From p. 16-17 of Fall 2004 issue of Rising Tide magazine: "....The cause of a lot of the distortion in the Middle East comes from the fact that many of the governments there are not addressing the problems of their people; instead, they are exploiting their people - they deflect the attention to the United States, to Israel, to other things that are irrelevant to the purpose of solving the problems that their people have...."
A couple of lines from their Terrorism Update: "....The success of the decapitation strategy is that is appears to have affected al Qaeda's ability to attack distant, hardened target - such as those in the United States - but has far from eneded bloodshed altogether....countering this threat would require a major departure from the war on terrorism's current decapitation strategy. In this new case, fighting al Qaeda will require undermining its worldview and dissuading local groups from taking up arms against local and foreign targets...."
I remember hearing a news report that indicated that one successful approach has been to point out that jihadists demand loyalty to individuals, like bin Laden, in violation of many precepts of Islam.
From a report released 10/20/04: "....The phenomenon of Islamic hacking for political purposes did not exist in any significant measure prior to the 9/11 events in 2001, save India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine localised cyber skirmishes. International Islamic hacking accelerated throughout 2002 as did global criminal syndicate activity on the internet to reach a new crescendo immediately after the start of war with Iraq in March 2003. The last one year has seen further increases. The targets have included assets belonging to the US, UK, Australia and other coalition partners on the one hand and within the domestic environments of Russia, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Malaysia and Kuwait on the other.
There is mounting evidence that politically motivated hackers from amongst Islamic countries are collaborating with each other and with criminal syndicates from Russia, Latin America and China. They are devising and implementing new strategies for carrying out simultaneous attacks; subtle reconnaissance and surveillance missions including identity theft; organised crime activities to raise funds through phishing scams, spam and malware proliferation; as well as mount globally noticeable yet untraceable distributed denial of service (DDoS) business interruptions against publicly quoted household name corporations within the financial services, information technology and consumer goods sectors.
The key indicators highlighted by the study published by the mi2g Intelligence Unit are as follows:
1. The economic damage from DDoS attacks in 2004 has crossed $34 billion worldwide. The comparable for 2003 was less than $1bn.
2. The number of phishing scams - elaborate online financial fraud and identity theft - carried out against customers of major brand names in 2004 has crossed 117. The comparable for 2003 was 54; and in 2002 the phenomenon hardly existed. The economic damage from phishing scams is estimated to exceed $44 billion worldwide in 2004. The comparable for 2003 was $14 billion.
3. Spam - unsolicited email messages - volume in 2004 has crossed over 3.3 trillion messages worldwide. The comparable for 2003 was 1.6 trillion messages. The economic damage from spam in 2003 is estimated to have crossed $119 billion worldwide. The comparable for 2003 was $58 billion.
4. Major viruses, worms and trojans - malware - in 2004 have caused upwards of $165 billion in damages worldwide. The comparable for 2003 was $83 billion.
5. The economic damage from all forms of digital risk manifestation - covert attacks, spam, phishing scams, DDoS, major malware, overt attacks - in 2004 has crossed $411 billion worldwide. The comparable figure for 2003 was $215 billion...."
Lowlights about some Duke PSM Conference workshop "leaders"
They've earned their arrest "rap" sheets at various anti-everything demonstrations, and several boast of their activities as human shields in Palestinian areas. To those I say - be a human shield; hop on a bus in Jerusalem; stand at a hitchhiking post in Tel Aviv; or now, go to a resort hotel in Taba.
Some low-lights: Abe Greenhouse, famous only for throwing a pie at Natan Sharansky at Rutgers – see the following, written by him, for insight into his personality: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22abe+greenhouse%22+zionist&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=E3XWa.130005%24Io.11030947%40newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net&rnum=3 -
It includes the following:
“….We saw all the standard tourist spots - Masada, Yad Vashem, Independence Hall, the Dead Sea, the Western Wall (where I inserted a note reading "End the motherfuckin' occupation!!!" into the cracks),….” This statement was widely publicized, and perhaps this article and photographs at http://www.masada2000.org/Abe_Greenhouse.html has one of the best reactions….
from http://www.smoothnews.us/texts/no_protest.html: “….Student, Ora Wise is definitely an activist. .... She was arrested during the World Economic Forum in 2002 and spent a weekend in a Brooklyn jail. Then she was arrested again on April 19, 2003 during a protest over the death of Rachel Corrie.... She–along with 17 others, locked themselves together as a human-barricade across Fifth Avenue at Israel’s Bank Leumi…..”
Rima Mutreja, in concluding her letter to the editor of the Washington Times, http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040112-091549-7683r.htm: “The Palestinians have a right to "resist" the Israeli occupation and fight for their nation and sovereignty. Unfortunately, Israel's brutal policies against the Palestinians have given birth to a radical form of resistance.”
Fadi Kiblawi: from http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/July/9o/I%20Saw%20Palestine,%20By%20Fadi%20Kiblawi.htm: “….My hatred for the State [Israel] that sent my ancestors to Lebanon’s camps scattered in the Diaspora of gods and flies, as Mourid Barghouti would say, and sealed our fate into exile….” And the opening of http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=2002112218411467: “Today I am remembering my eldest elders, those who initiated the long struggle of resistance against the arrogance of ultra-nationalism and the violence of exclusion….”And his response to his arrest and release http://www.al-awda.org/frompalestine/: “….The condition of my release was that I no longer enter the Occupied Territories for the duration of my stay in Palestine. Furthermore, I was informed by the immigration intelligence officer that I would never be allowed entry into the country again. This is a foolish delusion of Israel to believe that I, a Palestinian, a U.S. taxpayer and a student of the law, would accept the dictates of an illegal occupying power. Three days and two checkpoints later I was in Ramallah,….”
Yoshie Furuhashi, along with Ora Wise, 2 of the primary organizers of the OSU PSM conference, from http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2003w41/msg00032.htm : “We have and will continue to speak about the beginning and how to right the original wrong (that is to say, the refugees' right to return), but we also need to think about the future. If the future that Palestinians envision includes living in historic Palestine with Jews, Palestinian military strategies and tactics for liberation must be in keeping with such a future. What means make sense in part depends on what ends are desired.-- Yoshie
and to help them learn how to protest, Satya from the Ruckus Society, an offshoot from the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front, leads a workshop. Ruckus Society – probably far more than anyone wants to know at http://www.activistcash.com/organization_quotes.cfm/oid/188. Search for it at David Horowitz’s Frontpage Magazine, too. “Ruckus’s primary contributions to the activist agenda are its “action camps”: weeklong boot camps [they seek $100-$500 donations per attendee] for leftist protesters, usually held a few weeks prior to a major organized demonstration. A few hundred young Ruckus recruits typically attend each camp, where they are trained in the finer points of “police confrontation strategies,” “street blockades,” “urban climbing & rappelling,” “using the media to your advantage,” and “learning to lock your head to something” (among other things).”
Is it any wonder that Duke University, at its own expense, is increasing security for the Oct. 14-17 long weekend of the conference?
