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British Intel Shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites
DarkWolf0 writes "I guess it should not be too surprising --
the British Times Online discusses the recent shutdown of multiple websites associated with al-Qaeda. I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"
If the government got the hosts to yank them, then the government's hand would be tipped because they'd have to get legal orders which would eventually be released by some leak. But if it's through hacking or DDOS'ing, it raises the question of whether the government really did it (or if public-spirited hackers went vigilante), and if the government did it, where do we draw the line on the illegality of such tactics?
Can a judge issue an order allowing the takedown of foreign sites via hack or DDOS if they are deemed harmful to national security? Can such an order be sealed and kept from the public?
Perhaps the point is moot as no one has surfaced a smoking gun, pointing to British intel. TFA just quotes Israeli sources saying the hand of British intel was detected, but not stating that any direct evidence has been presented to prove this.
I'll be interested in seeing how the story develops. There's a certain visceral satisfaction in seeing advocates of hate and violence silenced, but at the same time it's frightening to think of any government covertly silencing voices of dissent, as that starts a society down a slippery slope of oppression.
I'd be much more willing to believe that the Israelis have a covert and capable corps of hackers than the British. And if these corps, regardless of national origin, were capable of initiating DDOS attacks, I'd be curious as to where/how they got their zombies. It would be sad to think that a source of worms and viruses were government-paid hackers, building bot nets for black ops.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is an example of shutting down expression on the internet. As far as the IT part goes, its easy to turn off a site.
We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.
Even from a tactical point-of-view this doesn't make sense. They cite one web site as offering technical instruction on how to commit terror, OK, but what about the rest which undoubtedly contain information authorities could be using to predict and prevent future attacks?
Do they actually think that this will hurt their recruitment efforts? That some guy who is already of the mind to commit suicide for the cause is going to change his mind when his browser gives him a 404?
How is it in this most important of issues we see the least intelligent people making all of the decisions for us?
--
Why didn't you know?
Intel is a Registered Trademark of the Intel corporation....
Quit using it. Or Intel will get angry.
Just to post those websites on /. ?
I'll bet they were doing that.
Whether or not allowing the sites to stay up for the intelligence info was probably a hard choice all along, and after the recent bombings, they probably just changed their minds.
British Intel shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites
1. Why is a PC chip manufacturer shutting down al-Quaeda Sites?
2. Do the british chips run linux?
Hello,
In response to recent attempts to shut down sites related to Al-Qaeda, I'd like to state that Slashdot has never been a platform for communicating messages from this organisation. So, please don't shut it down, even if one of us accidentally slips some words like 'bombing' or 'terrorism' into the posts.
Thanks for your time,
OBL
Are they preparing us for a lockdown of the internet?
true. better to monitor then to keep moving them on.. would only make them think about going deeper underground and harder to monitor.
Maybe they were already doing that for some time, and decided they had all the info they needed and the sites had outlived their usefulness.
And here I was thinking that only AMD does something new these days.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
This is nothing about preventing another person or person's their right to express themselves. This is about preventign the enemy from communicating and sharign information to conduct terrorist operations. Al Jazeera continues to grow unimpeeded by the west.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
You will find only the casual websurfer like you and me - and brand them as terrorists. Brilliant.
Is it now illegal to look at such websites? I don't know. But I surely googled 'jihad' etc once.
What did I found? Unreadable arabic websites and some english ones which only enforced my view that these people are really such assholes as you can also see by looking at their actions.
But the fact that you nowadays could 'get flagged' or even get a very nasty visit by looking at such content is silly. More, it makes me both afraid and angry. Terrorists attacking our freedom. Oh yes, it seems that they are very effective now.
doom.
Won't work.
Nothing new. Nice try, though.
"However, the sobering message of many security experts is that the terrorists are unlikely ever to lose a war waged with technology.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
They can probably do this via other means. This almost certainly the case if they are shutting down the websites. The fact that they knew the sites existed probably infers that they can get the same information from other sources. If these sites were so important, then they would have produced information that would have prevented the last series of terrorist attacks.
"I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"
Yeah, that's what they really want. Mr. and Mrs. Jones vacation page to be shut down under the guise of anti-terrorism. Damn, people, grow the fsck up!
I'm a innocent brazilian, and I have a website, and we are talking about british! My site is dead! Well, at least isn't me, as Jean who was killed because was wearing cloths for cold in a warm day.
The root causes of terrorism
OK, I've been giving some thought, and I think I've got a handle on The Root Causes of Terrorism. Just why do people turn to terrorism to achieve their goals?
1) It's simple. It has an ease and ready accessibility that essentially any group, of any size, can pull off a "terrorist" attack with very limited resources.
2) It's flashy. Terrorism is "the new coolness." It gets a lot of attention, very quickly.
3) It's empowering. The one element that all terrorist groups have, at the start, is far more passion than power. They care a great deal about their cause, but they simply can't get anything done through more legitimate means. So they start getting violent, to increase their profile and extend their power.
4) It's deniable. If a government wants something done, but doesn't want to risk the backlash of doing it openly themselves, they can try to get some "terrorists" to do it for them. This way, they can stand back and say "tsk, tsk" when something bad happens that benefits them.
5) It's cheap. Modern weapons and training cost far, far more than an average individual or group can afford. But bomb belts probably cost less than a couple of hundred dollars to make. Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols put together the Oklahoma City truck bomb on their average salaries.
6) It's tough to fight. A long time ago, a bunch of countries laid out a set of rules for warfare. These rules were designed to, among other things, minimize the number of civilians killed in war. In exchange for some serious restrictions on what combatants could do, large groups of people, institutions, and buildings were declared "off limits." The terrorists systematically look at those restrictions and use them as guidelines for how to best attack our forces.
Many people look at the terrorist attacks [in the civilized world] and wonder why it's happening. I look at the above and wonder why there haven't been more.
I believe Juanita
Werent we being critical of China for doing the same thing to their internet?
Let's hope they start using MSN and Microsoft Messanger next, maybe they'll get shut down too. :-)
I can see the headlines now, Microsoft shut down because it was found the terrorists prefer Windows.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
http://freenet.sf.net/
it's slow, but it works.
These sites where not for the ability to speak, as you imply, about "political opinions", but the ability to encurage and coordinate the kind of violence that we have recently seen.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Censorship makes fighting terrorism IMPOSSIBLE.
How can you fight terrorism if you can't see what the terrorists are thinking and counter them? Terrorist websites should be free information which anyone can access. The more free and open their networks are the easier it is to prevent 911 types of situations. It's the closed source secret networks which cause the most problems.
I think we need to give terrorists the internet, and simply watch them while gathering intel, instead of taking down websites.
I am so sick of people equating any government action agains TERRORISTS as silencing free speech. These animals murder innocents in the name of their god. Whatever the governments of this world do in order to stop them is A-OK with me. If the websites they are talking about are associated with Al-Qaeda, shut their asses down. No question. But I challenge all of you who throw your hands in the air and whail about free speech every time the government cracks down on them to show how YOUR speech is being hampered. They are criminals, operating a murderous enterprise. They dont have rights to freedoms at that point. I honestly doubt you would be so quick to condemn the actions taken if your loved ones were butchered by these monsters.
British Intel shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites
Did anyone else think it was strange that Intel was fighting terrorism? Did they use a backdoor in the server processors, or what?
---
funny commercials
1. It only identified one website that supposedly was shut down.
2. I'm pretty sure they got the name of that website WRONG (www.mojihedun.com isn't registered...but the Google-suggested alternative www.mojahedun.com is, and a quick whois suggests that it is the site they really meant to name).
3. DNS requests to the authoritative DNS servers for www.mojahedun.com show they are having problems, which may have convinced the writer of the article that the website has been shut down.
4. The article has no byline, so nobody gets the blame for any mistakes or inaccuracies.
I saw this article earlier today and immediately noted the lack of hard facts and named sources. It's hardly worth the space it occupies. I'll pay more attention when it names names and isn't just fluff and regurgitated B.S.
(Score:-5, Conservative)
Indeed.
No one believes me when I blame MI6 for stuff that happens on the Internet.
."
IT Guys: "We've noticed a lot of questionable sites accessed via your workstation. Any ideas on how that could have happened?"
Me: "British intelligence."
IT Guys: ". .
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!Reuters :: Monday, August 1 2005. Popular geek website Slashdot was shutdown by unknown government officials due to a dDOS (distributed denial of service) attack perpetuated by the linking of a story about terrorism. Previous accusations of dDOS attacks on other sites, attributed souly to Slashdot's popularity, will now face closer scrutiny to determine if these too were instances of targetd terroist activity. Slashdot administrator, CmdrTaco, is currently being sought by Interpol for investigation into possible paramilitary association.
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Since the West does not negiotiate with terrorist organisations, the Government may also be shutting down the terrorists only publicly scrutinised avenues of communication with Western society.
Admittedly, these sites are more about purveying extremist propaganda than about open and honest communication. However, right now we should probably be looking to preserve any possible communication channels with these organisations.
These websites have been the public face of Al Quaeda and its various arms. Shutting them down is somewhat akin to jailing your enemy's diplomats.
How can censorship ever make us more safe? It only allows terrorist networks to operate in SECRET. Cyber terrorists are easier to track than real life invisible terrorists. It's very difficult to track a person offline, but on the internet everything you look at gets tracked. In general the government can use a pattern analysis program to analyze the shopping patterns, and other patterns of internet usage to reveal if the person is an actual threat or if the person just likes to look at terrorist websites. If a person starts researching on how to build a nuclear bomb and starts to make strange purchases, these indications are far more reliable than anything else. Shopping habits reveal who supports terrorists, not just what country the came from or how they look, but what they buy.
News stories mention these "al queda websites" all the time but I've never seen one, and the stories never mention the website address... anybody got links to these digital havens of terror?
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:B60L67QmhdcJ: www.mojahedun.com/+&hl=en&client=firefox-a
I wouldn't be surprised if the http://www.google.com/ cache or http://www.archive.org/ internet resources were banned next...
I think any website that actively exorts its readers to commit sectarian violence against everyone dissimilar to them and provides some sort of way of organizing groups for that purpose is a pretty good target of our security forces.
Of course now some multicultralists are going to try and say that mainline Christianity and Judaism are just as bad as Islam because of things that happened several hundred years ago and that were sponsored by secular governments. To such people, I challenge them to read this and say that Islamist websites are not a very dangerous threat to our societies.
The slipper slope here is not in shutting down Islamist websites, but in allowing Islamists to freely operate. Wahabis in particular will mass murder even Shiites and Sufis in particular. There is a state interest, even in the US, of eradicating Wahabi Islam because even (Church of) Satanism is a better religion in practice than Wahabi Islam for society.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I hope terrorists don't turn into Eurasia.
Seriously.
Shh.
Funny, but isn't that the NRA argument against gun control? Someone somewhere might miss the first day of duck season, so we can't keep records on any gun purchases for more than a few days?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
...everyone is only a few links away from a terrorist. As the "Kevin Bacon Game" (Six degrees of separation) shows, the world's not as large as we think at times.
I consider myself a liberal, and I agree with the parent post. Can we *please* stop the idiotic editorializing, especially when it comes to political stories such as this? We don't have to end every single story about government action with an open ended thought about how this can be taken to extremes and destroy your civil liberties. Really, we can think for ourselves. Let's cut the kneejerk reactions and behave like adults. Editors, do your job!
Oh god, I've turned into one of those people that complain about Slashdot. Someone shoot me.
Yeah, me too. And you'd think that capturing and interrogating a suspected suicide bomber would be more productive too. The British police, on the other hand, seem to believe that it's better to let one board a bus, ride for miles, exit the bus and proceed to a subway station, and ONLY then chase him down in plain cloths, waving guns, shouting "Get Out", pinning him to the ground and shooting him execution style seven times in the back of the head. Turns out the guy had nothing to do with terrorism, but I'm obviously not a highly trained, highly skilled murd^H^H^H^H law enforcement professional, so who am I to criticize. I'm sure the CCTV footage corroborates the Police's story too. He was acting suspicious and jumped a turnstile, so we'll surely see that footage made public. Any day now. It's only been a week or two now... It's really the terrorist's fault after all.
This is yet another example of the bugs in Slashdots moderation system. Censorship on the internet is exactly the topic. Just because you replace "Terrorist" with "Chinese" change the fact that censorship is wrong if its to the terrorists or the chinese, and its wrong for you and I to be censored.
Otherwise you are giving up free speech to fight terrorism.
This situation is a perfect example of how the Powers That Be marginalize people who disagree with their methods. You don't want your government to DDOS certain websites? You support terrorism. It seems to be just about that simple to the swing vote in most elections. The subtleties of the arguement somehow are lost on most people. This whole issue is a lousy test case for personal freedoms anyway, because it's hard to convince the average person of the value of leaving terrorist websites intact. (I'm having a hard time coming up with a good reason, myself.)
Shutting down unwanted communication channels is the single most reliable way of fighting dissent. Russia is a great example of how all pre-Internet channels can be controlled with great results. Today's China shows that Internet can also be effectively controlled.
You are probably right in claiming that the actual terrorists don't mind; it is the British public that is loosing its ability to hear from people who are for terror. The government is trying to prevent dissent among its own constituency.
ok. I AM GETTING VERY FCKING SICK OF THIS.
they did not have a "split second". they chased him all the fcking way to the train, and pinned him down on the floor. "shoot to kill" would have been appropriate the moment he ran, but not after bringing him under control by piling on top of him. even in a fcking WAR, this could be considered quite dirty, if people found out about it, and stuff like that actually made it to the news. the damn brainwash machine is just working overtime to keep dipshits like you working for it.
this was a fcking EXECUTION, not an act of police protection of the public.
I noticed a lot of replies regarding different parts of the website, and terrorism in general, but I was hoping to provoke someone to ask about the possible repercussions that could happen in the future. So far we have seen the following used to fight terrorisim (All of which I agree with, but right now because of a legitimate cause) 1. Freezing of bank accounts 2. Expulsion of people 3. Webpage shutdown(s) 4. Patriot Act And the list goes on. I do agree with the previous, because terrorisim does need to end. But what if say the "war on terrorisim" ends? Then what? Will the government just willingly put aside all these powers to do just about anything they want? I some dont believe it will be that easy. "Power corrupts... "
You may recall that in 1990, the U.S. secret service raided Steve Jackson Games with an unsigned search warrant, and took the then-unpublished GURPS Cyberpunk, along with some computers and laser printers, claiming that the game was a "manual for computer crime". SJ Games sued the Secret Service and won; but if the event were repeated today, with broader anti-terrorism powers, that part might not happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk
To echo a previous post, a lot more can be gained by allowing the sites to stay up and watching them than by chasing the people to another location.
To illustrate, when I was in the Air Force, as an ICBM Launch Officer, I had a partner who was in training to move to the OSI, the AF's "special" cops. One day we were talking about the Russian spies which were living near the base. (No surprise there, that base was the largest nuclear weapons site in the world...) I asked why we didn't scoop those people up. He said that would mean we'd have to start all over again. It was considered better to let them watch and watch them than to have an unknown situation.
Having said that, there are vigilantes who shut down al Qaeda and other terrorist web sites. The board at http://haganah.org.il/ is one meeting place for these folks.
That British article goes on to praise the terrorists and say they're so clever that they'll always be one step ahead of law engorcement. It also claims to know the success rate of electronic surveillance including Echelon. Since when is that open knowledge. Uh...yeah...riiiight.
This isn't newsworthy. An idiot writes an article which is stupid. Slow news day at Slashdot, huh?
>> But the fact that you nowadays could 'get flagged' or even get a very nasty visit by looking at such content is silly. More, it makes me both afraid and angry. Terrorists attacking our freedom. Oh yes, it seems that they are very effective now.
