Revolution

Cyber Caliphate- empty threat?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/people-arent-taking-the-cyber-caliphate-hacking-for-isis-ser?utm_term=.cgdNJr3x8#.hlWxYavM7o

The Cyber Caliphate Released Its First Threat Video But Nobody’s Buying It

The so-called “Cyber Caliphate” released a video Monday claiming that they are about to launch a series of attacks. But the internet was kind of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

posted on May. 11, 2015, at 6:36 p.m.

Sheera Frenkel

BuzzFeed News World Correspondent

Hackers claiming to be affiliated with ISIS threatened a series of cyberattacks against the U.S., Europe, and Australia Monday, in the first video to be released by a group calling itself the “Islamic State’s Defenders in the Internet.”

“Praise to Allah, today we extend on the land and in the internet. We send this message to America and Europe. We are the hackers of the Islamic State and the electronic war has not yet begun,” says an altered voice in a video reminiscent of the Anonymous hacker group. “What you have seen is just a preface of the future. We are able until this moment to hack the website of the American leadership and the website of the Australian airport and many other websites.”

Cyber experts who focus on ISIS, however, have expressed doubt about the hacking-prowess group — more widely known as the Cyber Caliphate — and see the most recent video as an attempt to capitalize on the media attention recently paid to Junaid Husain, a U.K.-born hacker who is currently thought to be in Syria and who appears to have exchanged tweets with one of the gunmen in the attack on Garland, Texas, last week.

Tweets by Husain, who goes by “TriCk” online, have provided the only direct link between ISIS and that attack. British authorities now say that Husain is a dangerous hacker who has previously managed to crack bank security systems, as well as taking part in attacks against involving former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, NASA, NATO, the United Nations, BlackBerry, and the English Defense League alongside his former collective, TeaMp0isoN.

Following previous attacks, Anonymous — the collective of hackers, trolls, and teen hangers-on — has declared that it would launch counterattacks on known ISIS accounts. So far on Monday, accounts on Twitter did not seem impressed by the new threats by the Cyber Caliphate as put forward in its video.

The style of the video released Monday was a departure from previous videos released by ISIS-linked accounts, said J.M. Berger, co-author of the book ISIS: The State of Terror and a fellow at the Brookings Institute.

“It suggests this may have been thrown together pretty quickly to exploit the publicity from Garland. However the differences may also be intended to present more of a hacker façade,” said Berger.

Since January, a group of hackers going by the name “Cyber Caliphate” have claimed responsibility for several attacks, the most widely publicized of which was the hacking of U.S. Central Military Command’s @CENTCOM Twitter handle and YouTube page. In a message later posted to Pastebin, the group also claimed to release confidential U.S. Army files, thought it appeared that many of those files were available online and were not confidential. The same channels that distributed the claims of that attack pushed Monday’s new video.

“In principle, it is certainly quite possible they have cyber capabilities that they haven’t displayed publicly yet, but until we see evidence of such, it’s hard to put a level on the threat,” said Berger. “People are concerned, but the damage done so far has been minimal.”

“The d0xing activities were the most significant,” he added, using the term for revealing private details of accounts broadly online, “but it’s not clear they deployed any hacking muscle to get that information, and they may have accessed data from previous hacks by other parties or used other open-source tools.”

Sheera Frenkel is a cybersecurity correspondent for BuzzFeed News. Her secure PGP fingerprint is 0B69 4C66 9228 93D5 91A3 010B 7542 9FAF 4315 B404

Contact Sheera Frenkel at Sheera.Frenkel@buzzfeed.com

Cellist plays in aftermath of bomb

Karim Wasafi: Music can bring us together



http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/people-end-appreciate-normality-cellist-baghdad-154453026#sthash.dDnagtBu.dpuf

'An act against cowardly violence': the cellist of Baghdad

After a car bomb ripped through his Baghdad neighbourhood last week, Karim Wasfi set a stool among the wreckage and played his cello

Karim Wasfi plays his cello in the wreckage of a Baghdad car bomb (Facebook: Karim Wasfi Center For Music & Creativity)

Mary Atkinson

Monday 4 May 2015 18:03 BST

Last update: 

Monday 4 May 2015 11:52 BST

Last week a car bomb ripped through a busy suburb in western Baghdad, killing 16 people and injuring dozens. 

Like the dozens of other explosions that have hit the Iraqi capital this year, there was a lot to do after the ambulances left the scene: glass to be swept up outside the restaurant and the petrol station, burned cars to be towed away.

