MEMRI notes that within “the past few months” Islamists have engaged what they are deeming a “media jihad” by aiming to show the world the jihadi snuff films.  MEMRI notes the free video services such as YouTube as being a prime location for the uploading of videos.

There’s hardly any question that is accurate, but it’s more than just within “the past few months.”  On occassion I get emails from a YouTube user telling me I and every other American should see some video.  I got my first one nearly one year ago.  The video is usually some recycled attack in Iraq or Afghanistan on an Coalition soldier.  There are groups set up to spread that type of stuff.

But MEMRI notes another form of the “media jihad” that I have not noticed, though that may be due to ignorance.

“Raiding American Forums is Among the Most Important Means of Obtaining Victory in the Fierce Media War… and of Influencing the Views of the Weak-Minded American”

“There is no doubt, my brothers, that raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war… and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army. This American is an idiot and does not [even] know where Iraq is… [It is therefore] mandatory for every electronic mujahid [to engage in this raiding].”

“It is better that you raid non-political forums such as music forums and trivia forums… which American people… favor… Define your target[ed forum]… and get to know it well… Post your contribution and do not get into… futile arguments…”

Indicate You Are an American

“Obviously, you have to register yourself using a purely American name… Choose an icon that indicates that you are an American, and place it next to your nickname [in the forum].”

“In my experience, the areas most visited in American forums… [are titled] ‘Random Thoughts’ and ‘What’s going on in your mind?’… [The former] takes priority in the American forums, and is highly popular. You should post your contribution there… This should include films of the mujahideen in Iraq, mujahideen publications in English, and images and films of the Americans’ crimes, [such as] killing unarmed civilians in Iraq… etc.”

“Invent Stories About American Soldiers You Have [Allegedly] Personally Known”

“Obviously, you should post your contribution… as an American… You should correspond with visitors to this forum, [bringing to their attention] the frustrating situation of their troops in Iraq… You should invent stories about American soldiers you have [allegedly] personally known (as classmates… or members in a club who played baseball and tennis with you) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves…”

“Also, write using a sad tone, and tell them that you feel sorry for your [female] neighbor or co-worker who became addicted to alcohol or drugs… because her poor fiancé, a former soldier in Iraq, was paralyzed or [because] his legs were amputated… [Use any story] which will break their spirits, oh brave fighter for the sake of God…”

The goal is to increase the anti-war movement, thus precipitating an American withdrawal from both Afghanistan and Iraq.  While I’d like to say it would be easy to point out someone speaking broken English, we’ve all been to forums where English appears to be a second language to all participants.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it would be more difficult to weed out the jihadi within.

Even so, when these same jihadi snuff films are hyped up and even broadcast by U.S. media outlets, why is there a need to go to a forum?

Spain has detained two men suspected of being jihadi webmasters of the Islamist site Al-Andalus Islamiya (which is down at this time).

The Spaniard, a web designer who converted to Islam, is alleged to have posted videos to the Al-Andalus Islamiya website containing calls to Jihad and martyrdom. The man, who always used pseudonyms to conceal his identity, spoke of a “front” and posted messages to the website that spoke of a “front” to fight back against “Zionist and/or Islamophobic aggression.”

The Moroccan was born in Oujda but is resident in Huelva province in the southern Spanish region of Andalucia.

The 31 year-old Spainiard is charged with encitement and vindication of terrorism.  He allegedly set up a page to honor those “who die and suffer at the hands of the unfaithful ones” and emphasized the jihad in Algeria.

It has always struck me as odd when the owners of these sites set up shop in nations that cooperate with these types of arrests, but hide behind an online alias as if there’s no way you could find out who they actually are.

Islamist web sites in the United States have issued a vague threat to a Georgia driver who has a bumper sticker that reads: “Kill them all.  Let Allah sort them out.”

The license plate number of the Georgia driver has been posted with the following message by blogger ‘mujahida3001.’

This is baraa. If he wants to repeat the quote of one of the crusader generals during the first crusades in Jerusalem, then no, I do not care about his safety. I care about his lack of it. He shouldn’t feel any security at all. So, Muslims, do whatever you can get away with.

Take care and keep it militant.

The Jawa Report has more details.

Here’s a video report on the Kent State University history professor Julio Peno and his blog calling for jihad against the United States.

No shock here, but Pino is saying he is free to write what he wants out of free speech protection.  That’s partially true, but you cannot advocate for the death of people, in which he clearly has done.  That’s the catch-22 only a history professor can pass over (sorry, Dr. Walker).

