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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...death.html

Thousands of Iraqi Christians pour out of Mosul after ISIS jihadis give them deadline to convert, pay or face death
ISIS told Christians they must convert, pay special tax or leave Mosul, Iraq
If they did not, there would be 'nothing for them but the sword', it declared
Deadline of noon (9am GMT) today was relayed by mosques in the region
Christians have now joined Shiite and other refugees in nearby Kurdistan
Chaldean patriarch: 'For first time in history, Mosul is empty of Christians'
Militants enforcing an extreme Islamic law launched offensive on June 9
By SOPHIE JANE EVANS
PUBLISHED: 09:13, 19 July 2014 | UPDATED: 21:14, 19 July 2014

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Thousands of Iraqi Christians today poured out of Mosul after ISIS jihadis gave them an ultimatum - convert, pay or face death.
The Islamic State terror group declared that Christians must either convert to Islam, pay a special tax or leave the city, around 250 miles north-west of Baghdad.
If they did not do so by noon (9am GMT) today, there would be 'nothing for them but the sword', it said.
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Exodus: Thousands of Iraqi Christians today poured out of Mosul after ISIS jihadis gave them an ultimatum - convert to Islam, pay a special tax or face death. Above, Christian women pray at a church in Arbil, Kurdistan
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Exodus: Thousands of Iraqi Christians today poured out of Mosul after ISIS jihadis gave them an ultimatum - convert to Islam, pay a special tax or face death. Above, Christian women pray at a church in Arbil, Kurdistan
As militants attempted to break government defences in strategic areas and edge closer to Baghdad, Christians fled to join hundreds of thousands of Shiite and other refugees in the neighbouring autonomous region of Kurdistan.
Their escape to the safety coincided with the expected homecoming of Iraq's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, after 18 months of medical treatment in Germany.

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Chaldean patriarch Louis Sako, who heads Iraq's largest Christian community, said the terrifying ultimatum had been relayed by mosques in ISIS-controlled Mosul.
He told AFP: 'Christian families are on their way to Dohuk and Arbil [in Kurdistan]. For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians.'
Refugees: The Christians joined hundreds of thousands of Shiite and other refugees in the neighbouring autonomous region of Kurdistan. Above, Shia Turkmens flee from Sincar to Arbil yesterday due to attacks
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Refugees: The Christians joined hundreds of thousands of Shiite and other refugees in the neighbouring autonomous region of Kurdistan. Above, Shia Turkmens flee from Sincar to Arbil yesterday due to attacks
Escape: Human Rights Watch said the Islamic State 'seems intent on wiping out all traces of minority groups from areas it now controls in Iraq.' Above, Shia Turkments carry their possessions to Arbil yesterday
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Escape: Human Rights Watch said the Islamic State 'seems intent on wiping out all traces of minority groups from areas it now controls in Iraq.' Above, Shia Turkments carry their possessions to Arbil yesterday
Most Christians in the northwestern Nineveh province fled in terror after jihadist-led militants enforcing an extreme version of sharia - or Islamic law - launched an offensive on June 9.
But many of the poorest families returned when the fighting stopped and ISIS started administering the city.
Mr Sako said the number of Christians who were still in Mosul on Thursday was around 25,000.
Today, Human Rights Watch said the Islamic State 'seems intent on wiping out all traces of minority groups from areas it now controls in Iraq.'
Journey: The mass displacement was the latest in six weeks of turmoil which has forced more than 600,000 people from their homes, left thousands dead and brought Iraq to the brink of collapse
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Journey: The mass displacement was the latest in six weeks of turmoil which has forced more than 600,000 people from their homes, left thousands dead and brought Iraq to the brink of collapse
Iraqi Christians flee after militants issue deadline to convert

