Slashdot Mirror
Cyberwar on NASA Websites
Vexorian writes "Two NASA websites were hacked today by a group of Chilean activist hackers. The reason was to protest against the war on Lebanon. The mirror of the defaced site contains an image of an injured child and claims that the sites were running MacOSX."
What is not clear is... did they hack OS X or simply hack a web application running on OS X. I wouldn't say "Linux was hacked" if I was running an insecure forum or blog. The information is VERY thin, but I'm interested to see if OS really was hacked.
Israel has the capabilities to aim thier artillery, Hezbollah does not. Israel also has ways to target non civilian areas and yet they still do. Israel has no right or reason to attack Lebanon's infrastructure, or main cities the blockade is ludacris, and if Hezbollah is a terrorist organization you won't ever actually destroy it. What terrorist organizations do is extremely smart in terms of winning a war - They die, their family takes their place, their family die, their kids take their place, and it's all for a religion.
Take what is happeneing in iraq as an example, we killed a few leaders, and every time the attacks have gotten worse.
As far as I care I hope you all die for killing each other in the first place.
Its "HE STARTED IT!" kid talk on a international scale..
You make a strong point. Except Israel just released video of that strike that they did on that building that killed the 50+ people and sure enough it looks like from the video that the missles are being fired right from behind the main large 4 story building on top of the hill. Yes that is truly sad so many woman and children were killed/crushed to death and I have compassion; but as some news agency have been reporting is 'where are all the young and older men casualties at in the building?'. Could they have been firing from the building from behind or somewhere else at dead night? Argument that they could not get out because of roads/bridges blown were false because the news crews have been reporting they got there with their big news vans easily.
The Bush administration does not understand the Arab community. The Middle East has a long tradition of successful military campaigns. The culture in the Arab world demands military success and takes pride in that. When the Arab world was unable to defeat Israel on multiple occasions the collective Arab world was humiliated. They are unwilling to forgive Israel but also their own leaders for their military failures.
When a foreign nation like the USA takes down an Arab government like Iraq there is the same sense of humiliation. That the Arab world was itself unable to take down a brutal dictator but also in the post-war occupation they are unable to govern its people. However when a group like Hezbollah is able to stand up to Israel, even though Hezbollah is a Shiite group, the Arab street is overwhelming in favor of those who they perceive as standing up to foreign aggression. At the same time they criticize their leaders for not taking a similar stand.
The Arab world is desperate for some sort of success, be it military or political and are willing to cheer on even the most insidious of organizations. The longer this conflict goes on, the more civilians who die and the more Hezbollah holds out the more radicalized the Arab world will become.
I think the Bush administration is right in that we should invest in democracy, freedom and economic prosperity in the Middle East. This is the long term strategy that will provide peace in the region. However it can only come through political action. A military strategy will only be ferociously resisted by the Arab world.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
managing Lebanon is Lebanese priority, not Israeli.
Not according to international law. You occupy, so you are in control and you are responsible.
What you suggest contradicts the entire concept of an occupation.
Israeli priority is to make sure that the occupied territory does not harbor terrorists with rockets and rocket launchers.
That was the responsibility of Lebanon upto the point of occupation (during the first occupation it was the PLO and not Hezbollah who sat there with their rockets and launchers and mortars and what not, not to mention Lebanon was rather involved in a civil war).
Now? It was definitely the responsibility of the Lebanese government to see to it that Hezbollah got disarmed. They failed for obvious reasons. Lets not forget that Israel found itself unable to do much about Hezbollah while they were occupying Southern Lebanon, and that in fact Hezbollah's effectiveness has been a factor in Israel ending that occupation. Expecting the Lebanese army to do the job instead is disregarding reality, even more so when realizing that this would certainly result in a continuation of the civil war.
Managing an occupied territory, that is very interesting idea. Let's ask the US how that is going in Iraq.
They have done pretty well in Germany and Japan. After that however there is also a long string of failures.
It might be very interesting to see why the first 2 worked, but that will be a bit too much to write in a simple post here.
Instead I'll point at the main reasons why the Iraq occupation does not seem to work very well..
Three issues come out on top:
1. Occupation force for Iraq is at least a factor 5 too small, and more likely a factor 10. You are not going to controll a country that used to have a large military busy with internal control, with a force approx 1/8th of the size of the local army.
2. As a consequence it failed to provide quick security and basic needs like food and shelter to the population
3. Disregard of the local situation in many aspects (ethnic, political, religious)
That said, the attempt in Iraq does have a chance tho it is unlikely to work out in the way the USA envisioned.
And so did the initial occupation of South Lebanon by Israel.
One could even argue that the initial occupation of South Lebanon was very succesfull. In the end it managed to drive the PLO out of Lebanon, and in a military sense its goals were achieved completely.
The problem is that the consequences were worse then the problem it tried to address. The party in control there was Israel, and so the ones responsible for allowing those consequences are to be found in Israel, not Lebanon.
If Israel had treated the local population well (remember that that local population did at that moment support the Israeli invasion and occupation) and aligned themselves with the local people instead of bringing in the SLA, it is very likely that Hezbollah would never have gotten beyond a few isolated extremists.