Prof. Gabriel Weimann writes in the Asian Tribune how terrorist groups use the Internet.  For the purposes of this discussion, Weimann does not just limit his thesis to radical Islamic groups.  There are many interesting aspects of Weimann’s article, but I want to focus on just one; the use of the Internet to recruit or indoctrinate.

Weimann notes: “The mass media, policymakers, and even security agencies have tended to focus on the exaggerated threat of cyberterrorism and paid insufficient attention to the more routine uses made of the Internet. Those uses are numerous and, from the terrorists’ perspective, invaluable.”

There have been several arrests in England and 17 arrests in Canada over self-indoctrinated jihadists, and repeatedly we’re told those allegedly involved in this form of terrorism were influenced by watching violent images and video of war.  We’ve all seen those same videos and yet I know no one who has seen any and even planned a terrorist operation.  Therefore there is much more at stake at what drives a relatively peaceful person into someone who wants to blow up the Canadian Parliament.

But on the notion of videos and scenes of carnage, Weimann notes something very interesting.

. . . most sites refrain from referring to the terrorists’ violent actions or their fatal consequences—this reticence is presumably inspired by propagandist and image-building considerations.  Two exceptions to this rule are Hezbollah and Hamas, whose sites feature updated statistical reports of their actions (”daily operations”) and tallies of both “dead martyrs” and “Israeli enemies” and “collaborators” killed.

Another obvious exception are the sites of Al Qaida, the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah, the Islamic Army of Iraq (Baathists mainly) and several other jihadi groups out of the so-called mainstream.  And when one visits any of the jihadi message boards, both public and private, users create montages of their favorite ‘martyr’ often accompanied by images of violence (one of the more simple ones seen at right).  It is also interesting to note these montages always negate to mention who the primary target of many of these attacks are, fellow Muslims.

Weimann notes “foreign journalists are also targeted” into their propoganda campaigns, as is evident by by the homepage of alhesbah.org where it lists several media organizations as members of the forum.  But the goal is to acquire sympathy for their groups to influence public opinion, and it’s a shame there is sympathy garnered through many of the deceits present in many of these sites.

Use of the Internet in psychological operations is not the main course of terrorist sites either, Weimann notes.

Terrorists, for instance, can learn from the Internet a wide variety of details about targets such as transportation facilities, nuclear power plants, public buildings, airports, and ports, and even about counterterrorism measures. Dan Verton, in his book Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyberterrorism (2003), explains that “al-Qaeda cells now operate with the assistance of large databases containing details of potential targets in the U.S. They use the Internet to collect intelligence on those targets, especially critical economic nodes, and modern software enables them to study structural weaknesses in facilities as well as predict the cascading failure effect of attacking certain systems.”

Indeed many of the terror threats we hear about in the news come from such forums, such as the one that came out last week supposedly over oil facilities in Canada, Mexico and Venezuela, though the actual targets of that threat may have been misinterpreted.

The SITE Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based terrorism research group that monitors al Qaeda’s Internet communications, has provided chilling details of a high-tech recruitment drive launched in 2003 to recruit fighters to travel to Iraq and attack U.S. and coalition forces there. Potential recruits are bombarded with religious decrees and anti-American propaganda, provided with training manuals on how to be a terrorist, and—as they are led through a maze of secret chat rooms—given specific instructions on how to make the journey to Iraq. In one particularly graphic exchange in a secret al Qaeda chat room in early September 2003 an unknown Islamic fanatic, with the user name “Redemption Is Close,” writes, “Brothers, how do I go to Iraq for Jihad? Are there any army camps and is there someone who commands there?” Four days later he gets a reply from “Merciless Terrorist.” “Dear Brother, the road is wide open for you—there are many groups, go look for someone you trust, join him, he will be the protector of the Iraqi regions and with the help of Allah you will become one of the Mujahidin.” “Redemption Is Close” then presses for more specific information on how he can wage jihad in Iraq. “Merciless Terrorist” sends him a propaganda video and instructs him to download software called Pal Talk, which enables users to speak to each other on the Internet without fear of being monitored.

It is this networking, Weimann writes, that both recruits jihadis and provides a virtual meeting place for groups to form.  We saw this precise method with the Toronto 17, where a jihadi site owner in England ended up sending propoganda videos to the cell’s ringleaders, who all met online.

Read Weimann’s full column.

