Monthly Archives: July 2014

Jul 4 2014

NASA/NOAA Corruption Of The Northern Hemisphere Temperature Record


This is FACT I have also studied this issue and NASA-GISS under James E. Hansen setup this system of the distortion of data to promote their cause; this is not science!

Tony Heller's avatarReal Climate Science

I’ve written often how NASA and NOAA have corrupted the US temperature record to rid it of that inconvenient 1930s warmth, but their efforts to wipe out the warm past extend far beyond President Obama’s 57 US states.

They have done even more damage to the Northern Hemisphere temperature record since the 1975 National Academy of Sciences report. The animation below flashes between 1975 National Academy of Sciences temperatures and 2014 GISS temperatures.

From: Tom Wigley <wigley@ucar.edu>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer <santer1@llnl.gov>

It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.

di2.nu/foia/1254108338.txt

NASANHChanges1975-2014

1975 NAS Report (Temperature graph on page 148)

data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/ZonAnn.Ts+dSST.txt

ScreenHunter_807 Jul. 04 08.50

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Jul 4 2014

Is Administrative Law Unlawful?


Unchecked administrative law stamps out freedom!

Re-Post from PowerLine
Posted on July 4, 2014 by Scott Johnson in Administrative state, Books, History

Hamburger29 In advance of the holiday weekend and late in the afternoon yesterday, the Obama administration released an 1,300 pages of new Obamacare regulations, adding to the more than 10,000 pages previously promulgated. This is the way we live now under the regime of the administrative state, subject to regulations dwarfing the laws duly enacted by Congress.

Continuing our series of excerpts from Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger’s important new book on administrative law, we offer these thoughts from chapter 25 in honor of the day:

[A]dministrative governance is a sort of power that has long been understood to lack legal obligation. It is difficult to understand how laws made without representation, and adjudication made without independent judges and juries, have the obligation of law; instead, they apparently rest merely on government coercion. They therefore cannot be perpetuated on a theory of consent or acquiescence, and they traditionally would had the potential to justify revolution. Certainly when the English crown justified its absolute power as constitutional, the English and eventually the Americans engaged in revolutions against it.

Jul 4 2014

ISIS and the CIA Connection


Given what we know about Benghazi and the movement of former Libyan military equipment to Syria this is believable.

Jul 4 2014

Obama one the ISIS Caliphae Four


‘They fled like rats’: ISIS snatches key Syrian oilfield from rival militants

Re-Post from RT Published time: July 04, 2014 10:16

Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) (Reuters)

Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) (Reuters)

ISIS fighters have seized an oilfield on the Syria-Iraq border, snatching it from the control of rival militants. The Pentagon has said while it considers the Iraqi Army capable of defending Baghdad, outside aid may be required to repel the jihadists.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the key oil field in the Deir al-Zor province had fallen under the control of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) on Thursday.

“ISIS took control of the Al-Omar oil field,” located north of the strategic town of Mayadin, also under its control since dawn Thursday, said the Observatory.

The group cited an amateur video that was posted on YouTube purporting to show the capture of the oilfield. The footage shows a bearded man who is identified by the cameraman as Commander Hommam boasting that the field was taken without a single shot being fired.

“We took it [the oil field] over without any fighting. They fled like rats,” the commander said, referring to fighters from the Syrian opposition group al-Nusra who had previously been controlling the oilfield.

Al-Nusra Front had captured the oilfield from Syrian government forces in November and kept up with the production of oil at 10,000 barrels a day, according to the Observatory. The field itself has a maximum capacity of 75,000 barrels a day.

ISIS has gained significant ground in both Syria and Iraq and has declared the creation of an Islamic state, or caliphate, straddling both countries. The group has also issued a call to Muslims throughout the world to flock to their banner, vowing revenge for crimes committed against Muslims.

“Muslims everywhere, whoever is capable of performing hijrah [emigration] to the Islamic State, then let him do so, because hijrah to the land of Islam is obligatory,” said leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Monday, two days after the group rebranded itself as IS (Islamic State).

Iraq’s security forces have so far proved to be of little use in stemming the onslaught of the extremist group. ISIS continues to seize control of towns in Iraq, getting steadily closer to the capital of Baghdad. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has appealed to Washington for help, but the American government has shied away of making any statements about the deployment of troops in the region.

On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army General Martin Dempsey said they believed the Iraqi army was capable of defending Baghdad. However they expressed doubts over whether they could push ISIS out of the country without external support. The two military heads said they were now considering what military role should be adopted by the US in this conflict.

