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.'"

Comments

Who and How?

[gbulmash]

TFA doesn't discuss how the sites were shut down: whether this was a DDOS, the government got the hosts to yank them, or if the sites themselves were hacked somehow.

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

Re:Who and How?

[Transcendent]

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?

Yes, and yes.

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.

You don't think they can get ahold of 16-20 year old computer geeks who dwell in their parent's basement?

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.

They'll do it as long as the public doesn't lash out against it. They know revolutions happen.

Re:Who and How?

[USSJoin]

Frankly, it's much more likely that it was done by MI-5 or MI-6, the domestic or foreign intelligence services, respectively. TFA *does* point out that evidence points to the British government, even though it doesn't disclose methods. The advantage of the MI groups, just like our NSA and CIA (respectively the equivalents) is that they really don't need pesky little things like the "law" on their side. That's why the government set them up; to have a nice little veil of "reasonable deniability."

Re:Who and How?

[bigman2003]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[strider44]

You don't think they can get ahold of 16-20 year old computer geeks who dwell in their parent's basement?

Far more likely, I think they'd get hold of a 35+ year old's computers that they use for letter writing and browsing the web thing.

Re:Who and How?

[One Div Zero]

It's the government. They don't do efficient, cheap things like infect computers to make zombies.

If they did use a Denial of Service attack, I imagine they first bought all the computers they'd need, set them up, finished the DoS, then shut down and destroyed the computers.

Re:Who and How?

[DarkWolf0]

More then likely, it was done by MI-5 in my opinion. A good corelation is MI-5 being the FBI, and MI-6 being the CIA. The CIA is not "supposed" to be allowed to operate in the US, thus, they do not have to be burdened with some of the legalities that we do. And of course there is the reasonable deniability, because lots of stuff happen in the background that no public typically wants to see their government doing. Its not surprising that they shut down the sites either, because people are frightened, and at all levels of government and the military they are demanding a response *now* They have to be decisive if the government desires to show the people it can protect them. I wouldnt be surprised to see more things like this in the future. Heck, even France is supposed to be trying to(Or already has) expel 12 militant clerics from their country, so websites going down should hardly raise an eyebrow from a country that was actually hit.

Re:Who and How?

[olgrandad]

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:

Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia. "I have not seen any Al-Qaeda manuals that look like genuine terrorist training," claims Clarke.

Re:Who and How?

[Not The Real Me]

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?

All MI-5/MI-6 has to do is contact the ISP hosting the site. Or MI-5/MI-6 can contact the foreign gov't where the site is hosted and that gov't can tell the ISP to yank the site. Hacking or DDOS is not necessary. Afterall, ISPs are in the business of staying in business.

On another note, the best terrorist training manual is the American written "The Anarchist Cookbook".

Re:Who and How?

[rm3friskerFTN]

"The Anarchist Cookbook" book reviews seem to contradict your review

Re:Who and How?

[daniel23]

Right.

However, this being the Government the actual work is done by some sub-sub administrators. The task of destroying the computers is delegated to the authority in charge, lets call them the Office of Computer Disengagement.

They have some strict rules down there with regard to saving costs and taking good care of taxpayers money, so they delete the hd and sell the machines on auctions, ie. ebay.

Since they have some strict regulations re: decreasing their work force, too, they actual outsource the hd-deleting business to some private subcontractor run by the niece of some influential politicians wife. Well, it doesn't do much to lower the cost as that service is astonishingly expensive, but at least it's out-sourcing, right?

On the other hand, working with that "hd-deleting" business is a popular job with local folks as there are plenty of boxen, plenty of games and no control. Ever.

Which, by an unexpected turn of luck, leads to a /. story 3 months later listing all the fake uid/passwd combinations used in that particular action.

Home office starts a thorough investigation as soon as all the major papers report the incident, results will be reported as soon as available, thank you.

Re:Who and How?

[bigman2003]

A group that is organizing with the intent to kill people.

Ever heard of 'conspiracy?'

Without a law like this, only the 'trigger man' would ever be held liable for a crime, and other people could shield themselves.

No, the web-site didn't kill anyone, but they used it for planning and organizing.

Here are some definitions for 'conspiracy.'

• a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act
• a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot)
• a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[Guspaz]

You should RTFA. A quote from TFA:

One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be "moderate", remain.

Re:Who and How?

[mnemonic_]

On another note, the best terrorist training manual is the American written "The Anarchist Cookbook".
Have you ever even read it? It's over 30 years old now. It's all but useless if you already know that gasoline + fire = explosion. Directions on creating certain drugs are flat-out wrong. The sections on electronic communications disruption are particularly ludicrous this day and age.

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

"Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons"

I call bullshit on that one.

The last I heard, Al Qaeda was so technologically backward vis-a-vis bio weapons they were checking out seventy-five year old books on WWI from the library to read up on it. Hell, they'd have done better to simply run a Google search or order the Loompanics catalog for $10.

"How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions."

Yeah, right. You can order fifty books from Paladin Press or Loompanics that will give you "full technical instructions" on how to do exactly what any military manual will tell you (which is what most of those books are.)

In planning for my little terrorist spree, I just read perfectly legal books about what was done up to that point - books on the Italian Red Brigades, the PLO, the IRA, Baader-Meinhoff, etc. Then I extrapolated and used my imagination. If I had done even a tenth of the stuff I came up with, you'd have martial law and National Guard tanks parked on every street corner in the US by now, instead of a couple of towers getting knocked over three freakin' years ago - and not a single incident since.

This is media bombast and hype. It's fear-mongering to justify shutting down anybody who can in any way be connected to advocating violent overthrow of any government.

If Al Qaeda COULD do this stuff - other than just making bombs that don't work properly - they WOULD be doing this stuff - not making Web sites about it.

I call bullshit.

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

The "Anarchist Cookbook" is CRAP. And obsolete since it was written from cribbed notes from some Cuban course back in the Sixties IIRC.

There are plenty of much better books available.

Most of them are early editions of good ole US of A Army/Marine/Special Forces (and some British SAS) military manuals.

Pick up the Paladin Press catalog and learn.

Your basic point is correct, however - the Web sites are utterly irrelevant in "defeating" terrorism.

Shutting them down is just CYA bureacratic bullshit.

Re:Who and How?

[ryanov]

I think you'd have a bit of trouble defending the legality of this one.

Re:Who and How?

[JudgeFurious]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[swimmar132]

Newsflash: The guys who did the failed bombings in London recently weren't a part of Al Qaeda.

Re:Who and How?

[Lehk228]

Terrorists don't know the meaning of the term. sure, it means "target" to them

Re:Who and How?

[SA Stevens]

These "terrorists" will never be able to set up ANOTHER WEBSITE.....

Without well-known publicized domains for their 'followers' to connect to, they won't have a 'web broadcast' facility. As soon as a new website becomes prominent, it can be 'whacked' too.

The analogy to 'park benches' doesn't hold, because this action is just an attempt to smash the well-known park benches. Without 'common knowledge' park benches to meet at, communication breaks down.

Your last sentence rather tips your hand. Who cares about reason and accountability? SOMEONE IS CLAIMING TO FIGHT TERRORISM! ATTACK and RIDICULE them!

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

Irrelevant to my basic point, but correct.

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

Somehow, it think if we actually had PROOF, we wouldn't be shutting down sites at all, but monitoring them in order to track down ACTUAL PEOPLE.

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:

1. there were various websites affiliated with al-Qaeda,
2. lots of them have gone dark, and
3. 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.

Re:Who and How?

[artson]

"How about having the offending sites removed from the Wayback Machine?"

Umm, I just checked http://www.archive.org/ for www.mojihedun.com and they show zero entries.

Re:Who and How?

[flamingnight]

Try Recipes for Disaster from the CrimethInc Ex-Workers' Collective instead. Sure, there's no information on making drugs, but for real-world situations from direct action to silkscreen and guerrilla performances to reclaiming the streets, it's more than a valuable tool.

Re:Who and How?

[Linus Torvaalds]

No, the web-site didn't kill anyone, but they used it for planning and organizing.

Let's not be naive here. How useful would such planning and organising be to terrorists if the government was observing their communication?

I think it's reasonable to assume that if terrorists want to plan and organise, they can find methods of communicating with one another very easily.

Under that assumption, shutting down an observable communication point does one thing and one thing only: it removes your ability to observe the terrorists's communications. It doesn't stop them communicating. It stops you listening.

Re:Who and How?

[FLEB]

So... trackerless terrorism?

Re:Who and How?

[aidfarh]

If they did use a Denial of Service attack, I imagine they first bought all the computers they'd need, set them up, finished the DoS, then shut down and destroyed the computers.

You mean ... shut down and sell the computers via auction.

Re:Who and How?

[KwKSilver]

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.

Given that their motive is to conquer all non-Muslims and impose Sharia law world-wide-and what other goal has Islam ever had?-(see the amusements of the Taliban in Afganistan for a peachy example), I hope your set of solutions is incomplete. Fortunately, people other than you have been thinking about it, see, for example, this blog for one, or Daniel Pipes, for another, and even some really moderate and/or ex-Muslims over here.

Re:Who and How?

[theLOUDroom]

The analogy to 'park benches' doesn't hold, because this action is just an attempt to smash the well-known park benches. Without 'common knowledge' park benches to meet at, communication breaks down.

Actually, the way you put is hilarious! Yes, let's smash all the "well-known" park benches. The terrorists will never regroup.
I can't believe you're serious!


Your last sentence rather tips your hand. Who cares about reason and accountability? SOMEONE IS CLAIMING TO FIGHT TERRORISM! ATTACK and RIDICULE them!

It doesn't bother you at all that sites are being shut down with basically ZERO accountability and no meaningful description as to what's getting them shut down?
Do you live in Iran or something? Are dense?
The article doesn't ACTUALLY tell us who is shutting down what websites or why. How can you possibly support that?

And isn't it also interesting how you totally avoided my point about giving yourself away before you've arrested anyone.
If there are actual terrorists going to a website, and we know this, we should be getting the proper authorizations and trying to hunt down the ACTUAL PEOPLE.

Notice for example, that Israeli intelligence is being used as a "source" here. They noticed these sites disappearing. It couldn't possibly be that they were watching these sites and getting useful information, could it?

These guys should be after two things:
PEOPLE
MONEY

You could destroy every single line of communication tommorow. The people and the money will still be out there, they will set up new links, and next time it will be harder to find them.
In the end, you've only made the REAL job harder.

Of course, maybe we're not actually interested in the real job...

Re:Who and How?

[theLOUDroom]

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.

Or maybe none of what you just said is true at all. 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.

I'm guessing you didn't RTFA.

Actually, I did. The article doesn't ACTUALLY tell you who's doing what to who. It makes vague implications of yet another victory in the war on terror, but in reality, there's no proof of any such thing. Maybe you feel informed, but I assure you, there was very little ACTUAL information in that article.

So there I was responding to a post the says "Hurray! We're shutting down their communcations links." And you're calling ME the consiracy theorist!

ABOUT WHAT!

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.

Re:Who and How?

[ryanov]

I'm gonna go with "45,000 wrongs don't make a right."

Re:Who and How?

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

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.

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.

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?

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

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?

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

It doesn't bother you at all that sites are being shut down with basically ZERO accountability and no meaningful description as to what's getting them shut down?

Quite honestly, no, I don't. While I am opposed, in general, to the general sillieness that has resulted from "The War on Terra" (i.e. PATRIOT act, billions spent on absurd airport security measures, the Iraq war, etc) I do accept that the fight against al-Qaeda is a war, albiet one with rather nebulously defined fronts, and very limited objectives for our side other than "keep them from blowing our shit up."

The websites in question were, from the descriptions in the article, communications systems being used by the bad guys. This makes them legitimate military targets. If, in fact, this story is all smoke and mirrors, the website owners can certainly come forward and attempt to press their freedom of speech and/or the press cases (I'm not a Britton, so I don't know how this sort of thing works over there. Presumably, though, citizens--sorry, subjects--have some sort of recourse when their speech is shat upon by the powers that be.)

Re:Who and How?

[provolt]

Patriots and Terrorists are only the same for people who have absolutely no moral clarity. Here are three quick ways to tell them apart for the morally impared.

Patriots proudly stand up, say who they are and don't hide. Terrorits hide who and where they are.

Patriots target military assets. Terrorits target civilians.

Patriots fight to destroy oppressive governments. Terrorists fight to create them.

There are things that are done by people who claim to be patriots that are truly not patriotic. However, those with moral clarity are able to distinguish between the two. Apologist who lack the ablity to see the difference and claim that they are simply different points of view will forever be locked into a paranoid delusion.

Re:Who and How?

[Dyolf Knip]

So if the feds show up at your door tomorrow and haul you away with ZERO accountability (no charge, no attorney, no trial), you're ok with that too? Or are you just totally certain that bad things only ever happen to bad people as long as you wave your flag hard enough?

Christ, look at how many mistakes, lies, and abuses have been sent our way in the WoT, and you still happily take their word for it when they say, "It was a bad website run by bad men. Move along, nothing to see here."

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

"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.

Re:Who and How?

[KarmaMB84]

No, quite relevant since it was suggested that those failed bombs were indicative of al Qaeda's capabilities.

Re:Who and How?

[James_Aguilar]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[demachina]

Of course if you take this to the logical conclusion and you really want to accomplish this objective you need to stop all communication between everyone, except in approved government and military channels, because "they" are everywhere, "they" are behind every bush. How do you know that benign looking little web site over there isn't really an Al Qaeda front and they are just using code. There is a real shortage of Arabic translators in U.S. and British Intelligence so maybe to be safe you better just start shutting down all Arabic web sites. Of course then maybe Al Qaeda will start using English or French in code. Maybe better still you do what China does and create a great firewall so you can filter and monitor everything.

Bottomline is I fall in the camp that if they were really Al Qaeda website you would have been way better off cracking their codes and reading their mail. Starting a wave of censorship, based on unproven suspicion is just one of the classic signs of a government under attack by insurgents turning in to a repressive police state in a futile effort to counter the insurgency. The insurgents want that because they want the U.S. and Britain to turn in to unpleasant repressive police states, so the formerly free people there can get a flavor for what its like to live in the repressive places they grew up, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt keep their enemies from communicating too. Their definition of enemy is unfortunately a tad broad, they throw a wide net for their enemies. For example it includes anyone who happens to object to a repressive dictatorship or a corrupt monarchy. The definition of enemies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt apparently includes people who use the term "Freedom and Democracy". If you were to actually try to create a political party and run in elections against the powers that be there, you would probably have your ability to communicate amongst yourselves ruthlessly terminated.

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

So if the feds show up at your door tomorrow and haul you away with ZERO accountability (no charge, no attorney, no trial), you're ok with that too? Or are you just totally certain that bad things only ever happen to bad people as long as you wave your flag hard enough?

The post you responded to noted that I'm against the vast majority of what has been done in the wake of 9/11. Anyone in the US swept up as part of an anti-terror operation should most certainly have their right to a fair and speedy trial respected (or to a cout martial, depending on their status and alledged crimes.)

Christ, look at how many mistakes, lies, and abuses have been sent our way in the WoT, and you still happily take their word for it when they say, "It was a bad website run by bad men. Move along, nothing to see here."

Hold on there, sparky--I take anything said by the US (or in this case, british) government with a large grain of salt. However, "they" sure as hell aren't the ones I'm believing here. I'm taking the press report at face value, yes, until information to the contrary appears. Let's look at this rationally:

1. There are websites run by and for al-Qaeda for the purposes of communications and the spread of propaganda. I don't believe we need to debate this point, but feel free to offer opinion otherwise.
2. When identified, we can either use these websites as intelligence gathering tools, or shut them down. In this case, it appears the latter course of action was chosen.

Look, I consider myself to be a rabid supporter of civil liberties, but there's a point when you need to accept that something isn't a civil liberties issue, even though it technically meets the definition of "free speech." To use an analogy, it would be like suggesting that a communications tower set up during ww2 for the purpose of vectoring bombers counted as part of a "free press" or that armed foreign soldiers on US soil had a 2nd amendment right to bear those arms. The idea of either of the above being protected rights is absurd on its face--and as I noted elsewhere in this thread, if a mistake has in fact been made, the site owner can step forward and press his/her free speech/press case to the appropriate court--and I, for one, would strongly support their right to do just that.

Re:Who and How?

[Not The Real Me]

Do try and keep up with the times, Superman. You must still be using DOS 2.0

"Remember the Anarchist Cookbook CD-ROM has the Al Quaeda Training Manual as well as 26 different cookbooks from a variety of sources as well as specific directories on Drugs and the BOOMB collection. In addition it has a number of Military manuals of the Navy Seals and Special Operation Forces. See the Anarchy CD-ROM section for full details. "

[Index to the Anarchist Cookbook IV, ver. 4.14]

COOKBOOK.IV: Intro by Exodus

003: Making Plastic Explosives from Bleach, 007: Solidox Bombs, 010: Thermite Bombs (NEW Rivision, 4.14)
021: Napalm, 022: Fertilizer Bomb, 029: Under water igniters
031: Chemical Equivalency List, 033: Landmines, 046: Calcium Carbide Bomb
060: Portable Grenade Launcher, 061: Basic Hacking Tutorial I, 062: Basic Hacking Tutorial II
068: Jackpotting ATM Machines, 071: Mace Substitute, 076: The Myth of the 2600hz Detector
078: Napalm II, 079: Nitroglycerin Recipe, 084: Unstable Explosives
093: Phreaker's Guide to Loop Lines, 099: The Phreak File
108: Verification Circuits, 112: Cellular Phone Phreaking, 121: "Phreaker's Phunhouse"
122: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 27 (Intro to MIDNET), 123: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 27 (The Making of a Hacker)
124: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 28 (Network Miscellany), 125: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 28 (Pearl Box Schematic)
126: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 28 (Snarfing Remote Files)
127: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 30 (Western Union, Telex,
128: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 30 (Hacking & Tymnet), 129: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 3, Issue 30 (The DECWRL Mail Gateway)
131: Mercury Fulminate, 133: Nitric Acid, 135: Carbon-Tet Explosive
137: Reclamation of RDX from C-4 Explosives, 155: Phrack Magazine - Vol. 1, Issue 1 (The Phone Preak's Fry-Um Guide)
164: "Red or White Powder" Propellant, 166: European Credit Card Fraud (Written by Creditman!
170: Down The Road Missle, 177: Ripping off change machines 2
178: Lockpicking the EASY way, 179: Anarchy 'N' Explosives Prelude
180: Anarchy 'N' Explosives Vol. 1, 181: Anarchy 'N' Explosives Vol. 2
182: Anarchy 'N' Explosives Vol. 3, 183: Anarchy 'N' Explosives Vol. 4
184: Anarchy 'N' Explosives Vol. 5, 185: Explosives and Propellants
187: Chemical Equivalent List 2, 188: Nitroglycerin 2
189: Cellulose Nitrate, 190: Starter Explosives
193: Revised Pipe Bombs 4.14, 195: Ammonium TriIodide
196: Sulfuric Acid / Ammonium Nitrate III, 197: Black Powder 3
198: Nitrocellulose, 199: R.D.X. (Revised 4.14)
202: Picric Acid 2, 203: Bottled Explosives
205: Fuses / Ignitors / Delays, 208: Phone Bombs
209: Special Ammunition, 210: Rocketry, 211: Pipe Cannon 2
212: Smoke Bombs 4.14, 217: LockPicking 4
219: -* THERMITE 4 *- -- The BEST rev. to 4.14

Re:Who and How?

[steelfood]

Moral clarity is an illusion of moral absolutism. One simply cannot impose what one thinks (about anything) to anyone else. The concept of "civilians" being different from the "military" itself does not exist in every culture. And when one culture puts a hand into the happenings of another, the former cannot cry foul when the latter play by a different set of rules.

I'll humor you and accept the absolute distinction between civilian and military (the Swiss, for example, would not fall well into this categorization). The definition of patriot and terrorist have in fact, nothing to do with whom they attack, but the purpose of their attacks. Well, they really aren't mutually exclusive, but let's just redefine the two terms for a moment: patriots attack for love of the country; terrorists attack for hate of the country. While this intention results in primarily certain types of targets (military vs. civilian), it all depends on the country they are attacking. Both groups' objective is to see the fall of that country, and both groups, regardless of their intention, will use the most effective means of attack to bring about this downfall. For a free country, the most effective form of attack would be against the people, whom the government serve, because the people dictate the government. For a monarchy or another dictatorship, the most effective form of attack would be against the leaders, for nations under such systems of government would fail without an effective leadership.

OK, now, let's move the word "terrorist" back to its proper definition. A terrorist is one who incites terror in the civilian population. There are many things for people to be terrified of, the most profound of which is death. Terrorists however, do not necessarily need to incite terror by threatening death. If, for example, a society was more terrified of dictatorship than death, then it would theoretically be possible for one who threatens the society with dictatorship to be labeled correctly as a terrorist. For the most part, that's unrealistic and wishful thinking. People are scared of death. Period. People might be afraid of their own death, or of the death of others around them, but either way, it is still a fear of death. So terrorism has been associated with killing.

But if you think about it, a great many wars are a product of terror. Take the US Civil war. The South was afraid of having slavery abolished, and thus their way of life taken from them--more afraid, it could be said, than they were of death. And they fought for it. Well, they fought for the right to secede, but the purpose behind secession was slavery and their lifestyle. And well, everyone fought for their own reasons, but the reason for the war was this fear. So, by this definition, the North were terrorists (legally, but no one says that terrorism is illegal, only the effects of this terrorism, which more often than not, happens to be murder). But they were also patriots, who loved their country and did not want to see it split into two. So "terrorist" and "patriot" are not mutually exclusive. Of course, if you disagree with my definition of terrorism, please, by all means, clarify why terrorism is called terrorism and the difference between that and rebellion or guerrilla warfare.

Well, the debate between moral relativity and absolute can only be reduced to ad hominem attacks, since the views are pretty much mutually exclusive, or so either side perceives. Since you seem to fall in with the latter, let me ask this of you for the purposes of providing you a little bit of food for thought: If there is such a thing as moral absolute, what is right (and consequently wrong), and how do you know what you think to be right is actually right? Or to word it differently, whose version of "right" is absolutely right, and why?

Of course, the moral relativists have their own problems, but since it doesn't seem like you are one, there's no point in asking you to answer for them.

Re:Who and How?

[stephanruby]

Yeah, but France was never known for its civil rights or for protecting the right to free speech.

Re:Who and How?

[HiThere]

Umnh...
Do you have any evidence that the (unnamed) sites that were shut-down have anything to do with the killing of civilians?

I'll admit that it's probable, but since we don't know which sites were shut down, we are taking on faith that the targets were, in fact, reasonable targets. And recently, how much of what the government has been doing justifies taking ANYTHING they say on faith? (I'm not British, so that's an honest question. My opinion of my government is that it recognizes honesty, and resolutely faces away from it.)

Re:Who and How?

[HiThere]

Since the particular sites that were taken down have not been identified, you are taking the words of people known to be unreliable sources of public information as if they were truth.

The class of people to which I am referring is "government employees operating out of an intelligence agency". I can imagine other classes that could be constructed which would also be true, but that's the one I had in mind.

Re:Who and How?

[JudgeFurious]

So was FDR a "war pig"? Does he get a place in your list? How about ol' Winston Churchill? They led their countries during a war didn't they? They must be war pigs then right?

  All war is not terrorism and terrorism is not war. You have no idea what you are talking about. None.

Re:Who and How?

[Tony Hoyle]

The fact of the matter is that after the first set of bombings Britain immediately outlawed certain kinds of speech. Specifically any speech by a muslim which could be construed as an incitement to terrorism.

Wrong on two counts...

'Acts Preparatory to Terrorism' is a law that was already on its way through the system (and doesn't become law for a couple of months yet). It was planned long before the bombing thing happened.

The government simply can't make laws that fast. There is a process that has to be supplied.

The law is not targeted at muslims. That would be illegal anyway.. the law applies to everyone.

Re:Who and How?

[Tony Hoyle]

Al Queda basically translates to 'anyone vaguely arabic who blows stuff up' to the press.

Every time something happens they're all over it saying how they 'related' to Al Quaeda or 'used the same websites' (which could mean google FFS!!) or even worse 'have similar aims' (eg. blowing stuff up).

It's getting to the point many people questioning whether such an organisation actually exists or if it's just arabic for 'people who blow stuff up'...

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

Wow, telling the truth sure is costing me karma today, oh well I have some to burn...

"So was FDR a "war pig"? Does he get a place in your list? How about ol' Winston Churchill? They led their countries during a war didn't they? They must be war pigs then right?"

No they were not. A war pig is one that wages war for fun and profit. Iraq did not attack the US, George Bush is waging a war in Iraq for his own purposes (fun, profit, religion, who knows). It is a discretionary war and that makes him a war pig.

So in summary, if you are the agressor then you are a war pig. If you wage war against countries that have not attacked you then you are a war pig.

Now to drive the point home...

Saddam Hussein gassed a town to put down an insurgency thereby killing thousands of innocent people along with a few combatants in the insurgency.

George Bush bombed a town to put down an insurgency (twice!) thereby killing thousands of innocent people along with a few combatants in the insurgency.

So what's the difference? Saddam used gas, George bombed twice. Yup that's it. No other difference. they are both war pigs.

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

Oh one more thing..

Both FDR and Winston Churchill were leading their countries in war to defend against agressors. Neither one started the war, both of them were trying to protect their country against an agressive army intent on invasion. In this regard both of them can be compared to al-zarqawi. Sorry the truth is so hard to take but there it is.

Re:Who and How?

[kevlar]

Most (actually, I think all) of the major Middle-East and Pakhistani uplinks are provided by British companies. I'm sure they therefore have plenty of clout in shutting down these websites.

This of course would only be a reasonable explanation if the machines were hosted outside of Britain. If their within Britain, then it'd be much easier to get them shut down.

I'm surprised the Americans haven't already done this, but they probably would rather have their spooks sniff the connections that were made to the webservers to gather intel.

Re:Who and How?

[you_muppett]

"When we bombed the shit out of fallujia we were not destroying a military asset, we were destroying a city so in that case there is ZERO differnce.

Why do you think they went into Fallujia the way they did?

Possible answers:
1. They went into Fellujia because they thought it would be a good idea to kill civilians - good for increasing the support for going into Iraq in the first place, good because killing civilians is the reason we went to war, good because it increases the support the need troops on the ground from civilians
2. They went into Fellujia because they were hunting down 'soldiers' who did not surrender and who decided to use civilians as human shields.

Maybe there are other reasons, but if you think that it might be reason #2, then these 'soldiers' are military assets. *That* is significant difference between an army and a nation following 'moral' rules of engagement and terrorists who don't.

"There is no differnce between a war pig like Osama Bin Laden, a war pig like Saddam Hussein and a war pig like George Bush. They all wage war to get what they want, they don't care how many people die to get what they want."

I'm not a fan of Bush, but to say that there is no difference between Laden & Hussain and Bush shows you have lost your grip of reality.

Re:Who and How?

[Evil Adrian]

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.

Why is this amazing to you? This is Slashdot -- this site is infested with dumb fuckers!

Re:Who and How?

[anubis__]

>>or to a cout martial, depending on their status and alledged crimes

Just a minor thing, but service men and woman would be subject to a courts-martial. Prisoners of war are not subject to trial unless it is for war crimes. Enemy combatants are, seemingly, sometimes eligible for trial or indefinite detention. Enemy combatants should instead be eligible for civil trial, or the "war on terrorism" should be operated as any other war under the Geneva convention (and thus extend - in theory - certain protections to US service men and woman).

Re:Who and How?

[teh kurisu]

GCHQ is very well equipped to carry out this kind of operation. They can do all sorts of scary things.

The question of legality is in my mind entirely moot. Most countries have anti-spying laws, so by definition such organisations must operate outside the law.

Re:Who and How?

[you_muppett]

Btw, your liberal mates at BBC now call terrorists 'terrorists'" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1439288/p osts

Re:Who and How?

[stephanruby]

Patriots tend to know who non-combatants are.

No, we don't. Osama Bin Laden was working on our behalf when he was killing school children in Afghanistan (to root out the russians). Saddam Hussein was working on our behalf when he gassed his own people (with our own mustard gas). The world was outraged at the time and the US protected Iraq from receiving repercussions for its actions and actually loaned it an additional one billion dollars just after the massacre.

As to the non-combatants deaths in Iraq, the Patriots you speak of don't know and don't want to know about the non-combatants deaths in Iraq (unless they were committed by the terrorists). The news shows you watch and the newspapers you read don't try to ask those questions and don't try to show you those victims (again, unless those victims were killed/maimed by terrorists).

In Falujah also, we didn't know who were the terrorists and we didn't know who we had to kill, but we destroyed the city anyway just to show the other cities what could happen to them if we lost control.

In many ways, the US may not like to use terrorism, afterall it doesn't like the bad press. But it will use indiscriminate terrorism and extreme fear if it can not reach its objective another way. It has done this in the past and it's currently doing this right now.

Re:Who and How?

[sumdumass]

But Britan never had freedom of speach. They were allow the freedom of speach but there is nothign specificaly allowing it. Conspiracy or not, they don't even need a law to be broken to stop speach.

