HIGHLY MANIPULATED: A HOLY WAR

Australia, as the second largest contributor to the Coalition, had played a direct role in the largest human rights abuse of the 21st Century.

In Mosul, encompassing the ancient city of Nineveh, thousands lay dead.

A city demolished. 

He could hear the rats scrabbling through the walls, and it didn't matter how much he complained that his pursuers were dishonest, incompetent and corrupt, they were on contract. They were as unfeeling and as self-motivated as the bombs falling on the ancient city of Nineveh.

They would like to have welcomed him to paradise.

Your guards are like locusts, your officials like swarms of locusts that settle in the walls on a cold day-- but when the sun appears they fly away, and no one knows where. Nahum.

Once the largest, most powerful city in the world, the ancient city of Nineveh lay in ruins, full of the stench of death.

Worldwide, the jihad movement was incensed.

Australia had been led blindly into a jihad trap.

The greatest military strategists on Earth led the West into a blind canyon. Easily shot at. Their own civilisations in ruin, Do unto others as you shall have them do unto you. 

The footage rarely showed the rotting bodies where they fell.

All they could do, those who pressed to communicate, not to tell you the truth.

He smells a rat, one of the Watchers on the Watch observed as Australia's, and America's, bombs rained down on Muslims on the other side of the world.

The people were in ignorance, blind, compressed, manipulated.
. 
Of course he smelt a rat. He wasn't as dumb as he looked. 

That it took the world's greatest army's, billions of dollars, many months, the concerted manipulation and oppression of domestic populations, for no one must know the truth about this devastating war, or where it was leading, although the evidence lay strewn on the world's battlefields; easily seen. Pick up the strands. Look at what they say themselves. The world was already entering the seventh and final stage. 

The Iraqi forces on the ground were backed by the Australian government. They had peddled the lie that we were there at the request of the Iraqis, which was bullshit. The Americans were despised. The Australians were their cohorts. The notorious Iraqi Army behaved badly, looted, laughed and killed, young soldiers boasting about how many Islamic State fighters they had killed. 

In an ancient city. From the ramparts, all could be seen. But could anyone describe the madness that had set down upon the world?

There was nothing to be proud of, as the uniformed army tortured anyone they suspected,  in the blood lust that inevitably took over in extremes of war. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The news coverage was highly restricted, and highly manipulated, as Western audiences ignored, or turned their backs on the pantomime play of experts on their screens, pontificating about the "liberation".

No eyes to see, no ears to hear. They were torturing their targets in ruined buildings, for pleasure, strutting, young men for whom the whole of life should lie ahead, as their comrades died, strutting for the cameras, or their own versions of their own selves in history, barely cognisant of their own actions, or their place in the terrible scheme of things. Arbitrary detention and arrest. Torture. Disappearance. Shell shocked. Traumatised beyond all measure. As the bombs rained down mobs hunted through the the smell of death which coated rubble. Shock, pain, incomparable grief cutting through the clutter of the new millennium, the thirsting of millions of vessels ripe for harvesting.

Putrefaction. Of the bodies in the ruins. Western civilisation as we had once understood it. Of a place where the gods played their wars, and there was evil on every side. 

Let me draw you a diagram. All of these resources. The President... The Donald... The FBI. Nobody trusted the CIA to provide a reliable report about anything anymore. Homeland Security. The NSA. Heavily compromised. The local security forces were so easily impressed, had so totally abrogated their own sovereignty, they let the Americans take control of any operation. Anything.  The Australian Army was advertising to recruit devout Muslims. What was wrong, in the name of diversity, in recruiting ordinary Muslims, who like most Christians went to pray intermittently, went about their lives in what was supposed to be the liberal West, went to work, cared for their children, liked to be distracted from the turmoil and ordure of daily life.

No. Devout. They must pray five times a day. They must be there as warriors on the domestic front. Ready, with their non-Muslim brothers, to take control over a disarmed, demolarised, hoodwinked population.

Already, in Britain and in France, heavily armed soldiers stood on street corners. What they could not take with propaganda, subterfuge, manipulation, they would take with force. The enemy which had become my enemy was inside the gates. The ancient, conflicted foes were now on the same side. The Jihadis and the Jesuits met behind the back fence. The lunar left and the lunar right collaborated on their project to transform the society. 

 The killers in high places say their prayers out loud.

Those possessed settled into their mansions, like the castles of old. But no amount of money in the world could make them happy. Prestige lapped and was gone. For the cowards of war faced the dead in their dreams; and the public bayed for their blood. The mechanisms of dissemination, the deeply conflicted security apparatus, the high and the low and the fabric of it, all was settling into a future they, despite all their wealth and their technologies, had never predicted.



THE BIGGER STORY

Photography by Lauren van der Stockt, winner of the 2017 World Press Photo Award for his work in Iraq. Courtesy of Le Monde:

http://www.lemonde.fr/international/portfolio/2017/06/30/dans-les-ruines-de-mossoul-avec-l-armee-irakienne_5153949_3210.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/01/thousands-of-mosul-civilians-trapped-in-isis-territory-as-iraqi-forces-close-in

Hundreds of civilians fled Mosul’s Old City on Friday as Iraqi forces slowly squeezed the last pockets of Islamic State resistance, and the UN warned that the “intense and concentrated” fighting put innocent lives in even greater danger.

