Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 2, Day 2.

Yesterday (3/1/16) the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released a video in which they murdered five people and made numerous threats against Britain.

Despite the fact or possibly because I've recently brought Season 4 of "Game of Thrones" watching real people being really slaughtered is not high on my list of priorities at the moment. Therefore I did not join in with the mad rush to watch this video before it was deleted to become some sort of glamorous myth.

However I gather the central message of the video is that the five victims were spies who had been helping to direct British air-strikes against Raqqa - ISIL's de facto in Syria. The men were forced to give false confessions to their 'crimes,' apologise for being apostates to Islam and begged to be re-admitted to ISIL's perversion of Islam before being killed. The video ended with with a child of no more then 11 or 12 threatening an ISIL attack on the UK.

Towards the end of November 2015 the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) started giving tours to western media outlets - particularly America's CNN and the UK's Sky News - marking the success of their Hasakah/Al-Hawl operation. Rather unprofessionally during these interviews members of the QSD told the media that they'd established a resistance force within Raqqa and were supplying them with weapons in preparation for an operation to liberate the city from ISIL.

Since then ISIL have been extremely paranoid about the issue of spies within Raqqa. They have rounded up numerous people and publicly murdered them in an attempt to terrorise the residents of Raqqa from joining the resistance force. The fact that these latest five people have been accused of being British spies seems simply to be a lie to allow their murders to be used as a message to Britain.

The message ISIL were trying to send was multi-fold;

In the first instance both the central, 'executioner' figure and the child at the end spoke English with a native English accent. This was intended to remind the UK that it has sent many of its Muslim citizens to fight for ISIL in order to highlight how easy it would be for those fighters to return and carry out attacks in the UK.

This is hardly news because many of those fighters were sent to ISIL by an MI6 agent codenamed "Glasgow bin Lorry." Most of 2015 was spent on a large inquiry into his actions. Curiously it did not end with prosecutions.

Secondly the central figure in the video was masked in almost the exact same way that Mohammed Emwazi (AKA: "Jihadi John") had been in his numerous murder videos. The intention being to highlight how utterly irrelevant the killing of Emwazi in a November 12th (12/11/15) air-strike was because ISIL would simply replace him with someone else.

Again this is hardly news because at the time of his death I pointed out that Emwazi hadn't killed anyone for about 9 months yet ISIL's murders had continued.

Although it wasn't ISIL's intention I think it is important to consider the way that ISIL use masked killers and Emwazi stopped killing once his identity had been revealed. What they're trying to do is glamorise their killing by shrouding it in mystery and secrecy.

By immediately removing these videos so they can only be alluded to in hushed tones in newspapers and on TV I can't help but worry that we're actually assisting ISIL by helping to build up the mythology around them.

As for the guy featured in this video I'm pretty sure that I already know his name. I just need to recover it from my memory palace.

The video of course was released on the 1 month anniversary of the UK Parliament voting to authorise air-strikes against ISIL in Syria. Promising attacks on the UK in response to the air-strikes is a clear attempt to encourage those who claimed that air-strikes would increase attacks on the UK to campaign for the air-strikes to end.

As I explained at the time this is a completely false argument. ISIL have been trying to attack the UK on an almost daily basis for certainly the past 18 months. Attacking them in Syria has not changed their desire to attack the UK but it has restricted their ability to do so. 

That is why ISIL want the air-strikes to stop.

In threatening that ISIL would soon invade the UK the video made the rather curious claim that UK Prime Minister David Cameron would do nothing to save those“fighting under his banner on minimum wages.” This is an attempt to recruit more British Muslims to ISIL's cause.

Throughout the past 18 months or so numerous theories have been put forward as to why young British Muslims join ISIL. It has been suggested that it's because they're so outraged by the brutality of the Syria government while others have talked about complex brainwashing and this mysterious "radicalisation." The main reason though is actually a lot more simple then that.

