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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.'"
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?
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.
I don't think they are shutting down, 'Voices of dissent.'
What they are doing is shutting down a conduit for the organization of groups whose purpose it is to kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government.
If all they were doing was 'voicing dissent' then most Western governments would allow that. It's when they go a step further, and start killing people, that it becomes a problem.
No reason to lie.
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
How about having the offending sites removed from the Wayback Machine? What if the significant content of these sites were posted to a popular forum, say Slashdot? Where will the big eraser hit next?
I believe the sites they took down were just propoganda sites, which IMO isn't incredibly significant. It's more of a visible, 'See, we are doing something.' I mean, it's entirely possible that some recruiting occurs online, but it's not likely to be a primary source.
Besides:
Never run for the train.
"The Anarchist Cookbook" book reviews seem to contradict your review
I believe Juanita
If you were suddenly confronted by a group of men brandishing guns, wouldn't your first thought be to get away? Especially if they were shouting at you in a foreign language?
These were not regular police officers in uniform, and they were understandably worried and probably as a result weren't as clear about who they were.
I wouldn't be surprised if in his panic he thought *THEY* were terrorists.
The irony is, apparently he wore the clothing to cover his equipment because he was afraid people would be suspicious of all the wires and such he was carrying (those being the tools of his electrician trade).
How do you know what those sites actually were about? I certainly don't.
Furthermore, "encouraging" violence is part of everyday political opinions: US politicians do it just about every day.
So, do you have a specific argument for how shutting down those sites is going to make us all safer? Because, a priori, restricting free speech and political discussion would seem to only strengthen the arguments of the terrorists.
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.
>> 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
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.
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.
How do you kill someone with a web site? Or is that classified?
I can't tell you who originally said this, but I agree whole heartedly, and I believe it answers your question quite well: "The most dangerous weapon in the world is a set of trained eyes and a radio."
Communication is a military neccessity--removing your enemy's ability to talk amongst themselves makes your job easier, and theirs alot harder.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
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.
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.
OMG! Someone who lives near someone who once did something evil dared to express moral outrage! Silence them at once! We must censor such unacceptable content!
Wrong is wrong, even if a less-than-moral person is the one pointing out that it's wrong.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Exactly. Clarke is right there.
Al Qaeda and most of its adherents are old-style "shoot 'em and blow 'em up" terrorists - no different and less sophisticated than most other groups thirty years ago.
The idea that they have some sort of advanced biochem/nuke weaponry is horseshit. They jack off to that stuff - they don't actually have any.
It's trivial to bring a city to its knees with some guns and some hand grenades - you just have to pick your targets and, most importantly, KEEP DOING IT. This business of pulling off one attack, then either not doing anything else for three years, or screwing up a second attack, just makes the first attack worthless.
Terrorism does not work unless it is CHRONIC. Look at Italy and Turkey in the 1970's - THAT was chronic terrorism and it nearly brought down the governments of those countries. Or the IRA in Northern Ireland.
The stuff done in Europe and the UK, let alone the one significant attack in the US, simply isn't on anybody's radar screen on a day-to-day basis.
Everybody's dancing around now because four bombs went off in London. Three months from now, nobody except the relatives of the injured and killed will remember it happened (and those relatives probably will get screwed out of any compensation they have coming by the bureaucrats in charge.)
Meanwhile, though, it will be used as an excuse to ramrod more laws giving the UK government control of everything. And the US will follow suit.
Look at the idiocy of starting random searches on the New York subway. Totally braindead. Nothing but CYA for the idiots running New York.
Anybody can walk into any crowded transit vehicle in the US with two hand grenades in jacket pockets, pull them out, pull the pins, flip the levers, say "Imshallah!" and toss them - and twenty people within twelve feet of him will die or be seriously injured. Get five guys to do that in New York - totally bypassing the cops (unless these guys really LOOK wacko) - and there will be no New York subway the next day. Do it on San Francisco's BART and cripple the city's transportation system for months.
As Rutger Hauer, portraying a "Carlos" type terrorist in "Nighthawks", said: "Remember - there is no security!"
There are only TWO ways to stop terrorism:
1) Find them and kill them BEFORE they act (only works for small, geographically concentrated groups.)
2) Remove the social and political reasons for their acts.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I also wonder if the original poster is correct, do "Western" governments have websites that advocate killing Muslims because they are Muslim? I suspect not. Certainly there are factions of "Westerners" that believe this, but my guess is their websites don't last long either. Hypocritical or not, al-Qaeda websites (or any websites) that advocate murder based on religious faith should be shut down.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
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.
Close. It's not quite that simple.
There's that whole "non-combatant" thing that screws up the curve and makes simplistic answers like the one you gave untrue. Patriots tend to know who non-combatants are. Terrorists don't know the meaning of the term.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
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.