People climbed over mounds of rubble and through narrow alleys as gunshots and explosions rang out nearby. The neighborhoods where government forces are fighting have been under siege for months as grueling urban warfare drew out the operation to retake Iraq’s second-largest city.

For the civilians held as human shields by the extremists, supplies have run low and drinking water is scarce, according to residents interviewed at screening centres and clinics.

The battles came a day after Iraqi forces made significant gains against the militants and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared an end to the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

After a dawn push on Thursday, Iraqi forces retook the symbolic site where the al-Nuri Mosque once stood. It was from the pulpit of the 12th century mosque, which the militants blew up last week along with its famous leaning minaret, that their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had proclaimed the caliphate in 2014.

During the evening, al-Abadi announced the full liberation of Mosul was near and that Iraq’s “brave forces will bring victory”.

Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi said by Friday afternoon the special forces were within 700 metres of the Tigris River, which roughly divides Mosul into eastern and western halves.

The operation to retake Mosul, backed closely by the US-led coalition, began in October, with the Iraqi government initially vowing the city would be liberated in 2016.

The battles came a day after Iraqi forces made significant gains against the militants and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared an end to the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

After a dawn push on Thursday, Iraqi forces retook the symbolic site where the al-Nuri Mosque once stood. It was from the pulpit of the 12th century mosque, which the militants blew up last week along with its famous leaning minaret, that their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had proclaimed the caliphate in 2014.



During the evening, al-Abadi announced the full liberation of Mosul was near and that Iraq’s “brave forces will bring victory”.

Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi said by Friday afternoon the special forces were within 700 metres of the Tigris River, which roughly divides Mosul into eastern and western halves.

The operation to retake Mosul, backed closely by the US-led coalition, began in October, with the Iraqi government initially vowing the city would be liberated in 2016.

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2017/06/30/islamic-state-mosul-falls/

The Iraqi government has announced the end of the caliphate after capturing the Al-Nuri Mosque in Western Mosul, the place where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of the caliphate and unleashed a reign of terror on the world.

“Their fictitious state has fallen,” an Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, told Iraqi state television.

Only an estimated 350 Islamic State soldiers remain in an area of less than one square kilometre in the ancient city.

Experts warn that the brutal nature of the Mosul occupation is fuelling extremism around the world. While the exact numbers are concealed in the rubble of the ancient city, the mujahideen soldiers of Islamic State, civilians and Iraqi personnel have died in their many hundreds.

As streams of Sunni muslims flee from the pulverised ruins of their neighbourhoods they pass bodies rotting in the intense heat.




More than 860,000 people have fled the city since the Iraq Army, backed by Coalition airstrikes, including from Australia, began pounding the city last October.

Eight months of gruelling combat later Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and encompassing the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, and whole districts of what the Bible refers to as the “Great City”, look like scenes from an apocalypse.

Back then, Army officers boasted it would be mere days before they retook the city where al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic Caliphate in 2014.

While some of the civilians being “liberated” from the city display gratitude, or ingratiate themselves with their new conquerors, it is clear from footage of the frontline that the civilian Sunni population are as terrified of the Coalition-backed Shias of the Iraqi Army as they may once have been of Islamic State.



Human Rights Watch says thousands of Sunni Muslims have been tortured, killed or disappeared.

There are numerous concerns over the behaviour of the conquering Iraq Army, which is backed by both America and Australia. Footage from French television shows officers laughing at dead Islamic State soldiers.

Belkis Wille, Senior Iraq Researcher with Human Rights Watch, told The New Daily the civilian population is “extremely traumatised”.



“The civilians are highly traumatised. Mosul is the largest urban war in modern history. The west of the city and the neighbourhood still under ISIS control are extremely densely populated,” she said.


THE SEVEN PHASES TO WORLD DOMINATION:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2005/08/the_seven_phase.php




The First Phase Known as “the awakening” — this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby “awakening” Muslims. “The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”



The Second Phase “Opening Eyes” is, according to Hussein’s definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the “Islamic community.” Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.



The Third Phase This is described as “Arising and Standing Up” and should last from 2007 to 2010. “There will be a focus on Syria,” prophesies Hussein, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and — even more explosive — in Israel are predicted. Al-Qaida’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.




The Fourth Phase Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that al-Qaida will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments. The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within al-Qaida.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.




The Fifth Phase This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al-Qaida hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order.



The Sixth Phase Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of “total confrontation.” As soon as the caliphate has been declared the “Islamic army” it will instigate the “fight between the believers and the non-believers” which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden.



The Seventh Phase This final stage is described as “definitive victory.” Hussein writes that in the terrorists’ eyes, because the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the “one-and-a-half million Muslims,” the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war shouldn’t last longer than two years.

HIGHLY MANIPULATED: A HOLY WAR

Australia, as the second largest contributor to the Coalition, had played a direct role in the largest human rights abuse of the 21st Century.

In Mosul, encompassing the ancient city of Nineveh, thousands lay dead.

A city demolished. 

He could hear the rats scrabbling through the walls, and it didn't matter how much he complained that his pursuers were dishonest, incompetent and corrupt, they were on contract. They were as unfeeling and as self-motivated as the bombs falling on the ancient city of Nineveh.

