Al Qaeda's First English Language Magazine Is Here

[Elvis]

I just have no words....

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ere/59006/

Al Qaeda's First English Language Magazine Is Here

Jun 30 2010, 10:10 PM ET

As the U.S. struggles to manage its efforts to influence opinion about Al Qaeda abroad, Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula has produced its first English-language propaganda magazine.

It's called "Inspire," and you can read parts of it below. A U.S. official confirmed that the pages correspondent to the version its open-source collectors had obtained.

"Inspire" includes a "message to the people of Yemen" directly transcribed from Ayman Al-Zawahari, Al Qaeda's second in command, a message from Osama Bin Laden on "how to save the earth," and the cover includes a quotation from Anwar Al-Awlaki, the American born cleric who is believed to be directly connected to the attempt to destroy an airplane over Detroit by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day. (The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, made that disclosure at a security forum in Aspen, CO, Fox News reported.)

The table of contents teases an interview with the leader of AQAP who promises to "answer various questions pertaining to the jihad in the Arabian Peninsula." It includes a feature about how to "make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom."

AQAP's first effort to post the magazine to jihadist websites failed Wednesday, as many of the pages were contaminated with a virus. (I half seriously believe that U.S. cyber warriors might have had a hand in that little surprise.)

The US is quite worried about Al Qaeda's new publishing ambitions, which mark a more sophisticated effort to engage the English-language world and to recruit English-speaking Muslims to join the cause.

The copy was obtained from a private researcher. AQAP had advertised for days that the magazine would appear with the interviews specified in the table of contents. It is possible, although not likely, that the magazine is a fabrication, a production of a Western intelligence agency that wants to undermine Al Qaeda by eroding confidence in its production and distribution networks. The U.S. is engaged in direct net-based warfare with jihadis; this sort of operation would not be too difficult to pull off.

Since I am not completely certain that the clean PDF doesn't contain a hidden virus, I've elected not to post it just yet.

[Nordic]

U.S. cyber warriors ????



Yes, the Jack Bauers of the keyboards!

I wouldn't be surprised if The Atlantic produced this fucking magazine. Considering OBL has been dead for years, I really don't think he's penning articles on American left-wing themes like "how to save the earth".

It's propaganda all right. Aimed at middle America.

God I hate The Atlantic. I'm ashamed I once subscribed to it.

[Twyla LaSarc]

Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom

This is the Onion, right?

[JackRiddler]

Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom

This is the Onion, right?

Confess, you're the jihadist Cras al Alywt!

Um, welcome to RI (do we do that?).

I like how these US super cyberwarriors are suspected of quite a feat: infecting someone else's PDF on the upload. But not of the much likelier one of making the PDF in the first place.

[norton ash]

Nordic wrote:

God I hate The Atlantic. I'm ashamed I once subscribed to it.

My sweetie gave me a gift sub for Christmas... I'd grabbed a copy at the airport because there was really nothing else, and I left it at her place, so I think she thought I liked it (I don't, it's more interesting for spook-watching) ... and she was persuaded by the LOW LOW price of the subscription.

Anyway, this year's Atlantic has an obsession with cybersecurity-"cyberterrorism", Google Inc., and how the Chinese and other unfriendlies will hack and virus the West to death.

The Al-Qaeda mag kinda looks like it was done by their own graphics and layout people. That butt-ugly Saturday Evening Post-meets- the-Economist style.

[Twyla LaSarc]

Confess, you're the jihadist Cras al Alywt!

Um, welcome to RI (do we do that?)

No, jes' a good Ummeerican. Or something like that.

Thanks!

When I saw that, I couldn't help but flashback on a loompanics (?) publication of yore that someone once showed me. It was all about making plastique type explosives at home. It had a horrible cover; 50's propaganda as drawn by Tom of Finland, featuring an idealized Donna Reed family building bombs in the family home. Creepy.

But not as creepy as the website. Just WHO are they trying to appeal to with this?

