POLITICS
Terrorism makes strange bedfellows. Consider the winding path of a speech written by America's leading neo-Nazi, William Pierce. An excerpt from his anti-Israeli rant, "The Value of Truth and Righteousness," ended up on the Web site of Hezbollah, the militant Islamic organization in southern Lebanon. Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, also preaches that every Arab should be forced out of North America (along with Hispanics, blacks, and, of course, Jews). But that doesn't seem to bother Hezbollah. The organization, which has sponsored terrorist attacks in Israel, has at least two things in common with Pierce's National Alliance: hatred of Jews and deep suspicion of the US government. Here's how Pierce's speech made its way to the Middle East.
From Neo-Nazi Rant...
- During the week of November 12, Pierce drafts a 3,340-word speech on a PC located on the first floor of the National Alliance headquarters in Hillsboro, West Virginia. The point of the speech: If Bush wants to wage war on terrorists, he should start with Israel.
- Pierce heads to the second floor of the headquarters, where a National Alliance engineer uses a Dell 600 and Cool Edit software to record him reading the speech. The engineer creates a WAV file and emails the text and voice versions to webmaster Evelyn Hill.
- In California, Hill edits the WAV file using Sound Forge. She posts the voice and text files on the group's host servers: QuikNet of Sacramento, California, and BitShop of College Park, Maryland.
- On November 17, the speech is distributed worldwide to about 5,500 National Alliance listserv subscribers.
...To Hezbollah Homepage
- The speech reaches Hezbollah, possibly through National Alliance members the group claims are based in Lebanon.
- A Hezbollah representative excerpts 641 words of Pierce's speech. The only editorial change: Every reference to Israel is placed in quotes. Sample: "The prime minister of 'Israel,' Ariel Sharon, is a war criminal, a mass murderer, with the blood of thousands of women and children on his hands."
- The excerpted speech is sent to the site of the Islamic Resistance Support Association (www.moqawama.tv), the online home for Hezbollah's background information and opinion articles, where it is coded in HTML. The Web page is hosted by Cyberia, Lebanon's leading ISP, located on the capital's main thoroughfare, Hamra Street, Beirut.
- It's posted online November 24 and viewed by an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 readers, in both English and Arabic. Roughly 85 percent of the visitors are outside of the Middle East.
MUST READ
Flash Face-Lift
The Broadband Terror Effect
Fox TV's 24 : Believe It or Not
Beijing, We Have Liftoff
5 PERCENT
One Zap, and Your Computer Is Dead
A New Kind of Cool
The Edible Patent Boom
People
Jargon Watch
Extremists of the World, Unite
