The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been called the world’s richest terror group. While the group generates the majority of its funds through oil fields seized in northern Iraq and Syria, it still relies on a number of other ways to secure financing. Donations from wealthy sympathizers greatly helped ISIS when it was first established. However, now that global governments are aware of ISIS and actively look to track and block all funding efforts through banking channels, donations have become harder to receive. These difficulties have not stopped ISIS from seeking ways to bypass sanctions and money-laundering filters, however. The group has begun to use cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoins as it looks for anonymous and untraceable ways to transfer money.
The ISIS-Bitcoin Nexus
Like most forms of technology, fraudsters, criminals and terror groups will find ways to exploit them for nefarious uses — Bitcoin is no different. Due to its anonymity and untraceabilitiy, it is used for criminal activities such as laundering money, buying and selling illegal goods and services and transferring money to support criminal or terror activities. Al-Khilafah Aridat: The Caliphate Has Returned, a pro-ISIS blog, discusses how Bitcoins can be used to fund the caliphate. The post states that they are untraceable by Western governments and, therefore, they will not be stopped by regulatory screening processes. The blog then discusses the decentralized nature of virtual currencies, specifically stating that they are able to access markets that cross all borders and nation-state regulations to send money instantly and in a way that is untraceable by “Kafir” governments.
In an additional step to keep the senders’ and receivers’ identities secret, the blog post discusses the use of dark wallets. Dark wallets offer Bitcoin users more protection in relation to privacy and identity. It is also widely known that dark wallets may enable serious crimes such as murder, child pornography, drug and weapon sales and terror group financing.
According to the blog, Bitcoins are an entirely anonymous donation system that could send millions of dollars instantly from the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Ghana, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
Child abuse imagery found within bitcoin's blockchain
German researchers have discovered unknown persons are using bitcoin’s blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery, potentially putting the cryptocurrency in jeopardy.
The blockchain is the open-source, distributed ledger that records every bitcoin transaction, but can also store small bits of non-financial data. This data is typically notes about the trade of bitcoin, recording what it was for or other metadata. But it can also be used to store links and files.
Researchers from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany found that around 1,600 files were currently stored in bitcoin’s blockchain. Of the files least eight were of sexual content, including one thought to be an image of child abuse and two that contain 274 links to child abuse content, 142 of which link to dark web services.
While the spending of bitcoin does not necessarily require a copy of the blockchain to facilitate, some processes, such as some mining techniques, require the downloading of the full blockchain or chunks of it.
“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others. Consequently, it would be illegal to participate in a blockchain-based systems as soon as it contains illegal content,” the researchers wrote.
Since mining is essential for the function of bitcoin, as the process records the transactions into the blockchain to verify trades and generates new bitcoin in the process, having illegal content such as child abuse imagery within the blockchain could cause significant issues for the currency.
“We anticipate a high potential for illegal blockchain content to jeopardise blockchain-based systems such as bitcoin in the future,” the researchers wrote.
This is not the first time warnings over the ability to store non-financial data within the blockchain have been issued. Interpol sent out an alert in 2015 saying that “the design of the blockchain means there is the possibility of malware being injected and permanently hosted with no methods currently available to wipe this data”.
The agency warned that the technology could be used in the “sharing of child sexual abuse images where the blockchain could become a safe haven for hosting such data”.
But this is the first time such content has been shown to actually exist, creating a moral and legal quandary around possession and the blockchain.
People are using bitcoin’s system to share child pornography, researchers say
German researchers have found about 1,600 files of non-financial data, some of which link to or contain child pornography and other objectionable material, on the system that stores bitcoin transactions.
The discovery could place certain users of the bitcoin network in legal jeopardy, the researchers said, and could pose an obstacle for greater adoption and mainstream acceptance of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin “miners” and people who have volunteered to use their computers to maintain the network may be liable for the possession of illegal content, the researchers said. But people who own and trade bitcoin but don't participate in the bitcoin network are not directly affected.
The researchers analyzed about 1,600 files on bitcoin's blockchain, the public ledger that serves as the infrastructure for cryptocurrency transactions. Most of the files were harmless, the researchers concluded, but some contained copyright violations and the disclosure of people's identifiable information, and at least eight files had sexual content. Some files depict or link to “mildly pornographic content,” and two files contain 274 links to child pornography websites, the researchers found. Another file is believed to depict a nude image of a minor, the researchers said.
“We thus believe that future blockchain designs must proactively cope with objectionable content,” the researchers from Aachen University and Goethe University Frankfurt wrote in their research paper, which was presented last month at an international conference on financial cryptography in Curacao.
Experts say that the files likely got there when people added the material as notes to transactions or inserted them as if they were transactions themselves. People using the blockchain can add non-financial data to describe a transaction's purpose, insert benign messages or record information for other financial services. Anyone with access to the bitcoin software has the ability to upload content to the blockchain, including miners, exchanges and other individual users.
It isn't known who uploaded the offending material. The seven researchers did not respond to a request for comment.
Although users on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube may see objectionable content posted by others, people who maintain aspects of blockchain-based systems may actually be in possession of such content even if they did not produce it themselves. That's because people who maintain the bitcoin network have to download the entire blockchain or parts of it.
“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others,” the researchers said. It's difficult to pinpoint who added the objectionable files because users on the bitcoin blockchain are pseudonymous and can generate a new address for every transaction.
The researchers said there is legislation in several countries, including the United States, that suggests that illegal content held on the blockchain would be unlawful to possess for all its users. The researchers suggested that technologists creating new blockchain designs could address these issues, perhaps by preventing people from inserting such files or halting their spread, to protect users from potential liability.
Christian Catalini, a professor and founder of MIT’s Cryptoeconomics Lab, said that the offensive material the researchers found in the blockchain does not present a major problem right now because the blockchain was not designed as a large-scale file storage system — meaning it’s still hard for people to use it to post offensive content. But as developers create new blockchains primarily for hosting files, the posting of offensive material could become an issue, he said.
As with certain communications platforms on the Web — such as social media, blog platforms and chat forums — engineers could set rules or create filters for illicit material. “The choice of accessing all sorts of content already exists, and that is a result of having the Internet,” Catalini said. “What's novel here is we have a new technology, but the solution is the same.”
