The disaster was triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake, the region’s most powerful in 40 years, that tore open the seabed bed off of Indonesia’s Sumatran coast, displacing billions of tons of water and sending waves roaring across the Indian Ocean at jetliner speeds as far away as East Africa. . .

More than 160,000 people died in Indonesia, more than half of the total 230,000 people killed across the region. . .

In Sri Lanka, the water swept a passenger train from its tracks, killing nearly 2,000 people in a single blow. A symbolic recreation of the train journey was planned as part of Friday’s ceremonies.

Read more from this story HERE.

Defiant Christians Gather in Baghdad for Christmas Mass

/3 Comments/in , /by

Iraqi Christmas EveBy Saif Hameed. Baghdad’s embattled Christian community worshipped defiantly Wednesday night at Christmas Eve mass.

The pews filled at Baghdad’s Sacred Heart church, as people remembered the darkest year in memory.

Blast walls shielded the church and seven policeman flanked the outside of the house of worship, in an indication of the government’s fear of an attack on the religious groups by jihadists who consider them non-believers.

The congregation sang in unison: “Praise Jesus, our Lord. Oh praise him” as incense burnt in the darkened church. Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________

In Iraq, displaced but defiant Christians gather for a somber Christmas

By Molly Hennessey Fiske. The children awoke the day before Christmas behind blast walls and armed guards, in a dingy Syrian Catholic schoolhouse strung with clotheslines. Their families have been cooking on hot plates and sleeping on pallets there in recent months, forced from their homes in northern Iraq by Islamic State militants.

They took turns showering in the communal bathroom, dressed in donated clothes and prepared to meet Santa.

This year, there would be no big holiday parties at Our Lady of Salvation, a local landmark topped by a towering cross that’s visible for miles. Christians are leaving Iraq, the population down from more than 1 million a decade ago to about 350,000, many of them displaced.

In the north, Islamic State fighters have forced thousands to flee. In Baghdad, where the security situation is still so tenuous that priests worried that celebrations could provoke an attack. Last Christmas, three bombings targeted Christians, including a Roman Catholic church, and killed 38 people.

Shortly before the 6 p.m. Christmas Eve service, the children and their families filed out of the school past concrete barriers topped with barbed wire and into the packed church for several hours of singing and prayer, the highlight of their day, hoping the strangers they met meant them no harm. Read more from this story HERE.
_______________________________________________________

Traditions of Christmas Found Only in Memory

By Tim Arango. For months now, since militants of the Islamic State stormed her hometown, Qaraqosh, in northern Iraq, near Mosul, and began killing and driving out Christians, home for Miriam and dozens of her old neighbors has been the run-down Al Makasid Primary School in Baghdad. To get by, they have relied on the kindnesses of the nearby church, and of local Muslims, too.

In the school’s dingy courtyard there is a tree, trimmed in balls and bells, and a Nativity scene. A few gifts have been donated — toys, clothes, dolls and candies. It is not much, and nothing like being at home, but Christmas has not been the same in Iraq for a long time now.

Two numbers tell that story. In 2003, when the Americans invaded, there were an estimated 1.5 million Christians living in Iraq. Today, experts say, there are fewer than 400,000, many of them on the run from the Islamic State. Read more from this story HERE.