Note from your jihadi travel agent:
Tired of getting your ass kicked in Iraq, and Afghanistan? Try Chechnya for your next murderous getaway...
Having a wonderful time in Chechnya, wish you were here...
And let us say, Amen.
See:
Surveillance Bill Offers Protection To Telecom Firms
Deal Would Extend U.S. Wiretap Power, Shield Providers Facing Privacy Lawsuits
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, Washington Post Staff Writers, Friday, June 20, 2008; A01
And also:
Our dear friend Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed has pled guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists. This in relation to the production, and distribution via YouTube, of a video explaining how to turn a remote control toy car into a detonator for Improvised Explosive Devices. In his plea he admits that he made the video with the intent of enabling jihadis to set off their bombs from a distance so that they might live to kill more infidels another day.
The Investigative Project has a copy of the plea agreement posted here...
You can also read all about it on select jihadi forums, e.g.
Mohamed gets honorable mention on a jihadi forum
The extent of Mr. Mohamed's involvement with other jihadis is not known, but we do know that the detonator video was viewed by some hundreds of people, and we are not aware of any effort by Mohamed to promote the video through "normal" jihadi channels. So one assumes he was part of some network or networks of like-minded individuals.
From page 9 of the plea agreement
Finally, this detail on page 11 of the plea agreement led someone at Little Green Footballs to dub Mohamed "the Frugal Jihadi."
Source:
Crown's case alive and well in homegrown terror trial
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD, globeandmail.com, June 20, 2008
Quote:
"The charge is participation in terrorist activities - not participation in terrorist activities on an epic scale."
Context:
Since the mass arrests in June of 2006 and continuing even until yesterday - when a Toronto columnist baldly claimed "the government has delivered a devastating blow to its entire case" - the probe has been repeatedly described as exaggerated, receiving a series of "stunning" punches or utterly collapsing.But to borrow from Mark Twain, the reports of the death of the Crown's case are premature.
And no one has said this better or from a position of more unassailable neutrality than the presiding trial judge himself, Ontario Superior Court Justice John Sproat. Earlier this month, in a ruling that has been overlooked in the media, Judge Sproat issued a 41-page decision on a defence application to have the Crown's key witness prohibited from testifying about what he heard the alleged conspirators say at the now much-ridiculed terrorist training camp near Orillia, Ont., in December of 2005.
In a nutshell, the defence had argued that CSIS informant-turned-RCMP agent Mubin Shaikh and the group leader about whom Mr. Shaikh would be testifying at length were respectively unreliable and a grandiose dreamer incapable of posing a real threat to Canada.
But Judge Sproat noted that at the time of the training camp, the leader had a 9 mm handgun and had played a role in the importation of three other loaded guns into the country a few months earlier.
"History," he wrote, "is replete with examples of how dangerous even a lone gunman, particularly with a misguided sense of mission or importance, can be."
More significantly to the future prospects of the broader case, Judge Sproat dryly concluded, "The fact that the group's realistic capability with a few handguns might have been to kill a relatively small number of political leaders, police or members of the public, as opposed to take over Parliament Hill, does not to my mind detract significantly from the reliability of the evidence in terms of proving the existence of a terrorist group.
"Put differently," he said, "The charge is participation in terrorist activities - not participation in terrorist activities on an epic scale."
Internet connection: Members of the Toronto 18 were active on a number of high-quality jihadi sites, and were part of the broader "Irhabi007 Network."
Currently in circulation on jihadi forums...
...an e-Book about the first conquest of Andalus, AKA Spain, by Muslim armies, and the age of glory and wonder that followed. Tales of such "glory days" seem to play an important part in the mindset of the jihadist, and such a focus on the past (or future) rather than the present may well play a role in encouraging the jihadi to let go of the natural inclination to continue to live in the here and now.
CBS Evening News June 18, 2008
Nice of them to notice.
...goes to the brother at al-Hesbah, with this long-winded rant directed towards the spies in the forums.
Interagency Task Force Targets 'Violent Actors,' General Says
By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg
Special to American Forces Press ServiceWASHINGTON, June 6, 2008 - U.S. Central Command is part of an Interagency Task Force for Irregular Warfare, a CentCom initiative that recently stood up to track and target "violent and extreme actors" in the command's area of operations, the Air Force general who's spearheading the effort said yesterday.