There is no constitutional provision, no charter of rights or anyhting of the sort in england that protects the freedom of speech in any way. In the US and many other places there are. This is not to say that speech cannot be limited in these areas either. Already you are not allowed to make speech that will cause harm or violence. As it stands now if you yell fire in a crowded theater your (hit)gone. If you make a speech calling for the heads of some other people and someoen actualy injures them because of that, you are (hit)gone.

Does this mean that terrorist have already won? I don't think so. Or at least not to the degree you imply. Yes your percieved freedom has been limited because of their actions. No this freedom didn't exist in the first place, it just wasn't gone after. I would say that if there is realy somethign bad about this, it would be it took inocent people getting killed and several other fearing for thier lives before someoen had the balls to do what should have been done in the first place. It is one thign to call for the fall of a country, company, governmetn, or some form of coruption ect.. It is another thing to do so in a many that takes the lives of incoent civilians.

If all they went after were the police and military or governmmental personel, i could agree with you more. These terrorist are nothign more then a hate group like the american KKK who are attempting to get the attention of the governments they have a problem with by killing someone that has no say in the policies thier objecting to in the first place. Countries like spain gave them the impression that these tactics work. It is a pointless exercise to kill incocent civilians who are doing nothign more then trying to make a living. They have no say in the matter.

Freedom of speach wasn't designed to protect polular opinion but it wasn't design to protect people trying to comit murder by inciting violence with thier speech either. The concept of free speech exists but in england there is nothign to guarentee it as well as there shouldn't be anyhtign anywere protecting speech designed to murder someone.

Re:Who and How?

[stephanruby]

How about having the offending sites removed from the Wayback Machine?

If you ask nicely, the way back machine and google will remove anything personal of yours that is on their server.

For something like that especially, since it involves the government and their national security, I'll bet that it wouldn't require more than an email from a government official to have both of those organizations take down those materials.

Re:Who and How?

[timmarhy]

let me ak you this, and consider it seriously. in this day and age, if you were muslim and ran a website that put forward views that were pro al-qaeda, BUT you never actually engaged in any illegal activites or corrispondence with criminals, would put up your fucking hand? you wouldn't get a fair trial, you wouldn't get anything but a one way card to jail without any hope of escape. this is how it begins.

Re:Who and How?

[MoneyT]

Bottomline is I fall in the camp that if they were really Al Qaeda website you would have been way better off cracking their codes and reading their mail.

This line of reasoning amuses me. So if it's a real enemy, shutting it down is bad cause censorship is bad, but hey, violate right to privacy all you want.

Re:Who and How?

[Entropius]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[RWerp]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[uprock_x]

There are websites run by and for al-Qaeda for the purposes of communications and the spread of propaganda. I don't believe we need to debate this point, but feel free to offer opinion otherwise.

There is no 'al-Qaeda' as I understand it, it's like closing down warez sites; there is no 'Organization of Warez' run by one mastermind. But there are too sides to the propaganda. I would call 90% of coverage on the WoT in the mainstream media as fairly worthless propaganda, I don't see anyone saying let's close down Fox and the BBC. Of course I'm not saying these alleged aq sites are great sources of unbiased information with good intent, I'm sure they are not, but if propaganda were a crime Slashdot would be locked up with the key thrown away some time ago.

When identified, we can either use these websites as intelligence gathering tools, or shut them down. In this case, it appears the latter course of action was chosen.

Yeah but there is no 'we', you are not participating in the decision. Remember Bliar sees other issues as a slippery slope; notably criticism of the US and Israel. So who will be next ?

I consider myself to be a rabid supporter of civil liberties, but there's a point when you need to accept that something isn't a civil liberties issue

In this case shutting web sites down is an easy gesture to present to a Murdoch zombified population that their government is 'doing something'. But censorship typically creates more problems than it solves and has backfired before with regards terrorism.

Re:Who and How?

[inode_buddha]

Yep. I read it when it was new, and ya know what? That guy made a lot of bucks off of CRAP.

Re:Who and How?

[eyeye]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[Linus Torvaalds]

A website "How to strike an European city" is not a means of two-way communication which could be observed.

Of course it is. Their browsers ask for a particular resource, the website sends it to them. That's the way HTTP works. During this transaction, you can observe many things - IP address, which you can use to track down the computer they used to view the website, the time of day, giving clues as to whether they have a full-time job or not, their default language, which tells you their ethnic background, and so on.

That particular website is an example of a website that can be subverted. Alter the bomb-making instructions so that the recipe blows up in their faces. Voila, you don't even have to go to the bother of hunting them down and sending them through the justice system. Or put a few trojans on the website, gaining access to their computers.

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.

You really think a terrorist can't figure that out for himself?

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.

What kind of information would be harmful if terrorists could communicate it, but shouldn't fall into Western intelligence officers' ears?

Protesting against that in the name of free speech is plain absurd

I never said anything about free speech. I think it's a bad idea because it's counter-productive, not because it's an infringement upon their rights.

Re:Who and How?

[TheDracle]

Do you actually know that 'all' of the sites that were shut down were related to terrorist groups? It seems to me that without due process, any entity is subject to attack and censorship.

      The article mentioned sites related to the creation of chemical weapons. It is indeed a slippery slope from there, to censoring the mentioned American Millitia sites, because they contain information related to the creation of weapons.

      I suppose arguments could also be made that the propegation of PGP and other encryption techniques could also call for censorship, since they may very well be used by terrorists. The United States already attempts to practice by restricting the distribution of certain levels of encryption in certain countries. This could go right along with hacking information, and a myriad of all different types of information.

I would like to see some kind of due process before I see any government entity shut down a source of information.

Re:Who and How?

[BobTheLawyer]

Why do you think a judge can issue an order authorising a DDOS on grounds of national security? There is no provision in the Computer Misuse Act for such an order to be made, and no other legal authority that could be relied upon.

You and the parent are also assuming that it would be against English law for a person in the UK to hack or DDOS a foreign website. This is not necessarily the case.

Re:Who and How?

[Jugalator]

Communication is a military neccessity--removing your enemy's ability to talk amongst themselves makes your job easier, and theirs alot harder.

A web site is a luxury a military organization definitely can be without, and many even don't even want to have, and far from a neccessity.

Re:Who and How?

[Xrikcus]

I think the more obvious answer is that the logic leads to one place only, and that is that the war in Iraq (and similar conflicts) are immoral. It was not a lessening of terrorism but bringing so called "Patriotism" into what one might consider its true light.

Or so I read it anyway, not sure I agree though...

Re:Who and How?

[Xrikcus]

Why do patriots stand up and say who they are? Did the French resistance in WWII stand up and say who they were? Would you consider them patriots? Surely a patriot only stands up and says who he is because his country is backing him, by definition a terrorist does not have that backing (although I suppose you could argue that in the circumstances the French resistance were terrorists).

Patriots fight to destroy oppressive governments? That really depends on the circumstance, doesn't it, you're just talking from a position of moral high ground because in the Iraq situation the terrorists are clearly particularly unpleasant people... not all terrorists by definition want to create oppressive governments though, often they just want their own government back.

It is possible to have too much moral clarity, I'm sure the terrorists do. It takes much more decency to consider the flaws in your own moral judgements than to make judgements of others.

Re:Who and How?

[arivanov]

Objection your honour.

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.

Re:Who and How?

[maxpublic]

Patriots fight to destroy oppressive governments. Terrorists fight to create them.

In the United States, a patriot is someone who stands up and defends the Constitution against anyone and everyone who would abuse it - including the government, if the government was one of the abusers. In fact, anyone who didn't stand up for the Constitution, or who actively argued against it, would properly be labeled a "traitor".

Max

Re:Who and How?

[Belisarivs]

You might have a point if it weren't for the fact that we had surrounded Fallujia for weeks, shouting at the top of our lungs for people to get the hell out. It was widely suspected that a good many of the fighters actually escaped along with the majority of the populace.

Re:Who and How?

[jdfox]

There's a certain visceral satisfaction in seeing advocates of hate and violence silenced...

Bush told Bob Woodward:
"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defence of our great nation."

Who's silencing Bush? His website is still up.

Re:Who and How?

[MichaelSmith]

There's a certain visceral satisfaction in seeing advocates of hate and violence silenced

Probably more useful to get information on the people providing content for them. Rather than taking the sites down the police should be quietly taking control of these servers and backtracing the social networks behind them.

Chances are there won't be anything hi-tech like anonymous http proxies in use here. This should be (and presumably is) a good source of intel.

Re:Who and How?

[r3voluti0n]

Moral clarity? What does moral clarity have to do with it? If bombing the shit out of two different other countries in response to having a much milder dose of the shit bombed out of your country is moral clarity, then I'm pleased to opt out of it. Everyone's a patriot for their own little cause, when two causes intersect then you have a whole load of moral dilemma. So patriots proudly stand up, say, in the cockpit of a plane 22000 feet up, and hit a button, which is just so much more morally clear than flying another plane into a building. Civil liberties died on S/11, welcome to the new facism, able to take down offending lines of thought and inquiry with a single denial of service.

Re:Who and How?

[Shaper_pmp]

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.

Re:Who and How?

[James_Aguilar]

I don't have evidence, but I tend to believe that governments that want to be reelected don't shut down honest websites. It's possible that my taking things on faith like this is a fault, but, as you said, it seems most probable that the government was doing it to protect its citizens.

Re:Who and How?

[brainburger]

Patriots tend to know who non-combatants are. Terrorists don't know the meaning of the term.

What an extraordinarily sweeping statement! - Do you suppose the IRA (not that I approve of them), took no care to restrict its attacks to 'legitimate targets'? - Even though they failed to do that, plenty of times?
Or how about the not-very selective bombing of cities (by all sides) in WW2?
Having said that, this recent batch of fighters are less selective than most, but their goal isn't to attack the military power of the west, but to scare tourists and stir-up race hatred.

Re:Who and How?

[Jim Hall]

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":

• a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act {such as, to overthrow British rule over American colonies}
• a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot) {such as, to overthrow British rule over American colonies - which was illegal under British law}
• a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose {such as, to overthrow British rule over American colonies - which was illegal under British law}

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.

Re:Who and How?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't think this "war on terror" has led to the death of a lot of innocent people at the hands of the "legal" side, you are clueless.

One minor little detail that you "conveniently" left out of your definitions - terrorists intentionally target innocents, soldiers don't.

Every war leads to the deaths of innocents on all sides, even the deaths of innocents not on any side. Always has, always will. Get over it.

What you're proposing is no war for any reason ever. That is insanity. Sometimes ya gotta fight. It's better to kill a few innocents than roll over and let the bad guys win. Grow up.

Re:Who and How?

[Bwerf]

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).

Re:Who and How?

[mbbac]

What a bunch of morons! They shut down sites that probably led or could lead to some of their most valuable intel. So, they've caused their foe to become even more invisible.

They should really hire Pierce Brosnan back, they've gone downhill since letting him go.

Re:Who and How?

[theonetruekeebler]

The UK does *not* have jurisdiction to enforce UK law abroad

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:

• "Abortion is wrong and should be stopped."
• "Abortion is wrong and should be stopped by murdering the doctors who perform them. Here are the home addresses of ten doctors who perform abortions:"

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.

Re:Who and How?

[XchristX]

>terrorists intentionally target innocents,soldiers don't

An odd statement to make in the defense of the British, whose 'soldiers' have committed more acts of genocide than the Reich, Khmer Rouge and Hutus put together,

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

Prisoners of war are not subject to trial unless it is for war crimes.

Yes, I understand that--hence, "depending on their status and alledged crimes."

Re:Who and How?

[instarx]

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.

I get your point, but it isn't really accurate. A good example is the non-combatant civilian killed by the police in the London Underground. Also, I am sure the IRA thinks of itself as patriotic organization, but they have killed hundreds of non-combatants.

And let's face it, the Iraqi insurgents consider themselves patriots fighting an occupying army, and they kill indescriminantly with their bombs.

I think al-Queda recognizes non-combatants (although their definition is very different than ours), but from their position of weakness they could never fight army to army. This is the way it has always been when the weak fight the strong. Their only hope for success is to fight unconventional war and accept the innocent lives lost as acceptable to acheiving their goals. It isn't that al-Queda does not recognize that there are non-combatants, they target them. It is the only way to effectively use the their limited power.

Before I get blasted, I'm no al-Queda apologist. I think terrorists of that ilk should be hunted down, tried and executed. But using 'patriotism" of itself as a separator between ourselves and our enemies is meaningless. The Nazis were patriots, so clearly patriotism can be a very bad thing. What is important are the ideals of the country of which you are a patriot.

Re:Who and How?

[elrous0]

I would offer a different definition of terrorist:

Someone who intentionally targets civilians in attacks designed to terrorize government(s) and/or their citizenry.

For example, the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon and Pearl Harbor were not terrorist actions (acts of war, certainly, but not acts of terrorism). The attacks on the WTC were acts of terrorism.

And while soldiers kill civilians too, the difference is that the terrorists are specifically TARGETTING them. The military generally hits them either through negligence or in the process of trying to hit legitimate targets.

-Eric

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

A web site is a luxury a military organization definitely can be without, and many even don't even want to have, and far from a neccessity.

We're not talking about the 101st airborne here, we're talking about insurgents trying to talk to each other--and to spread propaganda. In that case, a website becomes a very important tool for a military organization.

Re:Who and How?

[Theatetus]

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.

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.)

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

let me ak you this, and consider it seriously. in this day and age, if you were muslim and ran a website that put forward views that were pro al-qaeda, BUT you never actually engaged in any illegal activites or corrispondence with criminals, would put up your fucking hand?

As noted in TFA, those sites are still up. However, I do agree with you: If I were living in the UK and an al-Qaeda supporter, no, I probably wouldn't want to attempt to press my rights. I am, however, unconvinced that your pronouncement "this is how it begins" is correct--while we have seen encroachment upon civil liberties as part of "the war on terra," it's debatable whether pressing the enemy's viewpoints in time of war actually falls under the umbrella of "free speech."

A good example of this would be Tokyo Rose, who was an american citizen tried and convicted of treason by the US following the second world war. British law may work differently, though.

Re:Who and How?

[Tekzel]

If ever there was a troll, this be it.

Re:Who and How?

[debraj]

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. If this had not happened, the Hamburg group might have ended up as cannon-fodder in Chechnya.

Re:Who and How?

[robertjw]

Your post reminds me of this quote:

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist (1939) (1894 - 1977)

Re:Who and How?

[joxeanpiti]

Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons.

Please, any probe of they were this kind of information? I have one prove of this site doesn't exists and were not exists: go to www.mojihedun.com or search in google and/or yahoo the word "mojihedun". You will only found the same note as you publish in the (Surprise!) www.timesonline.co.uk publication.

However, Islamic sites believed to be "moderate", remain

And what sites thinks the UK Governments are "moderates"?

Re:Who and How?

[magarity]

the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon and Pearl Harbor were not terrorist actions
 
The civilians riding on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon were quite terrorized, I assure you. And it's news to me that Pearl Harbor attacked on 9-11; what happened there?

Re:Who and How?

[mfrank]

Bzzzt, wrong, please play again.

England declared war on Germany in WWII. So, by your definition, Churchill *is* a war pig.

Re:Who and How?

[MrVelvet]

me thinks you need more bran in your diet...

Re:Who and How?

[3nd32]

"One simply cannot impose what one thinks (about anything) to anyone else." Since you aren't referring to what is possible when you say "cannot", as history has demonstrated one most definitely is capable of imposing what one thinks, you must mean it is morally wrong. Who are you to say that imposing my morality is morally wrong? My culture is just different from yours! Be more open-minded! Stop trying to shove your views on morality down others' throats! (sorry, couldn't resist being sarcastic)

Re:Who and How?

[Entropius]

We have a term for violating another country's sovereignity to enforce your own laws: act of war.

If someone is standing over border threatening your countrymen, and the other country won't apprehend them or allow you to cross the border and apprehend them, then you certainly have the ethical right to do something about that -- with the awareness that you've stepped outside the bounds of law to do so. In many cases protecting life is more important than respecting law (Afghanistan, October 2001); almost by default, (non-civil) war is a non-lawful procedure.

However, when Clinton fired cruise missiles into Afghanistan at terrorist training camps (which I supported!), he committed an act of war. This had nothing to do with concepts like "criminal liability"; this was blowing people up, without a trial, because you think you're sufficiently safer with them blown up.

Likewise with destroying websites hosted in a country without said country's permission: you're destroying property in another country, without the blessing of applicable law. Maybe it's justified, maybe it's ethical, but it's not legal. Neither is it necessarily illegal (unless international treaty or the laws of the aggressor forbit it), for war is beyond considerations of law.

Re:Who and How?

[Lord Flipper]

The military generally hits them either through negligence or in the process of trying to hit legitimate targets.

Not quite as simple as that.

US military, onboard (meaning 'in the field', rear support, helis and jets, etc), targeting and warfare management computing programs all employ the use of 'civilian' kill rates, which are very flexible, in terms of 'weighting', depending on the mission, and other imperatives.

"Targeting" factors are interesting. The US also includes things like "How long (in seconds) has enemy been observed to be able to deploy gas masks, etc." Hmmm...

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

How useful would such planning and organising be to terrorists if the government was observing their communication?

Depends if said government is interested in doing anything to stop then. It's not uncommon for governments to sponsor terrorists or to see to use terrorist attacks for their own ends.

Re:Who and How?

[Guuge]

You mean they're playing to emotions in the wake of a national tragedy? Oh my god, I'd never have expected that from a news organization. You've totally uncovered the liberal media conspiracy.

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

Well, I do not know if the European convention on human rights has stipulations on what is and what is not protected speech, but Web sites used for communication between terrorists for terrorist activities is not protected speech according to U.S. law.

In practice it would probably depend on if the US Government supported the terrorists and/or their aims. It would be suprising if the UK Government were any less hypocritical.
Even with the "war on terror" it isn't hard find terrorists which are apparently ignored. Often combined with a reluctance on the part of the MSM to apply the term "terrorist" to people who arn't either Arab or Moslem. (Wonder if any websites supporting Dr Baruch Goldstein are hosted in the US or UK.)

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

One minor little detail that you "conveniently" left out of your definitions - terrorists intentionally target innocents, soldiers don't.

In the real world things are a lot less black and white. Not only are plenty of weapons so indiscriminate that they can hardly be called "targeted". It isn't hard to find cases of "terrorists" specifically targeting police, soldiers or even other terrorists. Nor is it hard to find examples of "soldiers" deliberatly killing civilians. Then you have "special forces", who are soldiers who's job can include killing civilian political leaders. Then you have militiamen acting against an occupying army...

Re:Who and How?

[the gnat]

Unfortunately, we aren't without that bit, so I don't think the question of when the government might stop has much relevance here.

Yes, but there are other sites that advocate pretty much the same stuff, except not from an Islamist perspective. The Maoist Internationalist Movement comes to mind; their website openly sneers and human rights and defends Stalin's purges. They'd happily put me in front of a firing squad or in a Siberian gulag. Or there's the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, diehard Shining Path partisans, whose website is run from Berkeley (where I live).

But are these assholes still online? Yup. Would I have it any other way? Nope. I don't see a point to censoring al Qaeda's web presence (or the Stalinists'); I'd prefer we combat them in meatspace. With napalm, ideally.

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

Communication is a military neccessity--removing your enemy's ability to talk amongst themselves makes your job easier, and theirs alot harder.

Removing one communication channel isn't a good way to go about this. Indeed cutting a communication channel isn't likely to be effective since even if you have disrupted an important channel they know to "switch to backup". If you've disrupted an unimportant channel then you havn't even caused them too many problems.
The smaller and less organised the entity in question the easier a radical, but secure, change in communication is likely to be.

Re:Who and How?

[demachina]

"reading their mail" was a bad choice of wording. These are public web sites, I just meant watch everything posted on them, and maybe worst case watch who is looking at them on a regular basis. You aren't exactly violating anyones privacy when you are monitoring very public web sites.

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

There is a real shortage of Arabic translators in U.S. and British Intelligence so maybe to be safe you better just start shutting down all Arabic web sites.

Maybe they should either learn Arabic or employ people who know it. It's not as if they had this problem with Russian or German...

Bottomline is I fall in the camp that if they were really Al Qaeda website you would have been way better off cracking their codes and reading their mail.

Then moving on to infiltartion and subversion.

Starting a wave of censorship, based on unproven suspicion is just one of the classic signs of a government under attack by insurgents turning in to a repressive police state in a futile effort to counter the insurgency.

Such an action by a government could create an environment where a fair number of citizens want to overthrow the government :)

Re:Who and How?

[HiThere]

I feel that in each individual case "it is most probable" that the government is acting honestly, as they see it. Unfortunately, this tends to imply that if there are a number of individual cases, some of them are likely to have been done for motives that even the government doesn't see as honest.

This is why government actions need to be open to public oversight.

Re:Who and How?

[TheDurkinBoy]

"...kill civilians, disrupt society, and bring down the current government" describes UK and US foreign policy for at least the last 70 years. That's the problem with filling the role of global policeman. Dumb idea.

Re:Who and How?

[theonetruekeebler]

With destroying websites hosted in a country without said country's permission: you're destroying property in another country, without the blessing of applicable law.

I'm not convinced that any government's sovereignty was violated, or for that matter that there is any applicable law in the circumstance.

Here are some possibilities:

• British Intelligence successfully hacked and destroyed the web sites, whose admins decided faith is just as good as backups.
• Whatever country they are hosted in agreed to order the sites shut down.
• Instead of being destroyed or taken down, they have been blacklisted at the switch.
• Al Qaeda forgot to renew its domain registration.
• The servers were crashed by an irate third party.
• The servers crashed all by theyselves because the admins were too busy hatin' to RTFM.
• They forgot to pay their Microsoft licensing fees and Microsoft DRM'd them.
• They got TOS'd for advocating violence.

As for using cruise missiles to knock out terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan: That was in reaction to an act of war. Two acts, actually: Those camps were used by the terrorist organization that bombed two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. The host country's government was utterly complicit (and repeatedly said they would never hand over the terrorist leader), so on August 20, 1998, we blew up the camps, and we were well-justified in doing so.

Re:Who and How?

[Guspaz]

Please, any probe of they were this kind of information?

Huh? Make sense man.

I have one prove of this site doesn't exists and were not exists: go to www.mojihedun.com or search in google and/or yahoo the word "mojihedun".

You didn't look very hard. Your google search should have pointed you to "mojahedin", which produces many results. There are various very similar names for the group. It's a militant Iranian group.

You will only found the same note as you publish in the (Surprise!) www.timesonline.co.uk publication.

Umm, I'm not the author of the article. I didn't publish anything. See my previous note on this. It's not my fault the author of the article can't spell.

And what sites thinks the UK Governments are "moderates"?

I don't know, why don't you ask them. I'm not a UK citizen, let alone the UK government.

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

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.

One of the most popular of these conspiracy theories involves a global terror network, with a very boring name, lead by a Saudi exile. This "base" appears to be assumed responsible for just about every act of terrorism in the 21st century. Even in the absence of any (credible) evidence or where evidence pointing to other entities is present.

Re:Who and How?

[mpe]

There is no 'al-Qaeda' as I understand it, it's like closing down warez sites; there is no 'Organization of Warez' run by one mastermind.

The problem is do the "intelligence" people actually understand this? This is neither the "cold war", nor some global conspiracy from the plot of a cheap thriller.

Yeah but there is no 'we', you are not participating in the decision. Remember Bliar sees other issues as a slippery slope; notably criticism of the US and Israel. So who will be next ?

Placing any state above critique is a bad idea. Even one with sane and rational leaders.

Re:Who and How?

[jacekm]

Assuming, that the webistes taken down were abroad, any British judge does not have much jursidiction over this, so it really doesn't matter what is his order. It is probably much more important to have an advice from a lawyer that specializes in international law. Attacking foregin website by the British is probably illegal, but the problem is that the people and organizations who maintain those sites will have a difficult time to win a lawsuit in the international court. Any type of lawsuit would force them to reveal some of the secrets of the organization and that probably would cost them much more than the moral win of any lawsuit. I bet the intelligence community would like to know names of the people who are involved in maintaining those sites. The biggest risk taken here is that other governments might justify this type of action in the future. Imagine Chinese government attacking websites located in US or Europe devoted to democracy in China. The Israelis definetly did not do that. That would be very naive assumption since it is against their national interests. - First, Israel practically is not a target for AlKaida, so there is really no important reason to attack AlKaida with the scarce resources that they have and reveal to their most dangerous enemies that they have such capabilities. In all recent AlKaida terrorism actions there were wery little if any Palestinian Arabs involved. - Second, AlKaida targets West which makes the West natural Israeli allay in the struggle with extremists. - Third, Arab terrorism convieniently turns world public opinion against Arabs. - Fourth, Arab terrorism turns world media attention away from Palestinian issue. - Fifth, any attack in Europe, "hopefully in the future", in countries such as France or Germany actually helps Israelis, since European countries are usually not symphatetic to Israel in its struggle with Palestinians. I'm not suggesting, that they are not going to warn the West if they knew something about coming attack. What I'm trying to say, is that the terrorist attacks will take place many times in the future and from Israeli point of view it is important that they happen anwhere but in Israel and preferably in the countries that are not symphatetic to the state of Israel. It would be naive to assume that the Israel is going to devote it's intelligence resources trying to save every country and every person against islamist terror. - Sixth, tracking those websites probably allows for more intelligence on militant extremism, that shutting them down. It is the same mechanism as with Osama cell phone. Until we did kept it secret that we can track his cell phone from satellites we were able to listen to some of his conversations and gain some intelligence. Now we don't even know where he is and how he communicates with his troops. All those reasons above are somewhat or even very cynical, but in the world of secret services and national intelligence the "moral" standards are not the most important factor. National interest and effectiveness is what counts. Remeber Rainbow Wrrior ? JM

Re:Who and How?

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

I do not have any data about the shutdown of these sites save for that which was in the article. I do think it's within the realm of plausibility that it was organized, if not executed, by the British government (or any number of others), but I'm not actually accusing them of doing it. As you say, I was "framing the debate," but I intended no nefarious purpose; rather, I was trying to create context for my question, which I reproduce here:

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?

To that, I would also add "should they be shut down at all?" Such information is trivially easy to find for anybody with access to a University library (read: nearly anybody) and a high-school understanding of chemistry and map-reading. I, myself, know how to make a few different explosives: black powder (I shoot and hunt with muzzleloading rifles, and though I prefer to buy my powder pre-made by Goex, I know how to make it), ANFO (I know people who grew up on farms, and blasting stumps is pretty common), or even simpler explosive devices like...a full gas can. Any number of other explosives can be found and synthesized with information from a good chem book, or certainly university-level chemistry materials. Almost every city of significant size in the US (I don't know about Britain or the rest of the world) has a university, and many public libraries stock good science selections as well. The point is, such information is trivially available; should the government ever have the power to shut down a site for saying something it doesn't like?

If we accept that such power should be granted by the citizens (and I'll concede, for sake of this argument that it should, though I don't consider the question settled), then my original question comes into play: how do we ensure that only the "right" sites are taken down? Indymedia has had numerous "problems" with the law lately, mostly seizures of equipment, and I don't think they advocate violent revolution. This story deals with the "killing civilians" bit, but governments have a history of <ahem> interfering with people who say things they don't want to hear, or don't want the people to hear. How do we grant the power to "obstruct and intercept terrorism" while maintaining transparency and public control of the process, particularly when the government is quick to use the "National Security--You Can't See This!" label?

Re:Who and How?

[budgenator]

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?
They probably do have the right, what they don't have is the authority to take down the website, which normally means that as long as you don't travel to Saudi Arabia you'd be all right, occasionally people have found themselves un-fortunant pawns in two countries diplomatic manuverings. Very probably the British asked the Pakastanis very nicely and were told by the Pakistani's we can't but don't care if you do it.

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

If you take down the websites describing how to attack a European city, none of the European cities will be able to design their countermeausures to frustrate the popular methods of attack.

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

The law, in its infinite justice, forbids both rich and poor alike to steal food or sleep under bridges.

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

The terrorists have already won because they are right. It doesn't really matter whether they win or lose in the sense of forcing the invaders to withdraw from Iraq, because they have God's approval, for acting courageously on the side of justice, in defense of the innocent victims of the USUK axis aggression. Those who love to rape, torture and murder children may enjoy themselves for a while, but they invariably lose in the end, when they burn eternally in hell.

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

That's rich - mentioning Daniel Pipes - one of the biggest neoconservative, racist assholes involved.

Pipes is a Zionist asshole who wants Israel to rule the entire Middle East and probably either exterminate or enslave the remaining Arabs.

Try reading Juan Cole's blog if you want useful commentary on the Middle East and Pipes.

Re:Who and How?

[elrous0]

The civilians riding on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon were quite terrorized

But they weren't the TARGET of that attack. They were collatoral damage in an attack aimed at a legitimate military target.

-Eric

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

Feel free to substitute any other failed Al Qaeda operation you might prefer.

