Meet the Americans Flocking to Iraq and Syria to Fight the Islamic State

From Adam Rawnsley, at Foreign Policy, "A motley crew of Texans, Iraq War veterans, evangelicals, and bored young men are battling to take down the caliphate":

Meet the motley crew of Americans flocking to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State. http://t.co/rRrd5aFWi1 pic.twitter.com/VqC2zMubXu

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) August 28, 2015

When a U.S. citizen going by the name “Abu Abdullah al-Amriki” blew himself up in a suicide attack in Baiji, Iraq, this month, he was the most recent example of a troubling trend: the roughly 200 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State.

Not all of the foreigners have left for the region looking to fight for the Islamic State, however. Instead, growing numbers of Americans are heading there to fight against the extremists. The American fighters — mostly military veterans, with a strangely disproportionate share of Texans — are linking up with Kurdish groups and Christian militias in the region to battle the Islamic State militants who currently control broad swaths of Iraq and Afghanistan. A new report by the investigative website Bellingcat, released Wednesday, takes the first systematic look at these “other foreign fighters.”

The report finds that at least 108 Americans — including one woman — have made the journey to Iraq and Syria to take on the Islamic State, highlighting the global nature of the conflict and the relative ease of recruitment and travel to the battlefield. It’s a dangerous undertaking, and one American has already been killed in the fighting. Massachusetts resident Keith Broomfield, 36, died while fighting with a Kurdish militia in Syria earlier this year. Broomfield, who had no military experience, traveled to the war zone after a Christian religious awakening.

Nathan Patin, the author of the Bellingcat report, combed through social media posts and news accounts to compile the database. Although Patin was able to find information on the fighters using open sources, the report withholds the identities of those fighters who haven’t gone public in prior news accounts and does not include personally identifying information or information that could lead to their location on the battlefield, out of concern for their safety and that of their families.

The relative online openness of the Americans offers insights into their backgrounds and motivations for wanting to leave behind their daily lives in the United States and participate in wars far away that seemingly have little to do with them. Based on the biographical details offered, the Americans Patin found were almost all male, tended to be in their 20s and 30s, and stayed on the battlefield mostly between one and four months. Around two-thirds describe themselves as veterans, drawn primarily from the Army and Marine Corps. Texas, even accounting for its larger population, produced a disproportionate number of volunteers relative to any other identifiable home state.

In a statement, the FBI declined to say whether it was legal to travel abroad to fight the Islamic State. Still, the agency told Foreign Policy that there “are laws beyond material support charges that may apply to the actions of U.S. citizens in a foreign country,” a reference to statutes banning Americans from providing funding or other assistance to banned militant groups. The State Department also discourages Americans from traveling to the region in general, much less fighting there.

Discerning the motivations for wanting to take up arms against the Islamic State on a freelance basis was more difficult. Humans tend to be unreliable narrators of their own psychology, and assessing motivations from fragments of social media and news accounts offer only an imperfect view.

Based on social media posts and news interviews with the subjects, outrage at the Islamic State’s atrocities was among the most frequently expressed motivation for volunteering. Other factors included solidarity for Christian victims, nostalgia for the camaraderie of prior military service, and even sheer boredom.

Patrick Maxwell, who traveled to Iraq to fight with the Kurdish Peshmerga, is representative of many of the fighters in Patin’s report. A Texan and a veteran of the Marine Corps who served in Iraq, Maxwell has said his service there sparked a desire to return to Iraq and join the fight against the Islamic State.

“I may not be enlisted anymore, but I’m still a warrior,” Maxwell told the New York Times. “I figured if I could walk away from here and kill as many of the bad guys as I could, that would be a good thing.”

Still more.

The Obama administration will probably go harder after Americans fight Islamic State than it will against the actual jihadists.

Andy Parker, Father of Murdered Journalist Alison Parker, Pushes for New Gun Control After Virginia Shooting (VIDEO)

The man's been speaking out for new gun control laws since the murders.

This is from yesterday, at Mother Jones, "Watch the Grieving Father of the Slain Virginia Reporter Make an Emotional Plea for Gun Control."

And he gave an emotional press conference today, at WRIC News 8 Richmond, "Father of Alison Parker speaks to media Friday."

And watch, at CNN, "Slain journalist's father: Alison was a force of nature."

Democrats Freak Out as Donald Trump Campaign Puts Illegal Immigration at Top of Policy Agenda (VIDEO)

Priorities USA, Hillary Clinton's political action committee, is out with a new ad slamming Donald Trump and the GOP as racist on immigration, "This is the Republican Party."

(And at Big Government, "Dem Ad Attacks Trump, Bush, Walker In Spanish on Immigration.")

Obviously, though, the Democrats are shitting bricks now that Donald Trump has made illegal immigration, and Democrat Party murderous open-border sanctuary policies, the top policy concern of Americans.

