NOTICE AT MOZILLA/FIREFOX

HERE.

Snippet:

The internet we know and love is at risk. Help save it.

Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could profoundly affect the future of the internet. It's called the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The fact is that this legislation as written won't stop piracy. But it would pose a serious threat to social media and user generated content sites (like YouTube) across the internet. It could also undermine some of the core technical systems underlying the internet, creating new cybersecurity risks.

As a non-profit committed to keeping the web open and accessible to all, Mozilla wants to ensure that this legislation does not jeopardize the foundational structure of the Internet.

So we've done two things so far...

Read the rest HERE.

Every tyrant or wannabe tyrant must silence voices to stay in power.

FACEBOOK WISELY SHUTS DOWN HAMAS FAN-GROUP

Facebook has done or allowed some foolish things before, but here, they've done something right, and closed down a terror-supporting group:

The social networking website Facebook has shut down a fan page dedicated to supporters of Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh, London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Sunday.

The page had accumulated over ten thousand "friends" when Facebook removed it, and Facebook has issued no official statement regarding the reasons for the webpage's deletion.

A supervisor of the Haniyeh fan page told Al Hayat that he expects similar action to be taken against a related Facebook page devoted to the apparently more popular Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal who has obtained over seventeen thousand "friends."

And if they do take action, that's good. The less terrorists on Facebook, the better.

Many radical Islamic groups have utilized social networking sites such as Facebook in order to recruit, disseminate propaganda, and fundraise, according to Steve Emerson, terrorism expert and founder of the non-profit research group The Investigative Project on Terror.

"The terrorist war is a two-prong war, one war is fought militarily but the other war is a propaganda war, and that's what the social networking Websites accomplish," stated Emerson.

According to Emerson, the social networking websites are utilized by Islamic radicals to humanize themselves and their struggle, and serve as a means of communication within the group.

"There's a battle for the hearts and minds of the western world and using social networking sites increases their audience, it humanizes them, and that's what they want," said Emerson.

The Investigative Project on Terror is recognized as one of the most comprehensive centers of information on radical Islamic groups and has been used by a number of Government Agencies as a critical source of evidence in the past, according to its official Website.

Emerson has an important point: terrorism cannot be humanized.

A RETURN TO "SEPARATE BUT EQUAL"?

Read about this new web browser:

For African-American Web surfers who just can't relate to their browsers, there's hope: the Blackbird Web browser.

Billed as "the Web browser for the African-American community," it's a modification of Mozilla Firefox with a different color scheme — black and earthy shades of green and brown — as well as certain built-in features meant to appeal to black Americans.

These include "Black Search," which brings up results tailored to what its backers assume are African-American interests; "Black News Ticker," which does more of the same; and "Blackbird TV," which is "the best of Black video on the Web."

"We believe that the Blackbird application can make it easier to find African American related content on the Internet and to interact with other members of the African American community online by sharing stories, news, comments and videos via Blackbird," reads a press release posted by 40A, the somewhat mysterious firm behind the browser, on the CrunchBase Web site.

Downloads (for Windows XP and Vista only) are free; the project claims to be funded by ads and targeted links.

Reaction from black bloggers, tech writers and commenters has been, shall we say, a bit mixed....

I am at a loss for a printable comment to this one.

RADICAL ISLAM'S EXPLOITATION OF THE INTERNET

One Jerusalem's editors attended a briefing by Daniel Kimmage, author of the study of Iraqi Insurgent Media: the War of Images and Ideas, which discussed how Sunni terrorists are exploiting the internet to spread their evil. Here's a video of the discussion below:

The subject is about a week old now and the MSM has shown no interest in covering it.

For Kimmage's entire report on the insurgents, here's the PDF file.

ISLAMISTS ADVOCATE RAIDING AMERICAN FORUMS AND REPEATING DEMOCRATIC TALKING POINTS

We're sure that this quote has been getting passed around, but our RSS reader decided that it didn't like the posts from last Wednesday-Friday and acted accordingly. So it's new to us:

In addition, MEMRI researchers monitoring jihadi Web sites have recently found Islamists trying to influence American anti-war efforts. On the Islamist Al-Mohajroon Web site, someone with the username Al-Wathiq Billah instructs readers on how to infiltrate popular American Internet forums to distribute jihadist films and spread disinformation about the war. "There is no doubt, my brothers, that raiding American forums is among the most important means of obtaining victory in the fierce media war ... and of influencing the views of the weak-minded American who pays his taxes so they will go to the infidel American army. This American is an idiot and does not know where Iraq is ... Every electronic mujahid" must engage in this raiding, Mr. Billah writes. Mr. Billah advises his jihadist readers to "register yourself using a purely American name" and to "invent stories about American soldiers you have personally known..." The writing should, he says, provoke "frustration and anger towards their government, which will ... render them hostile to Bush ... and his Republican Party, and make them feel they must vote to bring the troops back from Iraq as soon as possible."

This is what "not anti-war, just on the other side" means in the context of many of the far left sites to which the Democratic Party is now beholden. The excuses of "jihadists don't pay attention to our media" have never been particularly compelling, but they now require an intimidating combination of denial and ignorance to even pay lip service to. Which is not to say that people shouldn't express dissent against a democratic government during wartime - but it is to say that they shouldn't be allowed to comfortably deflect criticism with fantasized excuses. There's something almost ironic about this: for decades, the academic and activist left could be as crazy as their little hearts desired - precisely because nobody really listened to them. But now, when people are listening, it would behoove them to grow up.

[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]