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From this article on vice.com:
The self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) has severely restricted use of the internet in its de-facto capital of Raqqa, requiring that all residents — including those in the militant group's ranks — access the web from observed internet cafes, according to international monitoring organizations.
An IS leaflet photographed and circulated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), advises that "all owners of shops with satellite internet must comply with the following: Removing Wi-Fi boosters in internet cafés as well as private wireless adaptors, even for soldiers of the Islamic State."
...
Activists worry that internet restriction is intended to clamp down on citizen journalists, human rights workers, and potential IS defectors.
Even under IS rule, activists have managed to sneak out videos, images, and accounts of daily life. In September, a woman with a camera hidden in her niqab walked through the city narrating her experience. The smuggled footage was aired on French TV.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:35PM
Actually, it's CIA and US State Department funding. This has been well-documented (by anonymous and unchecked sources, Seymour Hersh, Iranian TV, ). The U.S. State Department confirmed May 29, 2015 with CNN that Islamic State fighter Gulmurod Khalimov from Tajikistan was trained in the United State three times.
ISIS videos are, of course, staged productions as the recent leak confirms [leaksource.info].
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:13PM
That someone was trained somewhere, and then decided to go Rogue does not mean that ISIS is a US/CIA funded operation.
The Tajiks and Uzbeks were our ally in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Training their Special Forces in counter-terrorism is the price we had to pay for forward secret air bases. No way you can parlay that into ISIS being a US operation.
Do you ever read what you type to see just how ludicrous you sound.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:46PM
It's much easier to track Gulf state money, and Saudi money in particular, directly investing in ISIS than it is US or other NATO. That much NATO equipement rapidly found its way into the hands of ISIS is unquestionable - we funded and equipped a large number of groups in the early stages of the Syrian civil war, some of whom were doubtless shady and linked with (or linked with groups that were later merged with) ISIS, and others of whom were assimilated or wiped out and their equipment seized. That happened. What is much harder to demonstrate, most likely because it is not happening, is that ISIS are actively funded by NATO states. The only possible outlier is Turkey, who have credible motivations for maintaining upheaval in Syria and continued pressure on the Syrian Kurdish population - though even in that instance, if it *is* happening (and I have seen no evidence to suggest it is) there are probably some people beginning to think it was a big mistake.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:07PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 21 2015, @10:15PM
And by that same standard, Al Qaida is a US/CIA operation, since Osama bin Laden was for quite a long time a CIA "asset".
The real story there is that the CIA is mostly incompetent, totalitarian, and incredibly short-sighted:
- The biggest testament to its incompetence is Cuba: Between the Bay of Pigs and hundreds of failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro, they've shown that they cannot carry out the mission they've been assigned to do.
- The basic argument for why they are totalitarian: It has not once overthrown a dictator and installed a democracy while it has done the opposite to a large percentage of the world. And these weren't friendly neighborhood dictators, we're talking mass murder, summary execution, and torture here.
- As for short-sighted, almost all of our great enemies of recent decades have been former CIA assets, from Manuel Noriega to Saddam Hussein.
They mostly try to hide all this behind a wall of secrecy and killing people who they are afraid might talk. But frequently they get caught, for example attempting to overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.