[Twyla LaSarc]

Egad, double post. Oops!

[Elvis]

I like how these US super cyberwarriors are suspected of quite a feat: infecting someone else's PDF on the upload. But not of the much likelier one of making the PDF in the first place.

That, or some giggling geeks in Tel Aviv.

Here's another take from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... ity/59035/

5 Reasons to Doubt Al-Qaeda Magazine's Authenticity

Jul 1 2010, 12:05 PM ET

Late Wednesday evening, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported that the first-ever English-language propaganda magazine purportedly written by al-Qaeda officials had surfaced on websites in the vibrant online jihadi community. The publication, "Inspire," carries the emblem of al-Qaeda's Yemen-based spin-off, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The magazine, which was uploaded in PDF format, carries the bylines of such super-star jihadists as al-Qaeda founders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri as well as U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen. Ambinder's report cited a U.S. official confirming that the PDF has appear on jihadi web forums, which independent analysts have confirmed to CNN. Still, wrote Ambinder, "It is possible, although not likely, that the magazine is a fabrication." Indeed, here are some reasons to question the authenticity of this document:

(1) Bin Laden and Zawahiri are extremely secretive and issue statements rarely and directly to the media. It would be unusual for them to write for a third-party publication, especially one put out by the Yemen-based AQAP, with which they have little or no direct ties. However, it is possible that the magazine's producers simply copied old statements they had made.

(2) The language of the magazine, such as "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom," reflects either a poor command of English or a light-hearted sense of self-parody. AQAP is not known for either. Awlaki, whose location in Yemen makes his participation very plausible, is a native, fluent, and very articulate English speaker. His fiery English-language sermons are not funny.

(3) The magazine includes an essay by Abu Mu'sab al-Suri. But Suri, whose connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain, has been locked up in Guantanamo--and possibly a CIA black site--since 2005. However, as with bin Laden it is possible the magazine simple copied old statements.

(4) Analysts tell me that the magazine PDF file either does not load properly or carries a trojan virus. This is unusual because al-Qaeda and AQAP have produced and disseminated such PDF publications many times without such problems. If the report was produced by U.S. counterintelligence, or if the U.S. operatives attached the virus to the original file, would the trojan really be so easily detectable by simple, consumer-grade virus scanners? Surely U.S. counterintelligence has less detectable viruses at their disposal.

(5) The web-based "jihadi" community itself seems suspicious. The report has received little attention on web forums, especially given its apparent importance. A publication including such high-profile figures would normally receive far more attention than it has so far.

There are also reasons to doubt that the report was produced by U.S. counterintelligence, as CI officials would likely know enough to edit out these red flags. It's unclear who that leaves, but the most likely culprit could simply be mischievous, if knowledgeable, pranksters in the U.S. who wanted to disseminate a trojan virus among jihadi forum visitors. That would also explain why the document was written in English.

Of course, none of these doubts are definitive and it remains a significant possibility that the publication is authentic. Leah Farrall, an AQAP expert and former Australian counterterrorism official, expressed doubt about the publication but disputed some of the cases against its authenticity.

"The make a bomb in the kitchen of your mum is not by Awlaki. It may be an effort to play on an old series of manuals released a few years back on how to build IED's from materials in your home. Many readers would be familiar with these manuals since some sections have been translated into english before. So that by itself is not really enough to bring into question the authenticity of the document," she wrote in an email. "The addition of an al-Suri excerpt is curious, but not unexpected. AQAP ideologues have mentioned his book before. So, this is also not enough to bring into question the authenticity of the document."

It's not clear who produced this PDF and why. But there are some compelling reasons to doubt that it was produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for the purpose of spreading the group's message to English speakers.

[Elvis]

This is the Onion, right?

Hi Twyla, you're not the only one who got that impression.
(Also from The Atlantic):

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ody/59020/

So Is it an Inspired Parody?

