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."
I, for one, welcome our new Chilean activist overlords.
On the one hand, this is news; NASA is a big target. On the other hand, why are we posting a link to the defacement? We don't need to see it -- just report the story.
Look, I seriously doubt you're going to find that many people who think the war in Lebanon is a good thing, besides anyone with a vendetta against the Lebanese or the people selling bombs and rockets. You want to protest the war, fine -- but don't exepct me to care what you have to say when you can't make your voice heard in a public and legal forum. Defacing a website, any web site, is not the way to make me feel sympathy for your point of view.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Hacktivist hacks happen all the time. Is someone trolling for an Israeli-Lebanon Conflict discussion?
Arabs? Chile is in South America for crying out loud!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
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.
Yeah! That'll show those NASA warlords.
"Oh boy"
When last I looked into this it was a unilateral isreali action.
since when did NASA of all government agencies have to do with a war in lebanon.
It seems to me like theyre doing the cyber equivalent to nasa that isrealis are doing to lebanese civillian centers.
stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid....
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It is so easy to protest something that is right in your face on TV, isn't it? How about years and years of killing that have been going on in Israel by Hizballah and Hamas terrorist organizations? How about all those rockets that were launched at Israel from Lebanon within the past two decades? Maybe a UN server should be hacked, after all after 2000 UN and Lebanon was responsible for keeping Hizballah from amassing rockets and other weapons. Do these activists care when during the 'peace times' Israeli kids and adults get blown up?
If anything, these protestors should thank Israel for taking action now and preventing more carnage later. One cannot constantly procrastinate in this kind of a situation, because it is only getting worse.
Oh yes, and how about protesting where it actually makes sense: at Hizballah, at Lebanese, Iranian and Syrian governments. Protesting against regimes that allow terrorists to do what they do: use civilians AND UN folks as living shields on the battlefield. Not only are civilians used as shields, they are a great propaganda tool. When a terrorist launches a rocket at civilian targets in Israel from a busy market place in Lebanon, and Israeli army answers with fire at that place, is it the responsibility of Israel to make sure that Lebanese civilians do not suffer or is it responsibility of those, who used the civilians for their political gain around the world?
Here are a couple of caricatures that do tell something about the reality of this war.
You can't handle the truth.
They did NOT hack OS X. They simply hacked the application database running on those platforms. Why would the author indicate OS X was hacked when really, it looks like a large number of the servers hacked were in fact running Linux.
I'm not saying OS X is unhackable, but leaving ANY insecure server software running is asking to be hacked.
When Martin Luther King led the nonviolent marches that pulled off a second American Revolution without a second Civil War, the marchers didn't trespass or tear down signs. That's why they changed the attitude and culture of America, which is the victory everyone needs in these conflicts. The victory that others who accepted or embraced violence lost, like Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and all the hundreds of forgotten "freedom fighters". Even when their agenda and goals included important results that would be good for practically everyone, they polarized, alienated and pushed people into defensive positions on even indefensible parts of the status quo.
Chileans vandalizing America when Israel attacks Lebanon doesn't change anyone's minds for the better. It just escalates by a little bit the spiral of violence:
Ignorance -> Fear -> Anger -> Violence -> Alienation -> Ignorance
The central front in the Terror War is in our own minds, where that well-worn cycle can send us all to our doom.
--
make install -not war
The Lebanese government is in enough trouble as it is, having a radical group (Hezbollah) executing attacks on their neighbors against the government's whim. Getting civilian support for that radical group (by demonizing the aforementioned neighbor, which Israel's civilian-infrastructure-targeted attacks and utter carelessness with regard to collateral damage have been doing pretty effectively) weakens the legitimate government, giving the radicals even more of a chance to take over Lebanon completely.
Israel is off their collective rockers, and the world is standing by and letting them get away with it. It's insane.
The Israelis sent messages to the cities they intended to bomb so that the people there could leave and not get killed. Why did they bomb the buildings in those cities? Because the people who run those cities had installed thousands of rockets pointed at their neighboring country and had engaged in randomly firing those missles into civilian centers of the neighboring country without any warning!.
