ISIS or ISIL? MULTIPLE BRANDS FOR TERROR, THE BACKGROUND AND POSSIBILITIES

Hello World,

As ISIS is gaining notoriety at a global level, my observation of a specific segment of news tells me something is off-key and it is not by default but rather by design. I am not sure about the details and so I wish to begin with my observation and try to drive backwards to see if there is a starting point that is reachable from this point in time.

Here is my observation:

Obama and ISIL

Barrack Obama, in almost all of the interviews and speeches he did, is using the term ‘ISIL’ instead of ‘ISIS.’

Here is a small compilation of video clips of him using the titles ‘ISIL’:

Now from what I understand, ISIL stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Levant and ISIS stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

What I don’t understand is why is the head of a nation  intentionally using a brand that is otherwise largely neglected by the mainstream media. My automatic response is to look into the possibility of a reason behind such an insignificant yet odd-looking outlier.

ISIS/ISIL and What They Are

Here is a small clip compilation of Barrack Obama defining the ‘ISIL’ as he [or should we say, the US administration] perceives it to be:

Even when the journalist uses the term ISIS, Barrack Obama uses the term ISIL. He doesn't seem to care to make the correction established. Here is a clip showing that:

So the definition here indicates that those who were affiliated with Al-Qaeda and/or other larger terror networks in Iraq got together to form a new alliance for an operations of their own.In one way, this makes a little sense. My understanding says, ISIS [I would call it this way] is an integrated terror network where one large group decided the branding and objectives and other regional groups pledged their support to the growing brand and the brand is on a continuous expansion mode as new groups across the Middle-East are integrating under the ISIS banner while also attracting international terror groups.

Here’s what confuses me. See below a video clip of a press-meet where Barrack Obama says he ordered the speeding up of the training of ‘ISIL’ forces and Sunni tribes:

The news reports indicate that the White House later clarified it was a typo/mis-spell incident and the statement had not intended to use ‘ISIL.’

If it was not ‘ISIL’, what was it? ……ISIS??? Also apart from the specific banner, he also mentions Sunni tribes. So the US government has been actively supporting other groups in its ‘Regime-Stabilization’ operations in the Middle-East.

My interpretation is, if ISIL and ISIS are in fact two different things and Barrack Obama made a mistake of using ISIL’s name during the press-release, then the US administration perceives the existence of ISIS [or something other than ISIL but sounds very similar to ISIL] that are pro-democratic rebel groups representing different clans in the region. Then there are Sunni tribes too that were trained/helped.

US Involvement in Anti-ISIL Efforts

Here’s another clip from an interview where Barack Obama mentions the US involvement in supporting Sunni tribes that are resisting ‘ISIL’:

Earlier, Barrack Obama said US forces helped and trained Sunni tribes to fight against Al-Qaeda and they reconstituted to integrate with ISIS. Now he says the US administration is working to support Sunni tribes that are operating against ISIS.

Here is the next confusion I have as Barrack Obama makes gives a slightly contradicting definition of what has happened with ‘ISIL’:

Now, based on what Barrack Obama said, if Al-Qaeda was a vicious group that was quashed by US Marines with the ‘HELP OF SUNNI TRIBES’, and ‘they’ were able to reconstitute themselves later on, then clearly it has to be one of the two following options:

Option 1: The Al-Qaeda group that was ‘quashed’ by the US marines reconstituted themselves.

This means the US operations against Al-Qaeda in Iraq wasn’t entirely successful.

Option 2: The Sunni tribes that helped US troops reconstituted themselves.

This means the US administration made a mistake in choosing their right ally or at east failed in keeping the ad-hoc ally in check. Basically what it means is, they got weapons from the US troops and then vanished along with them…only to be back in a different name.

Getting down to the Syria connection, here is a clip where Barrack Obama clarifying US administration’s aspirations with respect to Assad’s regime in Syria:

The questions that rise are:

Why would the US help smaller rebel groups and leave them unchecked after the operation? Is that militarily impossible to do? If yes, then that indicates the deficiency/weakness of US/NATO military operations in the Middle East?

