My friend Angelo Embuldeniya just told me that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese dissident, is on Facebook. Is it possibly a fraud? Sure. (I friended her anyway.) I guess my question is, assuming this is legitimate, how will she use Facebook? To protect herself by raising awareness of her situation? To share information about her cause? To organize actions? To recruit members to an organization? These are all uses of Facebook. Will she take advantage of them?

image from a terror-promoting web site celebrating the attack in Kenya in 1998 

I'm wary of even discussing this topic. I need to begin by saying that this post in no way advocates terrorism or violence of any kind. Terrorism and war and hatred make me sick and sad. Rather, this article is an analysis of how Islamic terrorists are incredibly effective at using the Internet to active their strategic aims while traditional NGOs lag behind. It is about implications.

An article in the New York Times today, An Internet Jihad Aims at US Viewers, inspired me to finally

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges...and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed....

I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad....

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good,

The exile site Irrawaddy.com posted these images e-mailed from those still in Burma

I wish I had more time and knowledge to devote to the shutting down of the Internet and phone lines in Burma (Myanmar). As the New York Times reports, until last Friday, text messages, cell phone and digital camera images, and e-mail accounts were pouring out of Burma showing in vivid detail how the Burmese government is repressing the pro-democracy rallies there. Even as a means of information (the article does not mention that there tools are bring used to organize the protests), the Internet and