Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Psalm 97:11
Showing posts with label Islamic State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamic State. Show all posts
Monday, November 23, 2015
Thursday, November 19, 2015
The tiny pill fueling Syria’s war and turning fighters into superhuman soldiers
Reblogged from https://www.washingtonpost.com
Captagon
pills are displayed along with a cup containing cocaine at an office of
the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, Anti-Narcotics Division, in
Beirut in 2010. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images/File)
As The Post's Liz Sly recently noted,
the war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by
"al-Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues
and Western volunteers."
On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas.
Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon.
A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and now widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters and the ability to keep the conflict boiling, according to the Guardian.
“Syria is a tremendous problem in that it’s a collapsed security sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so many criminal elements and organized networks,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) regional representative, Masood Karimipour, told Voice of America. “There’s a great deal of trafficking being done of all sorts of illicit goods — guns, drugs, money, people. But what is being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that’s not something we have visibility into from a distance.”
[The long war against Islamist extremism has become more complicated than ever]
A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as "fenethylline," Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon.
"You can't sleep or even close your eyes, forget about it," said a Lebanese user, one of three who appeared on camera without their names for a BBC Arabic documentary that aired in September. "And whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it."
"I felt like I own the world high," another user said. "Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling."
"There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon," a third man added.
[Deadly Chinese drugs are flooding the U.S., and police can’t stop them]
Captagon has been around in the West since the 1960s, when it was given to people suffering from hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, according to a Reuters report published in 2014. By the 1980s, according to Reuters, the drug's addictive power led most countries to ban its use.
The United State classified fenethylline ("commonly known by the trademark name Captagon") as a Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act in 1981, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Still, the drug didn't exactly disappear. VOA notes that while Westerners have speculated that the drug is being used by Islamic State fighters, the biggest consumer has for years been Saudi Arabia. In 2010, a third of the world's supply — about seven tons — ended up in Saudi Arabia, according to Reuters. VOA estimated that as many as 40,000 to 50,000 Saudis go through drug treatment each year.
“My theory is that Captagon still retains the veneer of medical respectability,” Justin Thomas, an assistant professor of psychology and psychotherapy at the UAE’s Zayed University and author of "Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States," told VOA in 2010. “It may not be viewed as a drug or narcotic because it is not associated with smoking or injecting.”
Five years later, production of Captagon has taken root in Syria — long a heavily trafficked thoroughfare for drugs journeying from Europe to the Gulf States — and it has begun to blossom.
"The breakdown of state infrastructure, weakening of borders and proliferation of armed groups during the nearly three-year battle for control of Syria, has transformed the country from a stopover into a major production site," Reuters reported.
"Production in Lebanon's Bekaa valley – a traditional centre for the drug – fell 90% last year from 2011, with the decline largely attributed to production inside Syria," the Guardian noted.
[Photo released by Islamic State claims to show bomb that downed Russian jet]
Cheap and easy to produce using legal materials, the drug can be purchased for less than $20 a tablet and is popular among those Syrian fighters who don't follow strict interpretations of Islamic law, according to the Guardian.
Doctors report that the drug has dangerous side effects, including psychosis and brain damage, according to the BBC.
Ramzi Haddad, a Lebanese psychiatrist, told Reuters that the drug produces the typical effects of a stimulant.
"You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic," he said.
But one secular ex-Syrian fighter who spoke to the BBC went further, saying the drug is tailor-made for the battlefield because of its ability to give soldiers superhuman energy and courage:
"Some people became addicted to it and it will damage the addicts," he said. "This is the problem."
Captagon
pills are displayed along with a cup containing cocaine at an office of
the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, Anti-Narcotics Division, in
Beirut in 2010. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images/File)On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas.
Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon.
A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and now widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters and the ability to keep the conflict boiling, according to the Guardian.
“Syria is a tremendous problem in that it’s a collapsed security sector, because of its porous borders, because of the presence of so many criminal elements and organized networks,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) regional representative, Masood Karimipour, told Voice of America. “There’s a great deal of trafficking being done of all sorts of illicit goods — guns, drugs, money, people. But what is being manufactured there and who is doing the manufacturing, that’s not something we have visibility into from a distance.”