Point remains - Al Qaeda has done very little that is significant in terms of damaging its enemies - except in its ability to provoke those enemies into damaging themselves, the classic case being the US and Iraq. And since those enemies are essentially doing this damage to themselves in pursuit of their own nefarious objectives, it could be argued that Al Qaeda is little more than the state's usual "loyal adversary".

Re:Who and How?

[Master of Transhuman]

Not as much as Bill Gates makes off his.

Ever read any of Kurt Saxon's stuff? I imagine he's done pretty well with his books.

Re:Who and How?

[Spiked_Three]

WTF is an innocent?

Re:Who and How?

[magarity]

But they weren't the TARGET of that attack. They were collatoral damage
 
BS - They were co-targets. Leasing a cargo plane and filling it full of explosives and fuel would have been better than a passenger plane for attack strength. Using a hijacked passenger plane full of regular civilians was an act of terror, not "collateral damage". Your attempt at apologizing for those animals fails.

Re:Who and How?

[budgenator]

Without well-known publicized domains for their 'followers' to connect to, they won't have a 'web broadcast' facility
Perhaps the problem is the "well-known"ness of the site, if bad-guys were obtaining secret messages through the site, they were probably buried in the noise generated by the other users of the site

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

Police operate under a framework and laws. There are checks and balances on them.

The US acted alone and outside of UN sanction and international law. Calling yourself the police does not make it so.

The US invaded iraq for fun, profit and election results. Policing had nothing to do with it.

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

Wow, you have completely dismantled my argument about how al-zarqawi is trying to defend his nation from an agressive invading force acting outside of international law and UN sanction.

Bzzt sorry we are not playing the same game. You keep your head buried in the sand OK? Don't let any facts enter your brain and disrupt your limited view of the world.

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

"Maybe there are other reasons, but if you think that it might be reason #2, then these 'soldiers' are military assets. *That* is significant difference between an army and a nation following 'moral' rules of engagement and terrorists who don't."

No it's not a significant difference. It would be a significant difference if the US risked the lives it's own soldiers (who are paid, trained and ready to die) in order to spare the lives of the innocent. The US did not do that. It used massive arial bombardment so that the risk of us soldiers dying would be minimized. It also used artilerary and tanks for the same reason.

The US army made a calculated decision to kill civillians in order to spare the lives of US soldiers. That much can not be denied.

So tell me how much a difference exists between bush, hussein and bin laden? I say none.

By the way, hussein did the exact same thing against a kurdish insurgency. In order to kill some peshmerga soldiers he gassed and entire city. So there is absolutely zero difference between what bush did and what saddam did. NONE, ZERO, ZIP, NADA.

The problem is that your reality ignores facts, it ignores actions of the bush which are exactly the same as saddams.

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

Wow, a war pig republitard called me a liberal. Oh man that hurts. Hey I have an idea why don't you drag a nigger behind your truck or crucify a fag to a fencepost or something OK?

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

You are talking about the second time we bombed the shit out of them right? The first time there was no such warning. But hey don't think about that! It will ruin your rosy picture of the US fox news painted for you. By the way I am so glad your moral system approves of killing women and children, destroying 75% of a city, confiscating communications equipment from doctors, kicking the press out so nobody can report on your atrocoties as long as you give them fair warning first.

Yup a great set of morals your mother thought you there.

Re:Who and How?

[KwKSilver]

Went to Coles' blog & saw no comment(s) on Pipes
 
Since when does being conservative-or for that matter liberal-make one wrong on the facts? Statements are either facts or not. Facts have no politics. As near as I can tell, Pipes' opinions are clearly identified as such. Nor have I seen any racist statements. Frankly, Pipes gives more credit to the idea that there is a significant number of "moderate" Muslims than I do. (My definition of "moderate" is one who doesn't want to kill or enslave those of us who refuse to convert.)

As far as plans for exterminating others and ruling the world goes, and having taken concrete steps towards accomplishing that goal no one, no group, NOTHING, has anything on Islam. The wanton extermination of tens of millions of Hindus in India between Islam's first incursions in the 700s and and the establishment of the British Raj is beyond mind-boggling.

Before 9-11 a Brit reporter interviewed a Muslim holy man in Afghanistan (IIRC) asking him what they wanted of the West. His reply could not have been clearer, "We don't want your women, we don't want to convert you, we want you dead-all of you." What part of "we want you all dead" is unclear?

Even if their goal isn't mass elimination of all non-Muslims (Jews, Hindus, pagans, Buddhists, atheists, and Christians not necessarily in that order), it certainly includes the extermination of all non-Muslim, thought, culture, art, music, poetry, ... in short, everything which makes my life worth living. "We are the Umma, resitance is futile, you will be assimilated." Screw that. Your mileage may vary.

Re:Who and How?

[sumdumass]

So it is right to kill inocent civilians who have nothign to do with your grief? It is right to harm people that have no say in the policies.

The only thign right is the governments who seem to do more of what the terrorist are crying about because of the terrorist attacks. Think about it, the governemnt says we are going to bomb Iraq because they might have weapons they are nto supposed to have, they aren't hnoring the cease fire agreements to our satisfactions and thier leader might be aiding or harboring terrorist. Now we have bombing by terrorist killing inocent civilians who cannot stop anythign the governemnts are doing-(it's been tried in both the US and UK)

Now the governments come back and say, see i told you so, we need to kill more of them and the only thing that changed is more inocent civilians agree with the government now.

I can't believe someone actualy thinks the terrorist are right when they kill inocent civilians. I find it almost funny that when terrorist attack civilians they only succedd in getting more civlilians to back the governemnts efforts. It might be a different story if the terrorist were going after the military or the actual government istelf though. No one got pissed when the USS cole or some other military target was hit but they all got together when somebodies neibhor never came home.

The terrorist can still go on loving to rape, torture and murder children. It wonn't be long before they cause more of the world to join the USUK axis and stop them out of existance. The terrorist are nothign mor ethen a modern version of the KKK and whiel not totaly eraticated, they are not too weak to do anythign significant. One day, AQ wile stand up and realizer they are pissing in the wind but it is blowing back on them.

Re:Who and How?

[killjoe]

"Oh I get it - you think it is a *good idea* to have the US army to have as many casualities possible!"

Since you have no arguments against what I am saying you now decide to put words in my mouth to see if you can argue against things you pretend I said. Let's see how that works out for you.

"Think: Why doesn't the US use gas? Why doesn't the US nuke them all? Please, if there is one question I ask that you answer, please answer this?"

What difference does it make how you kill children? Did you god or mother tell you that it was more moral to kill women and children by using phosphorus bombs (melts the skin off of people you know) then with nukes or other gasses? I think your god told you that otherwise you would not feel so morally superior because your president decided to kill innocent people using phosphorus bombs or depleted uranium instead of gas or nukes. Either way George Bush is responsible for killing innocent civillians in order to try and kill some soldier mounting an insurgency. Oh and why were they mounting an insurgency? What was their crime? Why it was because they objected to George Bush invading and occupying their country. GASP. FOr sure people trying to defend theit country against an occupying force should all be wiped out from the face of the earth. I bet your god told you that too huh?

Now to answer your question. Because it's just as easy and much cheaper to use conventional weaponry to kill women and children. No other reason. If it was cheaper and easier to use nukes we would use it, if it was cheaper and easier to use gas we would have done it.

So once again.

George Bush killed women and children by bombing a town with some insurgents in it (twice).

Saddam Hussein killed women and children by bombing a town with some insurgents in it (once).

George used phosphorus bombs which melted the skin off of people, Saddam used poisonous gas which choked them.

I don't know, I kind of think Saddam looks better in this comparison. He only bombed a city once, his victims probably suffered less, he did not destroy building or infrastucture so the people could move in afterwards and try to make a life.

Yup Saddam looks much better the GW in comparison.

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

When the U.S. was at war with Japan, they did not hesitate to kill millions of innocent people. When the U.K. was at war with Germany they did not hesitate to kill millions of innocent people. When the USUK axis of evil invaded Iraq they had already killed more than 500,000 innocent people, according to U.N. figures. Justice will be served when a few million Americans, British, and Israelis have died in pain and agony. The more of them that die in the city of London, the more appropriate and just the outcome.

How can the citizens of a democracy deny responsibility for the actions of the governments they elect?

Re:Who and How?

[elrous0]

I'm not apologizing for anyone, fucktard. I'm just trying to provide a definition of terrorism that is broad enough to include those who are clearly terrorists, but narrow enough to exclude those who are soldiers fighting a war (irrespective of the nobility, or lack thereof, of their cause).

By the definition you are apparently functioning under, almost every U.S. soldier (and certainly the entire Israeli military) is a "terrorist." All soldiers are sometimes faced with the moral dilema of killing civilians to attack a legitimate military target. They do it knowingly, they do it for what they see as a "larger good."

And, as long as their intention is to attack a legitimate military target, they are not terrorists. They may be assholes, they may be fanatics, they may be wrong--but they are not terrorists.

But since you've got it all figured out, why don't you give me your definition of a terrorist? You know, one that distinguishes between soldiers across the world and bastards who walk into supermarkets with bombs strapped to their chest.

I'll even give you bonus points if you don't use the term "Towel-head" or the phrase "anyone who attacks my side."

-Eric

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

The notion that it is legitimate to broach civil liberties in the service of defense fails on two grounds:

- "Defense" generally consists of killing hundreds of thousands, or millions, of innocent people. I'm sorry, but that can't justify ANYTHING.

- Resisting evil with evil just makes more evil. It's not just bad, it's a bad idea.

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

I'm sorry, but your post does not make any sense.

Neither one of your two "points" actually relates to your thesis, with the possible exception of the latter--and then only tenuously.

Looking at this objectively, the first question that must be answered is: "Are these websites what the newspaper story suggest they are, or something else?" I am assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, that they are, in fact, websites run by and for al-Qaeda. That being the case, we can conclude that this is not a civil liberties issue, which makes your entire response problematic at best. Your suggestion that "Resisting evil with evil just makes more evil. It's not just bad, it's a bad idea" doesn't apply--shutting down the enemy's communication does not fall under the concept of "evil."

Then we come to this: "Defense" generally consists of killing hundreds of thousands, or millions, of innocent people. I'm sorry, but that can't justify ANYTHING." My first thought was to wonder what shutting down websites has to do with killing millions of people. My second thought is that you're entirely incorrect: I can justify killing hundreds or thousands or millions of innocent people in the name of defense--for example, if doing so saves more lives. For a real world example of this principle in action, see World War II and the strategy of removing your enemy's ability to wage war by destroying his infrastructure and manufacturing capability. This ends up costing a lot of civillian lives, but probably ends up saving just as many or more by shortening the war significantly.

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

Actually, I think the name "al Qaeda" is totally hilarious. In Arabic, it means "the toilet".

Re:Who and How?

[aminorex]

Therefore, George W. Bush is a traitor.

Re:Who and How?

[theLOUDroom]

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."

So for YOU it's "speculation", but for other people it's crazy consiracy theories. Perhaps it's not that I don't understand you, but that you own thought process is fucked.
If it wasn't, you'd understand that I made that statement to point out you ridiculously lopsided rhetoric.

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?

That's the frickin understatement of the year: Vietnam, Hussein, WMDs, other coutries nuclear capabilities, the list is a mile long.

They seem to be much better at doing what the handful of people in charge want, than persuing actual intelligence.
But hey let's forget the whole "eternal vigilence" thing and just stick our head in the sand because we're oh-so-scared.

After all, the article doesn't actually tell you exactly who's doing what to who and why, but already you have no problem with it (whatever "it" ACTUALLY is) because there's vauge mention of the war on terror.
Way to take a stand on "something"!
You're don't know what you're actually supporting, but it's gotta be a good idea because they mentioned terrorists.

Re:Who and How?

[sumdumass]

When ww2 and all was going on the weapons didn't allow the percise aim that we have today. The bombings and such were colateral damage but the unnderlying point is that the targets were militery in nature.

Thats right there is a difference. If you work at a military compound or some plant that makes things for the war effort then your likley to be a target. The terrorist don't even go after the military and thats what makes them murdering cowards.

The UN has no statistic about 500,000 inocent civilians being killed. You talking out your ass and confusing another group that held those statistics. Also somethign to note is that those nunumbers reflect people killed in car accidents and those that died from natural causes like old age. They had to include those numbers to make it outragious and convince simple minded people to follow thier belifs.

Lets recap if you will. You think that the casualties form a military target is the same as blowing up a train were people who don't have any control are the only victoms. You think because we had some bad things go on in the past it justifys the continuance of those bad things. Well lets bring back slavery and discrimination. It would be nice to know your race and start with you.

I cannot belive i am actualy having a conversation with someone that cannot tell the difference between colateral damage from war and strategic tagets and some lunatics blowing up inocent civilians who have nothign to do with the situation they have a beef with. It amazes me that you cannot distinguish the differences between them and think you (they) are high and mighty because of it. The terrorist are nothing but a hate group that thinks killing anyone who doesn't agree with them is fine. Actualy they are worse then a hate group because they try to blame thier failings on religion.

How can the citizens of a democracy deny responsibility for the actions of the governments they elect?

Because the majority of the citizens didn't vote for either canidate or the one elected. Democracy isn't some unanimous decision were every elected official get 100% of the possible votes. In this day and age, it is actualy imposible for someone who represent the average citizen to get elected. there just isn't enough money for it.

I have to ask if you are deaf or blind? when the governments started hinting they wanted to start the war, the citizens of these countries protested and cryed foul to no avail. From the rest of your post I gather that you are actualy blinded by the brainwashing of the terror movments. I guess all i can do is wish for your safetey and hope your not a victom in the next terrorist attack against civilians. Boy that would be ironic, you supporting them and all and they wouldn't give a damn if they killed you in the process because they are going after civlians who cannot change what the governemnt is doing.

Good luck in staying alive while support the verry people who will likley kill you :)

Re:Who and How?

[Shaper_pmp]

"I do not have any data about the shutdown of these sites save for that which was in the article. I do think it's within the realm of plausibility that it was organized, if not executed, by the British government (or any number of others), but I'm not actually accusing them of doing it."

Fair point - it was the first thing that occurred to me too (especially with the recent London bombings). OTOH, there are two questions - was it the British (as opposed to, say, the Pakistani) government, and was the site in question actively promoting violent terrorism?

By my calculations I should only start worrying if the British government took the site down[1], and the takedown was unjustified. In the absence of any other information either way I make that only a 25% chance (1 option from 4) that it's something worrying, so I found myself disagreeing with many posters who seemed to take the least-likely answer[2] as read.

"To that, I would also add "should they be shut down at all?" Such information is trivially easy to find for anybody with access to a University library (read: nearly anybody) and a high-school understanding of chemistry and map-reading. I, myself, know how to make a few different explosives:"

That's true, and I'd have serious problems with a site being shut down just for telling someone how to make bombs - as you point out it's just information, and widely-available information at that.

However, a site which (for example) actively promotes, encourages, recruits for and takes donations for terrorism or specific terrorist acts or groups is a slightly harder question to tackle. Obviously I believe passionately in freedom of speech, but IMO this is where it starts overlapping with the "shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre" counter-example.

You're right - it's a thorny issue, which I think is why people tend to polarise into "Information must always be free" and "Free speech as long as you're only parotting government policy" camps.

Unfortunately (as I said before), without more information we have no way of knowing which side of the debate this incident strengthens, and which it weakens... in isolation[3], but in the absence of hard information either way I'm happy to take this incident in isolation

[3] Like people who try to assuage fear of flying by telling you you're more likely to be killed in a car accident than a plane crash. It's true, but not when you're already sat on the plane. ;-)

Re:Who and How?

[Pansy]

"Before 9-11 a Brit reporter interviewed a Muslim holy man in Afghanistan (IIRC) asking him what they wanted of the West. His reply could not have been clearer, "We don't want your women, we don't want to convert you, we want you dead-all of you." What part of "we want you all dead" is unclear?"

In related news, a 7-toothed Christian 'holy man' in rural Alabama told an American reporter last week, "I wants all them there Muslims dead." Obviously Alabama and the Christians must be stopped. Or maybe the opinion of one purported 'holy man' doesn't serve to indict a religion and a region...

Re:Who and How?

[anubis__]

Oh whoops, I should've clarified: prisoners of war are not subject to courts-martial. They are subject to trial by civilian court or a specially appointed war crimes court. Courts-martial is reserved for service men and woman only in the military where the courts-martial is taking place, never for POWs. It is assumed that during a time of war your typical grunt, while he might hold valuable intel, cannot be held responsible for actions committed which do not violate the rules of war.

Just nit-picky information.

Re:Who and How?

[Zak3056]

Oh whoops, I should've clarified: prisoners of war are not subject to courts-martial. They are subject to trial by civilian court or a specially appointed war crimes court. Courts-martial is reserved for service men and woman only in the military where the courts-martial is taking place, never for POWs. It is assumed that during a time of war your typical grunt, while he might hold valuable intel, cannot be held responsible for actions committed which do not violate the rules of war.

You have this backward. It is illegal to try a prisoner of war in a civillian court--unless the detaining party also tries its soldiers in civil courts. Also, "laws of war" don't enter into it: you can try a POW for any offense your own soldiers are subject to, and you must sentence them as you would one of your own soldiers. Up to and including the death penalty. The one thing you cannot do is reduce the prisoner in rank, or strip them of medals or qualification badges.

The important part, by the way, is that the court martial be fair--the accused is entitled to a defense inclusive of the help of one of his own side, an interpreter (if required), and an officer to defend him of his own choosing. A 'Protecting Party' (the International Red Cross, pretty much, though these days the UN would probably also be acceptable) must be informed if judicial proceedings are initiated against a POW, and must be allowed to attend the trial to ensure its fairness.

From the 3rd Geneva Convention:

Article 84

A prisoner of war shall be tried only by a military court, unless the existing laws of the Detaining Power expressly permit the civil courts to try a member of the armed forces of the Detaining Power in respect of the particular offence alleged to have been committed by the prisoner of war.

In no circumstances whatever shall a prisoner of war be tried by a court of any kind which does not offer the essential guarantees of independence and impartiality as generally recognized, and, in particular, the procedure of which does not afford the accused the rights and means of defence provided for in Article 105.

Article 85

Prisoners of war prosecuted under the laws of the Detaining Power for acts committed prior to capture shall retain, even if convicted, the benefits of the present Convention.

There's more, but I don't see the need to inject yet more text into this discussion. You can read the test for you self at the UN Commissioner for Human Rights website.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why is this under IT and not YRO

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why is this under IT and not YRO

[grumpygrodyguy]

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.

The reason is because political issues are becoming more important every day, and payola sites like Slashdot are trying to stay on the fence and keep everyone happy for as long as possible.

Once a website gets branded as partisan, it immediately alienates a large percentage of its readership. So hot-button issues like Iraq, Terrorism, and Civil Rights are marginalized from discussion because it's not good business to 'get involved'.

Re:Why is this under IT and not YRO

[Anonymous Coward]

This is under IT because Intel is an IT company...

Re:Why is this under IT and not YRO

[delong]

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

The Brits don't have the First Amendment.

And incitement to violence and true threats are not protected speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, in any case.

Re:Why is this under IT and not YRO

[Grym]

The reason is because political issues are becoming more important every day, and payola sites like Slashdot are trying to stay on the fence and keep everyone happy for as long as possible... So hot-button issues like Iraq, Terrorism, and Civil Rights are marginalized from discussion because it's not good business to 'get involved'.

Slashdot--fence sitting? Are you kidding? I hope you don't honestly think Slashdot has a politically balanced readership (which, via moderation, ultimately translates to material).

Slashdot is, in general, quite liberal (in the U.S. sense of the word). When George W. Bush won in November, I think I saw CmdrTaco shed a tear. Seriously, leading up to the election when I (or any other moderate) would even say things like, "I don't like Bush but he might be right on on X...", it would get modded down to oblivion--nobody wanted to hear that kind of talk.

I think in general the reason why /. as of late has avoided such topics is to prevent itself from becoming just another political debate (rant?) forum. Instead, it focuses on technology, open source software developments, gaming, and so on--you know... News for nerds...

-Grym

Brilliant

[nokilli]

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?

Re:Brilliant

[zxnos]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

their speech is intended not as a civil discussion but as a way to communicated the means and methods for murder of innocents. in the u.s. groups are allowed to say what they want... ...until they start calling for the murder of other people.

i agree with a post above, better to try and trace the communcations and run raids.

Re:Brilliant

[DietCoke]

:We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

And there's a problem with that? If you're a terrorist, getting your website shut down is getting off pretty easy.

"...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?"

If they're going to commit suicide, it's better than they do so in the privacy of their own home. Giving them a way to communicate amongst each other in order to harm others... well, that's stupid.

Re:Brilliant

[superyanthrax]

Yes, we are squelching the terrorists' speech, but think about what they're talking about. They're talking about killing us all in a massive holy war and taking over the world. There are limits on what is acceptable speech, and I'm certain most would agree that talking like this is not acceptable.

On the other issue, I think there is a very delicate balance. On one hand, we could just hack the web site/servers and monitor them to monitor the terrorists' movements. However, letting those web servers stay up creates a great danger. Many young prospective terrorists are frustrated with their situation and hate the Americans, but they aren't necessarily convinced to perform terrorist acts until they see Al-Qaeda's recruiting or propaganda. Al-Qaeda uses their web sites to recruit more members faster, because more sympathizers can see the terrorist's message. It works like this with most rebel groups; they need to get their word out in order to more effectively recruit those who sympathize. Without getting their word out many sympathizers would never join up. The Internet is one of the best ways to do that. If we brought the web servers down, it would put a major crimp in their spreading of propaganda and it would slow the flow of young Muslim men signing up to become terrorists.

Personally, I would side with the people who want to bring the web servers down, because I'm certain that the terrorists would quickly find out that they are being hacked if we tried to hack them, and fix the problem, and then we're back to square one.

Re:Brilliant

[bani]

If you have a problem with it then why not join the 'people making the decisions' so you can make decisions too. Or share your vast intelligence with them so they will make the 'right decision'.

Your armchair rant is cute but pointless.

Re:Brilliant

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

"but what about the rest which undoubtedly contain information authorities could be using to predict and prevent future attacks?"

Such information won't be on the internet. I've said why before here. All the tactical planning won't be done on the internet cause of security and secrecy. While strategic views, potential targets and ideology will be published over the net in full view the actual innovative ways to attack won't be. That'll be up to the terrorists on the ground.

You see, terrorism deeply follows the eastern way of warfare. As sun tzu said about the soldiers being ideologically glued (the tao) to their leaders then having the initiative to fight on their own. It's a form of commanders intent, or hive mind. The eastern way that the terrorists are fighting is a bottom up way of fighting and having faith in its soldiers. The western way of warfare, which is highly authoritarian, is top down. Although the marine corps have tried to implement soldier level initiative with such concepts as the strategic corporal and the commanders intent. Anyway I've ranted too much.

Re:Brilliant

[DarkWolf0]

I believe the problem they had with the websites taken down wasnt because they were afraid of them spreading a hateful message, but more of them becoming virtual control centers, where they could spread out messages to operatives throughout the world with ease, chat boards to discuss upcoming operations, plans freely available for them to use, etc. Of course, it may not have made a huge dent, but you have to start somewhere. The part about recruitment is moot, because I dont know many people that speak Arabic out of the Middle East, and the ones that do live there cant typically afford the Internet ;)

Re:Brilliant

[Jacked]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

Oh, come on now, let's not be naive. Yes, we would rather they use words than blowing things up, but, they have no such desire.

They've had free speech on those sites this whole time, and they used it help teach each other how to kill people. The sites weren't vehicles for ongoing discussions and debates on how to end the conflicts. Not to mention that the shutting down of some web sites does not take away their ability to speak. With one phone call they could have the world's media at their doorstep.

What most people don't seem to want to believe, is that they don't want to talk things out. They don't want peace-achieving dialog, they want to kill their "enemies"/non-believers.

Otherwise, you make some good points ;)

Re:Brilliant

[mpthompson]

With one phone call they could have the world's media at their doorstep.

Very true. As this ABC Nightline story interviewing the mastermind behind last year's Beslan school massacre, even the most shameful butchers of 300 innocent children can spout their hatred and bile in our western media.

What amazes me is that ABC can track this SOB down for an interview, but Russian intelligence can't.

Re:Brilliant

[Eil]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

A bit of googling would reveal hundreds, maybe thousands of web sites promoting hate and violence against some group of people or another. Many have been online for a very long time. Al-Qaeda is unique in that they're the only group currently organizing to act on their promises. It's not their ability to speak that's causing concern, it's their open willingness to kill innocent people.

To a degree your argument makes sense. But also look at it from the government's point of view. Jon Stewart interviewed Fareed Zakaria (click to watch) a few days ago on The Daily Show. Fareed appears to be an expert on the things which drive terrorism in general and al-Qaeda in particular. Currently, there's no evidence that the group that staged the bombings in London were actually linked to the "official" al-Qaeda group at all. They were in fact probably just "disaffected youths" who took al-Qaeda's idealogies to heart and acted on them. Right now authorities are seeing much more activity from these tiny unaffiliated groups than from al-Qaeda itself and these are the groups that they're having the toughest time countering.

How to stop them? Cut off their information and inspiration. This of course would probably not magically cure disaffected young Muslims in Europe. Fareed Zakaria says in the interview that the best and possibly only way to stop Muslim extremism in Europe is for policy-makers, leaders, and citizens to actually sit down and figure out how to better integrate Muslims into predominantly white cultures. <cynicism>Of course, this won't happen as people 'round the whole earth are generally opposed to actually thinking and working to change things for anyone but themselves.</cynicism>

Perhaps more importantly (and more obviously), shutting down the sites is also meant to be a bit of a psychological strike. If someone's interested in al-Qaeda and they visit 12 websites out there promoting it, they're bound to come to the conclusion that the group is active and gaining strength, making it a much more attractive "club" to join. On the other hand, if all of the sudden the same person notices that all the al-Qaeda sites have gone missing, it raises suspicion that the group's control is slipping, even if nobody's been arrested or charged with a crime in real life.

In the end, this won't stop al-Qaeda members from communicating with each other and spreading propaganda, it just pushes them underground a tiny bit further.

Re:Brilliant

[sean23007]

Are people in the US really not allowed to talk about the murder of other people? That seems like an abridgement of free speech that the founders wouldn't have been okay with (condsidering the fact that dueling was still an acceptable practice back then. I would think that talking about killing someone should be okay until someone actually does it. In which case said person should be prosecuted for the actual killing. And calling everyone a terrorist does not make everyone a murderer.

Re:Brilliant

[theonetruekeebler]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

We may well also be taking away their ability to coordinate. For operatives in a first-world city like London, Internet access is utterly trivial. As would be making subtle changes to the site's content which, to those who understand the code, mean "execute the attack on the morning of 7 July."

Re:Brilliant

[steelfood]

Here's the thing (and this is a reply to all the siblings else as much the parent), by shutting down certain means of communication, they are able to force the terrorists to resort to other forms that are more convenient for law enforcement. Law enforcement believes that text can contain hidden codes (this is a product of the Cold War actually, and is a strategy born from the censorship that the McCarthy era introduced to a free society in the name of a "perceived" threat). The thing is, the internationalization and the freedom of the internet is a very big problem for local (national) law enforcement. So by shutting this down, the terrorists will have to resort to snail mail, telephone calls, secret physical signals, etc. that create many more points of potential failure. Don't forget the commonly quoted phrase, that criminals must not make a single mistake, but law enforcement only needs one. Thus the more chances for the criminal (terrorist) making a mistake, the better.

Or so that's the idea.

What this is in reality is censorship, and at a level that many of us have come to expect in a war against terror, again, from our experience with the Cold War. This has and will be said many times, but this act sets a horrible precedent, especially in a supposedly free nation that supposedly believes in the freedom of expression. For something like this, I take a page out of the Freenet supporters' book: when given the choice of upholding the freedom of expression over silencing those considered wrong, the former is the greater good. This is possibly the greatest challenge of every individual and group who believe in true freedom. Thus far, all the supposedly "free" nations have been utterly failing this challenge.

Along the same lines, there is always Freenet for these terrorists to spread their word, and I would not be surprised to find terrorist sites up already. What scares me the most is the thought of when all the law enforcement agencies in the world collectively declare Freenet a tool of terrorism and arrest all the operators of nodes as terrorists--not because I am running a node (an act I will freely admit to), but because this event would herald the beginning of the end to free society (are we really free if we can't strive to promote freedom?).

Re:Brilliant

[Dhalka226]

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?

Oh, I don't know. If my terrorist cell can't even keep their website up I might reconsider my suicide bombing. If they can't even do that, how the hell can I have any faith in their ability to deliver my virgins?!

(Shit... does that mean Al Qaeda is trolling /. for women?)

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

their speech is intended not as a civil discussion but as a way to communicated the means and methods for murder of innocents. in the u.s. groups are allowed to say what they want... ...until they start calling for the murder of other people.

You can say all you want about killing people as long as you are talking about killing them and not us.

Re:Brilliant

[erunaheru]

IIRC, just saying someone should be killed is not illegal (no matter how serious you are), but having an actual plan that you intend to execute is.

Re:Brilliant

[phoenix.bam!]

