Slashdot Mirror
Terrorists Move to Cyberspace
Dreamwalkerofyore writes "The Washington Post has an article on how Al Quaeda is now using the 'net for its new HQ. From the article: 'With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.'"
1) Find Al-Qaeda website.
2) Troll with goatse.
3) ???
4) FREEDOM!
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
I'm a computer geek, not a terrorism expert but from my understanding, Al Queda is much more a brand name than it is an omnipresent, neboulous, James Bond-like organization. Bin Laden/Al-Zawahri isn't holed up in some Bat Cave, directing his mindless minons in yet another half-baked, but grand scheme at ruling the world. But painting Al Queda as such makes it easier to scare a populace who's grown up with comic book bad guys into complacency.
Al Queda is just a cause; it's a flag that militant Islamic zealots hoist in order to feel part of a worldwide movement. They're a ragtag bunch of criminals who want to spread their message as far and wide as possible. There are no definate leaders (Bin Laden is just a spokesman), nor do they have a cohesive strategy. Therefore it makes perfect sense that they use the Internet to communicate. This isn't news. It's just another way to make us feel that a Muhammad with a Kalashnikov just might be invading an ubiquitous part of most Americans' daily lives. Pair that anxiety with most people's complete lack understanding concering the Internet (ignorance begets fear) and suddenly it becomes much easier to curb our digital liberties just a bit more. Not to mention it helps to sell Washington Post newspapers.
I mean, come on... how many headlines read "Confirmed: Terrorists using telephones to communicate"?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Quick, turn off the Internet!
This is all the more reason the US govt and the CIA need to invest heavily in recruiting and training Arabic translators.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
and shut down the internet......
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
The FBI can ditch the expensive equipment and just add the terrorists to their buddy list.
I love how the Bush administration keeps the Terrorist "threat" at the forefront of the American peoples' lives. It really makes me wonder if we are not moving closer to an Orwellian future. "War Is Peace" is beginning to sound more and more like Bush's rhetoric every day.
Ads? What ads?
A glass parking lot!...?
(yes i am talking about the internet.)
down wit terrerists
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Laptops and DVDs, they're so leet...! :|
Maybe they sponsored DeCSS, bring down the system from within... terrorforge.net anyone?
Quick, outlaw the internet! The terrorists are using it!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You don't have to respect the man, but George Bush is America's leader during this war. He was elected twice to the position because America trusts his judgement, who are you to second guess a majority of Americans? Bush has been nothing but forthright and candid during these troubled times.
Ooh, computers, terrorists, BOOM!
Be afraid of kids in net cafes, actually you know we should just censor the whole internet. Not like it really went anywhere anyway, it's mostly child porn. Do we really need that much spam?
Terrorists and movie pirates write all the world virus's you know, that's how identity theft works, they take your credit card number online and buy guns with it. I think we should just go to walmart, it's just more safe and american.
I mean before you just had to worry about all the 50 yr olds trying to have sex with your children, now you have to worry about them running away and becoming terrorists and suicide bombers? That's how 7/7 happened in britain, they all found this suicide bomb page on the internet and some kids made the bombs in their apartments. That's how these terrorists find kids to die for them.
Next week: How college brainwashes you into an atheistic communist radical.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
They should also replace actual destruction with playing Batallion - if anything the scale is greater and they will never be shot back at.
1) Find Al-Qaeda website
2) Post on Slashdot (include reference to breasts)
3) Allow nature to run its course (Slashdotting)
4) Servers become anti-terror weapons
Everything is easy when you don't understand the problem.
to get even more control over the internet.
...the slashdot effect: the new Nuclear Winter.
I like it.
Al Gore would up and invent a new one. And wouldn't that just mess things up again.
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
al WhatNow?
You don't have to respect the man, but George Bush is America's leader during this war. He was elected twice to the position because America trusts his judgement, who are you to second guess a majority of Americans?
Bush was elected once.
And not by the majority of Americans.
...for new draconian legislation to pass in congress next week.
What will it be this time?
Copyright infringement sentences which are longer than sentences for rape?
Mandatory monitoring and archiving of all Internet communications?
Blanket ban on the use of any encryption or a mandate to escrow all the encryption keys?
A new criminal offense of "visiting subversive websites" which automagically renders the user an "enemy combatent"?
I can just hear them now
"The terrorists are using this newfangled Internet thingy to destroy our American freedoms - quickly, to the legislature!!!"
Humor aside, where is the news here? Terrorists use the Internet...come on!
In Soviet Russia, Internet uses YOU!
... if when bin Laden dies / is captured / finally disappears, he'll be replaced officially by Emmanuel Goldstein.
--- EMERGENCY DISPATCH TO ALL CITIZENS WHO FREELY LOVE DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM: THE MINISTRY OF FEAR ADVISES YOU TO INCREASE YOUR GENERAL FEAR LEVEL TO 'ABJECT TERROR' BUT AT THIS TIME GIBBERING IS NOT ADVISED. REPEAT, GIBBERING IS *NOT* ADVISED. THAT IS ALL. ---
Yeesh. Maybe they should have thought about the fallout BEFORE they trained and armed this guy. Makes you wonder whether those dudes they trained to slaughter nuns in Nicaragua are getting ready to march north.
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
If you were president and your approval rating was as low as his is now, your advisors would probably tell you to try to keep people scared to death too.
Doesn't make it any less rediculous but the guy doesn't have a lot of options left to salvage a good reputation in history.
And remember people, if you like this story, purchase your Washington Post next week for other exclusives: - Toilet habits of bears - Religious beliefs of the Pope - Bill Gates' views on Linux - Enron's financial position - GWB revelation that he's not a liberal peacenik I'd be more surprised to hear that Al Qaeda were not using the internet and cell phones.
Windows Tweaks
I might as well have read a post titled "Terrorists use the phone to communicate". You and I might call them terrorists but, they are still people. And people generally tend to use any piece of technology around them (assuming they are aware pf the technology and they are skilled enought to use it) to achieve their goal. They should not be underestimated and thought of as primitive because even they will adapt and develop new means and methods if need be.
For anybody who wasn't tuning in at home before.
Al-Quaida stands for "The Base." It was a database of terrorist organizations, maintained by Bin Laden.
Sure, it had physical manifestations, but it has, from the very start, existed as an Internet entity.
Afghanistan was merely harboring a known terrorist when he was on the run (and he has been on the run a lot longer than most of us bothered to read about him). Al-Quaida merely had troops in Afghanistan protecting him.
If there were all there, Al-Quaida business would have stopped the second that we fought them there.
BWAH HA HA HAAA!!!
That was great. Someone mod parent "Funny", right now!
Seriously, though. Isn't it a bit of a stretch to claim that "a majority of Americans" voted for Bush when he won with, what, 51% of the vote? Maybe 52%? And now that his approval ratings are sub-Clinton, that statement is even more disingenuous than ever.
Claiming that he has been "forthright and honest" is even more of a stretch. How many justifications have we heard for the Iraq invasion? How many of them have panned out to be even slightly true? It's pretty common knowledge at this point that we haven't found a single WMD since invading Iraq. It could be that we were spreading democracy, but there's good reason at this point to believe that this "democracy" won't be extended to women.
How American is that?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
How quickly we forget why we are in this war in the first place: Bush's lies about weapons of mass destruction. It is our power and duty as american citizens to question the decisions our government makes, and the motives behind those decisions. This war in iraq is not in the best interest of the american people.
And besides, he was elected for a second term because of a bunch of theocratically minded christian zealots...
I got nothin'
Does anybody else think it is sad that the population of the U.S. feels so powerless to fix the federal government that almost two-thirds of the country chose not to even bother voting? Talk about your government of the people.... It isn't even government of the plurality if you consider the non-votes a "none of the above"....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
...that "dooropen.wav" will be replaced by "dynamite_a_splode.mp3", the pop-up ads will be replaced by pop-up bombers, and the running little guy would carry an AK and shoot down people with a >90% Warning Level?
;)
Not quite what the Feds want...I think.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Seriously, though. Isn't it a bit of a stretch to claim that "a majority of Americans" voted for Bush when he won with, what, 51% of the vote? Maybe 52%? And now that his approval ratings are sub-Clinton, that statement is even more disingenuous than ever.
Why is it a stretch to deem 51% as majority? Would it make any difference if his approval ratings were higher than Clinton? Would that somehow imply that his majority was any more valid?
who are you to second guess a majority of Americans?
Indeed!
Bush's overall job approval was at 42 percent, with 55 percent disapproving.
So your telling me that the terrorists who want to destroy us and everything we have accomplished are using the most globalized tool to ever come out of our research labs? Have they even stoppped to think about the fact that they owe this ease of communication to American ingenuity? They are all just a bunch of hippocrates, mean ignorant zealous hippocrates.
I love how you put scare quotes around that like somehow terrorists really don't exist except in Bush's and their supporters' minds.
I guess 9/11 wasn't a "threat", or when Osama and his buddies put out videos with their jihad against America, that isn't a "threat" either.
You people who follow Michael Moore who also says there's no threat can keep your heads in the sand, but just because you close your eyes doesn't mean the threat isn't still out there.
Where are these websites then? It'd be nice if they had something to show us.
"you sonofabitch i didn't know!"
Politicians (often) started it. Now politicians use it to obtain their goals [hem, oil].
Simon's Rock College
All the more reason all American's should have to use their SSN's, fingerprints, and cornea to sign into any internet café. Why Bush hasn't payed MS to change every internet sign in to the centralized .NET Jesus only knows.
(chill, jk)
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Thirty seconds on Google shows the media has reported on how Al Queda communicates before. (Feel free to be picky about 'headlines' if you want.)
http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2002/091602-us_cusWhat's wrong with that statement? He didn't say a majority of Americans liked Bush. All he said is that a majority voted for him. A majority is, by defition, larger than half. What part of that description doesn't 51 or 52 doesn't fit?
-Grym
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
-Winston Churchill
(It's worth noting that he also said "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.")
