I have been extremely busy with a bunch of personal stuff and haven’t had time to write.  I was actually taking a break with a pal last night and missed an interesting – and oh! so sweet! – bit of  news which I would normally have seen at the Jawa Report, but I got on email from a friend late last night.  It seems that RevolutionMuslim‘s South Park threatener Zachie-boy Chesser,  using his infant son as camouflage (what a typical terrorist thing to do huh?) tried to board a flight to Uganda with an ultimate goal of reaching Somalia to train and fight with al-Shabaab, which has ties to Al Qaeda.  There goes his “Father of the Year” award!

Apparently Zach has been ostracized by his family because of his extreme views and one report said that he had earlier tried to follow this path with his wifey Umm Talhah, but HER mommy stole her passport to prevent it.

His first attempt to join al-Shabab came in November, when he planned to travel with his wife to Kenya and make his way to Somalia, possibly by speedboat. But Chesser wrote in his journal – which he described as a “real-life ‘how-to guide’ on how to reach the fields of jihad” – that his mother-in-law took his wife’s passport and wouldn’t give it back, thwarting his plans.

I cannot tell you how funny I found that!  The big-man-on-campus Zachie, foiled by his mother-in-law!  (Go MOM!!!) Sounds like THAT would make an excellent South Park episode, doesn’t it?  This boy is a traitor of the first degree.  Let’s hope that the U.S. government gives him the proper punishment for being one.

The most disturbing part of the story to me is this – Zachie had had contact with none other the Al-Awlaki, the radical cleric who was recently added to the U.N.’s “Terror List” and is on the wanted dead or alive U.S. terror list.  Awlaki is in Yemen (reportedly.)  Just how would a cowardly cleric who won’t commit violence himself but incites others be able to influence a college aged kid who lives in Virginia?   The quick answer is “the internet:”

The terrorism-related charges against two Americans, both devotees of Mr. Awlaki, are part of a marked increase in homegrown extremism in the United States, often influenced by radical material on the Internet.

But no one seems to want to delve into the exact way that this happens on the internet.  I’ve been posting about this for a few years, and the folks at Quoth the Raven and The Jawa Report (among others) have been after it for WAY longer!  A quick and simple primer for how it happens is this:  the terrorist’s video tape their radical cleric and then the production wing of Al-Qaeda or whatever terrorist group they are with edits the video.  They then upload their propaganda – usually to a big uploading site (like megaupload or RapidShare.)  A little dweebie terrorist wannabe like Zachie Boy then goes to that site and downloads the video, uploads it to YouTube for free and easy video hosting and then embeds it in his blog so that all the other dweebie little terrorist wannabe’s can see it and get all jazzed up for jihad!  Seriously – if you want to see the dots connected for you, look here.

So just how easy is it to find Awlaki’s videos at YouTube?  Click here to see search results at YouTube — or try this one.  These videos are uploaded daily by users like DEENONLINE and Safallah7.  In Awlaki’s most recent foray into inciting the wannabes, he urges Muslims in the U.S. to wage jihad against the government.  The guy is serious and we need to take him seriously, because it’s rather obvious that his target audience does by the actions that they take upon being influenced by him.

What is it going to take for YouTube to take seriously their responsibility in this process? The FReeRepublic group and others have been flagging videos like crazy and YouTube has begrudgingly removed one or two videos here and there.  It seems that it goes through cycles.  Something happens like the arrest of JihadJane or the attempted bombing of a airline flight to Detroit and for a while they are fairly responsive to flaggings.  Then they sort of devolve into apathy until the next thing comes along.  NOT ACCEPTABLE! YouTube is aiding and abetting terrorists and their ability to recruit all over the world.  It’s time for them to get more aggressive about removing this stuff from their servers and STAY that way.  We’re flagging – it’s time for YouTube to hold up their end of the “community policing” terms-of-use bargain.

….

Update:

Just a thought.  Umm-Talhah should be charged with child endangerment unless she reported Zachie-boy’s hairbrained scheme to take their son to the land of Shabaab-Jihad.  Hope the authorities are on their game and I also hope “Hag-in-the-Bag’s” MOM gets custody – sounds like she’s one smart lady.  (Thanks to Urban Infidel for the lovely nickname for Zachie-boy’s wifey and also for the picture.)