Why would the US continue to help support and train regional rebel groups, including Suni tribes, in spite of knowing that part to whole of them are going to integrate with the ISIS terror network?

The State of the Western Military Involvement in the Middle-East

Owing to budget cuts, both US and its NATO allies are finding it hard to carry out extensive military operations. However, their military help is required in the regions that does not have a powerful government military arm to effectively crack down on the terrorist groups [including ISIS].

The Arab Spring movement just complicated things as many regional rebel groups sprung up fighting oppression and anti-democratic regimes. Now the Middle-East has more than expected rebel groups with many of them integrating under the ISIS banner. 

However, it is very evident that the US/NATO forces at some point in time had a part to play in the arming and training of the rebel groups that are now part of ISIS.

From a NATO perspective, Europian countries are also still struggling with budget cuts and are not in a position to carry out dedicated large-scale military operations in the Middle-East. With the Remotely Piloted Aircraft [RPA] strikes growing, following the troops drawdown from Iraq/Afghanistan, the European military forces are now obligated to contribute to the collaborative efforts in the Middle-East.

The current trend is to receive specific ‘Air-Strike Packages’ from NATO members and allies and use them in the Middle-East. However, the european countries had to avoid excessive contribution as they are facing funding shortages and rising internal demand [civilian] for funds. Another reason for this might also be Russian military operations in Ukraine and alleged intrusive air operations in the Easter-Europe air space. The European countries in the eastern ends of Europe not only have limited funding to support their militaries but also need their military forces to make presence felt over their air space that they feel is being intruded by Russian military aircraft. 

Out of some weird coincidence, it is exactly during this time [of European countries gradually refraining from extensive collaboration in the Middle-East] the terror attacks on the European countries happen. 

If the countries now agree to share intelligence seamlessly, what were they doing so far?

Why are terror attacks influencing actions that were otherwise restricted by reducing military budgets?

Why now, when these terror attacks could have happened anytime after the troops drawdown from Afghanistan/Iraq? 

There need not be a specific connection, but my interpretation refuses to accept the absence of such a thing. 

The Syrian Confusion

While US/NATO allies are trying to contribute to collaborative military operations in the Middle-East [including Syria] and continue to maintain a negative stance against Russia, they are now facing Russia actively taking part in the effort maintaining an individual stand. Russian forces have been conducting air raids on ISIS targets. The US/NATO allies are now seeing their publicised antagonist playing the larger protagonist role in Syria. 

However, it has to be noted that the US administration is consciously expecting a regime change in Syria as it feels Assad represents an anti-democratic leadership. That may be the reason for the media propaganda that has been accusing Russia of failed strikes and hitting civilian or pro-NATO targets.

In the end, the US, from what Barrack Obama said, has been directly or indirectly responsible for a part of the ISIS terror network’s growth over the past few years. If the US administration cannot track or control the integration of the rebel groups they helped in Iraq in the past, then it only indicates an obvious lack of capability on the US/NATO side. 

The question is, Why help someone whom you cannot track or control? If you have helped someone with weapons and training and now they are fighting against you, are you not using your own taxpayer’s money to fund the killing of your own soldiers? What were you thinking then and what are you thinking now?

To be fair, it takes a big heart to spend one’s taxpayers’ money for the benefit of some other countries’ citizens. So from that perspective, the intentions are all good. However, the contradicting methods of stabilising and/or de-stabilizing regimes in the Middle-East indicates that the objectives are not entirely what they are being released to the media. 

My subsequent question is, why use taxpayer’s money to do something internationally which cannot be revealed in entirety?

Summing Up

Getting back to the ISIS vs. ISIL branding confusion, my interpretation says that for some reason the US administration perceives the brand ‘ISIS’ as something related to an ally from the present or the past. That is why there is a deliberate avoidance of the term ‘ISIS’ which is being replaced by ‘ISIL.’ 