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
We are calling on patriots spreed movies and tv programs on p2p network braving the RIAA sanctions so to distract the terrorists from their evil plans, let's get them hooked on American Idol and use up their bandwidth and save the World !
As if Voting is fair and valid.
Grow up. It's as fake as wrasslin.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
And not by the majority of Americans.
BFD. Neither was Clinton. Or Bush. Or Reagan. Or Carter. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last president who got a vote from the majority of eligible voters.
I don't mind that people point out the obvious that the current president didn't get a majority vote. But I do mind that people only point this out when a Republican is in office.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I saw the Al Quaeda myspace profile months ago.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Due to the distributed and international nature of the Internet, it just isnt possible for governments to take action against the publicly accessible al-qaeda sites. My question is this: why haven't US and UK based hackers taken action against these sites? It certainly seems like a slightly more productive use of time and energy than writing viruses.
This abuse of the Internet to sow hatred and terrorism will mean that governments will monitor the Internet much more closely, and will close down any web sites and stop any activities that are potentially dangerous. The Wild West Period of the Internet is definitely ending. There will be things you can and can not do. Like it or not the rule of law will be enforced with increasing strictness. (It is just like us humans to abuse a good thing.)
new reasons to police the internet...my ass
1) Toss opposition website/organization metaphorical football
2) Label terrorists; play smear the queer
3) ???
4) Victory...
How long before the government disappears non-conformists with this label?
"Terrorist Web-site shut down: al-kay-duh torrents found"
Great first terrorists.. whats next? pr0n? I would be shocked!
It's pretty common knowledge at this point that we haven't found a single WMD since invading Iraq Hate to pick nits... :)
It was known before hand that there weren't any WMD's to be found. When the topic came up the experts were ignored.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!
A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!
- US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
Apparently, Rummy thinks the internet is a Bad Thing.
Actually, people have.
p hp
http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/jondavid.
>My question is this: why haven't US and UK based hackers taken action against these sites?
And mine is for those running GPL OS and apps, why haven't the authors cancelled their EULA?
Unless, of course, there are doubts as to Al Q's real intentions (maybe they're just a human rights group)?
many of those kids are defacing sites for zone-h "notoriety" or getting arrested by the feds for hacking. i believe that vigilante hackers could do more harm than good. what if some hacker defaced the public_html/ dir, deleted everything, and just uploaded a simple index.html saying "pwned".. you had a lot of valuable evidence getting deleted by some stupid script kiddie.
/.'ers getting riled up over horrible medical care in the US and giving people erroneous medical advice and doing surgeries without any education.
if you wanna help fight terrorists, join the army/marines or department of homeland security. leave the terrorist hunting to the professionals. i don't see many
Clippy asks:
"You seem to be composing a bomb threat, would you like help?"
"You seem to be writing a terrorist agenda, would you like some pointers?"
On the Internet is where I hope terrorists try to connect, because it will sure make things easier for spies than it was for them to infiltrate Afghanistans training camps. They don't have broadband in Tora Bora.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Your constant attempts at fear-mongering no longer have an effect upon me. After 9/11 I was very frightened, very angry, and very vengeful. I believed that terrorists posed a direct threat to me and my family, and that our government should "do something."
Now I believe that our government is far more threatening to me than Al Qaeda will ever dream of being, and that the media only serves to distract from this with bullshit stories such as this one.
I'm not afraid any more, or at least I feel my fear is more intelligent than it was in the years after September 2001. I fear and hate fascists and theocrats as much as (if not more) than I hate bin Laden.
Loose confederation of individuals rallying under a common name, a head-figure that's just a spokesperson, using the Internet to communicate and plan... SCO was right, the terrorists *do* sound just like Free Software hackers!
(For the slow of wit, yes, that was just a joke.)
..and there go our /online/ rights..
This just in: Al Quaeda are humans!
"You, Stop right there!! Are you a Human? HIT THE FLOOR, HANDS BEHIND YOUR NECK!!"
But then.. this should make cybercafe's slightly safer from being blown up.. (by the terrori^Wsuicide bombers anyway)
i don't see many /.'ers getting riled up over horrible medical care in the US and giving people erroneous medical advice and doing surgeries without any education.
WebMD
DrKoop
Oh please, isn't it about time to MoveOn?
I'm no fan of Bush either, but that poor departed horse has been beaten into powder.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Naturally, many people hear about Radical Islam on the web and the investigative types want to see it for themselves. Well, obviously, unless you can read Arabic or a few others languages with large activist Muslim populations, you won't get very far with that idea.
One site political observers may find interesting in light of Iraq, however, is Kavkazcenter (formerly Kavkaz.org). One might consider Chechnya to be Russia's Iraq. It remains a quagmire in which any obvious means of extricating military control becomes ever more remote as time goes on and the reasons for and results of each conflict share many similarities (though Chechnya is arguably a much, much more ancient one). Like Iraq, the threat of jihadism has radically increased with "foreign occupation" as an extremely successful rallying point for it, while secular nationalism has fallen to the wayside as a dissident cause (and was, I would say, dealt a death blow when Russia killed Aslan Maskhadov, its former figurehead). If you want to read jihadism unapologetically propounded in English, in depth, in light of current events, Kavkaz Center is about as good as source as you'll find.
Government uses the Washington Post to spread FUD.
By "hackers" I take you to mean "bad people on the internet"... or crackers, or script kiddies or something. I would imagine there's no incentive for them to do that. The answer lies in your question. You asked "why" haven't the bad people on the internet attacked other bad people on the internet? They have no "why" reason.
If "crackers" were to believe terrorists had billions of dollars, or some other resource, and were sloppy at their online activities and an easy target, they just might do so.
Also, terrorists may be (ab)using services out there of innocent people and businesses. They would not deserve to be attacked.
Any investigator can tell you that somtimes the best way you catch your mark, is to wait for them to slip up and make a mistake. And they will. In some aspects, it may end up being easier to catch them online.
I can imagine beating terrorism is all about beating them at their own game. (I don't mean cruel inhumane acts, either). They think they're pretty smart moving to the Internet for secret covert communications, this may be the biggest mistake they've ever made. If we end up being better at it than they are, we can stop them from the inside out.
FLR
Since it is infinitely easier to data-mine and hunt down information sources on the net than it is to find caves full of real people in places like Afganastan, this is a terrific move. The NSA owns the net (it is unlikely that you can pass information on the net without the NSA filtering software taking a gander at it), and therefore if this is true, the terrorists are cutting their own throats by moving to the net.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
I love how the Bush administration keeps the Terrorist "threat" at the forefront of the American peoples' lives. It really makes me wonder if we are not moving closer to an Orwellian future. "War Is Peace" is beginning to sound more and more like Bush's rhetoric every day.
... I think someone didn't RTFA. Bush isn't even mentioned once in the article. Why did this post get a +5 Insightful when it has nothing to do with the article?
Um
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
I can think of a plausible justification for invading Iraq when we did.
as an Iraqi refuge told me well before 9-11, Saddam and Bin Laden were not allies, Al Queda wants a government based on Islam, Saddam wanted a government based on Saddam.
Saddam's power base was slowly weakening, the well trained and fed troops that he had in the prior conflict were getting older, and being replaced by children who grew up undernourished, and undereducated during the Sanctions.
With Al Queda being crushed in Afghanistan, many of it's members fled into Iraq, which had the convenient situation of no being helpful to the US, while Saddam was rapidly losing control.
Consider if Saddams government collapsed without American intervention; who would be there to grab the reins of power? Islamic Extremists, backed by Al Queda, ready to bomb, murder, and terrorize anyone who wanted an actual representitive government, just as they are doing now.
The U.S. wouldn't have an excuse to intervene after the revolution, because Saddam would have been deposed, the new government would claim to represent the people, and by claiming a basis in Islam, any attack would be claimed an attack against Islam.
So, if that scenario were about to come to pass, the time to begin an occupation of Iraq would be before the revolution not after.
There is no way the U.S. government would describe their intercession as preventing the formation of a self-described 'Islamic State' as doing so would incur the wrath of far more groups than having a stated reason of "deposing a tyrant", "protecting the region", "WMD's", "Terrorists", etc.
So these other reasons were made up, and used interchangably. In case one of them proved invalid, the other reasons would still justify going to war.
The biggest surprise to me was that some covert group didn't plant WMD components in Iraq to be 'Discovered', I thought it was almost certian we would find WMD's if they existed or not.
We still fall back on the idea of pre-emptive war, and if it's wrong to kill tens of thousands of people over a 'what if'; but it sure looks like there are a lot of terrorist bomber types hanging out in Iraq that don't need Saddam to tell them to kill and terrorise people.
Fortunetly, radical Islam is dying: Terrorism is like the kid who knocks over the game board when he's losing, the philosophy of "If I can't win, then nobody wins." and the 9/11 attacks were like punching a hornets nest because you're allergic to hornets. Osama, to me, seems like a spoiled brat; rich parents, thinking he's the center of the world, he's right, everyone else is wrong, and all. If he actually had the support of the Islamic people, Al Queda would have an Army, not a few guys with boxcutters and makeshift bombs.
Never us a long word where a short one will do.
Ok, I won't, but don't you think that use would have been a much better word than us there?
Sounds like a good way for people to hassle me when I'm with my iBook at Starbucks, not a credible threat.
I wish these rabble rousing journalists would look themselves in the mirror and realize that instead of helping the American public they are just making life harder for hard-working American immigrants. Looking for a good way to alienate American Muslims in the same way the Londoners bombers were? This seems like a good way.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
No its not. Its just Dubyah having a relaxing day with the staff.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
You can just revoke rights granted to a licensee on a whim. Otherwise the GPL (and similar Free Software licenses) would be rather pointless.
My little brother (Marine sniper) found terrorist hideouts complete with tortured Iraqis chained to bloddy walls and CDROMs laying around with .wmvs of said torture. Don't know about connectivity. Sure it was sneakernet.
This guy is way out there
I once saved an article, I think from the NY Times, about gangs moving onto the Internet. They could not, however, gather any useful information from these "barely computer literate" gang members because they used CODE WORDS in place of what they really meant. Now imagine, no heavy encryption, no PGP, just plain text from teenage punks...and they couldn't get anything useful because they used CODE words.
