Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
Because they don't have the expertise, the means and the funds. They don't the satellites, air force or intelligence structure to do that. They don't have the experts who could analyze millions of satellite photos.

They can stumble upon something sometimes, or make a decent report about a single, small aspect, but for the bulk of information, they rely on what was provided to them by the authorities.

Read the articles, it's in there - "a state official said...", "an official report by...", "sources from a department...", "according to the intelligence data provided by..." and so on...
Again, I don't get what your argument is. No one is interested in every rock IS controls, but the greater trends. I am not basing the assumption that IS has not lost territory on what some spokesperson said, but on the lack of credible evidence showing the opposite.

Social media ... You're having a laugh.
YouTube videos, primarily. They can be geolocated. Fake videos do exist; but I am not aware that this is a huge problem (and do not typically focus on location anyway, AFAIK). Biggest problem is establishing that the date is correct.

Categorically dismissing such evidence is silly. They are one small part of the toolkit.

If it were so, there would have already been a strong group formed already.
That's in part because strong groups are forming: those with more resources cannibalise those with less.

Anyone trying to bring shariah laws to a secular country is an extremist.
But does every islamist want to introduce sharia?

Maybe...
Indeed.

How can anyone be talking about democracy and shariah law at the same time?
Why - what's the problem? How can anyone talk about death penalty and democracy at the same time? (is it democratic to kill potential voters?) How can anyone talk about voting restrictions and democracy at the same time? (aren't people under 18 humans too?)

There is no such thing as a perfect democracy. The most important thing is that a sizeable part of the population can have a say in who controls the country. There's no inherent reason sharia laws, like any other laws, cannot be amended or abolished by a democratically elected parliament.