Wanting to be in the media makes it a bit easy for the media to find someone. I doubt the guy wants to be in a Russian holding cell.

Re:Brilliant

[ryanov]

What's worse is that a 550 is liable to make him go fucking bananas! We can't risk this kind of thing.

Re:Brilliant

[ryanov]

The problem is, you don't know what you're talking about, and you don't know what they're talking about. When's the last time you've read anything of theirs?

Re:Brilliant

[ryanov]

I personally love it when people tell me all about what "they" want. When's the last time you've discussed anything with one of them. What is your information source? Hell, who ARE "they?"

The us versus them shit is going to end up killing us all. I've had enough of it.

Re:Brilliant

[ryanov]

Wishing harm upon those who do not agree with you? Someone censor his comment!

Re:Brilliant

[msuarezalvarez]

How do you know that <random-web-site> (e.g. a web page dedicated ot the memory of someone's dead puppy) is not used for that? If you are trying to hide such a message it'd make two or three more cubic light years of sense to hide it as a change on such a site than on one ranking first on a Google search for 'jihad'...

Re:Brilliant

[Samari711]

Threatening speech and speech intended to incite others to commit violent acts against someone else have been consistently considered to fall outside the boundaries of protected speech, along with slander, libel, obscenity, and other types of speech intended to cause harm or durress (like yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater). The courts have to balance your right to free speech with the rights of others. Idle threats and the like are actually considered protected speech so long as no person of average competence would take you seriously.

Re:Brilliant

[killjoe]

So if you say that every member of al quada should be killed then you should go to jail?

It's perfectly OK to incite others to kill human beings as long as those human beings are "the enemy".

Re:Brilliant

[NotBorg]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

So when we go to war we should refrain from targeting communication towers so that we can preserve the enemy's right to free speech?

I would rather the terrorist get a 404 and commit an attack that was less effective and less organized.

FTA: "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."

Keep the sights up for intelligence? They don't seem to be getting any. The terrorist, however, seem to be getting all the communication they need. Is that "Intelligent?"

Oh, BTW, I spoke with the British authorities and they have agreed to consult you first before taking down any more web sights. They apologized for making rash decisions on your behalf.

Re:Brilliant

[Jacked]

My source is what they themselves say. Who are "they?" Well, "they" are the ones this discussion was about. It's a story involving the organization al Qaeda.

The us versus them shit is going to end up killing us all. I've had enough of it.

Me, too. But, it's not going to end until "they" stop thinking it's us versus them and we must die.

Re:Brilliant

[sean23007]

Then who is to say who is of average competence? I would guess that a lot of people in this country (and others) would assert that the current administration in the US is completely incompetent. Are they therefore not allowed to judge whether the threats are dangerous or not? And if this is the legal case, why can't their decisions be questioned without gaining an accusation of terrorism or incompetence themselves? (Note the high profile slander of public enemies of the administration, such as Richard Clarke.)

Re:Brilliant

[wa1ter]

The part about recruitment is moot, because I dont know many people that speak Arabic out of the Middle East

I don't know where you live but in the Netherlands and France a lot (if not most) of the people of middle eastern/north african descent speak arabic. Even most of the 3rd generation immigrants I know speak arabic. To me it seems that makes a decent recruitment pool.

Re:Brilliant

[msuarezalvarez]

If your family was taken out by these guys, I think you'd have a different opinion.

That this may pass as an argument is sad. Not only it is fallacious and disregards any minimally sensible standard for the setting up of rules and procedures, but it is in fact a generalization unwarranted by experience: not everybody subjected to such tragedies thinks differently. Of course, their not thinking differently makes them very much less interesting material for prime-time news, and this kind of `argument' is usually propounded around that time.

Re:Brilliant

[meadowsp]

Where does the death penalty come into all of this?

Re:Brilliant

[10e6Steve]

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.

Re:Brilliant

[Politburo]

Al-Qaeda is simply not the only group in the world that is out to kill people. They may be the one that the so-called western world should be most concerned with, but to say that they're the only terrorist group killing people is just wrong.

The real al-Qaeda, imo, has been eliminated. Granted, due to some colossal failures Osama has not been captured, but I do not think that he has any ability to control the people who claim to be in al-Qaeda.

Unfortunately, the name al-Qaeda has grown, mainly due to the use of al-Qaeda as a bogeyman by western politicians. This has led to other terrorists adopting the name (see 'al-Qaeda in Iraq'.. how original), which leads to continued use of al-Qaeda as an enemy, etc., etc. By supporting the al-Qaeda myth, we assist in some small part with the recruitment of additional members.

Re:Brilliant

[ryanov]

Your source is what they say where? Everyone on here seems to claim to know what "they" say. However, no one has even quoted or linked to the websites, or any that have not been taken down, or even a cache.

Re:Brilliant

[bikerguy99]

Babitsky has been involved in this conflict as a reporter for at least six years. He lived(s) mainly abroad, works for Radio Svoboda and has established a special and trusting relationship with the Chehen "rebels". He has been arrested by the Russian agencies on several ocasions for this type of journalisic activities. For teh Russians, the question was and remains: Is it morally justified to to carry out this line of reporting when you know of all the terror that Basayev brought onto civilians... His (AB's) position is clear - what about Russians' actions in Chechnya... Catch 22 as always...

Re:Brilliant

[dvdeug]

They're talking about killing us all in a massive holy war and taking over the world. There are limits on what is acceptable speech, and I'm certain most would agree that talking like this is not acceptable.

Then why isn't anyone reacting to the right-wing people who want the same thing, or is it all right to kill Arabs and have white people take over the world, but not the other way around?

Re:Brilliant

[erunaheru]

execute as in "put into effect" not execute as in kill

Re:Brilliant

[Eil]

Al-Qaeda is simply not the only group in the world that is out to kill people. They may be the one that the so-called western world should be most concerned with, but to say that they're the only terrorist group killing people is just wrong.

You're indeed correct and I realized that the statement needed qualifying only after it was already posted. Guess I should have previewed one last time.

The real al-Qaeda, imo, has been eliminated. Granted, due to some colossal failures Osama has not been captured, but I do not think that he has any ability to control the people who claim to be in al-Qaeda.

Unfortunately, he does not need to control them, he only has to influence them via propaganda. That's got to be the hardest part of battling al-Qaeda and similar extremist groups... you can't uncover organized groups by following links because the links simply don't exist.

Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel is a Registered Trademark of the Intel corporation....

Quit using it. Or Intel will get angry.

Re:Hey!

[Ron Bennett]

I see "Intel" frequently on news tickers, etc too referring to intelligence ops, etc - makes me wonder why Intel (the chip maker) hasn't launched an awareness campaign to discourage that; legal action ... such as how Xerox ran massive ad campaigns decades ago to discourage use of its name as a generic word for "copy".

Ron

Wouldn't it be easier...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to post those websites on /. ?

Re:Wouldn't it be easier...

[WilliamSChips]

Humorix though this up before you did.

Re:Strange

[astrashe]

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.

Very cool, but...

[Nuclear Elephant]

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?

Re:Very cool, but...

[dancingmad]

No, but I hear they're good with fish.

Re:Very cool, but...

[ArAgost]

yes, but they run them on the left :|

Re:Very cool, but...

[mbrewthx]

but don't eat the green ones they're not ripe Kkkkeeennn.

Re:Very cool, but...

[Charles Jo]

1. To better to distract the public from their AMD lawsuit, dear. You just can't go wrong when you're against al-Qaueda.

2. Everything does or soon will run Linux.

Re:Very cool, but...

[Varun Soundararajan]

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.....

Re:Very cool, but...

[ggvaidya]

No, fish goes better as fish and finger pie ... :p

Re:Very cool, but...

[Alwin Henseler]

Okay...
We know what those chips cost, so how much is the fish then?

Re:Strange

[bani]

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.

finally Intel doing something innovative

[RelliK]

And here I was thinking that only AMD does something new these days.

Re:finally Intel doing something innovative

[SniperWolf]

It seems the Apple / Intel deal is already paying off

Enemy Communications

[N8F8]

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.

Re:Enemy Communications

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

:: sigh ::

Why do so many westerners completely fail to understand the nature of Al Jazeera? Study for a bit! Al Jazeera is run by flaming liberal (at least by Arabic standards) journalists who would be the first against the wall if the jihadists took over!

They give the jihadists coverage in the same way the liberal ACLU defends conservative white supremacists -- they see themselves as giving a voice to dissent, even if the group they're giving a voice to hates their guts.

Believe me, nobody at Al Jazeera actually wants the ultraconservative jihadists in power. It would mean the end of Al Jazeera.

Re:Enemy Communications

[Dylan2000]

I missed your point too, I think. The parent poster interpreted it the same way I did..

You didn't make your point very well. Could you please make it again? And type slowly, for dummies among us :)

Re:Enemy Communications

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

You implied that everything was okay because while the sites rah rahing the terrorists were down, Al Jazeera was still around. Either you were implying that they were part of the same group, with Al Jazeera simply being a "milder" form that counted as "free speech", or you did understand the nature of Al Jazeera and your statement was just nonsensical.

Imagine for a moment a mirror universe where the middle easterners had far more control over the internet and had the power to shut down western websites that were rahrahing westerners blowing things up in the middle east. That would be like saying "It's okay that they shut down Fox News, because free-speech sites like Pacifica Radio (the only extreme-liberal broadcaster I can think of in the U.S. on short notice) are still up!"

It makes zero sense because the two sites have nothing to do with eachother, aside from being run by people of the same ethnicity.

Re:Enemy Communications

[N8F8]

Enemy Communications == Al Quaida

Valid discourse == Al Jazeera

By being members of Al Quaida they have already decided to kill and maim innocents to sew terror.

Both sites may be distastful to many westerners but we see the latter as valid and allow it to be broadcast via satellite. If Al Jazeera's reporters were busy showing terrorists how to conduct terrorist operations and incite them to do so, they would be shut down.

As a side note, I lived in the mideast for three years, the first two in a Shiite village. People are people everywhere.

Re:Enemy Communications

[yintercept]

You can also make the argument that Al Quaida is liberal. Their intellectual leaders studied the same revolutionary literature that was popular in the West. Undoutably they are convinced that they are fighting a war of liberation against the evil and corrupt western industrial military complex.

You have a good point. When looking at the political line up of parties in Iraq you see a pile of ideologies with roots in modern liberalism, communism, stalinism, fascism and even a few in classical liberalism. The middle east is filled with divisive rhetoric and a lot of issues to resolve. I don't think it comes down to saying the jihadists are conservatives and the Al Jazeera is the area's liberal saviour. The area has extremely odd mixes of ideologies. Their biggest problem, however, is that some of the groups are resorting to violence to destabilize society. The world is being forced to respond.

Re:Enemy Communications

[LWATCDR]

Actually you jumped to the wrong conclusion. The parent was saying Al Jazeera==Free Speech. You are actually echoing his post while condemning it.

Re:Enemy Communications

[ryanov]

Who's "the enemy" this week? Frankly, I'm not comfortable with that kind of talk. How long will it be before I'm the enemy for disagreeing with types like "y'all."

Re:Enemy Communications

[demachina]

"Al Jazeera continues to grow unimpeeded by the west."

That is a provably false statement. Al-Jazeera has been continuously and massively harassed by both the U.S. military and the puppet interim Iraqi government during and since the Iraq invasion. Their offices were bombed, journalists killed by U.S. forces, their office in Iraq was closed for a time in 2004, and might still be, I'm not sure. Paul Wolfowitz in particular accused them of inciting violence and sought to shut them down.

Sometimes Al-Jazerra's reporting is a little over the top but to their credit they are one of very few new organizations with a big reach that tries to tell the whole story about what happened and is happening in Iraq and rest of the Middle East. The U.S. and its puppet government has throughout refused to count or report the number of civilian deaths their forces have caused, and they have actively suppressed pretty much all the video coverage of the carnage in Iraq during and after the invasion.

To their credit both Saddam's government and the U.S. were attacking their coverage as biased in the other sides favor during the war so they must have been doing something right.

I'm inclined to say Al-Jazeera certainly has some bias in it but its NOTHING compared to the bias in U.S. coverage of the Middle East or any of the government supported media outlets in Iraq.

Re:Enemy Communications

[killjoe]

So is Al Jazeera a terrorist organization then?

As far as I can see the only thing they seem to be guilty of is saying things republicans don't like.

Re:Enemy Communications

[cpghost]

This is about preventign the enemy from communicating and sharign information to conduct terrorist operations.

Shutting down websites *is* certainly one way to slow down the information flow within such organizations; but it's not very effective. They could also piggy back their data unto spam messages, and use the huge number of Windows zombies to spread their news. The problem with that is that using spam to communicate would effectively thwart traffic analysis that could still be used with static websites.

Al Jazeera continues to grow unimpeeded by the west.

Yes, but they are a television network run from a pro western country that we already control (sort of)...

Re:Strange

[sploxx]

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.

Try solve a social problem with technical means...

[daniel23]

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.

Oh brother...

[jav1231]

"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!

Re:Oh brother...

[DarkWolf0]

Its amusing to say, but if you associate activities such as that happening in Britan, couple it with the Patriot Act, and you have a frightening mix of government doom and gloom. Say your in a religious group of any variety, and are branded a "terrorist organization" Well guess what. You have just had the right to be searched without a judges writ, have your website shut down, your name smeared, all your financial accounts put on hold, and your life basically ruined under the guise of terrorisim. Dont get me wrong, I am all for shutting down with extreme prejudice maniacs and terrorists, but there is a very fine line you have to walk.

Re:Oh brother...

[jav1231]

Neither.

Re:Oh brother...

[DarkWolf0]

Perhaps, ive been in the military over 5 years, and have been to Iraq 3 times. ;)

Re:Oh brother...

[DarkWolf0]

Good points all around! For some reason a lot of the more omnious biblical things more of came to mind then Orwellian, such as the persecution of entire religious groups. (Right now, Islamic Extremists) Right now it is definiately a far off notion, but time and again a major event has shown to shake the world to another unexected path, with everyone accepting the changes as necessary. Im surprised many people whom considers themselves of a Christian denomination (Catholic, Protestant, etc) arent truly frightened by the fact that many members of the Islamic commuinty (Just recently, I beleive there has been more distinction between the moderate and extremist types) are being sought after and imprisioned.

Re:Oh brother...

[Jeremi]

Well, gee, then maybe try not to be in a religious group that advocates suicide bombing, and you won't have a problem with the whole terrorist label

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right? Because our government never labels anyone a terrorist unless they actually are terrorists. (Of course, Richard Jewell, Steven Hatfill, and Hossam Shaltout might disagree with you)

Conspiracy theorists are idiots - our government commits its evil acts in plain view.

You're right about conspiracy theorists being idiots, but if you are suggesting that the US government never engages in illegal or immoral covert actions, you are wrong. Yes, the government does commit some evil acts in plain view, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also do evil things in secret. You may recall the Iran/Contra scandal, the Bay of Pigs scandal, the toppling of democratic governments in Iran and Chile -- and those are just the ones that got screwed up and became public. Presumably there are others that were successfully kept secret (or at least "plausibly deniable").

Re:Oh brother...

[ryanov]

Unless you happen to have the same name as someone on the no-fly list, or any of the other asinine ways in which our governemnt is fuc^H^H^Hprotecting us.

Re:Oh brother...

[ryanov]

Far as I know, no one who has been taken into custody has been properly charged to date. Seems to me if it can't convict anyone that it detains, it might be a little more difficult to escape them than you think.

Re:Oh brother...

[Danga]

that many members of the Islamic commuinty (Just recently, I beleive there has been more distinction between the moderate and extremist types) are being sought after and imprisioned.

I think they were sought after more for having connections with "questionable" (ie known to be involved in the terrorist community) people, not b/c of what religion they are. I look at it in a similar way to how drug lords are taken down. At times the process begins at the bottom with the users and then works its way up through the drug dealers until they get to the head honcho.

If you do not want to put yourself in the position of being sought after don't engage in questionable activities.

Re:Oh brother...

[JaredOfEuropa]

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!

Not the holiday snaps I suppose, but perhaps Mrs. Jones weekly blog column, if it's slightly critical of the government? After all, "we can't afford criticism of the gov't in these times, or people fomenting discord.". Or do you trust your government so much that you don't think they'll abuse an overly broad restriction on free speech? I sure don't... I still remember that a decade or 2 ago, a Dutch member of parliament was jailed on a charge of racism, for advocating something the cultural elite deemed not politically correct at the time. (Most of parliament is now voicing the same ideas that this guy had, and more besides)

Re:Oh brother...

[jav1231]

In the U.S., free speech is pretty well protected. Michael Moore can still foment anger, blogs are just fine, in fact it's the left that rants about blogs BTW. Just as it was leftist leanings that came up with political correctness. The Patriot Act isn't stopping anyone from blogging. My whole point is, anytime the government (US or Brit) shuts something down everyone one /. thinks the sky is falling.

Re:Oh brother...

[lgw]

Oops, you're right about one thing: I was talking about evil acts within our borders. We seem to get our fill of evil against ourselves through the ordinary democratic process, no need for conspiracies.

Jewell was cleared - no one *ever* said justice was fast. We don't know what evidence there was against Hatfill, but the government *has* to raid suspected criminals with merely substantial evidence, it wouldn't work if you waited for concrete proof. As far as the public data, Hatfill was the victim of a rampant media, not crazy law enforcement. It seems like Shaltout got crosswise of an army in the middle of a conflict - he's nothing but lucky.

I'm sure there will be people accused, even convicted of terrorist activities who are completely innocent. No legal system is *ever* perfect. But that doesn't mean this is some secret plot to suppress dissidents. And putting up a web site sympathetic to the enemy in the middle of a war is like shouting racial epithets in the middle of a ghetto - it may be your right, but I have no sympathy at all for you if it doesn't work out well.

Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[protomala]

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.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

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).

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[rich_r]

If by plain clothes police you mean (more likely) special forces, who followed him two miles on a bus, chased him onto a train and, once he was on the floor, shot him eight (8) times?

[daily mail reader] At least it demonstrates a solution to these pesky illegal immigrants[/dmr]

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Colourspace]

Well first - if you are so sure of what you are saying - why post AC? Secondly, it was not three years after but two weeks later when our services were still on high alert because of the potential for the same events as 7/7 (I hate using that 9/11 thing but that seems to be de facto now) - I'm sorry but I can't blame them for making the split second decision they had to - though I admit longer term evidence *may* show them to have been misguided, I will wait and see but I don't think that anything out of the ordinary will be shown. But thirdly - and this is my real point - british anti - immigration laws are frankly not harsh enough - I have no problem with real asylum seekers coming here if it is truly justified, but Britain is generally seen as a 'soft touch' - how else would we for so long have tolerated the hateful activities and indoctrination that went on at the Finsbury park mosque in North London because deportation of inflammatory individuals is not PC? Im sorry for the brazilian guy - I really am but if he was a genuine person integrating himself into our society then he would have understood enough to know that it was a fucking stupid thing to run away from anyone on that day, time and location, (it has been known for some time that terrorist cells in London have been educated around Stockwell) forgetting for the moment he was on a false visa and probably just thinking about himself... Anyone that says he was running because he thought they were terrorist themselves is having a (sick) laugh. He knew better. Men and women trying to protect the citizens of London had a very tough decision to make and I don't envy them for it but I sure as hell support it. May people of many nationalities (and creeds, including Muslims) were killed on 7/7. We don't want it to happen again - as someone said today - really he need to be viewed as a victim of the terrorists himself rather than a victim of the British police.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Kumkwat]

yeah probably those ones.

so?

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Kumkwat]

I wouldn't be surprised if in his panic he thought *THEY* were terrorists.

Yes, because terrorist m.o. is to move around in groups, brandish side arms and shout "STOP, POLICE".

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[rich_r]

If you're deploying special forces into your capital city, to carry out a police function and there hasn't been a miltary coup, there had better be a damn good reason.
So, a man was, to all intents and purposes, murdered in front of a train load of commuters.
Said man was, authorities admitted later, nowt to do with the attacks.
Not muslim, not arabic and almost certainly not al qaeda. Off topic? not 'alf.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Kumkwat]

If you're deploying special forces into your capital city, to carry out a police function and there hasn't been a miltary coup, there had better be a damn good reason

How many of ur every-day beat cops do you think have training to handle a situation, where hesitation can mean the difference between 30+ people dead and 1 person, who they had every reason to suspect was a terrorist? ( refer to the numerous posts detailing his suspect behaviour ).

I don't think many, if any. You are just conjecturing they were special forces anyway. If your tailing someone, you don't wear police uniforms, if you do, you should be laying bricks.

Its a pity he died, however the circumstances bear out the result.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[rich_r]

My conjecture to the presence of special forces is:
No warning to the suspect before firing
Massively inappropriate (for the police) use of force. The suspect is on the ground and is subsequently shot eight times.

The courts have shown, in northern ireland, that running in spite of a warning does not justify the use of deadly force. In the UK, anyway.
The ends justify the means? Well, that's alright then. Good job he wasn't able to detonate that non-existant bomb.
The key question is: If the police/intelligence services/special forces/GNAA suspected that he had a bomb and was about to carry out a suicide mission, then why was he allowed to board a bus?

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[delong]

"U.S. intelligence agencies have identified at least 22 Islamic terrorists who are believed to be operating in the so-called tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay."

Hezbollah has open, plain-view operations in South America.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Jeremi]

Yes, because terrorist m.o. is to move around in groups, brandish side arms and shout "STOP, POLICE"

Actually, impersonating officials IS a common m.o. for terrorists. It hasn't happened in Britain yet, but that doesn't mean it won't -- it's happened many times in Iraq.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[ryanov]

Yeah, they had a really difficult decision. The man was laying FACE FUCKING DOWN on the pavement when he was shot. I don't care who you are, or how stupid the man was for running, that is murder and attempting to blame it on the terrorists is shirking responsibility. You shoot, you take responsibility. All the rest is BS.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[pintomp3]

you are right. illegal immigrants who run from gun-brandishing police deserve to be show 5 times in the back of the head. the punish really fits the crime here.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[InfiniteWisdom]

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?

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[you_muppett]

I heard the following stat on the Moral Maze programme on BBC 4: 12 suspicious Brazilians killed a week in Brazil. By Brazilian police. Don't fucking talk to me about innocent Brazilians.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[julesh]

If they thought he had a bomb, why did they let him board the bus when they were following him?

Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[protomala]

I know, I know everthing you guys are saying to justify Jean's death. It was supposed to be a joke, the news about intel isn't even very related to british. But yes, this case was just everthing terrorists want: police and government are so paranoic that they will kill anyone suspect and people will forgive them, Did you guys noticed you are saying people with a invalid passport are ok to be killed? And that brazilian's police actions justify british's ones? Man, I'm terrified just now, what a paranoic world are we just now?

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[MullerMn]

I realise this is a bit pedantic and inconsequential, but in actual fact they shot him 7 times. 1 in the back, the rest in the head.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[marcosdumay]

"If so then I nominate him for a Darwin Award"

Even then, isn't it funny that the english police, that is pround of almost never using their guns, kill (execute) someone with 8 bullets on the head?

"U.S. intelligence agencies have identified at least 22 Islamic terrorists who are believed to be operating in the so-called tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay."

Are that the same US intelligence agencies that lied to you that Iraq had WMD? Can anybody still trust them while US is trying to enforce its authority on Latin America?

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[InfiniteWisdom]

They may have shot him before they pinned him down... but once they had him restrained, there is absolutely no way to justify pumping those bullets into his head

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Chris Burke]

First, anyone who knows anything about this story knows the language issue was moot. He spoke English just fine. Who cares? The only relevence his origin has is that 1) he looks different 2) he was illegal, and thus predisposed to flee. The questions thus are: would this have happened if he was legal and would this have happened if he had non-threatening white skin?

If someone yells "STOP, POLICE!" in the subway, I would stop.

Someone, anyone? My understanding is that he is not the only person who ran. That doesn't surprise me, when you're in the location of a previous terror attack and somebody in plain clothes brandishes a gun -- regardless of whether they claim to be police or not!

He wasn't the only one who ran. The reason they chased him down specifically is because they were tailing him because he lived in the same complex as a different suspect*; I.e. they were already suspicious, and thus his actions only served to confirm their pre-conceived ideas.

THAT, by the way, is why we (used to) have so many laws protecting the "accused": because to a police officer, even the average honestly-trying-to-do-good kind, a "suspect" is "the guy who probably did it" and all of the "suspect's" actions are going to be viewed in that light. That police officer probably thought he was fighting evil incarnate when he shot an innocent man in the face. Why? Because he already assumed this was the case.

Which just highlites the fact that the whole scenario was idiotic. If he actually had been a suicide bomber, then he would have detonated his device the second the police revealed themselves. When that didn't happen, when they chased him down and he still hadn't exploded, and then pinned him on the ground face up and he still hadn't exploded, what need was there to shoot him? Only "I'm killing an evil terrorist because that's who Dispatch told me I was chasing -- Me: 1; Terror: 0!" can justify this.

My deepest, sincerest hope is that we will sometime soon stop saying "But my actions are justified because I'm fighting Terrorists!" and start realizing "My actions are not justified because they are completely ineffective at fighting Terorists!" It seems precious few people are able to dissociate fighting terrorism with fighting terrorism effectively. I had hoped and was largely gratified that the British would keep their cool. It does seem that certain elements are following the U.S. in a policy of "whatever we do is right (because it's against Terror!), no matter how stupid and counterproductive".

* Is it only me that is worried that plain clothes officers may tail me and launch a sudden attack which may result in me being shot in the face if I were to, say, panic, because I lived near an actual terrorist suspect? Roving wiretaps were bad enough, but roving shoot-to-kill orders? That's insane!

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Savant]

The Brazilian fellow was white-skinned. Check out the various images of him floating round various news websites.

Here's a couple from the BBC:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41337000/jpg /_41337183_menezes203.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41336000/jpg /_41336581_victim203.jpg

In the current climate, running from police officers is a really bad idea, no matter what your skin colour.

I disagree with many of your conclusions though. Surely a terrorist determined to blow himself up would have made for a crowded area, rather than blowing himself up in an open space to no avail when challenged by the police? And that's what Mr. Menezes did, vaulting the Tube station barricade. Given the suspicious nature of his behaviour, the police must have been convinced he was a terrorist. They pinned him down, he struggled, they panicked, it being quite clear in their minds he was attempting to blow himself and them up. Men tend not to be at their most rational when they think someone's trying to kill them. So they shot him, and only then discovered their mistake.

Lacking these powers would render them incapable of acting against real terrorists. Having them means civilians who act suspiciously are at risk from the police as well. So far the terrorists have proven more of a danger than the police. If this changes, perhaps things will need to be rethought.

Re:Oh no, they will shutdown me!

[Chris Burke]

Surely a terrorist determined to blow himself up would have made for a crowded area, rather than blowing himself up in an open space to no avail when challenged by the police?

Surely a terrorist determined to blow himself up would do so before being apprehended, even if the target of the explosion would be less than ideal. The place where he was when the police announced their presence was sufficiently crowded to make exploding there more ideal than being apprehended and the mission being a failure.

It would be interesting to see in cases of actual suicide bombers how often scenarios like this happen -- the bomber is alerted to and chased by police, and then apprehended without detonating. I would think, but don't know, that most cases of a suicide bomber being caught would involve them being caught off guard and immediately restrained, not chased through their chosen target and eventually tackled.

They pinned him down, he struggled, they panicked, it being quite clear in their minds he was attempting to blow himself and them up. Men tend not to be at their most rational when they think someone's trying to kill them. So they shot him, and only then discovered their mistake.

Exactly, that was pretty much my whole point. The police, already having assumed that he was a suicide bomber, saw his actions as being indicative of a suicide bomb attempt and responded accordingly. That cop thought he was saving his own life and the lives of everyone nearby when he shot an innocent man in the face. The problem is that this irrational course of action was set in motion by the decision to label a guy from the same apartment complex as someone else as a likely terrorist. Having already been assumed to be a terrorist, there is little surprise in the outcome, because the police following him were waiting for anything "suspicious" as a reason to put him down. I posit that the scenario would have been entirely different if the police had been told he was a suspected illegal immigrant with no ties to terrorism.

Lacking these powers would render them incapable of acting against real terrorists.

What powers? And what real terrorists? I fail to see how anything involved in this scenario would have helped to stop a "real terrorist" unless they shot him as soon as they were sure they were following the right guy.

Having them means civilians who act suspiciously are at risk from the police as well. So far the terrorists have proven more of a danger than the police. If this changes, perhaps things will need to be rethought.

PERHAPS?! No, you should definitely think again before the police are even close to being as dangerous as the terrorists they are trying to stop!

Not that it will take much. How many died in the first explosions? It seems that most Britons have taken it in stride, but some law enforcement are way too eager to prevent it from happening again and are fingering anyone they plausibly can (as much as "lives near other suspect" is plausible). Combining such a wide dragnet of suspicion with a shoot-first-questions-later policy is a disaster in the making, and I fear this is only the first example.

The root causes of terrorism

[rm3friskerFTN]

From the Wizbang Blog ...