Jul 1 2010, 12:01 PM ET

What's to make of Al Qaeda's first foray into the English-language magazine publishing business? To a lot of folks here, including our publisher, it reads almost like an Onion parody. The article offering tips about how to make a bomb in your mom's kitchen seems to be a dead give away.

But then again, we shouldn't necessarily expect a Western-quality magazine from people who don't edit such magazines for a living.

A senior U.S. official and SITE, a private intelligence research firm, have told me they believe it to be authentic -- a genuine production of people allied with Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.

The content mostly comports to the content that Al Qaeda promised in banner headlines on jihadi websites. It appears to be a mix of borrowed and rehashed interviews and clips, as well as some new content. George Washington University's Marc Lynch, on Twitter, thinks that it is "impossible to say at this point whether it's authentic, but some reasons for caution." Christopher Boucek, an Al Qaeda expert at the Carnegie Institute, told me, I'm skeptical of its authenticity (for several reasons), but I'd really need to see more of it to be more definitive."

The 67-page PDF I have -- you can view it on another site here -- contains ASCII-text debris after the first three pages. Jihadi forums seems to be skeptical that the magazine is real because of the existence of the debris, which seems to them to be a virus of some sort. One expert I spoke with said that the non-gibberish version of all 67 pages was up on some sites yesterday but is no longer there.

One of my correspondents, ActionFromTheBackSection, notes:

Here's the original file as uploaded to archive.org (from where, I suspect, your sources got it): http://www.archive.org/details/Inspire_06

People who have Adobe Acrobat (not Reader) can download PDF (and no, it has no viruses), go to any page after 3 and open Document -> Crop pages menu. In the "Margin controls" replace 0.5 inches in the "Top" and "Bottom" sections with 0 inches. You will see that what was cropped out in the pdf are the page number (bottom) and this string (top):

""C:\Users\m050\Desktop\ellenbca.pdf 29 June 2010 16:45"

Which means that the debris _was_ put into the file deliberately, and was present in the initial file from which it was printed ("ellenbca.pdf").

From a counterintelligence standpoint, adding debris to a file is the best way to make sure that no one reads it. Whether or real or not, the U.S. government is quite worried about even the prospect of English-language Al Qaeda propaganda. So it would be within their interests -- and the interests of a number of countries -- to sabotage any document that exists, whether it's a hoax or not.

The Navy's 10th Fleet, based in Massachusetts, and various active Air Force elements conduct offensive cyber war, and one can't put aside the possibility that they, or some other entity, created a semi-foolish Al Qaeda-type magazine in order to confuse and demoralize the enemy by subjecting it to ridicule, or that they managed to somehow hijack the copy and mess with it, either adding a tracking trojan (to see who downloaded it) or just rendering most of the content illegible.

These sailors and airmen have incredibly powerful cyber weapons at their disposal, and their activities tend to be highly classified. It would not be legal for them to create a magazine with the intention of influencing a domestic audience, however -- see this column's discussion of psychological operations (or MISO) -- but perhaps there's an exception, buried somewhere in the law, for countering propaganda aimed at influencing Americans to become terrorists.

[Simulist]

I've come to consider Al-Queda to be bullshit.

So a "magazine" allegedly put out by them is probably something even smellier still.

[8bitagent]

Anyone Remember this? The Atlantic Exclusive! Inside al Qaeda's Hard Drive
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... rive/3428/

How they managed to find Zawahiri and bin Laden's personal computer from 1997-2001.


As for the subject at hand..

Haha Simulist...well its like a girl you been dating for months, but she only teases...

Like, why is the only "video" of bin Laden thats come out in years seem simply a match-moved edit of an older video, that seems to coincidentally freeze right when hes about to reference (then for sept 2007 at least) current events?

