Subcultures can be frustrating things.  You just don’t know when you have a subculture laying around, like one that attacks Muslims on the Internet.  I mean one would have to exist because Al-Fajr Information Center, a distributor of radical Islamic terrorist groups’ propoganda, has released a manual designed in part “to help prevent acts of aggression against Muslims [in cyberspace].”  The Muslim just can’t get a break anywhere I suppose.

But seriously, the manual links up places to download pirated software (warez) that conceal a computer’s identity on the Internet and allow for more anonymous surfing. That is just in case, I suppose, you’re a jihadi and you want to try to hack the FBI database (not a good idea I should add) because the FBI is attacking you for being a Muslims just because the FBI exists.  What’s interesting is that they work of setting up a virtual machine, which is actually reverse hackable but it doesn’t seem like they know that.

The manual asks:

My kind, technical Mujahid brother, the magnitude of responsibility which is placed upon you is equal to what you know in the regard of information. Do not underestimate anything that you know; perhaps a small article that you write and publish can benefit one Mujahid in the Cause of Allah or can protect a brother of yours in Allah. This way you will gain the great reward with the permission of Allah”.

While I am neither a mujahid, technical or the brother of whomever wrote the manual, I felt I might want to contact the editor of this magazine in hopes of supplying an expertise I have.  I couldn’t find any contact information.

There is a curious photo of a white girl eating a cupcake before an article on the myth of Juba the sniper, run with an ABC News photo and caption in full English.  It’s the same Juba who might have been captured.

Anyways, these sort of manuals get released all the time and they are usually pretty sound in technical advice, conspiracy theories and general hatred for all who are not them.  If you wish to take a gander, you can download it HERE.

Der Spiegel has an excerpt from the new book ‘The New Al-Qaida’ by Spiegel Online editor Yassin Musharbash.  It’s an interesting look to note how Al Qaida has largely moved online.

In another article in Der Spiegel, in what seems to be written years too late but still offers some good information, Suzzane Koelbl notes how terrorist groups are increasing their technology used to film the grissly scenes of war.

One of the sites even announces its terror videos as if they were entertainment. Global Islamic Media Front presents “Mujaheddin’s Hidden Camera — Blood Comedy.” In that video, the Russian diplomats kidnapped in Iraq on June 3 beg for their lives. But their appeals are in vain. Thirty seconds later, the men are brutally beheaded. The film goes on to show US soldiers collapsing in Iraq after being mortally wounded by snipers, Navy Seals being massacred in Kunar in eastern Afghanistan and military vehicles being blown up. The credits read: “In the name of the merciful, oh Allah, let the shots hit their mark and strengthen our steps.”

That last line made me consider if soldiers of other religions say similar things, but they don’t to knowledge.  They draw inspiration for inner strength, pray to whomever their diety is for courage or for their life/loved ones, but I have never once heard a soldier pray for God to increase their accuracy to kill fellow man.  Correct me, anyone, if I am wrong in this.

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Israel has knocked the main headquarters of Hezbollah’s Al Manar television out but the media outlet switched to other temporary broadcasting stations.  Al Manar’s web site, which is hosted in the U.S. by the way, also experienced difficulties at the hands of the Israelis.  Ah, that’s a shame.

What Hezbollah did to try to increase the bandwidth for Al Manar’s site though is to hijack another server, and that server is located in beautiful Austin, TX.

In an exclusive interview, Broadwing executives told us how Al Manar TV, the propaganda arm of the Lebanese terror organization was able to get on the Internet. It was done by hijacking the Web service of one of Broadwing’s customers linking Al Manar to a Broadwing Internet address.

“Our customer had absolutely no relationship to Al Manar. And neither did we,” Dillon said.

Broadwing Communications quickly noted the hacking and ended it, which is refreshing to hear since there are several terrorist groups who use U.S. companies as hosts to their perverted game.

Terror experts say Al Manar’s Web site is key to Hezbollah’s fundraising, recruiting and communication. After being disconnected by Broadwing, they say it’s already popped back up through India, but appears to have been shut right back down.

“It’s going to be very important that Hezbollah is perceived in the Arab world that they are a very functional, strong group that is combating the state of Israel,” Fred Burton with Stratfor said.

Mufsidun hackers unite!  The strangest example of hirabahs hijacking a server or site that I have heard of thus far is when an Al Qaida affiliated group backdoored a Sweedish soccer team’s web site.  There was also a case in Canada where a well known cellular phone company found out the phone numbers and access to of even the CEO of that company were hacked into and stolen.

I’ve got nothing today, so in an effort to keep everyone entertained, I’ll bring back an old favorite of mine.

I always find it quite interesting what is found on radical Islamic message boards. This picture has obviously seen its way through Photoshop before I put it in to re-size it, but there are people who will believe this is accurate. In fact, posters on the thread in which this photo was taken from are taking it as truthful.

