The Cult of ISIS

No, we’re not talking about any ancient Egyptian religious lore, even though geographically, we’re in the same general area.

We’re talking about the latest boogeyman trump card drawn by the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” – US / UK / EU / Israel – bent on instilling fear, terror and panic amongst Western nations.

Today, “ISIS” allegedly stands for “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” a demented terror organization that suddenly sprouted out of nowhere filling Western media headlines with gory decapitation scenes carrying many of the trappings of a Hollywood super-thriller where reality and fiction merge to distract, confuse and fool the gullible masses.

Before April of this year, there was almost no mentioned of either ISIS or any other senior member of the Egyptian Pantheon for that matter. If Egypt itself was in the news, it was mostly due to the continuation of engineered social and political strife resulting from the Egyptians not having enthroned “the kind of democracy that we want to see”, as former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said back in March 2011.

With tens of billions of dollars financing, with well-armed and well-trained Jihad fighters, and an eerily charismatic black-robed Darth Vader-like fearless leader – Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi – ISIS sprang to life armor-clad and fully armed just like the Greek war goddess Pallas Athena was born out of Zeus’ forehead.

But, do ISIS and its bloodthirsty leaders even remotely promote and represent the interests and desires of Sunni Muslims? Or is “somebody” – yet again! – lurking in the dark and taking advantage of genuine political, social and religious grievances of Sunnis (as well as Shiites and other Muslims) throughout the Muslim world, hijacking (yet again!) their political ambitions, sending them crashing against a hard wall of violence, frustration and death?

Is ISIS “Arab Spring 2.1” after all? An updated version of externally triggered and controlled engineering of social and political havoc, targeting specific ethnic and religious groups in order to achieve the objectives of major foreign powers having huge interests in the Middle East? And I’m not just talking about oil, but more so about geopolitical positioning for the coming war on Russia, Iran and further afield.

Tell me your name, and I’ll tell you who you are

ISIS is one of the names – or should we say trademark – under which this very scary terror group is known. Uncannily, “ISIS” seems to be the name of the “prototype” – so-to-speak - coming straight out of CIA / MI6 / Mossad PsyWar arsenals or, more likely, from PsyWar think-tanks backing them from afar: the London-based Tavistock Institute? the US-based Council on Foreign Relations? Even the more globalized Trilateral Commission?

For “ISIS” underwent several rather odd name-changes occurring almost as fast as its surprisingly sudden appearance almost out of nowhere. The names under which it trades often overlap in the mainstream media, which variously refers not only to ISIS, but also to ISIL - Islamic State In Levant - which is more ambitious in its territorial scope, spanning the whole of the Middle East and not just Iraq and Syria.

After a spate of “identity crises,” the organization now seems to have settled on something shorter, catchier and very straight to the point: “Islamic State.” How convenient for the Western Powers’ “Global War on Terrorism,” since “Islamic State” aptly demonizes the whole of Islam.

Talk about religious discrimination!! There is hardly a more brutal example of an entire religion being perversely and powerfully demonized, insulted and tarnished by dumping upon it all the outrage and hideous crimes of beheadings, bombings, mass executions and irrational violence done by “Islamic State.”

“Islamic State” (IS) Geopolitics

But let’s take a closer look at Islamic State’s little war. Who are its enemies? Who do they most hate? Who do they so viciously attack? And, just as important: Who do they not attack? Who do they ignore and leave alone?

- First and foremost, IS focuses its attacks on parts of Iraq and Syria not under US-puppet control; notoriously, it targets Bashar al-Assad’s Syria where they have wrenched from government control several governorates including Aleppo;

- IS calls for “Holy War” against Shiite Iran, and also against Russia which stands firmly behind both Iran and Syria;

- IS attacks Kurds and Christians of many denominations throughout the region, mainly targeting civilians, monks and priests.

- IS has also allegedly beheaded a dozen Westerners filming their strange orange-suit “executions” in a “desert somewhere”: US correspondent Jim Foley, former RAF officer David Hume, American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, UK-aide Alan Henning, French mountaineer Herve Goudel; more recently, Peter Kassig. IS also allegedly filmed the execution of 18 uniformed Syrian soldiers. All these videos show how these victims are strangely calm down to very last blood-dripping moment, some even making strong anti-American speeches to the very end. It sets one thinking.

- If this sounds strange; the following is even stranger: for some “unexplained” reason Islamic State does not attack US allies in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar or Bahrain. Even more oddly, IS does not attack Israel whom Arabs are supposed to consider their greatest regional enemy;

- IS did not even take advantage of the fact that during July and August Israeli forces were busy, busy bombing and leveling Gaza to the ground whilst its global prestige sank to new sub-zero depths! Now, wouldn’t that have been the IDEAL time for IS to use all its new-grown military punch to hit Israel really hard, even if only out of solidarity with the martyred Palestinians? But no, some unfathomable stroke of political absentmindedness had IS looking the other way.