ISIL pay foreign fighters around GBP2,000 per month. This works out at around GBP24,000 per year which is pretty much double the pay of someone working a 35 hour week on the UK minimum wage. Not only don't ISIL fighters have to pay tax on their salary it is on top of free housing and a monthly food allowance. Exact price comparison data isn't really available but I'm guessing £24,000 buys you a hell of a lot more in Raqqa then it does in London.

As such the people fighting ISIL on the ground don't refer to them as Muslims, Jihadists or even terrorists. Instead they refer to them simply as Mercenaries because they're in it for the money.

Therefore by referencing the minimum wage ISIL was hoping to remind British Muslims in minimum wage jobs they'd earn far for more fighting for ISIL. It's also quite disheartening for people like me to be reminded that ISIL fighters are earning more then four times what I'm forced to make do on. Members of the Syriac militias fighting ISIL as part of the QSD actually have to pay for the privilege by buying their own ammunition.

Yesterday's video also seems to be a response to the numerous official statements issued by the UK during the Christmas and New Year period.

The most important of these was the Queen's Christmas Day message in which the Queen speaks as both the Head of State and the head of the Protestant Christian Church of England.

I thought this message was actually rather well done. Rather then speaking about ISIL directly the Queen instead used the refugee crisis - no cause was mentioned - to talk about the darkness that it currently enveloping the world to reassure us that light will prevail. Any reference to ISIL's role in this modern day "Massacre of the Innocents" was so oblique you really had to be looking for it.

The second most important was the Archbishop of Canterbury who was speaking in his role of effectively general manager of the Church of England.

Obviously speaking exclusively to an audience of Christians as their spiritual leader he was able to speak much more freely about how great he thinks Christianity is and the plight of his fellow Christians. This he did going so far as to compare ISIL to a modern day King Herod who carried out the Massacre of the Innocents as it appears in the Christmas story.

However his main message was not that Christians should oppose ISIL because they claim to be Muslims. Instead it was that Christians should oppose them because they're so intolerant of other faiths. Therefore the best way to oppose them is for Christians to be more tolerant of other faiths including Islam.

These messages seem to have provoked ISIL's self-appointed leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to release a message of his own the following day (26/12/15) in which he reassured followers that ISIL had not forgotten about Palestine before making various threats against Israel. With all the comparisons to King Herod this seemed to be an attempt by al-Baghdadi to refute claims that he is the illegitimate King of Judea being kept in place by the evil Empire.

By contrast though the Christmas message by UK Prime Minister Cameron was appalling ill-judged. Despite not speaking in any religious capacity basically listed ISIL's atrocities before announcing that the UK would defeat the Muslims savages because it is a Christian country.

Proving there are some rather tedious people on Twitter this was immediately seized upon and mocked mercilessly using the hashtag; "YouAintNoChristianBruv" in a play on the "YouAintNoMuslimBruv" hashtag that sprung up in response to the December 5th (5/12/15) ISIL inspired stabbing attack in Leytonstone, London.

ISIL of course like to portray themselves as the heroic guardians of Islam helping to protect Muslims from the Imperial wars of the vast Judeo-Christian conspiracy against them. The UK Prime Minister announcing that the UK is on some sort of Christian Crusade/Jihad against ISIL is pretty much doing ISIL's propaganda departments job for them.

Cameron was warned about this extensively when he did the exact same thing in announcing the death of Reyaad Khan in an unauthorised UK air-strike in October 2015. If he continues to behave like that people are going to have to start questioning whether Cameron's loyalties lie with the UK or with ISIL.

That prospect has clearly got ISIL worried. If we start being honest about the fact that ISIL are simply western mercenaries acting to hold back the Muslim world their popularity is going to plummet even further.

No wonder they described Cameron as an "imbecile."

16:05 on 4/1/16 (UK date).

Edited at around 19:45 on 4/1/16 (UK date) to add;

The child in the video has already been provisionally identified by the media as Isa Dare from Lewisham, South London.

It's a bit embarrassing for Channel 4 News because it turns out that back in 2013 they interviewed his mother - Grace Dare - as one of those 'moderate' fighters they assure us are just outraged by the brutally of the Syrian government and have absolutely nothing to do with ISIL.