Irrespective of what ISIS or ISIL is/are, the names represent a terror network wreaking havoc in the Middle-East. Why bother so much about mentioning the ‘RIGHT VERSION OF THEIR NAME’????

If such a concern is being genuinely addressed and efforts are being made to use a specific term to describe a FREAKING TERRORIST GROUP, with the executive head of a country’s administration exercising that effort at an individual level, then there is something behind it that we as commoners do not know entirely about. It may not be what I might propose, but it definitely exists and it exists at the cost of billions of taxpayers’ money from multiple countries.

So my conclusion is that, Barrack Obama does not want to officially record an opinion where the US administration admits all non-government military activity in Syria as ‘TERRORIST’ activity. The reason is, it wants Assad to be removed and ISIS group is allegedly operating against the current Syrian administration headed by Assad. 

Why is something we may never know but we can be absolutely sure that ‘ISIS’ and ‘ISIL’ are not necessarily the same from certain perspectives and the perspectives are not being publicly elaborated. It is the deliberate withholding of clarity on trivial aspects such as the branding of a terror group [or groups should I say] that tells us, there is a lot more than meets the eye or ears and that those cost a whole lot of taxpayers’ money.

So, what would you recognise as the REAL ISIS BRAND? Does ISIL mean anything different to you? In the end, we are now facing a terror network that has successfully established two brands in the minds of its victims, observers and adversaries. While any act of terror or human rights violation is condemnable, why are we still struggling to use the same name to describe the bad?

Regards,

Image Source: 
1410379733000-ISIL-g3_still.jpg

http://cdn.tegna-tv.com/-mm-/1c3346e193f648318f05abe246dcefaeb29bc9b9/r=x408&c=540x405/http/www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/ea1d6510750d0d50a8365c90dfae5b4c183cd315/c=422-0-1859-1079/local/-/media/MEGroup/WCSH/2014/09/10/1410379733000-ISIL-g3_still.jpg

Video Credits: 
abc, 60-minutes, C-Span, WH-gov

INDIANS EAT BEEF

Hello World,

Yesterday, 52 year old Mohammad Akhlaq, his 22 year old son Mohammad Danish and his 82 year old mother Asari Begum were attacked by a fundamentalist mob on the basis of rumours that Mohammed and his family were eating beef. Mohammed Akhlaq was beaten to death and his son is admitted to the hospital in critical condition. Ansari Begum is badly hurt but did not sustain life-threatening injuries.

This is not the first time such an incident has happened. While some state governments have recently passed laws banning cow-slaughter, this country allows sale and consumption of beef.

Let me make it very clear. Indians eat beef. There are thousands of families who cannot afford chicken or lamb/mutton. Beef is the only affordable meat they have access to. There are many families living in remote forest locations where even beef is a luxury and all they have access to are mid-sized rodents in their habitat. 

From what I understand, about 15% of Indians are vegetarian by tradition who never eat meat. Another 10% are vegetarian by choice and they don’t eat meat either. Another 15% of the population doesn’t eat beef owing to religious and non-religious reasons included [they eat chicken/egg/fish/lamb]. The rest of the population either regularly or irregularly eats beef. They are Indian citizens too. 

Beef is by far the cheapest meat available in the market and this makes it affordable to those Indians who cannot buy chicken/lamb on a regular basis. 

If someone says ‘Indians don’t eat beef,’ then that is absolute triple distilled BULLSHIT!!!!

There are more beef-eating Indians than anyone can possibly imagine. Unfortunately most of those segments of the Indian society are not represented outside India and the vast majority of the non-beef-eating Indians just shoot out generalisations such as ‘Indians don’t eat beef.’

My dear fellow humans of the western world who regard orange clothing and the word ‘guru’ as something related to high-end Indian spirituality, please don’t get misguided by the comments from few Indians who say ‘Indians don’t eat beef.’ Who say so may not eat beef for various reasons. Please respect their lifestyle choice. However, do not believe them when they say nobody eats beef in India. 

