February 21, 2015

"ISIS is talking online about jars of Nutella, pictures of kittens and emojis."

"These three images are in part helping ISIS recruiters lure westerners into their fight because they want people to believe their life on the battlefield isn't so different than yours. They actually eat Nutella, and I guess they have pet kittens..."

I don't know about all of that, but here's a tiny frog riding a beetle...



Have you ever heard of insect and frog politics? Neither have I. Insects and frogs ... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise, no Nutella. We can't trust the insect... or the frog... or the kittens...

ADDED: That's not my photograph, but I don't know where the original credit should go.

21 comments:

Michael K said...

Frogs learned that about scorpions around the time Aesop was making up stories.

traditionalguy said...

Insect men seem to be as boring as it gets. No wonder the weapons of mass destruction favored by Muslims seemed to always be poison gas. That's what you use on insects.

But as they say in Fort Worth: Fear the Frog.

Bob Ellison said...

My Kindle Fire recently auto-updated its main software, and suddenly the keyboard has an Emoji set. Press the Emoji button, and you've got hundreds of irritating things to type with.

There's got to be a way to short Emojis. One can short FaceBook. Why not short a concept like Emojis?

I'd go long on Nutella, though. Also arthropods.

chickelit said...

The whole opening scene in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" was insect politics if you accept the premise that art can be politics.

Chris N said...

Imagine if they started talking about their psyches, tattoos and divorced parents...

jr565 said...

You can't chop off heads all day. You need some hobbies too. And even villains like their sweets.

bbkingfish said...

I always wondered why we never heard any follow-up about the Great Nutella Heist. National security implications, I guess.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/04/11000-pounds-of-nutella-stolen/

William said...

I can understand the Nutella and kittens. It's the videos of beheadings, mass executions, and burning a person alive that I have trouble with. How can that be a recruiting tool? How many Charles Mansons are there on the earth?

Hagar said...

All the world loves a winner.

virgil xenophon said...

@jr565/

Yes, e.g., Nazi concentration camp guards who, after a long day at the ovens and gas chambers retired to their quarters to listen to Wagner and Beethoven and read Goethe.

pst314 said...

jr565 "You can't chop off heads all day. You need some hobbies too. And even villains like their sweets."

According to recent news reports, a favorite hobby is violent rape. Sounds appropriate if one wants to emulate the bandit prophet Mohammed.

Are W said...

I've seen Nuterella snack packs with short pieces of pretzel. I can imaging a serving looking like poo on a stick. How can you trust anyone who would find that attractive? How?

rhhardin said...

No magic can change a frog into a prince -- a frog, that is, who has never been a prince. He can be given a prince's shape, that is all. He has the self-consciousness of a frog.

-- Stanley Cavell The Claim of Reason

Michael The Magnificent said...

And we pity the poor Russians, hoodwinked by the barrage of propaganda from their state-run media.

Michael K said...

"How many Charles Mansons are there on the earth?"

A lot.

Purpose one: The murder videos are recruiting ads. IS leaders believe the videos visually demonstrate their undeterrable will to kill in order to secure and expand radical Islamist power. The videos apparently persuade young, alienated Muslim men. Best guesses indicate IS has attracted from 20,000 to 40,000 European, North American and Asian Islamist volunteers.

IS videos leverage al-Qaida's dark psychological insight. Al-Qaida connected the Muslim world's angry, humiliated and isolated young men with a utopian fantasy preaching the virtue of violence. That utopian fantasy seeks to explain and then redress roughly 800 years of Muslim decline.

Which leads to purpose two. Murdering helpless captives shocks, insults and angers civilized human beings. IS leaders, however, love to shock and insult. To shock and insult means to defy restrictions. In its war against infidels, IS recognizes no restrictions. If this sounds a bit like a 19th-century European anarchist political trope, indeed it is.


A lot. Thousands. Among other things, polygamy leaves a lot of young men sexually frustrated. Why do you think 72 virgins are important?"

walter said...

jr: "You can't chop off heads all day" True..that's what begat Nutflix and The Beheading Channel.
By the way, did they focus group the head shaving prep of hostages? Seem to leave their hair untouched now. Maybe just a time issue. Busy, busy.

Oso Negro said...

That image perfectly inspires an anthropomorphic response. It is impossible not to see the joie de vivre of the frog.

jr565 said...

There's our in by the way. Ship them a ton of Nutella. Laced with ebola. And then seal off the perimeter.

Quaestor said...

That frog is working on his Major Kong impersonation, a big hit at amphibian house parties.

Yaaa--Hoo! Yip! Yip! Yaaa--HOO! (Ka-boom)

Quaestor said...

That frog is working on his Major Kong impersonation, a big hit at amphibian house parties.

Yaaa--Hoo! Yip! Yip! Yaaa--HOO! (Ka-boom)

Unknown said...

I suppose this is obvious, but isn't ISIS great?: It attracts batshit Islamists from all over the world and concentrates them in Syria and Iraq where they can be slaughtered without doing damage to anything over here.