This is an unprovoked serious act of war, by a people who have repeatedly and openly sworn to destroy the neighboring country. Against a people who lost 90% of their population in a slaughter the last time they didn't take these warnings seriously.
If the criminal Hizba'allah organization had not repeatedly engaged in serious unprovoked acts of war against a neighboring sovereign state, the Israelis would not be currently bombing the shit out of them.
This is the way that the world works. You would be doing the exact same thing if it were you. The difference between the Israelis killing Arabs and Arabs killing Israelis is that the Arabs wrap their children in high explosives and send them off to blow themselves up in crowded public areas without warning and without mercy. Then they dance in the streets in celabration of their ' great victory'. The Israelis warn the Arabs that they are coming and if they want to live, then leave. Then they agonize over the wisdom and morality of their actions. They offer peace plans that are always rejected. The cycle of madness begins anew.
All this anti-Israeli and 'anti-Zionism' talk around the world is just anti-semitism resurfacing and trying to pretend not to be. The Israelis are great people that are surrounded by millions of people who have surrendered their minds to a death cult. The Israelis do what they must. They don't get any pleasure from it. But they don't shrink from it, either.
Every single one that U.S. citizens do, and they are numerous. Don't try to excuse the hacking as a "lack" of political access. That don't fly.
The Hezbollah army builds their bases on the ground floor of civilian apartments. They are literally hiding behind women and children. Both sides (Hezbolah and Israel) are equally to blame for the civilian deaths. And since the Syrian and Iranian government are funding the rocket attacks, shouldn't these hackers be hacking Syrian and Iranian sites as well? Could it be that hacking US sites just provides bigger bragging rights?
Disproportionality is the only way to deal with terrorists. The border was peaceful until the Hezbullah incursion. If I were an Israeli I would not relish the prospect of being terrorised forever at an ever more lethal intensity. I would want to irradicate the problem. As for civilians, they were given fair warning to leave the area and go to central Lebanon were they would not be harmed. Hezbullah uses civilians as shields, launching attacks from aprtment buildings, residential areas.. If Hezbullah stopped doing this there would be no civilian casualties. Israel's only recourse is to ignore them in pursuit of the enemy.
an ill wind that blows no good
Actually, it's Chileans, so, it's more friend of my friend's enemy's friend is my enemy.
In all honesty, haven't the US and Israelis attempts at "kicking the nuts" of Hezbollah and similar organizations repeatedly failed miserably? It's a real world example of the myth of the hydra, the more heads you chop off the more there will come! Israel is selling out all their international goodwill (axcept maybe in parts of the US) for a futile attempt to kill off all of Hezbollah. It just can't be done!
staggering that in such a short time the US has gone from loved to hated
This may break your heart to hear, but the US has never been loved by much of the world, ever. Unless, of course, those people dancing in the streets on 9/11 were, you know, doing it out of love.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
It makes perfect sense that the hackers came from south america and not an arab country. My own government (the UK) is way ahead in removing that particular distinction
Seriously though, the reason they hit NASA was because they could. They almost certainly scanned through all US government sites for a vunerability they could exploit, and NASA just happened to have one.
Also, you should be thanking them for this. This form of protest hurts exactly nobody. A sysadmin gets some extra overtime, thats all. If you guys didn't have contempt for peaceful forms of protest like this, perhaps people wouldn't feel the need to murder thousands of you just to get your attention.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
what with the shooting of Jews in chicago yesterday
Do you actually read the news, or just go with what you're told? The shooting was in Seattle - a very different place from Chicago. And Jews have been at the bottom of some people's "favorite peoples" list for centuries - I doubt our foreign policy could really ever change that in just a few years.
The world is not nearly as petty a place as some would like to think it is. Bush hasn't helped, sure, but anti-US sentiment has been building for years. We rule the world, but spend outlandish amounts on shopping trips and vacations to countries whose people can barely afford basic food and shelter. Then, when something happens to our own, we can't take care of them either.