Other minorities rooted in the same province of Nineveh have suffered even more than the Christians, according to crimes HRW documented against the Yazidis, as well as the Turkmen and Shabak Shiite communities.
The mass displacement was the latest in six weeks of turmoil which has forced more than 600,000 people from their homes, left thousands dead and brought Iraq to the brink of collapse.
IRAQ'S CHRISTIAN POPULATION
Iraq's Christian population includes Chaldean, Assyrian, Armenian and Syriac communities.
Some of these are among the world's oldest and speak a form of Aramaic, a language thought to have been spoken by Jesus Christ.
Chaldo-Assyrians follow eastern rites of the Catholic Church, while Syriacs consider themselves Eastern Orthodox.
The Christian population once numbered more than a million nationwide, with upwards of 600,000 in Baghdad alone, but now there are now fewer than 400,000 across Iraq.
This is largely because since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, sectarian attacks against them have been mounting.
Iraq is also home to a small community of Mandean Sabeans. They are not considered Christians and practice one of the world's oldest surviving Gnostic religions, but they worship John the Baptist as their central prophet.
Now-executed president Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz is from a Chaldean Catholic family and is one of Iraq's best known Christians.
Mr Talabani's return to his native Kurdistan today was likely to spark celebrations among supporters from his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.
He is widely celebrated as a skilled negotiator, who enjoys good relations with both the United States and Iran and has repeatedly mediated between Iraq's fractious politicians in recent years.
But some observers warned there was little the avuncular 80-year-old head of state could do to ease spiralling ethno-sectarian violence and rhetoric and roll back the Islamic State's expansion.
'I really do think this is a post-Talabani era. I've stuck my neck out there, but I haven't heard any Iraqis talking about him in any way being president,' said Toby Dodge, director of the London School of Economics' Middle East centre.
Federal forces collapsed, in some cases abandoning uniforms and weapons in their retreat, when fighters under the command of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi launched their assault.
The army has since regrouped, received intelligence, hardware and manpower from Washington, Moscow and Shiite militias, but nonetheless struggled to regain lost territory.
Security analysts have said Baghdad remains too big a target, but militants have in recent days repeatedly attacked targets that would expose the capital if captured.
On Thursday night, a jihadist commando stormed the Speicher air base north of ex-president Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, sparking a fierce battle.
'Last night, gunmen infiltrated the base. There were snipers and suicide bombers among them, they managed to reach the runway,' an intelligence officer who survived the attack told AFP.
Shocking: ISIS militants were captured on video taking sledgehammers to Christian and Muslim tombstones earlier this month. They were filmed attacking centuries-old graves in the city of Mosul in Ninevah province
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Shocking: ISIS militants were captured on video taking sledgehammers to Christian and Muslim tombstones earlier this month. They were filmed attacking centuries-old graves in the city of Mosul in Ninevah province
Attack: Donning balaclavas and black coats, the militants swung sledgehammers into the old tombstones
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Attack: Donning balaclavas and black coats, the militants swung sledgehammers into the old tombstones
He said the pilots managed to fly all but one of the base's aircraft to safety - but a statement posted on jihadist Internet sites said many were destroyed.
Many people, including within his own Shiite alliance that comfortably won April elections, now see Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's departure as essential to national reconciliation efforts.
In a Friday sermon delivered by one of his spokesmen in Karbala, the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani - Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric - appeared to lean in the same direction.
'Christian families are on their way to Dohuk and Arbil [in Kurdistan]. For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians'
Chaldean patriarch Louis Sako
'The new government should have broad national acceptance and be capable of solving the crisis in the country and correcting the mistakes of the past,' he said.
Parliamentary blocs have until Sunday to submit nominees for the post of president, whose election is the next step in what has been a protracted and acrimonious process to renew Iraq's leadership.
Despite his unexpected return, there is little expectation that Mr Talabani, who has been president since 2005, will seek another term.
It comes just weeks after a video emerged showing ISIS militants taking sledgehammers to centuries-old tombstones in Mosul in Ninevah province.
Donning balaclavas and black coats, the rebels swung sledgehammers into the tombs, causing pieces of dust and stone to fly through the air.
Sha