The focus of any act of terror is typically not to maim or kill a few dozens, but provoke reactionary policies by the government, inconveniencing millions. Look at the basque movement for classic example of this, where concilliatory gestures from the spanish government were met with increasing violence. Admittedly they were attacking targets within their own country, but the dynamic is identical.
No terrorist organization can do a fraction of the damage to a government that it will do to itself in reacting... How many lifetimes worth of hours have the American public lost in increased airport security checks alone? There are no bombs going off on US soil, but you're getting screwed every day to prevent it.
Either way the terrorists win a little bit.
http://request-header.info
In other words we are wasting our money and resources here.
q
First time in all these past years where they have written about these websites and given a URL!
The Times is owned by Murdoch (whos son jacked his job in this weekend) who also runs the SUN tabloid which has barked on and on about how the secret service listen to their phone calls etc etc
Hey careless talk cost lives you brain dead OZ!
If I ran that secret service I would go out of my way to make it look like someone else did it, I would not allow a SUN reporter within a 1000miles of my ops or I would feed them a load of tosh.
If I ran that terror group I would go out of my way to blame the British Empire and its crock-nosed spiteful crusaders!
And who owns the domain?...oh NO ONE OWNS THE DOMAIN!
(Made-up tosh)
The guy had lived for 3 years in the UK. His family said he spoke excellent English. He ran because he was in the country illegally.
So you condone inciting violence because (according to you) we do it too? Don't tell me it's OK for them because we do it, tell me it's not OK for us OR them .
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The website they mention appears to have never existed. Havent tried all the spelling variations. However it was the case that several websites of an al-Queda supporting nature were hosted in the UK at various times (indeed London in particular is the home of many middle eastern dissidents of one sort or another, including pro-democracy activists as well - my local butcher was assassinated by (probably) Libyans having been involved in an attempt to kill Gaddafi years earlier, and many Iraqi opposition figures, all sorts). The story seems like rubbish though. If they could point to a real site and it on wayback or a convincing archive copy I might believe them. It could be true. On the other hand people might have pulled the sites to keep out of the police sights as well.
Whats happened to decent journalism.
So... it is a-okay to bomb a terrorist camp and kill everyone in it... but suddenly their 'rights' are violated if someone knocks out their websites? Get a little fucking perspective please.
As to what is accomplished, that is easy. First, it makes low level support more difficult. You want to prevent casual supporters from throwing a few bucks in their direction.
Second, it is a propaganda war. If a terrorist blows himself up in London, murdering a pile of innocent civilians, it is best to deaden whatever benifits they get out of it by making it harder for them to get their message out.
The reason why this is being done is the exact same reason why Britian didn't let the USSR set up a Soviet Army recruiting station in London. Is it going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. Is it worth while to try and disrupt a terrorist's cells propaganda machine? Sure, why the hell not.
Put another way, if a British rapist made a website and posted movies of him raping 13 year old girls, would you be terribly upset if it got shut down? Get some fucking perspective.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Geez guys, quit dumping all over British Intel. I bet they haven't shut down as many sites as Slashdotter have by linking to them. Hmmm..... that gives me an idea. LOL
I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'
Well, if you've got the imagination of certain fellows, you may find that:
[..] slashdot.org is an far-right wing Internet news website that posts libelous and defamatory content and is used by Open Source Community members to anonymously post hate speech, death threats, threats to murder and promotes and advocates acts of domestic terrorism within the United States.
So there you go! And while we're quoting the guy:
The beheading and murder of United States Citizens in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have been videotaped, converted to MPEG and other images for viewing on the public Internet through the use of OSS and Linux software and computer technology developed and purloined by Linux and OSS members and illegally exported from the United States.
Yes. Seems we're all terrorists nowadays if you just ask the right person.
So now are they going to pass the Colonial Revolutionaries Act?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
>> "I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"
Good question. And I wonder how easy it is for any person to become an anarchist. Both good questions.
Maybe we should just pass out a bunch of doobies so that no one cares anymore.
I don't quite think you grasp the seriousness of what's going on.
When extra-national entities throw away all known rules of warfare and start attacking sovereign states, judges are only as effective as the armies that enforce their will.
And once you find that you really do need an army, judges tend go get in the way.
Can a judge issue an order allowing the takedown of foreign sites via hack or DDOS if they are deemed harmful to national security?
Replace web site with "undisputed and known terrorist", and you see how ridiculous your assumption that judges are useful in the fight against Al Qaeda and Islamic extremists. What the hell were we supposed to do on 9/12? Get a warrant for the arrest of Osama Bin Laden from a judge and have an NYPD squad car drive to Afghanistan to pick him up?
When something is being used by an organization like Al Qaeda, it's a target itching for a highly-exothermic destruction, not a suspect that needs a warrant from a judge so it can be picked up for questioning.
meaning decapitalise the word Intel
AFAIK, *calling* for the murder of other people is perfectly legal. That's why nazis and KKK's are not illegal there. Actually murdering someone is a crime, though, or it used to be. But then, I'm brazilian, racism/nazism and such are illegal in my coutry, as in some other countries as well. I might be wrong.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"
People are watching!
Is it just me or does articles like this bring out the real /. mindset? Scoping out most the comments here and the article submitter himself, one would think that /. is a bastion of over-reacting narrow minded dimwits. But that's ok cause we've got technology right? Being able to talk about technology makes us smart in everyones eyes and therefore we'll offer brilliant opinions about everything.
How wrong and narrowly minded we /.'ers truly are.
On another note, the best terrorist training manual is the American written "The Anarchist Cookbook".
"The Anarchist Cookbook" is crap. Maybe it seemed authoratative to pot smoking hippies in the early 70s but that speaks more to their ignorance than the book's quality. The book was basically a scam for paranoid early 70s hippies and high school chemistry students of the mid-late 70s and early 80s. Been there, done that, my high school chemistry class would be on a domestic terrorist list today.
The good manuals are by the government, military and CIA, and used to be readily available to the public, and no I'm not talking about some bomb shelter supply store in Montana, and no I'm not going to tell you where because I don't want to help dumb-ass kiddies hurt themselves. Almost been there, almost done that.
The sites they are talking about are not your every day religious zeolots web forums, they are hardcore extremist websites that are constantly monitored by the media, and always quoted for breaking hostage stories from Iraq and all.
And they are not easy to find either. The last one I stumbled upon was kr-hcy.com, a known terrorist group from Pakistan that's officially banned in the country. Amazingly, their website is hosted right here in the U.S.A by Globat.com, who failed to respond to two emails I sent to them complaining why they were letting the site go on... greedy mother---ing webhost.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
From Orwell's letter Pacifism and the War:
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that 'according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be "objectively pro-British".' But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious 'freedom' station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
Orwell is respected by the Right, his socialist credentials notwithstanding, because he wasn't a Useful Idiot.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
interesting coinky-dink. Few weeks back all of paks internet went down when their main undersea cable "broke" and needed "fixing".
uh huh, it "broke"
What better way to destroy a civilization than to attack its laws and virtues? The thing the public doesn't understand is that the terrorists are winning on the Legal front. For all the political ranting about how terrorists won't change us nothing could be further from the truth than in the legal realm. The more the laws change the more the terrorists win in the long run by destroying what we once were.
Establish an Islamic Caliphate over the entire world, forcing everyone to live under sharia.
Then label all non-Muslims as kafirs and dhimmis, kill Jews, bury homosexuals alive under collapsed stone walls, remove all rights from women and make them all have to be the property of some male, and gang-rape those women who don't agree.
Why is figuring out Islamic extremism hard? "It's because of the invasion if Iraq" is bullshit. The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the East Africa embassy bombings, the Khober tower bombing, or the bombing of the USS Cole.
The excuses offered by terrorist apologists change from year to year and day to day. The words of the Islamic extremists don't.
It's certainly a fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, and we've been right to point that out. But it's also a fact that damn near all terrorists are Muslims.
Actually, the argument against keeping background check data longer than a few days is because it's ILLEGAL according to the Brady Bill, in which the instant-check system was created.
But the real reason is because it amounts to de-facto gun registration if you keep those records indefinitely, which is why that limitation is codified in law.
By the way, hunting has very little to do with the second amendment; you might want to read it sometime?
Seriously, might aswell nuke the fuckers it would be 10x more effective. Oh wait! That's not a good idea, since there is already so many of those scum in our country, but that's the british goverments fault for letting so many of those fuckers in on the first place.
British Intel? So now is al-Qaeda a British AMD?
And yet a government cannot do 'nothing' in response to a terrorist act or threat. That would merely invite ever increasing acts, until they HAD to do something. (WTC I, Khobar, USS Cole, Nairobi, WTCII)
Either way the terrorists win a little bit.
Exactly. In this sort of dissimilar warfare, 'winning' by the 'good guys' is extremely difficult, if possible at all. It may take decades or centuries.
But in the meantime....ignore it at your peril.
The NRA's point is that gun-control laws applied to all citizens are only effective against law-abiding citizens. Criminals (felons), who aren't allowed to own firearms to begin with, aren't going to obey the new laws any more than they obeyed the old ones.
The National Socialist German Workers' Party used Germany's existing gun registration laws, selectively enforced, to pave the way for the Holocost. They didn't have to make additional laws until late in the game. The lesson here is to distrust politicians who want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. Giving the government a handy list of who to target is considered Bad.
The west doesn't negotiate with terrorists?
Mate, you want to grow up a bit.
That was classic intercourse!
whats worse is pushing them deeper underground. They don't *stop* them communicating, they just make is harder for us to hear them.
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
Memo: mrt68 knows too much and must now be disposed of.
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
Yeah, they fired Michael over this, but now Timothy's at it. :\ Blatent trolling if yuo ask me.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If they are English, I'd like to see them. I suspect that a really incredible drinking game can be created out of terrorist web-sites..
Another Barney hater, I see...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
They're dead.
Nor can the residents of Nagasaki.
A few days later, the Japanese surrendered and a non-Western society with a history of imperialism, autocratic governments, and nothing to do with democracy was occupied by US forces.
Fifty years later Japan is one of the most democratic and successful nations in the world.
God knows I hope it doesn't take nukes to destroy the allure of fanatical Islam, but destroy that allure we must. But if it takes nukes - so be it.
Don't fuck with a country that's fought in two world wars in the 20th century where probably over 100 million people were killed world-wide but still had it's bloodiest war in the middle of the 19th century - when it fought itself.
You don't see it in the NY Times. You don't hear about it in the movies coming from Left-coast Hollywood. But there's a damn good reason why a single regiment of US Marines could hold off multiple German divisions at Belleau Wood and earn the name "devil dogs". There's a reason an underequipped division of paratroopers can be trucked right in front of an entire panzer army and hold it at bay, responding to a surrender request with "Nuts". There's a reason why Sherman's troops could climb Cemetary Ridge and take the untakeable.
It's the same damn reason why in 1991 three days of ground war destroyed Iraq's army, and why in 2003 just two divisions of US troops could attack Iraq and conquer it in three weeks despite being outnumbered something like 4 or 5 to one.
It's because US citizens - those is flyover country, not too many of those in the coasts where they've become so candy-assed that swimming pools can't have diving boards - have a mean streak a mile wide and are tough as shit when they need to be.
Ask the Japanese on Saipan who jumped to death because they were so afraid of American soldiers. Ask the Chinese who died by the thousands trying to destroy the Marines at Chosin. Ask the German defenders of Omaha Beach.
Ask the Native Americans who stood in the way of "Manifest Destiny", if you can find any.
Hell, the Japanese hit us with a surprise attack. We nuked the bastards.
And beleive me, we'd do it again.
Hopefully, we'll have as much success transforming Iraq into a democracy as we had in Japan. Of course, with the left-wing media cheering the US on to failure, the world better hope the leftists are wrong because their favorite causes of women's right, abortion, gay rights, and homosexual marriage would be the first things to go if the Islamists are successful in the publicly stated goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate to rule the world under sharia.
Quite true.
One has to wonder if it isn't likely that the intelligence agencies aren't aware of this as well. Could it be that largely ineffective, but probably inexpensive, measures such as these are meant to calm down the general populace rather than actually curb the threat of terrorism?
It might be comforting to the average everyman to know that their government in involved in "cyber-warfare" against the terrorists - because as you point out, this creates an illusion that terrorism is a "solvable problem"; even an easily solvable problem that we can abstract to a technological level and throw money at until it goes away.
Sadly, it might not be that easy.
I guess you have identified the basic terrorists among us!
Brilliant!!!!
But in the meantime....ignore it at your peril.
Nobody says to sit around and wait to get blown to bits, or get turned into another +1 for the next bodycount.
Vigilance is the best defense. If there's a bag on the floor and nobody seems to be claiming it, say something. If somebody's acting suspicious (like a good friend suddenly gone strange), confront the person. If somebody wants to ram the plan you're riding in into a building (and has a gun) stop that person. Terrorism is not a war against a nation, it's a war against a collective group of people (hence the name, i.e. it inspires terror in the common). Most people do not accept that they are in a battlefield. Most people don't want any part of a war, any part of a fight they do not perceive is theirs. Most people would rather stand by idly and wait for someone else to stop the terrorists than contribute something meaningful. I've seen this with my own two eyes, and when I see it in the people I know, it makes me ashamed. And then, there are those people in denial that they are even at war (i.e. the government's policies that brought about this, it should be the government fighting).
The recent terror-inspired draconian laws were put into place to remove the responsibility from the public. If the terrorists blow something up and kill a bunch of people, it becomes a failure of law enforcement. If those plans were foiled, law enforcement were able to do their job. Well, obviously, if these newfound powers of law enforcement still did nothing to prevent the next attack, then they didn't have enough power. If these powers allowed them to accomplish the task, by all means, keep giving them more power so that they can do an even better job. What needs to happen is the return of power to the hands of the common--the people, whom the government is supposed to serve. And for that to happen, the people must accept the responsibility of defending their life and more importantly, their way of life.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
But the fact that you nowadays could 'get flagged' or even get a very nasty visit by looking at such content is silly. More, it makes me both afraid and angry. Terrorists attacking our freedom. Oh yes, it seems that they are very effective now.
Actually, it's not the terrorists taking your freedom away. It's your government. As you already have pointed out yourself, there's absolutely no reason why somebody could be a terrorist only because he visits nonstandard websites. In fact, assuming such is completely ridiculous. When your government considers 'flagging' people because they're visiting certain websites, it's them taking your freedom away, not the terrorists.
The same applies to the contents of those websites. If your government wants to remove contents it doesn't like, it's the government taking away your freedom of reading what you want to read. Not the terrorists.
Well, actually, an "academic" one.
I thought of calling it "Terrorism From the Terrorist's View".
The articles would be reviews of weapons, explosives, tradecraft technigues, media technigues, brainstorming tactics and strategy, the theory of terrorism, "constructive criticism" of terrorist incidents, terrorism news, etc.
The idea was like the 2600 hacker mag - while probably few terrorists would actually read it, most of the subscribers would be counter-intelligence people and it amused me to think I would be making a living from the subscriptions of people who hated everything I stood for.
Today of course it would be a quick way to see Quantanomo up close, so I think I'll put that one on the back burner.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Was thinking about how we in Britain have gone about catching the people who bombed/attempted to bomb London.
The first set are all dead apart from the organiser, no sign of him yet as far as I know.
The second set seem to mostly be caught and in custody now.
Sovereign nations invaded as a result of bombings - NIL
How many people related to 11/9 have the American authorities caught ofter organising the invasion of sovereign nations and blowing up almost everything they could find there ?
Gives pause for thought on the most effective way of going about things doesn't it ?
All the reasons listed above are the reasons why I am 100% against accepting statehood for Palestine. The Palestinians have been the leaders of terrorism against both Israel and the West for 35 years now. Most of the incomprehensibly brutal and sub-human things that we have come to associate with organized terror they either invented or brought into international prominence. And they have done it for one reason only, to be accepted as an independent country by the rest of the world.