While bitcoin's value soared last year, the cryptocurrency market has faced heightened scrutiny, even as more people are turning to virtual currencies as an investment option. Google said recently that it will ban cryptocurrency-related advertisements on its platform, following a similar decision by Facebook earlier this year, in an attempt to stem misleading ads. The Federal Trade Commission is also cracking down on alleged cryptocurrency schemes and filed a lawsuit last week.
As of Wednesday, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies was more than $350 billion, according to the cryptocurrency tracker coinmarketcap.com.
‘Terrorist dream come true’ ISIS using Bitcoin to fund deadly attacks and buy weapons
Terrorists are using anonymous cryptocurrencies to fund their operations and evade detection as they move huge sums of money across international borders, former US Treasury advisor Elizabeth Rosenberg and Centre for a New American Security researcher Edoardo Saravalle have warned.
Ms Roseberg and Mr Saravalle said: “Bitcoin may be ushering in a new era when the United States finds it nearly impossible to stop the financing of terrorism.
“That’s a frightening development that could allow terrorists to go undetected – until they strike.”
The two experts revealed terrorists have already been caught using cryptocurrencies to fund potential attacks or send money to ISIS.
The purely digital setup means money can be sent anonymously around the world.
Ms Roseberg and Mr Saravalle said: “As a high-tech money laundering device, Bitcoin is a terrorist’s dream come true.”
Cryptocurrencies are completely decentralised and allow criminals to bypass financial institutions and their rules designed to fight terror funding.
In a report, the experts wrote: “Because bitcoin transactions can be completed anonymously, the virtual currency is an ideal way for criminals – including terrorists – to hide their financial transactions from government agencies and law enforcement.”
Al Qaeda finance chief Mustafa Abu al-Yazid lamented the impact of financial regulation on his deaths cult in 2007 noting “there are hundreds wishing to carry out martyrdom-seeking operations, but they can’t find the funds to equip themselves”.
A lab technician from New York has been accused by the US Department of Justice of using cryptocurrencies to fund ISIS.
1984 George Orwell's is real, the name of the tool is called Facebook. The Government weapon to the surface web to control everyone's thinking and opinion. To be honest, the tool is more efective, it's the diablerie at the worldwide energy of people. The need of people spread their energies online is the specific tool to make people lazy and uncapable to have a real social relation.
Better peolpe don't want to have social relations than being prohibited.
None is prohibited, they chose not to have!
The understand the need of the people to have pleasures of virtual life and to map what people need to know, need to do, need to expose.
Facebook is a tool for the control of population, while you inform a big database about your personal tastes, political opinion, sexual desires, sexual orientation, government can map the society and trace the ones who interest.
For exemple, Government can make research of political running, and make a common sense on who to make propaganda, where to do, how to do.
Facebook is the tool that made people lose the limits and give opinions and advices and grow the moral capability of understand everything. This tool gave the oportunity of people have opinion of everything.
People are avaiable to know everyone in intimacy, that is exposed daily, and are capable to to advice or criticize.
Also, Facebook traces the profile of people that can act social in one way and virtually in other way. Spawning the capability on people creat a character for a virtual life, like a gentleman, a leader of a furious ideology, capability of leading, and show something that they are really not at real life.
The exposition of personal life is amazing, because people expose the best of their lives, creating envy and it's good to the society to cause an unrest in personal relations.
The movie "The Circle" stimulates that people must be online all the time, creating a routine of work that goes beyond the work, that goes by their needs, exposition of personal life, opening accounts, etc.
The stimulation of the isolation comes with the sick of the society, making people everyday more and more recluses and this reclusion makes easy to map the population, alienating them to a place that they need to have their pleasure on expose the personal life.
Liars or ‘Genius?’ … Gaga, Zuckerberg and Obama Groomed From Childhood for Their Roles
The Education of Mark Zuckerberg … It’s May 7, a week before Mr. Zuckerberg’s 28th birthday. And, as Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the wider world all know, something big is coming. It is the deal that will either prove once and for all that Facebook is changing just about everything, everywhere, or that the mania over social media and this company, its apotheosis, is spiraling out of control … If all goes well, Facebook will go public on Friday in an I.P.O. that could value it at nearly $100 billion. And so now, as C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg has never been more secure — or, given the coming I.P.O., more exposed … On some evenings, as dusk falls in Menlo Park, Mr. Zuckerberg and a small circle of his lieutenants play roller hockey, and maybe knock back a beer or two, outside Facebook’s headquarters … Out in the courtyard, the crew — almost all of them men, almost all in their 20s — hoot and skate until it is almost too dark to see much of anything. Across the courtyard floor, giant black tiles spell out the word “hack.” … The Facebook boys and their captain, Mark Zuckerberg, skate hard. They line up shots with care. And they play to win. – NY Times (5/13/2012)
Lady Gaga went to geek camp, too … Gaga, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sergey Brin are all alumni of the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins University. CTY and the Duke Talent Identification Program (TIP) are two of the most well-known highly selective programs that have given rise to high-achieving adults … But first, kids have to prove themselves by taking the SAT in about seventh grade, and they need to score as well as or better than 50 percent of the college-bound juniors and seniors taking the SAT or ACT (you can retest later). Summer Institute for the Gifted, another program, also accepts letters of recommendation and participation in a gifted program as credentials. These camps have programs at various colleges in the U.S., and some in other countries, too … All of these programs do offer financial assistance to some students, however. Students and alumni tend to agree that it’s all worth it. – CNN Living (9/6/2010)
Another day, another breathless announcement about the Facebook IPO – this one in the form of an extended article in the New York Times that demands no less than three writers and thousands of words.
And likely it’s all a lie of sorts. Zuckerberg is no genius-mogul and Facebook is more a US intelligence asset than a functioning business. But the show must go on, even though it is increasingly a threadbare pretense. The Internet allows us to see clearly how these gambits (scams) are probably perpetuated.
The idea of the global elites, of course, is always to convince the masses that those who work at the top of gigantic corporations and banks are superhuman and deserve their largesse and fame. A quick look at reality provides another perspective entirely.
For the most part, world leaders are staggeringly incompetent and ill-informed … though it is true that many possess native intelligence of sorts. This is not surprising, as they have been selected for this trait. It is in fact seemingly a growing trend as global governance expands.
It is a simple formula. The power elite that wants to run the world has increasingly integrated a seamless network of testing throughout the West to help identify top human youngsters – those who are symbolically facile, even verbally adept without the additional burden of deep thinking.