If we have to bring an analogy to this situation we can look at hollywood movies. Everytime they say the world is going to end in a disaster movie, the disaster almost certainly hits Manhattan and the few big cities are often portrayed as ‘America.’ However, the real USA has so much more that even those in the big cities there are yet to realize. 

Similarly, when you hear India, don’t jump to a cultural stereotype coloured in orange, hymns and yoga tricks. Nobody does that. Those who do the spiritual practices you see at ‘cultural centers’ form less than 15% of the population.

Because those Indians who don’t eat beef are too embarrassed to indicate their minority status, they tend to generalise and what you receive is ‘Indians don’t eat beef.’

Well, I am Indian. I eat beef. I know many of my relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues who eat beef and this list includes all religions. We get beef in fine dining restaurants, takeaway eateries and the most important street shops we fondly call ‘KaiYendhi Bhavan’ [this is a term very local to where I come from and most of my Indian friends would not understand or even heard of it before….however, it has been in existence for decades]. 

Fundamentalist violence is slowly taking over this country and is depriving the citizens of their rightful lifestyle choices. 

Time has come for the beef-eating Indians to stay strong and not feel marginalised because of a simple lifestyle choice - BEEF. 

For those who are not aware, India is the largest beef exporter of the world. Indian beef accounts for 23.5% of the global beef exports. This in essence means that India harvests a lot of beef which also explains the low cost of the meat and its consumption by large segments of the Indian community.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-on-top-in-exporting-beef/article7519487.ece

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/indian-mob-kills-man-cow-slaughter-rumour-150930193719666.html

Summing up, INDIANS EAT BEEF and will continue to. 

Here is the documentary covering 'beef-ban' made by the students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences that was banned from being screened in a film festival:

Regards,

THE DEATH OF A PERCEPTION CALLED PRIVACY

Hello World,

I read a news that the administration is in talks with the US administration to get into a data-sharing agreement where the governments will share their ‘Terrorism Screening Information’ for collaborative enhanced law enforcement. Also the government is looking to demand Internet Data from the US servers, covering companies such as Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. 

While I am all for collaborative safety measures and law enforcement to protect the citizens from terrorism I do not agree with the level of information sharing that will happen, especially concerning the information on US Servers that may be shared or deleted by the US administration upon request from international agencies.

While massive amounts of personal information is going to be shared by the governments, which itself will be a massive breach of our privacy, I am more concerned of the access to internet content on US servers that will be exclusive to the govt. agencies here. There will be disastrous consequences when the agencies here get the exclusive right/access to the information stored on US servers. In the name of potential terror prevention mechanisms, the information that will educate and help Indian citizens will be deleted and/or the author of the content be punished.

The Indian societal set-up is a mix of demographies and this set-up is here to stay. However, the educated demographies are slowly growing and the subsequent result includes a growing disparity in the levels of awareness among the citizens here. What is obvious for one is non-existent for the other, even when both of them are from the same family, living in the same house. While we are struggling to come to terms with harsh realities, especially that of the grossly inhuman activities we have been practicing in the name of religion, tradition etc., we are also actively looking to assess events going on around us using different forms of information available to us. 

Most of the Indian know-how depends largely on the personal account [or rather opinion, be it informed or cooked-up] of a trustworthy acquaintance [family, friend, neighbour etc.] but we as a community are slowly realising the power of the internet. We are buying a lot of items online and consciously choosing online stores over the conventional brick-and-mortar businesses. We are looking things up more often than before. The internet, at this point in time, serves as a single unbiased source of information [both facts and fiction] to us here.

In the recent past, multiple events covering large scale violations of human rights took place and the administration has been pointing at certain pieces of information [potentially untrue] on the internet, stating that those fragments of information caused the acts of terror. This, in my opinion is serving as the basis for the government agencies demanding Internet-Data on US servers so they can delete those pieces of information before they create mayhem.