Therefore to accept the legitimacy of a Palestinian state would also mean accepting the legitimacy of the means that they used to achieve it. It means granting them a free pass for all the horrible, horrible crimes that they have committed against innocent people for 35 years.
And it means that every group of disaffected shit-for-brains losers in the third world with a case of AK-47s, a pound of C4, and a psychopathic holy man (and there are a lot of groups like this) will believe that the way to a seat in the UN is to murder innocent Americans and Europeans. After all, they will think, it did work for the Palestinians!
I believe that that world should accept that regardless of whatever legitimate political grievances that the Palestinians may have, the possibility of their having a independent country is an impossibility given the crimes that they have committed against ordinary people for decades. For every innocent civilian murdered by the Palestinians, the global diplomatic acceptance of their country should be postponed for one year.
Basically in international relations, you get the type of behavior that you reward. If we legitimize the crimes of the Palestinians, then we are guaranteed to get many more crimes of this nature committed against us in the future.
It's said that the Palestinians are simply too backward and dysfunctional to understand this concept. It's said that the Palestinians 'never miss an opportunity to ''miss an opportunity.'' Well, that is their problem, not ours.
The whole Palestine question is quite minor compared to the amount of news media attention that they have received for the past 35 years. You could take all the Palestinians out of the Middle East and put them in Mexico City and it would be weeks before anyone noticed that they were there.
Hell, you could take all the Palestinians and put them in the middle of the endless slums of Lagos or Nairobi or Abidjan or Kinshasa and they would just -disappear- as if they never existed. The only reason why they are considered important news is just laziness and inertia on the part of the new media companies. What they do is considered important only because, for some unknown reason, they were considered important in the distant past. The Palestinians are like some absurd American daytime television soap opera; no one knows or cares the endless twists of their plots and history but the show can't be canceled because everything is on auto-pilot.
Can you imagine if from the late 1940's to the present day the African-American people of the USA adopted the same tactics and methods to obtain justice that the Palestinians have used? Both groups were at basically the same position as oppressed minorities in their societies at that time. If the Black people did to the White people in America the same things that the Palestinians have done to the Israelis, there would today only be about 50,000 or so African-Americans left alive. And they would all be living in a concentration camp in northern Alaska. And every one would have a microchip embedded in their head; broadcasting their location to the helicopters flying over the camp 24/7/365.
With all respect and honor - Shalom - to the memory of those lost in the holocaust
The Palestinians don't realize how lucky they are to have the Israelis as the occupying force in their land. Having suffered the wors
In some areas of the world, main stream news website sources from the west are considered hate filled propoganda arms of the governments there, and one can safely assume that aerial bombardment and assaults from "the west" and etc against entire cities *might* qualify as "violence".
Just depends which side of the fence you are on and which way you are looking.
If these were truly sites for breeding terrorist plots, then from a logistics perspective it would make more sense to monitor the site. As a result of shutting them down, the potential terrorists are likely to find some other forum where the government won't be able to keeps tabs.
If the Police(Government) do it then it's not a crime, if the plebs do it then it is.
I don't know how you missed the fact that we've hardly been sliding down the slope in the UK since the end of the cival war that gave us the liberties in the first place.
Are you kidding? The terrorists spent a couple years planning their op, and spent 19 lives (and plane tickets) to take out the towers.
Let's ignore the direct casualties and property damage, and instead look at the whole picture.
In response to what twenty people did, we have, in response, killed tens of thousands of people, lost about twenty thousand of our own soldiers (dead and wounded), and have spent nearly two hundred billion dollars in a War On Terror, with no end in sight. For the money we're paying, we could lose a World Trade Center EVERY OTHER WEEK and STILL be ahead on costs.
Our first war front, Afghanistan, at least isn't a complete disaster. The government is not in tight control, but we could 'win' there, where 'win' is defined as leaving behind a stable, democratic government. Now, we probably won't LIKE a stable, democratic Afghan government very much, nor they us (if they're free, one of their fervently-exercised freedoms will be to dislike us), but we don't have to like them... we just have to be reasonably sure they won't bomb us. That's still possible.
Iraq, on the other hand, was completely and totally bungled. It IS a total disaster. We have created the world's best training center for terrorists, where disaffected Iraqis can learn to fight Americans in the comfort of their own homes.... we'll break right in! We face escalating violence in that country, to the point that some people are starting to talk 'civil war' instead of 'insurgency'. The American-intalled government is looking very shaky indeed. The problems there are getting worse, not better. We lost that war at Abu Ghraib; we showed the Iraqis just what kind of people run our country. The Iraqis will never, not EVER, accept any government we impose. It's just a matter of how many body bags we choose to fill before bailing out and watching that place turn into a firestorm.
Back at home, we have lost rights by the score. The government now has many, many powers to intrude into our lives that it has wanted for years, but which we (rightly) refused them. We have few protections against unreasonable search. We are building a surveillance society, the thing we feared most as a country for so many years. We are IN a police state, it's just not one that has shown its fangs very much yet.
We have lost habeas corpus. The government can call you an enemy combatant and disappear you.
Win? The terrorists didn't "win". They hit the FUCKING JACKPOT.
I suspected he was brain dead after he took on US citizenship...
You never catch me alive
How many Arabs living under the PA can say that?
Every time I read about any use of IT to further terrorism, I wonder how long it will be before strong civilian crypto is outlawed (or key escrow is mandated, same thing) in the US.
You forgot the number one reason people resort to terrorism.
7) It's the only political voice they (think they) have.
People don't just wake up one morning and decide, "Hmmm, I think... I'll blow myself up." It take years of social and political supression to create the kind of pressure necessary to get precipitate terrorism, paticularly suicide terrorism.
In a recent study, it was found that the majority of suicide bombers were actually quite intelligent and affluent by comparision, and generally had no previous record of violence. Strange but true.
The moral of the story is that terrorists are trying to say something. Their message is usually lost amid the shrapnel, but if you look into it you'll find most have quite legitimate grievences. Does this justify killing other people? Well you'll find that the repression they're subject to has a way of twisting peoples views on that too.
Bottom line. Terrorism doesn't "happen". It's created. The solution is to find the cause, not treat the symptoms.
May the Maths Be with you!
if a company now for what i thinketh than, it can predict something out of its jargon. some people would like to contribute for it's cause, other are happy enough to reject it. get a grip and spell some http://www.ableton.com/ shit, AMD majority would live ever after. Realize and dont asciiez.
"It must be wonderful to be so smart. "
/. from smartasses who don't have a fucking clue themselves about any particular topic on the site - they just like to mouth off, like anybody here actually cares.
It is. Look at the respect I get on
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
read the irony paragraph from TFA?
Arash Partow
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
"I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism?"
this (PDF) and this.
But the situation was doomed from the start.
He certainly had a reason to run from the police - he was in the country illegally. While I can understand his motivations, he picked a very bad moment.
The fact is he came out of a location that was being monitored for terrorist activity. While I, personally, would have pegged him as a South American or at least not a person from the Middle East or North Africa, that's because I have spent a fair amount of time in South America. I doubt the police involved had.
So, here's a guy, walking out of a place that's under observation for terrorists. They take a look at him. What's he wearing? A large coat. It's July, and warm in London (I'd say the sun was shining, but this is London) not the kind of weather you'd expect someone to be wearing a coat in. Why is he wearing a coat? Could there be something under the coat?
The subject is now monitored more closely and pursued. Where's he going? A tube station. Alarms go off in the officers heads.
So, here's what we have at this point - a man, coming out of a location being monitored for terrorist activity, who appears to the police to be a foreigner (possibly Middle Eastern to their eyes) wearing clothing that is not appropriate to the season but would be great to hide a bomb under.
Now, they get closer to the tube station and he picks up the pace as he realizes he's being followed by the police (he's not interested in having his immigration papers looked at, most likely). Some reports have him running from the police, jumping over the turnstiles, in the tube station.
So, at this point, you've got a man who could be a terrorist wearing a BBIED (body-borne improvised explosive device) rushing for a train. He half-trips, is half is pushed, and goes down. He does not respond immediately to the officers' demands (it's quite possible he doesn't understand them, depending on how well he speaks English and his mental state at the time), and the officers are faced with a decision that must be taken in a split second.
What do the officers do? He may have a bomb strapped to his body, and he's close enough to cause a great deal of civilian casualties, and a great risk to the police officers as well.
Do the police aim for the torso? No. It would not be advisable to shoot him there, as that's where the bomb could very well be, and bombs aren't known for reacting well to bullets (thanks, Sean Connery). Additionally, if he is a suicide bomber and is only wounded, he could still set off the bomb.
Do you tazer him? No. Sure, it could prevent him from setting off the bomb itself. But, even though I am not an electrical engineer, it is my understanding that many bombs would react to a jolt of a few thousand volts the same way they would react to bullets.
So, it's head shots. Lots of 'em. Fast. Take him down now before he can hurt anybody else. It's the only way to handle it. A suicide bomber, in most cases, is someone already committed to dying for a cause and who will go through with his or her mission regardless of the risk - their life is already forfeit. Force that is immediately leathal or incapacitating, without risking setting off the bomb, is the only effective means of preventing them.
Don't misunderstand me - I believe it's a tragedy what happened to your countryman and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But, given the situation, I can understand why the police did what they did. It's a terrible twist of fate, but that's the way it worked.
Where a paranoid rant written in response to a post that the author obviously didn't even read is considered "insightful". Maybe if I just threw some more big brother references into my posts I could get more points?
Doing anything is a terrorist act, nowadays it seems. 4 days ago, while visiting Ottawa, for taking that picture of an old city bus, I had six cops on my back.
The websites are not the equivalent of 'spies living close to a military site.' The websites are broadcast organs.
I oppose Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. I MUST be a terrorist.
I wonder if all blogs that display opinion against the WOT can be considered terrorist in nature and be shut down no matter where they're being hosted.
I oppose Britain's involvement in Iraq!
There. That should qualify it being a terrorist statement. Now I'll sit back and watch a slashdot editor being forced to remove that post.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
A while back I was surfing a website that, if memory serves, belonged to some branch of Hammas or someone along those lines (yes, I know, not considered terrorists by all, please no flames along those lines).
Anyways, I was watching one of their videos that purported to show the execution via carbomb or RPG (geez... I keep hearing about how these guys use technology to spread their message, but they really need better cameramen and to use something better than a low quality Real Player video to get it across) of an informant to the Israelis, I believe.
The video went on for about four or five minutes, and had this terrible music in the background that I assumed must have been from an artist in the region. Then, I finally realized I'd heard it before when I was younger... one of my mom's favorite CDs... crap! It was YANNI! I hate Yanni!
The US or someone must have made a serious impact on their funding if they're having to use Yanni as their background music. I'm pretty sure that constitues a violation of several human rights treaties to release such vile filth for general viewing/hearing.
If the web site was beieved to be used as a weapon or a tool for a terrorsit organiztion I can understand the need to take it down example used to pass messages to operatives or contain maps times locatiosn etc etc. These types of web sites like child pornography hate groups etc I beleive should all be removed by the proper governments off the net but were the line is drawn on this issue seems to be what you can get the press to push to the citizens of that country and not really a set in stone undertanding which there needs to be. For instance what if the next web site is a religous one a freedom of religon is something tht is set in stone here in America.
basically unless you are a canadian citizen, chances are your government/country/culture/etc has done something similar to what the terrorists are doing now.
As a Canadian, just wanted to put in my two cents. It's silly to think that Canada is any different from the United States (or any other country, really, but we'll use the US as a point of comparison here). Was just reading an article today, actually, and this post brought the point up.
First of all, it's silly to discount the state discrimination against Canada's own natives - which has indeed led them to the present-day position of occupying a far disproportanate share of our corrections system as well as being plagued with a spate of socioeconomic disadvantages. In the 1930s, there are cases of academically achieving black and native students being denied scholarships/prizes by virtue of their races.
Second of all, and almost more importantly . . . the KKK was active in Canada as well as the United States - while there is a temptation to ascribe the KKK to a sort of spill-over from the United States, there has certainly been a Canadian movement. Much of this continues from Canada's own discrimination. Remember that Slavery was legal in Canada, even past the abolition movement in the northern United States. Indeed, there are tales of Canadian slaves fleeing to New England!
Sort of an unrelated, off-topic diatribte on the history of discrimination in Canada, but perhaps some food for thought.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
"For the money we're paying, we could lose a World Trade Center EVERY OTHER WEEK and STILL be ahead on costs."
What an absolutely moronic statement. How convenient you "ignore the direct casualties". Do you advocate that for murders, rapists and the like? No. Why? Because it's not about the cost of curtailing these assholes. It's about stopping them killing people. The costs are not very relevant.
Well, the whole point of having a state is to allow it to use force. If everyone started arresting people they had found guilty of stuff they believed should be illegal, things would start to get crazy. But we allow the government to use violence/force, under the terms given by law, which we (the people) indirectly control.
Slightly OT: In theory, this can lead to allowing capital punishment (in some primitive countries ;-) or even full genocides (nazi Germany was generally elected and lawful in their actions). That's why there is a need for human rights and other international laws. The states are quite simply not stable enough. An international bill of privacy rights would, in these times, be great.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Apparently someone mistook the response below for a troll. It's not, the author of the book admits it is crap, he admits he was a 19 year old kid who didn't know jack and merely cobbled together crap from the library and other sources. As for the book being a scam, well it is but a scam by the publisher not the author. The author sort has no rights to his work and wishes that he never wrote it and has asked the publishers to remove it from the market. They won't, they keep finding suckers who will buy it. Another poster has a link: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=157635&cid= 13210369
On another note, the best terrorist training manual is the American written "The Anarchist Cookbook".
"The Anarchist Cookbook" is crap. Maybe it seemed authoratative to pot smoking hippies in the early 70s but that speaks more to their ignorance than the book's quality. The book was basically a scam for paranoid early 70s hippies and high school chemistry students of the mid-late 70s and early 80s. Been there, done that, my high school chemistry class would be on a domestic terrorist list today. The good manuals are by the government, military and CIA, and used to be readily available to the public, and no I'm not talking about some bomb shelter supply store in Montana, and no I'm not going to tell you where because I don't want to help dumb-ass kiddies hurt themselves. Almost been there, almost done that.
Good. Much slower and easier to intercept and deal with.
Yes and they are more proportionately represented than any minority group in any other country. Out of 70 israeli parliament members about 12 are arab. That's about 17% of the knesset. They make up one in six of the population, which is also about 17%. If only the US had such representation for latinos and african americans then we'd actually be a representative democracy, except for our Nation's Capitol--talk about taxation without representation (mostly minority). We should be ashamed. Let's focus on our domestic ailments too , people! DC STATEHOOD NOW!!
Is it now illegal to look at such websites?
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/July/It says "and then try to follow them," but it also says that they're going to try to find ways to find out who's reading them. Even if you don't follow them, you can expect to get a knock on your door (or, if it's anything like the American BATF, a battering ram knocking your door down) just for visiting such sites. It's for the chiiillldren, after all.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
> shutting down their source of explosives only causes them to find another. shutting down a source of recruitment only causes them to find another. searching their bags at a station only makes them go elsewhere. etc, etc. so do you think doing nothing is better? do you think not fighting back will make the terrorists stop?
We better keep an eye on American AMD.
Where's these terrorist forums located.
DealOverflow.com - Hottest Technology and Computer Hardware Deals, Updated Daily
Then why are there ever increasing terrorist acts, according to studies by the U.S. Defense dept?
Maybe because You've got it backwards bub. If any of the righties would bother to try to understand the terrorists, they'd realize it is the U.S. military presence in the mid east and the billions in military support to Israel, that makes the U.S. a target. But of course that would hamper plans to use WTC as a pretext for attacking Iraq, which had nothing to do with the bombings.
Remember, the U.S. and it's 'coalition of the willing' is just a sideshow, the real target is Saudi Arabia. So further military presence in Iraq is assbackwards, basically turning sentiment of the rest of the world anti-america, what with Abu-Garaib, Gitmo, and the everyday slaughter of civilians in Iraq is simply not good advertising.
