soup
@antderosa | facebook | testimonials | ask me anything
topics: syria | egypt | bahrain | libya | china | afghanistan | iran | iraq | japan | architecture | scandanavia | science | tech | art | design | photography
-
Skygall: Jon Stewart rips in Obama’s hypocrisy and secrecy on drones: only transparent about last guy’s secrets
-
Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track.
Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.
That same day in Chechnya, according to intelligence I reviewed, Ibn Al-Khattab, an extremist who was known for his brutality and his links to Al Qaeda, told his followers that there would soon be very big news. Within 48 hours, an intelligence official told me, that information was conveyed to the White House, providing more data supporting the C.I.A.’s warnings. Still, the alarm bells didn’t sound.
-
One year after bin Laden’s death, how done is al-Qaeda? Depends on who you read.
So, when looking up stories on the upcoming one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, we noticed a bizarre trend: None of the stories seemed to agree with one another. Some seemed to suggest al-Qaeda was basically gone. Others suggested that they were still planning major terror attacks. Seeing this, we got an idea: What if we scored the stories based on the done-ness of al-Qaeda, from 1 to 10? Because one wire service’s “in ruins” is another national newspaper’s “far from defeated.” Check the results above, and take one major point from this: Not every story has an agreed-upon answer.
-
Obama admin to outline how U.S. laws empower them to kill Americans overseas whom they accuse of terrorism against U.S
Civil liberties groups have been pressuring the administration to offer justification for what has been described as a top-secret “targeted kill” program in which Americans who have joined al Qaeda or other militants are deemed legitimate targets to be killed overseas.
Attorney General Eric Holder plans to address the issue and the underpinning legal principles for using lethal force during remarks at Northwestern University School of Law on Monday afternoon in Chicago, the source said Sunday on condition of anonymity.
-
via @kaepora
-
If terror challenges democracy, the answer is more democracy, not less; more accountability and openness, not less. The question is whether the secret power we have allowed to spring up in our name is under any kind of democratic control. Do our elected representatives keep our secret agencies under sufficient scrutiny? Does the press know what is being done in our name?
We have paid for sovereign failure with secret government. Most people accept this, because our enemies have not prevailed. The mastermind is dead, his remains scattered at sea. His followers are in hiding and know they will be pursued to the ends of the earth.
But they created the apocalyptic standard, and the risk now is not just al-Qaeda but any group with the desire and capacity to emulate it.
-
Al Qaeda uses web forums, social media to recruit, spread propaganda
It comes as no surprise that Al Qaeda, the militant group founded by the now-deceased terrorist Osama bin Laden, has been using the Internet for around a decade to spread their propaganda in the form of news releases and videotaped messages.
But as the internet has evolved over the past five years away from stationary single-serving news websites to a platform of mass communication and recruitment through social media, so has the methods of Al Qaeda and its media branch, the Global Islamic Media Front or GIMF.
Shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden, I became curious as to how Al Qaeda was spreading its message of jihad through the Internet. I began tracking down various websites, web forums and blogs used by members of Al Qaeda and their supporters and made a few interesting discoveries, one of which being that Al Qaeda is beginning to use social media as a method of recruitment and broadcasting.
The other discovery made surprised me: Many Al Qaeda websites are hosted on American servers and are paid for with American dollars. Domain registration and hosting services trace back to American companies. Domains are frequently registered with American-based Yahoo and Microsoft Hotmail email accounts. American software, like Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop, is being used (and legitimately licensed) to create slick-looking videos and fancied-up press releases.
Videos are being published frequently to YouTube and the Archive.org project. Newsletters and press releases, such as this one released shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden and obtained by ProducerMatthew.com in May, are being uploaded MegaUploader and other file sharing websites — multiple times, just in case they’re discovered and deleted.
American services and American ingenuity is tapped into and frequently exploited by the Global Islamic Media Front, Al Qaeda and its supporters to spread propaganda, messages and to recruit.
These forums and blogs have become a lifeline for Al Qaeda and its supporters. There’s a web forum for Al Qaeda in Iraq, another for Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Conversations published on the forums range from a discussion of the will of a recently-deceased leader within the group to advice and support on Adobe Photoshop.
Tomorrow, I’ll publish a story both here and on Quotse detailing four months of investigation into these forums and revealing platforms the terror network uses to spread both its anti-American propaganda and its call for terror.
(Source: matthewkeys)
-
Live TV Coverage of Mumbai Blasts at NDTV
Reuters is reporting 3 killed, 25 injured.
-
Homeland Security hasn’t made us safer
Hardly anyone has seriously scrutinized either the priorities or the spending patterns of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), since their hurried creation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Sure, they get criticized plenty. But year in, year out, they continue to grow faster and cost more — presumably because Americans think they are being protected from terrorism by all that spending. Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the agencies are making Americans any safer.
DHS serves only one clear purpose: to provide unimaginable bonanzas for favored congressional districts around the United States, most of which face no statistically significant security threat at all. One thinks of the $436,504 that the Blackfeet Nation of Montana received in fiscal 2010 “to help strengthen the nation against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks”; the $1,000,000 that the village of Poynette, Wisconsin (pop. 2,266) received in fiscal 2009 for an “emergency operations center”; or the $67,000 worth of surveillance equipment purchased by Marin County, California, and discovered, still in its original packaging, four years later. And indeed, every U.S. state, no matter how landlocked or underpopulated, receives, by law, a fixed percentage of homeland security spending every year.
As for the TSA, I am not aware of a single bomber or bomb plot stopped by its time-wasting procedures. In fact, TSA screeners consistently fail to spot the majority of fake “bombs” and bomb parts the agency periodically plants to test their skills. In Los Angeles, whose airport was targeted by the “millennium plot” on New Year’s 2000, screeners failed some 75 percent of these tests.
Page 1 of 4