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z381Vs7H9q

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Iraq: Blowback Blackwater-Style
Column: Politics Region: Middle East Country: Iraq
234234When we think about the term “blowback,” we think of the rogues gallery of foreign mercenary forces the United States has created or exploited over the decades who invariably end up turning on their creators. The most prominent among these is Al Qaeda who, legend tells, was created in the Afghan mountains by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980′s. Flush with cash and weapons, this Al Qaeda would go from lauded freedom fighters to America’s preeminent global enemy, conveniently replacing the Soviet Union as the “free world’s” new arch enemy as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Other “blowbacks” in the making include the terrorist forces the United States, many in Europe, and the Persian Gulf monarchies have created in their quest to reorder such nations as Libya, Syria, and now apparently Iraq. Time Magazine’s mid-July 2014 issue includes a story titled literally, “Blowback,” claiming, “with thousands of Westerners fighting for Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq, a foreign jihad no longer seems so distant, and officials fear that some of these fighters may eventually return radicalized by their experience – and ready to bring their war home.”

Either by design or convenience, this predictable “blowback” allows the US, Europe, and others to continue unpopular wars overseas while justifying the expansion of ever increasing security states that stifle opposition at home. But now there is a new kind of “blowback” that students of history recognize well, and while predictable, may be as inevitable as it is unwelcomed by those that created it.

The Irony: Private Security Contractors Increase Insecurity

The New York Times revealed in a stunning report titled, “Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater,” revealed that, “just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.”

New York Times would continue by revealing that “American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators,” revealing the outlaw nature of America’s private contractors was worse than even imagined. The NYT continues, portraying the contractors as drug-addled, unprofessional, and even incompetent, but always very dangerous.

What the State Department was left with was a reality that the United States had trusted the security of Americans to drug addicts, alcoholics, and unpredictable psychopathic killers. While their criminal energy was directed at Iraqis, the US State Department and the US Embassy, who depended on Blackwater for their security, knew that at any moment, this unpredictable, unprofessional organization could easily turn on them and no one could stop them.

Blackwater did not just operate in Iraq. The NYT states that they also were operating as far as China, and the various re-brandings of the organization have operated across multiple continents and amid many conflicts. It, like Al Qaeda, has become an unofficial arm of American hegemony, but Blackwater is neither a novel organization, nor its ultimate failure to achieve America’s goals abroad a surprise.

The Late Roman Empire and the Curse of Mercenary Armies

The Roman Republic was forged by a professional army of highly motivated Romans. The resulting Roman Empire dwindled under and was eventually destroyed by an unprofessional, disjointed network of foreign mercenaries, as part of greater socioeconomic and political decline. Often times, these mercenaries would take turns raiding and pillaging Rome, carving out fiefdoms from Roman territory and allying themselves with Rome’s enemies. While historians can argue whether such chaos amid Rome’s security apparatus was the cause or effect of imperial decline, the growing use of mercenary armies appears to be a feature of hegemonic decline in either case.

For Rome, German Goths that had lined their mercenary ranks eventually overwhelmed and ended the Empire in the West. The problem with employing mercenaries who fight for wealth is that any and all before them are seen as either potential targets or potential obstructions toward greater wealth. The use of temporary and limited numbers of mercenaries has been common practice throughout the ages, but the moment these mercenaries become a permanent, then growing addition to a nation’s or empire’s armed forces, the day they turn on those they serve is inevitable.

Blackwater and other rogue armed factions operating within the West pose as much a danger to those who perceive themselves as benefactors, as to those perceived as the West’s enemies. While the NYT report covers threats that have sent a ripple of shock through Western society regarding a contractor firm already widely reviled, there may have been incidences left unreported where such threats were carried out.

The NYT fails to reveal the hidden and growing influence of America’s private contractors, but students of history know regardless of what NYT reports, that influence and the danger it represents to America today and its future tomorrow, is unquestionably inevitable. It is not a matter of ‘if’ America meets its reckoning with its mercenary armies just as the late Roman Empire did, it is a matter of ‘when.’

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
http://journal-neo.org/2014/07/20/blowba...ter-style/

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/0...KT20140709
Exclusive: Iraq tells U.N. that 'terrorist groups' seized nuclear materials
BY MICHELLE NICHOLS

(Reuters) - Insurgents in Iraq have seized nuclear materials used for scientific research at a university in the country's north, Iraq told the United Nations in a letter appealing for help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad."

Nearly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of uranium compounds were kept at Mosul University, Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the July 8 letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

"Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state," Alhakim wrote, adding that such materials "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction."