A very costly and foolhardy mistake for little gained. Further it's not "your" peril or "my" peril, it's the everybody's, and if those in power had their heads on straight, not outing CIA intelligence officers working on following the WMD money flow, we'd be in a much better situation. Maybe we'd have put a lid on Iran, rather than pushing them towards building nukes. Or North Korea. And not supporting a dictator in Pakistan, who like the Saudi's could be toppled at any moment. Giving the keys to George Shrub, reformed alcoholic and incompetent businessman was a big freaking mistake, the U.S., and the world, will live to regret. The rest of us already do.
"And yet a government cannot do 'nothing' in response to a terrorist act or threat."
Simple answer. The U.S. should have used everything it had to swiftly and massively crush Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using every civilian airliner and ship it could find to get the forces there as quickly as it could. If Pakistan objected they should have been crushed too because the Pakistan secret service more than any other organization help nurture and create the Taliban and Al Qaeda and they are still unscathed today. They are also most probably still sheltering the Taliban and Al Qaeda today possibly including Bin Laden.
Instead they fought a weak proxy war in Afghanistan using local war lords, with very dubious motives and loyalties, mixed with special forces and air power(though there were very few actual targets to bomb). They managed to scatter Al Qaeda and the Taliban instead of ruthlessly crush it. They certainly failed to strike a crucial blow at Tora Bora. Once Al Qaeda and the Taliban made it to sanctuary in the tribal areas of Palestine and the mountains of Afghanistan they have gone largely untouched for the last four years.
Where did the U.S. focus its attention, and the lion's share of its military, money, and resource instead, Iraq which had NOTHING to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda.
So today Al Qaeda is alive and well, spread around the globe, and using Iraq as a recruiting poster for the malevolence of the U.S. towards the Muslim world. Instead of crushing the problem at the source, the U.S. and British are engaged in a futile strategy to try to stop attacks which are by nature nearly impossible to stop. Israel has been trying for decades, using much harsher measures in a much smaller country and failed. The effort is costing a fortune and its mauling civil rights.
All in all it was a strategy conceived by morons who, to cover their tracks, constantly tell everyone what a great job they are doing, and what great war time administrations they are. In fact they are making no headway in the war and seem to mostly be playing right in to Al Qaeda's strategy. One of Al Qaeda's main goals is to launch a small number of attacks and let the U.S, Britain etc. mangle their own economies and political standing in the war with misguided overreaction.
In Iraq Al Qaeda no doubt sees a replay of Russia in Afghanistan. Tie up the U.S. there with an insurgency for the next 10 years and inflict massive economic, political and morale damage on the U.S and Britain. The U.S.S.R's misguided war in Afghanistan was the single biggest contributor to its ultimate collapse. Al Qaeda came in to being figthing that war with CIA backing and they no doubt want to repeat their victory in Iraq against their former benefactors.
@de_machina
Seems late in the 'game' to notice there are websites that needed to be shut down. What were they waiting for, a few deaths?
Charles Angelich
the story starts like a ludlum novel saying israli agents noticed the sites vanishing from the web...
it's like "this is a nonstory but let's mention unverifiable israeli agents and it'll get posted"
because i read it to the end and there's no proof whatsoever of anything, it could be the martians or the russians or a temporary website problem, but the sites were shut down, this journalist had to post something. so let's mention some israeli secret agents who noone will ever be able to verify and therefore we have something called "credibility".
the mention of isareli agents makes no sense with the rest of the story. the best source is always a "XXX country agent" because you obviously can't verify the info anyhow.
unless i'm missing something.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
And they are not easy to find either. The last one I stumbled upon was kr-hcy.com [kr-hcy.com], a known terrorist group from Pakistan that's officially banned in the country.
You can tell they're evil - all their media requires RealPlayer.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I'm a innocent brazilian, and I have a website, and we are talking about british! My site is dead! Well, at least isn't me, as Jean who was killed because was wearing cloths for cold in a warm day.
I think it had more to do with the fact that he just left a building where a suspected terrorist cell was operating (from a flat he shared with several cousins) and because he ran from the police, almost certainly owing to him being an illegal immigrant with a forged stamp on his passport.
Let's get this idea of him being 'innocent' out of the way, and that he was killed merely because 'he was wearing a big jacked'. He had commited a criminal offence and was staying illegally in this country, with a bent passport. That's an entirely pre-medatated crime on his part, and almost certainly explains why he ran from the police, jumped the barrier and tried to make a getaway by going through the underground.
I can't begin to imagine illegally being in a foreign country, with a forged passport, and on the run from armed police (in a western modern democracy, of all places).
I'm quite sure in the heat of the moment he didn't grasp the seriousness of the situation properly or figure he was likely to be shot at by the police (no regular police force carry guns in the met, only the 300 officers in what is known as SO19, the specialist firearms support squad) and it's cetainly unfortunate that he was killed in these circumstances.
However, I'm prepared to the blame here squarely at the criminal who decided to go on the run from armed police, rather than come quietly and go to jail.
Personally I think it's a disgrace that the UK government are considering giving money to his relatives as compensation given he shouldn't even have been here. I'd be trying to find out who forged his passport for him, finding out if (as is not entirely unlikely) his cousins were in on it (he was apparently saying with 3 or 4 cousins in the flat that was in the building being monitored) and then I'd bang up everyone involved in the deception for a few months for being complicit, before deporting them and barring them from re-entry into the country.
But then, I read a lot of 2000 AD as a child.
Illegal imprisonment of a goldfish without a permit? 9 months in the cubes creep!
Thank you for taking the time to write a long and detailed reply to comment.
I will research the incidents that you have referred to in your comment and realign my perspective in order to get closer to a just truth and balanced point of view.
"Where did the U.S. focus its attention, and the lion's share of its military, money, and resource instead, Iraq which had NOTHING to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda."
Don't tell a republican that. Survey after survey indicates that a significant (if not a majority) of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for or played a part in 9/11. Needless to say they are all republicans.
"In Iraq Al Qaeda no doubt sees a replay of Russia in Afghanistan. Tie up the U.S. there with an insurgency for the next 10 years and inflict massive economic, political and morale damage on the U.S and Britain. The U.S.S.R's misguided war in Afghanistan was the single biggest contributor to its ultimate collapse. Al Qaeda came in to being figthing that war with CIA backing and they no doubt want to repeat their victory in Iraq against their former benefactors."
Al Quada was successful because they were able to get sphisticated weaponlry and intelligence from the US. Who will back them now? Maybe china? maybe north korea? Maybe Iran? maybe somebody from south america? maybe even the russians? I am afraid too many countries hate us and would like to see us suffer. It could be anybody.
evil is as evil does
--
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
- George Orwell (?)
I believe Juanita
british AMD leaves terrorist-related sites alone.
Are you seriously suggesting that the only possibilities are:
1) Do nothing.
2) Treat your own citizens like terrorists.
?
Wow -- way to totally miss the point. There are far, far better options. Like:
1) Attack the terrorists in their base of operations, while leaving your own citizens alone.
This can easily be facilitated by doing any or all of the following:
1) Avoid going to war with uninvolved third parties.
2) Avoid alienating your allies and the UN.
3) Actually pursue your war against the terrorists, rather than losing focus so that you can wage war on uninvolved third parties.
4) Treat your citizens as if they were freedom-loving Americans, despite their tendency to vote for proto-fascists.
Frankly, it's shocking that the US has even a single soldier in the field for reasons OTHER than hunting down Al-Quaeda. They killed 5000 Americans, and no one is even bothering to look for them anymore. It's as if the Allied army in World War II had taken an enormous detour on their way to Germany, and tried to conquer India instead (giving the Axis years of time to rebuild and concentrate their power).
America -- truly a nation of belligerant children.
I find this story hard to believe. Now if they said Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer UK) had raised a new tax on (suicide) bomber jackets, that I could believe.
threadeds blog
Wow. "Crush them"... Pakistan has nukes. Pakistan has Islamic Fundamentalists and Al Qaeda sympathizers... Do the math.
- The race is not [always] to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. -
Of course, what's fine and dandy for ABC is completely unacceptable for some crazy "al-Qaeda Sites".
Long live the democracy of hypocrisy, comrade!
I think we have yet to see a common murderer/rapist cost too much in terms of property and human lives to catch and jail. It's not that I'm exactly refuting your point, but that we won't actually know what we'll be doing in such a situation until that time comes. And judging from the fact that common criminals tend to be fairly easy to take out once they are known, such a situation wouldn't be at all likely.
This makes no mention of the possible murderers/rapists that have been allowed to go because the human and financial resources were estimated to be too great to actually catch the person(s). But since I know of none myself, there's no real point in considering this as anything more than possible.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Yes. What are spies? They're just information carriers, aren't they? The same principle applies. Shutting down communicaiton channels means a slight disruption until new channels are established.
I started to type a few more things but why state the obvious to the "bad guys." Think about how websites work.
I would think hacking into the sites and logging everything would be more productive. Shutting them down will only cause them to find other means of communication...
That's only if you assume that the "other means" will be as effective. I don't think they can be.
I'm going to ignore the freedom of speech issues for the moment and say that shutting them down is the better option. Extremist websites (especially well-established, well-developed sites) are invaluable in giving the *impression* that a cause is legitimate and well-supported.
Your group might consist of just you and your neighbor, but online you can create the impression of a huge movement. Psychologically, this is a tremendous power. You can use it to intimidate people into joining you, and to give courage to people already on your side. Regular people still tend to equate websites with newspapers, or other real-world things that are actually held to standards and require money and support to create. Forcing extremist websites offline forces that many fewer results to come up in Google, and forces the ones that survive into fly-by-night mode (which usually means ugly and hard-to-find)... which remove much of their power as first-contact recruitment tools.
All of that said, any restriction of free speech still makes me nervous (think about it -- they probably also recruit by talking about the injustice in Iraq and seeing who agrees the loudest... if we can make anti-government talk illegal, we can stop this method!). Plus, if they're not applying an even standard to sites they shut down (i.e., any site, Muslim or not, including exhortations to violence will be shut down, etc.) this becomes an obvious injustice = yet another recruiting tool.
You could *always* get arrested for looking at websites.
Try googling for kiddie porn and following the links. On second thoughts, don't do that as I don't want to be listed as an accessory.
Someone who starts getting interested in extreme islamic sites needs watching. Maybe it's just a kid going through a phase.. maybe it's someone who's just about to kill 100 people.. it's difficult to know but I'm glad someone is trying to check on these things.
This is what islamic miltitants really want. this is the real goal.
http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/manualpart1_1.pdf
I am sure many of you won't believe it. But your the ones that will be turned first by these people. Your the easest to confuse.
Page 12 is about what they should be doing and what the aim really is.
Ah, yes, the right wingnuts. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing. Pure American right wing. The anthrax attack? Unclear, but it was somebody who had access to the US's weaponized anthrax.
Fun militia sites:
-
The Michigan Militia. Protecting Michigan from, well, somebody. Canada, maybe? "Training Schedule for Saturday, August 6th: 0800 Rifle zero, 0930 Camo check, 1000 Tactical walk, 1100 Fire team formation."
-
Militia of Montana. More into selling stuff. Order your bomb-making manual here.
-
The Indiana Militia. Offers custom dog tags.
Currently feuding with the Indiana Citizens Volunteer Militia. Promotes National Ammo Day.
These over-armed groups are left alone by the Bush Administration. But when some Arab guys played paintball in Virgina, one of them was sent to jail for decades.There's been a boom in militia activity in recent years. This may reflect the changing role of the National Guard. It used to be a one-weekend a month thing with a two week summer camp. If you join the National Guard today, they send you off to the real wars. So the guys who just want to play soldier on weekends don't join the Guard any more.
one spy is worth 10,000 troups
"Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia."
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
by Al K. Dah
Step One: Place European city on table.
Step Two: Lift arm over head
Step Three: Bring fist down forcefully onto city.
"Al Quada was successful because they were able to get sphisticated weaponlry and intelligence from the US. Who will back them now? Maybe china? maybe north korea? Maybe Iran? maybe somebody from south america? maybe even the russians? I am afraid too many countries hate us and would like to see us suffer. It could be anybody."
Actually, the most likely backers are China through the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence).
You see, China has a northwestern territory which is predominantly islamic and has had problems with islamic terrorism. If islamic terror in other parts of asia ends or simmers down, these mercenaries will flock to the Chinese province and that won't be good for China's access to central asian OIL.
-Shaunak
But wait.. there's more! We can drag out torture, theft, blood libel, scientific repression (including a nice, entertaining hanging now and then), McCarthyism, subjugation of women, vilification of sexuality, sanction of excessive breeding, financial parasitism, pogroms, persecutions of heretics, rapine, brainwashing, "exorcism"...
And that's just staying with Christianity. If we wish to enfold the Muslims and the Hindus into our loving little reminiscence, we can add genital mutilation, jihad, an interesting twist on repression of women (I think the Muslims actually take the terrorist cake on this one, but the Hindus sure try, what with castes and "female circumcision" and the burning of unsatisfactory womenfolk now and then) and gee, just a bunch more.
Muslims and Christians both want world domination, and neither one is willing to say "I'll stop here." That tends to lead to problems.
Well. Anyway, sex is good. Religion is bad.
How about you religious types come over from the dark side. I mean, those of you who haven't had their private parts mutilated. That sucks. You guys have my permission to hunt down your mutilators and do the same to them. And then kill them horribly. Most satisfaction I can offer, very sorry.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Um, they spent a few hundred lives besides their own.
C|N>K
If you haven't already, you should download and watch the BBC documentary series "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of Politics of Fear".
It has an interesting take on how basically, the cronies behind Bush have created the current situation.
After seeing the Panorama show "The War Party" I'm rather inclined to agree with it.
amazing how things change once it's not headline news
2 C16132%2C1537613%2C00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0%
great! now we have real id on the rise...for those of you who have been asleep thats the goverment issued id with rfid chips in them. They can listen to our cell calls they can monitor our land lines view our email and now we going to start taking down those dangerous web sites! lets see... A good qoute...BOCK SKY IS FALLING BOCK SKY IS FALLING....
I'm sure the terrorists felt extra-terrible about the several hundred people on the planes, as opposed to the thousands and thousands in the giant skyscrapers they were crashing into.
"However, the sobering message of many security experts is that the terrorists are unlikely ever to lose a war waged with technology."
I call bullshit on that.
Remember the IRA? How did that problem get solved? After 9/11 Americans had to practise what they preached, i.e. funding terroirsm was wrong: hence they stopped funding the IRA, hence the IRA had a serious cash-flow problem and a compromise was looking more and more necesarry. You want to stop these people? Waging war on England is expensive. Stop their funding and eventually a compromise will be reached, technology or no technology.
Coding Monkey.org - Spanging the heavy spade of truth into t
- So, Gentelmen, time to start our training. Any suggestions?
:)
- A beer maybe?
- Well, sounds fine.
- Okay.
- So, it's decided. Let's go to the bar.
After 3-4 hours of "training" at the bar tables they go home
The whole "websites don't kill anyone" thing is retarded Do training camps kill people. Do they walk across the vast desert flying into builings, no. It's the place where terrorists are recruited, and inform each other -- just like the alleged sites, therefore they are gay Peace nigga
as flamebait and troll. No other way to describe it. You must be a mindless sympathizer of al-qaeda and its objectives. If the british govt can't shut down al-qaeda related sites because it is infringing on your so called "rights", you shouldn't be in britain in the first place.
The british govt is too damn lax on terror. Idiots. They should be even more firm on these terrorists than the french or cia.
I don't mind if they're breaking in to ISPs around the world but I would rather they showed some restraint back in the UK. The US government would do the same and has done in the past as I have had several posts removed from slashdot for 'threats against the president' (it was clearly a joke)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
In Soviet Russian there was no terrorism, because they have nationalized it a long time ago....
