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Al-Qaeda Web Sites Go Offline
thefickler writes "Four out of the five Al-Qaeda online forums have disappeared. The terrorist group used these forums to relay messages to its supporters. The four that have gone missing seem to have taken a hit back on September 10, the day before the annual video marking the 9/11 attacks was due to be disseminated. No one knows who is responsible for the sites' disappearance."
Yes, really. Apparently.
In one of the most transparently stupid "LOOK! TERRORISTS!" stories to date, The Times has "exclusively" published a report claiming terrorists are hiding their secret terrorist messages inside child pornography. Because, y'know, obviously you're going to hide your messages somewhere already illegal rather than in wedding photos or LOLcats.
I'm pleased to say that the commenters on the article - and UK newspaper online comments are one of the purest sources of raw stupid on the planet - are already condemning this as obvious Home Office press-release ware.
The Times has been spotted running press releases for the Home Office before with jawdroppingly stupid scare stories. Coincidentally, the Home Office's call for the police to be able to hold people 42 days without charge just got rejected. Obviously not linked.
I wrote a blog post on it, but I'm not sure it's obviously a parody of a stupid thing that someone actually tried to seriously push.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I think I speak for all of us when I say: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
US military Cyber Warfare project starts up again, and suddenly Osama's MySpace gets ruined. Coincidence?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
"For al-Qaeda, "these sites are the equivalent of pentagon.mil, whitehouse.gov, att.com," said Evan F. Kohlmann, an expert on online al-Qaeda operations..."
Apparently he's not an expert on American communications - who get any information from the three sites he called out?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I think I speak for all of us when I say: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
No, you are just speaking for people with really high UIDs.
That post was a cut-n-paste of a tired, old troll posting with the slight up date of using Obama instead of some random jock twink type.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The government budget to run these sites has been transferred to bailing out the banks.
The classic site was Voice of Jihad, but that's been more or less dead for a while. Back in August, it was apparently taken over by some McCain supporter. Now it's a misconfigured shared-IP site on Dreamhost.
bin Laden's annual video didn't get much press this year. He's released his 2008 video, and it's 87 minutes long, but it's hard to find. Reuters has a summary..
I suspect that the main reason there's pressure to suppress his videos is that he always has something tellingly negative to say about Bush. This year, bin Laden's sound bite is "And in fact, the subject of the Mujahideen has become an inseparable part of the speech of your leader and the effects and signs are not hidden."
It's worth remembering that the bin Laden family supported Bush's first presidential campaign. In 1978, Bush and Osama bin Laden's brother, Salem bin Laden, founded Arbusto Energy, an oil company based in Texas. Sometimes one wonders if the plan was to get an incompetent into the US presidency, then apply enough pressure to make him overreact. A pre 9-11 bio of bin Laden, "The Man who Declared War on America", has quotes from him indicating that he felt America needed to be corrupted before it could be taken down, and outlined what needed to be done to make that happen. All the family had to do was to get someone in office who thought tax cuts would fix anything, get him to overspend on the wrong war, and wait for the US economy to collapse.
We may yet see a "Mission Accomplished" from bin Laden.
No, the "terrorists" are done cleaning up after manipulating the market and making billions of whatever currency they use, so there's no need for those sites anymore. They have a new geocities URL. And will be conducting business as usual. Just like WAMUJPMorganChase.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
The government budget to run these sites has been transferred to bailing out the banks.
This is probably the smartest commend I've read here!
Al-Qaeda was a CIA DB name for the mujahedin back in the 80's.
They are 100% CIA asset, commanded and funded by the CIA.
Now lets joke on the truth:
So either they removed the funds, or Al-Qaeda ppl are too busy growing heroin for the NYSE bubble.
Americans be aware: You are a great nation, awesome people, and your government is making you look really REALLY bad. When the BIG shit hits the fan "they" will bail out, and you will take the heat! Don't you feel your freedom fading away? The world will hate you.