We'd be a whole lot better off is more Americans would stop using Bush as a scapegoat (again, he might be a good one, but that's not the point) and started changing the way they actually lived - cut back on energy consumption, buy a hybrid or use public transit, demand true equality in civil services and protection in poor neighborhoods/regions, and quit mouthing off on the Internet complaining about your government when the House has something ridiculous like a 98% re-election rate.
We don't take responsibility for our own actions - and when something goes right, take responsibility whether it was our doing or not. That's why people hate us.
It sounds like you are missing something, yes. Maybe you should follow the news? These guys in Chile clearly do. From this mornings headlines:
More than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children, have been killed in a town in south Lebanon in the deadliest Israeli strike of the conflict so far. BBC News
This is a sadly ordinary story. I'm no fan of Hezbollah, but I cannot understand the Israeli action, or the lack of action by my (I'm British) or the US government. Just remember who are selling those bombs.
Isn't that what Israel did? They withdrew completely from Lebanon. They gave back all of the Gaza and the West Bank, and withdrew all their settlements. They gave the terrorists everything they asked for and complied with every request the UN made. So now how should the respond to continued aggression? Just throw up their hands and wait for death to come?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Keep in mind not a single civillian would have had to die if their heroic freedom fighters in Hezbolla didn't insist on setting up operations in the center of residential neighborhoods, launching rockets from their cities, and overall using the civillians as human shields.
You're an idiot who has been thoroughly taken by the terrorist propaganda. As someone previously mentioned, an IDF general put it best: "Israelis are sleeping in bomb shelters. Lebanese are sleeping with bombs."
I don't have a position supporting either side, but I feel I should correct a point of yours...
Hezbollah had been making rocket attacks on Israeli cities before the Israelis began their bombing campaign (and later invasion) of south Lebanaon. I refer you to a timeline of the current crisis. They did escalate their attacks after the Israeli response.
Beyond the scope of the current conflict, Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israeli on and off for some time now; for example, see this story from Dec. 2005 regarding a rocket strike from Lebanon on the town of Kiryat Shmona.
But really, if you want to try to say "who started it", you'll be going back decades and centuries. You can't view this incident in isolation, it's all part of the long history of conflict between many parties in the Middle East.
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.
Then maybe we should have done the same to the chicago mafia in the 30's...
just shelled their places of business and damn the consequences...
Again, a non-workable analogy. The people smuggling whiskey and evading taxes in the 30's weren't launching missles from Chicago into Toledo, or proclaiming that only the destruction of Illinois is acceptable to them. They didn't randomly kill women and children, year after year, just to stoke things up (they just killed each other in a turf war over the smuggling market and related "industries").
The mafia wasn't a militant front for an oil-rich retrograde fascist theocracy that was shipping them millions of bucks and thousands of missiles.
It doesnt make sense to use millitary weaponry when surgical strikes on the ground would get things done.
If the Israelis stopped using precision weapons, you'd see the civilian deaths in the areas where Hezbollah keeps parking their weapons and launchers go from a few hundred to thousands and thousands over night. You do understand that you can't just march Israeli troops back into all of Lebanon and surgically remove Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure from the middle of the civilian presence in which they hide without an enormous invasion, right? It takes a gigantic supply chain, tons of armour, and thousands of soldiers - and it would take months and months, and many more Israeli deaths, which is exactly what Hezbollah would like to force them to have to do.
Hezbollah has had an uninterrupted six years to build bunkers, to booby-trap and mine their weapons storage sites, and to make sure that their personnel are woven completely into the fabric of the civilian population of Lebanon. Israel is being smart, and taking out the tools Hezbollah will need to re-supply themselves with weapons. Eventually they will run out, or Iran will have to more clearly show their hand by visibly pushing new weapons into the area by air - and they don't want to have that light shown on them just now. In the meantime, when Hezbollah pops out of a basement with a missle launcher, Israel hits that spot immediately, to destroy the cache that's there. They have no choice, other than to just tolerate more missles raining down on Haifa and beyond.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Even more than that, NASA has put up every single US military sattelite
Wrong. Military satelites are launched by the Air Force, not NASA, at Vandenburg AFB or Cape Canaveral AFB. NASA is strictly civilian launches, even if many astronauts (especially commanders and pilots) are former Navy or Air Force.