The only kind of factually dangerous kind of terrosim is the state-run terror. Only states can murder millions of people with their origanized terror machinery, both domestically and abroad. Don't forget the Gulags, the lagers, Hirosima and Mao's great leap camps!
Al-Kaida has killed 5000 people overall, so far. Great Dictators did that in less than one day! Be afraid of the 666 beast!
If Pakistan objected they should have been crushed too because the Pakistan secret service more than any other organization help nurture and create the Taliban and Al Qaeda and they are still unscathed today.
As much as I dislike the ISI, the Taliban was armed by the CIA.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
TFA: the British Times
It's "The Times", dagnammit. Like "The Post Office" and "Birmingham". They are the original, definitive articles.
It's not "The British Times", "The London Times", "The British Post Office", "The UK Post Office", "Birmingham England" or "Birmingham UK".
The other Johnny-come-lately Times newspapers are prefixed by a description, for instance "The New York Times", "The US Post Office" or "Birmingham Alabama". The original stands alone.
Whilst I'm having an Aspergers nitpick that'll be modded down, can I also put out a plea to stop people from saying such nonsense as "A spokesman, Tuesday". Unless the spokesman was actually named "Mr. Tuesday" or somesuch, it's "A spokesman on Tuesday" or even "On Tuesday, a spokesman".
Gah.
(Actually the report was from The Sunday Times, which in theory is seperate from The Times, but in practice is homogenous.)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
So, great and wise Pro-Israeli (or should I say settler) commentator of great values, if the Palestinians are too backward to reason about anything, what do you call the firing of tank shells into crowds of civillians? A demonstration of Salomonian wisdom? What do you call the outright theft of Palestinian land via the security wall and the wholesale destruction of Palestinian livelihood by destroying their orange groves and olive tree plantations? Divine thinking?
With all respect and honor - Shalom - to the memory of those lost in the holocaustIsn't it just a little too cheap to bring up the holocaust when trying to evoke sympathy for Israel?
I couldn't even really be bothered to go into a detailed rebuttal of your post. Israel is a brilliant nation that has survived a huge amount of travesty, but, sadly, along the way it started behaving towards those it conquered similarly to those that has conquered it. A huge historical irony that the Palestinians live in ghettos very similar to those that Jews lived in in Nazi occupied Poland and Russia.
Someone who starts getting interested in extreme islamic sites needs watching.
By the same logic anyone who actually reads hard-line Christian sites - the sort that advocate taking "extreme" measures against abortion clinics and pro-choice doctors - should also be watched very, very closely. These lunatic motherfuckers have proven themselves capable of murderous violence time and time again, and apparently have no intention of halting their abominable pogrom against the "unbelievers".
If we're going to be watching the religious whackos, we should be watching ALL of the religious whackos - including the vermin in our own country who claim to be doing "God's work" every time they blow up a clinic or splatter a doctors brains all over the pavement. We should be treating them as "enemy combatants", and either capping their sorry asses or sending them to rot in Gitmo.
A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. No one should get special treatment just because they worship god A instead of god B.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Only if you assume they have the interests of the USA at heart rather than their own. They got re-elected! Their strategy worked.
While that might have been effective, or reduce the chance for more Al Qaeda-style attacks like those in London recently, I would rate this point of view under "the same majority of people who just don't get the point". The same majority of people who voted GWB into office again, and got the US into this dreadful Iraq situation.
My point: these terrorists AREN'T the real problem. The real problem is what motivates them.
Sure there are always some nutcases who go out and kill random people. But this whole Al Qaeda thing is a lot bigger, and doesn't come out of thin air. The real question is: what motivates these young muslims to stand up, get trained, and blow themselves up in the middle of unsuspecting bystanders? What makes them so angry? What makes them hate westerners, christians or whatever, so much that if you take a couple of them out, ten others step in their place?
These terrorists like Al Qaeda are not the problem, they are a symptom. The real problem is what makes them tick. Just guessing here, but I'm thinking of things like:
IMHO the best way to attack terrorists, is to attack these underlying problems. Suppose a US-led effort would create durable peace between the Israeli's and Palestinians. Now that would help a lot more to stop young muslims from bombing US citizens. Not a be-all, end-all, quick fix, but something that needs time to work (decades). Changing your (political) ways, patience, and a bit of 'turn the other cheek' might work well here.
After 9/11, the biggest question should have been: "Why?" Instead, I think the US today is still dealing with: "Who?" Ofcourse I do realize that if you're a politician, this would be impossible to sell to a New Yorker who just watched the Twin Towers come down. And patience isn't in people's vocabulary. And the US will continue to put their own (oil) interests first. But I think few Americans realize, just how costly these politics are, all things considered. And much of that cost will be paid over many years to come, by people throughout the world (US included).Napoleon took a massive army into Russia, only to see it die off as a result of a lack of supplies.
We could get large numbers of troops to Afghanistan, but we wouldn't be able to support them. The Russians tried simply crushing them, and they had more manpower to sacrifice, and was willing to do things America wasn't. Further, it had much shorter supply lines. It still didn't work.
America did just about the smartest thing it could do in Afgahnistan - it played local politics. It bought an army and supplimented it with assests we could project into the area.
As for Iraq, there's a major difference between Iraq and Afgahnistan. First off, there's no major power backing the insurgency. Second, the majority of the population has a vested interest in seeing the insurgency fail. The Kurds and the Shia know what would happen if the insurgency wins. The major danger in Iraq is that the Shia and Kurds loose patience and "ethnically cleanse" the Sunnis.
CNN says the saudi king has died. It is quite likely UBL will be ajatollah of Saudi Arabia within a few year. Iran and UBL together will crush the infidel west.
So someone who funded people who killed civilians to change a regime would also be a terrorist, right?
K.
Cute argument, but it is silly logic that ends up revoking the sovereignty of a large chunk of the nations of the world, Israel included. Israel has more then its fare share of whack job extremist terrorists. You might even remember little peace agreement back in the 90's that fell apart after an Israeli assassinated one of its architects. Does Israel need its sovereignty revoked? What about the US? The US was not exactly friendly to the occupying British. Hell, the US was down right horrific to the natives and their actions easily could be classified as terrorists. Hell, there are eco-whack-job-terrorists that have committed terrorists acts, does the environment need to surrender now?
It is a silly and stupid argument. It would be nice if the world was that simple, but it isn't. Every cause out there can find a few nut jobs willing to do something stupid. Every cause WILL find a few nut jobs willing to do something stupid, regardless if they want them to or not.
If it is any consolation, Palestinian terrorists will never get what they want. Israel isn't going anywhere any time soon, and Palestine is never going to get all the land Israel took and settled back.
Dude, I totally agree with you.
OK, I've been giving some thought, and I think I've got a handle on The Root Causes of Wintel Terrorism. Just why do people turn to Monopoly terrorism to achieve their goals?
1) It's simple. It has an ease and ready accessibility to essentially any group of company, of any size, where they can pull off a "terrorist" marketting attack with very limited resources to brainwash any PHB out there.
2) It's flashy. Wintel Terrorism is "the new coolness." It gets a lot of attention, very quickly. You see, it's much more cool to use Wintel then lets say Linux at work.
3) It's empowering. The one element that all Wintel terrorist groups have, at the start, is far more passion than power, which is true for Microsoft Windows and Intel back in the 80's. They care a great deal about their cause, but they simply can't get anything done through more legitimate means. Absolutely. So they start getting violent, to increase their profile and extend their power by crushing all their competitors, by hiring false journalist, by destroying the credibility of any one beating them.
4)It's deniable. If a government wants something done, but doesn't want to risk the backlash of doing it openly themselves, they can try to get some Wintel "terrorists" to do it for them. This way, they can stand back and say "tsk, tsk" when something bad happens that benefits them, such as huge payback contributions to their politic party campaign..
5) It's cheap. Modern marketting PHB unbrainwashing weapons and training cost far, far more than an average individual or group can afford. But MSCE/.NET/Free MSDN Universal license circular dependancy bomb belts probably cost less than a couple of dollars to make the DVDs and advertising, compared to the huge billion dollars revenues lock-in and platform establishing that it creates. Bill Gates put together their first Microsoft product in their mom's basement.
6) It's tough to fight. A long time ago, a bunch of countries laid out a set of rules for using Unix software. These rules were designed to, among other things, minimize the number of computers infected during a war. In exchange for some serious restrictions on what users could do, large groups of people, institutions, and companies were declared "off limits." The cyber-terrorists systematically look at those new homogeneous security flaws and use them as guidelines for how to best attack our computers and servers.
Many people look at the cyber-terrorist attacks [in the civilized world] and wonder why it's happening. I look at the above and wonder why there haven't been more.
Linux/AMD zealot speak brother!
P.S.: Is it me or other people read the headline as: British Intel(TM) Shuts Down al-Qaeda Sites
We were being critical of blocking the words 'democracy' from all blogs having draconian censorship. I am pretty sure that no one has been critical of China's attempt to shut down sites run by terrorist organizations that have in fact killed people and that continue to advocate the death of civilians. No one is silencing complaints against the UK government and its dealings with either its own people or the Middle East. What is being silenced is a website that have the name of a terrorist organization that has claimed responsibility for terrorist acts.
Let me put it another way. If a British rapist raped little girls then posted movies of the girls being raped and killed, would you bitch and moan about censorship if the government took that website down?
Finally, get some perspective. These are people that if there were ever found in the UK or ever ran into UK soldiers would be shot or arrested. The UK actively seeks these people out to kill them. If you really are worried about their well being, their 'freedom of speech' rights really are on the bottom of the list next to 'being shot'.
I think when you are willing to shoot someone and revoke their right to life... eh... chances are their rights to blog have also been revoked as well.
"7 degrees of separation from Osama Bin Ladin."
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Yes terror should be stamped out
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Anyone remember the JFCC-NW story a few months back on /.? My best guess is that this takedown is a mutual working between the US and UK governments. We already know the US has a group to do it, but this might show that the UK might have one too.
Hmmm.
The first Jihad sites were on the net around 96. Badly written, worsely designed, mostly made for the sell of propaganda materials. Bosnia and Chechen videos, books from fundamentalist scholars and so on. Later they became more complex. Somewhere in 99 things became more complex, they started to pour doctrine over the Net. There were even oficial sites. Many had links in the US and European countries but the flagman was UK. In one way or the other, you could follow an origin to some London suburb. Ex. the ill-famous Qoqaz group of sites which was considered to have close ties to Ben-Laden.
After the Daghestan events, Russians tried to close down several of these sites, mainly those related to Qoqaz and Kavkaz.org. But in most cases their efforts wee ignored. Meanwhile many fundatementalist sites, on the eve of 09/11, became more complex. There were even sites full of Flash, Java and special effects. There were sites translated for several languages, specially those were the muslim community had some importance. Some of these sites should have costed some thousands of dollars to be created which is an indicator on how fundamentlists considered propaganda as one of their top weapons.
Only after 09/11, one could see the first witchhunt over the Internet. Unfortunately, this hunt went with a bent leg. The first wave of close-downs was just dumb. Fundamentalists just opened their sites over other providers or countries. Besides, it was noted that UK was not too enthusiastic to close its own fundamentlists. Even a few months after 09/11 one could find one and the same sites running with a slightly modified content or with the most critical materials masked behind a few pages. In fact, much was not done and only a few more popular sites were in fact removed. Hackers and disgruntled Inet users did much more to bring down these sites rather than UK authorities.
Meanwhile, CIA, FSB and other services did some homework in other places. In result, most fundamentalist sites went deep underground. Besides, they stopped publishing their BS in english or other european languages, prefering Arabic, Urdu and other asian languages for the content. Yes, they shrinked their audience, but they gained an advantage that it would be a lot harder to find them, by searching the content. Besides they made some wise maneuvers for coverup, hiding behind porno sites or deep under certain forums. These places are a lot harder to find and not everyone can easily get a tip where certain forums may be located.
This part of the game was completely ignored in UK. They gave them time to adapt. They kept them in the warm while others were hunting them down in the cold. They didn't care to bring down several places until the barbars were beyond the gates. So, whatever "good deeds" UK catches from bringing them down now, they just lost the initiative. Fundamentalists have already learned several lessons from a fight that was an half-fight because someone didn't want to "harass the sensabilities of its muslim community". So, now, they have the knowledge and capability to hide behind. Thanks UK for that...
Lessons usually tend to end in a "next time"... However for UK here will be no next time... They fucked off the momentum and now are dearly paying for it. People were killed, including many members of the "sensitive muslim community".
Are we really innocent? isn't it true that the most powerful nations on earth look down and exploit powerless nations? isn't it true that there are 3rd world countries that are oil and crop producers, yet their native population is dying because wealth is not distibuted amongst them?
I am not saying that terrorism is the way to go...but there is no such thing as "innocent people". We have democracy, and we voted for our leaders. It is us who are responsible for them. There may be a group of Muslim fanatics that are bent on destroying the 'west', but the 'west' is also responsible for many bad things on this planet.
All that should matter is that these folks have killed innocent civilians. We should take down all their means of communication. Why should we honor any of thier rights do you think that they would do the same for you?
FYI you can download this award-winning documentary for free on archive.org. Essential viewing to understand another side to the debate.
---- scrm
Example: ... Bad is good, down with government!"
"And then I says, tell me I'm wrong! And he says, I can't baby, 'cause you're not!" and "And he says 'Evil's okay in my book, how about yours?' and I says 'Yeah baby yeah'
c:\>ping slashdot.org
Pinging slashdot.org [66.35.250.150] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 66.35.212.150: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 66.35.212.150: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 66.35.212.150: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 66.35.212.150: Destination host unreachable.
Ping statistics for 66.35.250.150:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Personally I believe that all members of the Government should state what their 'end game' is and try to move the country+world in the direction of the 'end game', my end game would be everything's free, people have enough space to live in and no one is under the control of anyone else.
> The focus of any act of terror is typically not to maim or kill a few dozens,
> but provoke reactionary policies by the government, inconveniencing millions.
That's not a focus. From the content of your message I believe you mean `intention`. But it's not true that al-qaeda's goal is to `provoke reactionary policies by the government` - more to cause suffering in the West to balance the results of Western interference in Saudi Arabia, Palestine etc pre 2001, and Iraq/Afghanistan post 2001.
And Iraq had what? None of what you listed. Yup, a real no-brainer if you have no brain.
And here was me thinking that it was the US who put all that effort into arming the Taliban back in the Cold War days...
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I think that the reasons for shutting down these extremist websites are not practical but ideological.
These are not measures to stop terrorists communicating or to prevent access to practical information about creating bombs (this can be found easily elsewhere) they are to slow the spread of a hateful and violent anti-western ideology, and the recruitment of new, young, possibly naive, disenfranchised, would-be bombers.
I'm glad you let movies on the BBC, funded by a government supposedly 'in cahoots' with the Bush administration, guide your thoughts
Here's a suggestion. Why don't you present an arguement about your position, including reasoned ideas and points, instead of lampooning for some documentary you saw on TV.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Everyone is so adamantly anti-Bush/Blair that they will argue the point of terrorists by claiming they are "freedom fighters". They argue that anything that the government does is wrong because somehow it is justified that they are attacked because they've earned it.
Pre-emptively attacking regimes that would serve to destroy civilization through the killing of innocent civilians isn't wrong. It's the subversion of the government, only to disagree without purpose.
People argue that Bush/Blair have done the same thing. It's easy enough to justify your arguments when civilians are dying due to war. However, the civilians that die aren't the targets of the attacks -- unlike terrorist attacks where the civilians are the target.
Stop fueling the "freedom fighters"/"terrorists" and help determine how to end their insane trek to change the world into a monotheistic, oppressive, and non-accepting wasteland.
Yes, in theory you're right - but in practice there are quite many examples where the treaties indeed haven't been implemented in the member states' laws - you would still eventually win your case, but not before you had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which would then judge if your countrie is breaking your rights. There's quite many cases on the site BTW - the case database is online for all your reading delight!
