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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)
How is it that any story on Slashdot can survive without any comments at all for nearly 24 hours? Is the system broken? This is unusual!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
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...
First time I've seen a story that doesn't appear on the main
I do have to say that I am saddened to see this happen because although Al Jazeera may have been biased on the side of Iraq, it is good to have alternative news sources to get the other side's story from. And despite what many people may whole-heartedly claim, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NBC, etc all do have a sense of American bias in them. That's besides the fact that half of their reporting is so horrible, it is actually hard to watch sometimes. I've found myself turning off the TV numerous times in response to my disgust for some of the stuff they hack out as "news". Although, I have found the embedded reporter's reports quite interesting, and you can always catch the various briefings, latest field updates, and general news easily enough. But, these agencies spend way to much time on sensationalism, heart-string-picking, etc.
I hope Al Jazeera can get their site back up soon.
you can find it here. It's been hacked, but should come up shortly I bet. However, their controversial footage which is probably what you are looking for, is not available there. It's not available anywhere else due to heavy censorship, so you may have to check your favorite P2P network. Searching for 'jazeera' brings up some interesting results.
BTW, we've all heard claims that P2P networks are only used to steal music, movies, etc. This is about the first good example of P2P being used for a valid cause - to share news and avoid censorship. (aren't we supporting freedom of speech after all?)
Jobs? Which jobs?
What was the question?
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?
Writing the headline in "|-|@X0R" speak or whatever is pretty stupid here.
/. - and the hackerspeak is probably the number one reason why no comments are floating up in moderation.
This is a serious issue that should be generating lively debate here on
I rather doubt "script-kiddies" are involved in this, and as I write this the sites are even more down than they were yesterday (DNS lookups fail).
Regardless of what you think of this development, it's pretty obviously both "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" - and styling it as "n00z 4 n33rD$" is a disservice to this forum.
(Yeah I know my hacker-writing is a bit rusty.)
This Like That - fun with words!
More on this here
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
I listen to "Democracy Now" off the web. They frequently reference the Guardian and Aljazeera. www.democracynow.org Watch out for the sappy-amateur-protest-folk- songs.
____
null
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
I'll criticize both CNN, FOX and NBC for not being clear enough at times distinguishing what is "confirmed" from what is an initial report. The pundits have been even worse. The "chemical weapons plan" from Sunday night was very embarrassing. So was the "uprising" in Basra. Of course to be fair, that was the BBC that the American media outlets then picked up. So it is hardly an American phenomena.
Further most of the outlets have had a very narrow view of things. Very few questions and, in general, superficial reporting. One of the generals working for CNN has been pretty good and I was quite impressed with the CNN interview with the New York Times reporter last night. But overall they've not done that great a job. Further they seemed *shocked* that there were casualties and that the war didn't end in a week.
I think the media could do much better, for sure. But I suspect that they will improve with time. One hopes anyway. But while they tend to have a pro-American bias, that's hardly surprsing given their audience. But I don't think it is necessarily a pro-Administration bias.
On the other hand all of the other networks have had their biases. As for Al Jazeera, the following was an interesting discussion on them.
CNN Money
I can't speak for their bias, as I've not watched Al Jazeera. But clearly many have problems with them.
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.
Australia's ABC (TV, I suppose) has reportedly
cropped the portion of a picture of a young
girl's feet, which were to be seen dangling,
after apparently having been blown loose by
an explosion, in the ongoing Irag war.
The report of this "editting" the gore away,
to make a photo more acceptible to Australian
viewing audiences, as well as other revealing
aspects of media censorship, were mentioned on
this morning's Media Report, now available via
audio-on-demand, in RealAudio format, at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/audi
This 27 March program included British photo-
journalist Tim Page talking about this kind
of selective reporting & sanitizing of war
images, eg, from Vietnam to Iraq.
Come back in about a week for the transcript,
eg at URL:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/st
War solves nothing... unless, of course,
your company is selling to Defense...
Now if people did the same to Fox News the world would be a better place.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
The other day when loading up slashdot (like I've done everyday for years) /. for place to purchace PeacePinsso I
I noticed an add on
went out of curiosity and saw "We help fund anti-war organizations
like EndTheWar.org" EndTheWar.org This site is truely disturbing,Using the
Al Jazeera photos of young kids with their heads blown off for propaganda.