"Regionally, we look at influences of extreme actors that are malign that would provide, from within their borders, exporting either violence or activities that would be disruptive to their neighbors," Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert H. Holmes, CentCom's deputy director of operations, said to online journalists and bloggers during a teleconference from the command's headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.
He added that the objectives of the Interagency Task Force for Irregular Warfare for the near term include disrupting some specific elements of terror networks.
"If you find bad stuff in the wrong places, you have to call it like you see it. We continue to see that and continue to watch it," Holmes said. "Our business is looking at this malign influence and then figuring out what we can do to counter it ... in a holistic manner, not necessarily just force on force."
He added that to counter, combat and, ultimately, defeat these kinds of networked activities, it will take more than just military force over the long term.
Holmes said the Interagency Task Force for Irregular Warfare, which includes other federal partners and nongovernmental agencies, has been observing an "adversarial information operation," or communications tactic, with regard to reporting of civilian casualties. He said that both the Taliban in Afghanistan and terrorists in Iraq have both adopted this type of tactic.
"[There is a] discrepancy in what we see in open-source reporting with regard to civilian casualties and then what is actually in our operational reporting," Holmes said. "I believe that the enemy uses this tactic to try to dissuade a civilian populace from the things that are actually going on there."
The interagency task force also is looking into the networks of the Taliban and al-Qaida. Holmes said both terrorist organizations have specialists who are savvy in manipulating the media.
"There is a malign actor there that, in my mind, would have the purpose in an information operation campaign, and that is clearly a piece of terrain for our adversary, that they are going to use this to their advantage," Holmes said.
And that advantage can be significant in the court of world opinion, the general noted, because organizations with nefarious intentions will put out whatever information suits their motives.
"We're bound to tell the truth, and in most cases our adversary is not," Holmes noted.
Once information is put into the dynamic information environment, misleading perceptions are easily created.
"Often, truth is no longer important; it's just out there," he explained. "If I was my opponent, and I wanted to do something against someone I knew was grounded in truthful principles, ... then I would use that to my advantage."
Another trend the interagency task force is watching and trying to weigh out is the use of female suicide bombers. Though it's not a significant trend at this point, young or mentally disabled women being used as suicide bombers is a departure in enemy tactics.
"It's too early to say that this may be a sign of desperation," Holmes said. "We watched the recruitment and flow of young males that have been recruited to be suicide bombers. We have been trying to target that network to disrupt that flow."
(Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg works in the New Media directorate of the Defense Media Activity.)
Nuclear Jihad?
Some thoughts on the subject of nuclear jihad:
1. We know that al-Qa`ida and their ilk would love to acquire nuclear weapons and to deploy them against the United States.
2. The fatwa authorizing the use of such weapons was released years ago.
3. Acquiring such weapons is difficult, and making without the resources of a state is even more difficult.
4. The chances of such weapons being deployed against the USA by terrorists operating without state sponsorship are remote.
5. The consequences of a successful deployment of such weapons will be extreme.
6. Reporting any online discussion about using nuclear weapons, or videos or still images about same, is best avoided as it will have a negative impact on the credibility of the individual or organization doing that reporting.
7. We might as well wait until one of our cities gets nuked before we bother to discuss this threat in any detail.
8. Until then, sweet dreams...
The future of jihadi use of the Internet belongs to YouTube...
...and there's nothing Joe Lieberman can do about it by writing a letter (though it was noble to try).
What the Senator and his colleagues *can* do is make sure that US law enforcement has the legal authority to compel such companies to hand over information about users who are distributing jihadi agitprop with the intent to promote violent jihad.