While this sounds very safe and people-oriented, this is the real danger looming on us Indians right now as the administrations are close to inking the deal. Once the deal is inked with such an agreement, everything that is said about what’s going on in India, that is on US servers will be available for censorship by the administration. In essence the government will control the online opinions of Indian citizens, potentially violating their rights to free speech by deleting anything that is found as undesirable to those in power. This will also open the floor for lobbyists who will prompt the administration to delete data from US servers that might pose as any competition to their corporate profits [which they might share as a fee for the favor]. 

Allowing any administration to review and censor information shared over the public domain will cause disastrous consequences in countries like India. The US administration may not be entirely aware of the social environment prevailing in India right now. The disparity in public awareness is indescribable and the hatred on the basis of economic-status/religion/caste/language is growing at a rate faster than the growth and inflation rates. Every hate-speech has an audience and the audience is dumb enough to approve any nonsense that may be thrown at it. Allowing the administration, that is run by one or more groups utilising such hate-based vote-banks, to decide on the existence of information on US servers [be it any server for that matter] will create a information bias where one set of political hate-speech and corporate schemes will prevail over the rest. Those who hold the power and their friends will get to keep their information on the internet safe and visible while those of their [perceived] adversaries will cease to exist and the authors of such information will be prosecuted and possibly murdered. The request for deletion will be made on grounds of potential law and order issue that may rise as a result of something on the internet. What will not be made clear is that such censorship will have politically backed propaganda where one group will work towards preventing the rest of its competitors from spreading awareness. 

Be it a political/corporate-backed scheme or just an administrational drama, in the end, citizens will not have the freedom to share their views without getting censored or punished for exercising their right to do so. Internet Start-Ups will be operating, running the risk of getting shut down anytime they get on the bad side of the administration with or without knowledge or intent. Anyone who is friends with those who control the censorship of information on the internet will enjoy the privilege of terminating their competitors by illegitimate means which will be recorded as legitimate action executed by the administration in the name of national security or public interest. 

Our privacies are anyways gone as the mass surveillance systems are already tracking our every move without us knowing about it. What is left is the censor-protected data storage centers abroad, possibly beyond the purview of the local administration that serves as the platform for censor-free information sharing among citizens who at best are still struggling to understand the concept of awareness and freedom.

If the US administration agrees to hand over access/control of Internet-Data on US servers to the local administration here, then that will essentially mark the beginning of the institutionalisation of persecution of Indian citizens. Letting the administration control the information on the internet will result in the formation and/or the growth of terrorist entities within the country who will never make it to the database that is being shared among the agencies. There are organisations here that engage in acts of terror against select group of innocent citizens simply on the basis of hatred and those groups will be further empowered to establish their control on the society. These groups will never be called terrorists and will never feature on any database, partly because they are connected to political parties but mostly because the levels of citizen awareness here is still below detectable range. Allowing them to access an institutionalised censorship tool will result in the increase in hatred within the country and civilian deaths in riots will grow exponentially.

As of now, we are not sure what type of information will be shared as part of the collaborative sharing of terrorism screening information and therefore that is open to debate. What is certain is the large scale breach of privacies of citizens. While I do not agree with any version of mass surveillance programs, I do believe that safety will cost a certain amount of privacy, irrespective of us liking it or not but transparency can at least make it fair. What I am absolutely terrified about is the fact that an administration is about to get access to internet-data on US servers in exchange for sharing terrorism screening database. 

The terrorists will just have to switch roles from enemies to friends of the administration so they don’t feature on the database that is shared. Entities operating entirely on the basis of mutual hatred among citizens will gain control over what propaganda reaches the citizen and the citizens will be left with no fair means to express their views. An avalanche of ignorance and institutionalised terrorism is looking over India right now. 

All we had was a silly perception of privacy and with this agreement, even that is about to die. 

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Image Source: http://www.seqlegal.com/sites/default/files/free-legal-document-images/privacy-policy-image.png

Regards,