The website INBB has apparently been doing some citizen journalsim recently — and reached some troubling conclusions about a radical Islamic Yahoo group that it suspects is up to no good:
In the days leading up to the Iraqi election, a propaganda war continues to be fought on the Internet by radical Islamics.
However, one apparent major purveyor of terror appears to be off line – at least for the moment.
Yahoo group Global Islamic Media (GIM) which has been on and off line in the last few months (but which until Jan. 18/19 2005 was online at http://thisway.to/jabha and
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/markazislamiilami)
was continuing to post regular messages as well as links to a variety of terror related materials.While an e-mail requesting comment to Yahoo requesting comment about the company’s continuing hosting of this group was not answered, the site was apparently taken off line somewhere between 12 and 15 hours after the Jan. 18 e-mail was sent.
Read the whole post for details of some of the stuff posted online. INBB goes on to say this:
Another link from a message on Global Islamic Media is to www.hostinganime.com/emarah. This site appears to be a duplicate of the Yahoo GIM group and is still available on line.
Hosting Anime is the mysterious and elusive free Internet service provider that at one time was hosting as many as 15 to 20 al Qaeda affiliated and other well known terror sites. Several sites quickly gained notoriety for either showing or providing links to videos of the numerous beheadings that occurred in Iraq.
Hosting Anime provided a trail of false contact information that ranged from a mail drop close to Los Angeles to false names and telephone numbers in Seattle. The only thing certain about Hosting Anime is that its operators leased computer space on equipment belonging to the Houston, TX Internet service provider, "Everyone’s Internet."
Hosting Anime was apparently sold a few months ago and most of the terror sites that were at one time using its services were quickly pulled by the new owners.
INBB also posts some things in Arabic, adding:
This could be instructions for insurgents on how to select a family to stay with. And becuase I got a mess of things to do and I know I won’t be up for translating in the morning, I think that will be it tonight. As much as I’d like to know what these sites are saying, I’m moving on.
The sites need to be pulled off the internet.
And INBB’s PS is notable:
P .S. If any terrorist swine is reading this be warned I’m a southerner. We all carry guns where I’m from.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.