At the Los Angeles Times, "How Donald Trump turned the immigration debate from reform to 'anchor babies'":

At a recent anti-immigrant rally in the Inland Empire, where activists stood on a street corner chanting, “Help America, not illegals,” several sported the same white T-shirt. On it, in large blue letters, was a name: “Trump.”

This has been a satisfying summer for those who favor stricter immigration enforcement, thanks in no small part to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Less than a year ago, activists watched angrily as President Obama took sweeping executive action to shield millions of people in the country without legal status from deportation. But in a few short months, Trump has helped flip the national dialogue and given rise to a new surge of calls to ramp up deportations and wall off the Mexican border.

In Trump, anti-immigrant activists have found a brash and unapologetic celebrity spokesman – one whose impenitence was on display Tuesday when he tangled over immigration with Univision anchor Jorge Ramos after briefly kicking him out of a news conference.

Trump’s outrage over crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally has spurred congressional assaults on “sanctuary city” policies. His proposal to end citizenship for children born to immigrants without legal status has forced more-moderate Republican presidential candidates to the right, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and others using the controversial phrase “anchor babies.”

“It’s a good time for us,” said longtime anti-immigrant activist Robin Hvidston, whose group, We the People Rising, helped organize the rally in Ontario over the weekend. “Donald Trump has brought these issues to the front burner. Does it feel like public opinion is shifting? I’d say yes.”

A certain whiplash has come to define the immigration debate in recent years in the absence of a comprehensive fix to a system that all sides say is broken. Fierce battles play out episodically in Washington and at the state and local level, with activists on both sides trading defeats and victories.

Now the divisive issue is once again at the forefront of the presidential campaign — a fate Republican Party leaders hoped to avoid after 2012, when they ascribed their White House loss in part to their failure to win over large numbers of Latinos.

Recently, it seemed the immigration debate had swung in favor of immigrant advocates. Polls show a large majority of Americans support a path to citizenship, and advocates have won important victories at the local level, with driver’s licenses, healthcare and financial aid at public universities now available to immigrants without legal status in some states...

Keep reading.

Steve Sarkisian's Alcohol Use While Coach at University of Washington Comes Under Scutiny (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "Coach Steve Sarkisian Will Enter Treatment After Drunken F-Bombs at Salute to Troy Event (VIDEO)."

At CBS News Los Angeles:

#BlackLivesMatter Activists Disrupt Mayor Muriel Bowser Speech on How to Stop Black Killings (VIDEO)

It's Thermidor.

At Power Line, "D.C. MAYOR STANDS UP FOR BLACK LIVES AND TO “BLACK LIVES MATTER”." (Via Memeorandum.)



More at WUSA News 9 DC, "Protesters interrupt Mayor Bowser's crime agenda remarks."

Heather Depriest September 2015 Playboy Cover Model

Watch, "Heather Depriest Graces the Playboy September Cover Issue (VIDEO)."

And at Playboy, "Our Steamy September 2015 Cover With Guess Model Heather Depriest."

#WDBJ Shooter Vester Lee Flanagan Was 'Classic Injustice Collector'

It's New York Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller, at CBS This Morning.



Plus, from Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "Video: Gunman was “classic injustice collector”."

Up to 50 Migrants Found Dead in Refrigerator Truck in Austria (VIDEO)

Horrific.

The migrants likely suffocated in the back of the truck, which was probably locked on the outside so the refugees had no way to open to door for air.

At Russia Today, "20 to 50 migrants found dead in truck in Austria, suffocation likely cause."

And at the Wall Street Journal, "Austrian Police Find Up to 50 Migrants Dead in Truck":

Europe’s migrant crisis took a deadly turn far from the continent’s coasts Thursday with the discovery in Austria of a truck containing up to 50 decomposing corpses.

The bodies were found in an abandoned delivery truck parked off a highway outside of Vienna, on one of the main migration routes from eastern to western Europe, Austrian police said Thursday.

While more than 2,300 people died this year trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration, the gruesome discovery in inland Europe cast a sharp light on the European Union’s struggle to deal with increasing numbers of refugees crossing its borders.

The quickening flow and its consequences have sparked a debate about whether and how the influx of migrants into border states should be shared among all EU countries.

Many migrants are now traveling from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans to Hungary, a course considered less risky than the often deadly sea route. Around 3,000 people a day are currently being moved through the Balkans, the United Nations’ refugee agency estimates. The route has been used by roughly 10 times as many migrants so far this year as over the same period last year, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

The truck with Hungarian license plates was found near the Austrian village of Parndorf, the site of a popular outlet shopping mall about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Hungarian border. It had been left by the side of the highway for more than 24 hours, Austrian police said. Late Thursday they said they couldn’t yet determine the migrants’ cause of death, adding that preliminary inspection suggested the people suffocated or died of thirst.