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
From the Times article:
"Government-sponsored monitoring systems, such as Echelon, can track vast amounts of data but have so far proved of minimal benefit in preventing, or even warning, of attacks. And such systems are vulnerable to manipulation: low-ranking volunteers in terrorist organisations can create background chatter that ties up resources and maintains a threshold of anxiety. There are many tricks of the trade that give terrorists secure digital communication and leave no trace on the host computer."
Which is exactly where I come in. Mindpixel and my semantic spectrum technology can examine vast amounts of traffic and webpages and actually understand the intent of the messages, filtering out completely background chatter.
My GAC-80K based system is the only known automatic system that has actually made a terror prediction that seems to have been accurate. I released GAC-80K to the public for research purposes so that people could prove to themselves the value of the data for extracting meaning from text. All the right people currently have copies and I don't think it will be long before this technology is added to Escelon and Eshelon-like systems worldwide.
Involvement in the Islamic Jihad was not illegal in the United States until January 1995, but prosecutors are presenting evidence of earlier activity, arguing it represents an ongoing criminal conspiracy.
The above statement from the article is a blatant and outright admission of illegal spying activity, which this case is REALLY about, as well as free speech aspects...the adl is bad and wants to shut down free speech and they have been at it a long time....
many of the laws enacted by israels agent here, bush, which strip freedom and lock down security state, is to actually legalize illegal surveillance we were getting ready to bust them for....b
Al-Arian Faxes Read To Jurors
By ELAINE SILVESTRINI Published: Jul 28, 2005
TAMPA - Soon after counterintelligence investigators began intercepting Sami Al-Arian's phone lines, the wires were teeming with evidence of his involvement in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The bugs were authorized in late December 1993, and by Jan. 11, 1994, investigators recovered what FBI Agent Kerry Myers described as the first pertinent fax communication.
http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/2008_comm
Light Happens.
The only thing that'll happen is the terrorists making their bombs go off when the carrying party loses pulse. Or when he doesn't push a button during more than 5-10 secs...
Don't tell the terrorists, though. ;-)
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Why waste my time doing something like that when I can just recommend watching something that I think presents a good argument and different take on the shit that people like Rupert Murdoch shove down everyone's throats day-in, day-out?
.au government would reverse the funding cuts they've been making to the ABC for the last decade.
FWIW, the BBC isn't government funded. (So the poms here keep telling everyone who suggests otherwise.) And I trust them more than any American media outlet, seeing as they have the balls to criticise their government.
Public broadcasting is a wonderful thing. I wish the
demachina,
You know very well that's not the strategy with Iraq.
The Iraq action was initiated as part of a long-term strategy to change the face of the middle east by changing governments that CAN be changed, and standing up a quasi-democracy in a relatively secular nation.
It was and is a bold and expensive gamble.
This particular strategy was undertaken for exactly the reasons you implicitly state:
The prevailing state of mind in the US did not have the will, even after 9/11, to fight Al Qaeda with the force needed to manifestly eliminate it with great prejudice. This is further complicated by a questionable belief among some neoconservatives that this war can be fought with little or no sacrifice at home.
The problem is not just one of "Al Qaeda" or the Muslim Brotherhood or the Whabbists. It's a problem of Panislamic radicalism, and it's possibly a greater threat than the West has ever faced in modern times. These groups of people, under whatever umbrella you wish to shove them, desire for the creation of an Islamic theocratic superstate in the whole of the mideast, which is the seat of government for the world. Anyone who does not subscribe to their interpretation of Islam will, literally, be subjugated or slaughtered. The mindset in this sect is not much unlike the mindset of some 11th and 12th century Christian Crusaders.
Further remember that, if successful, the Panislamists would then have access to all of the resources of the current official governments of the region. And we all know what that includes.
There are a variety of reasons and conditions that led to this current state of affairs. US and Western foreign policy and interaction with the mideast has certainly played a role, but not an exclusive or even majority one.
Further, remember that the US support of the fighters, many of which became the "Taliban" or "Al Qaeda", was exactly the reason the USSR failed in Afghanistan. Ironically, your own assertion is that the failed fight was the single biggest contributor to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union! I'm not sure I agree with that thesis; or, perhaps, it can be reworded:
The single biggest contributor to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union was the United States' omnibus policy of opposition to the advance of the Soviet state and ideal on any and all fronts, at all costs, including places like Afghanistan. Certainly our actions and decisions have had consequences. But you cannot discount the defeat of the Soviet Communist empire, which you attribute nearly singly to the war in Afghanistan, which the US supported for that very reason.
So we traded an extremely large and brutal regime with ideals in diametric opposition to those of freedom, liberty, and democracy, in the form of the USSR, for a much smaller insurgency that has taken, in relative numbers, orders of magnitude fewer lives than the Soviet state. Realpolitik may have ultimately been outmoded and dismissed, but it did have its victories.
Now we find ourselves needing a way to speed the mideast toward modernization, along with which we hope comes freedom of speech, expression, press, and a general free flow of information, which we further hope accomplishes two things:
1. Causes the peoples and governments of the mideast to not tolerate the radical Panislamic terrorists within their midst;
2. Creation of states friendly/friendlier by default to Western trade in order to support our continuing need for stable, secure, and reliable sources of energy.
Note regarding 2. above: this does NOT imply creation of states that are Western puppets, but rather states with models of free market economies and democracy that will by their very nature be more amenable to trade/export relationships.
Further, I urge anyone reading this to keep in mind that the US economy, and that of Europe, and indeed the global industrialized economy is delicately predicated on the ability to obtain stable and inexpensive suppli
"Britain is a signatory to the European convention on human rights which makes the freedom of speech and freedom of expression an essential part of British law."
Since when does free speech include the right to advocate the slaughter of innocents? Since when does free speech involve the right to tell people "convert to Islam, or be killed"?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I am not sure if I am permitted to quote major chunks of a paid-article, but the one from which I am copying excerpts here is very compelling and well written, and makes some good points that fall in the context of this thread.
...
...
Economist, "The Enemy Within" - July 14, 2005
Even if everyone involved in terrorising London turns out to have been British-born, it is clear that the bombers had access to sophisticated explosives, not easily available in suburban Yorkshire; and, more important, that they were influenced by ideas, images and interpretations of Islam that would continue to circulate electronically, even if every extremist who tried to enter Britain were intercepted. So the best that terrorist-hunters in Britain and elsewhere in Europe can do is to trace how disaffected people from their own tranquil suburbs form connections with ideological mentors, and ultimately terrorist sponsors, who live overseas, and how those godfathers find recruits in western countries.
In Britain, too, security services have concluded that these days, connections between local youths and foreign godfathers are usually formed at the youths' behest. To a surprising extent, the onus is on individual zealots (or groups of them) to find mentors. Al-Qaeda does not actively seek recruits for the jihadist cause, partly because that would attract the attention of the security services and partly because, ever since the destruction of its bases in Afghanistan, it has--in the view of well placed British observers--been too loosely organised to recruit systematically.
This highlights one of the main difficulties of the "war on terror". In 2001, when America and its allies responded to the attacks on New York and Washington by declaring war on the al-Qaeda network, it seemed an identifiable adversary, with bases, financial structures and a leadership that could be singled out and struck. Since then, it has become something much looser: not even a "franchise", as it is commonly labelled, but more an ideological community, held together above all by electronic connections, which seeks inspiration from a common source.
...
Through the web, even dead al-Qaeda fighters live on, says Mr Ulph. On one website that ceased operations last year (but has several imitators), it was possible to read the writings of senior, recently slain al-Qaeda men on everything from physical training to guerrilla tactics.
A group of young Muslims will often travel quite a long way down the road to violent jihad before meeting anybody with terrorist expertise. Some never find the contacts they seek, and resort to their own devices; only occasionally does this have deadly results for anybody besides themselves. One example of such amateurism is that of two Moroccan men from the Dutch city of Eindhoven, Ahmed el-Bakiouli and Khalid el-Hassnaoui, who tried to enter Afghanistan in December 2001 in the hope of fighting some Americans. Having failed, they went to Kashmir, where they were swiftly killed by Indian security forces. In Britain, several terrorist plots uncovered since 2001 have been striking for their incompetence and lack of outside expertise.
Things become far more dangerous, of course, when committed radicals come into contact with veterans of wars in Chechnya and Bosnia, or of the Afghan training camps where several hundred Britons are believed to have been schooled. These veterans either have the know-how to plan an atrocity, or can find somebody who does, and it is under their influence that hopeless missions can turn deadly. Whether this happens or not is often a matter of chance. Take the Egyptian Mohammed Atta and other members of the "Hamburg cell" that plotted the September 11th attacks. They were drawn into mega-terror after meeting someone who introduced them first to an al-Qaeda operative in Germany, and then to masterminds in Afghanistan.
Just point and shoot
I see. Who cares that im an IT in the military, been to Iraq multiple times, and have said in more then one thread in this discussion that I fully support all activities that are being pursued to shut down al-Qaeda, and extremist activities, huh? Not only am I active in the fight against al-Qaeda, but I am quite possibly going back to Baghdad next month to teach computing 101 to Iraqi civilians. So just because I say that the absoloute power that the government is gaining is worrisome doesnt automatically make me a "mindless sympathizer of al-Qaeda and its objectives" Its called "asking questions" , something people should continue doing instead of accepting the "mindless thought" that it is always for your own good, so who cares? Grow up.
So you are conceding to the parent Anonymous Coward that your comment is indeed asinine? Anyway, we live in a society, not an Anarchy. Society makes the rules as to what is good for the whole, or not. Most clear thinkers agree that inciting violence is not good for the whole.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
People have no longer the freedom to say, what they want. We all HAVE to do, what is "right" for the country. I'm not a terrorist, but I'm defending the mentioned websites now. They must have their rights to send their messages, just like we do. If they see an objective website about the war on Iraq, it would be fine for the government, but if they see a subjective website about the bombings of London, then it's not right.. Remember, there are two sides of this conflict, and both sides should be covered equally!
The Power of Nightmares completely misses the point.
It doesn't matter whether an organization by that name specifically exists.
The threat of Panislamic radicalism is very real, and lumping them under a single umbrella is to simplify discussion.
The Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, "Al Qaeda" - they all want manifestly the same things, the most radical of which is an Islamic theocratic superstate across the whole of the mideast that is the seat of government for the world. Some might say "So what? Who are we to say that they can't have that state, if successful?" Well, people who want to live, that's who. If successful, they would have access to all of the collective resources of the current official governments of the region, including nuclear and other weapons. The collective power this group would possess, and the effects, would be devastating.
The Power of Nightmares is a quite pathetic attempt to claim that, simply, the threat doesn't exist.
Except that the extremely numerous terrorist attacks around the world by fanatical Muslim extremists would disprove that completely.
In short, concentrating on whether or not it's "Al Qaeda", or whether an organization by the self-given name of "Al Qaeda"-proper specifically and strictly exists is utterly and completely missing the point. Lumping them into a group under one term is more than accurate enough to describe Islamic militants who would wish harm on the US and/or West. Individual motives may vary slightly, but the goals and aims are largely the same, and to simply claim they don't exist is to ignorantly attempt to derail the issue.
It's also quite offensive that supposedly-intelligent people literally think that Bush and his "cronies" are the mastermind architects of this, that no threat really exists, and it's nothing but a figment of a bunch of neo-cons' imaginations designed to keep people living in fear under their thumbs.
Let me be clear: you cannot deny that Islamic, and specifically, Panislamic radical terrorism exists. Whether or not the number of people who died on 9/11 or in any other attack is more or less than other innocuous things like car accidents or smoking (as is often stated) is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. The point is that we're tackling the threat early, before it does kill significant numbers of people, not only in the US, but around the globe!
In a mindset where the US is the source or cause of all evil in the world, I know it might be difficult to understand this.
I second this recommendation.
Saw it this past weekend and it's very very interesting. Not to say it's fullproof. There are plenty of remaining questions but it is good insight on this whole "war on terror" and the history (or lack thereof) of Al Quaeda
This is a rotten Monday for some spook when it is discovered that Dreamweaver can't upload some CSS workarounds for IE5...
"The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech demand to be heard!" - Alfred E. Neuman
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Nice example of just how profoundly you take on the responsibilities inherent in our constitution. "Pretty well protected" -- good enough for me! (And then you troll for a grab bag of garbled, sophistic "talking points.")
Yours is the laziness that is impatient with any argument critical of those in power. That's not conservatism, it's... well, you've just given my a new sig.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Well I am for a palestinian state. But I don't like your justification any more than I like the grandparent's justification.
As another poster points out you could probably go back to the crusades and beyond if you want to start talking about who started it. The thing to do is take the present and work with what we have. Past Israeli abuses don't justify Palestinian abuses or vice versa. Lets just work with what we have and come up with something that will let us move beyond the past. I say work out a comprise and kill everyone who is killing everyone.
I never understood why the rest of the world thinks they are superior to America due to all the history that has taken place on their soil. Whats so great about the past? The future is what we care about. I think one of the great things about America is that it has very little baggage compared to so many places where people have been getting even for the last 1000 years.
You are aware of the fact that Pakistan has nukes, right? It was in all the papers a few years ago. Kind of complicates things.
Yes, it is a limitation to the abstract ideal of unlimited free speech. Great Britain also banned nazi propaganda during WWII - useful, pragmatic, sensible.
Furthermore, after reading large parts of the Qu'ran and bits of Hadith (Mohammeds life story - supposedt to be an example for all muslims - basically he lived a life of war from 622 to his death in 632), I sincerely believe we're only at the beginning of trouble. This abyss is dark and deep, but most people (very understandably) are not interested in discovering very unpleasent stuff.
Hang on, it's going to be a rollercoaster ride for freedoms of any kind.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
this is not making CIA or other 3 letters around the globe
very happy. These websites are/were a valuable source of
information on the jihadists and what they were up to, one
of the very few windows available. Remember that intel isn't
all cloak and dagger.
Irony is a good word. You should look it up, study it, live it, love it.
Irony is a grand device used in service to another concept, "satire." Please look that word up, too. I expect a 500 word report on my desk Wednesday morning.
Class dismissed.
Their motive is, basically:
1. coalition pull out of Iraq
2. Israel leave their neighbors in peace, and divide Jerusalem properly
3. Russia pull out of Chechnya
4. US pull out of Saudi Arabia
5. better income distribution in the middle east (related to 2, 4)
make the necessary reforms to do the five above and fundamentalist (terrorist) muslim activity will decrease to a halt.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Context, full disclosure and perspective are so overrated.
(You are probably not conciously trying to use emotions to convince people. You probably even think that you are using pure information and logic. Don't feel bad. It's what you've learned by reading/watching/hearing political discussions, and likely know no other way.)
"their goal ... to scare ... and stir-up ... hatred"
Now THAT's what I call a good definition of terrorist.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
"Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia."
Should this be a surprise?
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
On July 22, 1946 Jewish terrorists assembled in a classroom at a seminary in Jerusalem. One of them was Menahim Begin, later a prime minister of Israel. Disguised as arabs, the terrorists made their way to the King David Hotel. Some went on foot, some went in a van with 7 milk churns, each containing 50 kilograms of explosives.
The terrorists overpowered the guards and placed the explosives in the basement of the hotel. They set the timer on the bombs for 30 minutes and left the building. Over 90 people died in the resulting explosion. One who died was my uncle, an officer in the British Army who was acting as the editor for a English language newspaper in Jerusalem. He had a wife and two young children.
In a wonderful exercise in justification, the Iraelis have repeated pointed out that the terrorists telephoned a warning 20 minutes before the explosion, and the people who died were therefore the responsibility of the British who failed to act promptly on that warning. To this day it is unclear whether they actually did telephone that warning.
As you can imagine, my parents and their siblings hate Israel with a passion. Every day they still see the effects of Jewish terrorism in our family. Although I was not born at that time this happened, I still see the effects of the blast on my family.