From the outside looking in, it may seem that the West is an egalitarian place – especially America – where anyone with the requisite combination of hard work, talent and intelligence can make a large success. But in the 21st century this is increasingly myth, not truth.
Increasingly, the global elites are implementing a command-and-control grid that seeks out talented youngsters at an earlier and earlier age.
US President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program may be seen as just another one of his goonish, authoritarian visions. But when examined in a larger context, one can see that the US government has laid a grid across the country to identify up-and-coming youngsters at any level, even as young as elementary school.
Once identified, these youngsters are tracked and promoted. They may be the recipients of sudden scholarships or other forms of largesse. Certainly, their quiet rise from obscurity to, possibly, the world stage is supported by a variety of hidden contacts and networks.
These youngsters, eventually, have access to an entire gamut of global elite resources including the vast shadowy marketing machines of Tavistock and other elite promotional facilities.
All they need to do is come up with an idea, a technology (no matter how ephemeral) or in the case of Lady Gaga, a song, a chant … a rap – and the star-making machine goes to work. (OK, perhaps it is NOT preordained but it certainly is close to it.)
It’s a kind of organized crime approach to cultivating talent. After making their selections, elite handlers begin to make the pitch. The quid-pro-quo is surely obvious, and “Monarch Programs” are not necessary. Most – like Zuckerberg – acquiesce willingly and do whatever is required.
Of course, many young people mature late and mathematical capability is not the only kind of creativity. This is not an issue to the top elites. They apparently wish to select for numerical facilities (music, language and math skills) because the owners of such talents are likely to be linear rather than holistic thinkers.
The idea is to present geniuses with outward, dazzling skills but with little in the way of insight or determination to investigate the realities of their larger privilege.
In a sense these youngsters are like performing monkeys, fabulously skilled but incurious when it comes to the system that has launched them. Lady Gaga is said to have composed music at four. Zuckerberg supposedly speaks five languages including Latin. These are the so-called “beautiful minds.”
The privileges are evident and obvious. Zuckerberg, landing in Harvard with the eyes of the elite upon him, was soon smothered in money from various questionable sources including those with close ties to US Intel. Now his company is worth US$100 billion and climbing.
Lady Gaga’s rise was laid by a massive marketing campaign that is surely not available to most other youngsters with similar talents. She entertains billions with increasingly less agile and tuneful songs – or outright plagiarisms.
And when it comes to politics, top operators like US President Barack Obama seem almost entirely manufactured. Obama has hardly revealed anything substantive about his background, and what he has shared has been questionable, or even branded as a forgery. Nonetheless, he may win re-election, such is the power of those who stand in the shadows behind him.
The CNN Living article quoted above seems to give the game away. What are the odds that Lady Gaga, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg went to the same special school as youngsters? They are astronomical … except that the elites have set up a system to capture such individuals while they are young. The Duke affiliation is no accident, either.
It is no coincidence that the “best and brightest” constantly work for the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund or manifestations of the UN or NGOs. They populate the top levels of Western corporate privilege, politics and mainstream media.
One can visualize them as the fodder of global governance. They are the stylish male and female models of the New World Order – groomed to portray a face that is at once friendly and brilliant in order to convince lesser mortals that the coming globalism is inevitable. The “smartest people” are participating, after all.
An uber-class is being built up patiently, piece by piece. Youngsters in the West may dream of climbing ambitiously to the top, but little do they know the places are already taken.
How the NSA & FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool
The National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool.
Documents released alongside security journalist Glenn Greenwald’s new book, “No Place To Hide,” reveal the NSA and FBI partnership, in which the two agencies developed techniques for exploiting Facebook chats, capturing private photos, collecting IP addresses, and gathering private profile data.
NSA documents make painfully clear how the agencies collected information “by exploiting inherent weaknesses in Facebook’s security model” through its use of the popular Akamai content delivery network. The NSA describes its methods as “assumed authentication,” and “security through obscurity.”
The perfection of the facebook is in the psychossocial impact, because even with the security and political understanding, the need of being accept in one group, makes the need of people to join any specific group and makes people expose their own needs to get accepted.
Psychological warfare is an aspect of modern psychological operations (PSYOP), know by MISO, Psy Ops, Political Warfare, "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda. It's done to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people, not causing direct injuries but mental trouble, like depression, medicine dependency and psychological help.
Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. Facebook doesn't use tortures, but use the mental capability of association, associate pleasures on the need of showing peopleselves.
It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. The agenda of political programs are involved into the spread of propaganda and subversion in society, the demonization of people with controversial ideas of social ecumenism makes people fall into isolated groups and depression, also, other kind of isolation, made facebook the perfect tool for terrorism recruitment.
It is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops' psychological states. Target audiences can be governments, organizations, groups, and individuals, and is not just limited to soldiers. Civilians of foreign territories can also be targeted by technology and media so as to cause an effect in the government of their country.
In Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul discusses psychological warfare as a common peace policy practice between nations as a form of indirect aggression.
This type of propaganda drains the public opinion of an opposing regime by stripping away its power on public opinion.
The Facebook with the faster spread of opinion and news, including misinformation and fake news make people have a constant diverge of opinion, and put away people related before.
Facebook is created to spawn fears, spread news, spread thesis of chaos and give people the capability to solve, give the government the capability of cenroship, and give the policite the capability to link people and group them. The Synthesis is done by the spread of fake news, chaotic news, fast communication on news, that follows the capability of the State on solve problems.
The Dialectic is one of the theorietical forms that Facebook used the virtual logic to create the physical world departing from the virtual.
May Zuckerberg be the nineth, after the death of Rockefeller, and Obama is the 8th.
“On our journey to connect the world, we often discuss products we’re building and updates on our business. Today I want to focus on the most important question of all: are we building the world we all want?
“History is the story of how we’ve learned to come together in ever greater numbers — from tribes to cities to nations. At each step, we built social infrastructure like communities, media and governments to empower us to achieve things we couldn’t on our own.
“Today we are close to taking our next step. Our greatest opportunities are now global — like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses — like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.
“This is especially important right now. Facebook stands for bringing us closer together and building a global community.”
Zuckerberg then spoke of the need to build supportive, safe, informed, civically-engaged and inclusive communities.
He wondered: “How do we help people build an inclusive community that reflects our collective values and common humanity from local to global levels, spanning cultures, nations and regions in a world with few examples of global communities?”