So: Here we have ISIS/ISIL/IS murdering untold thousands of Iraqis, Syrians, Kurds, Christians, Shiites of all nationalities, but never touching Israel nor European and US homeland and foreign interests save for a handful of allegedly beheaded hostages.

But, wait a minute. What a coincidence! Those are pretty much the very same foes and friends of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” presently waging their “Global Mega-War on Terror!”

I have a question: is Islamic State’s geopolitical strategy being drafted by some team inside the Pentagon? Or the State Department?

I mean, after Russia drew a red line in Syria in September 2013, which lame-duck President Obama dared not cross, Neocons - who always have the last word in that Mud-Footed Colossus known as The United States of America - were not able to get away with bombing Syria to smithereens as they did in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.

Then in comes “Islamic State” giving the US the PERFECT excuse to bomb Syria, re-bomb Iraq and ready itself for “years of war on terror.”

Naturally, Islamic State cannot do this on its own. This is why it counts with “a little help from its friends” in the Western media, whipping up “fear, terror, trembling, panic, shock and awe…” in the old Randolph Hearst “yellow” journalism style.

Looking at some of those video beheading productions, are we seeing the fingerprint of some clandestine Hollywood-like production crew. I mean, is that sun-baked desert where these ghastly beheadings are supposedly taking place really “somewhere in Arabia” or “somewhere outside of LA”?

Turn the pages of history more slowly, please

How was it possible that this powerful, cruel and violent organization can so easily and so suddenly take over vast tracts of the Middle East, count with so many European “volunteer” assassins fighting shoulder-to-shoulder today, with yesterdays’ “Freedom Fighters” in Syria, Iraq and other “rogue states” in Arabia, all under the black banner of this Muslim Darth Vader?

Question: Is ISIS/ISIL/IS the first turn-key privately designed, controlled and programmed mega-terror group launched into the market; fully armed, fully trained, fully financed and with a “gory and scary” media coverage module? Maybe IS’ ruthlessness, madness and bloodthirstiness might even reflect Blackwater’s corporate added value.

Back in 2002, Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” published an interesting little article just when the West was starting to watch the first season of that grand masterpiece thriller, “Global War on Terror,” where good guys US/UK/EU/Israel were pitched in a live-or-die battle against bad guys Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Taliban Afghanistan and Saddam Iraq.

The article published 27th June 2002 was written by Amir Oren and carried the same title as this article for RT – “The Cult of ISIS” – at a time when that name meant little in political terms. It explained that, “A nephew of the late philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the great-grandson of a famous general from Berlin met yesterday in Brussels to discuss the common threats facing Israel, Germany and the 18 other countries members of NATO. …The nephew is Efraim Halevy, the head of the Mossad, Israel's espionage agency, or as he is usually introduced in English, the chief of the ISIS (Israel Secret Intelligence Service). SIS is the official name of MI6, the British version of the Mossad; Halevy was born in Britain and came to Israel as a youth….” (bold is ours).

More than twelve years on, the war on terror has undergone huge transformations, transmutations, alterations and blending. Its mentors have reinvented it so often that it has now become an on-going continuous “creative” process.

Global terror now includes new enemies, new terror groups, new pandemics, new scare tactics and strategies, new “homeland threat alerts”, new “rogue states”, all conveniently engineered, managed and rolled into one vast planetary enemy by powerful and obedient Western media, Western presidents, and Western prime ministers.

New agendas require new enemies. Yesterday’s Al-Qaeda is today’s ISIS, and surely right now some think-tank eggheads are busy designing the coming enemies for 2015, 2020 and even 2030. Just like automobile designers who design styles, market tastes, and plan obsolescence to drive revenues - both economic and geopolitical.

Successively, global public opinion is whipped up to frenzy. Whether it’s about WMD’s in Iraq, Al-Qaeda planning to blow up more skyscrapers from its cave HQ in Afghanistan (remember that?), Syria poisoning its own people with Saudi chemical bombs (!), Iran´s nukes ready to fire, Ebola / Bird Flu / Swine Flu pandemics, Anthrax, the big Chinese panda and the even bigger Russian bear.

It’s all like trying to read the road signs whilst travelling at 200 miles per hour. Everything is blurred and dizzying.

Shouldn’t we all slow down, take a break, look around, breath some fresh (mental) air and start seeing things as they really are and not them as today’s “Mad Max” team of global “leaders” driving at breakneck speed want us to see?

By the way: a moment of prayer might not be a bad idea at this juncture, independent of what God or Goddess you believe in. Maybe we should all even put in a good word on mad mankind’s behalf with ancient mother goddess ISIS (the real one, not the plastic CIA-MI6-Mossad version).

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.