Added to this grim ritual though was a new custom: music.

After the explosion Karim Wasfi headed down to the blast site, set a stool among the wreckage and started to play his cello.

“The only way I see to retaliate is to be active. Music isn’t an additional element in life, something to do just when things are normal,” Wasfi, conductor of Iraq's National Symphony Orchestra, told MEE by phone as he drove around Baghdad earlier this week, hooting at other cars and greetings soldiers at various checkpoints.

Baghdad has been the target of multiple bombings this spring, many of them later claimed by Islamic State, which also periodically shells outlying areas of the city. But Wasfi felt compelled to act last week when a busy shopping street in his neighborhood, al-Mansour, was destroyed.

“There is nothing in that area that I would call a target,” he said.

“Three women and their mother burned to death because of this ugly act of violence. A man who was visiting Baghdad from Dubai for the first time in years and went to do some shopping ended up losing two family members just like that.”

Wasfi described his decision to play as “an act against cowardly violence”. A five-minute video of the impromptu concert shows a crowd slowly gathering around him to listen. At one point, a man struggles to push his wheelchair over rubble and debris to sit close to Wasfi – as he listens, he lights a cigarette and waves it in the air as if conducting the music.

The video quickly went viral, proof, Wasfi says, that people in the city are desperate for an escape from the grinding fear of violence and bombs.

“When I conduct in Baghdad, the venue is packed out. People stay after the concert for more than an hour, just to feel normal.”

There were some negative reactions to Wasfi’s decision to play the piece, Baghdad Melancholy, a semi-improvised song he composed prior to the blast.

“One man asked why I was playing music when people were in such misery. Others said I was disrespecting the souls of the dead.”

But for Wasfi, music is a powerful and active tool – it can bring people together, he said, and undermine the destructive will of militancy.

“I don’t think there is anything music cannot do,” he said.

As if to prove his point, Wasfi was joined later by a group of Iraqis, young and old, who lit more than 300 candles at the blast site and laid white roses on the dusty pavement.

“People are interacting. They don’t want to accept violence and insanity any more.”

Cartoons for freedom

Aseem Trivedi- Cartoons play a vital role in activism



http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/aseem-trivedi-cartoonists-are-revolutionaries-now

Freedom of religion denied in China

No one should deny the people their choice of religion.

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Feb. 10 2015

URUMQI – In another crackdown on religious freedoms, China has forced the imams of eastern Muslim majority district of Xinjiang to dance in the street, and swear to an oath that they will not teach religion to children as well telling them that prayer is harmful to the soul.

During the incident, reported by World Bulletin on Monday, February 9, Muslim imams were forced to brandish the slogan that "our income comes from the CKP not from Allah".

State Chinese news said the imams were gathering in a square in the name of civilization where they were forced to dance and chant out slogans in support of the state.

They also gave speeches telling youth to stay away from mosques, and that the prayer was harmful to their health, encouraging them to dance instead.The slogans included statements glorifying the state over religion such as 'peace of the country gives peace to the soul’.

Female teachers were instructed to teach children to stay away from religious education and made to swear an oath that they will keep children away from religion.

Uighur Muslims are a Turkish-speaking minority of eight million in the northwestern Xinjiang region.

Xinjiang, which activists call East Turkestan, has been autonomous since 1955 but continues to be the subject of massive security crackdowns by Chinese authorities.

Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of religious repression against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang in the name of counter terrorism.

Last November, Xinjiang banned the practicing of religion in government buildings, as well as wearing clothes or logos associated with religious extremism.

In August, the northern Xinjiang city of Karamay prohibited young men with beards and women in burqas or hijabs from boarding public buses.

http://www.onislam.net/english/news/asia-pacific/482889-chinese-imams-forced-to-dance.html#at_pco=smlre-1.0&at_si=553a5bebae288e8f&at_ab=per-4&at_pos=1&at_tot=3

Islam--freedom to choose belief

"God alone is the One who can monitor the real feelings of the human heart in this life, and the only one who- on the Judgment Day- will tell us of our religious disputes. It’s up to every human to choose monotheism, paganism or atheism; it’s his freedom of belief and he will be responsible before God alone on the last Day. " _ Ahmed Mansour

Source: http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=6674

Mali musicians keep singing despite Islamists

How can anyone restrict music?

Mali musician: "If we ban music in Mali or in the entire world, it's as if you cut oxygen to people."



http://www.theguardian.com/news/video/2015/mar/03/mali-musicians-they-will-have-to-kill-us-first-video