YouTube is a great thing in my view.  It allows people to upload videos of whatever they want to be seen by a mass audience.  I’ve created a few, as regular readers know, and many of those have been seen by thousands of people both on YouTube and on other sites hosting them.

About one year ago, Islamists and those who support radical Islamic terrorism started to use YouTube to place Al Qaida, Ansar al-Sunnah, and other various terrorist group videos.  It makes sense, because those who support the international jihad also want to have a massive audience view jihadist propaganda.

Last November, my YouTube account was flagged by an Islamist group on YouTube, meaning every video I already have up or will post up in the future has been flagged for supposed inappropriate content. I saw it as a feather in my cap, because I’ve long said I enjoy ticking off Islamist groups in hopes to engage any of them in a debate to show the fallacy of their ways.

This morning I signed into YouTube to look around and noticed I had an email from a member of the Islamist group who flag my account.  The email was short and to the point, that I should watch this video.  The video was, as many of Al Qaida in Iraq’s videos are, filled with recycled material showing roadside bombs, car bombs, alleged suicide bombs, etc.  Why this is supposed to worry or concern me, I don’t know as I’ve seen too many of these videos and the video in question didn’t show even one scene I had not already viewed.

While I can respond to any email I receive in YouTube, for some reason I was not able to reply to this email.  Nor could I block future emails from this user.  That seems rather interesting since after perusing through this user’s videos, all of which are Al Qaida in Iraq propaganda videos, none of them were flagged for inappropriate content.  Yes, videos showing death and carnage of both military personnel and civilians in Iraq is not inappropriate, but a video I made showing the nexis between the Nazi Regime and the Islamist doctrine originating with the Muslim Brotherhood somehow is.

I cannot say this is an intentional YouTube endorsement of Islamist videos, and I don’t intend to make that case, but rather this entire episode strengthens what I’ve argued for a very long time.  It is 100 percent clear Islamist groups intend to use the very Western technology they supposedly abhor to advance their ideology.  This is just another instance of they jihadist two-step around certain supposed codes of Islamism when it suits their own ends.

And indeed as we’ve seen through the foiled terrorist attack in England yesterday, the Internet has become a recruiting ground for jihadists, indoctrination camp, a media outlet and a support group for jihadists who incessantly whine about why Allah does not simply wipe the Infidel out of existence (I kid you not on the whine part).

The counter to that should be to either learn how to end this use or place pressure upon the outlets who host jihadist sites or carry their videos.  That is easier said then done, however, when CNN runs a sniper video straight from the Islamic Army of Iraq site and later talks of ‘intermediaries’ which is a joke in itself, and a New York Times reporter who laments the fact her newspaper did not give her an ‘exclusive’ for showing a video she obtained off an Al Qaida in Iraq site.

It is always a shock to people whom I talk to regarding Islamism or jihadist groups when I tell them most terrorist group sites are hosted within the United States.  I don’t understand the shock either, believing it is common knowledge, but there hasn’t been a single person I’ve told that to who didn’t react with a look of complete surprise.   But when put into the context of major media outlets running these videos in their news covereage, should anyone really be flabbergasted terrorist groups have web sites hosted in the United States?

YouTube is an American corporation, the epitomy of jihadists hate, yet they are always more than happy to use YouTube to their ends.  So too are the internet hosts where jihadist groups sign up to put their snuff videos on for the world to see.  The larger question is not what we can do about it to combat this jihadist spewing of propaganda, but rather if the larger Muslim populace simply laughs their asses off that a group who campaigns against the technology superior West, in part because of said technology, ends up enriching the very nation in which they wish to bring down the most.

“The Internet is acting more and more like a virtual terrorist training camp,” wrote Dutch National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator Tjibbe Joustra in a report entitled ‘Jihadists and the Internet’ according to Radio Netherlands.  According to Joustra, there are 100 to 200 Dutch radical Islamic web sites whose main goals are to “form virtual networks, to facilitate training and for propaganda purposes.”

None of this is exactly new to anyone here, though the sheer number of sites in Dutch alone raises an eyebrow.  The problem, Joustra contends, is not necessarily that the radical Islamic message is out there in full force, but rather there are very few alternative voices to compete over the same audience.

“We’ve tried, in the report, to show the size of the problem and to make it clear that there is a huge amount of fundamentalist, Salafist or jihadist interpretations of Islam on the Internet. And we hope that this information will encourage other groups to put their far more moderate vision of Islam on the Internet.”

And hence the issue of radical Islam on the Internet almost mirrors the reality of the world.