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.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[william_w_bush]

if i may add:

7) The major networks do all the actual propoganda for you. It's like having your own PR firm. The media tends to magnify attacks it can dramatize, or that have victims you can sympathize with, which is why there is more coverage for an attempted suicide bombing in london, which killed nobody, compared to the hundreds of thousands killed in the russian war in chechnya, and the genocide of more than half a million people in darfur.

Not that I'm claiming moral superiority, I mean I sure as hell perk up when the news shows a tragedy happening in a place with a macdonalds in the background compared to some dusty 3rd world fuckhole, but that's part of being an arrogant westerner.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[dr_dank]

Seems like 1,2 & 5 could just as easily describe Paris Hilton.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[learn fast]

This is interesting but none of of these seem like root causes of terrorism. These are all features of terrorism that may or may not be necessary but are certainly not sufficient to explain why terrorism occurs. For instance, that terrorism is "simple" isn't a reason to commit terrorism. Perhaps that it is simple allows it to happen once the underlying desire is there, but it is not in itself the underlying "root cause".

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[The Limp Devil]

Some comments:

1) It's simple.
No, command and control is still difficult, and planning is necessary, unless you want your actions to be completely random with unpredictable results. Tim McVeigh and John Nichols are an exception, because they were two guys, not an organization. A campaign of terror is not simple, and this is why the average terrorsit is well educated and has a good economic background.

2) It's flashy.
Nothing new here. It was flashy with the highjackings of airliners in the seventies, but died off again in the eighties when that became difficult. The smaller bombs and assasinations continued, but never got as much attention. Eventually people adjust and reach a level of toleration. This was the awoved aim of ETA and the IRA: To raise the violence to unacceptable levels. They failed.

5) It's cheap.
It's less expensive than conventional war, but it's not cheap. You still need weapons, training, communciations, identity papers, lodgings, etc. which are secure and difficult to trace after the fact. Terrorsits without papers or with poor training are a liability. They are nervous and get caught, or they blow themselves up making or transporting their bombs. Even with suicide bombers you need to cover who they were in touch with and where they got their weapons, and if your operatives are not killing themselves it becomes even more important. This is why most terrorism has been state sponsored, and why old terrorist organizations that lost their sponsors are now almost indistinguishable from organised crime: ETA, FARC, IRA, GRAPO, et al now finance their activities by robbery, drug dealing, extortion etc. Terrorism is expensive.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[demachina]

"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."

Are you talking about the Geneva conventions? Well they didn't work. Especially with the advent of strategic bombing as practiced by both sides in World War II, civilians were killed in vast numbers and on purpose. In the Vietnam war again strategic bombing killed civilians in large numbers and there were free fire zones in which the U.S. military declared whole regions as sympathetic to the enemy and authorized killing of everyone in those zones, women, children and innocents included.

In Iraq the U.S. has in fact violated the Geneva conventions as a matter of policy and has again killed civilians in large numbers, denied them necessities of life like water and medical care, and of course arbitrary arrest, detention and abuse of civilians in prisons like Abu Graib.

The main flaw in your list is the delusion that the "civilized world" is somehow morally superior. It never has been. The British and French were brutal colonial masters throughout the 20th century. The French created the debacle that was Vietnam. The British created the root of the disasters we live with today in Iraq, Palestine and Iran. The U.S. took up where they left off after World War II, especially in Iran where the U.S. toppled the government and installed the Shah who turned in to one of the Middle East's most oppressive rulers. The Shaw was the root cause of the Iran revolution and putting the mullahs in power in Iran. Most Iranians viewed oppressive mullahs as an improvement over the U.S. backed Shah.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[demachina]

"Kinda what the left has done for a majority of people the last few decades."

You pretty much failed to make your point here, whatever it was.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[e40]

These are not the root causes, but they are reasons terrorism is possible. It is simple to drive an ice pick into my eye. Is that a cause? No.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[e40]

Ironically, I just ran across this post which speaks directly to the root causes of terrorism. If the US hadn't been meddling in the Middle East--support of the brutal Shaw of Iran, for example.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[varebel]

2) It's flashy. Terrorism is "the new coolness." It gets a lot of attention, very quickly.

And, that's a big problem. The media is turning "terrorism" into a catch-all buzzword for anything that even closely resembles any of your six points. Kinda like back in the early 90s when "multi-media PC" was used to describe anything with a sound card and a CD-ROM drive.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[the_womble]

Quite right, it would make terrorism a lot less attractive if the media could just report and then shut up. No chance of that of course.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[Peyna]

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?

The problem with why people turn to terrorism is that 7) is missing: "It works." Because it most cases, it doesn't work. Terrorism has rarely led to significant change, and in fact, usually ends up just angering your enemy more.

I'm sure there are examples of where it has been effective (examples are welcome), but I imagine there are many more of where it hasn't been effective.

Why use terrorism if it is a proven ineffective method of achieving your goals?

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[cpghost]

Terrorism has rarely led to significant change,

Well, current terrorism did lead to very significant changes: we keep spending billions of dollars every year on security which could have been put to much better use elsewhere. We've forfeited many civilian liberties, just to appease Joe Sixpack who's getting all panicky. And the mentalities have turned to the worst too. That's a lot of changes we've made to our society just because of a few terrorist attacks (they've had a lot more in Europe before 9/11 but they nowhere overreacted like the world did since then); and THAT's sadly encouraging more terrorists to do more of the same.

Terrorism by itself doesn't do much actual physical damage (outside the crime scene); it's our hysteria that does. Judging by the actual hype, this current wave of terrorism *is* pretty effective by all means.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[Peyna]

You've demonstrated that terrorism has had numerous effects on us; however, you have not demonstrated that it has had the effect that its users desire.

Re:The root causes of terrorism

[cpghost]

however, you have not demonstrated that it has had the effect that its users desire.

What do they desire? From their perspective, they are fighting a war against us; and we, by fighting back the way we do (I'm not suggesting we shouldn't; it's the WAY we do it that I'm questioning), do more harm to our society than terrorists could ever have done by themselves. They managed to make us loose reputation in the parts of the world where they would like to have strongholds; and we've lost a good deal of influence nearly everywhere else we go, including with our allies. That's exactly what they wanted and WE are doing them the favor by acting just like they anticipated we would act. So yes, we must fight back, but much more intelligently than we're currently doing.

MSN

[Fujisawa Sensei]

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.

Think it through...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

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.

Re:Think it through...

[cahiha]

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.

From making chips to fighting terrorism

[imuffin]

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

Terrible article...and here's why...

[divide overflow]

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.

Re:Terrible article...and here's why...

[mojihedun.com]

It isn't a type, I replaced the site with a patiotic one. I can tell for the responses and server logs, it was up.

Also, the other site you mentioned is a Palastinian site and does not overtly reference al-Qaeda, nor did it "instruct" the 7/7 bombers.

And yet no one believes me...

[SpaceAdmiral]

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: ". . ."

Slashdot post tunelling

[melikamp]

How To Tunnel Content Through Slashdot.

By following these simple steps you can encapsulate any sensitive and/or offensive content in a Slashdot post, and so make it practically indistinguishable from thousands of other posts. In fact, your success rate is directly proportional to how offensive your content is.

(1) Copy and paste offensive content into the Slashdot submission form.

(2) To ensure +5 interesting, prepend the post with "I'll probably get modded down for this, but..."

(3) To ensure +5 insightful, append "...just like 1984." to the post.

Re:Slashdot post tunelling

[Anonymous Coward]

I could see why you are so pi**ed off. Just because you don't get modded up most of the time doesn't mean others cannot either. I found the parent comment funny even if it is an old joke (like In Soviet Russia ...). It is still better than crying ....

Slashdot linked to terroism.

[Tehrasha]

!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.

sources ?

[Adult film producer]

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?

Re:sources ?

[fishbowl]

> News stories mention these "al queda websites" all
> the time but I've never seen one, and the stories
> never mention the website address...

Is Arabic a native tongue of yours? Chances are you're just not looking in the right places.

That said, I've often wondered about things that are purported to be commonplace on the internet, yet I've never actually seen, in a lot of years of being heavily involved in the net.

But in this case, I think you'd have to be heavily into stuff like Arab language blogs and so on before you'd even be on the heuristic that would lead you to discover something like an el-queso site.

Re:sources ?

[smitth1276]

There is a database of those sites at http://haganah.us/haganah/index.htm

Oh, I don't know

[ShatteredDream]

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.

Re:Oh, I don't know

[nagora]

All religions are the same and all are causing hundreds of deaths every day; Christianity is one of the worst with its track record of encouraging AIDS. The bottom line is that if you carefully develop a system of training people to believe whatever some "eldar" tells them then sooner or later some such eldar is going to tell them to kill people who don't agree with him.

Very few murderous rabble have ever been recruited from people who always ask why they should do as they're told.

As to mass murder, the current US ruling class are quite happy to see it if it supports their economic aims. They gave Saddam power, bioweapons and chemical weapons as long as he was killing Iranians with them. Today they're happy bombing the shit out of Iraqi civilians as long as they know that if push comes to shove with China, the US can walk in and take the Iraqi oil-fields. 100000 dead? They're foreigners, they don't count. 1000+ dead Americans? Canon fodder protecting the wealthiest 1% of the world's population - throw some more on!

Evil is as evil does.

TWW

Re:Oh, I don't know

[Master of Transhuman]

"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."

Okay - let's see now, that takes care of AIPAC (oh, wait, two of their people are already being investigated), Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Fox News, most of the Christian fundie sites...

"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"

Well, if you want to call the Catholic Church a "secular government", but I'd say that is stretching it a bit...

Actually the best thing that could have happened for Europe would have been the extermination of the Christian religion in Rome two thousand years ago.

As Aleister Crowley used to say, "The Christians to the lions!"

But don't worry - we Transhumanists will contrive a second chance: "The Christians to the disassemblers!"

Re:Oh, I don't know

[BCW2]

You might want to check the facts. The most persecuted Religion in the world is Christianity. More Christians are killed in more parts of the world because of their Religion than any other, every year. More people are persecuted for Christian beliefs than for anything else (what happens to Christians in China for example). It's been this way for years and only got a little better with the collapse of the Communist Eastern Block. The Communists can't tolerate any competing belief system of any kind. It might show how weak their system really is.

Re:Oh, I don't know

[SA Stevens]

Christianity is one of the worst with its track record of encouraging AIDS.

Thanks for including some of your most ribald nuttyness right in the first sentence. It helps people weigh the credibility of everything else you put in your comment.

Re:Oh, I don't know

[ryanov]

I would like to go ahead and... disagree with you there.

http://www.uua.org/ - Unitarian Universalism: The Uncommon Denomination.

Re:Oh, I don't know

[ryanov]

They encourage abstinence, not condom use. Ever tried abstinence? (Actually, this is /. so there may not be a lot of sympathy here ;)) It ain't pretty. You have to work within the confines of reality.

Re:Oh, I don't know

[nagora]

The most persecuted Religion in the world is Christianity. More Christians are killed in more parts of the world because of their Religion than any other, every year.

So? Two wrongs make a right or something?

Re:Oh, I don't know

[Dyolf Knip]

Hmmm, you must have missed the recurring Vatican decrees that "Condoms don't stop AIDS", or even the occasional "Condoms are laced with the AIDS virus as part of a western plot to kill you".

I think lying to millions of people about the contagion vectors of a plague and means of halting same qualifies as a 'pretty bad track record'.

Orwell

[headkase]

I hope terrorists don't turn into Eurasia.
Seriously.

The answer is....

[Rick Zeman]

...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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[DarkWolf0]

I dont think people are as worried about the "free speech" possibilities, but as to the possibilities of a future nothing like what the frames of the Constitution imagined. The people that started this great country were intent on keeping the government as much away from things as possible, and with the advent of more and more control over what people should say makes for a very scary enviorment. Sure, it is legitimate now, (Shutting down manicial clerics, preventing terrorist logistics) But what after that? Is all those added powers just going to "go away?" Doubtful.

Re:when in doubt, don't do anything!

[pchan-]

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.

A Uniter, Not a Divider?

[GrunthosTheFlatulent]

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.)

Re:Try solve a social problem with technical means

[melikamp]

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.

sick of you excuse makers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[Kumkwat]

You want to bet your life that a terrorist can't detonate his explosives, which is the assumption they were operating under, when he's pinned to the ground?

Yes, well done anonymous coward, I don't see you out there protecting the public.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[portwojc]

What's worse is people miss the point with their own mindset they can't get past.

That man would most likely be alive today if he just obeyed the police officers.

How can it be any clearer than that? Or am I just wrong in thinking if he did obey he would be alive today.

Somewhere along the line people have gotten the stupid idea that you can disobey an order from a police officer.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[lgw]

He ran from a house tha was under surveilance for suspected terrorist activity, he wasn't just some random guy in a coat. If the police thought is was wearing a bomb, it's no wonder they shot him even after capturing him, as the whole point was to keep him from detonating himself on the train!

But you must not care about this much, if you're not even willing to say "fuck" in protest.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[ryanov]

What's even stupider is that you seem to think you that it is legal for a police officer to kill someone who's disregarded an order. I don't know what country you're from, but in America it certainly is not.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[Danga]

I totally agree. This guy was NOT some innocent joe. Just read the previous posts about the illegal passport stamp, student visa, etc. If he had half a brain he would have just complied and faced the consequences instead of running toward the trains that had recently been bombed then I am 99.9% sure he would still be alive today.

As far as being shot while on the ground I would think he did something other than DUH laying on the ground motionless. If he had a bomb and he would have set it off then everyone would be up in arms saying he should have been stopped. In my opinion, this guy deserves a Darwin award and that is all.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[Danga]

What's even stupider is that you seem to think you that it is legal for a police officer to kill someone who's disregarded an order.
He was thought to have a BOMB. He came out of a building that was being watched and known to contain people who were in contact with terrorists. You were not there to make the split second decision whether to not shoot and possibly be blown up. I do not believe he was shot unjustifiably, he most likely kept struggling while he was attempting to be detained and yes if I was put in the position of letting the guy live or possibly getting blown up (with justifiable evidence otherwise) along with innocent bystanders then I would have shot him too. Disobeying an order was not the sole reason he was shot and you are an idiot if you believe otherwise.

Re:sick of you excuse makers

[ryanov]

I'm not saying that, I'm arguing with what you said. "These people seem to think they can disregard a police order." Apparently he couldn't. You are cool with this. Are we up to speed now? The dude was STILL on his face and shot 8 times in the back of the neck/head. Maybe if they were right, that would be something. They don't seem to ever be, however.

Did the overall rights occur to anyone?

[DarkWolf0]

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... "

Re:Did the overall rights occur to anyone?

[Master of Transhuman]

"If it is a lack of terrorist attacks, is there any time in history that would meet this definition?"

Yeah, for the US - the last three years.

Let's declare victory and stop.

SJ Games

[Ronin441]

"I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"

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

The odds are the government didn't shut them down.

[FredThompson]

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?

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[william_w_bush]

ok, shut up.

i don't know where you live, but chances are you live in a country which has no moral authority to tell others what is right and wrong.

america = native americans, slavery, civil rights, kkk, etc
britain = whole lot of imperialist killing
germany = holocaust
france = panama and suez canal, algeria, vietnam, other small shit
ad nauseum

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. I'm not defending them, I'm saying you're not right either, and those animals were you 50-100 years ago. this has nothing to do with free speech, speech has never been free from those determined to stop it.

I agree with your last sentence though, but ask an african-american how he feels about his ancestors being killed for being able to read before you bitch about how hypocritical people are who argue for free speech.

Re:Strange

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> 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.

From TFA... this is the best part...

[qzulla]

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.

In other words we are wasting our money and resources here.

q

First time Ive seen

[mrs dogbreath]

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)

He Spoke Excellent English

[Avenel]

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.

Your argument is Bull Shit.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Furthermore, "encouraging" violence is part of everyday political opinions: US politicians do it just about every day.

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 .

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[sean23007]

I would think that that's the point of his post. It's not okay for us to encourage violence, but if we want to prevent them from doing it, then we should probably stop as well.

It's okay for someone to tell someone to stop doing something that they don't do themselves, but it is hypocritical to say that someone shouldn't or can't do something that they do themselves.

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

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.

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[sean23007]

You have to bear in mind that it isn't the governments of foreign countries that are writing, hosting, or sponsoring these websites. If you're going to treat them that way, then they deserve treatment according the the Geneva Convention (which they do not currently receive). If you are going to assume they are funded by a foreign government, then you'll have to prove it. If not, then they don't really apply to our laws, since they're not US citizens and are not breaking US laws. I hope you don't think disagreeing with and/or hating the US government is against the law ... otherwise 49.1% of US citizens are criminals.

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[Shihar]

"...If not, then they don't really apply to our laws, since they're not US citizens and are not breaking US laws."

"...If not, then they don't really apply to our laws, since they're not US citizens and are not breaking US laws."

They are breaking US (or in this case, UK) laws. They are listed as a terrorist organization in both nations and have admitted and been shown to have committed terrorist acts. In the US and the UK, that is a crime, regardless of where it occurs in the world. As to the extent of jurisdiction, it is a moot point. Stepping over a political boundary only buys you as much protection as another sovereign nation is willing to afford you. If a pile of terrorist were tanning on some 1 kilometer large desert island in the Caribbean that is technically considered a sovereign nation, I find it highly doubtful the US or the UK would balk at arresting and/or killing them all.

You absolutely can violate the laws of a nation without being in it. The only question is whether or not the nation you are in feels like offering you protection. In this case, I think it is pretty safe to say that no nation is going to complain to the UK that their local Al-Qaeda web sites were knocked off line.

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[Politburo]

Certainly there are factions of "Westerners" that believe this, but my guess is their websites don't last long either.

Last time I checked, Free Republic was still up.

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[Politburo]

Well, you'd be wrong in this case. Have a nice day! :)

Re:Your argument is Bull Shit.

[cahiha]

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 .

I think it is acceptable for anybody to talk about violence, including suggesting that violence is a solution to a particular political problem. That's part of the political process. If people can't express that opinion in public, I can't disagree with them in public and try to convince them that they are wrong.

Re:time to use freenet

[protocol420]

"works" is a relative word when it comes to freenet. i know of better alternatives but cannot disclose them yet do to scaling issues and the main dev biting my head off. expect it soon, and its been mentioned in comments before. ps, when i say soon, i mean a month or 2

garbled story

[jpc]

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.

Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[Shihar]

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.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[jpc]

er no wasnt the Soviet recruiting station in Cambridge not London?

Not the army the spies....

And they got quite annoyed with Blunt, Philby, Maclean and co...

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[you_muppett]

Shihar, I couldn't agree more with you. "get some fucking perspective please" I listened to an interview on public radio in the US today and heard a professor at UCLA describing how the British police are now responsible for the 'third wave of terror' due to the 'shoot to kill' policy. Why are these left wing 'libertarians' SO much more interested in protecting the rights of terrorists than making sure we are doing everything we can to protect our freedom? Don't these libertarians realise that if the terrorists had their way, they would be one of he the firsts groups to have their lives extinguished?

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[radish]

I actually think they're more concerned about protecting the lives of innocent Brazillian electricians. Or does his death not matter?

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[Shihar]

I wouldn't compare the British shoot to kill policy with knocking down Al-Qaeda web sites. Knocking down an Al-Qaeda web site doesn't upset anyone except the border line insane. I mean hell, they smeared the words Al-Qaeda across the top of the website. That is a pretty good indication that those are in fact the guys you are trying to kill - and if you are willing to kill them, it is probably okay to knock down their blog while you are at it, hence the "getting some fucking perspective".

The reason why civil libertarians are pissed about that the British shoot to kill policy is because they shot the wrong guy. The guy they shot wasn't a terrorist. This isn't worrying about the terrorists rights; it is worrying about the rights of civilians to not have their brains blown out because the cops got confused and have itchy trigger fingers. I doubt anyone cares that terrorist will be shot, it is the non-terrorist that get confused for terrorist getting shot that has people worried.

That said, I understand the policy. If you think a guy is about to blow himself up, you might very well pump as many bullets into his brain as you can to keep him from setting off a bomb and killing dozens of people. My impression is that British policy pretty much forbid the use of lethal force in all but the most extreme circumstances before the bombing. After the bombing they changed it such that if the police believed that a suicide bombing was imminent, they could kill the suspect to prevent him from detonating the bomb. That policy isn't bad, it just needs to be refined. The police need to be properly trained as to when it is and is not the time to open fire. American police already have a similar policy. They are much free to use lethal force, but are well drilled as to when they can and can not use it. British police on the other hand have been thrown a new policy, and as the incident where the Brazilian man was shot shows, they clearly were not trained properly in how to implement it.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[An Onerous Coward]

Where in the story did it say these websites were being used to collect money? I think that if they had a PayPal link up, British Intelligence wouldn't be knocking the website down. Rather, they'd be quietly using the money transfers to gather intel on supporters and recipients alike.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[cahiha]

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?

Yes, quite right. Terrorist camps kill people, web sites don't.

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

It's also the exact same reason why the British Empire repressed freedoms: repressing speech works--for a while--until people get sufficiently pissed off. Eventually, repression backfires. That's why we are seeing terrorism in the first place.

Second, it is a propaganda war.

You are quite right that it is a propaganda war. And if we want to be perceived as the side standing for freedom and democracy, we can't afford being seen repressing speech we don't like.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[cahiha]

Why are these left wing 'libertarians' SO much more interested in protecting the rights of terrorists

These left wing libertarians are concerned with protecting the rights of free speech and self determination, rights that even potential terrorists have until they actually commit a crime.

Don't these libertarians realise that if the terrorists had their way, they would be one of he the firsts groups to have their lives extinguished?

Well, that sums up the problem: you accept doing the wrong thing (dismantling democracy, killing civilians) because you are scared, while we prefer doing the right thing (maintaining democracy, helping nations in need) even though it may be risky and unprofitable in the short term.

It's short-sighted thinking like yours that has created the mess we are in in the first place.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[Shihar]

So... we can shut people up by dropping a bomb on their heads... but we can't shut down their websites. Right...

It is very simple. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization. The stated goal of the organization is to kill civilians. In the UK, it is illegal to be a member of said organization. Anything belonging to Al-Qaeda can be seized and any member can be put in prison. In the same way that the UK will merrily track down their financial backings and take the money, they will merrily track down their communications network. Websites OWNED by Al-Qaeda are without a doubt part of their communications network. Just because they don't post their super secret plans on them doesn't make them any less legitimate of goals.

You are more then welcome to declare your support for Palestine, declare what a wretched government the UK is for being Iraq, smear all over your blog that you hope all the Brits in Iraq are beheaded. Any private citizen can do this in the UK. That said, as soon as you smear across your website that you are member of a terrorist organization whose states goal is to intentionally kill citizens of the UK, you lose any sort of 'rights' you have.

Personally, I am totally blown away that people are arguing with a straight face over whether or not organizations that have openly executed terrorist attacks and have declared their intention to conduct more such attacks in the future should be entitled to run websites. If Al-Qaeda was to open up an information booth and recruiting station in London, would you objective if the government shut that down too?

I am blown away that we are even having this argument. Let me be blunt and really get to the heart of it. Al-Qaeda does not have a "right" to own any fucking websites.

I can't believe I am listening to people argue that terrorist organizations have a right to have websites too. Should we offer them free health care and a tax exempt charity states as a religious organization while we are at it?

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[cahiha]

Al-Qaeda does not have a "right" to own any fucking websites.

No, they clearly don't. In fact, that has nothing to do with terrorism: Al Quaeda is neither a natural person nor a corporation, so they can't own anything at all.

But individuals have the right to have web sites. Membership in a terrorist organization may cause them to lose that right (among other things), but that determination should be up to a court of law in a democracy, not secret government organizations.

What you are advocating is that bureaucrats and spooks in the British secret service can determine, without any judicial or public review, what speech is acceptable, and enforce whatever restrictions on speech they want through secret means. That is unacceptable in a democracy.

It is very simple.

Yes, to people like you, everything is always "very simple". Someone in the government applies a convenient label to a group of people, and you let the government do whatever it likes. The label that you prefer to dehumanize others is "terrorist", but it might just as well be "Jew", "homosexual", "enemy of the people", "imperialist pig", or "infidel". It's people to whom things are always so "very simple" that are keeping terrorism, war, and hatred alive on all sides.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[Shihar]

If a website says, "This is an Al-Qaeda website", and it is not located in UK, you don't need a judge and jury to knock it out. No judge and jury is used when deciding who to bomb. There is no legal proceeding before someone traces a cell phone call in Afghanistan and a GPS bomb arrives on target a few minutes later. When you are actively engaged in hostilities (read that as war) against an organization like Al-Qaeda, decisions are made either by elected representatives, people appointed by them, or people appointed in accordance to the law of created by elected representatives. A jury is not used each time before a hostile action takes place. This is the nature of warfare, and it doesn't change because government agents are knocking out a website in Pakistan, verses government agents knocking out a transmitter in Afghanistan, verse government agents knocking out an Al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq.

Further, if the UK does knock out an innocent site, especially that of a citizen, there are legal means to address it. That said, I find it doubtful your local Al-Qaeda representative is going petition the government.

What you are advocating is that bureaucrats and spooks in the British secret service can determine, without any judicial or public review, what speech is acceptable, and enforce whatever restrictions on speech they want through secret means. That is unacceptable in a democracy.

First, you are assuming that the actions that took place were outside British law. I would like to see a single shred of evidence that it is against British law for British agents to knock out the websites for foreign terrorist organization. If you show me that, I will holler and howl with you about how this is illegal. I would say it is safe to say British policy and law allow certain British agencies to knock out terrorist websites.

Second, last time I checked Britain is a democracy. If the citizens are truly disturbed by the government's brutal treatment of Al-Qaeda websites, they can petition their government and enact laws to prevent the actions taking place. Further, British agencies are run by policy and laws enacted by elected representatives. British democracy is more then capable of putting a stop to the victimization of Al-Qaeda websites.

Finally, you seem to be confusing the difference between domestic and foreign affairs. Domestic affairs are handled liberally with all the benefits of trail by jury and the various protections and rights that a British citizen is entitled to. Foreign policy on the other hand does not receive those rights. Britain does not protect British rights for non-British citizens outside of Britain. Britain will not try and arrest Chinese police each and every time they try and enforce Chinese laws that would be illegal in Britain. This means that in Afghanistan, British airplanes will drop bombs on insurgents without a warrant. This means that if an Iranian is hosting an Al-Qaeda website, the British police will not fly to Iran and ask him to come back to Britain for a trial by jury.

If the policy is ever abused, use your democracy to fix it. Until then, I am not going to shed any tears because Al-Qaeda got its web servers knocked out. Show me a shred of evidence that this policy has been abused or that the actions taken were against British law. Other wise, what happened was a good thing.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[cahiha]

You are quite right that what the UK is doing is probably legal under UK law. British imperial rule and drug trafficking also were legal under UK law.

The question is not whether those kinds of policies are legal, the question is whether they are effective. And they are clearly not effective: terrorism is a worse problem than ever. Britain, and the West in general, cannot win the war on terrorism by attempting to suppress opposing politicial views, or even by going after terrorists and terrorist organizations. The only way to win is to help the people in those countries to become free and prosperous, and to convince them that we are friends and allies.

People like you exist on both sides, and they keep perpetuating the hostilities. Whether it's an Al Quaeda ideologue or a British right wing hard liner, you guys are ideologically pretty much the same, and you are threatening to destroy us all.

Re:Soviet Army Recruiting in London

[Pansy]

"First, you are assuming that the actions that took place were outside British law. I would like to see a single shred of evidence that it is against British law for British agents to knock out the websites for foreign terrorist organization."

It may not be agains British law, but if the servers reside in another country it is certainly against international law. The servers and the fiber that connects them to the backbone which connnects them to the British agents computers constitutes infrastructure directly or indirectly owned by the hosting country (indirectly in the case of private ownership by a business entity licensed in that country). Perpetrating attacks on the infrastructure of another country without a declaration of war is most definitely illegal under international law (though it is done all the time under the banner of "police actions", "peace keeping missions", etc.). This illegal act would be comprable to attacking the power grid of the hosting country to deny the 'terrorists' power. Certainly no country would stand idly by while Britain bombed a power substation without a declaration of war so I don't see why they shouldn't have every right to object to this illegal act. You can argue collateral damage, but I think there are still plenty of ways to make the comparison work.

That being said, I'll decline to argue whether it is 'right' or 'wrong' for lack of information. Where was the page hosted? How was it taken down? Did the hosting country cooperate?

obSMAC

[Repton]

We criticize terrorists for choosing violence over speech to make their point. Then we take away their ability to speak.

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

Re:obSMAC

[Detritus]

The quotation is from a fictional character in a fscking video game.

Re:obSMAC

[mike2R]

Not only that, its from a murdering, backstabbing bastard of a fictional character in a video game. Never trust Pravin Lal - he's just lulling you into a false sense of security while he preps his Planet Busters...

Re:Censorship?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Interesting that the parent has been modded "offtopic". Indeed the Slashdot hurd is anti-China for their censorship activities. And in reading many of the posts here, I see the same lines of thought, so in that, posters are being consistent.

Terrorist slashdot.

[k98sven]

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.

Re:Terrorist slashdot.

