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Web Site Hacks Rise as War Rages in Iraq
An anonymous reader noted a Reuters news story talking about Website Defacement during the war. Apparently protesters and hackers are defacing hundreds of US and UK sites, both corporate and government.
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Yeah, I thought that it was really interesting that CNN's website immediately switched to a smaller version of their usual website; fewer stories, fewer pictures, less to load, with links from there at 9:30pm EST Wednesday. Instead of waiting for the slowdown, they anticipated it. I don't think I've ever seen that happen before-- not that there have been so many incidents that have generated that kind of blanket interest since the web became a major news source for the masses. The only one, in fact, that I can think of was Sept. 11th; these measures were definitely not taken then until sites had already started going down.
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Huh?
Which news sites are you visiting? No major news outlet that I know of streams RealMedia on the front page until it's explicitly asked to do so. Both CNN and MSNBC are approximately 30k in size. Slashdot's front page is nearly double that.
I have to admit I can't explain why we're truly at war either, economicly it will be disasterous, it has ruined the international diplomatic ties the US once had, and it makes the citizens of the Uninted States more at risk to future terrorist attacks and in the worst case senario could start World War III
No, I can't explain why we're truly at war either, it baffles me. It is the most ill-conceived thing our government has done in my lifetime. Pray tell, why are we REALLY at war?
It isn't because Iraq has violated UN mandates, Isreal has violated more, and we still support them. It isn't because they have weapons of mass destruction, North Korea has more in that catagory, and we're trying "diplomatic means" to deal with them. It isn't because of Saddam's human rights record, or we'd be at war with China, not granting them favoured trade status. It isn't because the inspections were failing, the inspectors themselves thought the process was working, and shouldn't they know? Come, come, since you're so ready to critisize others for being unable to explain the cause of this war, explain the real reason we are at war, instead of alluding to it in an ambigious manner...
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Can you explain the current fiscal policy that the national reserve has put in place of lowering interest rates to stimulate economy growth? Do you know why they dont just set them to 0 in times of good growth? Maybe if you have studied economics.
Can the average American dictate foreign policy for the United States? Same answer, no, unless you did your doctoral in polysci and are smart++.
Can the average joe schmoe vote and decide who is best to lead them and make such decisions? Yes.
Don't hate the player, hate the game...democracy is what we stand for and seem to be criticizing lately?
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
OK. I had a hard time driving around SF yesterday because of people doing more or less the same thing. On the one hand, they are blocking access to cyber places - and on the other they are blocking access to real ones. I was wondering if anyone could explain the logic behind protesting a war that is already started? Does anyone really believe that our government is going to stop and say, "Gee, we better stop this war so that those guys from Berkley will move off the Altimont Expressway..."
All I can see here is people giving Saddam (or what's left of his regime) fuel for his fight. He can say, "Look, the American people don't believe what their government is doing. Stop surendering and kill kill kill!!!" This would cause more loss of life to american soldiers. So... Can anyone explain what the protesters are hoping to get out of this? (Other than a permanent record...)
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Not a damn thing. 76% of Americans approve of the war, but the protesters want to make it seem like they are the majority rather than a (shrinking) minority.
Username taken, please choose another one.
1) Saddam is far more likely to use his weapons than North Korea is.
2) Isreal has violated tons of mandates, and has a particularly sinister leader right now. We don't attack them because they're simply not a threat. Though there is a good case to stop supporting them.
3) Saddam isn't linked to 9/11. But I'm sure he wouldn't mind it one bit if some Al Quaeda boys borrowed some weapons to blow up New York. Oh please, you say? Al Quaeda doesn't like the beer-drinking, cursing, sacreligious Saddam? Well guess what? They hate us more.
4) China's government is on a remarkable progression to more Democracy and free thinking. I know because I lived there (I'm not Chinese either). Their human rights records are bad, but they'll get better.
5) The majority of the world isn't ready to cut off all diplomatic ties to the US because of the war (they might disagree, but only a few countries like France and Russia are really rabidly anti-war). That would be political suicide for them. Also, let's take France for instance. I thear a lot of folks saying "it's all about the oil." It is. France gets most of their oil from Iraq. It's no wonder they don't want us in there. Do you really believe the French are so anti-us involvement because they sympathize for the people in Iraq? Come on!
6) Iraq does pose a threat. They've got the weapons, and Saddam is crazy enough to use them. Don't believe me? We gave him weapons of mass destruction in the early 80's when he was fighting Iran. He used some against Iran, but there are others that are unaccounted for. Don't blame me as an American for being a little bit worried that he could use them (or being extremely pissed off at the lack of foresight the Reagan Administration had for giving them to him). Hell he's been dodging weapons inspectors for some time.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
There were 'hawks' and 'doves' during Vietnam, amongst the elite. The hawks viewed protesters as communist sympathizers (i.e. pretty much what the right thinks of them today). The doves looked at them more as misguided young people. Think Hubert Humphrey here.
In the end, most common folk had little sympathy for the protesters during Vietnam, as today. They're too wacky and weird to appeal to the mainstream, and then as now, they derive most of their sense of moral superiority by their close association with opinions voiced by foreign leaders. Hence, the appearance of being unpatriotic.
Having Jacques Chirac on your side isn't exactly guaranteed to endear you to the American public.
My opinion is that they generally make their own bed and I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. They can lie in it now. If they wanted to be popular they'd make their point in a more acceptable manner to the US public.
This is a perfect application of the First Amendment. The Dixie Chicks or Martin Sheen can say whatever antiwar drivel they want, and the US public can choose to not buy their stuff, and thereby hurt them economically. Or not. But the system works just fine.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The website we run at work was defaced by "Hackers Against War", they exploited a bug in the software we use (php-nuke) to replace all the stories on the front page with an inane antiwar statement and comments in French about their feelings for some girl. The pathetic thing is that our site already had a lot of antiwar articles up on it, so if their true motives were to express an antiwar opinion they failed horribly in that they obscured substantive antiwar commentary with their drivel AND forced us to take the site offline while we fixed things.
While I'm sure there are some groups out there with genuine political motives, based on this and some other things I've seen I really believe that this is just scriptkiddies looking for something trendy to do.
Did you mention the current situation in other Arabic nations? Currently, mostly governed by non-democratic leaderships, which are slightly pro-american (at least compared to the public opinion in their nations), which are supposed to be replaced democratic goverments by the shining example Iraq is expected to set.
Noticing the current discontent of the people with their current goverments, the wished for change might even come earlier than expected and a different way than expected.
Oh, and the Palestinian situtation will be much easier to solve, after removing the dictator, who spend a good fortune on their "freedom fighters" (Well, we would call them terrorists, but still it strengthened his support among them)
What will the Kurds do when Turkey will invade in northern Iraq, or how Turkey will react, when the Kurds should found an independent state.
One thing to add:
The dictatorship actually owning a fully functionally nuclear program, quite possibly two or three nuclear bombs, rockets with enough range to strike the U.S. and also distinguished member of the Axis of Evil.
Which features a starving and supressed people, partly fleeing to its neighbouring dictatorship, which most people in our situation would think people would flee from and a dictator, who is also not a very pleasent person, to say the least.
A nation, whose corporation with the UN-inspectors culminated quite recently in kicking them out.
This esteemed nation is quite alive and kicking.
Not that I suggest waging a war with it, but one has to wonder, what consequences a dictator has to draw in having WMDs.
Of course, it is a totally different situation than Iraq, but one has always has to keep an eye what kind of impression one might make.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"