Mr Sotloff reads out a text addressed to Mr Obama saying: "You've spent billions of US taxpayers' dollars and we have lost thousands of our troops in our previous fighting against the Islamic State, so where is the people's interest in reigniting this war?" The masked man describes the act he is about to commit as retribution for the US air strikes.
Additionally, EVD and HIV/AIDS have both been categorized as divine retribution for committing undesirable acts (28, 41).
This rhythm is so inevitable that, in the second episode, as soon as we see Ronnie jaunting down the street at night, carrying a bottle of Pinot Noir and a cut of steak, we immediately know that he will abandon his date to commit a stupid act of retribution.
Yet where a crime has been committed, they are terrified of retribution.
CALAMATISTS There are many environmentalists who believe that industrial civilization has committed crimes against nature, and retribution is coming.
There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high.
That argues for honest explanation that terrorism does not threaten any western government, that retribution, like police injustices committed in nervous haste, is likely to provoke more violence, that new restrictions are unlikely to bring new safety.
After Walzer and McMahan suggested some criteria for strikes — criminality, risk of American lives — I asked them this: Doesn't a journalist working abroad who is about to release classified information about a war crime — thus committing a crime — that will provoke retribution or a break with allies — endangering Americans — fit this definition of a target?
Al-Nusra frames its attacks as retribution for alleged atrocities committed by Syrian security forces and pro-government militia.
"Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen carried out the airborne operation as a retribution for the crimes committed by the coalition of Western crusaders and their intelligence agencies against the Muslims of Somalia," the statement said.
