Rebirth of Cool? Online Forums Mark 9/11
As Amm Samm noted, eight years after 9/11 our elected leaders are still having problems deciding who we're actually fighting, or why. There seems to be a similar lack of clarity in the murky world of jihadi internet forums, as Thomas Hegghammer reports at Jihadica:
Like last year, this year's 9/11 anniversary is the occasion of a major cyberbattle over jihadi forums. At least three of the top jihadi discussion forums - Faloja, Shouraa, Shumukh – have been down for the past couple of days, and I bet my left arm they have been hacked for the occasion. Other big forums such as Ana Muslim and Ansar were reportedly down for a while (though I didn't see it and they are back up again now). Minor forums such as Tamkin, Madad al-Suyuf and al-Tahaddi seem to have been untouched.
Fighting each other, or fending off differently-motivated hackers, I don’t know, but it’s interesting to see that the 9/11 anniversary amongst the pyjamahideen is being marked with relative chaos and upheaval. As Thomas has done, I've left the hyperlinks in for interested readers to explore these forums – report back if you like. Thomas did so as a farewell gift to his readers – he's on a blogging sabbatical, so good luck Thomas, and see you on your return.
It's not all doom and gloom though, as Thomas and Internet Haganah both report on the re-emergence of forum granddaddy al-Ekhlaas. Al-Ekhlaas – as well as al-Boraq and al-Firdaws – had been down since just before last year’s 9/11 celebrations. All three are allegedly connected with al-Qaeda's media operation al-Fajr. I wonder if a resurgent al-Ekhlaas will be pumping out media of AQ's new poster-boy, the achingly cool Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi?
Update:
Internet Haganah reports that al-Ekhlaas is down again. For good?
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