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."
Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government, launched crossborder raids and fairly advanced rockets on civilian targets many miles inside Israel. Israel has a right, and in fact a duty, to prevent its civilians from being attacked. Given that Israel's enemies are eager to "wipe Israel from the map" I suppose the other choice is for Israel to go quietly in the night, but that isn't really an option, is it?
So what you're saying is that "hacktivism" is only "legit" when the government it is undermining isn't your own?
The Chilean hackers blocked the flow of information from the websites attacked to the users wishing to access it. This is what the Chinese government is doing to their citizens.
Efforts to overcome Chinese censorship are directed at allowing information to flow to internet users. There is a difference.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Israel has not withdrawn from the West Bank. Gaza is under seige- remember the bombardment of the beach in Gaza that was part of the buil-up to the present conflict? It's not exactly ancient history! Israel also continues to occupy the Sheba Farms, which is arguably legally Lebanese territory (some say Syrian).
Hezbollah are indeed a nasty terrorist organisation. But so are the IDF. Both kill civilians in the pursuit of power. Both deliberately try to terrorise their target populations- unless you think Hezbollah has rockets hidden in Christian suburbs of Beirut? The IDF happens to have bigger guns, so they're more effective at killing at terrorising. Doesn't make their aims worse but they're certainly not better than Hezbollah either.
Essentially we have a situation where two nasty groups are duking it out and lots of innocent people are caught in the crossfire. This is A Bad Thing and peace is the best option.
As far as Palestine goes, what's happening there is nothing less than ethnic cleansing. A section of the Israeli ruling class wants "Eretz Israel" and will kill, maim and terrorise to get it. I'm sure if Hezbollah had a similar aim they would behave just as nastily. This isn't a James Bond movie, this is real life! Thinking it's Israel, the Good Guys vs Hezbollah, the Baddies, is just as dumb as thinking it's the other way around.
Both Israel, until very recently that is, and Lebanon had groups within their borders who had a 'foreign policy' of their own, if you can call it that. Both groups were given a tacit head-nod but were otherwise isolated from their own mainstream society; Lebanon has Hezbollah, and Israel had (well, still has, but their power is gone for a bit) the settler (greater Israel) movement. Both had their opponents in government, but were otherwise powerless to do anything about it; Lebanon because they're no match for Iran's money, Israel because of feelings of electoral suicide. It's a tad early to argue that because Israel reigned in their settlers, that Lebanon should just stand up to Hezbollah - after all, Lebanon had only just been 'released' by Syria. For Lebanon, it's just a shitter of a situation to be in, but then again - this situation could have been seen coming for miles. Nobody in either camp really wants peace; Iran doesn't want it (isn't that totally obvious ?) and Israel doesn't want it - it may want a cease-fire with a tyrant, but not peace with a neighbouring democracy. As I said; the writing was all over the wall. When Abbas said that he wanted a referendum over the acknowledgement of Israel out of Hamas, you knew that the bomb was going to blow sometime soon. Just too close for comfort, that was. And when you're a tiny country caught in the middle of it - tough luck.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Well said. You can't fight an unconventional war with conventional bombs. Innocent civilians die en masse, in order to destroy a bomb capable of kill 10 people.
War never makes sense.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, vote for Democracts in November 2006 and elect a Democratic President in 2008 - we need to balance things the other way for a little while. I don't care if Democrats help unemployed people a little bit; it can't be worse than spending $300 billion dollars on War/Death/Oil.
Afterall, as Ghandi said, the measure of a country is level of it's poorest people.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.