They would like to have welcomed him to paradise.

Your guards are like locusts, your officials like swarms of locusts that settle in the walls on a cold day-- but when the sun appears they fly away, and no one knows where. Nahum.

Once the largest, most powerful city in the world, the ancient city of Nineveh lay in ruins, full of the stench of death.

Worldwide, the jihad movement was incensed.

Australia had been led blindly into a jihad trap.

The greatest military strategists on Earth led the West into a blind canyon. Easily shot at. Their own civilisations in ruin, Do unto others as you shall have them do unto you. 

The footage rarely showed the rotting bodies where they fell.

All they could do, those who pressed to communicate, not to tell you the truth.

He smells a rat, one of the Watchers on the Watch observed as Australia's, and America's, bombs rained down on Muslims on the other side of the world.

The people were in ignorance, blind, compressed, manipulated.
. 
Of course he smelt a rat. He wasn't as dumb as he looked. 

That it took the world's greatest army's, billions of dollars, many months, the concerted manipulation and oppression of domestic populations, for no one must know the truth about this devastating war, or where it was leading, although the evidence lay strewn on the world's battlefields; easily seen. Pick up the strands. Look at what they say themselves. The world was already entering the seventh and final stage. 

The Iraqi forces on the ground were backed by the Australian government. They had peddled the lie that we were there at the request of the Iraqis, which was bullshit. The Americans were despised. The Australians were their cohorts. The notorious Iraqi Army behaved badly, looted, laughed and killed, young soldiers boasting about how many Islamic State fighters they had killed. 

In an ancient city. From the ramparts, all could be seen. But could anyone describe the madness that had set down upon the world?

There was nothing to be proud of, as the uniformed army tortured anyone they suspected,  in the blood lust that inevitably took over in extremes of war. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The news coverage was highly restricted, and highly manipulated, as Western audiences ignored, or turned their backs on the pantomime play of experts on their screens, pontificating about the "liberation".

No eyes to see, no ears to hear. They were torturing their targets in ruined buildings, for pleasure, strutting, young men for whom the whole of life should lie ahead, as their comrades died, strutting for the cameras, or their own versions of their own selves in history, barely cognisant of their own actions, or their place in the terrible scheme of things. Arbitrary detention and arrest. Torture. Disappearance. Shell shocked. Traumatised beyond all measure. As the bombs rained down mobs hunted through the the smell of death which coated rubble. Shock, pain, incomparable grief cutting through the clutter of the new millennium, the thirsting of millions of vessels ripe for harvesting.

Putrefaction. Of the bodies in the ruins. Western civilisation as we had once understood it. Of a place where the gods played their wars, and there was evil on every side. 

Let me draw you a diagram. All of these resources. The President... The Donald... The FBI. Nobody trusted the CIA to provide a reliable report about anything anymore. Homeland Security. The NSA. Heavily compromised. The local security forces were so easily impressed, had so totally abrogated their own sovereignty, they let the Americans take control of any operation. Anything.  The Australian Army was advertising to recruit devout Muslims. What was wrong, in the name of diversity, in recruiting ordinary Muslims, who like most Christians went to pray intermittently, went about their lives in what was supposed to be the liberal West, went to work, cared for their children, liked to be distracted from the turmoil and ordure of daily life.

No. Devout. They must pray five times a day. They must be there as warriors on the domestic front. Ready, with their non-Muslim brothers, to take control over a disarmed, demolarised, hoodwinked population.

Already, in Britain and in France, heavily armed soldiers stood on street corners. What they could not take with propaganda, subterfuge, manipulation, they would take with force. The enemy which had become my enemy was inside the gates. The ancient, conflicted foes were now on the same side. The Jihadis and the Jesuits met behind the back fence. The lunar left and the lunar right collaborated on their project to transform the society. 

 The killers in high places say their prayers out loud.

Those possessed settled into their mansions, like the castles of old. But no amount of money in the world could make them happy. Prestige lapped and was gone. For the cowards of war faced the dead in their dreams; and the public bayed for their blood. The mechanisms of dissemination, the deeply conflicted security apparatus, the high and the low and the fabric of it, all was settling into a future they, despite all their wealth and their technologies, had never predicted.



THE BIGGER STORY

Photography by Lauren van der Stockt, winner of the 2017 World Press Photo Award for his work in Iraq. Courtesy of Le Monde:

http://www.lemonde.fr/international/portfolio/2017/06/30/dans-les-ruines-de-mossoul-avec-l-armee-irakienne_5153949_3210.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/01/thousands-of-mosul-civilians-trapped-in-isis-territory-as-iraqi-forces-close-in

Hundreds of civilians fled Mosul’s Old City on Friday as Iraqi forces slowly squeezed the last pockets of Islamic State resistance, and the UN warned that the “intense and concentrated” fighting put innocent lives in even greater danger.

People climbed over mounds of rubble and through narrow alleys as gunshots and explosions rang out nearby. The neighborhoods where government forces are fighting have been under siege for months as grueling urban warfare drew out the operation to retake Iraq’s second-largest city.