He then addressed each point in its own section, citing personal stories of people’s lives and struggles to make his overall point: think global first.
And some of his solutions:
“The most successful physical communities have engaged leaders, and we’ve seen the same with online groups as well. In Berlin, a man named Monis Bukhari runs a group where he personally helps refugees find homes and jobs. Today, Facebook’s tools for group admins are relatively simple. We plan to build more tools to empower community leaders like Monis to run and grow their groups the way they’d like, similar to what we’ve done with Pages.”
“Looking ahead, one of our greatest opportunities to keep people safe is building artificial intelligence to understand more quickly and accurately what is happening across our community.”
“We noticed some people share stories based on sensational headlines without ever reading the story. In general, if you become less likely to share a story after reading it, that’s a good sign the headline was sensational. If you’re more likely to share a story after reading it, that’s often a sign of good in-depth content. We recently started reducing sensationalism in News Feed by taking this into account for pieces of content, and going forward signals like this will identify sensational publishers as well. There are many steps like this we have taken and will keep taking to reduce sensationalism and help build a more informed community.”
“[We should work toward] establishing a new process for citizens worldwide to participate in collective decision-making. … In the United States election last year, we helped more than 2 million people register to vote and then go vote.”
“Building an inclusive global community requires establishing a new process for citizens worldwide to participate in community governance.”
His summary?
More of the same: More thinking of the global good; less thinking of the individual.
More ‘new world order’ type thinking; less sovereignty and independence.
“I hope we have the focus to take the long view and build the new social infrastructure to create the world we want for generations to come,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The mission is to take off the autonomy of everyone! Take off the private life! Take off your accounts! Have your life and sell your private life to corporations, governments and censor you!
It doesn’t take much forethought to realize that there are countless privacy pitfalls in a world where a near-endless stream of personal bits is indiscriminately posted, indefinitely stored, and quietly collected and analyzed by marketers, identity thieves, and professional government snoops in America and abroad. The public controversies that have erupted to date—Facebook’s drastic terms of service changes and Google Buzz’s forced sharing of email contacts are only the first snares in a rapidly growing thicket of social networking privacy issues.
Facebook is CIA-Funded Data-Mining Project:
The prime question to ask is if Facebook is not being used for Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and Mossad? And, why is Chris Hughes on the guest list of the Bilderberg meeting of 2011? Do you really believe the boys from collage are not Zionists and tie themselves with the New World Order agenda considering the history of controversial changes that they were forced to withdraw and change because of public opinion.
Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC. The second round of funding into Facebook ($12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.
Facebook has been a place to spread of ideas and the solution for the globalists are the ecumenism of everyone, the multiculturalism to break culture and autonomy, the spread of the idea of migration as a break of local authority.
The spread of idea of drug use and the role gender in schools and socialist ideas in web are the tool that can be linked together and put poeple with same ideas together.
In other way, Facebook has a censorship to ideas against the new world order, like militarism, patriotism, autonomy and anti-monotheistic religion, the spread of atheism as a anti order is good, but the spread of atheism as a capability of thinking and self authority hurst the government and makes the decision of attacking as a exclusion of society by these members.
Facebook baceme the part of the plan to control the population, with military psyops in an advanced level of mind control, and people control.
The idea is take the sexual desires in person, making people has less children, the idea is spread the idea of animals are better than children, and the groups engaged in animal causes, veganism, homoaffectivity are active in these causes to promote a low growing of population, as the multinational corporations keeps the genocide of agriculture, slaughterhouses, and primal objectives.
There is a spread of propaganda of unhealthy food, promotion for Mc Donald's in direct contact with the consumers, other things are the promotion of sexual activities and prostitution, and the sexual predators that grew years from now, because the lack of control of parents in kids.
Facebook became the friend of the parents, because they let the children online while they have their personal stuff, even if it's to be at Facebook posting, but they have no personal activities anymore.
That's why schools has the more influence at the education than the learning, and parents educate less.
WikiLeaks founder: Facebook is "most appalling spying machine ever invented"
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be awaiting extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges but that doesn't mean the media has lost interest in what he has to say about various important issues. In a recent interview with Russia Today, Assange was asked for his perspective on the revolutions in the Middle East.
After Assange compared the differences between what is happening in Egypt and Libya, he was asked about the role of social networks such as Facebook. That's when the WikiLeaks founder erupted:
Facebook, in particular, is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It's not a matter of serving a subpoena – they have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.
Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it's not like that. It's simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them. And it's costly for them to hand out records, one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States' intelligence agencies, in building this database for them.
Facebook has since responded, denying Assange's claims at least somewhat. "We don't respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data — we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard."
Keep liking and posting! We need your likes! We need you showing how good is your life!
In his book 1984, George Orwell detailed a dystopian world wherein a person or persona called “Big Brother” saw everything that people did and where the central government pushed its agenda through propaganda, spying, monitoring, and thought controls.
That book was published in 1949. It is now 2017, and while we do not exactly have a Big Brother persona governing us, the Orwellian scenario is pretty much familiar. And it is not by means of some ultra-fascist government or political party. Rather, our loss of privacy and Big Brother’s influence on us are brought about by none other than our penchant for sharing on social media.
What privacy?
In 2013 Vint Cerf, who is considered as the father of the internet, said that “privacy may actually be an anomaly.” Throughout history, people preferred communal settings in just about anything — the concept of solitude and privacy was something limited to monasticism.
Greg Ferenstein outlined the history of 3,000 years of privacy through 46 images. You might notice that history agrees with Cerf — and the artworks and imagery at least showed how people did things on a communal nature. It was only during the industrial revolution that we started to have a preference for privacy.
And with the rise of social media, that cycle means we are now moving again toward loss of privacy.
Imagine how much people have been sharing online, with friends and even the public. This includes photos, status updates, locations, all that while tagging friends who may not be aware they are being connected with photos, events, and places.
It’s not even limited to Facebook. No matter how little you share, all the meta data involved in just about anything you do online can constitute your digital persona.
All of these digital crumbs, so to speak, paint a digital picture of us, which bots, machines, and even data scientists, can lead to our digital makeup. Add to that the evolving technologies of facial recognition and machine learning — this means tech companies might know more about us than we do.
And this is extremely useful to anyone who needs to do any customer targeting. Ask advertising agencies and marketers.
In fact, ask Facebook.
Did you know that the social network may have the capability to listen in even when we are not actively sharing information or using the mobile app?
