Legacy MattersAl Qaeda's "Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America" - from a recently translated document originally published on a jihaddist web site brought to you not by the mainstream media but from the Mudville Gazette, a blog by an American soldier.
Osama Bin Ladin, the document's author Najd al-Rawi says wants his fellow mujahadeen to pay more attention to the opportunities presented by the American media. The author wants more videos, especially of attacks on US soldiers and more English translations of videos that can "throw fear into the American people's hearts."
Lastly, the paper points out what the author considers the best locations for providing this material, and suggests dissemination via the world wide web, following efforts to ensure the origin can't be traced.
Targets listed:
- US discussion forums
- US chat rooms
- Well known newspapers and magazines
- American TV channels with web sites
- Famous US authors with email addresses such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington, and others
- Famous US web sites like MEMRI, or those of the Zionist lobby (AIPAC), or research institutes like Rand
CNN has already aired one video showing American soldiers being killed by snipers with film supplied by a terrorist organization.
Many of these snuff videos have been uploaded to YouTube where they are traded by Islamic jihaadists. The New York Times published a piece in its travel section, Anti-US Attack Videos Spread on the Web, especially on YouTube.
At the same time, American videos that protest the Islamic violence or are anti-jihad have been banned, I presume because the jihaadists are quick to protest. Michelle Malkin is leading an effort of many bloggers to protest the snuff films and other violent videos. Fighting jihad at YouTube
YouTube and the cyber jihad.
The war on terror is not just being fought on battlefields or within intelligence agencies. With the Internet, terrorists are able to attack us by cowing nervous Web site owners into submitting to their demands. When they can't scare Internet operators, they simply try to hack into a site and shut it down. As Mrs. Malkin rightly notes, in the case of YouTube, "instead of boycotting the site, we need to stay and fight." She has urged her readers to keep posting anti-Islamist videos to combat the terrorists' cyber-jihad.
Civil-liberties advocates are constantly warning about the dangers of censorship enacted by the government. What they have just as constantly overlooked is the very real danger of censorship enacted by private businesses fearful of Islamist rage. The only way to fight this assault on our freedoms is by not giving in as YouTube has.