Strengths and weaknesses of ISIS, hidden in the articles of their propaganda-magazine:

[DetlefK]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/

ISIS is publishing a glossy magazine, with colored photos and everything. It's called Dabiq.

- The magazine has an astonishingly professional lay-out and quality.

- Dabiq doesn't mind showing dead ISIS-fighters ("celebrities&quot , because they regard these deaths as God's will. Whether victory or death, it's all God's will and it should all be praised.

- ISIS is proud to be called terrorists and proud to be brutal.

- They don't care if you as a Westerner call them Daesh. To an Arab "Daesh" means something: an insult. Westerners use the term matter-of-fact-ly, not as an insult. And ISIS knows this and doesn't care whether you call them Daesh.

- They regard freedom as a bad thing and call themselves "slaves of Allah".

- They are up-to-date on the news, they use Social Media to interact with potential recruits. And their campaigns are multilingual. But despite this tech-savviness, they advertise a most brutal barbarism.

- They WANT to be fought. The arab states will fall, the US-military will ride in to save them and there will be an end-times battle on the Dabiq-plain in Syria where the good guys (ISIS) will win. This is their long-term plan and they don't mind dying in the mean-time, because the mean-time doesn't matter, only this final battle.

- ISIS is running out of money.
ISIS is running out of taxpayers.
ISIS can't understand why anybody would want to leave the caliphate.
ISIS is trying to convince the refugees to stay by saying that the journey is too dangerous and they will be turned down anyways.
ISIS is trying to guilt potential recruits into joining the caliphate with the challenge of building a better tomorrow.
ISIS is running out of specialists (doctors, engineers...) that keep their society and infrastructure afloat.

- ISIS got its weapons as war-booty. Most of them are weapons and equipment (e.g. 2300 Humvees of the iraqi military) that somebody (e.g. the US) sold to a friendly group in the Middle-East, only to be abandoned or left behind or pillaged.

- ISIS is fighting drug-smugglers.

- Dabiq published a US-libertarian sounding article how the currencies are about to collapse and the gold-standard is the best.

- They hate Iran, they hate the Taliban, they hate Al-Qaeda.

- The people they REALLY hate aren't the West, but the rest of the muslim world, because they are apostates, with extra hatred reserved for Shias.

Terminology:
- Every western politician/soldier/civilian is a "crusader". They don't differentiate any further.
- "Hijra" (I guess, related to the word "Haj", the pilgrimage) is the process of packing up and moving to the caliphate to join it. ISIS regards this a holy duty for all Muslims.
- "Rafidah" is someone who rejects the proper interpretation of Islam. Like Iran. (I guess, because they are Shia.) And don't tell former iranian president Ahmadinejad that he's a puppet of Israel.

[GeorgeGist]

1. Cut off their crank and they'll crash.

[Ex Lurker]

3. They apparently don't mind pictures of their dead compatriots

But I'll bet they don't like the visual of the trouserless terrorist being hauled away by French police.

[Ex Lurker]

2. Cracked used to be a Mad Magazine knockoff

suddenly, they're doing journalism. And pretty good journalism, at that.

[DetlefK]

4. Well, their new writers and the guest-writers are good. The old ones not.

Their "old guard" of writers has become repetitive and boring. They only focus on pop-culture anymore and once they find a topic, they ride it do death.

What I like about Cracked are the articles where somebody writes anonymously about e.g. what life in a war-torn country or with a specific rare disease is like.

[joshcryer]

6. Cracked is trying to catch up with VICE, IMO.

[joshcryer]

5. Thanks for posting this.

I wanted to seek out this publication but didn't want to wind up on a list somewhere.