After doing some more digging on just who these people are I found links
all over the place for WPK (workers party korea) led by General Secretary
Kim Jong il and International A.N.S.W.E.R. headed by Brian Becker who just
with a simple google searchshows up ties to WPK. Other more disturbing things that
I do not want to say because this was a few days ago and I cannot provide
links until I get access back the machine I was using at the time.Feel free to
look it up yourselvs you may find something I didn't.
I hope slashdot will pay closer attention to who's adds they are promoting
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
From what I understand, the Al-Jazeera channel is available unencumbered off of some satellite, so given $200 worth of hardware (I'm sure many satellite junkies have the necessary hardware) their news content is readily available.
I'm not sure I'd buy into the organized DDOS, but rather into a (near) world-wide slashdotting type effect. I've been frequenting their website quite a bit over the last week, and it's been fading in and out of existence (at least for my locale) quite often.
Most of the 'scandalous' images have been slurped from various sources and they're available in plenty of places. One such site is http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ (be gentle!), which includes the pictures of the supposedly executed soldiers.
I hope Al-Jazeera beefs up their infrastructure and expands their newly launched minimal english service... it's nice to have news from outside sources (ie: outside the US sphere of influence) with an opposite view-point.
Link: ... You can add the Iraq Satellite Channel to your 500-channel universe with a little tinkering. Iraqi television is rebroadcast onto the Net by the Dutch service DSL-TV, in both Real and Windows Media formats. The catch is that unlike ish.com's Al Jazeera stream from Germany, DSL-TV tries to limit its service to computers inside the Netherlands as part of its terms of service...
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
YOu say "I really hope this wasn't our Government's doing." you may have hit the nail on the head.
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...
It doesn't. However, what other dictators is the US flirting with right now?
The simplest and straightest way to solve this problem is to cut the Gordian knot
Why do you assume this is a Gordian Knot that you can just cut through and solve?
I have yet to see a better solution to dealing with Saddam right now
I agree. However, I have yet to see the US trying to act differently to avoid creating another Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden elsewhere. US diplomacy has failed to get even western nations to endorse the war, and has Arab nations almost unanimously against it. The US has effectively thrown away most of the compassion it gained on 9/11.
Yes, war against Saddam Hussein was probably inevitable, but where's the long term solution to the actual problem?
> 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!
Ladies and Gentlemen, please.
CNN is an American company. I'm an American. I don't want to see negative stories about my country. If they show me negative stories, I might change the channel. CNN knows this. CNN's advertiser's know this.
Does CNN broadcast biased stories? Probably Not.
Is CNN biased in its choice of stories? Definitely Yes.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Quote from a Graham Greene novel (The Quiet American)
"He had the best motives for getting into the worse trouble"
I believe that aptly describes our foreign policy.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Try reading British, Australian or Canadian media on the net for a few days. Or watch the BBC 24/7 news tv on the net.
I do, and Foxnews and CNN look like 24/7 Pentagon infomercials in comparision to serious media.
From reading the comments, I've realized that few Slashdot commenters know much about the history that leads to the present war in Iraq. So, here is a very short recounting. The details given here have been reported by many reputable news sources. There seems to be no disagreement about these facts.
All the actions by the U.S. government mentioned here were largely hidden from U.S. citizens. United States citizens paid the bill, but were mostly unaware of what their government was doing. Even though the U.S. government is presently at war with Iraq, only a small percentage of Americans can find Iraq on a map. It is said that a high percentage support the U.S. government's war in Iraq, but this is a blind kind of support that does not mean that there is comprehension.
Thread 1, Iran: Hidden elements of the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted to reduce the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government supported a very weak man, the Shah of Iran, who became very brutal toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iraq overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence to come.
People in Iran began supporting terrorism against the United States, in retaliaton for hidden U.S. government interference with the Iranian government.
To counteract Iranian support of violence against the U.S., the U.S. goverment began supporting and encouraging Iraq in a war against Iran. This was very profitable for U.S. weapons manufacturers. Weapons manufacturers in the U.S. were delivering weapons to Iraq under long-term contracts up until the same month as the U.S. began war on Iraq the first time.
April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq, encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. She said,
"I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." [my emphasis]
She also said, "I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. [my emphasis]
Here is a complete transcript of the meeting between the U.S. ambassador and Saddam Hussein. (http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspi e.html)
Ambassador Glaspie acted on instructions from Secretary of State James Baker, as she said. Later, she denied knowing that she was encouraging war. (Mr. Baker is a friend of George Bush and was later White House Chief of Staff.)