Intercepting terrorists messages isn't their goal. If they can't stop LA gangbangers from using the Net to communicate, they sure can't stop hard core terrorists, who are surely smart enough to use more than just code words.
What they really want to keep tabs on is the 99.9% of the Net who aren't terrorists and aren't using encryption and simple code words.
Man, I wished I could find that article!
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
The idea of a "permanent war economy" was first put forward by the CEO of GE (a major military contractor, in addition to making cheap light bulbs) shortly after the end of World War II. Keeping some sort of conflict in top of the news is old hat for the U.S. The War Against Terror (T.W.A.T.?) replacing the Cold War is the only change ...
y 080104.html
http://www.lefthook.org/Reviews/ChowkwanyunChomsk
"Us" is shorter, so more double plus good.
What nobody (or at least, too few) in this country are doing is "thinking".
In a nation that is so self proclaiming of its freedom as ours is, nobody is EXERCISING that freedom to THINK. Nobody wonders why those people are willing to DIE HORRIBLY to kill a few of us. When you are cornered, and an omnipresent foe threatens to destroy your lifestyle and enslave you to a set of norms completely against everything you believe, do you not think you would take up a rifle or machete and fight "the man" ??
We don't ask "WHY?" we just react. And thus our country is less like an elite martial arts master, analyzing the situation and acting properly, we are more like the dumb gangbanger shooting up the sidewalk full of innocents to kill some other kid that might belong to another gang.
Our leaders know what they are doing. They allowed it to happen, knowing that most of us americans are among the most ignorant people alive... unquestioning in their mob, serf-like mentality. Coupled with nazi germany style rhetoric and we have a mob ready to murder anyone the leaders point to. Wham... war in a can, just add, uhhh... oil.
Look at our people... they are "defending freedom", how?? The very people sending them to die are the ones outsourcing their jobs to the countries we "free". But does anyone stop to question? What happens when china and japan STOP buying our horrendous national debt??
Bush is to the USA what Gorbachev was to USSR. Only our fall will be much nastier, because we will got from being HAVES to being have nots. Not from have nots to haves as the russians did. We keep "buying" cheap goods made in China, we keep listening to those Indian IT support people. We buy the cheapest. But like buying RAM and a motherboard go, buying cheap only pays off in the short run, farther down the road you end up paying for being cheap. (Compare a PC Chips vs a good solid board (tyan and serverworks come to mind).
We can prevent all this. We leave the arabs to reconquer their lands, and we're likely never going to hear from them again. Especially after we put alternative fuels and energy sources to work. We will be cutting their funding AND their anger by containing them instead of trying to convert them to christianity. As I recall it, Jerusalem managed to be a peaceful place when it was under Muslim rule, it was bloodiest while under Christian rule, and so it is with the rest of the Middle East.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
But it ws shrtr, nd u got th msg.
What about being erroneously flagged as a felon and revoked of their right to vote?
or re-districted so their vote is marginalized?
or relegated to a district with antiquated voting equipment which caused fewer people to be able to vote by the time the polls closed?
or told by their employers they could kiss their jobs goodbye if they missed their shift. After all, voting isn't a holiday or required by law?
and let's not forget that our political system is a bipolar dog and pony show where the two parties put up staged spats from time to time and present candidates who tow the corporate line. Plenty of people recognize that politicians in the US are liars, thieves and wimps who are afraid to rock the boat.
or several other things.
Remember, voting is a statistical sampling. In that sampling errors are made. So try to be more polite to people who couldn't or didn't vote.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Why not mandate secure wireless routers right out of the box? It's easy to do--each wireless router would come with a different default admin password, and a different SSID and with WPA-PSK enabled, which would be random*, and would be printed on a slip in the box? SSID broadcast could still be left on so that Windows XP could find it. The user instructions would be to refer to the card for the password when Windows XP first connected. Would this be that hard?
* to make it a little easier, instead of being 1234lkasdF!@#$% you could do two random words (with some letters missing) and a separator character or two
> But I do mind that people only point this out when a Republican is in office.
Actually it was very widely pointed out in the 1992 elections. A lot of pissed-off Republicans complained that Clinton didn't get a majority of the vote but he won because Ross Perot took a lot of votes that would've gone to George H.W. Bush otherwise.
Fear. Fear. (maybe F34r?).
If the kind of world they wished to see actually existed, computers, DVDs and the internet etc just couldn't exist. Think 11th century.
I guess you were'nt paying attention to U.S. elections over the last several years. Since 9-11, nothing has dominated politics more than the so-called "War On Terror".
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
You ought to read the post he/she was responding to. And the following sentence while you're at it:
"Not even a majority of registered voters, I don't think."
So, Captain Obvious, the grandparent's statement that Bush was elected by a majority of Americans was wrong, and the parent's response was on target, and you need to go back to school and learn to read.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
But you don't understand man! Chimpy McBushHitler wrote that fatwa to scare the proles and something about orwell and free beer and stuff .....AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
/HowardDean
All he said is that a majority voted for him. A majority is, by defition, larger than half. What part of that description doesn't 51 or 52 doesn't fit?
The part where a majority of Americans either voted Kerry or stayed home and watched E! that night.
Islam is a religion with millions of adherents who have never bombed anyone, killed anyone, threatened anyone, or attempted to take over the world and destroy Christianity in the process.
Islam is definitely engaged in an internal struggle right now, but those who condemn violence are starting to do so more forcefully, and the notion that the majority of Muslims want to do in America and Europe is to the best of my knowledge unsubstantiated.
The Christian Identity Movement espoused by the Aryan Nation purports to be a true interpretation of Christ's teachings. Because they call themselves Christians doesn't mean that they speak for the millions of other Christians, does it?
Sure the leaders are the same folks who run Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, etc... The Strategy is to take over the world, pretty simple to me.
Bin Laden hates the Saudi royal family and would love nothing better than to have it destroyed. That hardly puts them on the same side. The fact that Iran is a Shiite nation and most of the rest of the Middle East (save Iraq) is dominated by Sunnis is also a very important factor. Just as Catholics and Protestants clashed in Europe for generations, so it is with the Muslim Arabs. That doesn't mean they can't and haven't been cooperating, but they certainly don't all share the same vision of what is right for Islam, much less the entire world.
Remember that the world communist movement had a very clear ideological platform and a very clear plan. They even had two giant countries, the USSR and China, in their camp. But nope, the whole "take over the world" goal was just too difficult to obtain. Communism imploded specifically because the West successfully pursued a strategy of containment, which forced communism to slowly collapse under its own contradictions.
Because of course they haven't invaded other parts of our lives like air travel and public transportation?
They have attacked us and inflicted damage, absolutely. But the effectiveness of terrorists can be minimized, and they can be isolated and slowly choked off. Deterrence and patient police work are the key to this, as the British know.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's a problem, but also an opportunity. Whereas before they might recruit in secret in mosques, now they recruit in the relative public of the internet. So now the CIA can find the bad guys by posing as radical muslims on the internet, whereas before they'd have to go to physical locations to spy on them. I guess one CIA operative could hang out in 100 virtual locations to spy whereas in the real world they could hang out at maybe 1 or 2 locations.
Due to the distributed and international nature of the Internet, it just isnt possible for governments to take action against the publicly accessible al-qaeda sites. My question is this: why haven't US and UK based hackers taken action against these sites? It certainly seems like a slightly more productive use of time and energy than writing viruses.
Having worked for company X where we actually HOSTED a number of Al-Quaida websites, I would have to say that this is hard. How is it hard? The websites were written in Farsi and Arabic (Mostly Arabic IIRC). None of used, spoke, or read these languages. It was not until we were alerted to the presence of pro Al-Quaida pages on our network that we took them down.
In that time we suffered many attacks - both DDOS and the standard stuff for large networks, but the attack traffic was largely directed at the english websites. The problem is that the skript kiddi3z cant read Farsi or Arabic. (Or perhaps READ period, but that is a whole other discussion...)
That's great. We had a chance to send in a few thousand counterterrorist assassins. Infiltrate their groups as did John Walker Lindh and other Euramericans. When they were still small and clustered in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Horn of Africa and a few other places (like Berlin, LA, NY/NJ), even after the 9/11/2001 planebombings. Instead we sent in thousands of troops, made a mess of the place, added Iraq to the blunder, and scattered the seeds. In fact we kicked the hornet's nest, rather than inject it with poison. Now we've multiplied them, mutated them, and handed them media victory after victory, so their obscure gang of assholes is now global and famous. We've got that moron Bush and his sadistic death marketers, never out of the safety of their air-conditioned offices and SUVs, up against bin Laden, his lieutenants, and a gang of desperate assholes with nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Now that the war is on the Net, where lives are not actually on the line, we have a second chance. We're supposedly the masters of the mediasphere. We can crank out orchestrated media campaigns to actually win infowar battles, winning consumers of our brand: liberty. Of course, we have to get our message straight: drop some of this "trade our rights for security" crap that makes us look like the Christian Taliban. We have to stop torturing prisoners, invading countries "because we can", and hiding behind nonsense like "we're not as bad as Saddam".
Rounds 1 and 2 we handed to the Qaeda, preferring to stick to our old Cold War scripts. If we don't win Round 3, now that they've cashed in on popularity and financial backers around the world, we'll have lost the infowar - and we're already starting down on the mat. If we go into Round 4 friendless, outnumbered, looking evil and deeply divided inside our borders, we'll never get a chance. It'll be the theofascists by a knockout, and our steroid-inflated body will get picked clean by the vultures.
--
make install -not war
God, I love the neuroses of the left.
Please, keep it up.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
QUICK shutdown osamas blog!
today we destroy his blog
tomorow we'll take the oil...
...no wait ...