[Master of Transhuman]

"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."

Nah - that isn't Slashdot! That's just one guy on Slashdot - me! And only against Windows trolls!

"through the use of OSS and Linux software and computer technology developed and purloined by Linux and OSS members"

Hmmm, how does one both develop AND purloin open source software? How do you "purloin" something that is freely available? Does one purloin from oneself? What's wrong with this picture?

Are They Going To?

[Comatose51]

So now are they going to pass the Colonial Revolutionaries Act?

Anarchist?

[repetty]

>> "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.

"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[erunaheru]

In the US at least, most of the stuff like right to due process only applies to citizens

Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[Skjellifetti]

In the US at least, most of the stuff like right to due process only applies to citizens

No. In the US, due process applies to anyone who is in the US. The Vth Amendment applies to all persons, not just citizens:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Same for the XIVth Amendment which was added in the aftermath of the Civil War:

... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[NarrMaster]

Your post should be modded up. The prevailing rhetoric among the right wing hate mongers such as Limbaugh that due process only applies to citizens is sickening, and your post makes me slightly less irritated in knowing that some out there know better.

Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[Politburo]

Correct and it's important to point out that the Constitution does use "citizen" elsewhere in the document. The writers of the Constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote "no person".

Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[slavemowgli]

That's the way it should be, but is it really the way things *are*? The fascists will still be able to interpret these amendments their way - similar to how the opening phrase of the declaration of independence (which states, among other things, that "all men are created equal") was twisted by advocates of slavery, who claimed that of course it only applied to white people, and that while it didn't explicitely say so, it of course was what the founding fathers meant.

The same thing will happen here (or, maybe, is happening here already): there will be claims that even though it doesn't *explicitely* say so, it *of course* only refers to citizens of the USA, and how naive do you have to be to even question that, sonny.

Don't get me wrong, I really agree with your point of view, but I think that in reality, there'll be lots of ways around it, if it even comes up in the mainstream press.

Re:"judge's order...allowing the takedown"?!?!?!

[kraut]

Exactly. That's why the US govt keeps prisoners in Guantanamo Bay - because it argues that's part of Cuba, albeit a funny one, and the constitution does not apply there.

In USA...

[Wooky_linuxer]

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.

Re:In USA...

[modecx]

No, I'm pretty sure that it's quite illegal to threaten violence or even suggest it to other people. Hate speech is also illegal, but I don't know exactly what laws these fall under.

Nazis and the KKK are legal here because they chose their words very carefully. We all know what their agendas are, but as long as they don't threaten anyone or target any specific group or ethnicity they're in the clear apparently.

So, basically, their message can be "Won't someone think of the white people?!", and they can pretend all they want to be for the rights of white people, etc. without fear of the law.

Shhhhh!

[MouseR]

I wonder how easy it would be to associate any particular activity with 'terrorism.'"

People are watching!

Ahhh deterministic /.'ers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is good news

[h2d2]

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.

Let's ask Orwell what he thinks

[Brian Stretch]

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.

Re:Let's ask Orwell what he thinks

[delong]

Orwell is respected by the Right, his socialist credentials notwithstanding, because he wasn't a Useful Idiot

Bravo. Orwell needs quoting on Slashdot more often.

Readers should check out Christopher Hitchens, that old Trotskyist, who is another great writer that isn't a "Useful Idiot", and calls it like it is.

Re:Let's ask Orwell what he thinks

[Brian Stretch]

Readers should check out Christopher Hitchens, that old Trotskyist, who is another great writer that isn't a "Useful Idiot", and calls it like it is.

Absolutely! Here's a good starting point.

Re:Let's ask Orwell what he thinks

[say]

Yeah, because all socialists are pacifists, and the communists didn't fight during WW2. Jeez. If it's one thing socialism can't be named, it's pacifist.

OTOH, Orwell's argument is moot if no (expansionist) fascist state exists. I can't understand why you think this quote is relevant at all. The terrorists aren't exactly trying to lure is into pacifism - they want a religious war of civilizations (quote Osama Bin Laden). As long as enough people stick to the peace ideal, that won't happen. Therefore, pacifism is a good ideal for today's western countries. In other times, with other threats, things could be otherwise.

Seems like...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

That seems like an abridgement of free speech that the founders wouldn't have been okay...

And what exactly do the Founding Fathers have to do with whether or not it's a good thing to prevent this kind of speech?

Re:Seems like...

[sean23007]

They wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and are the basis for every decision the Supreme Court makes (or are supposed to be, anyway). Therefore, what the Founders had in mind is supposed to be very important in the minds of US citizens and lawmakers.

Re:Seems like...

[drsquare]

I'm not an American, so can someone please explain to me how a few people hundreds of years ago can dictate policy to current-day citizens of your country? What exactly gives them the authority to do that? Dead people from centuries ago haven't been voted for by the current population, so how can their opinions override that of the democratically elected government?

Were these 'Founding Fathers' democratically elected, or were they a few powerful, rich white men who were allowed to dictate to everyone else.

Re:Seems like...

[drsquare]

The general population, I presume including blacks and women... And I bet the only reason they were up for 'selection' was because they were rich and powerful. That's not exactly a democratic way of running a country.

And no-one's yet explained why the opinions of a few people hundreds of years ago should be more powerful than the opinions of people today. If the founding fathers wrote in the constitution something which is abhorrent and immoral, would you agree with it?

Re:Seems like...

[Samari711]

that's why they wrote in the ability to change the Constitution, they knew that the government was probably going to need to adapt over time and the amendment process was written in to ensure it could be done.

The principles contained in the Constitution are all in all pretty good. The founding fathers had just gotten through with a bloody war with an opressive government and initially gave the federal government next to no powers. when that system (the articles of confederation) failed they realized that they needed a stronger federal government to keep nation together but at the same time wanted to make it very hard for the government to become opressive. (I'll leave out the debate over how effective they've been)

Re:Seems like...

[sean23007]

The founding fathers were the very influential intellectuals who led the American Revolution, wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Most Consititutional scholars and judges base their decisions on the intent of the founders. Several of the founders went on to be elected president, including Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, etc. Other notable founders include Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Paine, and others. Read up here.

They were only powerful once they led the American people to freedom and created a place for their own power. They are renowned for their public mindedness and remarkable foresight into political issues.

In my opinion, the world, and America especially, could use a few more people of their caliber.

Re:Seems like...

[zxnos]

The general population, I presume including blacks and women... And I bet the only reason they were up for 'selection' was because they were rich and powerful.

the system was based on ancient greece where only landowners had a say in government because, so the idea goes, they had the greatest political interest. remember these where different times where women where not afforded the same rights and slavery was o.k. we have fixed that legally in the u.s. and are still working on it socially. it doesnt devalue the contribution they made.

And no-one's yet explained why the opinions of a few people hundreds of years ago should be more powerful than the opinions of people today.

that is essentially the concept of a constitution. it is also akin to saying: "when i was born, i didnt agree to the laws at the the time, so why should i be governed by them?" why have a document that defines the basis of government if you are not going to stick with it? otherwise those elected to power could just decide to remain in power.

If the founding fathers wrote in the constitution something which is abhorrent and immoral, would you agree with it?

i think one word answers that: slavery.

Re:Seems like...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

that is essentially the concept of a constitution

Um...no. A Constitution exists independently of the people who wrote it. The question wasn't "why should we follow the Constitution" but "why do the opinions of the Founders matter so much?". You haven't answered that.

it doesnt devalue the contribution they made.

Just saying that it doesn't doesn't make it so. If I were looking for the guidance of someone in my thinking about freedom the last place I'd look is the writings of a slaveholder. I'd say that any contribution they might have to the subject of freedom was likely to be worthless. It may have had some value in its day - maybe it reduced taxes for some rich white men free even though it left the status of everyone else unchanged, but that's not the kind of thinking I'm looking for today. In the 200 years since the Declaration we've seen some incredible advances in the way people other than rich white men have been treated. But we've also seen some incredible rewriting of history so that we can view the Founders with rose-tinted spectacles as being part of those advances.

Re:Seems like...

[zxnos]

i think i did answer it. to follow the constitution is to respect the opinions of the writers of that document. if we decide their opinions are worthless, then we have no reason to follow our consitution.

one fault of a person makes all of their intellectual ideals null and void? you act like only "rich white" guys have owned slaves. blacks did as well as numerous other societies throughout history.

in my view it does not diminish the contributions those cultures made to the world.

Re:Seems like...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

one fault of a person makes all of their intellectual ideals null and void?

No, never said that. But when the 'fault' is a complete disregard of the freedom of their fellow human I think I'll just ignore their ideas on freedom. If, on the other hand, I were looking for some ideas on how to create an economically and militarily powerful nation I might look to what the Founding Fathers had to say, after all, no more powerful nation has arisen since the founding of the US.

you act like only "rich white" guys have owned slaves. blacks did as well as numerous other societies throughout history.

1. I won't look to these people either for ideas about freedom. If X is bad at something, and then you discover that Y is also, it doesn't mean X was good.
2. Politicians frequently arrange laws to benefit themselves. When they do so they tend not to be too fussy about who else they might benefit. That some blacks prospered under slavery is no argument against the claim that the laws were essentially for the benefit of rich white landholding slaveholding men.

in my view it does not diminish the contributions those cultures made to the world.

Again you misread me. There are many great things that have come out of bad cultures. The US space program is a great thing to come out of Nazism. If I want to build rockets, I'll hire some ex-Nazi rocket builders (as the US did). If I want some advice about freedom, I'll look elsewhere.

The Founding Fathers did a pretty amazing job at putting together the framework for a successful nation. But when I want inspiration on the subject of freedom that is applicable today there are far more recent people whose ideas I will consider will before I consider those of the Founding Fathers. If nobody in the intervening 200 years had had anything cogent to say on this subject I might have look at the writings of the Founders, they were an improvement over much of what had come before. But fortunately I have many more enlightened people to sample from.

Re:Seems like...

[zxnos]

i do not misread, i simply wanted you to dissociate the culture or man from the idea. in my opinion jefferson had some very poignant things to say about freedom and equality. unfortunately he was a hypocrite. to me it doesnt devalue the good ideas he had. many people talk virtue but fail to live up to those standards. who truely can?

washington, while a slave owner realized the errors of his ways and did what he could, to the great dismay of his wife and her family.

my point wasnt that blacks prospered from the slave trade or that the laws didnt favor wealthy landowners. you do realize there where free blacks and landowners as well? slavery in the constitution was basically about appeasing slaveholders so that the union could be formed in the first place. the point is that when you say something life 'rich white guy' you imply that anglos have a monopoly on oppression and idiocy. they dont. leave the race bating out.

Re:Seems like...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

leave the race bating out.

In one respect you're right to say this. It doesn't matter what race, specifically, the Founders were. They were more interested in protected the wealth of rich people, rather than rich white people, it's just that the rich landowners just happened to be white. On the other hand you're not right to say this because race was an essential fact of American culture at the time: many people did not have rights precisely because of the color of their skin and this was quite explicit in the politics of the day, something that's hard to ignore.

many people talk virtue but fail to live up to those standards. who truely can?

Right. But I'm not making a moral judgement of the Founders. It may be that by my own standards they were moral people for their day. I may even have some admiration for them for what they did in their day and compared to their contemporaries. My point is that I don't see what their ideas have to contribute when thinking about issues today. When you stop viewing the Founders as omnipotent gods you realize the world has changed very significantly since their time. They couldn't have foreseen the incredible power of corporations, the ease of exchange of unthinkable quantities of information, the importance of intangible goods, the variety of pornography available today, the ease of production of powerful explosives, and so on. I prefer to look to more modern thinkers when thinking about issues like freedom of speech.

pakistan main pipe

[zogger]

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"

Re:pakistan main pipe

[shrewtamer]

can u post your source?

Re:pakistan main pipe

[zogger]

random links pulled off of google news just now

http://pakistantimes.net/2005/07/05/top6.htm

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=stor y_4-7-2005_pg7_27

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,15 815164%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8424511/

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-07/08/conte nt_3195248.htm

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?t ype=internetNews&storyID=2005-07-08T133115Z_01_YUE 843230_RTRIDST_0_OUKIN-TELECOMS-PAKISTAN.XML

Fighting without fighting

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

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.

Re:Strange

[YrWrstNtmr]

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.

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.

Nope

[Brian Stretch]

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.

Re:Brilliant - Push them underground

[Paraplex]

whats worse is pushing them deeper underground. They don't *stop* them communicating, they just make is harder for us to hear them.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[william_w_bush]

the point is you are all evil, sins of the past, sins of the future, tell me how a suicide bomb is more evil than a mob lynching?

block their sites, hunt them down and kill them, i don't care, but don't act so completely holy and righteous on your quest for peace and liberty as though they don't feel equally justified in doing all the disgusting shit they do.

and you are both right, but they want the best for their group (devout muslims) according to their beliefs, as we do for our group, and we tend to screw other people to get what benefits us too.

pakistan and north korea have nukes, iran wants them. we already have them, and are the only country to have used nuclear weapons as an offensive weapon in the history of humanity. while i think the last thing this world needs is a bunch of nuked up countries with centuries old grievances against each other, how do we have the moral authority we always claim to not allow them to have any? honestly, the "we are doing whats right for everyone else even if they don't realize it and hate us for it" bit is getting old. attack iran, neutralize pakistan, wipe NK off the face of the planet, but don't give me all that victim bullshit, it's played out.

none of it is excusable, but don't lie and paint pretty red hearts on all of it like its a gay ass saturday morning cartoon where gi joe is going after the horrible terrorist, attack and kill them or don't.

Classified.

[Solra Bizna]

Memo: mrt68 knows too much and must now be disposed of.

-:sigma.SB

Re:when in doubt, don't do anything!

[lgw]

Yeah, they fired Michael over this, but now Timothy's at it. :\ Blatent trolling if yuo ask me.

Google cache?

[clambake]

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..

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[lgw]

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.

Re:Strange

[initialE]

Another Barney hater, I see...

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[duffbeer703]

Ok... so when somebody blows you up on the train, that's ok, unless you are a Canadian?

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[Master of Transhuman]

"damn near all terrorists are Muslims"

Not even close. EVERY country and religion has terrorists - including Christianity and the good ole US of A.

The first terrorists were the Sicarii two thousand years ago. They were part of Jesus's followers. They were named after the short-bladed weapon they used to commit assassinations of Jewish collaborators with the Romans.

Your connection of Islamic terrorism with "the invasion of Iraq" is short-sighted bullshit. Nobody is saying it's because of Iraq - we're saying it's because of the Western world's Mid-Eastern political policies going back seventy-five to a hundred years. And today, specifically those policies related to supporting dictatorial regimes in the "pro-Western" states and especially the support of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians in the name of Zionist fanatics who want Israel to rule the entire Middle East.

Iraq has merely aggravated the situation by turning a controlled (if dictatorial) country into a chaos land where terrorists have a free hand to attack Americans and get training and equipment to eventually attack Americans anywhere.

Get a fucking clue.

You mean liberals are terrorists?

[6800]

Heck, cutting to their basics, a conservative is for staying the same, a liberal is trying to liberalise or change.

I guess you have identified the basic terrorists among us!

Brilliant!!!!

Re:You mean liberals are terrorists?

[ryanov]

Pardon me, but have you noticed who is passing these laws? Just curious.

Re:time to use freenet

[thedustbustr]

You wouldn't be talking about i2p, the site linked in your sig, now would you? I hope the lead dev doesn't bite your head off...

Re:Strange

[steelfood]

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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[william_w_bush]

no.

if your government trained, funded, armed and supported the bombers for 10 years to fight what they considered a holy war against someone who just happened to be your enemy too at the time, then, after your use for them is over, you just let these rather unstable and ridiculously dangerous people loose in parts of the world they could nearly conquer with the skills you gave them, you probably shouldn't be too surprised when they suddenly show up at the other end of the table from you.

This is not just saddam, or OBL, or fuck, how many others did we set up, like kabila, who killed millions after we set up his government then let him go because we didn't need him anymore? pinochet? ANY OF THESE NAMES RING ANY BELLS?

the american people were not aware of the horrible acts being done in their names, but those acts were done none the less, with a callousness that sartre would relish.

so, its wrong, its horrible, the terrorists should die horrible, painful deaths, especially in their pee-pees, but moral outcry? yeah, but its shallow.

our civilians are dying, our innocents... what were the hundreds of thousands in chechnya? rwanda? chile? vietnam?

nobody cries, it's not on fox, nothing.

i'll say it again, they should die, they are evil.

but we aren't neccessarily good anymore.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[Homology]

And somehow the sins of the past make the sins of the present excusable? That's the kind of self-important junior high mentality bullshit that leads to moronic fucks blowing themselves up on subways.

Great many atrocities have been committed by Western countries, and still are (in Iraq, for instance). With the illegal invasion of Iraq where the occupation forces shows little regard for the civil population, we have gotten our self a new breeding ground of people living in poverty wanting to get even. The extremists know how to use this to enlarge their ranks.

I've Always Wanted To Start a Terrorist Web Site

[Master of Transhuman]

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.

Pondering methods

[Pop69]

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 ?

Re:Pondering methods

[smitth1276]

Gives pause for thought on the most effective way of going about things doesn't it ? No, actually. In fact, it sounds like the success of the UKs operations roughtly matches that of those in the US. The organizer is yet to be caught in both, the people who killed themselves are of course dead, and those who botched their attacks (Richard Reid here, failed bombers there) are in custody.

The US though (and, actually, Britain as well) are attempting to actually tackle and eliminate the root cause of terrorism--oppression/tyranny in the Middle East. By raising two new democracies smack dab in the middle of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, etc, the coalition forces have planted the seed for the freedoms that will relegate terrorists to the fringes of society. The people who previously supported or at least looked up to terrorists will reject them as they gain more of a stake in their own future and their own lives.

This is already happening: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/07/86ed9 5a7-63b7-41d5-b273-4dec11fa9d2a.html

Since the invasion of Afghanistan, we have see elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, a popular uprising in support of freedom in Lebanon and Ukraine and Kyrzystan, minor national elections in Saudi Arabia (still no women though... it's a start at least), women GAINING the right to vote in Kuwait, Mubarak in Egypt has announced elections, elections in Lebanon, elections in Palestine, and other occurences. In other places, there are positive signs... in the UAE, for example, the academic advisory council (to the government) recommended embracing democracy, lest they fall behind their neighbors.

Good stuff is happening right in front of your eyes... the very thing that feeds terrorism--oppression--is slowly but surely being uprooted before us. It's easy to get caught up in the cause du jour and jump on the bandwagon of anti-war activism. But what is being done there is reshaping the region in a way that will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the region and make us safer in the long run.

Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[Simonetta]

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

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

That is a really one sided picture of the reality that is Israel and Palestine. You should try to learn about the other side of the story, because there are always two sides in these things and you will have a lot better understanding of reality if you understand both sides. Things are never as black and white as you try to paint them.

For example Haganah and Irgun were for all practical purposes Jewish terrorists organizations. One of Haganah's more active members would end up as Israel's Prime Minister, Menahem Begin. Haganah turned in to the IDF, Israel's Defense Force when they siezed control of Palestine. In one their more famous acts of terrorism they leveled a wing of the King David Hotel with a bomb just like the Palestinians you hate so much will do years later. It helped drive Britain out of Palestine, which in turn allowed Haganah and Irgun to seize control of Palestine and create the state of Israel. So why exactly is it OK that the state of Israel was created on the back of terrorism of Jewish origin but its not OK for the Palestinians to use it to try and get a homeland back.

Another incident you should probably learn about to level your view is the massacre at Deir Yassin. Irgun massacred 100+ residents, many women and children in a Palestinian town that had remained largely neutral in the fighting between Arabs and Jews. The Palestinian didn't just pack up and abandon their homes to the Zionists, and opt willing for life as stateless persons in refugee camps. Incidents like Deir Yassin caused many of them to flee for fear they would be massacred if they stayed in Palestine after Haganah and Irgun started gaining control of the place. Many suspect Deir Yassin was perpetrated precisely to start a Palestinian flight which allowed Jews to seize their homes, farms and business for free and with no further bloodshed. It is a classic ethnic cleansing tactic just like you saw in Yugoslavia in more recent times, or Sudan today.

Though to be fair and balanced (don't you hate that Fox tag line that everyone uses now) there were Palestinians massacring Jews and Jews massacring Palestinians through most of the 20th century as soon as it became obvious Zionists were in the process of trying to buy control of Palestine land followed by waves of Jewish immigration both legal and illegal from 1920 through the late 40's.

"Therefore to accept the legitimacy of a Palestinian state would also mean accepting the legitimacy of the means that they used to achieve it."

So again how come you and most of the rest of the world are willing to accept the legitimacy of Israel when they used the same techniques to create their state?

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[killjoe]

" 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?"

Can you imagine if from the 40s to the present day Mexicans or canadians would set up settlements on US soil, wall them off, and then kill anybody who tried to stop them.

Can you imagine if the US had set up an apartheid system against the indians and peridically dropped missiles into the indian reservations killing a couple of thousand a year?

Can you imagine if the US never gave full citizenship to the indians, instead keeping them destitute for generations?

It's time for isreal to act as a civilized nation. Every country that has won terratory in war has eventually given the people it conquered citizenship. Every single one with one glaring exception, Israel. Israel must immediately make all palestenians living under israeli occupation full citizenship and full human rights. It's the civilized thing to do after all.

"The Palestinians don't realize how lucky they are to have the Israelis as the occupying force in their land. "

Well I am so glad you are merely content to kill a few thousand a year as opposed to all at once. You guys are so great, merely torturing them and keeping them in bondage.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[SQL Error]

The King David Hotel was at the time being used as British military command and communications base, and the British were opposing the creation of the Jewish state. (At that time - they changed policy on this repeatedly.) That made it a military target - which doesn't in itself justify the attack.

The broader point - that some of the Jewish paramilitary groups in the 1940s engaged in at least borderline if not actual terrorist acts - remains. But the mainstream Jewish military suppressed them quite effectively - viz. David Ben-Gurion and the Altalena incident.

When the Palestinian leaders can suppress their rogue militias the same way, then they will be ready to have their own state. Or rather, when they can maintain civil order to that degree, Palestine will be a state.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

Not sure I see the parallel. Altalena was after the Jews had pretty much achieved victory. Maybe you could say Hagana/IDF were suppressing a more extremist Irgun but it could also just as easily be interpreted as a turf battle where Hagana and Ben-Gurion were consolidating their power at Irgun's expense. They were always bitter rivals.

By contrast you are in a way suggesting that the Palestinians have to unilaterally disarm now to prove their worthiness, and hope that Israel will out of the goodness of their heart, in return, give them back little bits and pieces of Gaza and the West bank when they feel like it, under the terms they dictate, and with the obvious condition that the Israeli army and air force will sweep in to this supposed Palestinian state whenever they feel like it arresting, killing and bulldozing as they go. The "state" Israel is proposing is more like a series of walled ghettos in to which they want to lock the Palestinians and forget about them, until the inevitable rocket or suicide bombing happens at which point Israel will roll in just like they do today.

I really doubt any Palestinian with a spine would see it your way. Hamas is really the closest counterpart to Hagana, excepting Hagana won their war and Hamas has not. The Palestinian authority is so compromised by trying to curry favor with the U.S., Israel and everyone but the Palestinian people it will never be able to exert control over the place.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[TummyX]

Give them their own state and then the next time they fire a rocket into Israel (I'd give it a week), they can inderstand the true meaning of the words "responsibility" and "consequences" that comes along with statehood.

They've become career refugees. Why on earth should palestinians get $100 *EACH* a year from the west? Africans are far more deserving.

Israel, in the 50 years since the holocaust and mass jewish eviction from the middle east, is an amazing example of what you can accomplish when you leave the past behind and rebuild your lives. A lot of technology and advances have come out of Israel (from the MRI to the 8088 to ICQ) despite it constantly being attacked by its neighbours since its founding.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[SQL Error]

By contrast you are in a way suggesting that the Palestinians have to unilaterally disarm now to prove their worthiness

No.

What I'm suggesting is that the Palestinians actively stamp out the terrorist organisations that they are at present tacitly (or actively) supporting. If they have the will and the ability to do that, then they are a state, and it's time for us to recognise that.

If they lack that will and ability, then they aren't a state, and granting them statehood is just another useless fiction.

Form a frickin' army instead of blowing up school buses. What's so complicated?

The "state" Israel is proposing is more like a series of walled ghettos in to which they want to lock the Palestinians and forget about them

Bullshit.

until the inevitable rocket or suicide bombing happens at which point Israel will roll in just like they do today.

Such terrorist attacks are only made inevitable by the Palestinian history of terrorist attacks. Huge numbers of Palestinians worked in Israel until the beginning of the current Intifada. The wall is being built in response to attacks; to claim that it is the cause of attacks that started long before it was even considered is breathtakingly nonsensical.

If Palestine forms an army and forcibly disarms the militias, then it's a state. If it doesn't, then it's not, and never will be.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[DMNT]

Form a frickin' army instead of blowing up school buses. What's so complicated?

I guess they lack the money, weapons and education.

The wall is being built in response to attacks; to claim that it is the cause of attacks that started long before it was even considered is breathtakingly nonsensical.

The wall is a part of a vicious circle: Poverty drives into desperation, desperation into suicide attacks. Israeli then control Palestinians even tighter, creating more poverty.

Besides, the wall violates the rights of those who don't participate in violent attacks. It's not the rights of terrorists we're talking but the rights of an ordinary man.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[TummyX]

  ICQ sure plus a bunch of other stuff. 8088 and MRI? Now that's a new one


Maybe you should look it up and get a clue.


Even then Israeli standard of living is still second rate by western standards and its government system is full of questionable practices against non-Jews that amount to apartheid, discrimination or racism (take your pick) ..

That being said I would rather live in Israel than in say Iran (albeit that's not saying much). Jewish people in north american are generally wonderful. Jews in Israel are just as extremist as the Palestinians and desearve ZERO support/sympathy until they start observing international law and respecting human rights.



Don't be such a doofus. Israel is the 11th most secular nation in the world. It is the *ONLY* multicultural nation in the middle east. 15% of the population is arab muslim. There is huge diversity. There are Arabs in the israeli defense forces (including a General) and there are Arabs in the Israeli government. Israel is about as racsit and "apartied" as the US. Oh wait, you probably think the US is racist too. Your use of the term "apartied" was cute.

Learn some facts before you start spouting crap like that.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[markandrew]

The "state" Israel is proposing is more like a series of walled ghettos in to which they want to lock the Palestinians and forget about them Bullshit

So how do you explain the series of walled ghettos into which the Palestinians are being forced, and only allowed out through Israeli-controlled checkpoints?
The above isn't a prediction or an opinion, it's current fact.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[sol_geek77]

I don't dispute much of what you or the parent post are saying. But my confusion of the Israel/Palestinan conflict is in the overall history of the region. Specifically where to start. For example the Haganah was established due to rising riots from the Arab community starting in April of 1920 when five Jewish people killed and 200 were injured and the British (from the Jewish viewpoint) did little to curb it over the years. As Arab riots grew so did the power of the Haganah.

Going back prior to that, the claim is the Crusades started it. But prior to that most of southern Europe was invaded by Muslims and people were either converted or killed.

Prior to that you could go back to around 600A.D. when Omar ibn al-Khattaab took over the region to stop the spread of Chistianity and to convert the people to Islam.

Prior to that you had Byzantine rule where Christianity spread.

Keep going and you will eventually get to where the Israelites defeted the Canaanites around 1200 B.C. Which I guess is sort of Palestinian, but not really.

So where does it start and where does it stop?

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[TummyX]

Mind you, the fact that all the Jews in Arabic countries have been forced to leave due to anti-Semitism induced by Israel's actions doesn't help there.


The action you speak of is "existing".

Up until last year, what was the only country in the middle east where Arabic woman could vote?

Israel's actions indeed.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[TummyX]

And please tell me you're not trying to say it's acceptable for a country to strip a certain religious minority of their citizenship because the government hates another country whose leaders happen to be of the same religion?

You don't see Israel stripping its Muslim & Arabic population of their citizenship for all the crap that goes on.

Even discounting the Jews who were stripped of their citizenship, Israel is still more multicultural than other middle eastern states.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[kabocox]

The "state" Israel is proposing is more like a series of walled ghettos in to which they want to lock the Palestinians and forget about them, until the inevitable rocket or suicide bombing happens at which point Israel will roll in just like they do today.

I always thought that Israel was formed from US and British guilt over WW2. Reading your comment, I'd guess the real reason that Israel was allowed to be created was as a place to dump Jews from Europe, Russia, or even the US if the mood took them. No one really cared that the Jewish people survived and economically grew. That Isreal is a pain in the butt for the areas Muslims/Arabs is actually a long term pro of it. No one wants a unified middle east. Israel helps to prevent it.

I'm just cynical.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

The modern chapter starts with the rise of Zionism in the early 20th century. I read a pretty good history of it a while ago but don't have a URL. Search on Zionism in the early 20th century. The problem is most writing on it is rabidly biased to either Arab or Jewish viewpoint..