This time around, the majority of people in South Lebanon don't want a militia there, but they have learned over the last quarter of a century that having a 'friendly' militia there is a lot better then having Israel there. At least Hezbollah provides for schooling, medical care and food where needed.
All this said, Hezbollah has made a habbit out of attacking civilians and for that simple reason have no legitimacy whatsoever. Israel is not responsible for Hezbollah's choices obviously.
- There were no rocket attacks before Israel attacked Lebanon.
- The causa belli: two israeli soldiers were captured when they were violating the sovereign territory of another nation.
- Israel violates Lebanese airspace on a daily basis to take surveillance photos.
So tell me, how is Hezbollah an imminent danger to Israel? I'll tell you how: it used to be NOT. Now, with popular support for Hezbollah skyrocketing, you can count on it. Israel managed to dig itself a huge hole to fall into.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Some may go as far as to say that the action was unilateral by the US using Israel as a puppet state to do the Bush administration's bidding. Some may also say that the US "support" for Israel's actions points toward the US being a puppet state of Israel (they sit in a region of vast oil resources and we don't). The heavy bombing in sountern Beirut amazingly stopped for several hours during Condolezza Rice's diplomatic trip to Beirut. Imagine the odds, the "no bombing" window and her visit coinciding like that...
But this is all offtopic and I'm not anything remotely close to being politically "in the know."
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
So, in this context, it is true that the US has gone from loved to hated in the span of 17 days. Everything that has happened since the beginning of the war has strengthened the radical elements of the Lebanese government (like it or not, Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese gov't and represents 45% of the population). Every civilian killed was proof that everything that the radicals have been saying about the "Zionists" and the "Imperialist American Dogs" was true.
What are you talking about? They withdrew from Gaza, yes, but since then have blocked anything and anyone from entering or leaving. There is no economy, no money flow, no medicine flow, nothing going into Gaza. Yes, Israelis left, but they completely choked it up.
Man these Jews certainly have some superpowers. Couldn't get anything into there? Maybe that had something to do with the corrupt PLO leader Arafat not giving two shits about Arabs living in that area.
Also this smacks of being a whiner. Oh the Jews are keeping us down! Hrm, there's about 10 non-Jews for every Jew in that area, why can't they figure out how to run their own economies and supply food and shelter?
One more time asshole: Hezbulla needs to stop nestling themselves amongst the civvies.
Yeah, try to be objective you fucktard: Hezbulla turns the soldiers over to Israel and stops firing rockets, then Israel ceases lighting them up. Problem solved. Lebanese civilians are not Isreal's problem, however unfortunate their being in the way may be. The resonsibility of the Israeli IDF is first and foremost security of their populace. Capitulation and negotiation are perceived as "weakness" in Israel's neighborhood. I've lived in the middle east: this "you give a little, and I'll give a little" attitude does not hold. History shows that every time Isreal "gives a little" they get fucked for it.
As far as occupied territory? It's called "the spoils of war".
The Israelis are not angels by any stretch, but the bullshit hit a threshold and they reacted. You keep twisting the dragon's tail and sooner or later you're going to get fried.
Well, you are spewing bullshit. None of the attacks were against 'innocent civilians'. Israel does not target innocent civilians, they target Hezbollah terrorists, they fire at rocket launcher sites. Civilians and the UN happen to be there, sure.
Read this. This is from a Canadian UN soldier who got killed by the way.
And this: U.N. Chief Accuses Hezbollah of 'Cowardly Blending' Among Refugees
You can't handle the truth.
Blame the US and other "western" nations that supported israel. If they dident give israel weapons (even fucking NUKES!) then israel would most certianly have either fallen, or learned to make friends, as it stands, they dont make friends, they dont even try. They dont see non-israelies (palistineans) as equal to israelies, they jail them for no reason, and for the most part treat them like total crap even outside the legal system. There is no reason why jews and muslims cant live in peace, but its the nations of israel that is really to blame, as well as israels protecter nations that supply them with weapons that they dont supply to other mid-east nations (they let israel have nukes, but not iran or iraq? The cold war is over, israel has no need for those weapons, and if they ever used them, they would be destroyed without question).
While politics is complex, thats face it, nations either live or die, and israel is a nation that should have died, since it dident, it has only caused problems. Likewise to the US, stick your nose all over the world, sooner or later, youll piss someone off and they will slap it off. Just let things unfold, cut off support for israel, and they will either make friends, or die, either way, problem solved.
If you guys didn't have contempt for peaceful forms of protest like this
We have contempt for forms of protest that break the law.
You want to protest in the streets of Chile? Go ahead. You want to march on Washington? Be my guest. You want to call the president nasty names? I'll join you.
You want to do something productive, like start up your own site with the side of this that we're likely not seeing, at least not much, in the US? Please do.
You want to break into a server because you can and deface it? No, you deserve to go to jail. And you deserve to have the shit kicked out of you while you're there, since regardless of whether or not you may have had some point to make, you made your entire cause look stupid in the process--not to mention the fact that NASA has absolutely nothing to do with anything going on in Lebanon.
Do you think this stunt made me any more sympathetic to their cause? It didn't. And most reasonable people feel the same.
The trouble is that the arabs and palestinians have played for keeps and lost so many times that they've run out of palatable options.