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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 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.
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.
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...
> Al-Jazeera is not a news organization in the >Western sense. Al-Jazeera deliberately distorts the >news.
Most news organizations distort news to increase its appeal. Ever watch local TV "news at 10?" For the sake of increased local appeal, they always start bellowing "the LOCAL connection to the major news story", a connection that's flimsy or meaningless half the time.
There is no nobility in commercial journalism. The only difference between the New York Times and the Weekly World News is that one has annoying registration requirements, and the other has Bat Boy pictures.
OTOH, if you take everyone stretching the story in a different direction, perhaps the obvious distortions and contradictions tend to cancel out. The larger the number of voices you see, the better.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
"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.
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
>The US has effectively thrown away most of the compassion it gained on 9/11.
I don't buy this. Most of the countries whose populations and gov'ts had any REAL sympathy were already our friends.
You really, really should. Do you count Italy and Spain, to name only a few, as countries where the population had real sympathy for te US? Well, _overwhelming_ majority of the people in those nations is against the war in Iraq, and against the current US administration!
I don't think the people in the US fully appreciate the massive amount of damage your president has inflicted upon US's image in the rest of the world. I'm not talking Middle East or Asia here. I'm talking worldwide. For example, polls show that majority of the people in Europe consider Mr.Bush a greater threat to world peace than Saddam (no joke).
Nowadays the US is largely percieved as a bully with no regard for differing views (either you're with us, or you're against us - Pres.Bush) of anyone, even it's closest allies. Furthermore, US actions appear totally devoid of any foresight and planning beyond the immediate short-term agenda.
I think the Onion put it best in naming the current US campaign 'Operation: Piss off the planet'.
The saddest thing is that the situation really didn't have to play out this way.
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?