Everything You Know About Counterinsurgency History Is (possibly) Wrong!

[Valin]

"The Internet, isn't going to change the "ideas" and it's the ideas that create the conflict. " ( WF.O)

I wish I could be entirely convinced of that. I've been telling myself a long time that it is nothing but man-made metal, plastic, glass and electricity but I wonder at times over cultural perceptions of it, linear V circular thinking and perceptions become fixed rather quickly - a tangent here but a real one.

The very fact that I'm sitting here in "beautiful scenic" South Minneapolis is proof that the Net has changed things.
People don't really change, but how they use technology, affects them and society in general....see the printing press

For the Jihadis this is definitely true. The Jihadi/Salafist forums have been a boon to providing a means of passing information...etc. and giving them a sense of community.

For more see
"The Leaderless Jihad: Terror networks in the Twenty-First Century"
Marc Sageman

"Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice"
Jarret M. Brachman

Available from all the usual sources

[William F. Owen]

For the Jihadis this is definitely true. The Jihadi/Salafist forums have been a boon to providing a means of passing information...etc. and giving them a sense of community.

Yes, it's a changed how they act. It has not changed why they act. The Iranian revolution made great use of fax machines and cassette tapes. Neither of those things created the revolution, or made it possible.

The problems that created Political Islam, are nothing to do with the internet. The internet is just a medium, in which discussion takes place and information is exchanged.

Ask this question. Are people more or less likely to adhere to Scientology because of the internet?