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 Palestinians don't realize how lucky they are to have the Israelis as the occupying force in their land.
Your views sir, are to be frank, extremely odious and an anethema to decent human compassion. You need to take history lessons. Fast.
May the Maths Be with you!
Maybe this has already been done, and its intelligence gathering value is now outweighed by its usefulness to the bad guys. Or maybe the nature of the resource makes tracking the people who are talking problematic at best.
Unless, of course, you don't actually HAVE any information to back up your claims. So yeah, let's all have a big hurrah for this PR bullshit
I'm guessing you didn't RTFA. The British government isn't making some nebulous claims about terrorism--a newspaper is making the claim that:
- there were various websites affiliated with al-Qaeda,
- lots of them have gone dark, and
- all the information on the matter they've come up with points at the british government as the reason for item 2.
It never ceases to amaze me the conclusions people jump to, despite having no evidence of their conspiracy theories, and having access to information contrary to the idiocy they're spouting. For a good example, see all the "goddamn republicans!" posts in the "porn taxing" story further down the page. The tax in question is being pushed by a democrat, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone.What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Or maybe none of what you just said is true at all.
Indeed, this is quite possible.
You're ranting about conspiriacy theorists, and here you are, making shit up. I highly doubt you have a single shred of evidence to back any of that up.
You might not understand this, but in general when someone says "maybe this thing, or maybe this other thing" they are engaged in a process known as "speculation."
My whole point is this doesn't look like a real victory at all. It's probably bad because we're loosing sources of information, and we might be shutting down sites that we shouldn't be.
And this, of course, goes to the heart of why my speculation is far more likely than your "we are teh sux0rs!" ranting. Do you really think that our intelligence arms (and by "our" in this case, I mean "western intelligence assets engaged in tracking al-Qaeda") don't understand that reading the other guy's mail is a good thing? They have admittedly made mistakes in the past, but do you really expect agencies whose heritage includes the Magic and Ultra programs to not grasp this idea?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
No, to be a terrorist you have to put bombs in the subway or crash planes in buildings. It takes a little more than posting stupid comments.
I oppose Britain's involvement in Iraq! There. That should qualify it being a terrorist statement.
If one day the actual terrorists win, you won't have the opportunity to expose your lack of wits. So I guess it is a good thing to do it now, while you are still protected by these people you are bashing.
lucm, indeed.
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
I guess that tracking and shutting them down will not eliminate terrorism, but at least it might reduce its influence over weak-minded people.
lucm, indeed.
They shot him five times in the head while he was pinned down by two other officers. At that point he couldn't possibly have been a threat... it wasn't police trying to stop a potential suicide bomber... it was a simple execution.
If they thought he had a bomb, why did they let him board the bus when they were following him?
"Patriots tend to know who non-combatants are. Terrorists don't know the meaning of the term."
What difference does it make if you kill them anyway. I mean is it really that important that you feel sorry after you killed innocent civillians?
We bombed the shit our of fallujia twice knowing full well that there were going to be non combatants killed. The second time (according to the bbc) we destroyed 75% of the city. But I guess we are so morally superior to the terrorists because we know we killed non combatants and are sorry for it. Oh and we are so much morally superior then saddam because when he was trying to put down an insurgency he used chemical weapons to kill people. When we try and put down an insurgency we use conventional bombs to kill people.
Yup we are all sooooooo much better then those terrorists and saddam.
evil is as evil does
without the "killing civilians" bit
Unfortunately, we aren't without that bit, so I don't think the question of when the government might stop has much relevance here.
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.
Um.. The Stern Gang weren't terrorists?
Fact: 122 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 686 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000
Fact: 1,063 Israelis and 3,652 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000.
Fact: 7,361 Israelis and 29,000 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000.
This does not excuse terrorism. But that's not the point either. The point is that the Palestinians are at least as much victims of the situation as the Israelis, and your painting of Israel as the sole victim is blatantly false. This is due to US media bias.
The US media consistently reports more on Israeli casualties than Palestinian ones. (There is plenty of research on this, example) Non-US media is more even-handed. (wheras Arab media is strongly biased towards the Palestinian side.)
The international community is also far more critical of Israel's actions than the USA is, evidenced by the over 60 UN resolutions passed against Israel, many of which were opposed only by Israel and the USA.
I'm not agitating against the Israelis here. Israel exists and isn't going to go away, and the israelis certainly have a right to security. But it is impossible to draw the conclusion that Israel is blameless if you look at the situation in an unbiased way.
And the USA needs this more now than ever. The #1 greivance with the USA among Arabs (as shown in opinon polls) is not our religion, or our culture, or our support of their regimes, and certainly not our freedom.