For the civilians held as human shields by the extremists, supplies have run low and drinking water is scarce, according to residents interviewed at screening centres and clinics.

The battles came a day after Iraqi forces made significant gains against the militants and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared an end to the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

After a dawn push on Thursday, Iraqi forces retook the symbolic site where the al-Nuri Mosque once stood. It was from the pulpit of the 12th century mosque, which the militants blew up last week along with its famous leaning minaret, that their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had proclaimed the caliphate in 2014.

During the evening, al-Abadi announced the full liberation of Mosul was near and that Iraq’s “brave forces will bring victory”.

Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi said by Friday afternoon the special forces were within 700 metres of the Tigris River, which roughly divides Mosul into eastern and western halves.

The operation to retake Mosul, backed closely by the US-led coalition, began in October, with the Iraqi government initially vowing the city would be liberated in 2016.

The battles came a day after Iraqi forces made significant gains against the militants and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared an end to the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

After a dawn push on Thursday, Iraqi forces retook the symbolic site where the al-Nuri Mosque once stood. It was from the pulpit of the 12th century mosque, which the militants blew up last week along with its famous leaning minaret, that their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had proclaimed the caliphate in 2014.



During the evening, al-Abadi announced the full liberation of Mosul was near and that Iraq’s “brave forces will bring victory”.

Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi said by Friday afternoon the special forces were within 700 metres of the Tigris River, which roughly divides Mosul into eastern and western halves.

The operation to retake Mosul, backed closely by the US-led coalition, began in October, with the Iraqi government initially vowing the city would be liberated in 2016.

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2017/06/30/islamic-state-mosul-falls/

The Iraqi government has announced the end of the caliphate after capturing the Al-Nuri Mosque in Western Mosul, the place where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the formation of the caliphate and unleashed a reign of terror on the world.

“Their fictitious state has fallen,” an Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, told Iraqi state television.

Only an estimated 350 Islamic State soldiers remain in an area of less than one square kilometre in the ancient city.

Experts warn that the brutal nature of the Mosul occupation is fuelling extremism around the world. While the exact numbers are concealed in the rubble of the ancient city, the mujahideen soldiers of Islamic State, civilians and Iraqi personnel have died in their many hundreds.

As streams of Sunni muslims flee from the pulverised ruins of their neighbourhoods they pass bodies rotting in the intense heat.




More than 860,000 people have fled the city since the Iraq Army, backed by Coalition airstrikes, including from Australia, began pounding the city last October.

Eight months of gruelling combat later Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and encompassing the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, and whole districts of what the Bible refers to as the “Great City”, look like scenes from an apocalypse.

Back then, Army officers boasted it would be mere days before they retook the city where al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic Caliphate in 2014.

While some of the civilians being “liberated” from the city display gratitude, or ingratiate themselves with their new conquerors, it is clear from footage of the frontline that the civilian Sunni population are as terrified of the Coalition-backed Shias of the Iraqi Army as they may once have been of Islamic State.



Human Rights Watch says thousands of Sunni Muslims have been tortured, killed or disappeared.

There are numerous concerns over the behaviour of the conquering Iraq Army, which is backed by both America and Australia. Footage from French television shows officers laughing at dead Islamic State soldiers.

Belkis Wille, Senior Iraq Researcher with Human Rights Watch, told The New Daily the civilian population is “extremely traumatised”.



“The civilians are highly traumatised. Mosul is the largest urban war in modern history. The west of the city and the neighbourhood still under ISIS control are extremely densely populated,” she said.


THE SEVEN PHASES TO WORLD DOMINATION:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2005/08/the_seven_phase.php




The First Phase Known as “the awakening” — this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby “awakening” Muslims. “The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”



The Second Phase “Opening Eyes” is, according to Hussein’s definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the “Islamic community.” Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.



The Third Phase This is described as “Arising and Standing Up” and should last from 2007 to 2010. “There will be a focus on Syria,” prophesies Hussein, based on what his sources told him. The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and — even more explosive — in Israel are predicted. Al-Qaida’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.




The Fourth Phase Between 2010 and 2013, Hussein writes that al-Qaida will aim to bring about the collapse of the hated Arabic governments. The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within al-Qaida.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.




The Fifth Phase This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al-Qaida hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order.



The Sixth Phase Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of “total confrontation.” As soon as the caliphate has been declared the “Islamic army” it will instigate the “fight between the believers and the non-believers” which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden.



The Seventh Phase This final stage is described as “definitive victory.” Hussein writes that in the terrorists’ eyes, because the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the “one-and-a-half million Muslims,” the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war shouldn’t last longer than two years.

UTTERLY SURREAL

East Coast of Australia, Littoral Zone

It was utterly surreal.

But no one knew.

The news bulletins did not lead with it. There was no discussion at the Tables of Knowledge. The endless talk fests of modern society did not debate it. The politicians did not strut their stuff, crowing about military victories.

There was no pride in defense of the homeland. 

We discussed the war, if at all, as if it was some arcane version of Pokemon being conducted on the other side of the world, obscure, of having no significance to our lives.

Mosul was falling.

The place where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared a caliphate three years before and unleashed a campaign of terror which would profoundly alter the world was now in ruins.