I recommend this report for the bibliography, as it does a good job of summarizing how Islamic extremists - as organized terrorist organizations, less formal gangs of self-organized or "homegrown" terror-supporting activists, and sundry individuals - attempt to use the Internet to further their own ends. I say "attempt" because there is a tendency when this subject comes up to assume that just because the bad guys are using the Internet they are doing so effectively, that just because the message is delivered it is also received clearly and in full. Evidence regarding effectiveness is lacking - at best we can measure the popularity of any given message and
Some reservations/concerns/comments:
The report states that a cohesive and comprehensive outreach and communications strategy should be put in place to assist the USA in confronting the threat of Islamist extremism. This line of reasoning leads to such as the recent DHS and State Department reports which ban the use of the word "jihad" from discussions of jihadi violence. This may appease a handful of moderate Muslims who cling to a more peaceful interpretation of the word, but such moderates are by definition not a threat to the rest of us, and as for the jihadis, they have the Quran and the life of the Prophet and his Companions to guide them as they attempt to wage a global holy war. In the scripture itself we find little to support an alternative definition of "jihad," and the Prophet's life was a life of war, not of peace or self-improvement. Jihadis don't become jihadis because we call them "jihadis." They become jihadis for their own reasons and they call themselves "jihadis."
The NYPD's report on radicalization is featured, but is treated as a linear, mechanistic process. Given the way the process is represented graphically in the NYPD report, such treatment is understandable.
I would note that the authors of the NYPD report specifically caution against taking such a view. The point of the NYPD report is that groups of individuals who pass through all four of the stages (in no particular or necessary order) are more likely to actually attempt to perpetrate an act of terror. The other thing that should be obvious from the NYPD report is that these homegrown groups, these self-organized gangs, are just that: gangs.
A final note: Why terror gangs form more often in some places than in others, other factors (e.g. government repression, poverty) being equal, is very similar to the issue of why juvenile delinquency and gang activity is more common in some communities than in others, other factors (e.g. poverty, discrimination) being equal. The successful terrorist, as in a political extremist who seeks to perpetrate or participate in acts of terror, will have more than merely the motivation to do so. He or she will need the benefit of associations and opportunities that enable their achieving such an ambition.
Gilbert Ramsay, a PhD student at St. Andrews in Scotland, recently penned an essay entitled "Conceptualising Online Terrorism." Ramsay struggles with the implications of his own field of study, "terrorism", turns Gabriel Weimann into something of a straw man, and after a rather circuitous route offers up two final paragraphs that are worth quoting:
...the focus on jihadism as an ideology with its attendant online community as opposed to terrorism as a course of action reflects the effective rout of ‘terrorism’ as a useful concept in ordering understanding a category of online material. The security focused literature on ‘terrorist use of the Internet’ which as I have suggested, traces its roots back to grand concepts of cyber war and information war has been quietly routed almost at the very instance of its fullest flourishing. In its place, an approach has been adopted which, because it seeks to understand the phenomenon in terms of online communities of interest, is far closer to the mainstream of Internet studies.Can the concept of ‘terrorism’ be rehabilitated as a guiding concept for studies of online material? If there is any place for it, it will be necessary to demonstrate that there exist ‘communities’ or ‘cultures’ online for which the inspiration of terroristic violence is so central to their purpose that they are, to all intents and purposes, directly linked to the carrying out of terrorist acts. This is, interestingly, actually quite a good description of ‘jihadism’, an Arabic neologism which is dedicated to the elevation of a particular militant component of certain political Islamic ideologies into virtually a means to an end. Indeed, my own studies in jihadism online appear to suggest the possibility that inbuilt characteristics of the online environment previously theorised by ‘cyber-sceptics’ such as Beniger, Jones and Stoll are helping to create a truncated online community in which Internet users who may, in their own lives, subscribe to more complete and diverse versions of Islamic fundamentalism congregate online around a common interest in, specifically, violence. If so, then perhaps looking for terrorism on the Internet may not be so paradoxical after all.
That Mr. Ramsay takes issue with Dr. Weimann is ironic, because for his part Weimann is working on a major research project that adopts precisely such a "focus on jihadism as an ideology with its attendant online community as opposed to terrorism as a course of action." I know this because I conceived the research in question and I brought Weimann in on it precisely because his expertise is in the study of communications, not "terrorism."
You may find a copy of Ramsay's essay here...
remorse*
I have known the remorse
of the pitbull
when the squirrel stops twitching
--
* Each week I have cause to review archives of jihadi websites from more than a year ago, sites which for the most part no longer exist. So sad. Thus the haiku.
Have a bunch of new recruits who can't handle the math involved in making explosives?
Not to worry, we have the software for you...
...complete with a serial number.
• http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/004824.html
• http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/005357.html
• http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/005561.html
• http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/005928.html
• http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/006186.html
• http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/006194.html