Their #1 greivance is that they feel the USA has no compassion for the sufferings of their Palestinian brethern. This isn't true. I'm American and I'll say the Americans are just as compassionate as any other people out there. The problem is simply that people in the US don't know. Please. Do some in-depth study of the subject (i.e. don't just follow news reports). If you're in the US, get some non-US news. Try the BBC. Try Haaretz (which is more even-handed than most US media, despite being a major Israeli paper). Talk to Israelis and Palestinians. Go there, if you get the chance. (And I mean to Palestine as well.)
I have never been there. But I know 5 people who have (2 arabs, 3 non-arabs, none muslim, although that shouldn't be relevant). None of them condone terrorism. And none of them consider Israel to have any kind of moral high-ground.
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.
So someone in, say, Pakistan violates UK conspiracy laws on a website hosted in Pakistan. Big deal. They're not in the UK.
The UK does *not* have jurisdiction to enforce UK law abroad. I have a picture of my girlfriend and I holding hands on my website. This is illegal according to Saudi Arabian law; do the Saudi authorities have the right to take down my website?
Of course not.
A website "How to strike an European city" is not a means of two-way communication which could be observed. It's a way of gaining followers and giving them basic training in a cheapest way possible. Observing those websites won't give any new information to British intelligence, since they already know how one could plant a bomb in the Metro. Or, the designers of the website also know it is publicly available and could be observed, and won't include any information which should not fall into Western intelligence officers' ears. All they care is to reach those young frustrated males which are prime species for suicide bombings, and teach them a few things. Making this a little harder for them is a good policy. Protesting against that in the name of free speech is plain absurd, it's like complaining that the British government did not allow Nazi propaganda in the newspapers during WW II.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
It doesnt apply to everyone. For example the tabloid papers that printed satellite shots of "saddams WMD facilities" that incited support for the attack on iraq have not and will not be prosecuted. Neither will people like George Bush or Tony Blair who did their best to ensure the attacks were carried out.
If the police thought I arranged for someone to be killed regardless of whether it seemed good morally they would probably arrest and question me, if however you do the same on a grand scale and are the leader of the labour party they wont even bat an eyelid.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
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.
even i was baffled looking at the Intel connection. I know that article submitters sumbit it at no cost, but that doesnt mean the article should be titled this way.
Next article might be: AMD at Intel. (another mundane day at Intel).
101 tips to get modded up:
quote at the end: i dont care if u mod me down.....
"Form a frickin' army instead of blowing up school buses. What's so complicated?"
Are you kidding? The Israeli response to militant activity is to send in attack helicopters and destroy the police stations. Then they ask the Palestinian authority to better enforce their population. Israeli actions sometimes defy logic. I can't truly believe it but by their actions sometimes its almost as if they don't want peace.
Do you honestly think that even if they had the finances to do so, the Israeli government would allow the Palestnians to buy Tanks, helicopters, and aircraft?
HAHAHAHAHAHA! That really is laughable.
First off, who says it's definitely the British government? The article passes on one bit of unsubstantiated hearsay, with no references whatsoever, from unspecified "Israeli intelligence agents" (who could well be doing it themselves and looking to avoid consequences). Now I don't mean to come off as one of the tinfoil hat brigade, but that's hardly definite - the article makes the accusation then immediately veers off into discussions of who's being shut down and a philosophical discussion on whether technology helps or harms us more.
In addition if the Israeli intelligence agents knew damn well it was British intelligence, why would they go public confirming the suspicions of the people it was happening to? The British government and the Israelis are supposed to be on the same side in the War on Terror - they're needlessly shooting British intelligence in the foot. Slightly suspicious, to my mind.
Secondly, I'm as rabid a supporter of civil rights (and civil disobedience) as the next guy, but what exactly are you trying to say here?
"Well, without the "killing civilians" bit, I can think of any number of groups who would love to disrupt our society and bring down our current government. Matter of fact, I'm not sure that a few of them don't have the right idea."
Yeah, this is with the "killing civilians" bit, so that's completely irrelevant.
Unless you're also arguing for al-Quaeda's sovereign right to blow up whoever they want you've neatly sidestepped the actual question and reduced a complex, real-world issue into an unrelated black-and-white no-brainer that you happen to be on the "correct" side of. This is a variation of the straw man tactic, and it's intellectually dishonest.
Apologies if it was unintentional, but it's a common tactic (called "framing the debate") used by the Rebublican party and media in the US, and it makes the "framer" look like they've won while leaving the actual debate unresolved.
"Of course, the government would disagree; natural, really, having an interest in self-preservation. What is the threshold for shutdown, and how do we maintain transparency to ensure that the government isn't abusing the power to shut down non-violent (but strongly critical) sites?"