The Coalition, of which Australia was the second greatest contributor, had pulverised the ancient town, which encompassed the Assyrian city of Nineveh, referred to in the Bible as "the great city".

The Great City had been pummeled into dust by The Great Satan.

The vision of destroyed, traumatised families, dead bodies in the street, wounded or dead children, the infidel Americans in the city, their gunships overhead, was fueling jihad sentiment around the world.

It was as if deliberate, in the double, triple, quadruple blinds of Western artifice, as if some secret entity was pulling the levers, deliberately stoking violence, deliberately propelling the end of what had become known as Western civilisation, that now rotting ruin.

"My five children are dead. There is but one God, Allah."

The woman stumbled across the front line. Not into the hands of safety. Into the hands of the murderers of her children.

The highly traumatised population, devastated by the bombing, fled through snipers, past the smell of rotting mujahideen, past whole families rotting in the rubble, the largest, most shocking cases of urban warfare in history.

And the Australian news bulletins led on education reform, football scandals, yet more programs to cut waste, the latest bureaucratic minutiae on the development of emissions trading schemes, yet more legislation abrogating freedoms they purported to protect, celebrity gossip. And the latest in a long running secular witch hunt, the charging of Cardinal George Pell with sexual abuse allegations dating from 1978.

Where the truth lay in some accused fumble in a school gym 40 years ago only God knew.

But the hounds had been unleashed.

The stench of death hung over Mosul and no one cared, all the alleged social justice warriors too concerned with their waste disposal units to care about flyblown bodies on the others side of the world.

We were there, Australian politicians had assured the public, to stamp out terrorism at its roots.

Decades of failure in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of dead, the millions of lives altered or destroyed, the galvinisation of jihad movements around the globe, none of it mattered in the altered universe that was Australian public life.

Australia was actively supporting the Shia dominated Iraq Army, fermenting sectarian violence against the Sunnis, creating the perfect breeding grounds for Islamic State 2.0.

And nobody cared.

They would come to care. 

But would never understand why their world had just been mugged.


THE BIGGER STORY:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/mosul-mosque-where-isis-declared-caliphate-has-been-recaptured




Martin Chulov

Iraqi forces claim to have recaptured the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul – where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself leader of Islamic State three years ago.

The seizure marks a highly symbolic moment in the war, placing government troops in the heart of the Old City – the last redoubt of Isis in Mosul – and probably within a fortnight of recapturing all of Mosul.

Baghdadi declared a caliphate from the mosque three years ago to the day – 29 June 2014 – at the height of the group’s power.

Isis last week toppled the Hadba minaret adjoining the mosque, causing extensive damage to the surrounding compound. The fight for the terror group’s last redoubt was grinding and savage, with Iraqi troops reporting house-to-house fighting with a battle-hardened enemy, which refused to surrender.

Iraqi special forces entered the compound and took control of the surrounding streets on Thursday afternoon, following a dawn push into the area, said Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi.

Earlier, the special forces Maj Gen Sami al-Aridi warned that the site would need to be cleared by engineering teams as Isis fighters were likely to have rigged it with explosives.

Five Isis militants were killed on Wednesday while trying to swim across the Tigris river from the west to the east of the city, armed with explosives. The densely packed Old City is thought to still house up to 100 well armed extremists, as well as tens of thousands of civilians, who have been gradually streaming out of ravaged buildings to safety over the past week.

After months of fighting, the Isis hold in Mosul has shrunk to less than 0.8 square miles of territory, but the advances have come at considerable cost.

“There are hundreds of bodies under the rubble,” said special forces Maj Dhia Thamir, deployed inside the Old City.

THREE YEARS AGO:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, emerged from the shadows to lead Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque, calling on the world’s Muslims to “obey” him as the head of the caliphate declared by the Sunni jihadist group.


The notoriously secretive jihadi, who has never before been seen in public, chose the first Friday prayer service of Ramadan to make an audacious display of power in the city that the Sunni Islamists have now controlled for three weeks.


Speaking from the balcony in his new incarnation as self-anointed “Caliph Ibrahim”, Baghdadi announced himself as “the leader who presides over you”, urging Muslims to join him and "make jihad" for the sake of Allah.


Under his direction, the Islamic world would be returned to “dignity, might, rights and leadership”, he said.


“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, assist me,” he said, dressed in a black turban and robe reminiscent of the last caliphs to rule from Baghdad.

“If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you.”

Al-Baghdadi hailed the jihadi “victory” which he said had restored the caliphate after centuries.

“God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience... so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge,” he said.

“This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries.”

UTTERLY SURREAL

East Coast of Australia, Littoral Zone

It was utterly surreal.

But no one knew.

The news bulletins did not lead with it. There was no discussion at the Tables of Knowledge. The endless talk fests of modern society did not debate it. The politicians did not strut their stuff, crowing about military victories.

There was no pride in defense of the homeland. 

We discussed the war, if at all, as if it was some arcane version of Pokemon being conducted on the other side of the world, obscure, of having no significance to our lives.

Mosul was falling.

The place where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared a caliphate three years before and unleashed a campaign of terror which would profoundly alter the world was now in ruins.

The Coalition, of which Australia was the second greatest contributor, had pulverised the ancient town, which encompassed the Assyrian city of Nineveh, referred to in the Bible as "the great city".

