YouTube & Muslims Against Crusades – another match made in hell

A friend alerted me to a fantastic article that continues to connect the violent jihadi movement to YouTube.  (H/T Andrea.)  The article is very thorough, and details how the terrorists use YouTube to spread their cult of violence and what types of groups are using it.  This nugget, to me, was extremely interesting…

From MEMRI via Tolerant No More ~ Counter Jihad Knights:

 

November 2011: MAC Banned In U.K., MAC Website and Twitter Accounts Are Shut Down – But MAC YouTube Channels Continues

On November 9, 2011, the U.K. Home Office banned MAC; membership, holding meetings, or wearing clothing or “articles” to show support for the organization are now criminal offenses punishable by up to 10 years in jail. The official announcement of the ban, on the Home Office website, read: “Terror organisation proscribed: The Home Secretary Theresa May today laid an Order proscribing Muslims Against Crusades effective from midnight tonight. She said: ‘I have today laid an Order which will proscribe Muslims Against Crusades from midnight tonight. This means being a member of or supporting the organisation will be a criminal offence. I am satisfied Muslims Against Crusades is simply another name for an organisation already proscribed under a number of names including Al Ghurabaa, The Saved Sect, Al Muhajiroun and Islam4UK. The organisation was proscribed in 2006 for glorifying terrorism and we are clear it should not be able to continue these activities by simply changing its name. ”

Following this official announcement, the MAC’s website and Twitter account were shut down. However, the MAC YouTube page (youtube.com/user/MACrusaders) as well as the YouTube page of its leader Anjem Choudary (youtube.com/user/anjemchoudary) remain active.(emphasis mine)

Now how is it that Twitter can act so quickly to shut down the terrorists, but Google/YouTube just pussyfoots around the subject? Maybe Twitter needs to teach the folks over at Google/YouTube a thing or two.

I’m also curious as to where MAC’s website was hosted.  Surely not Blogger or it would most likely still be around as well.  According to the Jawa Report, it was hosted in Canada – we may all Stable Hand & the Jawa Report readers to thank for the fact that MAC’s site is no longer there rather than the U.K.’s Home Office.  But who’s keeping score?

Infiltrate this!

The morons over at  Shura al Mujahideen fee Junubu Afarika (South Africa) are all a-twitter over their “brother” Jose’s arrest on terrorism charges and the implications it might — and should — have for muslims “speaking the truth” on social networking forums.  Of course the well-documented transgressions committed by poor ol’ Jose are all false.   *insert ginormous eye roll here.*  Of COURSE they are always innocent!  LOL!

As a result they are looking to “infiltrate” and “keep an eye on” anyone who is countering their BS – specifically mentioning Internet Hagannah and Operation YouTube Smackdown.

When they gather information on the supporters of the mujahideen, be it about their youtube channels and friends, blogger profiles and blogs or their facebook accounts, they share it among themselves by posting it on their forum (forum.internet-haganah.com). If any brother or sister is to come across this, make sure that you inform those who are being spied on so they may delete their accounts and start up new ones or at least so they may be more cautious.

Oh nooooooes!  They are gonna watch us!  Run for the hills!  Hey boneheads – if we didn’t want you to see it, you wouldn’t know it was there — just sayin’!

Funny that they are all worried about the implications of the arrest.  Probably because they are guilty of promoting terrorism at their site as well.  And who do you think helps them out?  Yep!  You got it!  Google/YouTube.  Their blog is on Blogger — the free Google blogsite.

And their videos, linked and embedded at their Blogger site are hosted, of course, at YouTube.  Here’s a connect-the-dots series of screen caps so you can see for yourself.  Clicking this link on their sidebar:

Will take you here:

Not surprisingly, it’s a video hosted at none other that YouTube.

And yes – you can see on the statistics for the video that it was unloaded on 11/26/11 and embedded on 11/28/11.

You can also see the search topics by which people using YouTube found the video — which means that presumably YouTube/Google should be able to use their own search filters to find it as well.  And if they were truly serious about removing terrorist videos from YouTube, they would.  The hypocrisy is stunning! Google really needs to change their slogan.

Pimentel, “Jihad Princess”, Google and Joe Lieberman

So, we established yesterday that Jose Pimentel aka Muhammad Yusuf was a YouTube user — specifically mujahidfisabillilah1.  Today his website, http://www.trueislam1.com/, has been removed as has his YouTube account.

Possibly this is in response to Joe Lieberman’s demand for better ways to police Google’s Blogger platform, which is where Pimentel’s blog was hosted.  (Well THERE’S a surprise – NOT!)  Lieberman is asking for is a flagging system so that readers can bring terrorist websites that are hosted at Blogger to their attention.  Right now, if you see an offensive site, you can send an email to Google complaining of terms of service violations, etc.  It exists.  All Mr. Lieberman wants is to make that process a little easier.  Oh.  And he’d like Google to actually state explicitly that terrorist content is against their terms of service.