The possibility of airstrikes and the deployment of 750 American military advisors is currently on the table, said Dempsey. The US government has urged Maliki to take steps to combat the sectarianism that has taken root in Iraq. The country’s Sunni and Kurd minorities claim they are discriminated against by the Shiite elite in Baghdad.

 

Jul 3 2014

A TRUE AMERICAN HERO


American Exceptional-ism Mr. Obama — read this and maybe you can learn something

THE IMPROBABLE LIVES OF LOUIS ZAMPERINI

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Scott Johnson in POWERLINE

I am saddened to learn of the death yesterday of the remarkable Louis Zamperini. What a man; what a great American. The New York Times obituary by Ira Berkow is here.

I wrote about Mr. Zamperini on Power Line after I finished reading Laura Hillenbrand’s best-selling biography of him (linked below). The following comments are adapted from what I wrote then.

In November 2010 the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Review section carried Steve Oney’s moving joint profile of Laura Hillenbrand and Louis Zamperini, the subject of Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Zamperini competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and then served in the Army Air Corps during the war. David Margolick concisely summarized what happened next:

In late May 1943, the B-24 carrying the 26-year-old Zamperini went down over the Pacific. For nearly seven weeks — longer, Hillenbrand believes, than any other such instance in recorded history — Zamperini and his pilot managed to survive on a fragile raft. They traveled 2,000 miles, only to land in a series of Japanese prison camps, where, for the next two years, Zamperini underwent a whole new set of tortures. His is one of the most spectacular odysseys of this or any other war, and “odyssey” is the right word, for with its tempests and furies and monsters, many of them human, Zamperini’s saga is something out of Greek mythology.

Margolick commented on the “new set of tortures” Zamperini endured:

That story encompasses an aspect of the American experience during World War II — the cruelty of the Japanese — that, in an era of Toyotas…and Hideki Matsui, has been almost entirely forgotten. (Forgotten in the United States, that is: Japanese sensitivities on the subject remain sufficiently high that Hillenbrand refuses to identify her translators there.) It’s also yet another testament to the courage and ingenuity of America’s Greatest Generation, along with its wonderful, irrepressible American-style irreverence: just hearing the nicknames — many unprintable here — that the P.O.W.’s bestowed on their guards makes you fall in love with these soldiers.

Reading Janet Maslin’s New York Times review of the book, I was incredulous not even to have heard of Zamperini. But, as Oney and Journal reviewer James Hornfischer point out, Hillenbrand hadn’t heard of him either before she undertook the research for Seabiscuit.

Zamperini was living at the time of the book’s writing and publication. Struggling with the effects of chronic fatigue syndrome, Hillenbrand was able only to interview him from a distance as she conducted her research. They never met, yet they formed the deep bond that Oney described:

Over the course of the seven years Ms. Hillenbrand toiled on “Unbroken,” she and Mr. Zamperini became friends, despite never laying eyes on each other. “I call him a virtuoso of joy,” she says. “When things are going bad, I phone him.” Says Mr. Zamperini, “Every time I say good-bye to her, I tell her I love her and she tells me, ‘I love you.’ I’ve never known a girl like her.”

It took me a while to get to Hillenbrand’s book. I would have gotten to it faster, but my wife grabbed it from me when I brought it home from the bookstore. And I would have gotten through it more quickly if the last 200 pages hadn’t brought tears to my eyes on virtually every page. But I couldn’t put it down while I was reading it — I carried it everywhere I might have a chance to get back to it — and then I wanted to buttonhole strangers to talk about it, like the Ancient Mariner with his sea story.

The book sat on top of the New York Times bestseller list for a couple of years after it was published. It didn’t exactly need any help from me. But it’s the kind of book you can’t get out of your mind. I offered these 10 notes on the book in the hope that they might encourage you to read the book if you haven’t yet.

1. Hillenbrand almost completely subordinates herself to the story. In the one or two sentences where she slightly inserts herself — conveying the shibboleth, for example, that the war in the Pacific was a race war on both sides — the effect is jarring. Hillenbrand makes telling Zamperini’s story in all its multifarious elements her mission. Her research is comprehensive but unobtrusive.

2. I have never read a book so full of suffering. The suffering at sea is next to nothing compared to the suffering inflicted by the Japanese in the prison camps. Hillenbrand notes at one point early in Zamperini’s detention by the Japanese that Zamperini looked back on his days drifting at sea with fondness by comparison. But it is not only Zamperini’s suffering that Hillenbrand conveys. She also recreates the suffering of Zamperini’s family at home, worried about Zamperin’s fate.