The Great City had been pummeled into dust by The Great Satan.

The vision of destroyed, traumatised families, dead bodies in the street, wounded or dead children, the infidel Americans in the city, their gunships overhead, was fueling jihad sentiment around the world.

It was as if deliberate, in the double, triple, quadruple blinds of Western artifice, as if some secret entity was pulling the levers, deliberately stoking violence, deliberately propelling the end of what had become known as Western civilisation, that now rotting ruin.

"My five children are dead. There is but one God, Allah."

The woman stumbled across the front line. Not into the hands of safety. Into the hands of the murderers of her children.

The highly traumatised population, devastated by the bombing, fled through snipers, past the smell of rotting mujahideen, past whole families rotting in the rubble, the largest, most shocking cases of urban warfare in history.

And the Australian news bulletins led on education reform, football scandals, yet more programs to cut waste, the latest bureaucratic minutiae on the development of emissions trading schemes, yet more legislation abrogating freedoms they purported to protect, celebrity gossip. And the latest in a long running secular witch hunt, the charging of Cardinal George Pell with sexual abuse allegations dating from 1978.

Where the truth lay in some accused fumble in a school gym 40 years ago only God knew.

But the hounds had been unleashed.

The stench of death hung over Mosul and no one cared, all the alleged social justice warriors too concerned with their waste disposal units to care about flyblown bodies on the others side of the world.

We were there, Australian politicians had assured the public, to stamp out terrorism at its roots.

Decades of failure in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of dead, the millions of lives altered or destroyed, the galvinisation of jihad movements around the globe, none of it mattered in the altered universe that was Australian public life.

Australia was actively supporting the Shia dominated Iraq Army, fermenting sectarian violence against the Sunnis, creating the perfect breeding grounds for Islamic State 2.0.

And nobody cared.

They would come to care. 

But would never understand why their world had just been mugged.


THE BIGGER STORY:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/mosul-mosque-where-isis-declared-caliphate-has-been-recaptured




Martin Chulov

Iraqi forces claim to have recaptured the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul – where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself leader of Islamic State three years ago.

The seizure marks a highly symbolic moment in the war, placing government troops in the heart of the Old City – the last redoubt of Isis in Mosul – and probably within a fortnight of recapturing all of Mosul.

Baghdadi declared a caliphate from the mosque three years ago to the day – 29 June 2014 – at the height of the group’s power.

Isis last week toppled the Hadba minaret adjoining the mosque, causing extensive damage to the surrounding compound. The fight for the terror group’s last redoubt was grinding and savage, with Iraqi troops reporting house-to-house fighting with a battle-hardened enemy, which refused to surrender.

Iraqi special forces entered the compound and took control of the surrounding streets on Thursday afternoon, following a dawn push into the area, said Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi.

Earlier, the special forces Maj Gen Sami al-Aridi warned that the site would need to be cleared by engineering teams as Isis fighters were likely to have rigged it with explosives.

Five Isis militants were killed on Wednesday while trying to swim across the Tigris river from the west to the east of the city, armed with explosives. The densely packed Old City is thought to still house up to 100 well armed extremists, as well as tens of thousands of civilians, who have been gradually streaming out of ravaged buildings to safety over the past week.

After months of fighting, the Isis hold in Mosul has shrunk to less than 0.8 square miles of territory, but the advances have come at considerable cost.

“There are hundreds of bodies under the rubble,” said special forces Maj Dhia Thamir, deployed inside the Old City.

THREE YEARS AGO:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, emerged from the shadows to lead Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque, calling on the world’s Muslims to “obey” him as the head of the caliphate declared by the Sunni jihadist group.


The notoriously secretive jihadi, who has never before been seen in public, chose the first Friday prayer service of Ramadan to make an audacious display of power in the city that the Sunni Islamists have now controlled for three weeks.


Speaking from the balcony in his new incarnation as self-anointed “Caliph Ibrahim”, Baghdadi announced himself as “the leader who presides over you”, urging Muslims to join him and "make jihad" for the sake of Allah.


Under his direction, the Islamic world would be returned to “dignity, might, rights and leadership”, he said.


“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, assist me,” he said, dressed in a black turban and robe reminiscent of the last caliphs to rule from Baghdad.

“If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you.”

Al-Baghdadi hailed the jihadi “victory” which he said had restored the caliphate after centuries.

“God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience... so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge,” he said.

“This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries.”

RED ALERT 2017

Almost six minutes pass in the video focusing first on death and loss, and then on the sweetness and transitory nature of life: a grave is filled in with dirt; a young man gazes up at the heavens in the midst of Raqqa's rubble; an old man pulls a battered bicycle out of the ruins of a house; gold coins are counted and spin into eternity; a blacksmith labors wearily at his task; another man treads a path through fallen, sere leaves; a father gazes at his newborn baby; you see images of innocent children, of smiles and of flowers, of gold and of trees. You see normal streets and then those same streets that have been reduced to rubble.
This is Raqqa and it is in a way about the ongoing Coalition air campaign against ISIS. But the commentary is about much more than that. The commentator notes that those who have chosen the path of Jihad in the Path of God have made a better choice than the things of this world, of al-Dunya. You then hear the voice of a dead man, of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, just as you see an ISIS fighter on a sand berm shot and falling slowly to his death. Al-Zarqawi notes that there is in life, in the end, nothing for the Muslim but jihad and worship of their Lord. Focus, instead of this passing world, on the eternal, on al-Akhira, rather than this life.
From Islamic State's Raqqa Elegy shows both Weakness and Power by Alberto Fernandez.