Greetings Mr Smithe;
I am an operative of an international terrorist organization. Due to the recent crackdown on our money laundering operations we are left without an ability to transfer money across borders. We beseech you in the name of, say, Allah to let us deposit $50,000 US dollars in your bank account, ten percent of which you can keep as a thanks for helping us in this struggle. To confirm your account number please transfer $100 US to dirtyrussianspammers.com. You will also recieve a special 30 day trial membership in jihadibabes.com, as well as a lifetime supply of Afgan viagra.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Since it's constantly up and down, here's the Google cache. Mostly rationalization of this or that execution, wild claims of uncounted tanks and helicopter kills, US atrocities, stuff like that. If you've read it once you don't need to read it again. Pretty bad propaganda.
This guy is way out there
It seems that the majority of people on /. cannot take this article seriously and think it is part of some FUD campaign. I do not think it is at all on the otherhand and I think there are a disproportional amount of comments on this article which are immature.
/. in my opinion.
The article simply seeks to disseminate information which is interesting. It contains many facts including the URLS of former websites run by Al Quaeda. It even speaks about organizations who devote all of thier time to tracking the websites of Jihadists.
Since the Washington Post is the most liberal major newspaper in the US right now I doubt they will be doing this administration any favors. I do not think that they intended to spread fear or even to imply that tighter controls on the Internet were needed. Actually I think talking about the real tacticts of Jihadists will be the best argument AGAINST tighter controls. That is because whatever restraints we make on our networks here domestically will not affect the rest of the internet and besides there are ways around even the best policies. The Internet is a network that was designed for the easy transfer of information and that is how it is being used.
I think some of the information in the article is useful in the posturing of agencies looking to track down terrorists. If people neglect to think about this channel for imformation dissemination then many things will be missed. In addition the article pointed out that Businesses who do not take thier security seriously have thier websites hacked and used by Al Quaeda operatives. I think this is the best motivation ever for companies to finally get off thier lazy behinds and lock down open servers. Getting you corporate site hacked and turned into a commercial for Jihad is not good for PR.
In conclustion I think the article was good. It was not all new information but the article pulled a lot of info that was scattered and put it in one place. I think that is also deserved to be posted on
Well, technically a majority of Americans didn't vote for Bush. According to this, only 60.3% of the people who could vote did vote. But a majority of Americans that voted did vote for Bush. Although just by 0.73%.
Just use this.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1447371,001 301780001.htm
"Why are there no Indian Muslims in Al-Qaeda? There are no easy answers. But there are two probable reasons. One is the assurance of a level-playing field for all citizens in India because of the success of the democratic system. The other is the absence of American influence on Indian policy all through the Cold War years and, to a large extent, even now.
To start with the second, it has been observed that a majority of the terrorists come from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and some of the North African countries. What is common about these countries is the lack of a genuine democracy, despite the adherence to form, and longstanding virtual patron-client links with the US. What is more, these two factors are interconnected.
A basic reason why the military or feudal autocrats control these countries is that the US propped them up to serve its economic and diplomatic interests. It was either the presence of oil or their utility as frontline states against the Soviet Union that guided the Americans.
As is known, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire, was an American ally when his band of fundamentalists fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. It is the cynical use of these countries by Washington that built up a reservoir of resentment among large sections of their people against the US.
This anger may have become all the more intense because there were no democratic outlets -- no Parliament, Opposition parties, a free press and a free judiciary -- to let off steam.
The difference between India and these countries is obvious. India's 'noisy democracy', as an American newspaper recently put it, ensures that all segments of public opinion -- anti-US, pro-US, neutral -- are routinely aired.
Besides, during the Cold War, India was regarded by the US and the West as being in the anti-American camp despite its claims to be non-aligned. This perception gave India a certain dignified status in the eyes of its own people since the Western world was still seen as being engaged in a colonial enterprise.
The pro-American countries seemingly lacked this sense of self-esteem, as was evident from the title of one of America's favourite dictator Ayub Khan's book, "Friends, Not Masters". The Pakistan president's grouse was that the US tended to behave like a viceroy. The result was that while the governments of these countries were pro-American, most of their people were not.
But even more than India's neutrality in foreign affairs (which was resented by the US as the revelations of the recent Nixon-Kissinger transcripts show), what has saved the Indian Muslims from falling into Al-Qaeda's trap is its vibrant, multicultural democracy. Its value is now understood by the world even more than before because of the terrorist threat.
During the 60th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II in Moscow, President George W Bush introduced his wife Laura to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the words that he was the leader of the "most fascinating democracy in the world" and pointed out that Al-Qaeda hadn't been able to recruit a single Indian Muslim.
A recent Washington Post editorial noted that India's "large and tolerant" Muslim population "may serve as an ally against Islamic militancy". The old habit of looking for a docile 'ally' is again evident. However, the point that can be made is that the tolerance and upward mobility of Indian Muslims can serve as an example to the rest of the world. And the example underlines how a successful democracy can draw the poison from terrorist propaganda.
One of the reasons why the Al-Qaeda has gained ground among impressionable youth in the West Asia and elsewhere is that it portrays Muslims as an oppressed community. But this is far from being the truth in India, where the Muslims have done exceptionally well in several fields.
For instance, Bolly
You just keep thinking that, chump. If you and your kind keep things up the way you have been, in a couple months or years we'll be seeing their armies marching on our country. You'll run out in the street to welcome the Islamic liberators of the oppressed people of the Republic of America, and... likely get shot in the face.
(Yes, I'm over exagerating. Red-state boys in arms will obviously prevent such a thing.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It was known before hand that there weren't any WMD's to be found
Gotta love the slashdot doublethink.
For months every time someone posted 'where are the WMD' about 50 people posted claiming that they had been found, or that they were about to be found because they 'must' be there...
The *sole* justification given for the entire war was WMD. Colin powell even went to europe and gave a long presentation showing blurry satellite photographs of 'suspected' WMD to try to persuade the european governments (only worked for the UK, who were onboard anyway).
And now apparently the line is 'we knew there weren't any WMD.. just kidding folks'.
I'm speechless.
nebulous and omnipresent are 'long, impressive' words? where the hell do you live, land of the simpleminded fucktards?
I think the W3C needs to institute a "Terror bit" to be deployed alongside the "Evil bit".
.die top-level domain (just like, as we know, all pr0n sites use .xxx).
That measure should be accompanied by the requirement that terrorist organizations use the
In conjuction with that, CyberCafes and others can filter terrorist sites out with any of the highly-effective Net Filters and the evildoers are thwarted again, with a minimum of effort!
Ain't life simple!
/* TAANSTAFL */
you lose
Thats why I get my news from the Daily Show.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
No, can't say I'd really noticed.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Indeed not even close to a majority of registered voters, and even further from a majority of eligible voters. According to census.gov data, there were 142,070 thousand registered voters for the 2004 election, so Bush secured an amazing 43.7% of the registered vote. More importantly, my book, there were 201,230 thousand eligible voters in 2003 according to this study, which means that Bush was supported by a commanding 30.83% of the people who had the opportunity to vote for him. (Of course, Kerry came off with 29.33%).
You've got a point. Bush got the majority of the votes. Unfortunatly, not everyone voted. So he got 51% of (max) 60% of the population who are registered to vote, and remember: Not all registered voters did vote. So 51% of 60% of 295 million. About 90 million people. Is that the majority?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
No, but you know what really brings your point home? Horrible grammar. Seriously, I don't know why we liberals get so fired up at the "uninformed right". Perhaps because all too often you can't string two sentences together (upp, no...wait, you did that). But, I'm sure this special brand of ignorance applies only to grammar and you're very well informed when it comes to geopolitics.
In a posting not long after the London attacks, a member of one of the al Qaeda-linked online forums asked how to take action himself. A cell of two or three people is better, replied another member in an exchange translated by the SITE Institute. Even better than that is a "virtual cell, an agreement between a group of brothers over the Internet." It is "safe," extolled the anonymous poster, and "nobody will know the identity of each other in the beginning." Once "harmony and mutual trust" are established, training conducted and videos watched, then "you can meet in reality and execute some operation in the field."
OK, that's creepy, but that's the point of the article. The action implied is killing innocent people. So this is what happens to those who start conversing and working on that action:
Hmmm, I hope there's more than that to go on. It's not hard to make a cell phone blow up a package and (hopefully) not a crime to tell others how. Most cell phones have a vibrator, which can be tapped to trigger a relay or igniter. Anyone who knows how to make explosives go off is sure to also know how to make a cell phone do the work. I hope they have evidence the group was going to actually put bombs in public places. If not, what they are going to jail for is Thought Crime.
Thought Crime is a wonderfully flexible way to put people in jail. I like how the author uses a computer programmer and roll playing game communities for examples.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wonder what criteria the International Terrorist Entities Search Team http://www.siteinstitute.org/ uses to mark a website as 'Terrorist Entity'. Would posting a link to http://www.bombshock.com/fronts/explosive.html and yelling "Hey, lets undermine western society" put me on a no fly list?
for Imperial Terrorists and Kings - Boom, Boom, Bang Bang, lie down, you're dead... (with aplogies to Pink Floyd) Fortunately, web sites are a really bad substitute for real training facilities. If all wannabe terrs would play WOW instead, the world would certainly be a better place.
Oh well, what the hell...
The NSA can take on technology based communications every which way from Sunday. Phones can be tapped. Computers can be monitored. Going head to head vs. the US using technology is like putting on a football helmet and trying to ram a bull. You're dealing with the creature where it's strongest.
9-11 did as much damage as it did, not because of the use of fancy gadgets or technology, but because they were about as high tech as Ted Kazinsky and slipped under the radar.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Using the net to communicate, educate and retaliate? No way. I don't believe it.
Oh, and by the way, rumor has it that Al Qaeda has cemented plans to upgrade their sewage system from holes-in-the-ground to toilet's and associated plumbing so that they can better communicate through the this sewer system; manipulating the enormous bandwidth (but mindful of the falling/floating 'packets' and clogged ports).
Seriously though, a big duh to whomever this is really strikes as news or unexpected. The framework is laid out for them, all they need is an XBox 360 and a subscription to XBox Live so that they can practice squad tactics.
