I noticed while scrolling some old posts that burst.net's communication's skills are as poor now as they were a couple of years ago. In addition, they have now taken to housing terrorist web sites, namely azzam.com
I am a freelance writer and have done a number of articles on terrorist web sites in general (available at bushcountry.org). Not surprisingly, the subject of burst.net came up.
Please let me know what you think of this and what's the deal with burst.net. Then there's the issue of their porno subsidiary as well, unrestricted.net
Are the resular posters still having trouble with the company about technical issues as well?
Here are my thoughts:
Thankfully, we’re beginning to see some media attention paid to the issue of terrorist web sites, some of which experts believe have been used by terrorists to plan attacks against America. But is the issue really that important? I believe it is and so does Reuven Paz, director of the Project for the Research of Radical Islam in Haifa, and senior research scholar at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, (
http://www.ict.org.il).
Paz wrote in a recent article, (
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/artic...?articleid=436)
For the many Al-Qa`idah supporters in the Muslim world and in Muslim communities in the West, these web sites are an important link. They provide a crucial service in keeping the Islamist supporters in touch with the scholars who developed—and provide Islamist religious legitimacy to—ideological and religious messages in support of attacks against Western culture, the United States, Israel and the Jews in general. Two of the major themes here are the Islamic legitimacy of the September 11th attacks in the United States, and the use of suicide terrorism against every possible Western targets all over the world, and not only against Israel.”
Paz points out that one site,
www.azzam.com, is worthy of special note because it is “the web site of the main ideological direction of the global Jihad.”
In addition, as USA Today reporter Jack Kelley pointed out in a recent cover article, (
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...rror-cover.htm) the site, which officials believe has ties to al-Qaeda, encourages Muslims to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight “the Jewish-backed American crusaders,” or American soldiers. It also provides other information intended to help raising suspicion for those planning to travel.
The site reads, “If you are working, either resign from your job and take a year off or request unpaid leave from your employer. Many large companies offer unpaid leave to their employees for periods ranging from two months to one year. That way you can fulfill your obligation (of jihad) and not have to give up your job.”
U.S. officials also told Kelley that the azzam.com site contains encrypted messages – a methodology known as steganography. Alarmingly, officials believe that these hidden messages contain instructions for al-Qaeda’s next terrorist attacks. Officials at the National Security Agency are trying to crack the codes.
Then in addition to the more dangerous encrypted information there’s the openly available information available to anyone who chooses to access the azzam.com site. For example, it contains a newly posted article titled “Blaze of Glory.” Read carefully a short extract of this propaganda piece. The entire piece may be found at
http://66.197.135.110/~azzam/afghan/news/news.php.
“Crawling in and out of the swinging door of consciousness, the Muslim Ummah finds herself torn. Nearly ten months ago, the World was witness to a momentous attack against the greatest Empire of modern times. On September 11, 2001, a little past nine in the morning, time stood still. In a brief moment, the United States of America suffered the pain the people of Iraq and Palestine endure on a daily basis. The people stood beside the rubble, covered in dust and for a moment realized the fragility of their apparent Superpower status.
In one of the most sophisticated, well-planned attacks seen in modern times, the Twin Towers, the source of providing $5 Billion in annual aid to Israel, were destroyed. And what is often conveniently forgotten is that the third plane turned the Pentagon, the symbol for American military supremacy, into a rhombus, whilst the fourth plane was shot down by the US themselves. In barber shops, cafes, markets, everywhere people were whispering celebrations. It obviously meant that someone was upset with the United States, in fact, someone was very upset.
Rather than reflect on the motives for this attack or for the US to stop and think, ‘Why did this happen to us? Why did it not happen to Argentina or New Zealand or Austria?’, the US decided to wipe the world clean of Islam once and for all. They began with Afghanistan, the only nation on Allah’s Earth to have established His Law on the land.”
In spite of the all of this, Pennsylvania-based internet service provider burst.net continues to host the blatantly anti-American, anti-Israeli and pro-terrorist
www.azzam.com
While an initial electronic tracing of the site shows it as being hosted by Houston-based “Everyone’s Internet,” (which also hosts a Hamas web site that asks for donations to buy guns and bullets to fight Israelis) the site is actually hosted by burst.net through a technique called “HTML nested frames” and “page re-direct.”
Here’s what that means.
http://www.azzam.com points to
http://www.qoqaz.net which points to
http://www.azzam.co.uk which points to
http://66.197.135.110/~azzam/which is at burst.net in Pennsylvania.
With that in mind, I wrote the following to burst.net “I am a freelance writer who is doing a series of articles on internet terrorism for a number of web sites ... I am curious why you continue to host azzam.com, a blatantly obvious source of terrorist propaganda. Even an article in USA Today last week does not appear to affect your willingness to host this site.”
When there was no initial response forthcoming, I wrote again...and again...and again... Guess what? I finally received this response from Jason R. Brozena, vice-president of Marketing and Public Relations at BurstNet. Brozena, (who may be reached at
jason@burst.net) huffily responded in an e mail to me, “Please stop the e mails to my department about this topic. There are inherent reasons why I do not and cannot reply to this same email.”
I wrote back to Brozena. “Try responding to it the first time and I wouldn’t keep sendingand sending.”
He e- mailed me back. “I figured you would take the hint after strike one and strike two with no
replies. Guess I was wrong. No harm done, just understand there are much bigger reasons to not reply and that is all you need know.”
Uh huh. “Inherent reasons.” Sure. Inherent reasons that apparently allow terrorist to bounce around from one site to the next without being caught by the government. As my friend Johnathan Galt (who is responsible for providing me with hours of technical help and many leads that have allowed me to write these articles) commented in a recent e-mail, “You can see the logic -- if one site goes down -- perhaps some ‘crusader’ was successful at getting the ISP to shut them off, they can quickly bring it up at another cheap ISP and have their entire site back up in a matter of hours. Isn’t al-Qaeda devious?”
They sure are, Johnathan. I wish we were as clever but sadly it’s evident we’re not. According to the Associated Press in an interview published Saturday, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency says he believes that Osama bin Laden is still alive and hiding along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. If bin Laden is alive, I wonder how much that’s due in part to the efforts of ISP’s like burst.net and others.
It’s just a thought. You decide!
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