The Strip: ISIS militants skimming hundreds of millions of dollars of US funds: "A Dilemma for US & Bagdhad"

The only two installments of my “weekly column” The Strip appeared almost a year ago! I guess I’ll call it an annual column and consider myself ahead of the game! In any case, The Strip is about getting to the meat of the matter and stripping out the propaganda from a particularly egregious mainstream media story. Yesterday, such an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, begging me to give it The Strip. Here it is…

The Propaganda

The article titled, Militants in Iraq Siphon State Pay: Islamic State skims funds headed for government employees in occupied areas, creating a dilemma for U.S. and Baghdad, reports that the US is giving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Iraq government and one of the things the Iraq government is spending its money on is cash payments to government employees operating in captive ISIS territory. One or two thousand ISIS militants holding the city of Mosul in Iraq are forcing government workers there to remit 30% of their pay to the Islamic State. The White House is not comfortable directing the Iraq government to stop this flow of funds because “people can’t starve.”

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The Strip: ISIS militants skimming hundreds of millions of dollars of US funds: “A Dilemma for US & Bagdhad”

The only two installments of my “weekly column” The Strip appeared almost a year ago! I guess I’ll call it an annual column and consider myself ahead of the game! In any case, The Strip is about getting to the meat of the matter and stripping out the propaganda from a particularly egregious mainstream media story. Yesterday, such an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal, begging me to give it The Strip. Here it is…

The Propaganda

The article titled, Militants in Iraq Siphon State Pay: Islamic State skims funds headed for government employees in occupied areas, creating a dilemma for U.S. and Baghdad, reports that the US is giving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Iraq government and one of the things the Iraq government is spending its money on is cash payments to government employees operating in captive ISIS territory. One or two thousand ISIS militants holding the city of Mosul in Iraq are forcing government workers there to remit 30% of their pay to the Islamic State. The White House is not comfortable directing the Iraq government to stop this flow of funds because “people can’t starve.”

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FoxNews Reports ISIS Video of Beheading Copts Faked

beheadpic1

In the article below, Fox reports that the ISIS video of beheading Egyptian Copts in Libya was filmed in a studio using green screens and fake blood. Therefore, there is no evidence that this crime even occurred in Libya (or really occurred at all), yet Egypt bombed Libya killing seven civilians less than 24 hours after the video was released. Are these the kind of irresponsible hotheads we want as allies? Coup-installed Egyptian leader Sisi has asked the US to help him “fight terrorists” within Egypt as well, but can his judgment be trusted? The thousands of Egyptians he has killed since the coup have been protestors of the coup–is that terrorism? I’m sure it terrifies him, but that’s not really the point. I have been suspicious of his true motives for the bombing since it happened. I think the real story is that we and our allies including Egypt cannot tolerate the emerging government in Libya that operates out of the capital, Tripoli, and controls the oil rich areas of the country. I suspect that all attacks on “Libya’s ISIS” will actually attack the Tripoli government’s infrastructure and ability to engage in the oil trade.

As for the video, FoxNews reports, “The footage was faked.” Specifically, the video was made in part in a studio against a green screen, and that the parts that were shot outside were shot at a bay not the ocean, so there’s no way it was shot where Egypt bombed; the sea turning red is a post production trick; there were only six men total – 3 victims & 3 jihadis (all of whom appear to be over 7 feet tall) – and that sequence was looped 7 times, so even if all the victims were killed, that means only 3 died, yet Egypt killed 7 innocent civilians in its raid on a location that turns out to be unrelated to where this video was made; and the blood was likely made of cornstarch and wasn’t actually pumping out of the victims–so there’s no hard or soft evidence that anyone even died. Given all this, why is the mainstream media still reporting that 21 Christians were killed? No explanation can change the fact that this video was faked and there is no evidence whatsoever that ISIS killed 21 Christians in Libya. Furthermore, the claim that this just proves how sophisticated ISIS is is an old Saul Alinsky trick – when something goes wrong, use it to your advantage. Similarly, soon after people started to notice that many of the jihadis had British or European accents, the news started reporting that many Westerners were joining ISIS. The bottom line is, as always, The Saint Peter Test...if you consent to Congress authorizing the use of force – that is, killing people – you had better be absolutely certain it is in genuine self-defense or you will have blood on your hands as Egypt does now.

(For more on ISIS: What if ISIS isn’t what it appears to be?)