The discourse was all about White Privilege. They shivered in defeat. The mujaheddin sacrificed their souls to Allah. The Australian Prime Minister couldn't decide whether he wanted to be Mussolini or General Mao. Mosul was falling, the rapture was spreading, the project of the West was failing everywhere. As Western politicians trumpeted victory over terror, defeat was everywhere, in the soldiers on corners, in the increasingly proscribed lives of the populace, in the deadening of discourse into ritual, the lockout laws shutting down nightclubs and the sacrifice of traditional culture, whether or not you approved of the boozy, friendly, unsophisticated rabble or not, that was beside the point. Everything was sacrificed in the name of diversity, and each move, each shutting down, made the advent of the sharia easier.

What are we defending? 

A West which bombed and killed innocence with zero regard for the sovereignty of nations. 

A West which treated its own citizens as charlatans, and jailed them at will. 

A country which fined people for having too much mud on the mud flaps of  their vehicles.

Which achieved perfection when everyone was dependent on the state.

Where traditional tolerance was now a sin against God. Changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born. 

Old Alex interviewed an Iraqi expert from Human Rights Watch. We have never seen people so traumatised, she said. They have experienced three years of Islamic State rule. Their families have died in the air strikes, their homes destroyed. They have lost everything. 

The mujaheddin were fighting to the last drop of blood. Their sacrifice they hoped, or knew, would shelter, shatter, into the spiritual realm. The despised West was dying. They succeeded where all else thought they were failing. In the noble pursuit of truth. In the noble pursuit fo God's blessing. In rubble no Westerner could understand. Everything was comfort, even sacrifice, here at the end of days. 

The Aztecs had sacrificed the slaves, cutting out their hearts in ritual, there on the high reaches of the Pyramid of the Sun, summoning the gods.

Old Alex had climbed it as a boy, their pain a muffled, distant echo across two thousand years, across the flat plains, in high heat and low dudgeon. Now, ensconced, trapped on the other side of the world, trapped in suburban walls, there was no way to comprehend the disintegration of the West and the suffering of those who sacrificed themselves in the fight. They had no choice. They knew they were to die. That they were sacrificing their souls to Allah, high on amphetamines as they fought their final battles, that was all they knew as sheets of pain consumed them into the rapture.

Terrified populations. 

All that was accessible, filtered though a heavily manipulated media full of wall to wall propaganda, was the same muffled, distant echo of pain and spiritual compromise and and deaths which splashed through the heavens.

Words fail.

They know not what they do.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2017/06/28/iraqi-military-says-it-has-retaken-two-mosul-neighbourhoods-from-islamic-state/#u8Gmr8OXsTquqxqO.99

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's military pushed deeper into Mosul's Old City on Wednesday, taking two more districts from Islamic State and bringing it closer to total control of the city.

The army's 16th infantry division captured Hadarat al-Saada and al-Ahmadiyya, the military said in a statement. The areas are northwest of the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque which the militants destroyed last week.

Islamic State still controls the mosque's grounds and about half of the territory in the Old City, its last redoubt in Mosul.

"Fifty percent of this area has been liberated, al-Mashada and al-Ahmadiyya and al-Saada," Major General Jabbar al-Darraji told Iraqi state television.

"Our troops are now moving towards Farouq Street," he said, referring to the Old City's main north-south thoroughfare.

Federal police and elite units of the Counter-Terrorism Service have also been fighting inside the district's maze of narrow alleyways since the battle began 10 days ago.

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.

Authorities expect the battle to end in the coming days, though the advance remains arduous.

MEDIEVAL CITY

Federal policemen walked through piles of rubble amid wrecked houses on Wednesday to reach the frontline, southwest of al-Nuri mosque. A Reuters correspondent said they exchanged mortars and sniper fire with militants.

The Old City's stone buildings date mostly from the medieval period. They include market stalls, a few mosques and churches, and small houses built and rebuilt on top of each other over the ages.

The minaret of the Ziwani mosque, which is cleared of militants, has been partially destroyed, and the cross had been removed from the bell tower of Shamoon al-Safa church, a Reuters correspondent said.

The military estimates up to 350 militants are dug in among civilians in wrecked houses and crumbling infrastructure. They are trying to slow the advance of Iraqi forces by laying booby traps and using suicide bombers and snipers.

Five IS fighters tried to flee across the Tigris River to the eastern side of Mosul but were killed by security forces, the military said on Wednesday.