3. Zamperini wants us to understand the suffering he and his buddies endured. “Laura brought my war buddies back to life,” Zamperini told Oney. “The fact that Laura has suffered so much enabled her to put our suffering into words.”

4. Professor David Gelernter has created a fictional course to mitigate the phoniness of the baby boom generation praising “the greatest generation.” Among other things, he asks that we teach our kids the memoirs and recollections of the veterans who served in World War II along with the bestiality of the Japanese. Hillenbrand’s book should take a prominent place in Gelernter’s course.

5. Zamperini has had more lives than the proverbial cat. He was saved from a life of delinquency by his brother. His service in the war prior to the crash had an incredibly close call or two. He might well have died in the crash, as all but pilot Russell Allen Phillips and one other crewman did. Zamperini’s escape from the plane after it hit the water remains mysterious. He miraculously defied the odds to have survived in the raft drifting at sea for 47 days, mostly without food or water. He narrowly avoided being shot when a Japanese fighter strafed the raft. When he and Phillips found land, it turned out to be Kwajalein, otherwise known among the Americans as Execution Island. He could easily have been killed there. Zamperini might also have died during his detention after he was moved from Kwajalein to Japan; he was surely within a few days or weeks of death when the war ended.

6. American readers of the book will experience the joy and gratitude that Zamperini and his colleagues in the Pacific theater felt when Harry Truman saw to it that we dropped the big ones on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. Hillenbrand herself does not comment on this aspect of the story or quote Zamperini on it, but you can’t miss it.

7. When he returned home, Zamperini was consumed by nightmares and flashbacks that led him deep into alcoholism. He was rescued from his nightmares and alcoholism — by his wife, by Billy Graham, and by his conversion to Christianity. Hillenbrand’s research extends even to this aspect of the story. She tracks down, and quotes from, the audiotapes of the two sermons that Zamperini heard Graham preach in Los Angeles in 1949.

8. Our friend Hugh Hewitt had the privilege of interviewing Zamperini along with Zamperini’s fellow Olympian and USC alum John Naber in the studio a while back. The audio of the interview is posted here.

9. I learned from Hugh’s interview that Zamperini had a Web site here with items of interest including Bob Simon’s 1998 rendition of Zamperini’s story (now accessible online here). In the epilogue to the book, Hillenbrand notes that the research for Simon’s profile resolved a critical component of Zamperini’s story.

10. Zamperini’s story should be common knowledge among all Americans. If Hillenbrand hasn’t done the job, she’s getting us there. Maybe the forthcoming film of Unbroken (trailer below), scheduled for release on Christmas, will finish the job.

Jul 3 2014

The Real Job’s Report for June 2014


How many jobs were created since 2007 not last month

Based on the BLS July 3, 2014 Release USDL-14-1243 we have the following analysis using the numbers shown in Table B-1 and A-8. Then we use a DOD monthly report for Active duty military to add to the other two of 1.36 million soldiers. By doing this we get a more complete picture of those that are getting pay for some form of work and are therefore not on public assistance or retired. For reference that report claims that 288,000 jobs were created in June.

The first thing that came out when we look at what has happened since the high point of the previous growth period in October 2007 was that we are still short 394,630 jobs from then making this the slowest recovery on record. But there were categories of gains and categories of loss’s so what are they?

JOBS June 2014

The total gains and losses for all the other categories give a net gain of 428,990 which when combined with the two table’s leaves us with a net loss of jobs since October 2007 of -394,630. But we also see that close to half of the gaining categories are low paying jobs and that most all the losing categories were good paying jobs. It would therefore appear that not only are there fewer jobs but there has been a shift out of traditional middle class jobs to lower paying personal service jobs in food service nursing homes and the like. Without seeing the income distributions that is speculation but the categories speak for themselves.

The only real winners in the past 7 years appear to be the upper middle class and the upper class as those categories of government workers, financial advisers, legal and doctors have increased.

Jul 3 2014

Who will be the next American President?


We do not want any more Fundamental Change

When Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009 and again four years later he committed perjury for he fully indented to “Fundamentally” Change the Country; and he said so many times — and after almost 6years we can see that he certainly has Fundamentally changed the country — and not for the good. The problem with what he has done is that it was never in his power to do what he set out to do for the constitution, which sets the operation parameters for our form of government, clearly gives that power for CHANGE “solely” to the states in Article V, Amendments. The President has no part in the amendment process and so since he clearly wanted to make changes and clearly did make changes he also clearly committed perjury on January 20, 2009 and again on January 20, 2013.