Trivial Omnipotence
Then(tm) we(tm) can(tm) sue(tm) their(tm) nuts-off(tm).
I love patents!(tm)
Unauthorised reproduction of this post is prohibited.
Karma whoring
to formulate new ways of spelling "Al Qaeda".
Just spam them... They'll be so overwhelmed that their channels will grind to a halt.
... requires a fairly closed environment. Too many new ideas and they might loose the zeal for the cause.
Handing them an internet connection and teaching them to "surf the web" will inadvertantly lead them to online porn,
and a lack of desire for anything but one handed surfing.
The newest weapon against terror - free online porn! =)
Big deal, we've been doing precisely this for years. Why is it astonishing that someone else might be doing this?
Actually, a majority of Americans think Bush is dishonest, and 58% of them think he's mishandling Iraq.
Bush's re-election was due to the Republican Party's mastery of smear campaigning, hysteria-raising, and pandering to the religious right's thirst for power. The Democratic Party's uninspired campaigning didn't help.
Bush has been nothing but forthright and candid during these troubled times
Bwahahahaha! Seen any Iraqi WMDs lately?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Maybe thats because the republicans that get into office are so much more fucking scary?
C.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
Mohammed Atta for one, possessed a doctorate...in Urban Planning and Preservation.
How Ironic.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
i believe this is yet another way of increasing the level of fear the general public (at least in the US) already have.
i just hope that Bush gets thrown out of office and Osama Bin Laden and the whole Al Quada (spelling?) becomes a thing of the past. then we can go back to living our normal lives without having to read about some stupid suicide bomber or some (even more) stupid president who is so fucking incompetent.
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
That's not what I'm talking about. When only X percent of eligible voters vote, and most presidential elections are decided by >10% of the vote, then the winner is not getting the majority of the vote. In the case of the 1992 elections, even if Perot stayed out of the race NEITHER candidate would have gotten a majority.
The Republicans were not complaining about Clinton, they were complaining about Perot. While they still acted like whiny babies, it's a far different complaint. Compare that to the current Democrat meme that the only way Bush won was because of the severe apathy which Republican policies inculcated among the public.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
That herring is pretty and red.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The definition of a majority is 270 (or more) votes out of 538 ballots.
g e
There is a nice summary of the Electoral College in Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Electoral_Colle
Right. So here's what we do: every time we find a website being run by one of these terrorists, we make /. article of it and post a link on the main page. The traffic to their site will be so great that they'll be forced to shut down! In this way we can exterminate terrorism from the web.
Thanks for pointing out the inherent weakness in trying to enforce software use limits with an EULA.
Of course, in spite of being sure they are distributing something, we don't know for sure that they are violating the GPL or any of the other licenses they might be using, but if we could get them to hold still long enough for pre-suit legal maneuvering, well, uhmmm, what then?
So the powers that be, now that they realize they allowed it to happen, are beginning to regret the easy access to the kind of secure communication channels that every military commander and every espionage agent in history has ever dreamed of.
For all the widespread belief that the NSA has a backdoor into every known crypto algorithm, the truth is, secure commo exists and both your friends and your enemies have it. You may have the ability to take it away from your friends, but your enemies will still have it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
That reference is wrong. "Al-Qaeda" means "the base" as in a physical place. The guy who wrote that is confused because they found the name on a computer file.
The newest fud, "the terrorist are on the internet (insert evil deed here)...".
This nonsence has to stop.
It's an interesting strategy.... we'll terrorize ourselves so that Al Quaeda doesn't have to. (and why not? It makes about as much sense as the "we're fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here" line that gets tossed around)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This is not true. "Al-Qaeda" means "the base", not "the database." I welcome correction from an Arabic speaker but I seriously doubt the arabic word for "base" is the same as the word for "database." The word was first found in a computer file but experts believe it refers to a "base of operations", not a "database"
yay for generalizations! maybe you could try being polite and directing your comments toward the ruling party, or toward specific groups of people, rather than toward "you guys." furthermore, some of those accusations are just plain wrong.
-Americans have never killed innocent civilian people to steal their oil. I have not heard of a GI knocking on an arabs door, shooting him in the face, and stealing his oil. Wars have been in part motivated by oil, sure, but america hasn't "stolen" oil. who's oil have we stolen, and please tell me where it is. if i knew, it'd sure make gas prices cheaper!
-So we funded Bin Ladin in the 80's against the Russians. it was a different world then. not that it wasn't a mistake, but you must realize that it was not the world we live in today.
-we do not "shoot first and ask questions later"--thats just the typical cowboy stereotype that many people like to pick up on. this administration has been WRONG (about WMDs) at best, and DECEITFUL (changing the war-aims mid-game and pulling a fast one on the american people) at worst, but they don't "shoot first and ask questions later." and i resent you stereotyping all americans as moronic cowboys with six-shooters.
-the US has free education, and it is not communist
-i don't think there is a government on this earth that doesn't eavesdrop on conversations. this administration is pushing the limit, but don't get on your high horse.
-there are many right-wingers who think free medical care is communism...but no need to make that an "american" attribute.
i'm not going to go point-by-point anymore. the main gripe i have with you is your overall sense of moral superiority and your tendency to apply sensationalized traits of the ruling party (which, mind you, i have no great love for) to americans as a whole.
The terrorists have had a web presence for quite some time.
It seems that the media idea of a terrorist is not quite correct. These people are not poorly educated villagers trying to protect their traditional way of life from constantly encroaching Westernism. They are instead people who are quite fully comfortable and adept to Western lifestyles and middle-class interactions.
But they have also developed an obsession to randomly murder the people that they chose to surround themselves with. These people generally are different from the suicide bombers or shaheed individuals. The suicide bombers are 'brainwashed' by standardized cult methods into mass murder. They are ill-educated and working class youth in societies that have no real opportunity for young people because the population has grown much more faster than the economy. And because the governments are frozen in corruption and patronage, with little interest in change that would allow the needed growth.
In other words, there seem to two seperate types of people who do terrorism: the cadre and the cannon fodder. The well-educated who can function in the West and have no qualms about mass murder of random innocent peoples and those who are looking for a cheap ticket to heaven because life on earth sucks.
The well-educated mass-murders are most likely under the control of a cult. Because random mass-murder is not normal behavoir for educated middle-class people from any society or religion.
This matters because cultists aren't really committing crimes for politcal or economic reasons that have negotiated political solutions. Governments can never stop these people by giving them what they want because the only thing that they really want is to do is kill people. All the religious, economic, historical, military, and political arguments used to justify these acts of mass murder are just a smokescreen to buy time for the next mass murder.
It may be necessary to fight these death cults by creating counter death cults that infiltrate Islamic societies and create havoc and random murder to the point where the anti-West death cults first have to fight these new groups before they can engage in murder in the West. The West fights terror incidents in its own country by creating large numbers of secret cults of murderous psychopaths who disrupt Islamic societies with such a high level of random mass murder that the Al-Qaida groups too busy defending their own people to launch operations that murder people in the West.
Creating these cults with deep brainwashing and post-hypnotic suggestions would be a war crime in anyone's law book. But it's possible that the West may turn to doing this because they have run out of other options. This would be a crime on th level of the massive saturation bombing of cities in order to kill everyone military or civilian that was done in World War II. But that kind of mass murder ended with the defeat of the Axis governments and armies. This kind of mass murder would go on forever. Its point would not be to obtain any specific objective, but rather to constantly brutalize a society to the point where it couldn't function anymore, and would decend into total barbarism. It may come that the wealthy areas of the world will force the poor areas into permanent sub-civilized conditions with no hope of improvement in order to deny them the means of launching random murderous attacks on the daily life in the developed world.
The U.S. Congress is out of town until September. If you haven't heard about that (Does "recess appointment" ring a bell?), you really need to consider getting your news from somewhere besides /.
The US is so wrapped up in whipping themselves into a fearmongered bunch of people hiding under the bed with every sensationalist news headline that Al-Quaeda can just sit back and enjoy the show for years to come. They wanted fear and terror. Well, they've got it, on a scale they never imagined. Not a day goes by that a major news organization doesn't spread fear by using sensationalist headlines like this Washington Post one.
Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is not fear and terror, what they want is for the US to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, to stop supporting Israeli aggression against Palestine along with other grievances some of which are legitimate some of which are not. The Administration wants fear and terror and has very carefully cultivated it for some time now (hence the sensationlism) so as to point it in directions which are useful. I imagine Al-Qaeda is sitting back stunned at how completely oblivious Americans are to the issues at stake. In this sense we have been very good at subverting terrorism. Perhaps in some preverse way this a good thing, I don't know.
The Daily Show is good comedy and helps one see through the bullshit, but unfortunately it doesn't provide any alternative (namely the truth).
-ashot
Child porn scares weren't enough. Now you will find use of evasive technologies soon to be classified as criminal offences. TOR? Even SSH, when they want an example, or to close down another "free-thinker".
It's over. You traded your souls to these people, for a shot at buying a Lexus.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Pfffft. I never had a Lexus or a soul. Who's they?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
This is probably another ploy using the governments newest scare tatic catch phraze "terrorist" to take more of our right away. Hell just give us back our guns and if these towel heads come into my town I'll put two holes in their skull. There, end of terrorist issue.
[ brakken ]
Terrorists use phones! In-depth report this evening!
Tomorrow: Terrorists rumoured to be using cars. Join or discussion on the evils of technology.
New Series: How terrorists wear clothes and shoes. Petition to WalMart to stop selling terrorist tools!
Hey, USians, why don't you snap the fuck out of it? You're getting on everyone's nerves.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That train is *never* late!
It's shocking. Most of the people who comment here are facing a serious threat to their liberty, and all they can do is make lame jokes.
--
If you support dishonesty and violence, don't say you are Christian.
Al Queda is just a cause; it's a flag that militant Islamic zealots hoist in order to feel part of a worldwide movement. They're a ragtag bunch of criminals who want to spread their message as far and wide as possible. There are no definate leaders (Bin Laden is just a spokesman), nor do they have a cohesive strategy. Therefore it makes perfect sense that they use the Internet to communicate.