Facebook may be listening
You heard that right.
Given the amount of permissions we give social networks when we install apps on our mobile devices, we might as well just hand them over privileged access to our personal lives. With passive listening technologies, for instance, Facebook might be able to eavesdrop on conversations.
In 2016, a University of South Florida mass communications professor, Kelli Burns, shared her observations that the Facebook app delivered content based on things she mentioned in a conversation.
The idea that Facebook is passively spying has since been debunked, and Burns herself said her comments may have been taken out of context. However, this does not preclude the fact that Facebook itself has admitted to using smartphones’ microphones whenever necessary. “We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio,” it said in a statement.
The expansion of computer databases on the internet has provided the greatest access yet to sexyality explicit images access by both adults and children. Cyber porn is more than naked women. Demand for images goes far beyond what can be found in a bookstore magazine rack. Pedophilia, bestiality, bondage and sadomasochism make up a majority of the images. These are images, movies and online chat that use to be only avaiable on the bad side of town but which can now be obtained in the privacy of the one's home. Home computers have become the "ultimate brown wrapper" for pornography.
Cybersex/Pornography Addiction is a specific sub-tyme of Internet addiction. Estimates suggest that 1 in 5 Internet addictis are engaged in some form of online sexual activity (primarly viewing cyber porn and/or engaging in cybersex).
Studies show that men are more likely to view cyber porn, while women are more likely to engage in erotic chat. People who suffer from low self-esteem, distorted body image, untreated sexyal dysfunction, or prior sexual addiction are more at risk to develop cybersex/cyber porn addictions. In particular, sex addicts often turn to the internet as new and safe sexual outlet to fulfull their underlying compulsive habit.
Online pornography is popular. Sexually explicit forums are the most popular areas on computer online services online porn is big business. Nearly three fourths (71%) of the sexyally explicit images surveyed originate from adult bulletin-board systems (BBS) attempting to lure customers to additional collections of cyber porn. There they can charge monthly fees and take credit card numbers for individuals images. The five largest adult BBS systems have annual revenues in excess of $ 1 million.
Cyber Terrorism and Information Warfare - Dr M N Sirohi
Law Enforcement against Child Porngraphy
The US federal Police racked up arrest after arrest for online traffikers in child pornography, working through Operation Predator (run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Innocent Images Initiatite (fun by FBI). Billy Joe Bowser, 34, and Anthony Adams, 49, of Springfield, III were notable cyber pornography predators. The two men had more than 100,000 images of child porn that included kids less than 2 years old, trading them on a chat room called "Kiddypics and Kiddyvids" using WinMX software for "peer-to-peer" file sharing. Browser received maxmimum sentence of 20 years in prison; Adams got 19 years (McLaughlin, 2000, Huges, 2002).
The governments of developed countries have already realized the urgency of problem of child pornography. Many of the cases that law enforcement deal with the multi-jurisctional, including other countries. The lack of defnitional consensus introduces varios challenges for officers as they deal with international cases. According to researches it is possible to state that there is a relation of child and adult pornography to other grave organized crimes, such as international terrorism. Child pornography industry can be a financial support for terrorists groupings and commiting terrorist acts. The transanational nature of this crime is obvious. In this connection, it is very important to develop an effective system of cooperation between varios law enforcement agencies in child pornography online investigations (Huges, 2002).
Cyber Crime and Digital Disorder - P. Madhava Soma Sundaram and Syed Umarhathab
Pornography and National Security
Jennifer S. Bryson is the director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/08/3651/
Pornography is not a necessary cause of terrorism. The abolition of pornography would not lead to the cessation of terrorism in the world. Terrorism existed well before graphic pornography and its mass spread via the internet.
Likewise, pornography is not a sufficient cause for terrorism. There are pornography users, even addicts, who do not become terrorists. Given how widespread the viewing of pornography is today, if the direct result of each individual’s pornography use were terrorist violence, one could conceivably argue that pornography proliferation would pose a more widespread threat to human existence than nuclear proliferation.
Yet pornography now appears frequently in the possession of violent terrorists and their supporters, including Osama bin Laden. Regarding “smut” found on captured media, in 2010, a Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst was quoted in The Atlantic: “We have terabytes of this stuff.” Terabytes. That’s a lot of “smut.”
...
In seeking to understand terrorists, studying their ideas alone is not enough. We need to study and understand their minds—and in this day and age, this includes, in perhaps more cases than we are aware of, minds shaped by pornography.
Sometimes terrorists’ identification of their motivating ideologies can tell us more about who the terrorists aspire to be than who they actually are. Most significantly, if we want to understand modern terrorism in order better to prevent and counter it, we need to go beyond the surface level of what terrorists want us to believe about themselves and delve instead, to the extent possible, into the deepest levels of their actual lived reality.
...
Contrary to his views of 2009 and contrary to the view of other Muslims, including Muslim jurists, Abdo claimed in 2010, “Any Muslim who knows his religion or maybe takes into account what his religion says can find out very clearly why he should not participate in the U.S. military.” Abdo wrote that instead of deploying to Afghanistan, he wanted to use his time to "revive the faith of the Muslim nation." He also claimed, "I want to use my experience to show Muslims how we can lead our lives.”
Yet his words do not tell the whole story. As evidenced by Abdo’s possession of child pornography, he appears to have had interests other than—and in conflict with—just being a man who “knows his religion” or who takes his religion “into account.”
When there is dissonance of words and actions, words are not enough to explain behavior. What is needed is a comprehensive and authentic account of who an individual is. Focusing exclusively on ideology, as expressed in words, risks turning a blind eye to the internal reality of a person as expressed in his or her actions.
If we want to understand the inner workings of terrorists and would-be terrorists, we must seek to understand their entire person, including the relationship—or inconsistencies—between their words and actions. In the case of the 9/11 hijackers who visited strip clubs, and in the case of Abdo and among what seems like an increasing number of terrorists, actions include sexual perversions and pornography use that cannot be squared with what these ideological terrorists and their supporters espouse.
Are governments doing enough to prevent the global expansion of the sex industry?
Globalization has increased human interaction around the world due to technological advances and the diminishing significance of state and territory borders. This increased interaction has required governments to cooperate more extensively than ever before to overcome some of the negative effects of globalization. These effects include global law enforcement, the illicit drug trade, global ecological problems and the increase of the global sex industry. This essay will discuss what governments worldwide are doing to prevent the global expansion of the highly profitable sex industry, in the areas of entertainment, pornography and prostitution. The entertainment industry will focus on advertising, modelling and music. The pornography industry will discuss Internet pornography, regulations and the effects of children, and the prostitution industry will focus on trafficking, sex tourism and international organisations.