If memory serves the modern chapter started when the Zionist movement started raising money, began buying land in Palestine and Jews started immigrating there, with the ultimate objective being to eventually buy enough land and get enough Jews there to wrest control of Palestine from the Arabs and either drive the British out or get them to agree to the plan. Once the Arabs figured out what the Zionist plan was resentment grew and the violence started.

The Jews had by 1948 successfully fulfilled the Zionist plan with the help of World War II, bombing the Kind David Hotel, Deir Yassin and global shame over the holocaust. The British left Palestine, the Jews out gunned the Palestinians and drove them out. It was during this period the Jews developed their fondness for holding all the high ground, something they continue today as they build their wall around the West Bank.

I forget exactly when the British got in the mix, it might have been after World War I. Pretty sure thats when they got mixed up in Iraq. Much of the Middle East was dominated by the Turkish Ottoman empire but they lost much of it in World War I to the British, Lawrence of Arabia being a key player.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

The plan for Israel started before World War II in the Zionist movement in the early 20th century. I think the original plan was to just start buying up Palestine, moving Jewish immigrants in legally and illegally until they had a critical mass to push the Arabs out.

World War II and the Holocaust first interrupted the plan, then massively accelerated it when the War ended when waves of Jewish immigrants came to Palestine from the smolder ruins of Europe.

The Holocaust certainly created sympathy for a Jewish state that didn't exist before the War. The Holocaust was a tragedy but Jews have played it to the hilt to guilt trip the world in to giving them everything they want in its wake. There were a whole bunch of other genocides in the last century that were on the same scale and they have been largely forgotten by the world. Due to good PR and constant reminder no one forgets the Holocaust and Israel wants it that way. They get away with a lot they wouldn't have were it not for the Holocaust.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[velsin.lionhart]

Your other side of the story is just as incorrect. The moral equivalency of the Hagannah attacking the British police/military installation in the King David Hotel to the repeated suiced bombings targetting civilians (men, women, children) is shocking. Your various other comments are not worthy of repudiating based on your obvious anti-semitic vitriol which equates a military conflict with the deaths of civilian jewish lives.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

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.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[unixue]

I guess, you don't know enough.. But let's make the picture fit your current situation: You (the Palestinian muslims) are in your home, free and cozy.. Your children are playing freely, and your wife is sewing :) .. Suddenly, another man (Israeli jews) shows up in your house. The mayor (the United States of America) of the city (the world) has given him your house. Now.. We are playing the role-playing game: What are you going to do? A: You are saying: "Fine, that's just fine, I'm going to live with my neigbor (Jordan).. B: You are fighting to the last drop of blood remaining in your body. You are prepared to commit suicide, if it meant, that your wife and children could remain at HOME. You are all feeling sorry for the jews, I'm not! Why didn't the United States of America offer them some of their own territory, instead of directing them to Palestine? "I guess, Hitler didn't use methods, that were effective enough." -- That is many of the opinions, I hear from some of the muslims, I know.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[sol_geek77]

I totally agree with you and the writting is terribly biased.

IIRC the British were the ones that had to divide up the Ottoman empire and IMHO they did a terrible job. They let the Jews settle too much land and they let the Palestinians and the Jews resort to violence with little protection on either side.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[Simonetta]

Hamas is really the closest counterpart to Hagana,...

    Hagana never placed a bomb in the cafeteria of the Student Center of the University, nor did they ever proclaim that killing teenage archeology students was a moral and military victory.
    Hamas did this before and, given any opportunity, would do it again.

    Morality is what morality does, to paraphrase the Forest Gump movie. Hamas is not an organization seeking focused and obtainable goals leading to the independence and prosperity of the Palestinian people. It is a violent fascist organized confederation of gangsters, who have deluded themselves with disfunctional religious fantasy into believing that they are freedom fighters instead of the sub-human thugs that the rest of the world (outside of the Islamic lands) can plainly see that they are.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

"It is a violent fascist organized confederation of gangsters,"

Fascist is a pretty east word to throw around. You should read this letter signed by Albert Einstein among others which said the same thing about a Jewish terrorist organization or political party, depending on your viewpoint, in the young state of Israel in 1948 soon after the massacre at Dier Yassin.

Try reading Wikipedia on Hamas.

It started life as a charity and social work organization and a big part of the organization and funding continues that work today. In fact its one of the few organization that is actively working to ease suffering on the West Bank and Gaza, where there is a LOT of suffering, which is why it is so popular there. If there is any organization that has really popular support among Palestinians its Hamas and it would probably be the governing party except Israel and the U.S. would never stand for it.

It was recognized early in life by....the state of Israel, due to its charity work, though it has radicalized since.

It didn't establish a really militant wing and radicalize until 1987.

Its goal is clearly stated and exactly the same one, though in reverse of many Zionists and Israelis, a Palestinian state in all of Palestine versus a Jewish state in all of Israel (depending on how radical they are, some Jews want all the occupied territories too). So again why is it OK for Jews to want Palestine to be al theirs but when Hamas wants the same thing they are "fascists" and "gangsters".

Its really sad to see people as rabid and blind with rage as yourself. Me I can see a case for both sides in the Middle East. In my book Palestinians and Jews are both pretty wrong most of the time. They are just like you they only see their side, not reality. I could never kid myself into think one side is always right and the other is always wrong, because that is simply not the case there. There has been a whole lot of wrong on both sides.

When you use words like "sub-human" that is straight out of the Nazi playbook and you are sounding more like the Fascist than the people you are railing against. That is an historical irony, people under stress often become like that which they hate and their most bitter enemies. More than a little bit of Nazi Germany unfortunately rubbed off on the Jews that suffered under them. You have to wonder what the people who suffered through the ghettos in Warsaw in World War II would say about the walled ghettos in Israel today.

I really wish the Allies had taken a chunk out of the German coast and created a Jewish state, the size of Palestine, there after World War II. It would have been pretty fair punishment and atonement for Germany. The Zionists may still have insisted on seizing Palestine but if the more moderate Jews had accepted a homeland there, and the Palestinians still had their homeland in Palestine a lot of people wouldn't have been killed over the last half century and the world would be a lot happier and better place. Alas instead we are going to have never ending conflict there. The state being proposed for Palestinians today isn't any such thing, it is a series of walled ghettos still completely dominated by Israel and most Palestinians will never accept it so the bloodshed will go on and on, and the world will continue to carve in to two factions over it. People will be blinded by hatred forever just like you are.

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[demachina]

"15% of the population is arab muslim"

According to Wikipedia in 2003 19% aren't Arab though not sure about Arab Muslim. The arab population in Israel is growing a lot faster than the Jewish much to the dismay of the Jews and immigration of Jews to Israel is also in steep decline because most don't want to put up with the strife there.

"Your use of the term "apartied" was cute."

Well you missed some key facts in trying to deny it applies. Arab citizens of Israel are treated reasonably well but Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza are NOT and they do not have Israeli citizenship. They are the ones for which a case could be made for the term apartheid. We are talking about people that have been in this limbo since 1967, soon to be 40 years or a lifetime for most there.

There is an interesting statistical situation developing and the Israel government knows it very well. If you add up all the Arabs in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza they are just about to eclipse Israeli's in total numbers. The Arabs are reproducing at a much faster rate than Jews so this overtaking is inevitable.

Arabs as nearly as I can tell are around 4.9 million in Israel and the occupied territories and there are around 5 millions Jews in the same. There are 290,000 other ethnic groups.

If Israel doesn't spin off Gaza quick, which it is about to do, there will soon be more Arabs than Jews in greater Israel, most of whom are disenfranchised, so that sure sounds a lot like apartheid to me.

If the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza were given citizenship in Israel the Arabs would soon be able to take control of Israel at the ballot box through Democratic means.

Israel has in fact been passing laws making it more difficult for Arabs from the occupied territories to get citizenship. For example someone from the West Bank who marries an Arab with Israeli citizenship has been denied getting Isreali citizenship by marriage since 2003.. This law was passed precisely to help insure Jews never loose control of their supposed Democracy at the ballot box.

The numbers as best I can tell from the CIA factbook:

West Bank

2,385,615
note: in addition, there are about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and fewer than 177,000 in East Jerusalem (July 2004 est.)

Gaza Strip

1,376,289
note: in addition, there are more than 5,000 Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip (July 2005 est.)

Israel

6,276,883
note: includes about 187,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, about 20,000 in
the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, more than 5,000 in the Gaza Strip, and fewer
  than 177,000 in East Jerusalem (July 2005 est.)

81% Jewish and 290,000 other minorities.
19% Arab or 1,192,608

Re:Why I'm against Palestine statehood

[Rayonic]

Actually...

It's said that the Palestinians 'never miss an opportunity to ''miss an opportunity.''

This is rather true of the Palestinian government.

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 point the author is making is that Palestinians are, ethnically, just generic arabs, much like those in Egypt and Jordan.

The Palestinians don't realize how lucky they are to have the Israelis as the occupying force in their land.

Versus the Russians as the occupying force, for example. Original poster isn't saying that Palestinians are lucky to be occupied in the first place.

depends on what is "hate and violence"

[zogger]

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.

Re:depends on what is "hate and violence"

[myowntrueself]

Of course those aerial bombardments might happen to cause the death of a some nightshift cleaning lady but the civilised "west" would naturally deem that acceptable collateral damage...

Al Qaeda will just go elsewhere

[celephaix]

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.

Re:Al Qaeda will just go elsewhere

[lucm]

These sites are not online planning tools for specific groups, they are mostly part of a mass media promoting hate and violence, and explaining (as an example) How to Strike a European City.

I guess that tracking and shutting them down will not eliminate terrorism, but at least it might reduce its influence over weak-minded people.

we draw the line on the illegality of such tactics

[sykjoke]

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.

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[lebow]

I'm sorry but I believe you are the one who needs a clue. I don't quite see how raising a group of peoples standards of living constitutes "oppression" ?

Did you know that the state of israel provides affirmative action to help arabs get into collage ? And they also get free health care from to government.

Before you accuse Israel of things, see things for your self. Go take a trip and view this "oppression" for your self.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[william_w_bush]

last reply was about the guy saying only canadians should be upset if they get blown up in a train.

fighting a war can be a neccessary evil, but wars aren't always guys lining up in 2 rows with shiny armor and pretty horses. we fought a huge war with russia, and the poor and marginalized were the fighters and casualties. the people pinochet and his predecessors "disappeared" were often innocents, and much more than the 5k america has lost in terrorism, and we endorsed that, if only by not saying to our lapdog "hey you. stop killing people.".

my whole argument has to do with somebody actually recognizing that this sudden burst of terrorism isn't new, or strange, or sudden just because this was the first time people were killed who wore designer clothes and had nice shoes.

we shouldn't have left them, but if we were truly moral we probably shouldn't have supported and glorified (at the time) a group of the greatest monsters and generally evil people of the modern era because we wanted to show russia that "no, we're right and you're wrong, stupid!".

Re:Strange

[Malor]

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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[duffbeer703]

So the Soviets were just in their invasion and butchery in Afghanistan, and the US was in the wrong for supporting the fighters who fought against them?

Saying that the political class in the west that dominates the defense and intelligence establishment is a menace, is a valid political point. I probably agree with you.

But declaring the savages who would merrily rape your wife and butcher your children on television for the sake of a spectacle justified is nothing short of treason. Treason against your nation, culture and civilized humanity.

These people that you defend are against all civilization. They've studied Stalin and Mao and understand the importance of destroying the past. Why do you think the Taliban destroyed Buddist shrines that have stood for a milennia.

Whether we are "good" or not, Bin Laden and his cronies are the enemy, and are the enemy of all civilized men. The sooner their ilk are exterminated from the earth, the better.

brain dead OZ!

[PigIronBob]

I suspected he was brain dead after he took on US citizenship...

Crypto. Going, going, gone?

[e9th]

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.

The number one reason.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.

Re:The number one reason.

[scatters]

With a rational mindset, use of non-conventional warefare as a political tool makes some sense (I'm not a proponent of terrorism - before the death threats start...), since it is unlikely that the group could achieve any kind of victory in a overt action against a modern military. But throw in religious fanatacism, and the underlying reasons get a little harder to decipher and deal with.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[william_w_bush]

These people that you defend are against all civilization. They've studied Stalin and Mao and understand the importance of destroying the past. Why do you think the Taliban destroyed Buddist shrines that have stood for a milennia.

oh?

so, its wrong, its horrible, the terrorists should die horrible, painful deaths, especially in their pee-pees.

ok?

they should die. they should die. they should die.

i hope they all die, horribly, like fed into one of those farm machines with all the horrible teeth that make wheat or tear cows into slim-jims.

should i try to be clearer?

ok, now while i stick by my previous point, we should not be doing stupid things that, hey, create those same bastards. saddam hussein got in power because we put him there specifically. we supported his candidacy, looked the other way when he killed his opposition (very democratic of us btw), endorsed and armed him, and just generally were his best friends till kuwait. the fact that we all did an about face and called him the anti-christ after he invaded kuwait is just humorous to me.

we did evil in creating them, and, even though i am not religious like this, our evil returned in the form of terrorism. OBL was such an effective terrorist in afghanistan, how odd, i wonder where he learned to do that?

we weren't wrong in supporting the fighters, but
a: it was not a wholly selfless and charitable act, and
2: those fighters we supported? they we bad ppl. and reading the next paragraph down in your argument:

But declaring the savages who would merrily rape your wife and butcher your children on television for the sake of a spectacle justified is nothing short of treason. Treason against your nation, culture and civilized humanity.

These people that you defend are against all civilization. They've studied Stalin and Mao and understand the importance of destroying the past. Why do you think the Taliban destroyed Buddist shrines that have stood for a milennia.

Whether we are "good" or not, Bin Laden and his cronies are the enemy, and are the enemy of all civilized men. The sooner their ilk are exterminated from the earth, the better.

blockquote is a fun tag.

Re:WOW!!!

[Master of Transhuman]

"It must be wonderful to be so smart. "

It is. Look at the respect I get on /. 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.

Re:The residents of Hiroshima can't agree with you

[ryanov]

"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."

No, yeah, I agree with you. That's going real well. I guess all of our men who are over there are coming home tomorrow, right? Open your eyes, jackass. It doesn't take extremist muslims to fight against women's rights, abortion, and gay marriage. The "tough-as-nails" homefront types are more than enough. And they'll do it in the name of protecting us from those same infringements. Pretty clever, if you happen to be in a coma and don't see the absurdity of it all.

Did anyone....

[xquark]

read the irony paragraph from TFA?

Arash Partow

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[DAldredge]

Then why don't you provide sources/proof for any of your charges?

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[lebow]

First off, I don't know why you need to resort to name calling ( windows shill... that hurts )

I respect how you answered my argument point for point, very clever. Now please allow me to reply

I have no idea why you decided to capitalize random words any way .. What specifically have you READ and what who are these people that you say are RUNNING Israel? And what does it have to do with nuts ?

All this that you KNOW , how do you know ? What is your proof ? I'm sorry to inform you that capitalizing words is not a form of proof.

Do you also KNOW how many arabs living in the state of israel love it there ?

Also one last question, when was the last time you were there and saw what is going on for yourself. I know you READ the literature but there is something to be said for seeing things first hand. I'm sure you will find the arabs to be a warm welcoming people.

Let me know how your trip goes

Also thank you for the complement "Zionist" more than makes up for "Windows shill"

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[cagle_.25]

The Sicarii were Jewish and most definitely non-Christian.

See here and here for details.

If you want Christian terrorists, I recommend the People's Crusade.

The larger point about terrorism in the Middle East -- it seems awfully short-sighted to limit it to the last 75 years. After all, Al Qaeda repeatedly drags up the Crusades as the reason to attack America...as if America were somehow European or Catholic.

I'm not really sure that it's possible to assign a "cause" in that region anymore. Everyone's behaving badly; end of story.

Not to speak poorly of your countryman...

[ChePibe]

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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

And I'm sick of people like you dehumanizing people that you've never met, probably never read anything substantive about, getting all of your information from Fox News, and then -- when you have no REAL argument to make other than "they are ANIMALS," you try to call your opponent a hypocrite, and bring their family into it. It's like a goddamn formula with you folks. Happen to see Jeremy Glick on O'Reilly (what am I saying -- you probably saw it live!) -- perfect example of a guy who DID lose a family member and still is not into the bullshit, especially being done in the name of his dead family members.

Ah, Slashdot.

[ChePibe]

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?

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

And ignoring the sins of the past and not looking at the root causes of why these things happen is precisely why they will continue to happen. OVER and OVER. Tell me where the parent said "ignore the present, focus on the past." I believe what he said was "stop overlooking the past." Ever heard the phrase "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it?"

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

I just wanted to give you credit since I don't have mod-points. This is probably the most intelligent thing I've read in the entire comment page.

Yup indeed.

[Pig Hogger]

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.

Re:The odds are the government didn't shut them do

[SA Stevens]

The websites are not the equivalent of 'spies living close to a military site.' The websites are broadcast organs.

Hey I'm a terrorist

[mnmn]

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.

Re:Hey I'm a terrorist

[lucm]

I oppose Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. I MUST be a terrorist.

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.

Re:Hey I'm a terrorist

[smitth1276]

Yeah... that was a pretty stupid, immature, and ill-informed comment.

Re:Hey I'm a terrorist

[ryanov]

Protected, what, by an onslaught of all manner of civil rights vis a vis the PATRIOT Act, etc.? We don't need the terrorists -- we're doing it to ourselves. Or shall I say "the assholes you voted for are doing it to me."

Re:Hey I'm a terrorist

[ryanov]

Kinda makes you no better than the terrorists, doesn't it? Hm, h'bout that.

Terrorists and Yanni?

[ChePibe]

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.

Website as a tool

[stevebenson]

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.

Don't leave Canada out

[Staplerh]

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.

Re:Don't leave Canada out

[william_w_bush]

roflmao.

i'm sorry, that was a very good and serious post, but the thought of cruel, racist canadian's is a hard one to wrap my head around.

i guess you belong in the "also human" catagory too then.

maybe closer to the top tho, you guys make some fine beer.

Re:Strange

[Oligonicella]

"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.

Re:we draw the line on the illegality of such tact

[say]

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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[Deputy Doodah]

Will you say the same when they come to cut off YOUR head? Will it be ok to dehumanize them then? Fucking idiot.

Not a troll, "Cookbook" author admits it is crap

[AHumbleOpinion]

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.

Re:Strange

[Oligonicella]

Good. Much slower and easier to intercept and deal with.

Re:Strange

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

Is it now illegal to look at such websites?

A UK government clamp-down on internet abuse is being rushed through parliament following the apparent ease with which terrorists can obtain the wherewithal to make bombs like those used in the recent attack on London.

'Terrorist and extremist use of the internet poses a significant threat,' a Home Office spokesperson told Chemistry World, 'We are already working with our G8 and European partners to find ways to tackle the sites and identify individuals and groups responsible. People who download bomb-making instructions and then try to follow them could well be guilty of the new proposed Act Preparatory to Terrorism offence, which we announced on 18th July, and will be taken forward into the new Prevention of Terrorism Bill.'

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/July/2 0070502.asp

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.

Re:Strange

[choconutdancer]

> 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?

Big Brother Competition?

[spudchucker]

We better keep an eye on American AMD.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

If I were in charge, we wouldn't be in this mess and no one's head would be at stake.

Enjoying the cycle of violence are we?

Terrorist Forums?

[kelper]

Where's these terrorist forums located.

Re:Strange

[demachina]

"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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[strikethree]

If all people in authority were trustworthy and if it were only the criminals being affected, i am certain that we would all openly support the most draconian of policies.

strike

Something woke them up?

[cpangelich]

Seems late in the 'game' to notice there are websites that needed to be shut down. What were they waiting for, a few deaths?

israeli agents exclusive

[jfonseca]

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.

Re:israeli agents exclusive

[fitsy]

> unless i'm missing something

No you aren't missing anything, the times has a habit of publishing delusional fantasy.

Clearly evil

[No Such Agency]

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.

Thank you for your reply

[Simonetta]

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.

Re:Thank you for your reply

[radishfarmer]

http://www.deiryassin.org/bennymorris.html Calm horror.

Re:Strange

[killjoe]

"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.

FUNNY - Terror Website 404 Message

[rm3friskerFTN]

This is what the disappeared websites display when you visit them ... Error 404: This page has been martyred

--

"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 (?)

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[smitth1276]

I'm not sure that you have the slightest clue what you are talking about. With all due respect, you sound like you are ignorantly quoting Michael Moore talking points.

The invasion of Iraq was not illegal, under any reasonable interpretation of any law. At its most clear cut, it was simply a resumption of hostilities that ended with a cease fire in 1991, the terms of which were routinely violated by Hussein thereafter for 12 years. Furthermore, resolution 1441 coupled with the Feb 2003 testimony of Hans Blix that Iraq was in material breech of 1441 also provides pretty solid ground for the invasion. This has all been argued before... you are parroting a talking point that has already been thoroughly beaten down many times.

Coalition forces have gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid civilian casualties. That is one of the stupidest, least-informed comments that gets thrown around by misinformed or ignorant, reflexively anti-war types.

Iraq's economy is booming, not turning into a "new breeding ground of people living in poverty".

Poverty is not the root cause of terrorism. Political oppression is, both intuitively (to those of us who possess intuition) and according to a Harvard study which confirms what common sense already tells some of us: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05- terror.html

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

I can think of any number of things. It basically amounts to a stoppage a long time ago to "meddling in the affairs of foreign countries to serve our own interests." Screwing around in Iran, overthrowing this set of dictators to install our own. Siding with Israel and giving huge sums of money right or wrong. Pick up a history book. Any number of intersting fuck ups. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but foresight needn't be 20/40.

in other news

[jotux]

british AMD leaves terrorist-related sites alone.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[smitth1276]

The root cause has nothing to do with the past. It has to do with the present. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05- terror.html

Eliminate the cess pool of tyranny and oppression in the Middle East and the very people who are now forced to turn to terror to improve their lot in life will defeat it for us. As long as people are forced to choose between oppression and joining the ranks of the oppressors, we will have these problems in a world that is getting smaller with each passing day.

If you want to take on the "root cause" of terror (and I'm talking to everyone, not meaning to single out ryanov), quit the bitching about Iraq and Afghanistan and start actually... you know... supporting what we're doing there. It's the only thing in the long run that has a prayer of winning the war on terror, to the extent that it can be "won".

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

And it hasn't been working. At all. Has it? Yet it continues.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

How in the hell does that even remotely make sense? "The only way this train wreck can succeed is if we support it." Train wrecks do not succeed. Why would I support something if I think it is the wrong way to handle the situation. How many suicide bombings were there in Iraq before we went in there? Now I hear about someone blowing up a police checkpoint almost daily.

Imposing this shit on people is EXACTLY what they have said has been pissing them off. I know, I know we don't believe what they say, and they're really just jealous of our huge plasma TV's and overclocked l33t hardware...

For Real?

[Mark_MF-WN]

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.

Find this story hard to believe...

[threaded]

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.

Re:Strange

[thorndt]

Wow. "Crush them"... Pakistan has nukes. Pakistan has Islamic Fundamentalists and Al Qaeda sympathizers... Do the math.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[Pig Hogger]

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.

You don't have far to go for that. Canada is notorious for having attempted to forcibly assimilate indians, and with it's repeated policies against the french-canadians in general.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[ryanov]

"I am a big fan of O'Reilly, not ashamed of it whatsoever" ...I must be some kind of magician. And this is where you are getting your news. Again, cite ANY of that tripe.

Re:Strange

[steelfood]

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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[smitth1276]

No... what they said has been pissing them off is the fact that we are "infidels". The people they are blowing up in police stations... their crime is "embracing the evil principle of democracy," to quote al-Zarqawi.

We aren't imposing anything. ANd what does that say about your prejudices to think that just because they have brown skin they don't want to be free?

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[smitth1276]

I know, I know we don't believe what they say, and they're really just jealous of our huge plasma TV's and overclocked l33t hardware...

You also seem to have confused the Iraqi people with "them".

Re:The odds are the government didn't shut them do

[FredThompson]

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.

Shutting them down will have an effect

[JavaRob]

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.

Re:Strange

[Tony Hoyle]

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.

Bush administration soft on right-wing nuts

[Animats]

Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia.

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.

napoleon said ...

[scotty777]

one spy is worth 10,000 troups

Re:napoleon said ...

[Bwerf]

To be fair, Napoleon probably said it in french.

Re:napoleon said ...

[magarity]

Then Napoleon ripped off Sun-Tsu who said that to discern the enemy's position while not giving away one's own is the pinnacle of military preparedness.

Re:napoleon said ...

[scotty777]

Napoleon couldn't spell?! Noooooo!

Not in English, I guess! :-)

...and my speling reely kneads too improv to.

Shooting themselves in the foot

[RWerp]

"Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia."

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[william_w_bush]

I'm going to have to agree, and disagree. While I agree more freedoms generally lead to less terror

a: in many "democratic experiments" lead by america over the years, the governments actual democracy lasted on average 2 years, before a authoritarian leader managed to get elected, rewrite/bypass the constitution, and generally send the whole mess back to hell. (see africa, s. america, etc)
2: The key about democratic freedom is, you have to want it more than anything else, by an overwhelming majority, before it achieves real stability. some countries in the gulf are not near, but slowly approaching that point. i believe qatar allows women to vote and drive now. I do not see afghanistan reaching that point in the near future, and iraq is too early to tell. by in large the countries that value "true islamic values" the most tend to be the least welcoming of democracy, because it is relatively incompatible with the firm and authoritative brand of islam they follow.

basically, i can't see ultra-conservative muslims accepting democracy, if you understand the culture, the two concepts are nearly diametrically opposed. the key ideal of democracy is that all beings are created equal, and the implied all beings have worth. fundamentalist islam tends more towards the worth of the socially successful muslim, with the most prosperous member of the village/tribe/town being seen as patriarch, and the lesser members seen as servants of village/tribe/town, but not of great worth in and of themselves.

I have a lot of experience with the culture, so I'm not trying to make blind stereotypes, but the humanist viewpoint of the renaissance has not moved far beyond the west, and the middle east, as well as much of the far east, still see children as the servants of society until they have proven themselves and become adults of authority. read sharia law sometime.

With 3 or 4 decades of stability under some benevolent rulers, perhaps these countries could reach the point of becoming representative democracies, but not now, unless those democracies are imposed upon them by force (ironic).

It's easy to see the solution to the middle east until you understand the people. Some problems simply need to be grown out of.

my thoughts at least

MIRROR of Shut Down Web Site

[commodoresloat]

How to Strike a European City,
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.

Re:Strange

[hopethisnickisnottak]

"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.

If you want Christian terrorists...

[fyngyrz]

...We can talk about the Papal inquisition, the Spanish inquisition, any one of the many crusades, the conquistadors, the "witch" burnings, abortion clinic bombers, the Irish Protestant and Catholic frenzies, and McCarthyism.

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.

Re:If you want Christian terrorists...

[cagle_.25]

Wow...that's weird. "Sex is good"? All sex? under any circumstances? Surely you'd want to qualify that statement.

And "religion is bad"? I don't think that blanket statement covers the entire range of available data.

I'm sorry, I just can't agree with your statements as posed. They need some serious nuancing.

For that matter, why do you include "pogroms" under the crimes perpetrated by the religious? The largest pogroms were under Stalin and Hitler, the first of whom was avowedly atheistic and the second, a persecuter of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.

Atheism hasn't led to any regimes of freedom and light so far, so I'm not sure what alternative you're offering to the "dark side."

Re:If you want Christian terrorists...

[fyngyrz]

The sex remark was tongue in cheek. Apparently it has to be in your cheek before you feel it properly. Kind of a "princess and the pea" syndrome.

why do you include "pogroms" under the crimes perpetrated by the religious?

Er, duh... because they're crimes that have been committed by the religious? Martin Luther himself wrote a piece entitled "Against the Jews and their Lies", in which he advocated driving Jews out of Germany and burning their synagogues. Hitler liked to quote him on it. Or, if you'd like to take a little deeper dip into history, we can note that in 1391 a pogrom incited by the church arose in Seville. It spread through Spain and Portugal, killing 50,000 jews and destroying 70 Jewish communities. Afterwards, there were twenty years of massacres to make sure no one drew any wrong conclusions. Lovely, eh?

As regards size of pogroms; I wasn't talking about size, was I? I was just attributing some pogroms to religion, which is perfectly accurate. Furthermore, if Joe murders Jane and Martha, and then you murder Felicity, you don't get a free ride on an accusation of murder because Joe was more productive than you were. Maybe tomorrow, you'll be more efficient. We already know you suck, though. Darwin knows religion certainly hasn't stopped committing abuse and crime against society as yet. You can turn on the TV and hear unending hatred shouted out by the religious against homosexuals, the unmarried, the atheists... it's like an uncontrolled acid spill.

Good advice: Don't attack something I didn't say, it makes you look silly.

As far as atheism leading anyone anywhere, regimes come in all sizes (as do pogroms.) There are plenty of enlightened regimes, starting at the family level, for one. My parents were indeed enlightened, and the family was in turn. I am enlightened, and my children are in turn. Freedom and light are everywhere in my house. Pets, too. :-)

Re:If you want Christian terrorists...