Now they have the right idea... Debian Al-Qaeda/Terrorism anyone?
Since they chance sites regularly, cant someone set up a few honeypots to catch them moving to the new sites?
Redirect their efforts so that instead of blowing something up, they cut an old ladies lawn for her, or clean her windows.
Or suicide bomb the middle of an empty field. Those scarescrows are a menace to a way of life
Despite rumors that terrorists communicate only with animal noises and smoke signals, we now have reason to believe they may be using modern technology.
Look, I'm a Southern white boy and even I understand this. Stories like this one are FUD and more propaganda for the current regime.
They have spooked us into giving up freedom after freedom and are constantly trying to turn us against one another.
Honestly, I don't see what the journalists get out of it. Wouldn't standing up for the citizens gain more attention than falling into the party line?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Nice try, but none of that is proof that Tony Blair's recent iniative will squelch political dissident speech now or anytime in the near future as the GP suggested.
Half of the material you posted is on advertisements and political correctness which is completely unrelated to the issue at hand.
As for the actual case involving thehomegunsmith.com, there is, at the very least, an ongoing trial. Isn't that how things are supposed to work? In what pre-Orwellian state would that be the case?
-Grym
How sad is it that one can't even tell whether you were being serious or sarcastic...
Going over the article, it seems to focus a lot on the mostly benign while overlooking the real danger.
It's not these scary terrorist webpages. Heck, I could start my own webpage tomorrow called "People's Jihad of America", or some such rubbish, then provide a link under "training" entitled "How to detonate a nuclear bomb"
The body could be something like: First you find a nuclear bomb. Bring the bomb into America. This is the tricky part because you might get caught, so we suggest trying to smuggle it in as discreetly as possible. Once you've got it in the United States, take it a city like New York or Los Angeles. You should do this because those are dense cities and the denser the city, the more people the bomb will kill. Finally, take the bomb to the center of the city because that's where most of the people live, and detonate it".
The next day, there would be news reports that "An American website affiliated with terrorist organizations published a training manual for a nuclear attack against the United States. Singling out either New York or Los Angeles for attack, the manual provides tips on how to smuggle a bomb into the country, and even instructs on the proper placement of the nuclear device to have maximum effectiveness.
Well . . . um . . . duh.
The real scary part is communication, not webpages. Anonymous emails and chat rooms abound where parent terrorist cells can disseminate orders and information to subordinate cells. Simply handwriting a note and scanning it, emailing the message as a jpg can defeat pretty much all of our best detection methods. This--which is the real threat--is all but ignored in the media.
But some yahoo puts up a website after thumbing through the Anarchist's Cookbook, and we're supposed to be scared of that.
The Internet is generally stupid
Which would have changed point B to 'Hey if the other Arabs don't care we won't feed you either (Omar was a jerk and was demanding that his country get fed.)
That would meant that point C would not have happened. The Taliban woud have contained themselves in Afghanistan and starved to death or joined the litany of failures arabia has spawned and ended up running a 7/11 in DesMoines.
I totally disagre on point D. By refusing to attack in Afghanistan (which wouldn't have been necesssary if we'd secured the cockpit doors,) we sould have gone in, without the insurgency, which is currently always renewing itself. Disarming the Baathist army was a mistake.
Point E would never have existed.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Since nobody's mentioned it yet, let me recommend John Robb's excellent Global Guerrillas blog if you want to understand this stuff in more depth. John has been exploring the mechanics of massively-distributed terror networks for quite some time now.
Read my blog.
yeah, they should shut those down as well. Anything that can be used to communicate should be strictly controlled and monitored. Any use of restricted keywords and that's it - lights out, a hellfire missle headed your way.
fucking mad.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
I would like to see a `re-open nominations' box made mandatory on all ballot papers, and any spoilt papers, or non-voters counted towards RON. This would, I suspect, dramatically reduce the number of people winning because they are slightly less bad than the alternative.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
All I can say is that cyber terrorism is so much more than what the Washington Post is presenting, but it is about time that this topic starts getting discussed. Remember, terrorism is about creating fear, and cyber terrorism is the use of our Global Information Infrastructure (telecommunications and cyber space) to communicate and coordinate terrorist activities between cells and potential recruits, the gathering of intelligence on potential targets, a force multiplier for physical attacks by disabling emergency response systems, and for causing physical harm by electronically attacking control systems such as dams, electrical systems, medical databases, and a host of other computer dependent infrastructures.
So much of our livelihoods now depend on the secure use of computers for communications, transportation, banking, medical, etc., and these systems have been penetrated by hackers, crackers and cyber criminals for quite some time. Imagine what would happen if mobile phone service was disrupted just prior to a major chemical attack. Emergency Medical Services would be unable to communicate life saving instructions from doctors much less coordinate rescue activities. Visualize having your blood type changed in a medical database before a major operation. Game over...
Law enforcement is working to integrate their computer systems to provide better sharing of criminal and terrorist activities. In the past, people like Kevin Mitnik have demonstrated their ability to break into judicial and law enforcement systems and actually remove their criminal histories. Envision a cyber terrorist removing five people from a watch list hours before they board a jetliner. Imagine having your identity stolen and used to rent the apartment and truck that was used to make and deliver the bomb that blew up a federal building. Your life would change in an instant.
I have been doing continuous research on terrorist activities in cyber space and welcome any contributions or discussions. Visit my site at http://www.andrewcolarik.com/home.htm for contact details.
So, what's on al Qaeda's Netflix list?
- Spies Like Us
- Red Dawn
- Golden Eye
- Jewel of the Nile
- Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold
- Babe - Pig in the City (so unclean, yet so darn funny!)
Chip H.You know, I just finished watching the DVD release of the second season of "24". You know, the season in which a nuclear bomb is detonated on US soil and at first everyone thinks it was planted by Islamic terrorists from "the Middle-East".
I remember thinking, while watching all those secret meetings with people plotting and scheming to make it look like a bunch of Middle-Eastern countries had planted the bomb, that however far-fetched it all looked and no matter how over-the-top and unrealistic a Hollywood plot-line it was, this must all have really happened in some White House or Pentagon backroom with regards to the war in Iraq. How fucking scary is that?!
It disturbs me greatly to think that American politics these days have apparently sunk to the worst level Hollywood producers can come up with, for real.
... the US to become the next Roman Empire. Well folks, here come the barbarian invasions.
Well. Shure they have to invest heavily on that. But they could start by not chasing and firing the ones they have now.
I think that the United States PEOPLE need a while to sit down calmly and evaluate themeselves, their values, and what the fuck happened to them.
I mean. From the outside boiz, you look like a beheaded chickun. And Mr. Bush is a large aunt jemima with the large butcher knife that took it off.
And run and run you go, round and round. The poor america with her head chopped down.
What happened to this nation that was hated, envied but also respected and admired. Whats going on with the middle class people that should be educated in this powerfull nation. Cause thats what democracy is all about, education for all. At least for the majority.
And where did those ideals and their principals go? What is happening to my american brothers? What happened to the america Walt Whitman made inmortal? To commaradery, to liberty, to the value of being part of a nation of equals?
I mean. You guys had me going for a while there. I thought, id like my country to emmulate some of that good stuff the gringos are doing. But no. Not anymore.
Today the poor but educated of the world pity you, the other powers laugh at you and the ones that dont, just play along to your sad, suicidal lullaby of death.
NO SIG
.wmv's? And all this time I thought _Linux_ was supposed to be un-American. Seriously, prayers for your brother.
"free thinkers"
I think he meant the people that question WHY the terrorists are such a big threat.
Am I the only person who notices that the ONLY times terrorists strike public sites outside of the warzones are when support for the war drops?
Could it be that the governments are doing this to scare the fools and sheep back in line when they start dissenting? It seems entirely too convenient that terrorists would kill the very people who disagree with the attacks on their homeland.
The communists did this too, as do most authoritarian governments (which the christian fascist / aka republican movement, is).
Read 1984 for a good insight by a guy who actually lived in those periods of fear of communism, etc. The only SAD thing about that book, is that "doublethink" is practiced by most people today to ignore that they need to be involved. "someone else will change things, I can keep swilling beer and getting fatter on my couch... if I get fat enough, I'll hopefully not die on my way to buy Stacker2 pills. Oh, and Long live corporate america, who sells our livelihood to foreign enemies to keep their costs down."
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Because causing tens of thousands of people to die, and causing more americans to die as troops than died on Sept 11th (give it another 6 months for that to be true, but it WILL be true), is so much better than boinking a slutty intern.
You probably thought Grand Theft Auto was okay until the Hot Coffee scandal. That would seem to be consistent with your dubious statements and beliefs.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I'm assuming that you're not in favour of split infinitives.
and liberals have their own mythic boogie men -- free trade, big corporations, people who make money and don't feel guilty about it, starving people in africa, george bush, aids, etc.
wooptdeedoo.
I can remember back at the start of the Afgan war the US was CONSTANTLY blathering on about the terrorists used the internet and encryption to do thier dirty work. Then we found out, oops, all they had was a lame sneaker-net, to the dissapointment of everyone in the military. all thier toys were for naught... I wouldn't be suprised in the least if thier new found technical prowess were not a result of all that discussion...
I lived in both.
Now I live in the US. I have noticed a nasty trend for big business to consolidate, invalidating nearly 30 years of hard work to break up the baby bells and other huge monopolies that did nothing good for the customer. (the infrastructure was paid for by the gov't not the baby bells... they were just handed it by the US gov't to take care of and resell). This is also done by posting their "raising national spendable income" like microsoft did. Few people noticed that M$ also fired 1/3'd of their support staff. Hmm... profits indeed eh?
The way you talk, you must be from Israel. Perhaps you'd recall how NICE it would be if someone sold YOUR home to a bunch of foreigners, shot you, and moved them in. That's basically what was done to those people. That they want to kill you and take it back is no different than the american settlers genociding the natives, and the natives wanting retribution.