“Through your updated YouTube standards, Google has affirmatively stated that terrorist content will not be permitted on some of your sites. I strongly believe that Google should expand that standard to include your other platforms.”

Pimentel hooked up with “Jihad Princess” at YouTube.  He promoted her YouTube channel at his Blogger-hosted website.  He also posted video lectures — hosted for free at YouTube — from well known terrorists like Osama bin Laden, Aw-Alaki and others to his Blogger website.  He even credited YouTube user “Jihad Princess” with helping him figure out how to use the Blogger format.

He said most of the photos on his site came from her and that she told him how to use the Google site Blogger — where she describes herself as “an islamic jihad enthusiast.”

Her profile is accompanied by a photo of a woman peeking out from a hijab. On another site, she says she was born in Yemen but lives in the United States.

No doubt the FBI and Homeland Security are already checking her out. — which might be why she’s been deleting stuff left and right.  Sort of like closing the gate after the cows get out.

A lot of people seem to be jumping on Mr. Lieberman  accusing him of only caring about it because it gets him in the spotlight.  Maybe.  But that’s beside the point.  My question is this:  how many arrests, how many almost terrorist events, how many demonstrable terrorist “hook-ups” are going to have to happen before Google is liable as an accomplice?  If they don’t do everything in their power to prevent their services being used by the terrorists, then they ARE complicit.

YouTube: The Bart Simpson of Radicalization

So I got a hit today on a Google Alert I have up that went to the New York Times.  Holding my breath, because I didn’t harbor much hope that the piece would be balanced, I clicked the link and was transported to their site and an article titled “Radical Cleric Still Speaks on YouTube.”  As Andrea would say “NO SH!T SHERLOCK!!”  Ok, I’ll give them a couple points for trying, but seriously – President Obama has given the nod to taking Awlaki out whenever or wherever possible, but we can’t get him off YouTube – why? exactly?  Because we want to protect his free speech rights?  As Rusty said “I can drop a bomb on Osama bin Laden, I just can’t take away his microphone?”  Hello people!  The dude is a certified terrorist and gave up his rights to free speech when he chose to join the minions attempting to implement sharia law.

From the NY Times:

…members of Congress last year appealed to YouTube to remove calls for violence by Mr. Awlaki, the militant American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen, and in an announcement reported around the world last November, YouTube agreed.

End of story?

Not at all. A quick search of YouTube today for “Anwar al-Awlaki” finds hundreds of his videos, most of them scriptural commentary or clerical advice, but dozens that include calls for jihad or attacks on the United States.

I can just hear Andrea jumping up and down and screaming.  She (along with undhimmi, the Jawa Report and others) has been documenting the games played by YouTube with the video numbers ad nauseum. ARGH!

The article goes on to cite quotes from YouTube about just how much video is uploaded and how impossible it is for them to police and the old standby “we rely on our community” blah blah blah to police the site.  But here’s the rub:

The system has prevented YouTube from succumbing to the otherwise inevitable flood of pornography, which is directed to reviewers by software that scans uploaded videos for flesh tones. Computers also give priority to the review of videos with a high “flag-to-view ratio,” suggesting that many viewers are upset about it. Software bumps to a low priority videos that have previously been reviewed, as well as those flagged by users who have a record of, say, objecting to every Justin Bieber video.

So if I, as a user of YouTube’s services, object to every Awlaki video, or every video that features a coalition soldier being blown to smithereens, my flags are given a low priority by their software?  How is that relying on their community?  More like ignoring the segment of the community that actually takes the time to flag videos.

Additionally, this sounds like some pretty sophisticated software.  Something that, I don’t know, intelligent should easily be written to, say, remove every video that has Awlaki associated with it.  Hmmm…. interesting thought.

The variety and volume of Mr. Awlaki’s YouTube material makes it more difficult than might be supposed to decide its fate. Should his sermon on what makes a good marriage come down? His account of the final moments of the Prophet Muhammad? His counsel on the proper diet for a good Muslim?

Such material does not violate any YouTube standard.

What about the executive order that is supposed to prevent US interests from aiding and abetting terrorists in any way whatsoever, including by offering them services for free?  Oh wait – I don’t suppose that’s the standard they’d like to discuss.

It may be that the crowdsourcing that drives YouTube, its reliance on the masses, becomes the ultimate answer to violent messages on the site, more than company censors. Anti-jihad activists with names like the YouTube Smackdown Corps patrol the site constantly, flagging what they consider to be offensive material.

At a site called Jihadi Smackdown of the Day (“Countering the cyber-jihad one video at a time”), the links for past YouTube videos of Mr. Awlaki now usually lead to a standard message: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy.”

But if the people who flag more often are given a lower priority, just how will that work?  I think we’ve just been given a clue to what’s going on behind the wizard’s curtain, and, as I suspected, it’s about like confronting a couple of 7 year old Bart Simpsons over a broken lamp.

And while everyone’s pointing at everyone else, the environment remains ripe for the radicalization of yet another once-A-student-in-high-school-turned-Al-Shabab-wannabe.  At what point is enough enough?

YouTube’s Terrorist Tolerance

Well, yesterday, yet another YouTuber was arrested.  This time is was Norman Leboon, Sr. for threatening to kill Eric Cantor, the Virginia Congressman.

From the Philadelpia Inquirer…

Norman Leboon, 38, of the 1600 block of Benner Street in Mayfair, was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia with two counts involving threats against U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican House whip.

Leboon was arrested Saturday by the FBI, three days after his YouTube video was seen by someone in San Francisco and reported to the FBI.

Well how about that?  Someone posted threats on YouTube?  Say it isn’t so!  The funny (or not so funny) thing is that it’s just possible that the FBI ignored Leboon’s brother’s reporting on his brother because, well, threats are nothing new at YouTube.  They are everywhere.

YouTuber AllahAkChew had a threat posted on her channel just today by user MujahidAK74U .  Even the user names are threatening — take killkuffs for example.  It doesn’t take a lot of cognitive ability to realize that “killkuffs” means kill kafir — kafir being the term that muslims use for non-believers.  Then there are all the terrorist avatars that YouTube ignores.  If you think I’m kidding, just go look through the avatars on IslamicRevolutionTV’s subscribers page.  Here are a few samples:

And then there are the backgrounds that people put on their channels, which are a whole other story.  The point is, YouTube turns a blind eye every day to the hatred and violence and threats and thereby hosts a culture of threats and violence.

And if a user is suspended, they just come back under a new user ID like Colleen LaRose did, while again, YouTube turns a blind eye.  Their policies state that you are not allowed to make a new ID when you are suspended, but it’s up to the community to bring it to YouTube’s attention.  I can understand that they have so much video uploaded every day, yada, yada, yada.  Just because something is difficult to do, you are not absolved of your responsibilities.  (“Yeah, Mr. IRS man, those tax forms are just too difficult…”  Wonder how that’d work out…! )

How many true believer whackjobs like Colleen LaRose, Normal Leboon or Nidal Hassan is it going to take for YouTube to own their responsibility?  Yeah — it’s rhetorical.  The answer is, most likely never.

A friend has come up with another way to hold Google/YouTube’s feet to the fire though, and it is ingenious.  Google and YouTube have advertisers.  I doubt those advertisers would be happy to see their ads on pages that advocate things like killing U.S. Congressmen or wiping out the Jews.  Maybe a hit in the pocketbook is the cattleprod we need to wake up Google/YouTube.

All hands on deck – let’s roll!

Related Jawas post – heh!

Whose Troops Does Facebook Support?

“The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down in order to be right side up.”   –Billy Sunday

There couldn’t be a more true statement made about what I’ve been seeing on the internet of late.  YouTube allows terrorists sympathizers (or worse) to use YouTube servers to host videos that the terrorists then post links for downloading or
embed on their websites.

Many of the terrorist blogs and websites are on blogspot.com, a Google owned hosting service.  Facebook allows all manner of anti-Semitic groups to exist.

There’s even a LOVELY group called  “F*ck The Troops” [group title editing mine].   Even after being reported multiple times, it’s still up.

Then you’d think a group called “Support Our Troops!” would be safe, right?  Not really.

A friend of mine found that group and had the following conversation:

For confronting this twisted evil, my friend was given the following warning:

It was also delivered to my friend’s email address:

The fact that a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer attempts to use any or all of these services is to be expected.  What is mind-boggling is that when each of these entities is
notified of the fact that they are providing free services to terrorists, or that they are hosting content which calls for violence against specified groups, the entities have thumbed their collective noses at the person bringing the complaint, ignored  their own terms of service, permitted the activity to continue, and even threatened the accuser.  Yippee! They can be so proud of the contributions they are making to society.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to report these anti-American, anti-Semitic, terrorist sympathizing Facebook pages whenever we see them – and I hope you’ll join in and take a stand with us.

*********

Backstory reading:  Abu Fatima at The Jawa Report put up a post about the F the Troops group on January 23.

Also posted at Free Republic.