[cagle_.25]

You have a valid point when you note that atheistic pogroms do not give Christians a "pass" on their own misdeeds, which are many.

However, I think you misunderstood my points. I'm arguing that

1. Brutality is not limited to the religious; therefore, religion cannot be attributed as the sole cause of brutality.
2. Atheist regimes on a national scale have so far offered an inferior product to those influenced by Christianity. I recognize that's a matter of opinion, since "value" is measurable in many ways. Nevertheless, the largest of the atheist regimes are indeed notorious for their repression of human rights.
3. Not all people who are religious fit within the category of repressors.

Funny, when I turn on the TV, I hear hatred spewed out towards the religious. How? Because mainstream media usually pick the most foolish examples of religious people to run stories on. D'ya notice that when they run a story on, say, hydrogen fuel cells, CNN will pull in academic experts and industry experts on cars and fuel cells.

But when a story is run on religion, are seminary professors consulted? Not usually. Usually, it's Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, or some other nutcase. Then a professor of religion from Duke or Harvard* is called in to make the other guy look that much more foolish.

That's a different form of hatred: slow, insidious propaganda designed to get across a logically invalid but generally accepted message: All of the religious people I see are idiots, bigots, and fools. Therefore, all religious people in existence are idiots, bigots, and fools.

Truthfully, though, I know a lot of religious people -- mostly Christians, but not all -- who are intelligent, urbane, and "enlightened." Their families are also places of "freedom and light."

Perhaps religion is the wrong axis on which to evaluate enlightenment.

Factual issues:

1. Luther's relationship to the Jews was more complicated than the single pamphlet you cite.
2. Hitler's use of Luther's pamphlet was most emphatically not Luther's fault. Hitler was willing to use anything that furthered his insane dreams. Nor was he particularly friendly to Christians. Google for "Dietrich Bonhoeffer" or "The Barman Declaration" or "The Confessing Church in Germany."

Finally, some Good Advice: If you're going to trumpet your own enlightenment and commitment to freedom, don't use abusive language like "we already know you suck." It gives the impression that you want to bully your readers.



* Note that academic study about religion -- its sociology, history, etc. -- is different from academic pursuit of religion, which is what seminary profs do.

Re:If you want Christian terrorists...

[fyngyrz]

Brutality is not limited to the religious; therefore, religion cannot be attributed as the sole cause of brutality.

Certainly not. I would never attempt to argue such a position, nor am I likely to ever hold such a position.

Atheist regimes on a national scale have so far offered an inferior product to those influenced by Christianity. I recognize that's a matter of opinion, since "value" is measurable in many ways.

Yes, it's extremely debatable. For instance, if one wants to point to the USSR in such a mode, one has to first figure out some way of separating the effects of a very poorly managed communist-ish attempt at economic and political management from the attempt to eradicate superstition. It just won't do to point at the USSR, proclaim, they suck, therefore, atheism sucks. All of which is entirely disjoint from the value, or lack thereof, of an atheist viewpoint.

Not all people who are religious fit within the category of repressors.

Agreed. I am not saying religious people are bad, but I'm comfortable saying religion is bad. Not just organized religion, but religion across the board. Like any social system, good or evil, it can be transcended in either direction by its practitioners. Martin Luther King stood above religion and did a great deal of general good, despite resistance that continues to this day. Agnes Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) likewise left us with a hugely positive impression, and for good reason. On the other hand, Osama and his comrades in creativity have set the Muslims and the middle east in general back so far I don't think we'll even understand it for a century or more. All of them used religion as the podium to stand on. Strong people often do powerful things, and strong people with wide power bases can get bigger things done, generally speaking -- which is not to say that those things will be good.

That's a different form of hatred: slow, insidious propaganda designed to get across a logically invalid but generally accepted message: All of the religious people I see are idiots, bigots, and fools. Therefore, all religious people in existence are idiots, bigots, and fools.

Is it a form of hatred, though? And does it send the message you think? I mean, Falwell is a nutcase, and a hugely popular one with the American public. The public usually gets to hear him pimp out prepared scripts, in which insidious and highly doubtful (but opaque to the less sharp of the population, at the very least to that 50% under the median/average IQ) points are trotted forth with no counterpoint at all. The news -- such as it is, please don't get me started on the news -- is showing the public that when all is not scripted, Falwell doesn't do so well but that a more reasonable, better educated person can. From your own argument:

Then a professor of religion from Duke or Harvard* is called in to make the other guy look that much more foolish.

Now, is that hatred, or is that encouraging the religious public to (a) respect education and scholarship, something I regard as altogether a good thing, and (b) telling them that they can do better than Falwell even in the religious domain by thinking? I don't buy your conclusion from the example you put forth, I'm sorry.

Luther's relationship to the Jews was more complicated than the single pamphlet you cite.

The thing is, once you are a murderer, society, rightfully so, doesn't care if you are also the football coach to the kids of the family you just killed. Luther's attack against the jews resounded down the ages and I really don't care if he thought they "cursed Christians in their morning prayers", he was an ass-knuckle for attacking them as a group when they had not, in fact, attacked him either

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[LittleBigLui]

But it's also a fact that damn near all terrorists are Muslims.

Yes, mostly Irish Catholic Muslims,
Basque Socialist Muslims,
German Post-Hippie Muslims,
American Nutcase Muslims and
Japanese Hindu-Buddhist Muslims.

Re:Strange

[inode_buddha]

Um, they spent a few hundred lives besides their own.

Re:Strange

[shplorb]

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.

Macathyism is back YES!

[under_clocker]

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....

Re:Strange

[Malor]

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.

Re:He was not an innocent man

[@madeus]

It's ok to shoot and kill a man, and you say it was alright to do it because he was an illegal immigrant, in the wrong place at the wrong time?

It is okay to shoot a man if you are are an armed policeman and the man in question has just left a building that you are monitoring (because it contains suspected terrorists) and when challanged he refuses to stop, runs away from the police, skips the gate at the underground and tries to board a train.

Next time you'll say that rape victims asked for it, because they were wearing a short skirt.

You are incorrect, I would not. That's quite a specious comparison, because it confuses victims with purpertrators. This man was not a 'victim' of crime - no crime was commited against him by the police. He was however himself a criminal and it is factually accurate to say, had he not been, he would almost certainly not have been in a position to be shot.

My thoughts are with the officers who had to deal with this guy in highly suspicious circumstances, the long term impact it will have on them and their families and possibility that it could impact other officers in future - and so by extention, put the lives of genuinely innocent people at risk.

Just so we are all crystal on this one:

I would absolutely expect any armed officer in the same situation to behave in the same way.

Re:your article submission should be modded

[theskeptic]

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.

Threats are illegal

[t_allardyce]

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)

Re:Threats are illegal

[msuarezalvarez]

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.

This line makes me wish you are trolling.

The weltanschauung you evince corresponds to a completely different historical context, in which imperial/colonial power could choose the geographical location of conflict, and, of course, sistematically chose it away from the metropole. The very fact that that context is no more was what made the WTC attack so perturbing.

And, independently from that, the ``what's-good-for-us-is-too-good-for-them'' attitude explicit in your sentence is precisely one of the reasons why imperial/colonial power is not exactly liked in colonies. A reasonable reason.

Re:Threats are illegal

[t_allardyce]

dude, chill.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[msuarezalvarez]

Had I been there I would have said the same things I am saying now.

That'd be most extraordinary

Re:time to use freenet

[protocol420]

oops, lol.

Re:Strange

[dodobh]

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.

The /British/ Times?

[evilandi]

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.)

Re:The /British/ Times?

[ffub]

Abroad it can be referred to as the London Times to avoid confusion. In the US "the Times" refers to the New York Times. "The British Times" is bad English as there are more than one Times newspaper in Britain.

If he is referring to the Times Online website, an excuse could be made for, "The British Times Online". If he is not referring to the website's title, but the paper's, then "online" should be lower case.

What Bullshit

[theolein]

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.

Re:Strange

[maxpublic]

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

Terrorists are NOT the problem, their motives are

[Alwin Henseler]

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.

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:

• US foreign politics: giving 'friendly' dictators a hand, helping to overthrow other regimes, oil, etc. Things like Guantanamo Bay fuel this fire for decades to come
• the Israeli-Palestinian problem
• poverty, unfair world trade
• and many more reasons like this

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).

Re:Strange

[Belisarivs]

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.

Like the Contras in Nicaragua?

[kt0157]

So someone who funded people who killed civilians to change a regime would also be a terrorist, right?

K.

Sovereignty : REVOKED

[Shihar]

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.

The root causes of Wintel(TM) terrorism

[fprog]

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

I'll kill you, but not your blog.

[Shihar]

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.

I have a new game...

[PsiPsiStar]

"7 degrees of separation from Osama Bin Ladin."

Re:I have a new game...

[aminorex]

For GWB that would be 3 degrees, since his dad and OBL's dad were business partners in the Carlyle Group. I haven't been able to verify stories of OBL and GWB meeting in Texas in the late 80s.

Anyone remember JFCC-NW?

[Mz6]

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.

Woke up too late

[Ektanoor]

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".

"Innocent people"

[master_p]

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.

Re:"Innocent people"

[lxs]

"innocent cvilians" is one of those handy key phrases, and the great thing is, all sides in every conflict use it in equal measure.

Innocent civilians were killed by bombs London, Innocent civilians were killed by helicopters in Palestine, an innocent Brazilian citizen was shot seven times in the head for not conforming to fashion trends, to protect the innocent civilians on the train, innocent civilians were shot at a US checkpoint near Baghdad.

Everytime you read it, you know instantly that you are dealing with propaganda, either original propaganda or mindlessly parroted propaganda. When you find yourself saying it, it is time to take a step back and look intently at your own views.

Think of it as a mental spam filter.

Re:"Innocent people"

[TheSync]

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?

It is true that there are 3rd world countries whose governments create barriers to economic growth through corruption, socialism, and over-regulation. These governments are supported financially by foreign aid, debt relief, and in a few instances, oil and other natural resource sales. But the governments also are supported financially by the money they harvest through corruption, even where there is no oil.

It is a bit tough to lay global poverty at the feet of the west, especially the capitalist west, when you see examples of countries finally dropping socialism (be it democratic or authoritarian) and accepting free market reforms and it then leads to hundreds of millions of people leaving absolute poverty (as has happened in post-1980 China and India).

Certainly during the Cold War, developed countries engaged in political support of both pro-US and pro-Soviet dictators in undeveloped countries, but it wasn't like there was any kind of free market supporting democratic alternative, which would have been the only way out of poverty.

Which ignores the reality that most Islamic extremist terrorists that target the West outside of the middle east are actually just spoiled rich kids caught up in anti-Western ideology...

Re:"Innocent people"

[iggymanz]

funny you complain about exploiting, but the exploiting is 90% done by the oligarchy within those countries to their own people. Should the whole world refuse to do business with these countrise, would that make things better or worse for the exploited people? Should we proactively get rid of these all these Oligarchies, like as in Iraq?

Re:"Innocent people"

[master_p]

But the west does not refuse doing business with the corrupt governments of those countries. In fact, these corrupt governments are being put in place with the help of western governments that will buy their goods and services in very low prices.

As for accepting free markets, poor people are still not above the poverty lines. Most part of the Earth's population still lives with 1 dollar per day.

Re:"Innocent people"

[bmajik]

Maybe.. but it's an academic question

I can show, via tautology, that blowing up terrorists is fine

Theory 1: Nobody is really innocent.
Corrolary: Nobody is really guilty.
Conclusion: We can bomb the snot out of whomever with impunity.

Theory 2: Radical Muslim Extremists are bad
Conclusion: We can bomb the snot out of Radical Muslime Extremists with impunity.

In the future, the US (and the West, in general) should to less meddling with other peoples and other governments.

Right now, there's a big mess out there, and it needs cleaning up.

Re:"Innocent people"

[TheSync]

But the west does not refuse doing business with the corrupt governments of those countries.

This is true.

In fact, these corrupt governments are being put in place with the help of western governments that will buy their goods and services in very low prices.

This is not always true. There are plenty of corrupt governments that are kept in place without significant Western trade. They surivive simply through the rents they extract from their own minimal economies.

On the other hand, examples of countries with corrupt governments which the West has tried to avoid trading with (such as North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, and Iran) have not appeared to collapse as a result of a reduction in trade.

Yet at the same time, the government of China, previously one of the most corrupt and economy-destroying, having used central planning to starve tens of millions, has been willing to accept free markets in part due to the willingness of the West to trade with them, leading to amazing economic growth and reduction of poverty in the country.

This seems to suggest that there isn't much the West can do to remove economically destructive governments through trade restrictions, but that trade can provide carrots (even to hardlien Chinese Communists) that can lead governments to create the environments required for effective free market economies.


Most part of the Earth's population still lives with 1 dollar per day

Your statistics are wrong. Current estimates of percent of Earth's population living on $1 per day or below range from 7% to 18%. Snce 1980, the percentage has been cut in half, with most reductions occuring in East Asia (mainly China) and South Asia (mainly India) where 400 million fewer people live under $1 a day now than in 1980. More information is available here.

Re:"Innocent people"

[aminorex]

Nuking London and New York would slow it down for a while, but I don't think it's really a long-term solution. Now the Japanese are gearing up to go nuclear -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki just slowed them down for maybe 100 years, tops.

Re:"Innocent people"

[master_p]

There are plenty of corrupt governments that are kept in place without significant Western trade.

nope, there is none.

examples of countries with corrupt governments which the West has tried to avoid trading with (such as North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, and Iran)

You are obviously a US citizen:

• North Korea is not a corrupt state, it is a state with a different political system than yours
• Cuba again is not a corrupt state. Stop labelling anything different as 'corrupt'.
• Iraq was helped by USA.
• Iran is not a corrupt state! again, it's a different system!

I see you fell for the propaganda as the rest of the US citizens.

the government of China, previously one of the most corrupt

He he...the only not corrupted system is USA, right? :-)

and economy-destroying

China is destroying the world's economy? but China does nothing more than reaping the benefits of globalization, started from the west.

having used central planning to starve tens of millions

Nope, it has not. They just chose to follow Communism.

has been willing to accept free markets in part due to the willingness of the West to trade with them, leading to amazing economic growth and reduction of poverty in the country

Bullshit. Most of Chinese are as poor as ever. In a country with a 1.2 billion people, having, let's say, 10 million of them escape poverty is insignificant.

Current estimates of percent of Earth's population living on $1 per day or below range from 7% to 18%. Snce 1980, the percentage has been cut in half, with most reductions occuring in East Asia (mainly China) and South Asia (mainly India) where 400 million fewer people live under $1 a day now than in 1980.

Again, bullshit. From your link:

The 400m people who escaped absolute poverty by the $1-a-day standard over 1981-2001 are still poor even by the standards of middle-income developing countries.

Re:"Innocent people"

[TheSync]

North Korea is not a corrupt state

I call North Korea, Cuba, and Iran corrupt states because the leaders of these countries siphon off tremendous amounts of wealth for themselves, much like leaders such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. There is also significant structural corruption by officials of all levels within those countries as well. The fact that they happen to have different political or formal economic systems makes no difference.

Most of Chinese are as poor as ever

No, most Chinese are much less poor than they were 20 years ago. And there are few starvation deaths, unlike the late 1950's in China. They may still be poor, but are getting less poor every year.

In 1950, Chinese income per capita was similar to that of OECD nations in 1500 AD, today it is similar to that of OECD nations in 1917 (good link here)

I certainly would not like to be a worker in the USA in 1917 if I could avoid it, but would prefer it to being a peasant in England in 1500.

the only not corrupted system is USA

Here is the list from Transparency International. There are 18 countries less corrupt than the US (such as Finland, New Zealand, and Denmark).

just and incert

[nymx]

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?

Re:Strange

[scrm]

FYI you can download this award-winning documentary for free on archive.org. Essential viewing to understand another side to the debate.

Very Easy

[lbmouse]

Example:
"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' ... Bad is good, down with government!"

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

Re:we draw the line on the illegality of such tact

[sykjoke]

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.

Re:Strange

[Threni]

> 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.

It was the Pakistani intelligence services was it?

[Lifewish]

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...

Re:Strange

[Richthofen80]

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.

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[elrous0]

And guess who help out the Bedouins with free health care and assistance? Hint, hint it ain't their loving fellow Muslim brothers (most of whom don't even want them in their country).

It's the evil Zionist Jews. You know, the same people who have revolutionized agriculture in the region and turned a 3rd world shithole into a thriving country with free education and health care for the Palestinian masses. Maybe Palestinians should go ask their beloved Saudi brothers for a homeland and see how far they get.

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[elrous0]

And when is the last time all of those other groups combined inflicted even a fraction of the dozen or so terrorist attacks a day we see in Iraq alone?

Face it, the vast majority of active terrorists today are Muslim. Chechnya, the Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan--what do the terrorists in these countries all have in common (aside from their horrific brutality, of course)?

-Eric

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[LittleBigLui]

And when is the last time all of those other groups combined inflicted even a fraction of the dozen or so terrorist attacks a day we see in Iraq alone?

I didn't say anything at all about the number and effectiveness of attacks, and neither did you until just now.

Anyways, I think we shouldn't forget the fact that there were, are and will be terrorists of pretty much any faith.

After all, focusing on one threat (commies!) while ignoring and underestimating another one (hey, those towelheads fight the commies so they are our friends!) surely contributed to our current situation.

You'll have to appeal to the european court.

[TERdON]

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!

Enhancing Eschelon

[mindpixel]

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.

Re:Enhancing Eschelon

[mindpixel]

echelon eschelon escelon...see how inadequate symbolic representations of obvious vectors is? THe brain was never made to handle symbols.

Al-Arian Faxes Read To Jurors

[theREALbillder]

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. ....cont:
http://miami.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/2008_comme nt.php#2016

British "shoot to kill" policy

[TERdON]

And BTW - the british policy won't really work and is fubar anyway.

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. ;-)

Re:Strange

[shplorb]

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?

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 .au government would reverse the funding cuts they've been making to the ABC for the last decade.

Re:Strange

[daveschroeder]

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

Objection????

[DesScorp]

"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"?

Re:Who and How? (more readable)

[debraj]

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.

Re:your article submission should be modded

[DarkWolf0]

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.

Dum-dee-dum. Am I in your way?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Well, you'd be wrong in this case. Have a nice day! :)

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.

Re:Dum-dee-dum. Am I in your way?

[Politburo]

Of course I'm conceding.. It was pure flamebait anyone can see that.

No freedom!

[unixue]

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!

Re:Strange

[daveschroeder]

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.

seconded

[tacokill]

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

Tears from a spook

[onyx pi]

This is a rotten Monday for some spook when it is discovered that Dreamweaver can't upload some CSS workarounds for IE5...

obA.E.Neuman

[Shivetya]

"The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech demand to be heard!" - Alfred E. Neuman

Re:Lazy gets what it deserves

[ianscot]

free speech is pretty well protected.

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.

good points but

[toiletmonster]

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.

Re:good points but

[demachina]

I wasn't "justifying" a Palestinian state. I was debunking the parents assertion the Palestinians had no right to a state because they've resorted to terrorism. Just pointing out so did Israel so they don't have a right to state either if you use that as a criteria.

"Whats so great about the past?"

Because if you are a student of history you can learn a lot about how people, especially people organized in to governments and nations work. The old saying goes that people who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Sometimes you can be historically ignorant, like most Americans are, and just roll the dice and get lucky. You can also repeat some really stupid mistakes.

One good case study, is if American invades a place like Iraq and refuses to understand the history of the place it gets in a quagmire like the one its in today. Iraq's borders are not natural. It was fabricated by the British after they took control of it from the Turkish Ottoman empire in World War I. The British fought a blood nationalist insurgency in Iraq and eventually gave up on it. That is one fact the U.S. should have remembered, Iraqi's do have a recent history for fighting against a colonial occupier.

Iraq is really 3 countries. There is Kurdistan in the north which is split between Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The Kurds have been fighting Iraq and Turkey for an indepent Kurdistan most of the last century if not longer. The Kurdish nationalist insurgency is an origin of Saddam gassing the Kurds you heard so much about in the run up to the Iraq War. The Kurds have killed their share of Turks and Iraqi's and civil wars are usually ugly. In the middle there are Sunni Arab's and in the South there are Shia Arabs.

If the Bush administration had studied their history they would have realized that when they toppled Saddam a civil war was a nearly inevitable result. They didn't so nearly two thousand American's are dead, thousand more maimed for life, hundreds of billions spent and no end in sight. The Bush administration said the U.S. would be welcomed with roses because they were historically clueless.

Not sure I managed to convey the reason why understanding history is important here but I hope you got an idea.

Re:Strange

[mfrank]

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.

This is a Good Think

[Frodo420024]

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.

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.

this is a bad thing but not why you think it is

[Lawrence_Bird]

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. 

No.

[hummassa]

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.

Given that their motive is to conquer all non-Muslims and impose Sharia law world-wide-and what other goal has Islam ever had?-(see the amusements of the Taliban in Afganistan for a peachy example), I hope your set of solutions is incomplete. Fortunately, people other than you have been thinking about it, see, for example, this blog for one, or Daniel Pipes, for another, and even some really moderate and/or ex-Muslims over here.

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.

Re:No.

[KwKSilver]

And what did any of that have to do with Muslim agression against Spain (conquered by Muslims) or the Balkans (conquered ny Muslims) or India (conquered and brutally, brutally oppressed by Muslims for about a thousand years). How about, what is going on in the Phillipines, and southern Sudan now? Conquest and enslavement of all non-Muslims seems to have always been the goal.

Defined

[QMO]

"their goal ... to scare ... and stir-up ... hatred"

Now THAT's what I call a good definition of terrorist.

Ah, Montana!

[aixguru1]

"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?

Another view of this issue

[Calibax]

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.

Re:Strange

[demachina]

"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.

Re:Strange

[demachina]

"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.

Re:It was the Pakistani intelligence services was

[demachina]

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.

Re:Strange

[demachina]

" 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.

Re:Terrorists are NOT the problem, their motives a

[demachina]

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.

Re:Isn't that the NRA argument against gun control

[bobalu]

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.

correct but too simplistic

[bobalu]

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.

Re:Isn't that the NRA argument against gun control

[TheDurkinBoy]

Your car won't do much to help you when the government becomes oppressive.

Re:Strange

[daveschroeder]

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?

Re:Strange

[demachina]

"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.

Re:This idea of hampering of freedoms...

[Homology]

May I suggest that your get your "information" elsewhere than Fox "News" or any other state propaganda outlet?

Re:Strange

[slriv]

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.

history never repeats and there isn't a civil war

[toiletmonster]

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).

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[lebow]

So I don't understand why you must resort to name calling ( unless of course you really don't have any thing to argue about ).

Who are these founding fathers you are talking about? Are you talking about the jews who have always lived in that land ( before the word palistine was coined by the romans ) ? From what I remember it was the arabs that promised to throw the jews into the sea at the founding of the state.

What proof do you have that my claim is false that there are happy arabs there ? Take a walk through the old city in the non-jewish quarters, there are plenty of happy arabs there. Go to the university of Haifa and see how many arabs there are there who are more than happy that they aren't living in any other country in the middle east.

Also no I'm not willing to admit to a blanket statement like that, I have many friends who moved to israel from other middle eastern countries and love it there, and would never go any were else. I also have Ethiopian friends who are a much smaller minority who love it there. I have Jewish Indian friends who also love it.

Also if you have ever listened to israeli pop music you will see that it is mostly Sfardi jews, same thing with the food. Also not all Ashkenazi jews are "white" many have darker skin and look more middle eastern than their Sfardi friends. Ashkenazi doesn't have any thing to do with skin color ( sorry to tell you ) . Oh and by they way, if the Ashkenazim dominate then why do they not use Ashkenazi hebrew ?

One more thing, why do you even care ? Don't tell me because you are a caring human being, because if so, you would never think of using the term that you started your post with. A caring human being shows compassion for every one and you have shown that you don not belong to that group.

FREE LUNCH!

Re:history never repeats and there isn't a civil w

[demachina]

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.

Re:Strange

[Tesla Tank]

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.

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[lebow]

If you would like to discuss Yahadut please contact me directly.

I haven't said one lie, and it isn't nice to accuse people of that

I hope you aren't saying that E'Y mentioned in the TN'CH is in a different place?

If any thing I pity you for being so un-informed, and so angry

Re:We already know what they're thinking

[lebow]

im atah yhudi , az ani ohvev otah

Please contact me personally

ze bisvil lanu , lo l'hem

Re:Strange

[kraut]

>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".

Re:Strange

[demachina]

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.

Re:Strange

[slriv]

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 /.

Re:Strange

[NOPteron]

"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. . .

too bad

[Samarian Hillbilly]

From what I understand, those sites were a good source of information on Al-Quida activieties.

This post is well-written but wrong

[Simonetta]

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.

Re:This post is well-written but wrong

[demachina]

Dude you can fixate on that one incident all you want but it is one incident of savagery out of many incidents of savagery on both sides. You apparently choose to forget Deir Yassin even though I've pointed out time and again it was exactly the same kind of savagery and one of the people involved went on to be Prime Minister of Israel. Innocent women and children were killed there too. Are you demanding justice for them too? Why not?

If you want more recent stats here are the Red Crescent statistics on the deaths of Palestinian women and children at the hands of the Israeli's since 2000. 657 children under 18 and of those 153 were under 12. 185 women killed. Total Palestinian deaths of all ages since 2000, 3,626.

Palestinians consistently die at higher rates than Israelis. Innocent civilians killed by bombs from F-16's, missiles from Apache helicopters or machine guns on tanks are just as dead as people killed by suicide bombs.

I really hope someone close to you didn't die in this attack you've fixated on, if so my deepest condolences and I can understand how you can't bring yourself to forgive the people that did it. If that is not the case I really fail to understand how you have acquired such rabid hatred and a fixation over one incident and fail to see there are innocent people getting killed on both sides. Only way you are going to get peace is for everyone to realize its madness on both sides, forget that past and work to prevent it from happening again.

Demanding Hamas pay reparations isn't going to bring back any of the dead, in fact is pretty tawdry on your part to think cash payments fix anything. How much cash is a human life worth. You are mostly cheapening the lives of those killed to set a price tag on their deaths. You want to do something to honor their memory try working for a fair and equitable peace in the region instead of spewing venom and hatred, and demanding cash.

Re:This post is well-written but wrong

[Simonetta]

...but it is one incident of savagery out of many incidents of savagery on both sides.

    This was a incident focused on people outside of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are many groups outside of Israel-Palestine that have claim to the region for various historical and religious reasons. Israel has never focused a military or terrorist attack on any of these peoples, Hamas specifically chose to murder people from outside the conflict with this incident.

    How much cash is a human life worth. You are mostly cheapening the lives of those killed to set a price tag on their deaths...

    Yassir Arafat and Saddam Hussein paid $2000 to the families of suicide bombers. We believe that the lives of the individual people killed by these bombers are worth considerably more. The value of each individual life is determined by disinterested agencies according to factors like projected future earnings, number of dependents, etc... by an international court of law. Financial compensation is the primary means (and has been for hundreds of years) for settling obligations between the families of the victims and those who were responsible for their wrongful deaths.

    In a global context, the brutal tribal warfare between the Israelis and Palestinians is of little consequence. The real global issue in this endless and pathetic war is what the world will do should the Palestinians chose to extend their military stategy of mass murder of innocent civilians outside of Israel-Palestine borders.

    The initial incidents (like Munich 1972 and the various bombings around Europe since) will be ignored. Should the Palestinians continue to murder international civilians outside of their region, they will inevitably provoke a reaction from the world community. Presently the world accepts whatever the Israelis do to the Palestinians as necessary to keep the carnage localized. If the Israelis be unable to contain Palestinian terrorism in the future to the region, then the world will respond by massive genocidal attack on the Palestinian people. This will be an extranational attack, not identified with any nation or group. It will be a massive version of the small scale terrorist attacks endlessly launched by Palestinians, only directed at the Palestinians. It will be historically unprecedented. An attack of massive destruction specifically designed for the genocidal elimination of a specific nationality of people all at one time. It is the type of incident that everyone in the world wants to avoid because it could lead to a chain of ever-escalating attacks that would lead to omnicide, which is the systematic murder of all humans.
    This is the real danger of terrorism and it is the real reason that all civilized people outside of the Islamic world condem the use of terrorism as a military and political strategy.

Re:This post is well-written but wrong

[demachina]

I think the old saying is if you go down the "eye for an eye" road everyone involved just ends up blind.

You, my friend, are certainly blinded by your hatred. Give it up, I'm not wasting any more time on you. I never at any point contended that some Palestinians haven't done bad things. I just wanted you to notice some Jews have done bad things too, just as bad. Two of them Begin and Sharon ended up as Prime Ministers of Israel as the reward for the massacres they initiated. You can't deny that, all you can do is try to ignore it which you obviously are.

Re:Strange

[David Rolfe]

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

Simple answer

[hummassa]

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...

Re:Strange

[Shaper_pmp]

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

Re:Strange

[Shaper_pmp]

"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.

Just post them here...

[butterwise]

...and let them get /.ed. They'll be down in minutes.

Re:Strange

[Rayonic]

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.

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.