Now al Qaeda has had its own "official" website/s since before 9/11, or so weve been told. How many hundreds of times have I read "according to postings on al Qaedas websites/jihadist sites"...well where are these sites?(or is that SITE?) They never say where, its like "an anonymous quote says". Anyone remember when Zawahiri did some long forum q & a where he calimed bin Laden is alive and that they hate 9/11 conspiracy theories...and that Iran was behind the theories? In fact if we are to believe bin Laden and Zawahiri, then fighting global warming and Iran are two high priorities for them.

Theres no doubt this pdf fanzine is a total fabrication. Using westernized humor, the very cheesey 2002 American layout, etc. Hell I could have, with InDesign whipped up a way better layout/look...made it look like one of those expensive British published fashion magazines you see at Barnes and Nobles. I've also researched al Qaeda/global jihad enough to know just from the table of contents this thing is crap.

I do have several questions:

1. Why do people claim bin Laden is dead, yet dont question Dr Ayman Zawhiri, AKA "Number Two"? He is the one that appears in the bulk of the videos, opining at length about this or that. Tho often from what looks to be a giant rich mansion book study area(ISI, you furnishing that shit?)

2. Why Yemen all the sudden? I wrote about how Anwar al Awlaki(or Aulaqui back then) was just a protected pawn of the elite several years ago after being sheep dipped in the late 1990's and used in the 9/11 operations. How come all the sudden every al Qaeda group is headed by an American? Like Somalia al Qaeda, Yemen al Qaeda, or even that Jewish American Orange County former metalhead Adam Gadahn/Pearlman, the "#3" of al Qaeda proper?

3. Does ANYONE outside of policy hawks and super hardcore news junky even CARE about "al Qaeda". Ask the average person who Awlaki or Zawahiri is or about any of this and they'll just shrug.
Trillions have been spent to get hundreds of thousand of innocent Muslims, 6000 US soldiers and others killed or maimed...as well as to create a massive destructive military force, balloon intelligence, Orwellian big brother in the US and UK, etc. And for what? 9/11? Thats one expensive boxcutter!

To me it seems like the most obvious answer is not that of the CNN/Fox/MSNBC "analysts" nor the truthers nor the average liberal or conservative.
The real answer is that Global jihad worldwide is an easy to use and manipulate proxy tool, as much as those jihadists involved may be serious in their brainwashed convictions. al Qaeda and others are all too willing, making the idea of 9/11 being a "false" flag, false...yet perhaps everyone is being false flagged.

But one thing we can all agree on, is that 1) al Qaeda has never and will never have the ability to do any sort of terrorism without inside/outside help of various networks
and 2) The public has been played for a long time regarding the validity of this crap(this fake "magazine" the latest example)

[Nordic]

Okay, I'm really out of it today, but sometimes that can be an interesting thing.

I just went back to this thread and saw this and could swear that it said:

"CONSPIRE".

Look at the squiggly things to the left of the 'Inspire'. It sorta makes a big "C" and is suggestive of a CON

[Metric Pringle]

Wow. Well surely it's not from "them" as they use the term terrorist and not freedom fighter?

[82_28]

Not only that, it reads, looks, feels, seems like a brochure from a middle America mega-church. Hoax or no, somebody is getting us talking about it -- that's always my first tell for nefarious bullshit. I learned it by many a moon monitoring Microsoft press releases and jibing all it up with the behaviors of MSFT employees I've happened to know over the years. My conclusion is MSFT is more a cult than a company (Apple is in many ways an emulator of the cult part and has it down cold). Their whole reason for existence is to be talked about. Not software, not to make "great" applications, not to do anything that really helps anybody -- but to be talked about. For MSFT, a failure is a success. They create this through the use of, what I believe to be "programming", cult programming along with their other shitty ass programming. Do I have proof? Yes. My own proof. The moment I moved to Seattle I began meeting MSFT people. They're nuts, straight and simple. Do I retain friends that work at that place? Yes. Are they rich now and I am not? Yes, as well.