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
Of course in your reasonable-sounding comment, you leave out the fact that Hezbollah has never ceased hostilities towards a nation whose existence it denies. They have continually engaged in terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and have refused to disband according to the Taif agreement. They are also not a native Lebanese force. They are originally based in Iran, comprised of Iranian military forces. It's nice to see your balanced view completely ignore this, and jump on Israel as if they have been anything but attacked and harassed over the past 50 years by their neighbors.
I feel sorry for the Lebanese, as they are not really responsible for Hezbollah attacks (besides not taking action against them, anyway). However, the Israelis have leafletted the areas in question, and any civilians who remain in the area after that are either supporting the terrorists themselves, or willing to risk the lives of their own families to stay. In fact, the children who have been injured or killed are victims of their parents and Hezbollah, not Israel.
A nation should not have to endure endless kidnappings of their soldiers/citizens without taking action. Your attempt to compare Israel to the U.S. above shows your ignorance of the situation. A true comparison would be if Ontario was hosting a terrorist group which *regularly* fired rockets, employed suicide bombers, and kidnapped people from the border area and demanded the release of known murderers in exchange for the lives of the kidnapped people. Then, after the exchange (Israel at one point did exchange prisoners, for as little as the remains of the dead) continued to fire rockets, bomb, and kidnap more U.S. citizens. Meanwhile, Canada showed no interest in taking care of the problem themselves, and in fact were terrorized by the same group, but unable to oust them.
That would be apples to apples, except that there would be no Jews to blame. Don't worry though, I'm sure you could come up with some way to justify the terrorist actions, and oh the poor children, what are we doing to the children!
Vidar
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
All this anti-Israeli and 'anti-Zionism' talk around the world is just anti-semitism resurfacing and trying to pretend not to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semitism
"Anti-Semitism (alternatively spelled antisemitism) is hostility toward or prejudice against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group, which can range from individual hatred to institutionalized, violent persecution."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism
"Anti-Zionism is often characterized by opposition to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state"
The Anti-Zionism != Anti-Semetism, though the two do get mixed together.
The Israelis are great people that are surrounded by millions of people who have surrendered their minds to a death cult.
Not to burst your bubble, but the Israelis have heaps of fanatic (relegious) nutbags too. You seem to be confusing and conflating ideological extremism with religion. They are not the same, in the exact same sense that Anti-Zionism & Anti-Semetism are not the same, even though people mix them together.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'm sorry but when you try to justify the killing of innocent civilians you have already lost the argument. Surely war is war and civilians becoming victims of "collateral damage" can be explained. But it can never be justified. Once you claim that killing innocent lives is morally right you have lost all moral authority.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
http://209.67.212.138/~lebanon/
It hurts. Sure, you can find similar photos from Israel too, but these are a small group of extremists vs. a government who really should know better.
Fuck Hizbollah, and fuck the Israeli government.
They gave back all of the Gaza and the West Bank, and withdrew all their settlements.
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.
As for the West Bank, when did Israel withdraw from there? Most of the West Bank is currently occupied by huge Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land (as per the Oslo accords). There are also the ultra-orthdox Jewish settlers who create new "settlements" on Palestinian farmland by terrorizing its owners then erecting makeshift homes and shoot anybody who comes close. The Israeli government is trying to dismantle those, but at the same time expanding their other "legal" settlements by annexing more Palestinian land. Not to mention the completely illegal wall that is eating up even more Palestinian farm land.
They gave the terrorists everything they asked for and complied with every request the UN made.
Really? They definitely did not give back Jerusalem. They definitely did not allow UN peace inspectors into Gaza and the West Bank, and thanks to the US, they do not have any binding UN sanctions against them because of the American veto.