This was only one of many, many terrorist acts that resulted in the formation of Israel. This is the same Israel that now uses their superior weapons technology to hunt down and kill (without trial) anyone that they believe supports terrorism against them. The same Israel that restricts their Arab citizens to certain parts of the country, and routinely denies them the right to pass across "Jewish" territory to go to work. The same Israel that allows Jewish settlers to carry and use machine guns while killing Palestinians who throw stones.
It is unfortunate that the parent post has such a one sided view of the conflict. I can't help wondering if he would condemn the acts of the people who used terrorism to further the aims of the Jewish people.
"As much as I dislike the ISI, the Taliban was armed by the CIA."
The Mujadeen were armed by the CIA during the Russia/Afghan war. Some of them turned in to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The CIA stopped arming them after Russia withdrew from Afghanistan which was a while ago.
The ISI carried the ball from that point forward. Again the U.S. let large numbers of ISI agents fly out of Afghanistan when the Taliban fell. They were just as responsible for 9/11 as the Taliban were.
@de_machina
"America did just about the smartest thing it could do in Afgahnistan - it played local politics. It bought an army and supplimented it with assests we could project into the area."
Yes and it completely failed to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda while it had the chance at places like Tora Bora. The mercenary army they bought was both badly trained, badly equipped, badly motivated and easy to bribe. They, on numerous occasions, sat on their hands while Al Qaeda and the Taliban scattered.
If the U.S. had had the will it could have put a lot more force in Afghanistan than it did, and turning a blind eye to the ISI, and the tribal areas in Pakistan insured the U.S. would fail in defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The tribal region sanctuary in Pakistan was a key reason Russia lost in Afghanistan. You have to eliminate sanctuaries in a conflict like that.
"First off, there's no major power backing the insurgency."
Al Qaeda is a major power though a shadowy one. They can almost certainly pump men, explosives and strategy in to it for a really long time.
"Second, the majority of the population has a vested interest in seeing the insurgency fail."
The majority of Sunni's have a vested interested in seeing the insurgency succeed and they are a majority in the Sunni triangle which is why the insurgency flourishes there. Thats all an insurgency needs, popular support in the area its being waged.
There isn't one insurgency in Iraq there are probably three:
- Baathist Saddam loyalists
- Sunnis in general who have been completely disempowered. Kind of a superset of Baathists
- External Arab Jihadi's with Al Qaeda in the lead.
@de_machina
The CIA backing stopped after Russia was beaten. The ISI is the one that helped the Taliban take control of Afghanistan in the vacaum left when Russia pulled out and they were completely intertwined with the Taliban and Al Qaeda when 9/11 happened.
The ISI is as much to blame for 9/11 as much as the Taliban was. The U.S. let them get away with it and punished Saddam instead who had NOTHING to do with it. Explain that. Its no accident that a lot of continuing Al Qaeda terrorism has some Pakistani origin.
@de_machina
There is nothing "academic" about terrorism.
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
" a long-term strategy to change the face of the middle east by changing governments that CAN be changed"
Any government CAN be changed if you have the worlds best equipped military. So CAN change the contries where Al Qaeda has its origins, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan. I guess you are saying we CAN'T change them because for some reason they are our allies even though they are the ones where all the people who are attacking the U.S. come from and are based in the case of Pakistan.
So instead we changed places that were responsible for 9/11 the U.S. opted for the one government they COULD change, Iraq.
Basic problem here Dave, Iraq was working against Islamic fundamentalism, not for it. The Baathist's are secular socialists not Islamic fundamentalist. They are Muslim only when its convenient. Ever notice how most Iraqis wear mustaches. Saddam had for the most part outlawed full beards because it was a way to frustrate hard core muslims who wear beards as part of their faith. Women had more rights in Saddam's Iraq than they will ever get in the new Shia dominated increasingly fundamentalist Iraq, the one writing its constitution based on Islamic law.
There simple is no way to rationalize invading Iraq as a response to Al Qaeda and 9/11, in fact it was exactly the wrong thing to do. The only way you could explain it is the Bush administration was creating a honey pot in Iraq to draw Islamic fighters from all over the world who want to kill American soldiers. I'm pretty sure that was the plan the Bush administration had in mind though. The neocon plan was take down Iraq in a few weeks, then Syria and Iran and then all of Israel's remaining state enemies in the region would be gone. They got bogged down in Iraq so the rest isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
@de_machina
I'd probably write this same post when I'm adopting my "liberal" devil's advocate facade.
The key problem here is you aren't going to fix most of the underlying problems in under a century. The only one the U.S. could fixed is U.S. foreign and economic policy but to fix that you would have to get the electorate to stop electing people who like strong arm tactics. At the moment the U.S. is electing people who LOVE strong arm tactics and you can't change that with all the liberal idealism in the world. Even if you get the Democrats in office they use most of the same strong arm policies, they just aren't as blatant about it as the Republican's.
If you are attacked like you are on 9/11 and as a response your plan is to fix global poverty your attackers will still be there, you will look weak and they will keep attacking you. They aren't going to wake up one day and forgive the U.S. for all its past wrongs because they U.S. is handing out food or economic aid someplace. The U.S. also isn't going to cut Israel to the wind anytime soon.
Unfortunately you plan is idealism, not reality.
@de_machina
I heard that Kevin Bacon has also been linked to this group.
Yes, it's illegal because the NRA lobbying wouldn't allow ANY kind of gun control at all without it. And why an instant-check system? So the decent people who just want to get a new shotgun for the season won't get mucked up in red tape.
That doesn't make it smart. I think it might be interesting to law enforcement if some recent immigrants went out and bought a dozen high-power rifles with large magazines.
I've read the 2nd ammendment plenty, and I agree with the interpretation that it allows individuals (and not just the state "militia" to own guns. But I can't own a *car* without yearly registration and a paper trail.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Yes I know they're criminals, but criminals can't buy guns legally. They have to come from somewhere. Yes there are a lot out there already in criminal hands, and so they'll pass from one to another, but all guns out there are not all previously-hidden and unregistered. A fresh supply of guns does get into the population on a regular basis from gun store owners who look the other way.
Is it going to stop criminal gun use? No, but it could cut it down. Where I live people get shot in the ass every day. It's getting old. Yes, they could kill with a kitchen knife but they can't do it from 10 feet away.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I'm certain that taking down the sites was done with the best of intentions (i.e, "preventing terrorist acts"), but in doing so, you push the swine to someplace else...
If you don't know where that place is, then how do you monitor what they're doing?
In this case, the best thing would have been to simply monitor all the traffic on the sites and see who's talking to whom... Then you have a list of people to chat with...
In this case - the people using the site for nefarious purposes will simply utilize more traditional methods of communication, and set up a new site - maybe it's not so overt, but still serves the purposes of their organizations... However, you DON'T know this... and can't use the info to protect yourself...
IMHO, they ought to have left the damn thing alone, monitored it, gathered the info to zap the upper-level shitheads, and then arrested them. Leave the site up, and pretend to be the shitheads so you can capture the next level of swine in training...
Your car won't do much to help you when the government becomes oppressive.
And yet a government cannot do 'nothing' in response to a terrorist act or threat.
And yet there are terrorist acts in 'non-free' countries. So clamping down on the public doesn't work.
Just a couple of points:
Yes, and you probably know from my previous posts, we didn't go into something like Saudi Arabia because, first of all, as you say, they're our official allies. Second, we didn't really have a motivation to go after the government of Saudi Arabia, given that their relationship with us with regard to oil pricing controls and energy supplies is very important to our economic well-being.
I must take issue, however, with you saying that we "changed" who was responsible for 9/11. We didn't at all. It was stated ad nauseum by all manner of government and media that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, that bin Laden himself is Saudi, that many of the extremely militant Islamic radical movements and members were created in Saudi Arabia, etc. We never changed that, and in my estimation, that was never downplayed. (And for the ridiculously high percentages of people in some surveys who apparently thought Saddam and/or Iraq were responsibly for 9/11, well, I have no explanation. It has been repeated thousands of times that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi and that bin Laden is Saudi in all manner of print and television news media, and the administration has never said anything different. It tried to tie Iraq to Al Qaeda for a while, but NEVER said that Iraq was responsible for or involved in any major way in 9/11.)
As to Iraq's secular nature, as I said, that's exactly why it was picked opposed to others: it would have the least chance of a radical Islamic uprising from within. Indeed, that has proven to be true. What we didn't bargain for is a major Islamic uprising from without, with foreign fighters from everyplace but Iraq.
I would also take issue that Iraq is "increasingly fundamentalist" or that it will grow to be an oppressive state. That would run counter to the very reasons we started this in the first place.
And as to explaining Iraq as a response to 9/11, I did just that. You might not agree with it, or might think it was a horribly wrongheaded idea, but that's exactly why they did it. Without 9/11, we wouldn't even be in Iraq right now. And yes, the idea was, as you say, to topple the problem regimes in the area, preferably with the help of internal reformers. Those reformers DO exist, but their forces are outnumbered by those who fear the US is on a mission to exterminate Islam and expand the Jewish empire (both untrue). So we have reactions like we have in Iran, and yes, the plan as laid out was planned to go much more smoothly. It has not gone smoothly at all in this area, but in order for it to work, we need to redouble our efforts, not give up. A side note: this isn't about "Israel's" enemies, as you phrase it. This is about OUR enemies. That many of them are also Israel's enemies is incidental. You might be stunned to hear me say that, but I don't misunderstand the situation. This isn't about Israel. This is about us, and freedom and democracy here, AND in the mideast - in places like Israel, but in the Arab and Persian states too. What if the US stopped supporting Israel and exited the mideast entirely? How long would Israel be for this world? Would the genocide of the Jews set well with those who are so quick to condemn any US support of Israel?
"I must take issue, however, with you saying that we "changed" who was responsible for 9/11. "
Come on Dave, you are not that dumb. Everyone knows the Bush administration did everything they could to tie Iraq to 9/11 in the minds of the average America, if not in reality. The famous meeting in Prague was the classic one. Dick Cheney flat out said on Meet the Press that it was a link though that meeting has largely been discredited as fantasy and he tried to deny he said it later though it was on video tape.
"As to Iraq's secular nature, as I said, that's exactly why it was picked opposed to others"
OK I guess you really are just that dumb Dave. So in your war against Islamic fundamentalism you take down one of the most secular Arab government in the Middle East, one that was fighting Islamic fundamentalism more than just about any other. Saddam and the Baathist are Panarab not Panislam, huge difference.
God damn Dave, you should get a job in the Bush administration because you seem to have their same talent for completely twisted and moronic reasoning.
"I would also take issue that Iraq is "increasingly fundamentalist" or that it will grow to be an oppressive state. That would run counter to the very reasons we started this in the first place."
Well stick your head in the sand Dave because its a fact. Reports from around Basra, the seat of Shia fundamentalism, indicate it is starting to resemble Iran or the Taliban. Reports from their constitutional convention I heard a week or two go indicate it is nearly inevitable its going to be largely based on Islamic law unless the U.S. intervenes and stops it (which shoots down any pretense that they are a sovereign government). The Shia majority are devout Muslims and their leaders are devout Muslims. Left to their own devices they are going to create a fundamentalist Islamic state unless some outside force stops them.
This is what you get for trying to institute a democracy in a country where fundamentalist Muslims are in the majority. Saddam had his reputation for ruthlessness because he was fighting a Kurdish independence movement in the north that was using its own share of violence and a fundamentalist Islamic rebellion from the Shia in the South that outnumbered his Baathist Sunnis. Why do you think George H.W. Bush left Saddam in power? They wanted Saddam to suppress the Kurds and the Shia and serve as a balance to Iran without the U.S. getting mixed up in it. His kid unfortunately was to dumb to understanding the complexity of the situation and was bent on showing up his dad by finishing what he started in the first Gulf War.
If the Kurds try to declare independence once U.S. gets tired of Iraq a new war will start involve Iraq the Kurds AND Turkey. Turkey hates the Kurds as much as Saddam did.
@de_machina
"Taking action to stop the voices advocating terrorism and killing is a Good Thing. Freedom of expression is still under responsibility, and advocating/supporting/organizing terrorism better be stopped."
I agree with that statement, but you don't show any proof that 1. you actually read the quran and the hadith and 2. that you understand any of the material. I am a muslim my self, yet i don't have ANY urge whatsoever to randomly kill innocent people. Freedom of speech is an important right, but one that must be excersised RESPONSIBLY.
The quran never advocates indiscriminent killing, nor does it say create and instill fear in the "non-muslims". The whole concept of "infidels" that american news agencies beat into your heads is not how islam sees it. In islam, an Infidel, or Kafir, can refer directly to those who vehemently advertise against islam, God, and those who try to destroy the religion - everyone else is "a potential revert to islam". The times that the quran says to kill (which im sure most of you have heard the verse out of conext a bazillion times) refers to self-defence. The following verses after tell muslims that if they fight us, then we fight, but never transgress (kill innocents) and to fear God. God (arabic word: Allah) is even warning muslims not to transgress and threatens punishment to those who indiscrimenitly kill! and all over the quran, it preaches eye for an eye (justice), but forgiving is better. The hadith also state that those who forgive in this world, God will forgive them in the hereafter. One other hadith states NOT NOT NOT NOT to kill innocent women, old men, and children!
These bunch of guys who claim their actions for islam should NEVER be allowed to advertise their misunderstandings and incitements - its sick. Save yourselves from ignorance, and ASK a good practicing muslim, and not judge the actions of a few thousand out of 1.5 billion. dont think that just because you read a few passages and expect you know the true beliefs of islam.
yasbug
yasbug@yahoo.com
Man, I was totally on your side until you made all the typical uniformed rants about Iraq. Iraq is a disaster, I'll side with you there, but over time it WILL settle down, NOT get worst. The Abu Ghraib hype was just that hype. There was NO abuse to the degree that it was made out to be abuse. Many of the techniques that were used at Abu Ghraib were tried and true methods of breaking the enemy to extract information. If you have a problem with that, then you won't like living in Europe or anywhere else on the planet where torture methods are either unchecked or much more drastic.
The people in Iraq are making an effort to support their puppet government (and I use puppet here to make you feel a little better about my statement). The sheer volume of folks who voted back in January is proof of that. Would you have done the same, knowing that you might be killed at the voting booth, or even worst that some gang of thugs might come down your street looking for voters.
You talk about thousands of lives. Most of which were military or insurgent (misanthropes) fighters. All this nonsense about civilian deaths is way overstated, not to say that those deaths aren't relevant, but it's a freaking war zone. People die in war zones! If you are a civilian and you know a battle is coming to your city, maybe you should get the hell out of there, because otherwise your just stupid, or you side with or are an active participant of the insurgency.
It's really insane the ignorance of people, and especially those in Europe. The sad thing is their memory is so short. WWII, Germans were sending rockets to London and blowing up entire cities on the easter front while at the same time exterminating all civilians who didn't agree with them. The French decimated villages under Napoleon. And Let's not even discuss the actions of the Ottoman's and before Roman empire.
The US forces compared to the brutality of these regimes (some not so many years ago) is really pretty lame, and governed by laws and rules, most of which no other nation on the planet abides by. Look at the Vietnam war for how well the Geneva convention was used by the enemy.
All the worlds a stage, and I'm the guy running the lights...
The old saying is wrong. History never repeats itself. Saying the British occupation of Iraq is the same as the American liberation of Iraq is only slightly better than the people who say Iraq is like Vietnam.
The situation in Iraq is not a civil war. America had a civil war. There were armies and battles where 20,000 people died in one week. A guerilla war is completely different from a civil war. Not that there aren't any ethnic tensions, but the average Iraqi is looking for peace and a job, not fighting Americans who would like nothing better than to go home.
