The Management of Savagery

**davidbfpo** · 07-16-2016

The author is with ICSR @ Kings College and attempts to answer so many questions. The title is: How religion can drive someone to slaughter his fellow citizens – and believe they deserve it.

A key passage:

The movement is, however, millenarian; its followers believe that they are helping bring about the change of a corrupt society, transforming it from evil to good. Once they accept this as their mission, almost any act which is perceived as helping further the project, no matter how horrific, becomes acceptable and legitimate.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-citizens--an/

**davidbfpo** · 07-16-2016

Will McCants has this short article in TIME:http://time.com/4408926/the-differen...-and-isis-ish/

**AdamG** · 07-18-2016

Once again, people are blatantly ignoring the overlap of the 'front line' ISIS psychopaths and these lone wolf 'fellow traveler' psychopaths. The only difference between someone who drives a truck through a crowd of people having fun and a muj who dunks prisoners in muriatic acid is one plane ticket.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/in-...imply-deranged

**AdamG** · 07-20-2016

Videos have emerged online that appear to show Syrian rebels taunting and then beheading a boy they say is a captured Palestinian pro-government fighter.

One video shows five men posing with the frightened child, who could be as young as 10, in the back of a truck. One of the men grips him by the hair.

The same man is later filmed apparently cutting the boy's head off.

The incident is reported to have taken place in Handarat, north of Aleppo, where there has been heavy fighting.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36835678

Life imitates art?

I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Colonel Kurtz, APOCALYPSE NOW

**davidbfpo** · 07-20-2016

A WoTR article, good in places and sometimes speculative. One short passage:

While almost all of these attacks were claimed by ISIL, observers have expressed skepticism about the extent of the organization’s involvement. Some argued that ISIL’s role in most attacks during Ramadan was limited to providing ideological inspiration and encouragement to so-called lone wolves or wolf packs, who may have mobilized in response to Adnani’s call to arms but did not coordinate with ISIL operatives. Yet, a growing body of evidence suggests that the Ramadan offensive was largely a coordinated and deliberate ISIL campaign.

(Concludes) In essence, ISIL operates a professionalized external operations wing that is capable of directing and coordinating operations across the globe. Attacks that seem disparate or disconnected may actually be part of a broader campaign. Attackers who appear, at first glance, to have acted alone may be linked with a clandestine network. As we investigate the heinous assault in Nice, we should keep this in mind.

Link:http://warontherocks.com/2016/07/blo...rist-campaign/

WoTR article refers to a key ISIS text:

Adnani exhorted ISIL’s supporters to make Ramadan “a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers” and urged everyone considering migrating to the caliphate to instead carry out attacks in their home countries.

There is full SWJ article on Adnani's call:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...21-2016-speech

**AdamG** · 01-09-2017

After an end-of-the-year video showing pre-teens hunt down and kill bound prisoners in an abandoned building, the Islamic State today released an even more gory follow-up with children as young as preschool age murdering prisoners tied to broken carnival rides.
The 18-minute highly produced video out of ISIS' Khayr province in Syria was distributed through publicly accessible Islamic State#media channels, social media and file-sharing sites, including Google Drive and, briefly, YouTube.
It begins by showing adults training in a bombed-out building, but transitions into adults leading small children in exercises. A boy about#9 or 10 years old is shown gleefully participating in a public stoning.
Like previous ISIS videos featuring children, the video argues that coalition bombing is a reason for kids to join jihad and kill Americans.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-securit...ival-ball-pit/