[The long war against Islamist extremism has become more complicated than ever]
A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as "fenethylline," Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon.
"You can't sleep or even close your eyes, forget about it," said a Lebanese user, one of three who appeared on camera without their names for a BBC Arabic documentary that aired in September. "And whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it."
"I felt like I own the world high," another user said. "Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling."
"There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon," a third man added.
[Deadly Chinese drugs are flooding the U.S., and police can’t stop them]
Captagon has been around in the West since the 1960s, when it was given to people suffering from hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, according to a Reuters report published in 2014. By the 1980s, according to Reuters, the drug's addictive power led most countries to ban its use.
The United State classified fenethylline ("commonly known by the trademark name Captagon") as a Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act in 1981, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Still, the drug didn't exactly disappear. VOA notes that while Westerners have speculated that the drug is being used by Islamic State fighters, the biggest consumer has for years been Saudi Arabia. In 2010, a third of the world's supply — about seven tons — ended up in Saudi Arabia, according to Reuters. VOA estimated that as many as 40,000 to 50,000 Saudis go through drug treatment each year.
“My theory is that Captagon still retains the veneer of medical respectability,” Justin Thomas, an assistant professor of psychology and psychotherapy at the UAE’s Zayed University and author of "Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States," told VOA in 2010. “It may not be viewed as a drug or narcotic because it is not associated with smoking or injecting.”
Five years later, production of Captagon has taken root in Syria — long a heavily trafficked thoroughfare for drugs journeying from Europe to the Gulf States — and it has begun to blossom.
"The breakdown of state infrastructure, weakening of borders and proliferation of armed groups during the nearly three-year battle for control of Syria, has transformed the country from a stopover into a major production site," Reuters reported.
"Production in Lebanon's Bekaa valley – a traditional centre for the drug – fell 90% last year from 2011, with the decline largely attributed to production inside Syria," the Guardian noted.
[Photo released by Islamic State claims to show bomb that downed Russian jet]
Cheap and easy to produce using legal materials, the drug can be purchased for less than $20 a tablet and is popular among those Syrian fighters who don't follow strict interpretations of Islamic law, according to the Guardian.
Doctors report that the drug has dangerous side effects, including psychosis and brain damage, according to the BBC.
Ramzi Haddad, a Lebanese psychiatrist, told Reuters that the drug produces the typical effects of a stimulant.
"You're talkative, you don't sleep, you don't eat, you're energetic," he said.
But one secular ex-Syrian fighter who spoke to the BBC went further, saying the drug is tailor-made for the battlefield because of its ability to give soldiers superhuman energy and courage:
"So the brigade leader came and told us, 'this pill gives you energy, try it,' " he said. "So we took it the first time. We felt physically fit. And if there were 10 people in front of you, you could catch them and kill them. You're awake all the time. You don't have any problems, you don't even think about sleeping, you don't think to leave the checkpoint. It gives you great courage and power. If the leader told you to go break into a military barracks, I will break in with a brave heart and without any feeling of fear at all — you're not even tired."Another ex-fighter told the BBC that his 350-person brigade took the pill without knowing if it was a drug or medicine for energy.
"Some people became addicted to it and it will damage the addicts," he said. "This is the problem."
Saturday, November 14, 2015
The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates
Reblogged from www.steynonline.com
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on Europe
As I write, Paris is under curfew for the first time since the German
occupation, and the death toll from the multiple attacks stands at 158,
the vast majority of them slaughtered during a concert at the Bataclan
theatre, a delightful bit of 19th century Chinoiserie on the boulevard
Voltaire. The last time I was there, if memory serves, was to see Julie
Pietri. I'm so bloody sick of these savages shooting and bombing and
killing and blowing up everything I like - whether it's the small Quebec
town where my little girl's favorite fondue restaurant is or my
favorite hotel in Amman or the brave freespeecher who hosted me in
Copenhagen ...or a music hall where I liked to go to hear a little jazz
and pop and get away from the cares of the world for a couple of hours.
But look at the photographs from Paris: there's nowhere to get away from
it; the barbarians who yell "Allahu Akbar!" are there waiting for you
...when you go to a soccer match, you go to a concert, you go for a
drink on a Friday night. They're there on the train... at the magazine
office... in the Kosher supermarket... at the museum in Brussels...
outside the barracks in Woolwich...
Twenty-four hours ago, I said on the radio apropos the latest campus "safe space" nonsense:
With his usual killer comedy timing, the "leader of the free world" told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning, America" this very morning that he'd "contained" ISIS and that they're not "gaining strength". A few hours later, a cell whose members claim to have been recruited by ISIS slaughtered over 150 people in the heart of Paris and succeeded in getting two suicide bombers and a third bomb to within a few yards of the French president.
Visiting the Bataclan, M Hollande declared that "nous allons mener le combat, il sera impitoyable": We are going to wage a war that will be pitiless.
Does he mean it? Or is he just killing time until Obama and Cameron and Merkel and Justin Trudeau and Malcolm Turnbull fly in and they can all get back to talking about sea levels in the Maldives in the 22nd century? By which time France and Germany and Belgium and Austria and the Netherlands will have been long washed away.
Among his other coy evasions, President Obama described tonight's events as "an attack not just on Paris, it's an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share".
But that's not true, is it? He's right that it's an attack not just on Paris or France. What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world - an attack on one portion of "humanity" by those who claim to speak for another portion of "humanity". And these are not "universal values" but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta "universal" when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those "universal values" are utterly alien to large parts of the map today.
And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don't want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live - modern, pluralist, western societies and those "universal values" of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who's been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.
And all Chancellor Merkel and the EU want to do is make that large comfort zone even larger by letting millions more "Syrian" "refugees" walk into the Continent and settle wherever they want. As I wrote after the Copenhagen attacks in February:
To repeat what I said a few days ago, I'm Islamed out. I'm tired of Islam 24/7, at Colorado colleges, Marseilles synagogues, Sydney coffee shops, day after day after day. The west cannot win this thing with a schizophrenic strategy of targeting things and people but not targeting the ideology, of intervening ineffectually overseas and not intervening at all when it comes to the remorseless Islamization and self-segregation of large segments of their own countries.
So I say again: What's the happy ending here? Because if M Hollande isn't prepared to end mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe, then his "pitiless war" isn't serious. And, if they're still willing to tolerate Mutti Merkel's mad plan to reverse Germany's demographic death spiral through fast-track Islamization, then Europeans aren't serious. In the end, the decadence of Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the rest of the fin de civilisation western leadership will cost you your world and everything you love.
So screw the candlelight vigil.
~I'll be talking about events in Paris on Fox & Friends Saturday morning at around 9am Eastern/6am Pacific.
Twenty-four hours ago, I said on the radio apropos the latest campus "safe space" nonsense:
This is what we're going to be talking about when the mullahs nuke us.Almost. When the Allahu Akbar boys opened fire, Paris was talking about the climate-change conference due to start later this month, when the world's leaders will fly in to "solve" a "problem" that doesn't exist rather than to address the one that does. But don't worry: we already have a hashtag (#PrayForParis) and doubtless there'll be another candlelight vigil of weepy tilty-headed wankers. Because as long as we all advertise how sad and sorrowful we are, who needs to do anything?
With his usual killer comedy timing, the "leader of the free world" told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning, America" this very morning that he'd "contained" ISIS and that they're not "gaining strength". A few hours later, a cell whose members claim to have been recruited by ISIS slaughtered over 150 people in the heart of Paris and succeeded in getting two suicide bombers and a third bomb to within a few yards of the French president.
Visiting the Bataclan, M Hollande declared that "nous allons mener le combat, il sera impitoyable": We are going to wage a war that will be pitiless.
Does he mean it? Or is he just killing time until Obama and Cameron and Merkel and Justin Trudeau and Malcolm Turnbull fly in and they can all get back to talking about sea levels in the Maldives in the 22nd century? By which time France and Germany and Belgium and Austria and the Netherlands will have been long washed away.
Among his other coy evasions, President Obama described tonight's events as "an attack not just on Paris, it's an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share".
But that's not true, is it? He's right that it's an attack not just on Paris or France. What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world - an attack on one portion of "humanity" by those who claim to speak for another portion of "humanity". And these are not "universal values" but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta "universal" when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those "universal values" are utterly alien to large parts of the map today.
And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don't want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live - modern, pluralist, western societies and those "universal values" of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who's been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.
And all Chancellor Merkel and the EU want to do is make that large comfort zone even larger by letting millions more "Syrian" "refugees" walk into the Continent and settle wherever they want. As I wrote after the Copenhagen attacks in February:
I would like to ask Mr Cameron and Miss Thorning-Schmidt what's their happy ending here? What's their roadmap for fewer "acts of violence" in the years ahead? Or are they riding on a wing and a prayer that they can manage the situation and hold it down to what cynical British civil servants used to call during the Irish "Troubles" "an acceptable level of violence"?
In Pakistan and Nigeria, the citizenry are expected to live with the reality that every so often Boko Haram will kick open the door of the schoolhouse and kidnap your daughters for sex-slavery or the Taliban will gun down your kids and behead their teacher in front of the class. And it's all entirely "random", as President Obama would say, so you just have to put up with it once in a while, and it's tough if it's your kid, but that's just the way it is. If we're being honest here, isn't that all Mr Cameron and Miss Thorning-Schmidt are offering their citizens? Spasms of violence as a routine feature of life, but don't worry, we'll do our best to contain it - and you can help mitigate it by not going to "controversial" art events, or synagogues, or gay bars, or......or soccer matches, or concerts, or restaurants...
To repeat what I said a few days ago, I'm Islamed out. I'm tired of Islam 24/7, at Colorado colleges, Marseilles synagogues, Sydney coffee shops, day after day after day. The west cannot win this thing with a schizophrenic strategy of targeting things and people but not targeting the ideology, of intervening ineffectually overseas and not intervening at all when it comes to the remorseless Islamization and self-segregation of large segments of their own countries.
So I say again: What's the happy ending here? Because if M Hollande isn't prepared to end mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe, then his "pitiless war" isn't serious. And, if they're still willing to tolerate Mutti Merkel's mad plan to reverse Germany's demographic death spiral through fast-track Islamization, then Europeans aren't serious. In the end, the decadence of Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the rest of the fin de civilisation western leadership will cost you your world and everything you love.
So screw the candlelight vigil.
~I'll be talking about events in Paris on Fox & Friends Saturday morning at around 9am Eastern/6am Pacific.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Report: FBI Agents Telling Friends & Family to ‘Avoid July 4 Celebrations’
U.S. on high alert for Independence Day events
by Paul Joseph Watson | July 1, 2015Following warnings by the federal government that terrorists may be planning to attack Independence Day events, FBI agents are reportedly telling friends and family members to avoid major July 4 celebrations.
Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft cites an “inside source” who told him that, “FBI agents are telling their friends and family members to avoid “official celebrations.”
Hoft also claims that the FBI has canceled vacation for all its agents for the duration of the weekend.
Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued alerts to local law enforcement and urged Americans to “remain vigilant” for this weekend’s July 4 events.
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell also said Monday that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if there’s a terrorist attack during the 4th of July weekend.
“This one really resonates with me for two reasons,” Morell said. “One is there’s been about 50 people in the last 12 months who have been arrested in the United States for being radicalized by ISIS, wanting to go fight there or wanting to conduct an attack here, so there’s a lot of people out there who are seeing themselves as aligned with ISIS, number one.”
“Number two, you have this ISIS call to arms during Ramadan,” Morell said. “We are right in the middle of Ramadan, call to arms, conduct attacks against our enemies, so I’m worried about this one.”
Fox News also reported that the FBI is setting up command centers in all of its 56 field offices across the country to monitor potential terror threats.
ISIS supporters have recently intensified their social media propaganda campaign, with almost 100,000 tweets a day urging mass murder.
The warnings follow deadly attacks by ISIS last week in Tunisia, France and Kuwait that killed scores of people.
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