However he was able to avoid that charge and by this time it’s not relevant unless a conservative could become president and get all the Fundamental Change legislation nullified that was passed during Obama’s two terms.

The only challenge Obama faced was the Tea Party movement which started in 2010 and so Obama and his supporters/handlers i.e. George Soros (Mr. Open Boarders), Bill Gates (Mr. Tech) and William Ayers (Mr. Marxist): did not get all the Fundamental changes that wanted. And its unlike that he will get much more although he will try to use other means such as the executive order and administrative directives to get as much as he can before November 2016 and the inauguration of the next president on January 20, 2017. This will leave much change yet to go to get the complete package of Fundamental Changes in place that those like Obama desire. So the next president will need to either complete the process or try and reverse it.

It’s not clear whether the countries conservatives can force the Republicans into actually trying to reverse the damage that has been done and if the Republican Party (RNC) cannot come to terms with what their base wants then will be hard pressed to win any nation elections. Given the mood of the country, not wanting Fundamental Change, it should be easy for the RNC to take the Senate in November 2014, so if the RNC doesn’t than that will be an indication that they will run another McCain or Romney and lose again, by that I mean that they need a Reagan, nothing less will matter. That doesn’t seem likely to happen although Wisconsin Governor Scot Walker comes closest at this point in time.

The real question is whom will the Progressive Democrats run? Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elisabeth Warren appear to be the front runners and both are far left progressives so in principle each could finish the Fundamental change that is desired by their handles. However both have problems and may not be electable. Hillary has a lot of baggage form the Clinton years and more recently as Secretary of State under Obama. Bengasi in particular will be a major issue for her. Warren has little name recognition outside her home state of Massachusetts and is not a good campaigner as it’s almost impossible for a republican to win in that state so no real skill is required. Hillary also has that problem as she has nowhere near the political charisma that her husband Bill has.

One way out for the men behind the scenes would be to run Michele Obama for president. It’s a twofer for them a Black (actual American back roots unlike her husband) and a woman. That would get all the Black votes and has the potential for a large percentage of the female vote, except for one problem — what to do with Hillary? Well there is a way out for the handlers and it is doable given their power. The solution is to get Hillary into the position of Secretary General of the United Nations. That would give the handlers significant control of world power and bring them a step closer to the one world government that they desire. Hillary would go along with this as it is a very prestigious position and it puts her in a theoretical position above Michelle which would be satisfying given their mutual dislike for each other, although that could just be an act.

Obviously this is pure speculation but it does make sense!

Jul 3 2014

The ‘End’ of the dollar?


The BRICs Are Morphing Into An Anti-Dollar Alliance

Re-Post for Zerohedge by Tyler Durden on 07/02/2014 22:29 -0400

While numerous massively indebted administrations around the world hope to divert the attention of what’s left of their struggling middle class away from its daily impoverished existence and distract it with flashing lights and glitzy animations showing another all time market high on a daily basis, a significantly more important shift taking place behind the scenes is appreciated by very few: the ongoing de-dollarization of the world. For the latest example of how increasingly more countries are setting the stage for the final currency war, we go again to Russia where VOR’s  Valentin Mândr??escu explains that slowly but surely the BRICS – that proud Goldman acronym which was conceived to perpetuate the great American way of life by releasing trillions in US-denominated debt in heretofore untapped markets – are morphing into an anti-dollar alliance.

BRICS is morphing into an anti-dollar alliance, From VOR

Before the crucial visit to Beijing next week, the governor of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina met Vladimir Putin to report on the progress of the upcoming ruble-yuan swap deal with the People’s Bank of China and Kremlin used the meeting to let the world know about the technical details of its international anti-dollar alliance.

On June 10th, Sergey Glaziev, Putin’s economy advisor published an article outlining the need to establish an international alliance of countries willing to get rid of the dollar in international trade and refrain from using dollars in their currency reserves. The ultimate goal would be to break the Washington’s money printing machine that is feeding its military-industrial complex and giving the US ample possibilities to spread chaos across the globe, fueling the civil wars in Libya, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. Glaziev’s critics believe that such an alliance would be difficult to establish and that creating a non-dollar-based global financial system would be extremely challenging from a technical point of view. However, in her discussion with Vladimir Putin, the head of the Russian central bank unveiled an elegant technical solution for this problem and left a clear hint regarding the members of the anti-dollar alliance that is being created by the efforts of Moscow and Beijing:

“We’ve done a lot of work on the ruble-yuan swap deal in order to facilitate trade financing. I have a meeting next week in Beijing”, she said casually and then dropped the bomb: “We are discussing with China and our BRICS parters the establishment of a system of multilateral swaps that will allow to transfer resources to one or another country, if needed. A part of the currency reserves can be directed to [the new system].” (Prime news agency)

It seems that Kremlin chose the all-in-one approach for establishing its anti-dollar alliance. Currency swaps between the BRICS central banks will facilitate trade financing while completely bypassing the dollar. At the same time, the new system will also act as a de facto replacement of the IMF, because it will allow the members of the alliance to direct resources to finance the weaker countries. As an important bonus, derived from this “quasi-IMF” system, the BRICS will use a part (most likely the “dollar part”) of their currency reserves to support it, thus drastically reducing the amount of dollar-based instruments bought by some of the biggest foreign creditors of the US.

Skeptics will surely claim that a BRICS-based anti-dollar alliance will not manage to deprive the dollar of its global reserve currency status. Instead of arguing against this line of thought, it is easier to point out that Washington is doing its best to enlarge the ranks of the enemies of the dollar. Asked by the Russia 24 channel to comment on Nabiullina statements, Sergey Kostin, the president of the state-owned VTB bank and one of the staunchest supporters of anti-dollar policies, offered an interesting perspective on the situation in Europe:

“I think the work on ruble-yuan swap line will finalized in the nearest future and the way for ruble-yuan settlement will be open. Moreover, we are not the only ones with such initiatives. We know about the statements made by Mr. Noyer, chairman of the Bank of France. As a retaliation for what Americans have done to BNP Paribas, he opined that the trade with China must be done in yuan or euro.”

If the current trend continues, soon the dollar will be abandoned by most of the significant global economies and it will be kicked out of the global trade finance. Washington’s bullying will make even former American allies choose the anti-dollar alliance instead of the existing dollar-based monetary system. The point of no return for the dollar may be much closer than it is generally thought. In fact, the greenback may have already past its point of no return on its way to irrelevance.

Jul 2 2014

ISIS Incorporated: Annual Report of Metrics and Analytics


Obama One the ISIS (Caliph) Four

Jul 2 2014

Obama One the ISIS (Caliph) Three


The ISIS ‘Caliph’ now on U.S. Kill list
Shadowy Baghdadi issues first statement since January urging global terror attacks

ISIL fighters marching in Syria (AP)

BY:
July 1, 2014 4:01 pm

President Barack Obama has authorized targeted killings of the leaders of the al Qaeda offshoot led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi using drone strikes or special operations, as the Iraqi terrorist on Tuesday urged jihadists to conduct worldwide attacks.

A U.S. official familiar with internal Obama administration discussions on Iraq said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (IS) leader and several other commanders are now on the kill list of those targeted as U.S. national security threats. The list was approved by the president and allows U.S. intelligence agencies and the military to conduct strikes against the targeted terrorists after they have been located and their identities confirmed.

CIA and White House National Security Council spokesmen declined to comment on the kill list designations.

However, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed last week that attacking IS leaders is under consideration.

Currently, several hundred U.S. troops are providing security in Baghdad and assessing Iraq’s security needs, Dempsey said on NPR on June 28. The military is preparing “additional options” including the targeting of “high-value individuals,” he said.

“Those options are being refined because the first step was to make sure we had the right intelligence architecture in place, and we’re flying a great deal of both manned and unmanned ISR—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets,” Dempsey said. “And we’re building a picture so that if the decision were made to support the Iraqi security forces as they confront ISIL, then we could do so.”

Meanwhile, Baghdadi, who was declared the prophetic leader, or caliph, of all Muslims on Sunday by his group the Islamic State, issued his first public statement since January on Tuesday. He called on Muslims to extend jihad, or holy war, around the world.

The IS’s declaration of a caliphate—an Islamic state ruled by a single religious and political leader—represents a major escalation of global Islamist jihad.

“So raise your ambitions, O soldiers of the Islamic State for your brothers all over the world are waiting for your rescue, and are anticipating your brigades,” Baghdadi stated in a six-page message.

“Raise your head high, for today … you have a state and caliphate.”

Baghdadi concluded the message by urging jihadists to continue fighting and said, “If you hold to it, you will conquer Rome and own the world.”

The listing of Baghdadi and IS leaders, including military commander Abu-Umar al-Shishani and the group’s spokesman Abu-Muhammad al-Adnani, comes as the U.S. military began flying armed drone missions over Iraq.