Austria’s police said they were in contact with their counterparts in Hungary regarding ownership of the truck, which appeared to be a refrigerator vehicle previously used to transport chickens.

Separately, Janos Lazar, minister in charge of the Hungarian prime minister’s office, said the vehicle had been purchased from a Slovak firm and was registered to a Romanian national in Hungary.

“This shows once again that we need to take responsibility and offer refugees asylum,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said at a conference on the Western Balkans in Vienna on Thursday. Mr. Faymann emphasized the need for European countries to cooperate, secure the union’s borders, and “fairly share” the refugee burden...

More.

Today’s Impenetrable Wall of Social Justice

A lovely turn of phrase, by Ryan Graham, from the letters to the editor, at the Wall Street Journal, "Raising the Underperforming at the Cost of the Talented."

Writers are responding to Chester Finn and Brandon Wright, "The Bright Students Left Behind."

Might as Well Post the Link to Harry Stein's Book, No Matter What...They'll Call This Book Racist...

I'm off to the college for my long Thursday of teaching, but it's no doubt going to be an interesting new day.

Don't be surprised to see leftists martyr the Virginia murderer Vester Lee Flanagan for the cause of gun control. The New York Times is fast out of the gate with this really stupid editorial, which was posted prominently at the main page of the website last night, "Killings of Journalists Bring Gun Violence to Dark New Level."

As always, more commentary and analysis later.

Meanwhile, here's Stein's book, No Matter What...They'll Call This Book Racist: How our Fear of Talking Honestly About Race Hurts Us All.

BONUS: ICYMI, don't forget about Michael Walsh's new book, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.

Backlash: Black Killer of White Reporters Sent Manifesto Declaring that Murders were a Response to Charleston

At Ace of Spades HQ.

Lake Elsinore Man May Lose Hand After Being Bitten While Trying to Take Selfie with Rattlesnake

Definitely not too smart.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Lake Elsinore Man May Lose Hand After Attempting To Take Selfie With Rattlesnake."

The Dust Lady Has Died

Her picture remains one of the clearest images I remember from media coverage of the attacks.

At the Washington Post, "9/11 ‘Dust Lady’ Marcy Borders, featured in a haunting photo, has died of cancer." And the New York Times, "Marcy Borders, ‘Dust Lady’ Who Survived 9/11, Dies at 42."

Also, watch at the BBC, "Marcy Borders, the Dust Covered Woman in the Iconic 9 11 Photograph, Has Died of Cancer."

She was still a young woman. Of course she believed 9/11 caused her cancer. It's just too much not to believe.

More at the Guardian UK, "Death of 9/11 'dust lady' Marcy Borders renews worry over related cancers."

New York Daily News Puts 'Snuff' Photos of Murdered #WDBJ Reporter Alison Parker on Front Page

Truthfully, I'm not against full and honest reporting on all aspects of these murders, although folks on social media think today's NYDN cover is out of line.

Here, at NYDN on Facebook, "EXECUTED ON LIVE TV."

Actually, she wasn't "executed." She was murdered. There's a difference.

I'll have more tonight.

What Watching the #WDBJ Shooting Says — and Does Not Say — About You

From Mary McNamara, at the Los Angeles Times, "Critic's Notebook If we watch the Virginia TV shooting is the suspected shooter 'winning'?":

To watch or not to watch.

Early Wednesday morning, reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot to death during a live interview for WDBJ-TV, a CBS affiliate based in Roanoke, Va. In less than an hour, clips of the event were on YouTube.

It soon developed that the suspected shooter, Vester Flanagan, a former reporter for WDBJ, appeared to have recorded the shooting himself, posted it on Facebook and then tweeted about it using his on-air name, Bryce Williams. Flanagan shot himself while being chased by police and later died.

The Twitter and Facebook accounts were quickly suspended, and YouTube took down the videos, but the disturbing images continued to circulate, prompting an equally widespread "Don't Watch" campaign.

At best, some said, watching or sharing the footage was an endorsement of a media culture run amok, proof that the medium has indeed become the message — people will now literally do anything to be on television.

At worst, it made us complicit in the killings themselves.

Either way, if we watched the brief tragic clips of the attack on Parker and Ward, or the chilling footage taken by Flanagan just before he began shooting, somehow Flanagan would "win."

As if Flanagan were powerful enough to define our reactions to his crime or if any of those reactions were more important than the fact and nature of murder. As if news were suddenly beholden to feelings of gentility and any medium should be blamed for insane people attempting to leverage it for their own dissociated ends...

More.

Actually, leftist "don't watch" social media campaigns are always designed to help Democrats. Ignore them. If you want to watch the video, watch it. Flanagan's dead. He has no power over anything. Frankly, watching allows people to bear witness to the enormity of this assault on decency. And of course the enormity of Democrat Party evil.

