Author: Jason Ditz

It could be ISIS. Maybe.

US spy chief James Clapper, best known for lying to Congress about NSA surveillance, is now riled up about refugees “descending on Europe,” saying that even though there’s no evidence of it, he’s super, super worried that those refugees might turn out to be ISIS fighters just sneaking in.

Which is a great story for scaring people, but makes zero sense. In addition to not being backed by any evidence, it vilifies the people fleeing from ISIS and the war surrounding its rise.

It also totally ignores what intelligence officials the world over have made obvious is the biggest reason ISIS is a danger to Western countries. ISIS has a huge number of recruits from Western nations already, including a lot from Europe. Those recruits don’t need to “sneak” into Europe as starving refugees, but rather have passports that would give them access to targets in these nations in ways that traditional Middle Eastern Islamist groups simply don’t.

Demonizing the refugees is very convenient for governments around the world, of course, as it lets them off the hook for having to house refugees who their policies often created in the first place. Not copping to the bad things you’ve done, of course, is simply Clapper’s go-to move, but as the Director of National Intelligence he of all people surely knows better than this.

Reuters is releasing huge numbers of articles about Russia’s military today, mostly centering on the idea that Russia’s military advisers in Syria, despite having been there for years, are a new and major issue.

But they also announced an “exclusive” story about Russia planning to build a “major military base” inside Russia, but not far from the Ukrainian border. Despite referring to it as a “secret” base in the article, they confirm that the information was obtained from publicly available Russian military documents.

And the “major” base? Not so much. The base is described as 300 hectare site, which makes it about 700 acres. By comparison, most “major” US military bases are more than 100,000 acres in size, meaning this new base is less than 1% of that.

With the US and other NATO nations setting up sites for more and more deployments along the Russian frontier, it is perhaps unsurprising that Russia should also be building new bases on its western borders. That a publicly available document about a comparatively tiny site should become a “major” and “exclusive” underscores just how eager people are to latch on to anything Russia related.

If there was ever any doubt that the US doesn’t have a good handle on who the ISIS leadership is, it should be exemplified by the new reports of US officials openly talking about, in their effort to “destroy ISIS,” assassinating people whose Twitter accounts are seen as too pro-ISIS.

There appears, at the very least, to be some debate among counter-terror officials on the matter, though none seem to be questioning whether or not it’s appropriate to assassinate people on the basis of speech, and are simply arguing over whether or not it’s worthwhile.

The opponents see it as “wasting time” on “low level guys,” and believe the US should spend more time trying to assassinate actual ISIS leaders, instead of just killing Tweeters and declaring them “propagandists.”

One unnamed US official in favor of killing Tweeters, who ominously started his argument by declaring “we are the angel of death” like he’s some comic book villain, argued that since the ISIS war is a “propaganda war” and a “war of ideas” it’s entirely appropriate to kill people who are forwarding ideas they object to, saying he sees no reason to limit the killing to “military leaders.”

Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero was also a proponent of assassinating people on social media, saying ISIS has a “huge competitive advantage” on Twitter and that with little intelligence on the actual leadership of ISIS, you “attack what you can,” which means people on Twitter.

Another official, perhaps even more ominously than “angel of death” guy, talked up the killing of US-born cleric Anwar Awlaki as an example of the US assassinating people for speech, declaring “shoot your mouth off all you want. Eventually we are going to kill you.”

The Ukrainian city of Uman, in the Cherkasy Province, is an historical site of pilgrimage for Hasidic Jews, which often draws tens of thousands of pilgrims during Rosh Hashana. The pilgrimage centers around the burial site of an important religious leader of the late 18th century.

This year, it’s going to be tough going for the Hasidim, however, as the massive tent city the local Jewish community erected to house the pilgrims was wiped out over the weekend by Ukrainian nationalist fighters.

The Ukrainian nationalist groups often style themselves as neo-Nazis, and have been demonized by the pro-Russian east because of this. They remained embraced in large by Western nations, who were pleased at their violent rallies ousting the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine. However much Western governments try to shore up the image of these groups as “democratic,” they continue to engage in ethnic and religious violence, as evidenced over this weekend.

The locals say the attack in Uman was scheduled for the Sabbath, knowing that the Hasidim would be unable to quickly respond. Police were informed and responded, but stood by and watched as the nationalists caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

The local government is generally favorable to the nationalists, they say, as the “mayor” of Uman was installed, not elected, after the ouster of the pro-Russian government by leaders of the far-right Svoboda movement, the same group that just a week ago attacked parliament.

Since being in charge in Uman means being supported by the far-right, it is seen that they attacks are not just religiously motivated, but also attempts by the organizers to curry political favor in the lead up to October’s elections.

In mid-July, the Obama Administration publicly announced that they weren’t going to “publicly blame” China for the OPM hack, despite saying, publicly, that they believe China did it.

This was because there was no good evidence for China having done it. Indeed, the FBI mentioned them as a possibility, leading media outlets to treat that as an allegation, leading Congress to declare that as proof China did it, leading other media outlets to say Congress confirmed the story, and so on. By the end of July, despite not “publicly blaming” China, US officials were openly talking about “revenge” against them.

Shortly thereafter, a hack against the Pentagon’s unclassified email system happened, and the entire process was repeated again, only this time it was Russia who wasn’t formally blamed, who no evidence existed to really prove was behind it, and who the US was still mad at.

Fast forward another month, and we are at the present, with US officials now talking up the possibility of announcing sanctions against both Russia and China over these “cyber-attacks,” which again, they have not offered any public evidence were committed by either nation.

While officials treat this as a totally consequence-free option, the reality is that the sanctions are almost certain to provoke retaliatory sanctions, and tit-for-tat moves that will worsen relations and harm trade. And again, all this to “punish” people we really shouldn’t be so sure did it in the first place.

ISIS has released a new video over the weekend which discusses the self-proclaimed “caliphate’s” long-standing plans to release their own currency, including both gold and silver coins.

The video is a combination of the usual military bellicosity of ISIS videos, a call to global Islamism, and perhaps most unusually, a fairly straightforward call for hard money and an attack on the US Federal Reserve System.

While most of the talk in the past of this “gold dinar” stemmed from religious interpretations of this as the only permissible currency under Islam, ISIS seems to also be piggybacking on the usual talking points of the flaws of a fiat money system and the credit-driven global banking system.

The gold dinar, in this sense, is being presented as a uniquely sound currency, making the Islamic State the lone state in the world with a primary currency that is backed by precious metals, by virtue of being minted out of them.

This could be a shrewd tactic for ISIS, as particularly in oil-dependent Middle Eastern countries the local currencies have been fluctuating pretty wildly of late. The prospect of a more stable currency might make ISIS money more accepted abroad, even in nations overtly hostile to ISIS themselves, than it otherwise would be.

There has been talk of ISIS coming up with these gold dinars virtually since they seized Mosul, as the capture of the city netted them a massive banking complex and a large amount of gold from which to mint currency. There is, however, still no firm date for when this money is actually going to happen, despite the mock-ups being out for so long.