Slashdot Mirror
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
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 think this raises some new interesting questions.
For example, the US military claimed that Iraqi TV, as it was providing information and instruction to Iraqi troops, was a legitimate military command and control target. Would similar online media outlets be similarly classified?
More importantly, would hackers, even script kiddies, be considered combatants if they attack such a military target in a time of war?
I don't think this has any practical implications, just philosophical...
More pointedly, the DOS'ing of the Al-Jazeera web site coincides with the debut of its English counterpart.
The truth will remain elusive.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
While consulting, I've come across companies doing all sorts of dumb or just lazy things which make their sites slow and not very scalable. Then they get a big burst of unusual activity for whatever reason, their site crashes, and they like to claim conspiracy because it means it's not their fault.
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.
The vietnam war ended when enough people were sickened by pictures like these, so have a good look.
I read a story today that Al-Jazeera was pleading with the US goverment to do somthing about the attacks and about two Al-Jazeera reporters bering kicked out of the NYSE. In the past week Al-Gazeera has gained 4 million subscribers in Europe but only 100K in the US.
All I have to say to all this is welcome to free speech. People can't stand in front of the Al-Jazeera ofices since they are in Quatar. Personally I think their broadcasts encite riots and extremists actions. They get the inside scoop with wonderful governments likethe Taliban and Saddam Husayn by acting as their propaganda arm.
I used to have a translation website where I could read their site and when I read what they were posting last week and watched their broadcast, the first thing that came to mind was to write a tiny app to pass around that would start DOSing their site. In the end I didn't since Al-Jazeera seems to be gettign the treatment it deserves. They've even been tossed out of Iran.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Would it be a good idea for Al-jazeera to publish their content on freenet? Their articles would then be immune to any kind of censorship like they claim they are victim of.
When we hear the 3 Iraqi almost weep in tears about the torture, we know that we must send the Iraqis to Allah. God damn Saddam Hussein.
From where I am (Norlight, Central WI) that connection stops dead at the NAP in Chicago.
Someone is either shut some pipes off to stop the problem, it's REALLY big, or the IP is a typo.
My bets are on a typo. Did you modify a hosts file and use that? or just the IP in a browser...
"Wrong in a couple of ways, I think. First, Al Jazeera, while most cerainly outside U.S. control, is far from being outside U.S. influence. It is truly said that "he who angers you controls you". Al Jazeera is run by people so opposed to the United States and its policies that they violate every tenet of journalistic professionalism in their efforts to make Americans look bad. The result is a "news" service that disdains superficialities like fact-checking and citing sources. They are worse than useless for stories involving the U.S."
It is interesting to note that the Iraqi minsters themselves are complaining about Al Jazeera because of they believe it is pro the war, or at least not anti the US. It may relay what Iraqi TV is saying as well as other Arab TV channels, but so does the BBC (which also runs Iraqi press conferences live. Boy are those speeches long and rambling). It is up to the viewer to decide as to the validity of the information it is receiving. In amoungst the crap there is news. They will have reporters where the west cannot and news from the military is not always exactly accurate. The US said they'd picked up the pilots from the downed Apache, but they turn up on Iraqi TV.
I believe anyone who is pro free speech has to support the channel.
Well, the site certainly seems to be accessible from India. Of course, I haven't checked the English version. Just the Arabic one.
The pictures of the mangled children are available on the first page itself. Bear in mind that mangled just doesn't capture the essence of the pictures. I could not bear to see anything below the fourth pic or so.
I saw something kind of odd last night on CNN. At the close of one of the news personalities nightly shows (I believe it was Aaron Brown), they ran a piece (with dubed translation) from al-Jazeera over the Brittish actions in umm Qasar. The reporting of that particular story seemed rather fair and straight forward. If it hadn't been for the origional arabic language and writing, I might have mistaken it for a BBC piece.
Now the interesting bit is that Aaron Brown pointed out that their newsroom monitors al-Jazeera and other networks. That they would pick an al-Jazeera piece to air... over a relatively minor story... seems to indicate a certain nod of approval to the Arabic network.
Sure. Bias exists. But perhapse there is enough truth to be recognized by professionals no matter what side of the bias divide they favor.
It is quite interesting that this issue has spread into a political discussion. But the individual merits of different media seem a bit off-topic as part of this slashdot-comment discussion.
I would be much more interested in seeing more info on how the site is blocked (ie., is it really a DDOS attack, is it directed to the sites or to the DNS servers, could it be stopped merely by reconfiguring the DNS servers) and whether the routes are blocked too.
After we know that, we can start discussin if this is a case of international censorship and who is responsible for it.
And only then can we say who is trying to abolish such things as intellectual freedom, freedom of the speech, trans-frontier communication over the Internet etc. Only then, political discussion of this issue is possible.
But if we do want to turn this into a political discussion, I found it very interesting that many local media are talking about a cyberwar in terms of attacks of pacifist hackers agains american institutions' web sites. Has anybody seen any of that? Curious.
-Kvorg
Confirmation of DDOS and DNS issues here (and here
I don't have a problem with bias, as long as it's known. Everyone knows CNN is extremely liberal. Everyone knows Fox News is somewhat conservative. Everyone knows that the BBC is pro-Arab and anti-Israel. Everyone knows that Al-Jazeera is mostly pro-arab. Who cares? If anyone reported just facts, there'd either be too many bits or no connection in between them. In order to get a true picture of what is going on, you need to read news that is slanted both ways. So, read an American news source, and then ArabicNews.com (a pretty decent source). Or check Lebanon's Daily Star for a very much Arab slant.
Everyone thinks that they are centrist. Anyone right of them is conservative, anyone left is them is liberal. Which is why Democrats call ABC, CBS, and NBC conservative news, yet Republicans call it liberal news. That is also why Democrats call Fox News very conservative, and Republicans call in "balanced". But, the important thing is, that both the liberal and the conservative views are legitamite.
In order to report the news in an unbiased way, the reporter must assume an equidistant view from both warring sides. That is, the American news sources would have to decide that the Americans aren't automatically correct, and that Saddam isn't automatically wrong. The problem is, that legitamizes Saddam's regime to many who think it illegitamite, and that is something many do not want to do.
Also, unbiased reporting (which I don't believe exists) wouldn't have the flare behind it the biased reporting does. When people are biased, they go the extra mile to prove their point. I like that a lot better.
Have you read my journal today?