Here’s the full story from Fox…

ISIS’ army of 7-footers? Experts say video of Copt beheadings manipulated

By Malia Zimmerman

Published February 21, 2015

| FoxNews.com

Video of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians being marched along a Libyan beach before being beheaded by black-clad members of ISIS is hard for any civilized person to watch, but experts who made it through the sickening, five-minute clip told FoxNews.com Friday they came to the same conclusion: The footage was faked.

No one holds out hope the victims, mostly poor fishermen who had gone to Libya to scratch out a living, are still alive. But several anomalies in the video, which was posted online Feb. 15, indicated to trained eyes that at least some of the production was done on “green screen” with background added later, perhaps to disguise the real location of the atrocity. A day after the clip went viral, Egyptian warplanes struck hard at an eastern port city near Tripoli, where the video appeared to have been shot.

“The Islamic State’s manipulation of their high-production videos has become commonplace,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. The murders likely took place in a studio, and the background image shown was likely from another location, the Bay in Sirte, a part of the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya, according to Khan. There are several technical mistakes in the video that show it was manipulated, she said.

The most obvious, Khan said, is the speaker, “Jihad Joseph” is much larger than the sea in both the close up and wide shots, and his head is bizarrely out of proportion, meaning he was filmed indoors and the sea added behind him, Khan said. In addition, the jihadists featured in the film look to be more than 7 feet tall, towering as much as two feet above their victims.

The perspective is something several Saudi Arabians noted in their tweets about the video, questioning whether the jihadists were a part of some sort of special forces unit since they were so large.

Hollywood horror film director Mary Lambert, who among her many film credits directed Pet Cemetery, analyzed the film for FoxNews.com and quickly concluded Khan was correct.

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“They” Are Three Moves Ahead: Podcast of February 7, 2015 Show

WSB changed its podcast policy so now my options are limited as to how to post this. If you can’t hear this as is, please try another browser. My sincere apologies for the inconvenience. Hour 1 Hour 2 This is part 2 of “Hillary’s Libya.” Click here for part 1.

Behind Benghazi – Hillary's Libyan War: Podcast of January 31, 2015 Show

IF YOU’RE HAVING TROUBLE LOADING THE PODCAST, PLEASE TRY A DIFFERENT BROWSER. ALSO, IF YOU WANT ME TO CONTINUE TO BE ABLE TO POST THE PODCASTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE – THEY ARE IN DANGER! Hour 1 Hour 2 Here are the clips I used on the show: (the panetta clip is around 6:00 below) Listen … Read more

Behind Benghazi – Hillary’s Libyan War: Podcast of January 31, 2015 Show

IF YOU’RE HAVING TROUBLE LOADING THE PODCAST, PLEASE TRY A DIFFERENT BROWSER. ALSO, IF YOU WANT ME TO CONTINUE TO BE ABLE TO POST THE PODCASTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE – THEY ARE IN DANGER! Hour 1 Hour 2 Here are the clips I used on the show: (the panetta clip is around 6:00 below) Listen … Read more

"Admiral: US Could Have Ousted Qaddafi Peacefully"

For those who prefer mainstream media, here is more on the story: Report: Pentagon officials opened back-channels with Qaddafi regime to slow Clinton push into war (first installment of Washington Times series) Exclusive: Secret tapes undermine Hillary Clinton on Libyan war (second installment of Washington Times series) Hillary Clinton’s ‘WMD’ moment: U.S. intelligence saw false … Read more

“Admiral: US Could Have Ousted Qaddafi Peacefully”

For those who prefer mainstream media, here is more on the story: Report: Pentagon officials opened back-channels with Qaddafi regime to slow Clinton push into war (first installment of Washington Times series) Exclusive: Secret tapes undermine Hillary Clinton on Libyan war (second installment of Washington Times series) Hillary Clinton’s ‘WMD’ moment: U.S. intelligence saw false … Read more

Doomsday List From This Week's Show!

This week on the show we talked about a list I came upon:  Top Ten Global Risks we face over the next year.  Here’s the list:
10. Regime implosion in North Korea, on the basis that the surprisingly rapid acclamation of Kim Jong-un as ‘great successor’ to his father is a façade.
9. A deflationary trap in the United States similar to what Japan experienced in 1992-95, with dire consequences for global growth.
8. Cartels capture the Mexican state, wherein the essential functions and institutions of government are ceded to powerful drug lords.

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