For the record, I'm neither racist nor an arab, and I would not have minded if we had been honest saying that we were going to annex iraq and afghanistan for their oil. The fact that we are lied to and the mainstream eats it up as the "true mission" is what makes me SICK.
These people sell our jobs to foreign countries (try getting a decent intro level job after college in any tech field, and be ready to get paid less than a burger flipper, while your school debt mounts higher and higher). That idiot Bush, cut school funding but then answers that the "answer to outsourcing is education"... how the fuck?!
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
In our system, which is a republic and not a democracy, the answer to your question is a resounding "yes."
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Isn't it a bit of a stretch to claim that "a majority of Americans" voted for Bush when he won with, what, 51% of the vote? Maybe 52%?
Um... no. That's not a stretch at all. 51-52% is a majority. Am I missing something?
#1. Why do you think that they have stopped using fixed sites?
#2. How do you think one of their web sites got *owned* when they unregistered the domain name for like 15 seconds when they were going to transfer it betweeen registrars or whatever?
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
Read it!
A memorable and intense story of a young woman growing up in Iran and Europe.
It will give you a human level perspective of some of these issues.
Works terrifically as a graphic novel.
Thanks! He's back and out of the Marine Corps. In one piece with a little shrapnel in his shoulder but he's fine :)
This guy is way out there
*I* knew there were no WMDs. Scott Ritter made the case very clear.
If I knew it, I rather think the Office of Special Projects knew it too.
American lives aren't worth much to the neos.
Arabs and Persians are an outright negative.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Given that Kerry was a Bonesman too, don't you think he was just a patsy in a one-party rigged game?
Anyhow, the Democrats are unlikely ever to win a presidential election until they drop the abortion issue. That's the only thing motivating the Christian majority population to vote Republican.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
You need to understand that the believing Muslims are not struggling to invade anyone, but rather to repel the invaders of the Ummah.
When the U.S. stops messing with them, they'll ignore the U.S. Until then, we've got a billion enemies.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Yes, the DOD and their minions are very prevalant on the net.
I am not from Israel. I am from India. And I agree with your thoughts on Iraq being a big strategic fuckup. Afghanistan was a step in the right direction (don't know about the oil there) but then there have been fuckups since the very beginning. Instead of invading and fighting with an international coalition's armed forces (Iraq in 91-92), the US propped up warlords with seriously dubious motives. And then it's been mostly downhill.
Pakistan acts as if Afghanistan is it's vassal state (Pakistan will not allow India to be given any sort of role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, nor will it allow food from India to travel overland to Afghanistan. So all food aid has to go to Iran by sea and then 2000 kms over land to Afghanistan) and the US lets it. Afghanistan was not the epicentre of terrorism - Pakistan is.
As for American corporations, the less said the better (you said it pretty nicely).
"Perhaps you'd recall how NICE it would be if someone sold YOUR home to a bunch of foreigners, shot you, and moved them in."
Please refer to what has happened to Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Also refer to the genocide perpetrated by the Pakistan Army in Bangladesh prior to 1971. Or maybe you'd be better off referring to the greatest forced migration in the history of the world - India's Independence and Pakistan being cut out of it.
Please don't become an apologist for Islamic terrorism.
"Perhaps you'd recall how NICE it would be if someone sold YOUR home to a bunch of foreigners, shot you, and moved them in."
This is exactly how most of the muslim countries were founded from 700 AD to 1700 AD.
-Shaunak
So maybe this is why the Feds want backdoors to all Isp's. And why they leaked the info to the Wash Post.. To justify themselves, with the Wash Post being their stealth propaganda organ. Of course now the terrorists know about this , and can probably take the appropriate action to evade detection. So maybe the real reason for backdoors is to spy on our own citizens. Wouldn't it have been better to do all this in secret and hack into these sites if they were really interested in tracking criminal activity? Yes, I know maybe that's illegal like half the other things the Feds are doing. Of course hacking into sites is a lot more difficult and takes brains. And we all know the Feds dont like to do things difficult and have no brains. The first step to a totalitarian society is to take away people's privacy. "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state"- Orson Welle's Touch of Evil
Colin Powell and the rest of the administration were aware that the aluminum canisters he was discussing were not appropriate for refining radioactive material. So what were these "50" people doing? Driving the war effort. It is widely documented (obviously unread by yourself) that there was a tremendous amount of bullshit flying about reguarding mounting an invasion. Perhaps you should read more material that doesn't back up you and your "doublethink" mentality and run your mouth less. I'm speechless. Obviously not. Maybe a pompus ass...
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Please don't become an apologist for Islamic terrorism.
"Perhaps you'd recall how NICE it would be if someone sold YOUR home to a bunch of foreigners, shot you, and moved them in."
This is exactly how most of the muslim countries were founded from 700 AD to 1700 AD.
I'm not apologizing, I'm simply saying that we're angering a hornet's nest. And just like those Muslim countries, they were kicked out of spain, portugal, etc. The moors were faced with what we face today. The native peoples of a region get upset when someone moves in on them. There are only two effective solutions. One is to leave them alone. The second is to genocide them all and replace them with our own. Russia did this with much of Moldova. It is now known as Moldavia, despite having been a part of Romania. I recall they did the same with Grozny but I have never visited the old USSR. Interesting tactic, used by quite a few imperialists in the past.
However the USA has its own problems. We're throwing our jobs overseas, but we've got homeless people here, we've got a relatively high poverty index if the census were taken correctly. Down where I live, unemployment is viewed as "people collecting unemployment pay" or reporting to the employment commission. I, myself have never reported or collected, though I've been unemployed for several periods. I usually have enough savings to make up for it... But I pity people with high college loans to pay who went to college wanting to "integrate" into society, only to find themselves working at salaries shittier than burger king, but with more abuses (IT in the states is among the highest abusive career lines).
I sympathize with you, but I think that if people are always waiting for someone else to make the first move, then perhaps this is the single reason for oppression. The only ones willing to make the first move are the oppressors. True of Iraq, true of USSR, true of China, true of the USA.
I won't voice much on India vs Pakistan because both of said nations seem to have a very ingrained hatred of each other and I haven't managed to visit there yet to form my own views of the natives.
Pretty soon India will get its ass handed to it as well in the commerce thing. Everyone does. Until we have a true communism with an impartial godlike being ruling over it with no interest in personal gain other than to enforce the limits on income.
Unlimited growth is something only corporate lackeys would believe in. Everything else in nature obeys its habitat and doesn't outgrow it, when that DOES happen, the habitat is generally abandoned or destroyed. Corporations function against every rule of nature. They rape every resources available and move on. This will soon have to change. There aren't enough countries left to blow up before the gig is up.
PS - the war in afghanistan and iraq were meant to completely destabilize the region, providing for extremely cheap labor when the region begins to stabilize. Oil was just a cherry on top.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
As I understand it a great deal of what we consider mistreatment of women in Islam is actually an attempt to protect them. For example: Early in Islam's history Muslims were very much persecuted by others in the Middle East. Many Islamic men were killed and as a result there were many widows and orphans and not a lot of men. Polygamy was a very practical solution to this problem: there weren't enough men to go around otherwise and a lot of women would be left with noone to protect them (from the Meccans in particular if I recall correctly). See what the Quran has to say on the subject (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html).
Now, there are Islamic groups who do in fact mistreat women, but that really has nothing to do with Islam itself: there are also Christian groups who mistreat women. Unfortunately Americans pay a great deal of attention to such Islamic factions but not such Christian factions.
As for your points about how wonderful your precious Nation Under God is, having apparently invented separation of church and state (the seeds of which were present in the Magna Carta, long before the US Constitution), there is a difference between espousing these values and actually practicing them. The fact of the matter is that at the moment "fundie christians" do rule the United States. I become very concerned when I see a nation or administration claiming to be blessed or chosen by God (this includes any Islamic nations that may make this claim). This kind of thinking can easily turn into the assumption that one can do no wrong and that anything one does is right. Case in point.
Americans seem to hate to admit it, but a lot of the ideas they pretend to have invented actually appeared in England long before the colonization of the New World, and probably have roots much farther back in time than that. The US has its virtues, but it does not have a monopoly on virtues and it also has plenty of vices.
This can all be summarized in one word: hypocrisy (on both sides).
a ragtag bunch of criminals who want to spread their message
This must not be working very well.
I haven't seen anything saying what their message is. We hear Bush and Blair saying their message is "freedom, bad" but, that doesn't seem likely.
Some people say their message is stop supporting Israel from suppressing the Palestinians. But, again, the actions of these groups doesn't appear to be helping that cause.
Just what is their message anyway?
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
At least our current President isn't conflicted about the meaning of "is" is.
And I'm getting really tired of the "but-but-but Clinton...!!!" arguement. What previous presidents may or may not of done is irrelevant. George W. Bush is a lousy president who stood up in front of the American people and blantly lied about Iraq being a threat, resulting in an illegal war of aggression that has killed over 1,800 Americans and countless Iraqis.
Motive
Opportunity
Willingness
Using the motive and willingness of Perverts to justify the restriction of teh Internet at large is poor threat analysis, and does nothing fundamental in mitigating the criminal issue. It serves the ends of those who wish to restrict public thought and opinion. This is accomplished by enlisting the aid of those unjustafiably restricted, provoking their base, emotional concerns for saftey.
If Al Qaeda is on the Internet, then the CIA and Mossad should stop sending money to the ISI for laptops.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You won't be calling it a "so-called" war on terror when your arm blows off in a restaurant.
Um... no. That's not a stretch at all. 51-52% is a majority. Am I missing something?
Is 51% a majority of Americans? Well, what is the 51% that elected him? They are a subset of the registered voters. That is a subset of the elligible voters. Those are a subset of Americans. So, it comes out to less than 1/3 of Americans voted for Bush. The statement was about the "majority of Americans" for which I must ask, is 32% a majority?
Learn to love Alaska
I always like a good joke. But your joke wasn't very funny, and I feel uncomfortable with so many jokes about something that should be taken seriously. It seems to me that there is too much joking about this subject and not enough seriousness.