Now it is true I’ve been long removed from elementary education, but I seriously doubt this subject matter is being taught to children.

If you’re curious as to why I bring this image up again, it’s because I was trolling through a couple of message boards and reading some of the material with similar type responses.  One such message reads, and by all means pardon the grammatical errors as I won’t correct each one because doing so would completely alter the message, “Fatah and HAMAS never fight eachother what happened months ago as my friend told me and he is a Fathian that some agents wearing Fath cloths shot at HAMASians so they shot back thats it but there is nothing between them and theyre united now to protect Gaza.”

Phew.  That was a mouthful.  But we know the assertion that Fatah and Hamas do not openly fight against each other is a blatent lie.  In fact, before the taking of Shalit and the subsequent Israeli offensive Palestine was plummeting into a civil war between two factions; Hamas who gained power and Fatah who lost power.  That particular message did not come from a jihadi message board, but it is the same type rationale that does.  The “agents” referred to are Israelis or more specifically, Mossad.

We must always remember the basic tenants of the Arab Parallel Universe (APU) as described by the Egyptian blogger Rantings of a Sandmonkey and refer such cases as points of evidence to the APU.

AKI Crises Today has issued a report on jihadis using the Internet to spread their ideology.  The full report, available here, is in Italian* so I can’t read the fine details inside and I believe you have to be a subscriber to do so anyways.  The English version of the online news agency though reveals a bit of what is inside the report.

The report released last May by the British Intelligence and Secutiy Committee suggested that the 2004 Madrid attack and the 2005 London bombings were organised by groups “without any links to al-Qaeda, who might be inspired by their ideology.”

Thomas shares this opinion, concluding that the core of al-Qaeda’s power is not its opertional, financial, political or military structure, but its capability to persuade young Muslims to take part in suicide attacks to damage “Zionists’ and crusaders’ interests.”

Following 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, there are no longer ’sanctuaries’ for terrorists to gather, train and indoctrine Jihad militants. The internet has partially bridged this gap, providing online discussion forums, virtual chat-rooms, websites which offer all sorts of manuals to build weapons and explosive devices, physical training programmes, extremist tracts, and online pre-terror attack fatwas - or opinions of prominent Muslim clerics. Moreover, the internet is a favoured medium for claiming terror attacks, Thomas says.

Indeed something we’ve been harping about for close to two years now is that the Internet is where radical Islamic groups and likeminded individuals find each other, indoctrinate others, share plans, etc. and yet it also seems to be where concerned governments spend the least amount of time defeating.  There are clearly two distinct paths of the jihad and only one of those paths can be defeated with soldiers while the other side needs to recruit geeks.
The Toronto 17 were heavily involved in using the Internet to learn how to make bombs, see images of war that is one of the alleged ’causes’ for their plot and potentially to meet each other.  This cell had the help of Irhabi007, a top Al Qaida sympathising hacker and coordinator, who now sits in a British prison.  It was through the monitoring of chat rooms, email communication and jihadi message boards that the Toronto 17 were busted in the first place which is great news that at least the authorities are watching even a small part of the jihadi Internet reach.

For these reasons, it is very important to wage battle online as well by taking down these jihadi sites after finding out who contributes and visits them.  Coincidentally, this is part of why the U.S. government wants search engine companies such as Google and Yahoo to release their records, yet opponents to the Bush Administration think this request has everything to do with an intention to spy on normal Americans as opposed to finding home-grown terrorist cells.  I visit some jihadi sites and I would have no problem explaining my visits to these sites if the FBI or NSA ever called or dropped by, nor would I be offended in the least.  Instead, I’d feel better that at least they are looking on the Internet to find home-grown terrorist cells.

A good reminder of how jihadis use the Internet can be found here.

*If anyone can read Italian and cares to wade through the report and offer a good summary thereof, please contact me.  I’d love to read it and share it with others.

The blog Little Green Footballs received some hate mail.  Now that’s nothing new as LGF seems to get hate mail on a daily basis.  Some people have a hard time when others point out who our enemy is and many call LGF a racist site because it openly discusses radical Islam.  Yes, to those who have no other arguments a religion is now a race.

Anywho, what’s interesting about this latest piece of hate mail, which said “I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut….,” is that when Charles traced the IP of the commenter it was from Reuters.  Yes, that Reuters.  The same Reuters that some joke around and call Al-Reuters.  Looks like the joke is a bit less funny today and more truthful.

Read Charles’ post on the subject as he traces the email to Sweeden and then to England and run the IP yourself if you don’t believe it could have come from Reuters.