It is not known why the U.S. government would support Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. However, in the meeting mentioned above, April Glaspie said, "We have many Americans who would like to see the price [of oil] go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states."
The fortune of George H. W. Bush was heavily dependent on oil profits, and Texas is an oil-producing state. If the U.S. government is successful at gaining control of Iraq, profits for some companies in the U.S. will increase enormously because Iraqi oil will be sold directly to U.S. companies, rather than to Turkish companies, as it is now.
Thread #2, Afghanistan: There is a huge amount of oil in one of the countries inland from Afghanistan. However, the only good way to get the oil to people who would buy it is to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. The Soviets wanted to get
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
I will add to this if you please. The portion I am adding reads like a conspiracy theory. Its not. It has been documented in many places, including PBS and the White House itself.
I wont go into details here, I will allow one to read the material themselves. You can also watch the video as PBS online is currently hosting a story frontline did about the mess.
In brief:
The Project for the New American Century is a DC based think tank that has imagined a world under complete US military and economic domination (or "freedom" as it were). They have fiddled with and written documents concerning a post cold war world where the USA has become the Worlds Only Superpower and what that means from a Strategic viewpoint.
In the early days, Paul Wolfowitz produced a document that detailed the expansion of the American empire that seemed too radical at the time and was cleaned up and rewritten and stowed away. Over time, and through the most recent Coup by this incredibly radical group of men, this updated document, with the help of the PNAC, became the National Security Strategy Of the United States. Most chilling about this turn of eventls and policy is the new found policy of "pre-emption". Which I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state.
Also chilling (to me anyway) is the fact that this is the "official story", the one being reported by the obviously biased media.
Anyway.. some more links..
CBC.ca's take.
More Canadian Insight
The Frontline Special
It looks like it's just a "special edition" site devoted to war news only, and I'm not certain that it's officially run by Al Jazeera. I don't speak Italian, and effectively neither does Babelfish. :-)
If nothing else, though, they have lots of images which help to fill in the gaps left by other news media.
Note that it isn't spelled the same as in English - "i" instead of "ee".
http://www.aljazira.it/
You tell 'em, elmagil!
It is clear that the embedded journalists are there to ensure that we get the best quality, most up-to-date propaganda ever seen in the history of the world.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
And might I add that as someone that was in the theater before and after the invasion of Kuwait...
You people are full of shit...
Got Code?
I forget what show I was listening to, but on NPR yesterday, there was an interview with somebody in charge of an english language newspaper in the middle east. He had a really good perspective on this. Basically what it boils down to is that both CNN and Al Jazeera are commercial operations and it is in their best interest to present news that caters to the views of their audiences. So you see and endless stream of armchair quarterback generals on CNN and you see bloodied civilians on Al Jazeera.
One thing that they didn't go on to say in the story was the effect that this should have over the long term. If news outlets, being commercial organizations, are going to present news that enforces people's preconceived notions, it leads to a natural polarity of belief. People who are liberal will tend to get liberal news from liberal sources and find themselves even further removed from conservatives or the truth that exists somewhere in the middle. Vice versa for the conservatives.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
censorship, plain and simple
can't have anything contradicting our propaganda, can we?
You forget, Al Jazeera is trying to report on the truth of the conflict, not to further US war aims.
If this is the case, then why didn't they post pictures of the 5000 children who died monthly under Hussein's regime? Or the thousands of others tortured or killed by his regime for any number of "offenses". Do you know why Iraq has no international representation worth mentioning in the Olymipcs or other sporting events? Because Hussein's son, who runs Iraq's athletic organization, tortures athletes that lose. No Iraqi wants to become an athlete now. The stories are endless.
Al Jazeera is all too ready to inflame the Islamic world with anti-American propaganda, while omitting much, if not all, of the other side of the story. If you call that "the truth", then you're either naive or have the same twisted agenda as they do. If they actually gave the truth to their viewers, they'd lose their ratings overnight. They know what their viewers want, and they feed it to them with little concern for the truth.
al-Jazeera is the Fox News of the Arab world or Fox news is the al-Jazeera of the Western world.
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.
Al-Jazeera is not a news organization in the Western sense. Al-Jazeera deliberately distorts the news.
