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gobbo writes "The buzz amongst my Muslim acquaintances is that the al-Jazeera site is under "cyber-attack." Shortly after posting photos of mangled Iraqi children the server became unavailable. I don't have satellite TV to see if they are reporting anything on al-Jazeera itself, but pinging their name servers fails too. For those who don't already know, the al-Jazeera channel is a pan-Arabic satellite TV channel out of Qatar." While I am certain many h4x0rs are political, I can't help thinking that script kiddies are like moths to the flame of rising page views. (this was initially posted incorrectly, and has been moved to the proper date)
I'll believe this is a DDOS when I see the IRC transcripts from the people claiming to be the perpetrators (if that's not proof, I don't know what is :) Till then, this is Al-Jazeera crying because their site couldn't handle sudden worldwide interest.
According to the article you cited, the DDOS attack is being directed at their name servers, and not the web server (which is why I'm not getting "unable to resolve host" messages). Name servers generally don't wither under high volume - this seems more like a deliberate attack than a large-scale Slashdot effect.
I find the apathy on this site towards the possible gagging of a media organization disturbing. On a TV report this week, I learnt a lot about al-Jazzeera. Yes, they are pan-Arabic. Yes, they are critical of the US. They've also been threatened by every single Arab country in the region - closed down, ambassadors recalled, physical attacks. And it was bombed by the US in the first Gulf War when it reported the killing of civilians in a supposedly military target.
You can't have it both ways, even in a war. The Net is being used for some of the most blatant propaganda I've ever seen, but shutting down the Arab side of the argument isn't going avoid bigger problems later.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
There was an article in the Wall St Journal a few days ago discussing the bias of US reporters. They mentioned that many of the "embedded" journalists use the personal pronoun "we" all the time. They compared that with a clip from a British reporter who was careful enough to detach himself, referring to the soldiers using "they". "They are encountering resistance..." "They are approaching Baghdad..." etc. Its a noticable difference.
The article also mentioned that BBC seems to be doing a better job trying objective than US stations.
It's not a "similar" outlet. Unless you mean to bomb any foreign media that don't toe Rumsfeld's line. In spite of David Letterman sketches, al-Jazeera is neither Afghani or Iraqi, but is based in Qatar.
See this article on its origins.
They've also got a new English service. (Which was heavily overloaded even before this, so you'll have a hard time seeing it.)www.arabnews.com had an article comparing al-Jazeera and CNN.
CNN portrayed as lying, deceitful, mouthpiece of the US administration.
al-Jazeera portrayed as a font of wisdom and truth.
Both statements are crap CNN may well sanitise its stories, and portray the US side (hey..it's a US company)
But al-Jazeera is at least equally as bad.
In reference to the current fighting...
Does AJ show pics and video of Iraqi troops hiding among civilians and using them as shields? No
Does AJ show report on the Iraqi troops using a hospital for a weapons cache? No
Does AJ report on the use of explosives at the oil well heads? No.
Does AJ report on the ecological disaster of lighting oil filled trenches on fire? No
If you want to say CNN is not reporting 'fairly', OK..that may well be true.
But please do NOT hold up AJ as the bastion of truth and objectivity.