According to The Age, radical Islamists have create game ‘mods’ (modifications) for popular online games that put the U.S. in the evil seat waging a war against Islam. Standing tall and defending Islam is the mujahideen. I must say I’m pretty impressed because there’s really nothing that can be done to prevent this from happend, that is if we believe it is a big issue.

Tech-savvy militants from al-Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that US troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, US Defence Department official and contractors told Congress.

The games appear on militant websites, where youths as young as seven can play at being troop-killing urban guerrillas after registering with the site’s sponsors.

“What we have seen is that any video game that comes out … they’ll modify it and change the game for their needs,” said Dan Devlin, a Defence Department public diplomacy specialist.

The underlying propaganda message, officials say, is that the United States is waging a crusade against Islam in order to control Middle Eastern oil (somewhere Leftists are cheering), and that Muslims should fight to protect Islam from humiliation.

A little humor to follow here. For those unaware, a ‘mod’ is essentially changing one or more aspects to a game. The game the article uses is Battlefield 2, one I’ve never run accross but I do know the basic concept of it. The game puts two opponents to a war to control territory, or so I believe. A mod can change the weapons used, the look of the soldiers on either or both side, the allegiance of the soldiers, etc. From what I understand, it’s not that hard to do if you understand programing.

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An Arizona State University study concluded jihadis use the press as a weapon in their war. Yes, we already knew that, or should have known that, but there are some key things in the study that are worth the mention.

Steven Corman, director of the school’s Consortium for Strategic Communication and a Defense Department consultant on communications networks and counterterrorism, said “people are surprised the jihadis think of the media as a weapon.” What people? Those with the IQ of a peanut?

The report found that jihadist operations use consistent patterns of outreach that establish them socially and religiously, generate public sympathy and intimidate opponents. Threats, in fact, are part of terrorist “talking points.”

This is something we’ve noted and discussed a bit here, and it is crystal clear many of the messages from terrorists and terrorists groups, from Osama bin Laden to Ayman al-Zawahiri through the lesser known groups and suicide bomber videos, use the much of the same talking points. Are these talking points effective? To a degree, I think they are, but much like all products that are around for a while, the talking points lose power. I’m not sure if the jihadi talking points have crossed that point yet, but I have seen the latest messages adapt with the times more than the first communications.

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Nearly five years after 9/11, there can be considerable debate whether or not radical Islam as an ideology has grown. I believe it has, but the measure of whether or not the ideology has spawned future terrorists is not known. What is known is that jihadis using the Internet to disseminate their ideology has grown and grown at a rather alarming rate.

In the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s report, a twenty percent increase of jihadi sites is cited over the previous year.

“I think there’s been a line crossed insofar as the Internet really emerging as a virtual university of terrorism,” said Mr. Cooper, associate dean of the centre. “Giving the political leadership, a snapshot of what’s going on will help to formulate some of the discussions and bring them up to speed.”

“The Internet today is probably the key component in the war against terrorism,” Mr. Cooper said. “We’ve tried to put together a snapshot that I think will help [the ministers] . . . maybe make their interaction with [security] professionals in Ottawa, Washington, Paris and London better informed.”

The question on everyone’s mind is what are we doing to stop this? Sadly, I don’t think we are doing much to prevent these sites from operating and growing.

Much has been made of the July 7 London bombings in the wake of where those terrorists came from and now the new revelation that Al Qaida was not officially behind the attack. They were home-grown terrorists who lashed out against the British public because, according to an investigation of the act, of the quartets displeasure with the war in Iraq. The shifting cause of terrorism and the argument it was a religious fanaticism that was truly the cause aside, these Internet sites enable jihadis and jihadi sympathisers to band together, learn bomb-making procedures and meet to carry out an attack.

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World Tribune reports on something I have noticed for quite some time, that while our military power far outshines the likes of Al Qaida and radical Islamic jihadists everywhere, the true war against radical Islamic terrorism will be waged accross many theaters including on the Internet.

Rumsfeld said Al Qaida has been trying to manipulate the U.S. media to ensure an American military withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. The efforts, he said, include exploitation of the Internet.

“Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaida have media committees,” Rumsfeld said. “They meet, they figure out how to manipulate the news in New York City and the United States of America and London and Paris. We clearly have a responsibility for carrying the message of what it is we’re doing 24 hours a day.”

Kimmitt said in an appearance to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 22 that the military would increasingly focus on understanding and foiling Al Qaida’s use of the Internet. He said the effort was part of what he termed the “long war” of Central Command against Middle East-based Islamic insurgency groups.

It is though the jihadis use of the Internet that troubles me the most.  We can beat Al Qaida terrorists into a bloody pulp on the conventional battlefield, but the Al Qaida ideology will live on unless we confront their messages with either counter-messages or simply take down their Internet sites and ways of communication.

Simply?  Actually, it’s not so simple.

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