Governments and Advertising bodies around the world are finding it very difficult to control the use of sex in advertising. Many advertisers find it beneficial to use sex in their advertising as it attracts the consumer’s attention and makes them associate sex and a better lifestyle with their product, therefore increasing sales. These advertisers sometimes push the boundaries and create ads which can be seen to be indecent, sexy, and sexist. It has been widely accepted that sex in advertising needs to be controlled to protect public morals and the integrity and effectiveness of advertising. The control of this situation is difficult because society’s values and attitudes in different countries are constantly changing and therefore hard to define. If governments create regulations, they then impede on the freedom of advertisers. Government regulation limits “the rights of advertisers to communicate with the public…to receive information about products.” Due to these reasons many governments do not regulate on advertising but rely on self-regulating bodies.
See that Latinas are one of the most atractive women by it's bodies, and Brazi has a great sexual tourism, that is explored by local authorities, majors, ministers and in other cases by governors and also in federal sphere.
There were cases that tax insention to prostitution houses, to support more of the sexual tourism and when businessmen are interested on close business, the major part of the business are promoted with the promisse of a sexual act.
Arabs are involved into sexual interest in business too, in general sheiks are able to buy women when they are interested to put their hareem. It's a normal action on states that are not ruled by moral values, but by imediate actions and interest on gaining favours.
The use of sex in advertising can cause negative effects on children. In one survey, it was discovered that “children watch more than 1 300 hours of television annually, which resulted in exposure to over 20 000 commercials.” When advertisers use sex in their ads as a technique to increase sales, it can become confusing and misleading to children. Children could grow up associating sex with products instead of sex with love, and it may also increase sexual activity among the young. This would lead to more unwanted pregnancies, more STDs and more children with self-esteem issues over body images. Governments worldwide should prevent this type of advertising from existing and expanding. They could do this by limiting these commercials to late night television, create financial disincentives to advertisers and force TV networks to comply with government regulations.
...
In the age of globalization, pornography has moved behind closed doors. Legal sites involve subscription fees and require commercial identification services; these are sometimes provided by ISP’s. Research by Caslon explains that sexual acts without consent such as rape, bestiality and child pornography to young men and women can be linked to sexual aggression. This has provided grounds for real concern. In 1997, the Minister of justice in Canada was given the power to minimise child and violent pornography. This was done with the help of ISP’s, along with the identification of persons that indulge in such material. These people identified are then banned from the Internet and given penalties such as, fines and imprisonment.
In regards to Internet pornography, the best form of censorship is done at home. Filter programs such as Cyber Sitter or V-chip have a list of trigger words which block access to sites that include these words. This is because at best, ISP’s are just a distribution medium and do not input or have editorial control in Australia. Internet service providers in Australia are only bound to provide bandwidth and disk space regardless of content, as information and material flows over it. Australian law states that an ISP can not knowingly provide material of a graphic or illegal content, although this is hampered by the fact that it only applies to material stored on Australian systems. ISP’s are responsible for restricting sites to children with the programs mentioned above, however they are not designed to be censors.
Use of Feminism to prevent pornography is a ambiguous strategy, embracing both global causes. They use feminism to support a probable rape culture male and also put the men as a possible predator and put the idea that women can be individual, with no need of a man or a family. By the ther side, pornography puts the mind of they humans into a predator form of pleasure need, that's why many NGOs that are anti-pornography, spread the idea of feminism, also are involved with sexual forums.
Onion, 4chan, also AVAAZ, of Soros, Xvideos, Xhamster, Ashley Madison are exemples of websites that recruit people and put their data into a database that can control the access and the type or pornography. When you search at google a kind of image, you inform google about your sexual preference, your sexual fetishes. When you go to a news site, the free propaganda shows sexual products related to the researches you did before.
Feminism is a hypocrate form of moral values, but the feminism are involved into reverse pornography and the denial of the society needs, that is family, identity and autonomy. The idea of spread of independent moms, lesbianism and gay agenda, even in schools, shows that feminism and pornography are involved in the same agenda, but in different moral ways.
Femen ‘ladies’ were recruited from the model circuit. It’s an old trick, put a model on centerstage, for sure she will glue around her a bunch of feminists, man-haters, lesbians and manginas looking for the same, all the circus. In a sense I’m glad that the feminist agenda has sinked to such lows, they are exposing what truly they are.
See the connection? TRUMP MUST BE STOPPED - PUTIN MUST BE DEFEATED. So globalism is using feminists to create civil unrest. Why? because that gregarious thing, also called sheep belonging. Only problem ladies, the flashing tits act doesn’t have any impact anymore in this year 2017. Nor the pubic hair act, moreover if performed by an old aunt. So, here comes the Gender Gap. That’s the carrot to make women at large to engage the movement. But make not mistake. When you see a lady flashing het tits with an ad about Gender Gap, in reality she is pushing the globalist agenda, nothing more, nothing else. She may think flashing tits will get her extra money, it won’t happens, sorry to burst this gigantic bubble, the party is over.
GEORGE SOROS TEAMS UP WITH PORN INDUSTRY TO REGULATE THE INTERNET
https://www.infowars.com/george-soros-teams-up-with-porn-industry-to-regulate-the-internet/
Billionaire George Soros gives $246million to 100 groups behind the 'Day Without a Woman' protest
Billionaire businessman George Soros has reportedly given $246million to multiple groups behind the Day Without a Woman protest.
Conservative think tank Media Research Center says the liberal hedge-investor gave funding to 100 out of the 544 partners supporting the women's cause between 2010 and 2014.
Contributions were given to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Watch, the Center for American Progress, with the top recipient being the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) who received $37.3million.
According to NSA documents made public by Edward Snowden’s leaks, countless “radicals” have called for Jihad by day but watched porn by night. One damaging piece of evidence shows a “militant” using “sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”
It’s easy to imagine pornography’s empowering effect upon would-be jihadists, who may unable to afford the price of a wife or a prostitute, who are young, without normal sexual outlets and already predisposed to violence towards women — and to pedophilia.
