U.S. seen balking at challenge by Islamist Web

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is failing to counter Islamist online propaganda that could propel militancy into the next generation, experts say.

From the Middle East, Asia and Europe, Islamists have built an expansive Internet library of sophisticated texts on the ideology that underpins violence against the West and other enemies, analysts and intelligence officials said.

"It's a steady, stealthy indoctrination aimed at creating a whole new generation of jihadists. And scandalously, it is unopposed," said Stephen Ulph, who studies the Islamist Web for the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.

E-books and online pamphlets, with titles such as "39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad," encourage the growth of home-grown militant cells across the world, including in such Western countries as Canada and Britain, the experts believe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061028/wr_nm/security_internet_islamists_dc

Although the Jamestown Foundation does not explicitly state its foreign policy agenda, it does through its forums and publications align itself with the neoconservatives’ agenda with respect to Taiwan-China, counterterrorism/Middle East issues, and Russia. Like the neoconservatives, the institute equates evil and totalitarianism—and believes that U.S. foreign and military policy should be committed to “root out evil.”

All are regarded as national security threats to the United States. But unlike the neoconservative policy institutes, the Jamestown Foundation is not as strident and careless with the facts. With regard to Osama bin Laden, for example, the foundation posted a full transcript of his November 2004 speech before the U.S. elections, and his statement was identical to that which Al-Jazeera printed, which is the most authentic version. The same cannot be said of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a neoconservative organization that has consistently mistranslated much of the Arab and Middle Eastern press to serve its pro-Israeli, pro-American position. (10) (11) (12)

Funding

Between 1985 and 2003, Jamestown Foundation received close to $3.5 million from such right-wing foundations as Smith Richardson and two of the Richard Mellon Scaife foundations--Carthage and Sarah Scaife--which together contributed over $2.9 million of this amount. (21)

The Capital Research Center, a conservative research organization, reports that the Starr Foundation gave two grants to Jamestown in 1997 and 1998: $200,000 and $100,000, respectively. Also in 1998, Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness giant, gave the foundation $5,000. (22) (23)

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1507

A bunch of former cold warriors looking for another raison d'être.

There is nothing they can do about it unless they are willing to make a better offer. And they aren't.

"No one could have predicted that the jihadists would use the internet!"

The internets are evil and allies of the islamofascist terrorists...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2912093