As opposed to Western news organizations like CNN, which go out of their way to be [snort] objective and cover all sides of an issue?
Get real. You want unbiased content, go to Google News, and when something comes up between, say, the French and the Brits, read about it from both a French and Brit news source. Same goes for Pakistan/India, Israel/Palestine, and US/just about anyone else.
May we never see th
Al-Jazeera has changed DNS providers. Their "whois" data changed in the last update. Datapipe and Nav-Link are out, MyDomain is in. Four different DNS servers are listed, in different netblocks.
They've also switched to the Telia backbone. Telia is Scandanavia's largest backbone carrier, and is headquartered in Sweden.
It looks like they're getting the connectivity problem fixed. They're still on overload, with frequent "connection refused" messages, but sometimes you can get through.
Believe me they do regularly publish stories about all the Iraqi children dying because of the impacts of UN sanction on Iraq.
You mean the Iraqi children who die because funds from the "oil for food" program are misappropriated and diverted to Swiss bank accounts, military development, and nonessentials? Iraq is allowed to sell enough oil to supply its people with sufficient food, clothing, medical care, etc., but do you suppose the Iraqi government actually cares about the Kurds and Shiites, or even those people who are "ethnically acceptable"?
So who was it who kept our team out the the World Cup the time before last? Was that the other Iraq?
They didn't win the world cup, did they? Can you tell me the fate they suffered as a result? Why not read about it. I'd rather not repeat what happened to members of Iraq's soccer team. Needless to say, recruits are not flocking to Iraq's athletic programs.
But all you are doing is simply rabbiting US propaganda
That would be parroting. But you have some valid points. The US is extremely guilty of supporting nasty dictators and other unsavory types. And they come back to bite us often. For example, the Mujaheddin, Manuel Noriega, Saddam, and so on. We never learn. Or rather, the US government never learns. And yes, the US media is twisted in its own way, and is of course very biased. But that doesn't mean Al Jazeera isn't worse, and I think evidence shows that it surpasses the US media in this regard.
Kinda makes you think what AMERICA did to deserve that sentiment since 1945, doesn't it? After all, the US was the hero then and during the 50s and early 60s, why oh why would the European attitudes have changed so much?
Might it have anything to do with the increasingly bully-ish behaviour of the US? After all, the US was responsible for many of the dictatorships in South America (Chile, anyone?).
This anti-americanism is *well-deserved* IMO. I myself have changed from being a staunch US supporter in the 90s to *very* critical in the space of 3 years...and it's due to US actions alone.
--
I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state
LOL. Yeah, just like temporary military rule turned Japan into the 51st state. Oops, that makes Iraq the 52nd state. Oh yeah, I forgot, we also conqured Afghanistan. That makes Iraq the 53rd state. Wait a minute, I forgot South Korea. Iraq is what, the 54 state? 55th? 56th?
You can certainly be opposed to the war, but assuming the US does in fact win the war then what would you suggest they do differently than described in the NY times article? If the Sadam government is gone then you need some sort of government to avoid anarchy and disaster. When a war ends the military is in defacto control of the country. It then takes time to create and transition to a new local government.
Suggesting that the US will not transfer control over to a local government is at best totally unfounded speculation. The US has publicly declared that it will hand over control to the Iraqis and that they will not take any of the oil. If the government broke either of those commitments it would be crucified internationally and domesticly.
I can understand some people have fears of "colonialism", but it is simply not the way the US works.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
You seem to be forgetting the only reason the weapons inspectors were back in the country at all was because of the US. And as for "weakening his position", that's highly a matter of conjecture.
The Iraqi people may well have eventually overthrown Hussein (or one of his descendants), but how many innocent people would have died in the meantime ? Would it have been *less* than the number who will die in this invasion ?
In ~12 years the UN managed to do precisely diddly squat about Hussein (and he's just one of *dozens* of like-minded psychopaths that need to be dealt with). The reason is simple - you can't negotiate with people like that *because there is no common ground upon which compromises can be made*.
About the only thing the latest situation has done with regards to the international community is drive home just how worthless the UN actually is in actually coming up with (and carrying out) solutions. I like the idea of the UN in principle, but in practice its usefullness is limited to things like "expressing outrage".
Confirmation of DDOS and DNS issues here (and here
http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/
http://www.canada.com/national/features/iraq/
http://iraq.ctv.ca/
Pretty well balanced sites IMHO.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.