RED ALERT 2017

Almost six minutes pass in the video focusing first on death and loss, and then on the sweetness and transitory nature of life: a grave is filled in with dirt; a young man gazes up at the heavens in the midst of Raqqa's rubble; an old man pulls a battered bicycle out of the ruins of a house; gold coins are counted and spin into eternity; a blacksmith labors wearily at his task; another man treads a path through fallen, sere leaves; a father gazes at his newborn baby; you see images of innocent children, of smiles and of flowers, of gold and of trees. You see normal streets and then those same streets that have been reduced to rubble.
This is Raqqa and it is in a way about the ongoing Coalition air campaign against ISIS. But the commentary is about much more than that. The commentator notes that those who have chosen the path of Jihad in the Path of God have made a better choice than the things of this world, of al-Dunya. You then hear the voice of a dead man, of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, just as you see an ISIS fighter on a sand berm shot and falling slowly to his death. Al-Zarqawi notes that there is in life, in the end, nothing for the Muslim but jihad and worship of their Lord. Focus, instead of this passing world, on the eternal, on al-Akhira, rather than this life.
From Islamic State's Raqqa Elegy shows both Weakness and Power by Alberto Fernandez.

The discourse was all about White Privilege. They shivered in defeat. The mujaheddin sacrificed their souls to Allah. The Australian Prime Minister couldn't decide whether he wanted to be Mussolini or General Mao. Mosul was falling, the rapture was spreading, the project of the West was failing everywhere. As Western politicians trumpeted victory over terror, defeat was everywhere, in the soldiers on corners, in the increasingly proscribed lives of the populace, in the deadening of discourse into ritual, the lockout laws shutting down nightclubs and the sacrifice of traditional culture, whether or not you approved of the boozy, friendly, unsophisticated rabble or not, that was beside the point. Everything was sacrificed in the name of diversity, and each move, each shutting down, made the advent of the sharia easier.

What are we defending? 

A West which bombed and killed innocence with zero regard for the sovereignty of nations. 

A West which treated its own citizens as charlatans, and jailed them at will. 

A country which fined people for having too much mud on the mud flaps of  their vehicles.

Which achieved perfection when everyone was dependent on the state.

Where traditional tolerance was now a sin against God. Changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born. 

Old Alex interviewed an Iraqi expert from Human Rights Watch. We have never seen people so traumatised, she said. They have experienced three years of Islamic State rule. Their families have died in the air strikes, their homes destroyed. They have lost everything. 

The mujaheddin were fighting to the last drop of blood. Their sacrifice they hoped, or knew, would shelter, shatter, into the spiritual realm. The despised West was dying. They succeeded where all else thought they were failing. In the noble pursuit of truth. In the noble pursuit fo God's blessing. In rubble no Westerner could understand. Everything was comfort, even sacrifice, here at the end of days. 

The Aztecs had sacrificed the slaves, cutting out their hearts in ritual, there on the high reaches of the Pyramid of the Sun, summoning the gods.

Old Alex had climbed it as a boy, their pain a muffled, distant echo across two thousand years, across the flat plains, in high heat and low dudgeon. Now, ensconced, trapped on the other side of the world, trapped in suburban walls, there was no way to comprehend the disintegration of the West and the suffering of those who sacrificed themselves in the fight. They had no choice. They knew they were to die. That they were sacrificing their souls to Allah, high on amphetamines as they fought their final battles, that was all they knew as sheets of pain consumed them into the rapture.

Terrified populations. 

All that was accessible, filtered though a heavily manipulated media full of wall to wall propaganda, was the same muffled, distant echo of pain and spiritual compromise and and deaths which splashed through the heavens.

Words fail.

They know not what they do.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2017/06/28/iraqi-military-says-it-has-retaken-two-mosul-neighbourhoods-from-islamic-state/#u8Gmr8OXsTquqxqO.99

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's military pushed deeper into Mosul's Old City on Wednesday, taking two more districts from Islamic State and bringing it closer to total control of the city.

The army's 16th infantry division captured Hadarat al-Saada and al-Ahmadiyya, the military said in a statement. The areas are northwest of the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque which the militants destroyed last week.

Islamic State still controls the mosque's grounds and about half of the territory in the Old City, its last redoubt in Mosul.

"Fifty percent of this area has been liberated, al-Mashada and al-Ahmadiyya and al-Saada," Major General Jabbar al-Darraji told Iraqi state television.

"Our troops are now moving towards Farouq Street," he said, referring to the Old City's main north-south thoroughfare.

Federal police and elite units of the Counter-Terrorism Service have also been fighting inside the district's maze of narrow alleyways since the battle began 10 days ago.

A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.

Authorities expect the battle to end in the coming days, though the advance remains arduous.

MEDIEVAL CITY

Federal policemen walked through piles of rubble amid wrecked houses on Wednesday to reach the frontline, southwest of al-Nuri mosque. A Reuters correspondent said they exchanged mortars and sniper fire with militants.

The Old City's stone buildings date mostly from the medieval period. They include market stalls, a few mosques and churches, and small houses built and rebuilt on top of each other over the ages.

The minaret of the Ziwani mosque, which is cleared of militants, has been partially destroyed, and the cross had been removed from the bell tower of Shamoon al-Safa church, a Reuters correspondent said.

The military estimates up to 350 militants are dug in among civilians in wrecked houses and crumbling infrastructure. They are trying to slow the advance of Iraqi forces by laying booby traps and using suicide bombers and snipers.

Five IS fighters tried to flee across the Tigris River to the eastern side of Mosul but were killed by security forces, the military said on Wednesday.