"These nuclear materials, despite the limited amounts mentioned, can enable terrorist groups, with the availability of the required expertise, to use it separate or in combination with other materials in its terrorist acts," said Alhakim.

He warned that they could also be smuggled out of Iraq.

A U.S. government source familiar with the matter said the materials were not believed to be enriched uranium and therefore would be difficult to use to manufacture into a weapon. Another U.S. official familiar with security matters said he was unaware of this development raising any alarm among U.S. authorities.

A Sunni Muslim group known as the Islamic State is spearheading a patchwork of insurgents who have taken over large swaths of Syria and Iraq. The al Qaeda offshoot until recently called itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

"The Republic of Iraq is notifying the international community of these dangerous developments and asking for help and the needed support to stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad," Alhakim wrote.

Iraq acceded to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material on Monday, said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The convention requires states to protect nuclear facilities and material in peaceful domestic use, storage and transport.

"It also provides for expanded cooperation between and among states regarding rapid measures to locate and recover stolen or smuggled nuclear material, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage, and prevent and combat related offences," according to the IAEA.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; editing by Andrew Hay)

[Владимир Петровић]

Kurdish forces 'retake Mosul dam' from IS militants

Kurdish forces in northern Iraq have taken control of Iraq's largest dam after its capture by Islamic State (IS) militants, Kurdish officials say.

Kurdish ground forces supported by US air strikes launched the operation to take Mosul dam on Sunday morning.

Kurdish sources said they were still trying to clear mines and booby traps from the area round the dam, a process which could take several hours.

The strategically important dam was seized by IS militants on 7 August.

It supplies water and electricity to northern Iraq and there had been fears the IS militants could use it to flood areas downstream.

MORE ON > http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28826349#"

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Another Saudi Coverup Scandal Revealed

Sept. 5, 2014 (EIRNS)—U.S. government sources have confirmed that a "treasure trove" of documents confiscated in the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, exposing the direct backing of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other Gulf Cooperation Council states for Al Qaeda have been suppressed. One Washington source who had some knowledge of the bin Laden documents emphasized that the "first priority remains the release of the 28 pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry, which has been stalled for more than a dozen years." Another U.S. official suggested that CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have enforced a total coverup of the damaging documents and have suppressed their being accessed by Congressional intelligence oversight committees and even the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

In May 2012, 17 documents, totaling 175 pages, were declassified and made public by the West Point Center for Combatting Terrorism. Those documents exclusively dealt with internal Al Qaeda communications and revealed splits between "core Al Qaeda" and affiliated groups in Iraq and Yemen. None of the declassified documents dealt with relations between bin Laden and any of the Gulf States or Pakistan. News coverage at the time of their release confirmed that all documents referencing Al Qaeda links to Pakistan’s ISI were classified and blocked from public disclosure. At the time that the West Point report was released, John Brennan was still at the White House as President Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor.

One American diplomat emphasized that the still-classified documents are devastating for a number of Saudi and other Gulf officials whose intimate links to bin Laden and Al Qaeda would force a significant shift in U.S. relations. Some published sources have documented that Prince Turki bin Faisal sent a personal emissary to Afghanistan in 1997 to negotiate a deal with bin Laden for Al Qaeda to drop its targetting of the Saudi Royal Family—in return for allowing a renewed flood of money to go from the Gulf states to the terror group. A year later, in 1998, two U.S. embassies in Africa were car bombed by Al Qaeda, followed by the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and then 9/11. At the time of the 1997 rapprochement, Prince Turki was head of Saudi intelligence.

Prof Miroljub Jevtic had documented this many years ago!

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Iraq: C.I.A. And IS Are United
September 21, 2014



(BAGHDAD) The United States has conducted an escalating campaign of deadly airstrikes against the extremists of the Islamic State for more than a month. But that appears to have done little to tamp down the conspiracy theories still circulating from the streets of Baghdad to the highest levels of Iraqi government that the C.I.A. is secretly behind the same extremists that it is now attacking.