But the getting people talking about it part, that's the thing. Getting all manner of chatter going, has always been the thing. I've noticed it in all of my interactions with fairly well off Seattle people since I moved here. So what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

Everything.

It's about making SOMETHING out of NOTHING and then selling it. As we know, you cannot multiply any number with a zero and not get a zero. Hence software, like Al Qaeda is a scam. It's the same mechanism. In fact this .pdf seems to have a trojan built into it?!?! It has a Trojan or at least the "fear" of a trojan or computer virus afoot. But now we're talking! Have you seen that new Al Qaeda magazine? Wow, no I haven't. You don't wanna download it though, it may have a virus. So everybody gets to talking about shit that never really existed in the first place.

So does it exist or doesn't it? Wipe your hard drive clean, just on a whim, and see how much data you have left once the the re-formatting is complete. It's all entertainment to cover for fucking you, I and everyone else over. How do we reconcile any of this? By letting them further entertain us -- because we NEEEEEED it. The entertainment of terrorists, their zany antics. What won't they not stoop to to get us on board that these cave dwelling arabs believe? I'm gonna check out this magazine, cos I'm interested! Nope. They are making you THINK that OTHERS are interested and thus whether you read it or not or even give FUCK ONE about it, that it is a going meme.

I only know all this or have formed my opinion on this due to the term I became versed in way back when I used to read slashdot every day. It is called FUD.

FEAR
UNCERTAINTY
DOUBT

Couple that with powerful corporate cults and you have all you need to know. Now apply that to this so-called Al Qaeda magazine.

Say? When do you think the mainstream media will finally clue us fuckers in to the term "MEME" on the nightly news? It's a term that's been in use for over a decade now. I have yet to hear them say the term, define it and then say "tonight, in the meme's we're spreading tonight, here's the top story".

Ah anyways. . .

[Elvis]

It's about making SOMETHING out of NOTHING and then selling it. As we know, you cannot multiply any number with a zero and not get a zero. Hence software, like Al Qaeda is a scam. It's the same mechanism. In fact this .pdf seems to have a trojan built into it?!?! It has a Trojan or at least the "fear" of a trojan or computer virus afoot. But now we're talking! Have you seen that new Al Qaeda magazine? Wow, no I haven't. You don't wanna download it though, it may have a virus. So everybody gets to talking about shit that never really existed in the first place.

So does it exist or doesn't it? Wipe your hard drive clean, just on a whim, and see how much data you have left once the the re-formatting is complete. It's all entertainment to cover for fucking you, I and everyone else over. How do we reconcile any of this? By letting them further entertain us -- because we NEEEEEED it. The entertainment of terrorists, their zany antics. What won't they not stoop to to get us on board that these cave dwelling arabs believe? I'm gonna check out this magazine, cos I'm interested! Nope. They are making you THINK that OTHERS are interested and thus whether you read it or not or even give FUCK ONE about it, that it is a going meme.

I only know all this or have formed my opinion on this due to the term I became versed in way back when I used to read slashdot every day. It is called FUD.

FEAR
UNCERTAINTY
DOUBT

Couple that with powerful corporate cults and you have all you need to know. Now apply that to this so-called Al Qaeda magazine.

wow, 82_28, some astute thoughts there, regardless of who made the 'magazine'. I was thinking, no wonder only the first three pages are there; all they need are the headlines and article titles to spark talk...and fear and uncertainty....

Debate rages: Is Al Qaeda’s dopey new jihad magazine for real?
posted at 10:00 pm on July 1, 2010 by Allahpundit

I’m leaning towards yes, but this front-page feature headline gives me pause:

...

...If the magazine was cooked up by the U.S., it also makes sense that all but a few pages would be corrupted. Filling dozens of pages with jihadi boilerplate would arguably do more harm than good since even rote material might make an impression on an aspiring killer. And besides, the “how to build a bomb” section would be a dead giveaway as to authenticity....

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/07/01/d ... -for-real/