While some people swear by Google Earth, I’ve barely messed around with it.  But British intelligence claims terrorists in Iraq are using Google Earth to pinpoint British bases in Basra and southern Iraq.  The Telegraph reports:

Documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents last week uncovered print-outs from photographs taken from Google.

The satellite photographs show in detail the buildings inside the bases and vulnerable areas such as tented accommodation, lavatory blocks and where lightly armoured Land Rovers are parked.

Written on the back of one set of photographs taken of the Shatt al Arab Hotel, headquarters for the 1,000 men of the Staffordshire Regiment battle group, officers found the camp’s precise longitude and latitude.

“This is evidence as far as we are concerned for planning terrorist attacks,” said an intelligence officer with the Royal Green Jackets battle group. “Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?

“We are concerned that they use them to plan attacks. We have never had proof that they have deliberately targeted any area of the camp using these images but presumably they are of great use to them.

“We believe they use Google Earth to identify the most vulnerable areas such as tents.”

If this is indeed true, it’s also presumable to believe insurgent groups in Iraq have used Google Earth to map out Coalition bases throughout the nation, and frankly it makes sense.  What has struck me as one of the major differences between us and them is that we develop the technology, they use it to attack us.

The Internet has long been a valuable recruiting tool for terrorist groups, something we’ve never seemed to be able to prevent and some sites are hosted in nations fighting in the GWOT, but news that terrorists are using the Internet to map out attacks is a new one.  Since some installations have been blacked out on Google Earth, why couldn’t Coalition bases also be blacked out?  Let us hope this isn’t a failure of imagination.

Bluto reports a YouTube group has been set up to flag videos that criticize, as they see it, Islam.

Muslims have set up a group called Oul-Al-Albab/Oul-Al-Absar at YouTube that targets videos and users critical of Islamist violence. YouTube’s poorly thought out flagging procedures encourage dishonest users to lie about content in order to suppress videos with which they disagree. YouTube has refused to change the system, despite numerous complaints from users that certain groups, particularly those sympathetic to Islamic terrorism, are abusing it (screen captures).

The group members share information about YouTube users who create anti-Islamist terrorist videos and instruct members to flag the videos and users as “inappropriate,” often getting the videos and/or users banned.

I clicked the YouTube group out of curiosity, and low and behold, there’s my YouTube account listed by this group as “hate speech.” The group wants to send its members to rate videos by specific YouTube users to 1 star, 5 stars being the highest, and flag it. My film ‘Islamonazism‘ was sitting comfortably at around four and a half stars about one week ago, but it’s hovering below three now.

What’s puzzling is that I have gone out of my way both on this site and in the YouTube videos I have either produced or uploaded to focus entirely upon the Islamist movement. It is that reason we must conclude the YouTube group is pro-Islamist and objects to anyone pointing out the true nature of that movement.

Perusing the group’s discussion board, I saw a thread entitled ‘Does the Quran say why God did not protect the Bible from being changed by man?‘ You see, that’s why we know this is an Islamist group because Islamists believe the Bible has been corrupted because it teachings vary from what is within the Koran, or at least that which Islamists teach and believe. In fact, I included a short clip of Ayman al-Zawahiri saying exactly that in ‘Islamonazism.’ Interesting, don’t you think?

I really don’t care what ratings the films I upload have, and YouTube is just one place where I have uploaded videos or they have been uploaded, but it’s chaps me just a bit that YouTube allows this kind of thing to happen. And over the course of a couple of months, YouTube has become home to Islamists to upload their videos and flagging those of us who oppose the Islamist movement. It is owned by Google though, so maybe that’s just the way it’s going. Tap that into a reason why I haven’t created another video.

Just as I get done posting about a technical manual designed by an Islamist group, I read news the U.S. government has warned Al Qaida issued a threat to attack stock trading and banking web sites within the United States.  The attack was to occur today, so I guess they failed pretty miserably.

But was this a real threat?  The details seem to be in the names given.

A person familiar with the warning said the threat came from a group calling itself “ANHIAR al-Dollar.” The effort was related to al Qaeda and intended to avenge “Muslim brothers in the crusaders’ Guantanamo prison camp,” the source said.

Anhiar al-Dollar?  It seems to me Islamists aren’t literal and hardly have a sense of humor, that is unless it’s funny to call Jooos apes and pigs.

The attack was supposed to a denial of service attack and last through the month of December in retaliation of Gitmo.  And that’s another thing.  Gitmo is so 2004.  Islamists have moved on to newer things to complain about, like the Crusades.