“We know about who made Daesh,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a deputy prime minister, using an Arabic shorthand for the Islamic State on Saturday at a demonstration called by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to warn against the possible deployment of American ground troops. Mr. Sadr publicly blamed the C.I.A. for creating the Islamic State in a speech last week, and interviews suggested that most of the few thousand people at the demonstration, including dozens of members of Parliament, subscribed to the same theory. (Mr. Sadr is considered close to Iran, and the theory is popular there as well.)

How ISIS Works
With oil revenues, arms and organization, the jihadist group controls vast stretches of Syria and Iraq and aspires to statehood.


OPEN GRAPHIC
The prevalence of the theory in the streets underscored the deep suspicions of the American military’s return to Iraq more than a decade after its invasion, in 2003. The casual endorsement by a senior official, though, was also a pointed reminder that the new Iraqi government may be an awkward partner for the American-led campaign to drive out the extremists.

The Islamic State, also known by the acronym ISIS, has conquered many of the predominantly Sunni Muslim provinces in Iraq’s northeast, aided by the alienation of many residents to the Shiite-dominated government of the former prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. President Obama has insisted repeatedly that American military action against the Islamic State depended on the installation of a more inclusive government in Baghdad, but he moved ahead before it was complete.

The Parliament has not yet confirmed nominees for the crucial posts of interior or defense minister, in part because of discord between Sunni and Shiite factions, and the Iraqi news media has reported that it may be more than a month before the posts are filled.

The demonstration on Saturday was the latest in a series of signals from Shiite leaders or militias, especially those considered close to Iran, warning the United States not to put its soldiers back on the ground. Mr. Obama has pledged not to send combat troops, but he seems to have convinced few Iraqis. “We don’t trust him,” said Raad Hatem, 40.

Haidar al-Assadi, 40, agreed. “The Islamic State is a clear creation of the United States, and the United States is trying to intervene again using the excuse of the Islamic State,” he said.

Shiite militias and volunteers, he said, were already answering the call from religious leaders to defend Iraq from the Islamic State without American help. “This is how we do it,” he said, adding that the same forces would keep American troops out. “The main reason Obama is saying he will not invade again is because he knows the Islamic resistance” of the Shiite militias “and he does not want to lose a single soldier.”

The leader of the Islamic State, for his part, declared on Saturday that he defied the world to stop him.

“The conspiracies of Jews, Christians, Shiites and all the tyrannical regimes in the Muslim countries have been powerless to make the Islamic State deviate from its path,” the leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared in an audio recording released over the Internet, using derogatory terms from early Islamic history to refer to Christians and Shiites.

“The entire world saw the powerlessness of America and its allies before a group of believers,” he said. “People now realize that victory is from God, and it shall not be aborted by armies and their arsenals.”

Many at the rally in Baghdad said they welcomed airstrikes against Mr. Baghdadi’s Islamic State but not American ground forces, the position that Mr. Sadr has taken. Many of the 30 lawmakers backed by Mr. Sadr — out of a Parliament of 328 seats — attended the rally.

Mr. Sadr’s supporters opposed Mr. Maliki, the former prime minister, and many at the rally were quick to criticize the former government for mistakes like failing to build a more dependable army. “We had a good army, so where is this army now?” asked Waleed al-Hasnawi, 35. “Maliki gave them everything, but they just left the battlefield.”

But few if any blamed Mr. Maliki for alienating Sunnis, as American officials assert, by permitting sectarian abuses under the Shiite-dominated security forces.

Omar al-Jabouri, 31, a Sunni Muslim from a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad who attended the rally and said he volunteers with a Shiite brigade, argued that Mr. Maliki had alienated most Iraqis, regardless of their sect.

“He did not just exclude and marginalize the Sunni people; he ignored the Shiite people, too,” Mr. Jabouri said. “He gave special help to his family, his friends, people close to him. He did not really help the Shiite people, as many people think.”

But the Islamic State was a different story, Mr. Jabouri said. “It is obvious to everyone that the Islamic State is a creation of the United States and Israel.”

http://whitehousewhispers.com/iraq-c-i-a...re-united/

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http://govtslaves.info/isis-kills-300-ir...ah-attack/
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/23/...-industry/