FLASHBACK: See Jeff Jacoby, "James Foley video is grim, but we owe it to him to bear witness."

Venezuela's Food Shortages Trigger Looting

Venezuela's a freakin' joke.

At WSJ, "Venezuela’s Food Shortages Trigger Long Lines, Hunger and Looting":

LA SIBUCARA, Venezuela—Hours after they looted and set fire to a National Guard command post in this sun-baked corner of Venezuela earlier this month, a mob infuriated by worsening food shortages rammed trucks into the smoldering edifice, reducing it mostly to rubble.

The incident was just one of numerous violent clashes that have flared in pockets around the country in recent weeks as Venezuelans wait for hours in long supermarket lines for basics like milk and rice. Shortages have made hunger a palpable concern for many Wayuu Indians who live here at the northern tip of Venezuela’s 1,300-mile border with Colombia.

The soldiers had been deployed to stem rampant food smuggling and price speculation, which President Nicolás Maduro blames for triple-digit inflation and scarcity. But after they seize contraband goods, the troops themselves often become targets of increasingly desperate people.

“What’s certain is that we are going very hungry here and the children are suffering a lot,” said María Palma, a 55-year-old grandmother who on a recent blistering hot day had been standing in line at the grocery store since 3 a.m. before walking away empty-handed at midday.

In a national survey, the pollster Consultores 21 found 30% of Venezuelans eating two or fewer meals a day during the second quarter of this year, up from 20% in the first quarter. Around 70% of people in the study also said they had stopped buying some basic food item because it had become unavailable or too expensive.

Food-supply problems in Venezuela underscore the increasingly precarious situation for Mr. Maduro’s socialist government, which according to the latest poll by Datanálisis is preferred by less than 20% of voters ahead of Dec. 6 parliamentary elections. The critical situation threatens to plunge South America’s largest oil exporter into a wave of civil unrest reminiscent of last year’s nationwide demonstrations seeking Mr. Maduro’s ouster.

“It’s a national crisis,” said Marco Ponce, head of the Venezuela Observatory of Social Conflict, noting that unlike the political protests of last year, residents are now taking to the streets demanding social rights.

The nonprofit group recorded 500 protests over food shortages during the first half of 2015, 56 looting incidents and dozens of attempted lootings at grocery stores, pharmacies and warehouses. Even delivery trucks are frequently targeted. “If people aren’t outside protesting, they’re outside standing in line for goods,” Mr. Ponce said.

The unrest is a response to dramatically worsening living conditions for Venezuelans as the economy reels from oil’s slump following more than a decade of populist spending that left the government broke...

Still more.

#WDBJ Shooter Vester Lee Flanagan Was 'Just Waiting to Go BOOM'

He really was.

The entire social justice warrior radical left is just waiting to go BOOM!

More people are going to get killed, especially white people.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Suspect in killing of Virginia TV crew said he was 'just waiting to go BOOM'."

PREVIOUSLY: "Police: Vester Lee Flanagan Dead, Shot Himself After Killing Journalists During Live Broadcast," and "Vester Lee Flanagan, #WDBJ Shooting Suspect, Angry Black Democrat, Disciplined for Wearing 'Barack Obama Sticker' at Work."

Plus, "Vester Lee Flanagan Said God Told Him to Kill Alison Parker and Adam Ward as Payback for Charleston (VIDEO)."

Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe Called for More Gun Control Even Before Virginia #WDBJ Suspect Apprehended

More despicable leftist politicization.

At the Right Scoop, "UGH: Democrat Virginia Gov. EXPLOITS shooting, calls for more GUN CONTROL before suspect in custody."

#BlackLivesMatter Activist Deray McKesson Deletes Tweet Alleging White 'Terrorism' in Virginia #WDBJ Shooting

Truly despicable.

At Twitchy, "‘Mega-FAIL’: DeRay McKesson deletes tweet, backpedals after realizing #WDBJ shooter not white."

"Whiteness" is why they were killed you race-baiting piece of shit. #Deray #AllLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/q0E4NyKsXR

— Harold (@Nikk1066) August 26, 2015

PREVIOUSLY: "Police: Vester Lee Flanagan Dead, Shot Himself After Killing Journalists During Live Broadcast," and "Vester Lee Flanagan, #WDBJ Shooting Suspect, Angry Black Democrat, Disciplined for Wearing 'Barack Obama Sticker' at Work."

Also, "Vester Lee Flanagan Said God Told Him to Kill Alison Parker and Adam Ward as Payback for Charleston (VIDEO)."

Jackie Johnson's Got Your Weekend Forecast

It's supposed warm up a bit, and it's not like it was chilly yesterday, or anything.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles: