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.

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?

American Terrorists

Was doing some research for Internet Antropologist and found this very informative article.

We (and that’s a collective “we” including many different people and many different websites) have been saying this for a LONG time.  The violent postings of terrorist wannabe’s on the internet need to be taken seriously.  That’s why we’re so adamant that YouTube, Facebook and other social networks abide by their posted TOS.  The less outlets the terrorists have to congregate in, the more likely than can be caught.

Jihad’s Ugly American Face

…On July 10, Chesser was barred from boarding a flight New York to Uganda. According to an affidavit filed in the case, he admitted his intention was to travel to Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab. Chesser also said he brought his infant son with him as a cover “to avoid detection of his intention to join Al-Shabaab in Somalia,” the affidavit said.

Brachman calls would-be terrorists who graduated from posting jihadist rhetoric on the Internet to attempting to carry it out “jihobbyists.”

It is a fallacy to believe that such people don’t constitute a security threat. “There are so many [jihadists] that have a big online footprint before they go violent,” Brachman told the IPT.

For example, Faisal Shahzad, who pled guilty in the May Times Square plot, reportedly blogged on jihadist websites dating back to 2006. Hasan corresponded with Awlaki and other radicals via the Internet prior to the Fort Hood killings. Colleen LaRose, AKA “Jihad Jane,” posted frequently in favor of jihad prior to her arrest on charges of providing material support to terrorism and plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the prophet Muhammad.

The trend of American jihadists moving from advocacy to armed violence is likely to accelerate. For years, jihadists had accepted the concept that some of them would engage in violence while others could help with online advocacy, Brachman said. But he senses that this outlook is shifting dramatically. The turning point was a December 30 suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan which killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian official. The bomber was Humam al-Balawi, a double agent and a prolific jihadist blogger.

“That was a definitive moment for how jihobbyists thought of themselves,” Brachman told the IPT. In the wake of Balawi’s suicide attack, “the new mindset we’ve seen is that it’s no longer acceptable just to support violent jihad online.”

Jihad using the Internet and social media is now regarded “as a staging ground and not an end in itself,” Brachman said.

Go read the entire thing – it’s a who’s who of American terrorists.  And how they got there.

The YouTube Terrorism Threat

The members of YouTube Smackdown, Quoth the Raven, FreeRepublic, the Jawa Report, Stable of the Zionist Hores and many others have been virtually screaming for years about the hirabist threat that is aided and abetted by YouTube hosting terrorist videos for free on U.S. servers.  (Hint:  every one of those words in the previous sentence is a link to a post about YouTube’s free internet services for terrorists.)

Yesterday at MEMRI, Steven Stalinzky posted a spot on piece titled “YouTube – The Internet’s Primary and Rapidly Expanding Jihadi Base: Part II.”  There’s so much good information there that I hesitate to even pull tidbits out to post here – you really need to read the whole thing yourself, but here’s a preview…

On April 30, 2010, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan group created its official YouTube Page. One day later, the terrorist organization posted its first video on that page – a claim of responsibility for the attempted New York City Times Square attack. This is just the latest example showing YouTube’s emergence as the Internet’s primary – and rapidly expanding – jihadi base.

The following report highlights how jihadist groups worldwide are increasingly using YouTube for a multitude of purposes, including taking responsibility for terrorist attacks and posting footage of attacks for propaganda and recruiting purposes.

Much of what is there are things that we have told you about here and at the websites mentioned above.

There are those who will argue that there is intelligence to be gained from the videos, and occasionally they may be correct.  Fine.  Then have YouTube (or someone at a concerned government agency)  catalog the videos they remove and save them to an FBI / DHS / DoD website*  so the people who need to look for “intelligence” can find them.  Then get them off YouTube so your average moron looking to be radicalized cannot be stirred up by the likes of Anwar al-Awlaki or Zachary  spoiled-rich-white-kid-wants-15-minute-of-fame Chesser.

It has been shown multiple times that the availability of these propaganda and incitement videos are fueling “Sudden Jihad Symdrome” here at home and abroad.  (Jihad Jane,  Jihad Jamie,  Farouk Abdulmatallab, Nidal Hassan to name but a few.)  At some point the “intelligence value” of a video is vastly overwhelmed by the hirabists propaganda value.

At one point, the YouTube Smackdown went “on strike” publicly (although many of us continued fighting the fight behind the scenes and in other ways) because YouTube was not enforcing their own policies.  When we helped expose Colleen LaRose aka JihadJane — who had a very well documented YouTube connection — and she was subsequently was caught along with Jihad Jamie Ramirez and others in the process of trying to find a way to assassinate Lars Vilks, the Danish cartoonist, we brought the Smackdown back to FreeRepublic and have had a much more attentive policy enforcement from YouTube.  MaybeYouTube is beginning to understand it’s responsibility in this area.  More likely it is concerned with it’s liability.

At some point surely law enforcement agencies will begin to take notice of  the connection from YouTube to the terrorists who want to kill people  in a violent way and will begin looking to prosecute YouTube for complicity.   We can only hope, because I believe that is what it will take to clean the terrorist propaganda off the servers at YouTube.

Maybe they should start right here. Among other things, this user says

“Today on-wards, the direction of our JEHAD is AMERICAN States & Cities.”

More here.

…

H/T Andrea and Internet Anthropologist Think Tank.

* – update – it seems that the technology already exists (TECS), but is not used to it’s potential apparently.

YouTube Smackdown progress

In other news… On May 15, YouTube Smackdown came back from several months “on strike” after becoming fed up with YouTube’s extremely passive role in removing (or not removing, to be more precise) terrorist propaganda videos when said videos were flagged per YouTube’s own policies of community policing.

Today I pulled together the figures to see how many videos had been removed.  We have not been keeping track of individual videos, just the users suspended and how many videos went down when they did.  In just a month and a half, 5,474 videos have come down with the 51 terrorist users that have been suspended.

It remains to be seen whether they will take on the RevolutionMuslim accounts, of which there are several.

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!

BIG YouTube hirabist bites the dust… Goodbye Habibullah07 – cya l8r!

Flagged this jerk this morning along with other folks from the Jihadi Smackdown of the Day we took this sucker OUT!  Thank you YouTube for dumping this trash!

3,010 videos of radical islamic propaganda cleaned off the YouTube servers.  A step in the right direction!  I wonder how long it takes to upload 3010 videos?  LOL!

A little celebration music:

Join us!  The more the merrier.

YouTube: Still hosting videos for terrorists

I thought I’d post another “connect the dots” piece — YouTube IS the #1 hosting service for terrorist and terrorist sympathizing websites.  A quick perusal of various sites shows that most videos that are embedded on their sites are hosted at YouTube, with a smattering of LiveLeak and a few others.

Here’s an example of a YouTube video being embedded at several terrorist sites.   I started here:

I’ll save you from having to watch the whole thing — it’s loaded with
emotionally charged images, interspersed with a script that goes thru 20th century history (not sure of the veracity of all of the claims – a better historian than I might note bias – and then basically says that the khalifah and shariah will cure all the ills of society (including, of course, pedophilia – yeah, I am rolling my eyes as I type.)  It then encourages muslims to bring about this Islamic state so that it can be implemented throughout the whole world.  Here’s a definition for you of Khalifah:

the civil and religious leader of a Muslim state considered to be a representative of Allah on earth; “many radical Muslims believe a Khalifah will unite all Islamic lands and people and subjugate the rest of the world”

So even though this video, on it’s face, does not seem particularly violent or shocking, it is calling for Muslims to attempt to bring about this forced Islamic rule.  It uses the images and history “lesson” to stir up the emotions of the easily led – think Nidal Hassan or Colleen LaRose – and motivate them to action.  Propaganda for sure!  So where is this video being  used?  Well let’s just check that out…

Here it is at

Islamic Awakening:

At ismaweb.net – a Malay Islamic forum:

Ahh!  And our old “friend”

RevolutionMuslim…

This is surrounded by articles that show sympathy for Colleen LaRose (JihadJane), exultation over the death of Mohammad Al-Muhajiri as being a “success” as a martyr and others.

And here we have the video at the “we share a dream” blog…

I don’t  have a translator for that language, but in case you’re not sure
what the blog supports, they have this a little farther down the page for
clarity:

So how long is YouTube going to continue as a tool for the terrorists?
That’s a question that remains to be seen.   The problem is that
videos like the one featured here appear, at first glance, to be simply a
history lesson.  You have to pay attention to realize that that “history
lesson” is being used to incite violent jihad.  The key is the context.
And the context doesn’t lie at YouTube, it lies in the environment where the video is embedded.  It takes work to look this up, but anyone can do it.  I would urge any of you out there to see what you can discover – I think you’d be surprised how easy it is to find.  And then send your detailed complaints to YouTube via their flagging tool on each video you find linked in terrorist forums.  It’s a target-rich environment, and we can use all the  help we can get!

The Internet as a Terrorist’s Tool: An Emerging Battlefield

As we are reeling from the revelation of yet another attempted plot to assassinate Lars Vilks for his cartoon image of Mohammed as a dog, the media would have us believe that such “radical” and “extreme” violence is something new – something that has evolved in Islam over time.  Conversely, according to IslamWatch, “Muhammad’s life is a testament of ceaseless raids and plundering expeditions of highway caravans and waging wars against the infidel” in which “he himself had orchestrated more than one hundred raids, plundering expeditions and wars.”  In the days of Muhammed, groups of men required to meet together physically to plan and carry out their offensives.  From those fledgling days of congregated warfare, to yesterday’s small groups who trained together in order to execute their missions, to today’s “lone wolf,” the terrorists have shown an amazing ability to adapt to changing technologies.  The terrorist of the future will find the tools of the internet increasingly important for their “open source jihad.”  If we do not meet the terrorists on this internet battlefield, it will be at our own expense.

Mohammed had to hold planning meetings with his advisors, recruit men to follow him, institute training camps, and then follow through with his raids. Because of the lack of technology, all of these things demanded real, physical proximity. Fast forward to 1983.  An organization known as “Islamic Jihad” claims responsibility for the bombings of the Marine barracks in Beirut. Planning meetings for this were allegedly held in Damascus – a physical meeting place. In 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing was conducted by Ramzi Yousef and others.  Ramzi had spent time in Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and received explosives training there.  His uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who funded the mission, began his jihad training in his youth and was also trained by Al Qaeda after personally meeting Afghan mujahid Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.  Khalid Sheik Mohammed went on to plan other terrorist attacks and eventually to mastermind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of 2001.  In 1998, the US Embassy bombings in Tanzania, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were pulled off by 21 people associated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad – including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.  The operatives for this attack had trained together at Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.  While these groups were becoming increasingly efficient, there was still a need for centralized planning and human interaction in order to ensure success.

Today we are finding that the evolving state of terrorism is trending toward a “lone wolf” scenario.  On November 5, 2009, Nidal Hassan acted alone when he opened fire at Ft. Hood and killed 13 people and wounded 30 more.  It later turned out that Hasan had been in email contact with radical Islamic cleric Anwar al Awlaki, who is widely believed to be an al Qaeda recruiter.  In December of 2009, five American youths from Virginia were arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, where they had tried to contact terrorist groups to volunteer for Jihad after having made email contact with Taliban organizations beforehand.  On Christmas Day of 2009, Nigerian-born Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had been in contact with Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen, tried to bring down an airliner over Detroit, but succeeded only in giving himself some nasty burns on his upper thighs, thereby earning himself the derisive nickname “the underwear bomber.”  Al Awlaki admitted when interviewed that he had “kept in contact” with Abdulmtallab.  Most recently, the YouTube hirabist Colleen “Jihad Jane” LaRose, whose  downward spiral was documented by members of Operation YouTube Smackdown, The Jawa Report, Quoth The Raven, Internet Anthropologist Think Tank and others, began an online relationship with terrorists, traveling to Europe to allegedly marry a foreign national in order to commit the murder of Lars Vilks of Sweden, hoping ultimately to become a martyr. She used internet chat rooms and emails to help organize the plan and recruit others into it.  In each of these cases, the internet has played an vital role in bringing together easily manipulated individuals and terrorist mentors.

As we look to the future, the trend away from centralization and toward individuals acting, seemingly on their own, is likely to continue.  Rather than converging en masse to strategize with one’s followers, a mentor now only requires a simple laptop and internet access or internet active cell phone whereby he may send instructions to would-be jihadis.  The terrorist blog mujahidblog.com (link anonymized) calls this “open source jihad” and explains that it benefits violent jihad because, among other things, it can be accessed anywhere with no physical gathering space necessary, people who are not very well educated can be easily motivated to fight, and that because of the nature of the internet it provides “amplified propaganda capabilities.”  Indeed, Anwar Al Alwiki, who had been in contact with both Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, and Farouk Abdulmutullab, the Christmas Day epic fail bomber, has produced a pamphlet outlining “44 Ways to Support Jihad,” (also found here and here on YouTube.)  Along with the admonitions of fundraising for the Mujahideen and encouraging others to fight in Jihad, number 29 is an item which he lists as “WWW Jihad.”  He calls these people the “internet mujahideen” and encourages them to establish discussion forums related to Jihad, to establish email lists, to post or email Jihad literature and news, and to set up websites related to Jihad.  These admonitions play directly into the activity we have seen on the internet, and will continue to do so in the future.

From the time of Muhammed, Islamic jihad has featured violence against non-believers which demanded tangible presence to be executed.   As terrorist movements become increasingly characterized by “lone wolf” scenarios and as radical Islamic clerics call for even greater use of technology to both join them together and also to spread propaganda, terrorist’s use of forums such as YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, LiveLeak and Facebook and any other internet technologies which evolve to encite and train their followers will become that much more important to their ability to conduct the business of terrorism.

These uses of technology and the internet must be taken seriously if we wish to impede the spread of terrorism. To disregard threats posed over the internet, which is emerging as a vital terrorist tool for battle, is to seal our own fate.

————–

Contributions to this article were made by Andrea, Jer and bartender.

Chilling insight into Jihad Jane aka Fatima LaRose aka Colleen LaRose

So here’s an interesting bit – this is from YouTube user FuryofMsMarvel‘s  YouTube channel background…  You need to start at the bottom of the image and read up – it’s the way YouTube’s comments work – newest at the top.  The story is that there was a YouTube user named MuslimahoftheCentury who was a 16 year old girl and was what we would call a moderate muslim.  Colleen’s boyfriend (or someone she wanted as her boyfriend),  MujahidFilKilafah, threatened to slit the girl’s throat because she was moderate.  Youtube user TheTruthPrevail99 was concerned for her his friend, Fatima aka Colleen,  and confronted her about MujahidFilKilafah’s actions.  Colleen’s response was pretty chilling.  Keep in mind that Colleen fashioned herself as a mother figure to the muslim community on YouTube, encouraging them in jihad.  Start reading at the bottom….

Again, thetruthprevail99 is a friend of Colleen/Fatimah.
Thetruthprevail99  is taking Colleen/Fatimah to task because Colleen/Fatima’s boyfriend threatened to slit the throat of MuslimahofTheCentury, a 16 year old moderate muslim, for the crime of being moderate.
Thetruthprevail99 posted Colleen/Fatimah’s response to thetruthprevail99’s complaint against the boyfriend in which Colleen/Fatimah defends her boyfriend for his threat.
thetruthprevail then states that he is not posting this to spread fitnah on her(meaning “to persecute” her), but because he and his fiance fight against people who misuse the Koran for their own “lusts.”

Really there’s not much to say about that.  She defends violence against even other muslims because she loooooves her terrorist boyfriend.  Like I have said many times, the ones we call “violent” or “bad muslims” or “extremists” believe that moderation is evil and are willing to kill those that we would see as “peaceful” muslims.  They quote MANY sources from the Koran to back up their positions.  The truth is, any Islamist will become a violent “extremist” given the right motivation.  Fortunately for us, according to the “extremists,” many of them don’t know their own religion’s teachings.

God help us if they start figuring it out.

Meanwhile, it appears that Colleen is singing like the proverbial canary.  That chick must have a lot of tales to tell!

Edited:  it appears from the image above that thetruthprevail99 is a male named “Mike.”

Edit #2:  Still confused?  Read the comments for the nutshell version in better English…