The Predator drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, are used as “force protection” for U.S. military troops that were dispatched recently to Baghdad to bolster Iraq’s military.

However, officials said the deployment of armed drones also was done in anticipation that future intelligence operations by special operations commandos in Iraq will be used to identify and locate IS leaders and commanders for drone strikes.

The plans to attack the terror leaders were given added urgency by the early June military-style incursion into Iraq. The IS, backed by former Saddam Hussein military leaders and troops, seized Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul and other towns linking IS rebels in a swath of territory stretching from Aleppo in Syria through central Iraq and southward to areas west of Baghdad.

Analysts say IS will likely be rejected by the vast majority of Muslims who do not want a brutal terrorist as their spiritual leader. However, the danger of a new wave of international terrorist attacks by jihadists associated with Baghdadi is viewed as a major threat.

“While Baghdadi’s concerns may appear localized, his long-term objectives are most certainly not,” said Charlie Cooper, a counterterrorism analyst with the British think tank Quilliam Foundation. “Now that he has claimed the caliphate, he has effectively positioned himself as the standard-bearer of jihadism the world over.”

Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate and himself as caliph has been met with disdain by some analysts.

Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution specialist on the Middle East, said Baghdadi now claims to be a descendant of Islam’s founder Mohammad.

“With the announcement of a caliphate by ISIS we now have an alleged ‘true’ name for ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi,” Riedel said. “He is ‘really’ Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim Ali ibn Muhammad al Badri al Hashimi al Husayni al Qurashi. That means he is a descendent of the prophet, which is of course critical to being a caliph, and he comes from the same tribe, Qurashi, and the same family, Hashemites. This also makes him a blood relative of King Abdullah II of Jordan.”

An earlier claimant of the same title, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, was known as “Abu Omar al Hashimi al Qurashi al Baghdadi.” However, Riedel said “a drone did him in.”

“So now a man whose real name we don’t know claims to be the leader of all Muslims,” Riedel said, noting that the sole photograph of Baghdadi was provided by Iraqi intelligence, “So I doubt it really is a picture of him.”

Bill Roggio, a terrorism analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also said Baghdadi remains shrouded in mystery.

“Much like the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, Baghdadi isn’t one to release a lot of speeches,” Roggio said. “However, ISIS/the Islamic State has released numerous statements under its official media outlets.”

Roggio said Baghdadi’s latest statement also includes a call for Muslims to travel to the Islamic State.

Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, a former Delta Force commando and undersecretary of defense for intelligence in the George W. Bush administration, said the rise of Baghdadi, who was held in a U.S. military prison for four years before being released, highlights the danger posed by the administration’s release of five Taliban commanders from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Baghdadi is a difficult target who has avoided Western intelligence for years and can be expected to limit his use of electronic communications to avoid detection, Boykin said.

Noting that Secretary of State John Kerry last month dismissed concerns about the recent release of the five Taliban leaders in exchange for captured Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, Boykin said Kerry also suggested that if the commanders returned to battle in Afghanistan they would be killed by drones.

“Oh really, Mr. Kerry?” Boykin asked. “Here we have a really bad actor [Baghdadi] who was in U.S. custody for four years and we can’t find him nor take him out.”

“So tell me why I should not be concerned about the five Gitmo thugs again,” he said. “Baghdadi is very aware of the threat to him personally from a U.S. drone strike and he is smart enough to command through limited use of electronic comms.”

Patrick Poole, a counterterrorism analyst, said Baghdadi and IS leaders are hiding from possible drone strikes but also must be on alert for attacks from rival al Qaeda groups.

“They have threats coming from at least two different directions,” Poole said. “The actuarial tables on the life of jihadist leaders really weighs against these guys, and most rise up through these jihadist groups through the typically violent death of the predecessors.”

Al Jazeera reported Saturday that armed drone strikes were recently carried out against IS terrorists in Mosul. The report could not be confirmed.

In his statement, Baghdadi said the world has been divided between two camps: Islam and “the camp of disbelief and hypocrisy.” Jihadists must battle “the camp of the Jews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and religions of disbelief, all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews,” he said.

He defended the use of what in the West is called terrorism. “Terrorism is to refuse humiliation, subjugation, and subordination [to infidels],” he said. “Terrorism is for the Muslim to live as a Muslim, honorably with might and freedom. Terrorism is to insist upon your rights and not give them up.”

However, the use of terrorism against other Muslims is not permitted, he stated.