The reason there is any fighting at all is that the Baath party leaders in the Iraqi army never hung around to fight, but ran off into the desert and became a guerilla movement. They took billions of dollars from Iraqi banks (literally garbage trucks full of money) just before the war started and they are extremely well financed. Not to mention the billionaire foreign extremist sheiks who support the foreign fighters in Iraq. The average Iraqi was happy to be rid of Saddam and didn't think of us as occupiers and did welcome us with roses and they would have been happy to just move on with life. This insurgency is being led by wealthy baathists (socialists) and wealthy religious conservative nationalist muslims both of whom are anticapitalist. This is not a movement of poor Iraqi farmers. As usual the far left and the far right are really one and the same (see Stalin and Hitler).
The old saying is wrong. History never repeats itself"
Another old saying is "Never say Never" because when you do you are usually wrong.
Your entitled to your opinion but most people will disagree with you. Things are never exactly the same but someone with good historical perspective can spot the important similarities and tendencies that count.
"The situation in Iraq is not a civil war. America had a civil war."
Yes it is though its a low grade civil war in an insurgency stage. If American troops were to pull out wholesale you would see a full fledged, hot, civil war. The Sunni's are unlikely to ever accept living under Shia domination. The Kurds are biding their time but if they see an opportunity, especially if American troops withdraw or if the Shia stop power sharing, they will try to secede too. The Kurds have had an independent Kurdistan as their rallying point for nearly ever.
The second part of your post is gross oversimplification. I imagine most Iraqi's are glad to get rid of Saddam but it doesn't mean they like the new situation any better. A key reason there is an insurgency is because everyone in the Sunni triangle is unemployed, hungry, without electricity, A/C or a seqage system. All past politics aside those are ingredients for discontent and rebellion. Saddam sucked but the new situtation is totally different but equally bad. If you are Sunni it is way worse because the people you have oppressed for so long are now running the place and Sunnis have been completely driven out of the political process by the insurgency. All that propaganda about how great the elections were was just that, propaganda. the Kurds and Shias turned out in massive numbers, the Sunni didn't and that kicked the legs out from under any pretense of a real Democracy.
@de_machina
I wouldn't say the strategy was conceived by morons. I think they are very smart, much more so than the average public. I think that the government knows exactly what's happening. They are doing this for the increasing amount of power and not in the interest of the public.
Would you care to explain why, specifically, you think there was a better case for action against Pakistan that for action against Iran?
The prevailing state of mind in the US did not have the will, even after 9/11, to fight Al Qaeda with the force needed to manifestly eliminate it with great prejudice.
Bull-fucking-shit. Your implicit acceptance of the false Republican party line that Iraq and Al Qaeda are connected is child-like. The U.S. citizens, both parties alike, were perfectly willing to go into Afghanistan and complete the war action necessary to capture and possibly kill Osama Bin-Laden. This did not happen because George Bush sidetracked the U.S. forces with his war of choice of invading Iraq (to insure war continued through the 2004 elections to his personal benefit). I wonder how long it will be before you eat more of your words than you have already today. You could always get a gig as Rush Limbaugh's sidekick (or maybe something on Rupert Murdoch's Fox).
>There was NO abuse to the degree that it was made out to be abuse.
You were there, were you?
>Many of the techniques that were used at Abu Ghraib were tried and true methods of breaking the enemy to extract information.
Electric shocks to the genitals are "tried and true methods" to extract information. Whether the information you extract through torture is true is clearly beside the point.
> If you have a problem with that, then you won't like living in Europe or anywhere else on the planet where torture methods are either unchecked or much more drastic.
In Europe? Earth to slriv, earth to slriv, please come back!
>It's really insane the ignorance of people, and especially those in Europe.
Making an educated guess here that you're from the US, you have the gall to complain about the ignorance of Europeans? Heck, we have a lot of stupid people in Europe, but the general populace is dramatically better informed about international affairs than Americans. Of course, we ain't got no "Fair & Balanced" media over here. So please arrange the following words into a popular phrase: Pot Kettle Calling Black!
> The sad thing is their memory is so short. WWII,
Still well in living memory here, actually.
>Germans were sending rockets to London and blowing up entire cities on the easter front while at the same time exterminating all civilians who didn't agree with them.
Yes, they did, and lots more nasty things besides. And the Russians raped thousands of women on their way to Berlin. The Brits & the Americans firebombed Dresden, needlessly and deliberately killing huge numbers of non-combatants. The US consistently broke treaties with native Americans, stole their land and decimated them.
History is bloody & miserable. Let's try and make things better, rather than worse,
>The US forces compared to the brutality of these regimes (some not so many years ago) is really pretty lame, and governed by laws and rules, most of which no other nation on the planet abides by. Look at the Vietnam war for how well the Geneva convention was used by the enemy.
If your neighbours beat their wives, and your dad beat your mother, that makes it okay to beat your wife? As long as you don't use a belt, like they did?
Let's try something more challenging - arrange these words: "Off" and "Fuck".
no taxation without representation!
Tying Iraq to Al Qaeda is tying Iraq to 9/11, you dishonest prick. You still going to make these non-sensical, unsupported, academically-dishonest comments? Or, can you shut-up now? (Not that I don't support your free speech, but you personally need to sit down, read, and actually apply your logic background to the real world. You don't have to, but you're just spreading bullshit as it stands now.)
Thought I did. The ISI, Pakistan's secret police, was all over Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban and while Al Qaeda was there and planning 9/11. The U.S. let Pakistan fly all of them out when the Taliban fell, unquestioned and unchallenged. Pakistan's secret service helped put the Taliban in power and keep it there.
Al Qaeda is almost certainly still alive and well in Pakistan's tribal region and the Pakistani government, especially the ISI is letting them regroup there.
The only connection to 9/11 I've heard against Iran is some of them may have travelled through there.
The madrasas in Pakistan are breeding ground #1 for Islamic extremists.
@de_machina
...breathe deeply... in... out...
There! Better now?
Geez... can't help but laugh at your retort. So in a nutshell you are saying something which I think I would even agree with:
/.
'Let's try and make things better, rather than worse'
Okay, I dig that. The rest of your comments are either blatantly false or irrelevant.
From my experience, having spent large sums of time in Frankfurt/Paris and London, that it's more or less the same as it is in the US. If you live in Germany and something happens in France most will know about it. If something happens in Uzbekistan, 90% of the population would just go 'uhhhh'?
Look, my biggest gripe with the euros is the self-riteous BS that continues to spew from folks that haven't actually bothered to understand the issues and the various sides. It's true there is some of the same nonsense in the US, but for the most part the ignorant just don't bother to think about ir or as in your case make an ass of themselves on
All the worlds a stage, and I'm the guy running the lights...
Pakistan has maybe 50 nukes tops, the US has something like 14,000. Pakistan's longest range missle can barely hit the east coast of India, the US can lob missles from North Dakota, from under the polar ice, or from anywhere to anywhere. Just having nukes does suddenly make it a fair fight, in fact having nukes when going up against the US arsenal is more of a liability than anything else.
How the fuck can something be overated when it hasn't even been RATED????
Stupid mods.
-- Karma: Bad. Fucking stupid slashdot mods
"Vigilance is the best defense"
Strange, that, since "vigilance" and "fear/stasis" seem to culturally coincide. . .
Why is Competence+Autonomy inferior to Vigilance?
I've noticed that authority prefers a passive lower-tier / populace, and that pervasive individual-competence would be drastically-more effective than mere vigilance ( and culturally costly: it'd cost established habits/assumptions, and it'd cost authority-on-others [some-of] it's magnitude ), but perhaps this assumption/perception o'this-one is wrong. . .
Yes I know that it seems we're both arguing the same-side, but there is fundamental difference between watching+reacting, and every-single-one owning-one's-own-ground. . .
IPTables enhancement Fail2Ban bans cracker-login's
From what I understand, those sites were a good source of information on Al-Quida activieties.
This post is well-written, but wrong. Whatever good Hamas claims to bring to the Palestinian people is completely negated by their actions. In specific the action of planting a bomb in the cafeteria of the Frank Sinatra Center of Hebrew University several years ago that murdered seven international students and maimed 80 others.
This is a act of inconceivable savagery that can only be described as the work of monsters. This judgment would be reached by any group of civilized people in any society at any time.
There is no political or historical justification for such a vile and brutal act of mass murder.
By shielding from international justice (the murder of international students in an international university demands an international court of justice) the persons responsible for planning and executing this act of mass murder, Hamas departs ranks from a social service organization and becomes in international law, a criminal and terrorist organization.
Your other arguments are simply fluff and disjointed verbiage, meaningless within the context of this horrible act that Hamas sponsored.
When these criminals are brought to justice and Hamas extends fair and appropriate financial compensation to the families of the students who were murdered in this savage crime, then we might talk history and philosophy.
Hi, we've talked before about this topic. Let's revisit some stuff that's developed since then.
You said further up this thread:
We knew we couldn't tackle "Al Qaeda" directly; we wanted to go after a defined government entity that COULD be changed. What's really interesting to me is that you also admit that the insurgency in Iraq isn't the regular Iraqi people (for the most part, anyway) fighting the US occupiers, but are indeed the fanatical extremists that we hope to defeat in the end. You seem to think that simply because the insurgency exists and can feed itself and its power structure and recruitment off of the actions and techniques of the opposing forces (i.e., the US's action in Iraq) that the strategy is doomed to failure.
[...]
There is absolutely no question they'll use this to their advantage, to rally others to their cause, indeed, to attempt to radicalize peoples in the mideast simultaneously against the US and to the cause of Panislamism.
But that the very mechanism by which they do this is itself riddled with falsehoods. They will claim the US wants to rape their women, torture their sons, overtake their countries, exterminate their religion, steal their land, and end their way of life.
Ok. I know that's a lot of bold stuff to address, but I didn't want to take it out of context. I think the most fundamental disagreement you and Demachina are having here (and maybe me too) is this: The insurgents in Iraq (who will be fighting us for decades, make no mistake) are NOT NOT NOT Panislamists. They are merely Arabists. And as "Patriots" it is not difficult to see why they are streaming in from other Arab countries to fight. We do overtake their countries --Palestine, Iraq-- we do 'steal' their land, --Palestine, Iraq-- and we are --through overt military support of Israel-- working to "end their [Arabs', Palestinians'] way of life"; every time we support the Likudniks, or indirectly support the settler's movement. I've been arguing with my buddies through email about this for the weeks since that recent report came out about the geo-political make-up and backgrounds of the foreign fighters in Iraq. The Middle-East is not going to run out of Arabs anytime soon, and as such, the percentage of patriots willing to fight invaders isn't some negligible amount that we can just consume/slay. HOWEVER, this is very distinct from the support structure for what you call Panislamists (and what I normally just call radical Islamists, you know bin Laden-style 'death to the infidel', return to the caliphate, a pox on your decadent life-style extremists). The 'panislamists' have no future (well no real future), their numbers are very small, and I agree with you, they will not win. Sadly, for the foreseeable future there will always be just enough to kill us in explosive, scary, and disruptive ways.
So to sum up this section: Arabists will fight us (or our proxies) in Iraq for decades but eventually the generations that see us as invaders, stealers, and Israel-supporters will all die of old age (presuming that the Palestinians get their own country [back] some time in that span). It's pretty easy to see why: Would the French resistance have stopped killing Germans occupiers? If America was occupied by Germany would you accept it as 'a necessary step to achieve a stabilizing Nazi hegemony in the region', or would you fight them in the streets? (Apologies to Godwin and all, I'm not trying to equate the U.S. actions in Iraq with the spreading fascism of the 40s; merely trying to crystalize a patriot's duty.)
"Panislamists" will fight 'us' (the West) for the foreseeable future. Their numbers are minute. They have no grassroots support. They have no political support (see elections in the Muslim areas of Southeast Asia). This tiny, tiny minority of people must be dealt with as we've always dealt with organized crime (and in my estimation this means not destroying Anti-islmaist states in the region, but whatever, we can agree to disagree). People
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
We are talking about present-day, not ancient history. If we are going to talk about ancient history, you'll have to bring up: the native American massacres all over the continent (by Christians); the African enslavement; the Crusades; the Inquisition; the Purge of the Jews in Spain by none other than Isabel of Castilla and Fernando de Leon; the Holocaust...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
This thread has gone on far too long, and some of your arguments are starting to resemble arguing backwards-from-conclusion-justifications rather than concluding-from-evidence-theories. Nevertheless, let me address a few key points in your above post:
"we didn't go into something like Saudi Arabia because, first of all, as you say, they're our official allies."
Yes. And so (before Gulf War I) was Saddam - we even (overtly!) supplied and aided him in the Iran-Iraq war. As other posters have repeatedly pointed out he was the essential counterbalance holding back Islamic fundamentalism in the entire Gulf region.
This is why we didn't continue in and depose him at the end of Gulf War I - it was recognised that to do so would be counter-productive, since his example of a modern, secular arab state was the single example of a viable alternative to the theocratic, fundmentalist extremist governments that had developed elsewhere.
"It has been repeated thousands of times that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi and that bin Laden is Saudi in all manner of print and television news media, and the administration has never said anything different. It tried to tie Iraq to Al Qaeda for a while, but NEVER said that Iraq was responsible for or involved in any major way in 9/11."
Ok, how about some quotes from Bush?
"The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more."
"The regime . . . has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda."
"He has trained and financed al Qaeda-type organizations before, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations."
Even better, how about a whole fucking website full of them? Seriously - Dave, please reply to this point. I want to see what your reading of this is, since it's about a black-and-white as one can make it without resorting to Clintonesque hair-splitting of the meaning of "ally".
"As to Iraq's secular nature, as I said, that's exactly why it was picked opposed to others: it would have the least chance of a radical Islamic uprising from within. Indeed, that has proven to be true. What we didn't bargain for is a major Islamic uprising from without, with foreign fighters from everyplace but Iraq."
With respect, bullshit. When you're trying to encourage the growth of secular, modern, western-friendly arab states, you don't take out the only viable example of one as your first act. This explains why we put up with Hussain's genocides and internal violence, but not why we ousted him first.
In addition, although Iraq was a secular regime it had (and always has had) a huge muslim majority. Although many of the fighters are coming from outside Iraq it's not "all" by a long shot, and the ones who are fighting get a huge amount of aid from inside the country. Saddam spent half his tenure as ruler fighting internal dissention, especially form the fundamentalist Shi'ite muslims, who actually represent a majority in the country.
"Those reformers DO exist, but their forces are outnumbered by those who fear the US is on a mission to exterminate Islam and expand the Jewish empire (both untrue)."
Not, actually. What you're described in your posts is nothing less than the eradication of islam.
The trouble is by "not eradicating islam" you mean "not making them go to church and still letting them call their god Allah".
By "eradicating islam" they mean "manipulating governments to open their countries to other ("false") religions. Imposing your cultural values and eroding theirs (like, say, removing the laws forcing women to wear birkas). Imposing your laws and economic systems onto their countries, regardless of whether they think it'll actua
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
"Al Quada was successful because they were able to get sphisticated weaponlry and intelligence from the US. Who will back them now? Maybe china? maybe north korea? Maybe Iran? maybe somebody from south america? maybe even the russians? I am afraid too many countries hate us and would like to see us suffer. It could be anybody."
Even worse, who says it has to be anybody?
In the 80s intelligence and high tech weapons were expensive, and hard to obtain.
These days you can buy high-tech weapons practically off the shelf, hi-res satellite information is commercially available (hell, even for free) and you can sometimes even pick up an acquired nuke or two in the former USSR for a couple of million.
If the worst came to the worst I could almost see al Quaeda surviving on private donations (eg, through a website) and occasional large-scale robberies.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
...and let them get /.ed. They'll be down in minutes.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Thanks for pointing out the grandparent's idiocy
n/t
You are correct for all intents and purposes. But I should point out that if these groups ever stop struggling against the "other", they will shortly fight amongst themselves.
Heck, just look at all the infighting going on in Palestine right now. Civil war looms on their horizon.
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