h/t OMFG @Moon of Alabama
Under the fairly bland headline “Social media battle augments Iraq bloodshed”, Doug Gross of CNN states:
As ISIS’ fight has moved from Syria to Iraq, that savvy Web strategy has expanded to include online video posts much slicker than the grainy, shaky clips that have popped up from AQ and other terror groups. Recently, a slickly-produced hour-long ISIS video titled “The Clanging of the Swords” surfaced, showcasing killings, roadside bombings and other acts of terror for which ISIS claimed credit.
The video vividly displays these scenes in a style reminiscent of Hollywood efforts like “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” complete with elaborate aerial shots. Nadia Oweidat, a Middle East analyst at New America Foundation, said:
“This is funded. This is geopolitics. There is money behind it. It’s not just idiots. These idiots have somebody controlling them and providing them with equipment that is very expensive. You can’t just get it in a cave.”
On another front, at least one analyst says ISIS was recently using a mobile app made available in Google’s Play Store to inflate its presence on social media. Called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, or just Dawn, the app was promoted as a way to keep up to date with news from ISIS.
According to J M Berger, editor of national-security blog IntelWire, the Dawn app would post updates to users’ Twitter feeds. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, Google appeared to have removed the app from its store. Google did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment for this story.
(The Atlantic) – The advance of an army used to be marked by war drums. Now it’s marked by volleys of tweets.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni militant group that seized Iraq’s second-largest city last week and is now pledging to take Baghdad, has honed this new technique–most recently posting photos on Twitter of an alleged mass killing of Iraqi soldiers. But what’s often overlooked in press coverage is that ISIS doesn’t just have strong, organic support online. It also employs social-media strategies that inflate and control its message. Extremists of all stripes are increasingly using social media to recruit, radicalize and raise funds, and ISIS is one of the most adept practitioners of this approach.
One of ISIS’s more successful ventures is an Arabic-language Twitter app called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, or just Dawn. The app, an official ISIS product promoted by its top users, is advertised as a way to keep up on the latest news about the jihadi group.
Hundreds of users have signed up for the app on the web or on their Android phones through the Google Play store. When you download the app, ISIS asks for a fair amount of personal data …
…
The app is just one way ISIL games Twitter to magnify its message. Another is the use of organized hashtag campaigns, in which the group enlists hundreds and sometimes thousands of activists to repetitively tweet hashtags at certain times of day so that they trend on the social network. This approach also skews the results of a popular Arabic Twitter account called @ActiveHashtags that tweets each day’s top trending tags.
Saw one report that estimated ISIS’s known financial assets are upwards of half a billion dollars.
Guardian says $2 billion! I think the half a billion was what they stole from Mosul banks.
Saudi money? Moving against Iran’s ally? Playing the Republicans and neo-cons to create a crisis for Obama?
I see the Foreign Policy nitwits long to convert everything into a conventional war–ignoring the fact that ISIS is not fighting a US proxy (Iraq kicked us out).
This situation is so confused as who is operating in whose interests that the US military is reluctant to use drones, not knowing who would be the targets.
So far after the President’s news conference the only loser seems to be Ahmed Chalabi and his army of supporters who crowded the media this past weekend.
Saudi money? Or is it ransom money from the Europeans?
Don’t stare blindly at the name/group ISIS or ISIL, they don’t have the number of fighters to cause all the trouble. It was a Sunni protest in Falluja and the Sunni triangle that changed character during the last two years into an uprising/insurgency. US troops build a working relationship with Sunni tribal leaders through the Awakening Councils, when the US troops left PM Maliki neglected to pay the salaries. The Iraqi forces were led by Shia commanders and caused much abuse in Anbar province. Saudi Arabia money and arms flowed to the Sunni insurgents during US occupation to counteract the militias led by Shia cleric al-Sadr. Saudi Arabia and Gulf states are involved in this conflict. US president Obama has been warned not to take sides by military means, thus the conflict will deepen. Of course, Israel will give support to Saudi policy and cause futher turmoil in the Middle East and the Shia/Sunni religious wars. See Lebanon and Syria. Jordan will be the next domino to fall to Salafists or the Muslim Brotherhood.
In Obama’s speech, he pointed to Iran’s ‘interference’ in the West’s attempted overthrow of Assad in Syria. Does the US have clean hands in Syria? Of course not, they are deeply involved in the gross miscalculation and supporting militants and foreign fighters (jihadists). The neocons in US think tanks and within the White House as advisors are fulfilling the PNAC wet dreams. Obama failed to stop them. It’s all about BLOWBACK and will cause political trouble in Western Europe for the coming years. War On Terror v2.0.
○ Obama ‘Connived’ with Neocons for a Bashar Replacement
○ US Will Be Ousted by Saudi King Abdullah in Middle-East
○ Obama Administration Backed Muslim Brotherhood
○ Syria War and Iran Backed Shiite Government of Maliki to Blame