If you want the violence and the degradation of the U.S. lifestyle to stop, study the situation carefully. Below is background information you need to know to understand the Washington Post article referenced in the Slashdot story. You could gather this information yourself, but people who joke easily about this kind of thing generally don't take the time:
The SITE Institute supplied information for the Washington Post article. SITE stands for "Search for International Terrorist Entities". SITE Institute provides examples of terrorist web sites. One of them, PalestinianInfo.net, published this photograph: Photo of the day. The caption says, "Palestinian children walk on the rubble of a Palestinian house that was demolished by Israeli occupation authorities, in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of A-tur July 5, 2005. According to the Israeli authorities, the house was demolished due to a lack of permits." It seems that the issue might not be completely one-sided.
The Arab "terrorists" believe they are fighting a war, and that violence is a solution to social problems. The U.S. government believes it is fighting a war, and that violence is a solution to social problems. I'm not saying those groups have anything else in common, just that they share two beliefs in common.
If your government chooses killing as policy, expect others to choose the same. The U.S. government began killing Arabs and Muslims and corrupting their governments long before most Arabs and Muslims thought about the United States. None of the violence was secret. It was in the newspapers and in magazines and on TV, but not in enough detail that U.S. citizens could understand the implications. I remember reading that the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted his country to share more of the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government put a weak man in power, the Shah of Iran, who became very violent toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iran overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence that came after. For more information, see the short article, To understand the present conflict, consider the past.
As of 2005-08-08, 04:24 AM PDT, the SITE Institute says these are other terrorist web sites: http://www.kataebaqsa1.com/, http://www.moqawama.net/, and http://www.qudsway.com/. The only way you can know directly what they say in Arabic is to read Arabic. Be careful about accepting what someone else says they say. You need to be able to trust that the translator is not politically involved.
The Washington Post article says, "Hampered by the nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence." This sentence worries me. It seems to justify U.S. government interference with free speech. It's not clear that preventing open speech for those who disagree with the policies of the U.S. government is a sensible idea. It seems likely that knowing what they are saying is important; we don't want
This'll stop eventually. This whole terrorism as a product has really hit saturation point. I use that term because it is in essence a product, of both governments and various media agencys. All products are born (in this case in Autumn 2001), reach their peak (Pre-Iraq), then saturation (about now) and following that they simply die off.
These fears are a constant of modern times, consistantly there since the West became officially developed...
The first Red scare came in the early 1920's. It was mainly centered around immigration/crime paranoia (which curiously is still quite prevalent in some nations). It peaked as the final stages of the Bolshevik revolution were complete and the Soviet state formed. Then it died down, and the Soviets were considered our friends during 42-45' friends due to their help in WW2 and relative co-operation in Potsdam and Yalta.
Then came the beginnings of the Cold War, and "The Bomb". The second red scare began, complete with surveillance on "suspected communists" and a media hate for commie sympathizers, it was personified by McCarthyism. Eventually "The Bomb" became an object for satire (Ie. Dr. Strangelove) and the second red scare was over by the mid sixties. With its departure came improved relations and a much more relaxed atmosphere - a freer soceity occured, personified by a new generation, new music and ideas.
Then communism collapsed in the late 80's/early 90's. And, for a time Saddam Hussain was the new boogieman, the new figurehead for the culture of fear - now hitting the stratosphere due to the proliferation of the mass media and the non-stop force of globalization. Then people got sick of that, Saddam was also parodied (South Park movie, The Simpsons, etc) and made an utter joke of - the people rejected him just like they rejected the red scares.
And now, terrorism. Again, after a time, it has been parodied, made fun of and mocked (Team America) and as evidenced by many comments here people are sick to the death of the "Axis of evil" or "War on Terror". Terrorist attacks perpetuate it, but then the War in Iraq becomes a counterbalance to that. The fear of The Bomb perpetuated the red scares, actually talking to the Russians reasonably counterbalanced this fear.
If the Internet would have been around back in 1964, we'd all be pointing out the stupidity of it all. Referencing Dr. Strangelove and pondering on how close apocalypse was in the Cuban missile crisis, wondering why we let these governments go on deciding the fate of a planet that isn't theirs. A planet that belongs to billions of people.
But the real question is...what will be the next big fear, the next "omnipresent" enemy? The next object of cheesy politican-conjured terms and farcical media reports? You can bet your bottom dollar it'll go out of favour in a matter of years and we'll be there, pointing out the ludricous nature of it all. Groaning with every passing headline, wondering when it'll cease...
... terrorism is a tactic: you can't have a war against a tactic. Unless, of course, you want a 'war' that will never end, and I suspect that those taking political advantage of this issue are thinking along those lines.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Additional info:
Correction to this paragraph:
Writing
Another thought: If you love a woman, you will use your energy and creativity and intellect to try to understand when she has problems. If you love your country, you will do the same. I love the U.S., and I've done my best to understand the present problems. I'd like other people to do the same.
It seems reasonable that, considering the way things are going, the quality of life in the U.S. may eventually have the same level as in Israel, where everyone is worried all the time about violence. How do we avoid doing what they have done to themselves?
Don't miss the statement that the parent comment cannot be a complete discussion of how to deal with violence. It just provides some ideas. Peaceful methods are more secure and far, far less expensive. However, such methods are still complicated and still require research. It is not just weapons that require research.
> My question is this: why haven't US and UK based hackers taken action against these sites? It certainly seems like a slightly more productive use of time and energy than writing viruses.
/. explaining how Bush is more evil than Bin Ladin, or moderating up any anti-Bush post, even if the thread is not even remotely connected to the topic (witness today's poll).
Because they are too busy posting to
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
No, not time to move on, becauses your alleged president is still in office. His election was so faked up it's not at all funny.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
then again they could just be downloading porn
"This is exactly how most of the muslim countries were founded from 700 AD to 1700 AD."
Oh really, please name one. (I get the feeling you're going to say Pakistan. Even Pakistan didn't sell people's homes or shoot them. Hindus and Sikhs still live there, and if you're going to blame the turmoil of emigration from partition on them, the people emigrating India also had the same sort of struggle. The violence in Gujarat is enough to say that the Hindus are just as bad or worse when it comes to atrocities blamed on the South Asian Muslims) Any countries that had Muslim armies forcibly evict or kill people and take their land?
Both the Bush Administration and the Washington Post are using fear as a tool to manipulate people to serve their own ends. Bush and his horse-whispering handlers do it to control citizens, keep their focus away from their mismanagement of everything else, and let them pursue visions of Evangelical Empire without anyone even noticing. The Post does it for a much simpler reason: keeping the readership on the edge of their seats and "entertained" and subscription fees flowing in.
Aren't you sick of having these power-mongers with their legions of staff head-shrinkers having a tug-of-war over your emotions, each one battling for control of the right to push your buttons and make you dance like a marionette to whatever tune they throw on the turntable? Stop thinking with your amygdala and limbic brain, put a firewall around it, and remind these master manipulators that people go to Hell for a lot less sinful behavior than what they're doing.
FWIW....I agree. If they (Bush, Blair and the other serial liars) make people afraid of the Internet, then they can pass any law they want to in order to "secure" it.
Only boring people are ever bored.
1) Find Al-Qaeda website. 2) Fuck up the whole internet and bring everything under threat with overzealous measures and counter-measures. 3) Ignore pleas for wisdom. 4) Talk about FREEDOM! 5) Repeat from 2.
If you want to understand what this Washington Post article really is, you need to watch The Power of Nightmares by BBC (available on the P2P network of your choice).
0 .htm to read about "Four Arab men... arrested on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell." That's just one particularly hilarious example, but there are many others. The story about Tora-Bora underground fortress was also amazing (look up the illustrations in the archives of your favourite media poison site).
Search for "Detroit" on this page:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video104
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
...is 32% a majority?
...and (b) if there were only two candidates. 32% of Americans was enough to win the election in this case. The fact that 32% is less than 50% is completely irrelevant because of the number of candidates and percentage of Americans that voted.
That would only be an important question (a) if all of the following sets are exactly equal:
- Registered voters
- Elligible voters
- Americans
Say, hypothetically, there were 50 candidates and the winner won with 10% of the total population voting for him. Do supporters of the other candidates have a right to complain because the winner "only" got votes from 10% of the population? Of course not. 10% is five times as much as the 'expected' 2%.
i don't know anything about that bill. but if it does what you say it does, than i'm against it, i'm against corporate wellfare and i want to see a free market.
democrats bring plenty of pork to the union fat cats or whatever special interests that support them when they are in power.
i'd like to see a line item veto (and a president with the guts to use it) and a 1000 word limit to the tax code. this would go a long ways towards keeping out special interests on the left and on the right.
i also want to see an anti congress: an elected body which does nothing but repeal laws all day. perhaps they would only repeal laws older than 3 years old or something.
Do supporters of the other candidates have a right to complain because the winner "only" got votes from 10% of the population?
You missed the point. The supporters of the winner said he was elected by a majority of Americans. That is false. You agree it is false. So why are you disagreeing so violently?
Oh, and in our system, I believe it is theoretically possible to win with under 25% of the popular vote with only 2 candidates running. Win the low-population states with 50%+1 votes, get 0 votes in all the more populous states, and you would be able to win with less than 1/4 of the votes cast. Add in additional parties and it can be even lower. And that doesn't count the ever present possibility that the electoral college would pick someone that received 0 popular votes (unlikely, but still possible). So comparing against the possible mimimum for winning is not useful either.
Learn to love Alaska
This is no doubt one scary truth. Around here we all like to think of the bad guy being somewhat dumb after all why become a criminal anyone with half a brain would want to have peace not war but now these guys are getting smart and that worries me. But what also worries me is that a label like a "terrorist site" might be missused in the future by Governments and whos knows what power that gives the Government once your site is labeled a terrorist site! And what rights do you lose?
Government decides to shut down terrorist forum. Can't match IPs to people, ISPs refuse. Government outsources the job to RIAA. RIAA becomes latest terrorist hunting tool. Another triumph of free enterprise.
Hey, it could happen.
Fragging my father since 2004