Now this is the actual debate. However, by bringing it up here you seem to be implying that it was unjustified in this case - do you believe so? And why?
Obviously, regarding freedom of information there has to be a line drawn somewhere - instructions on how to make plastic explosives from bleach should not be wrapped around the tablet dispensed to violent paranoid schizophrenics, for example.
Now, given no evidence whatsoever, you seem to be assuming that these websites were shut down by British intelligence, and wrongly at that. Nobody here has any idea what was on the websites, who was running them or exactly why they were shut down.
I'm not saying the sites weren't totally innocent, but isn't it slightly possible that (for example), British intelligence alerted the Pakistani authorities to actual, documented lawbreaking connected with these sites, and the Pakistani authorities then closed the sites themselves?
That seems much more likely to me than rogue British intelligence factions starting black-ops DDoS attacks on suspected (but actually innocent) foreign websites.
Of course, that doesn't mean they were justified, but nobody in the article or on this thread has a single piece of hard evidence that could offer a conclusion either way. And that makes which way they jump very interesting to watch.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
A group that is organizing with the intent to kill people. Ever heard of 'conspiracy?' ...
Here are some definitions for 'conspiracy.' ...
Hey, be careful with that list of definitions. I'm not saying I'm backing al-Qaeda or terrorism, but shutting down web sites under your definition of "conspiracy" leads to misuse. It just so happens that on US soil around 1776, some people met your definition. Except we called it a "Revolution" and/or "Independence":
It cuts both ways, man. The danger with giving up a little freedom (speech) to have a little security is that you quickly have neither.
Well, if I was on Britains side around 1776 I think that's about how I would describe it, yes.
Overthrowing the government isn't something the government should take lightly on, even if it worked out ok in this instance (I leave the debate about that to the trolls).
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
Hopefully you will see this as a key to the problem: Terrorists train in Pakistan, doing perfectly legal things like firing AK-47s and learning how to communicate secretly, then do a perfectly legal thing like fly to London, then do a perfectly legal thing like associate freely with one another. Then they all get on the Underground on July 7 and blow themselves up, murdering dozens of people, the majority of whom believed the war in Iraq was wrong.
I invite you to consider the difference between the following two statements:
Believe it or not, there are legitimate limitations on speech. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the right to free speech does not include the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. He went on to write "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."
Granted, that's about free speech in the United States, where for the most part any asshole can speak his mind, including me. But the right to free speech, here or anywhere, grants nobody sovereign protection to place a want ad that says "I will give a hundred thousand dollars to the first person who agrees to murder my billionaire husband."
September 11, 2001 and July 7, 2005, and March 11, 2004 show the flaw in honoring an international border that your enemy does not. It does not matter in what country it was said "I will teach you how to glorify God by detonating explosives with a cell phone" when 190 are killed in Madrid as a consequence. If there was a time when a criminal could stand across a border and shout "neener neener" at those whose countrymen he is about to kill, that time has ended, and I wholeheartedly endorse every effort to disrupt the enemy's lines of communication.
This is not my sandwich.
Yeah, and they're also shutting down one of our best sources of intel on an organization of groups whose purpose it is to kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government. So you'll forgive me if I'm not applauding this. (There's a saying about counterterrorism: every time there's a cheer in the J Edgar Hoover building, there are groans in Langley and Ft. Meade. I don't know if that's true in England, but I can imagine so, especially if they're doing stuff like this.)
All's true that is mistrusted
Dude, there wasn't any anti-semitic vitriol at all in that post. You however are a sterling example of why there is NEVER a balanced discussion of the problem in Israel because no one can even being to relate the Palestinian side of the story without someone like yourself SCREAMING ANTI-SEMITE and attempting to end the conversation.
Maybe you could make a case the King David Hotel was a military target but Deir Yassin most decidedly wasn't. I note you didn't mention it in your little rant, because you have selective memory. It was a case of Jews killing innocent women and children too.
You might also want to remember Sabra and Shatila in 1982. These were Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon where some of those who fled Jewish control of Palestine ended up. When Israel invaded Lebanon and gained control of these camps the IDF, in particular Ariel Sharon, intentionally let Christian militia in to the camp that they knew had a blood feud to settle with the Palestinians. The militia proceeded to massacre everyone in the camps over 36 hours, many women and children while the IDF sat outside and listened and ignored reports of what was happening inside. The number of dead is unknown the estimates range from 350 to 3500. It was massacre by proxy.
The key point here is that yes Palestinian terrorism is abominable, but so are all the instances when Israelis have killed innocent civilians and they have killed a lot of them over the last 60 years just like the Palestinians.
One thing I really can't stand are people who selectively choose to ignore all the atrocities their side commits, while they rant about the other side and call them animals for doing pretty much the same things.
@de_machina