Yet, while most of the Muslim world is profoundly sexist (and while porn is everywhere there, too), few Muslims approve of porn. Indeed, its leaders often castigate the West for exposing women in a sexually explicit way.
Mia Khalifa quit porn because of death threats from terrorists
Former adult film star Mia Khalifa has revealed she left porn because she received death threats from terrorists.
The Lebanese-American influencer and social media star said she received threats from the so-called Islamic State (or Daesh), with some messages even threatening decapitation.
"It all started to spiral out of control when the death threats from ISIS started coming in. That's when I stepped away," the 25-year-old told disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong on his podcast Forward this week, as reported by Daily Star.
According to the FBI, the problem is real—and growing worse. Child pornography is the fastest growing type of smut in America’s booming $13 billion industry, generating more revenue than the NFL. Child pornography circulation exists, not only on American soil, but also globally. And news media shined a bright light on this truth after raids on Osama bin Laden’s compound revealed profuse amounts of pornography.
Terrorists and extremists not only use pornography, they profit on it. According to Nassif, Muslim extremists use child pornography to encrypt their messages and use pornographic websites to fund terrorist activity. Many of these extremists are highly educated Ph.D.s, communicating via websites with intelligence agency-level security.
Indefinite numbers of women and children involved in the pornography industry are victims of human trafficking. Indeed, Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, says: “The proliferation of hardcore adult pornography on the Internet and elsewhere is contributing to the demand for prostitution and thus, [the demand] for women and children trafficked into prostitution.”
As exploitation funds terrorism, many, including the U.S. government, consider human trafficking a form of terrorism in and of itself. Nassif reflects on the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons during the Bush administration, which rated nations on how they were combating human trafficking.
“For a nation to be on the report was a disaster,” Nassif recalls. “No one wants to be on the report. The key is public pressure. When you link them to something that sounds so horrific ... you’ll get the public opinion against them.”
Terrorism is using low self-esteem as lonewolves. Many of these soldiers that are recruited in forums are obssessed with images of militaria, good imagery of weapons and the capability of changing the world by an ideal.
Together this low-self-esteem, there is a need of being accepted by society as a normal man, for exemple a fat boy that want to have sex with the cutiest girl.
This break of the moral values of the society makes the pornography of rough imageries of sex seems normal, and the spread of a jihadist propaganda of inferiority of women, seems normal to these low-capability nerds of thinking by theirselves.
Unfortunately government, feminists, NGOs etc, blame on jihadists the spread of rape culture and mysoginist actions, but it's a lack of control of parents at first, it's a cultural form of social coexistence.
Religion is a drug on that, the conservatives nowadays spread the idea of jihadism as a problem for the mysoginism, but it's a seed that comes from the judaism. In Torah and Talmud, the women are very inferior to men, are like devil's creation. Christianity kept this evil work and the result was the medieval persecution of women and the Malleus Mallericarum, a book that showed how to torture and treat women.
So, don't belive when a christian comes with moral values explaining that women and men are equal, because the monotheism are the real root of the pornography and mysoginy. Christians are the most people involved into women agression daily and they belive that their gospel are over the laws and constitutions.
Also, jews and christians are the most involved in porn industry, porn directors and the prohibition of pornography in Islam, makes the muslims very involved with pornography whey they are out of their countries. Involved in secular marriages but keeping the rule of the poligamy or obligation of the women to follow their rules. Like the jews with non jew women and they follow the traditions of Torah Leviticus.
See that the Vatican State is the one who covers more cases of pedophily in the world, the cardinals are involved in sexual scandals, but the investigations keep on the Vatican and with the high council, not permiting to international police to investigate, and some of the national policies are stopped by the high council of Vatican.
Christian non-catholics are involved in many cases of sexual abuse, because of the brainwash that makes people belive that the sheppard can have the right of some more actions that they cannot do in intimacy of home. In many cases, there are cheating and also abuse of children, are common, specially in thrid world countries and neo-christianized colonies, like in Africa, that they have a culture of menstrual cycle and influence of the pagan gods in their lives, and christian uses it to promote abuse and sexual trafficking.
The book of the Protocols spread the idea of:
Take all prayer and Bible instruction out of the schools and introduce pornography, vulgarity, and courses in sex. If we can make one generation of any nation immoral and sexy, we can take that nation. - The moral values are not being taught in schools anymore. They are using gender roles, parties ideologies and leftists ideas. Not religion, but history, not prayers, but anthems, not christianity, but moral ando social values. Respect. Education comes from home, but teachers nowadays have the rights to educate your children.
Completely destroy every thought of patriotism, national sovereignty, individualism, and a private competitive enterprise system. - Individualism was destroyed with internet in schools. Everybody has a group that can be incontact with colleges and teachers. This happens to have lot of sexual harassment between teachers and students and the cases of pedophilia had grown more and more.
Circulate vulgar, pornographic literature and pictures and encourage the unrestricted sale and general use of alcoholic beverage and drugs to weaken and corrupt the youth. - The idea of sexual education not as educative for teenagers, but to spread homosexuality in teenagers as a choice. Spread the idea of everyone has the right to use drugs to experience at least one time and the parents have no autority because life belongs to the ones who lives it.
Karl Marx was into the subversive idea of disrupt the mind of chilndren, involve them into sexual initiaion, practic that was common on Maoist China, Kim Jong Un North Korea, and Cuba, also other nations that were involved into leftist government, like Burma, Vietnam and Tailand.
Terrorists Using Porn Pictures, Ebay Listings to Coordinate Attacks, Claims New Book on Mossad
Terrorists have developed several new techniques to communicate with each online by leaving coded messages on websites like eBay and Reddit.
This is according to a new book, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad.
Terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda are now using a technique to encrypt its messages in goods offered for sale on eBay, say code-breakers
Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence officers who spent time tracking the Internet message board Reddit found more than once, that a terrorist used hexadecimal characters and prime numbers as code.
After the messages were decoded, they sometimes indicated an attack was being planned or even about to happen.
Terrorists are even hiding messages in ‘X-rated pornographic pictures which conceal documents and orders for the next target,’ one intelligence source told author Gordon Thomas.
Some intelligence agencies such as Mossad and MI6 have recruited linguist specialists in Arabic, Urdu and Pashto to translate the online magazines that both al-Qaeda and ISIS are publishing with instructions.
They’re looking to infiltrate a message about a planned attack before it takes place.
Cyber units worldwide are becoming increasingly important in the fight against terror.
A number of the most skilled cryptologists in the Mossad unit for example, have mastered steganography, how to conceal secret information within a digital file.
Cryptologists have the ability to explore an area inaccessible to the search engines of Google, Yahoo and Bing called the dark side, or dark web.
This no-go zone contains billions of Web pages and is estimated to be 5,000 times larger than any other on the Internet.
By working with together, intelligence agencies hope to prevent future attacks.
When an attack appears imminent in a particular country, Mossad sends details to that nation’s intelligence service’s cybercommand.
Is there a link between pornography and terrorism? If the US’s National Security Agency is to be believed, as early as 2008 a probe into the porn viewing habits of terrorists revealed that coded messages were being sent through porn videos.
Indian agencies point out that porn gangs do not depend on terror networks. However terrorists have very often relied on pornography to send out coded messages between their associates. What is even more shocking that in most of the cases across the world, child porn is the most used medium to send out coded messages.
In 2006 UK officials arrested a man with plenty of child porn material. During the course of the investigations it was found that he used to preach at a London mosque. It was found that each of the clips that he circulated contained a coded message relating to terrorism.
Indian agencies point out that international terror groups which have an interest in India too have used several such tactics to communicate. It is done either through porn videos or plain movie clips. Sometimes a message is encoded in an ordinary photograph of a film star. However such clips cannot be sent out to anyone and everyone. It is always between two associates who have trained together and then split up for an operation. They only would understand and read the codes since they would have trained specifically for the purpose.
However, the primary concern for the Indian agencies is social media. Coded messages, both text and video, have been sent out through social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
The NSA handled this subject very differently. The agency basically had a two pronged strategy. While it kept a close watch on what was being shared on the porn space on the internet, the other agenda the NSA undertook was more like blackmail. The NSA through its snooping programme targeted Sunni radicalisers who viewed porn. They kept tabs on their porn habits and the intention was to embarrass them in public.
ISIS kiddie-porn and sex slaves; ‘Porn driven losers, low self-esteem’
As New York Post reporter Phyllis Chesler cited, when members of the US Navy SEALs raided the Pakistani compound that both housed and protected al-Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, the Navy special ops team “found a fairly extensive stash of modern pornography in his possession.” As it turns out, not only was the now decomposing carcass that once was Usama bin Laden the only aficionado of pornography involved in the global caliphate movement, police raids of terrorist cells in recent years conducted “in the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain have yielded countless images of hard-core child pornography.”
Even in recent weeks, the now dead jihadists who participated in the Paris Massacre not only enjoyed porn, they were big fans of kiddie porn. As police investigators searched the laptops of Amedy Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi for evidence, it was uncovered that “both kept child-porn photos on their laptops, which included ‘sickening pictures of young boys and girls involved in sexual acts with adults.'”
Despite the hard core Islamic purist streak that is common among jihadis, Kelli Morgan of Fox News reported that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan actually leads the world in online internet pornography searches. According to Google, Pakistan ranks No. 1 on the planet for “searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.”
Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for “horse sex” since 2004, as well as “donkey sex” since 2007. “Rape pictures” between 2004 and 2009, “rape sex” since 2004, “child sex” between 2004 and 2007. Since 2009, “animal sex” since 2004 and “dog sex” since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.
Pakistan also recently was just bumped for the number 1 spot for searches for “sex,” “camel sex,” “rape video,” “child sex video.” There were also a handful of other search engine inquiries that common decency deems too crass to be published here.
So what is a young man to do when he has bought into the ideal of masculinity sold to him by the media, but has no outlet to express this masculinity.
He cannot be socially dominant through violence because violence is not tolerated and will get you in prison.
He cannot become a celebrity because there are only so many celebrities that even a culture like ours can sustain.
He cannot become wealthy because such opportunities are still limited to only a few lucky ones, often despite talent and hard work – the last few years since the financial crisis have put rest to the myth of economic meritocracy in our society. He will be lucky to get a normal job. But, as “luck” would have it, he can still be abusive towards women. That is still something that our society tolerates.
Enter the resurgence of misogyny that we have seen in recent years, from the Twitter trolls that hound women with death threats any time an intelligent woman has an opinion on the television to mass shootings. The logical conclusion of the problem of the young man left behind is the emergence of social phenomena like the ‘pick-up artist’ movement, which regards women as little more than a hunter would regard a fox, and attributes to half of the world’s population just as much agency and personhood. Women, in this frighteningly prevalent ideology, are nothing more than objects of sexual interest for “real men” and are the prize a man will inevitably gain if he “plays” the right game of psychological and emotional abuse on his victims, often complete strangers.
But nowhere is there more scope for a man to be “manly”, which also includes the abuse of women, than in a war. And there is no war like “holy” war. Pick-up artists everywhere must stand in awe of what the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “lads” have achieved. Forget silly one-liners in the hope of a one-night stand. Grab a Kalashnikov, move to Syria, and get yourself a bunch of underage sex slaves. This is not to dispute the complex entwining of causes, ideological, socio-economic or geopolitical that gave rise to the monstrosity that is ISIS. But nor can there be any doubt about the prevalence of the maladjusted young man among the ISIS ranks, and indeed the attitudes of these people towards women.
Extreme sexual behaviour
A recent report has indicated that ISIS fighters are engaging in some extreme sexual behaviour. This should not come as a surprise as even pornography was even found in Bin Laden’s compound when he was captured by Navy Seals and we have all seen CCTV images of 9/11 hijackers in strip clubs days before the attack. More recently, Edward Snowden exposed how the National Security Agency (NSA) was fully aware of the hypocritical relationship between radical preachers’ public image and their private pornographic habits with at least two radical preachers grooming underage girls online.
Fighters are attracted to ISIS for a wide number of reasons. Some may be ideologically driven militants who want to establish an Islamic state. But many others are social outcasts who are not all religious but join for the same reason as young men join gangs in LA and commit horrible acts – they want to belong. Many from the UK and other Western countries fit this category and have a history of petty crime, drug dealing and broken families.
Like in many other things, ISIS is the ugly symptom of some really rather ugly realities. And not just in the Muslim world – our young men have been seduced by this ideology. But the problem of the young man does not seem to be going anywhere any time soon, and it is imperative that we recognise it. There are no obvious or easy solutions to it, but we must start thinking about it, sooner rather than later. Until we do, there will always be some kind of ISIS fantasy somewhere in the world.