Stop pretending that Israel is the perfect peace loving nation. Israel does not want peace, because peace is not in its favour.
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.
This is more the failure of the rest of the World's so-called foriegn polocies against Israel. Israel will only tolerate getting screwed for so long before the straw breaks the camel's back. I think the straw has broken the camel's back.
I noticed you didn't condemn Hezbollah. They continually use innocent civilians as shields. They were within 3 meters of the United Nations post that got hit. Israel has continually warned the people in Lebanon, including the people of Qana, BEFORE they attacked to get out of the way. They stayed there anyways. Israel didn't have to warn them, and they would have better luck fighting Hezbollah if they didn't warn the people in Lebanon.
You want the war to end? Everybody gives Israel the soldiers back. Hezbollah is disarmed, and then they stop lobbing missiles at Israel (like they have been doing regularly since long before this war began). The end result will be that the war would be over. The fact is, there is NOTHING anyone can due to stop Israel (even the US) short of what I said because for too long Israel has given into the requests of the terrorist giving them every they wanted short of wiping Israel off the face of the planet (the stated goal of Hezbollah), and they got no peace and safety form it.
Did the rest of the world think Israel would tolerate being bombed with rockets & homicide bombers forever without fighting back? If they did, they are truly stupid. No country would let their citizens go through these things. In fact, most countries would have done far more than Israel has done long (as in years) before this. Israel has been patient for too long.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
So, in your mind, anything critical of the policies of Israel is anti-semitism. Because that is what you have written. The Israeli people are no different from the palestine or lebanese people: Mother Theresa and that serial killer Manson belong to the same human race. There is of course ideology flung around, but labeling all arabs as being part of a death cult is "anti-arabicanism". If you think that anti-semitism is bad, then why do you exercise "anti-arabicanism"? The sole reason I put quote marks around that phrase, is because it is not even in common use to describe a behaviour that is exhibited in your own post.
I don't think the Israelis are doing what they must. I think they keep voting in politicians that act as if they and only they could protect them from a not lifethreatening (on a national scale) enemy (doesn't that sound familiar?). What the Israelis need to do is vote for less comforting, less "black-and-white" world viewed politicians, who can do their best to solve the problems on the middle east. While it might not look so good, because there are many compromises to be reached, both the israelis and palestinian/lebanese people would end up safer. If history ended up teaching something, is that unilaterialism end up in empires, and that empires fall.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
End transmission.
Unless, of course, those people dancing in the streets on 9/11 were, you know, doing it out of love.
Actually there was one Muslim country that had a candle light vigil for the US after the bombings of 9/11.
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm
Funny that our so called allies (Saudi's, Kuwaiti's, etc) didn't give a rats ass what happened to us.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons? Answer: Israel. (Ignore this, lameness filter bypass)
Yeah, except for that one nation called Pakistan. Oh and Iran in 10 years if we let them.
Q: Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections?
Except for that country called Iran. Yeah, they signed it, but they certainly haven't lived up to the treaty. Not to mention that Syria has not signed the CWC or BTWC.
You know I was intending of going line by line on your commentary, but it's obvious from your first two "points" that you did not intend to add a well-researched comment to this discussion and I know better ways of spending a Sunday afternoon than exposing trolls.
Then who were Eyal Benin, Shani Turgeman, and Wassim Nazal? Martians?
They were killed by Hezbollah forces operating inside Israel, on a mission to ambush and kidnap Israeli soldiers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Why do we assume that an attack on a US 'target' (NASA) is protesting a war between israel and lebanon?
Last time I checked, iraq was still at war..
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I wouldn't consider South Asia the Middle East. And our very different treatment of Iran and Israel's nuclear weapons programs just prove the GPs point.
Frosty piss posts are worthless, GNAA posts are worthless and hurtful, but they are the least of this site's neuroses.
"As many prior posters have quoted, the difference between Israeli citizens and Lebanese citizens is that "Israeli citizens are sleeping in bomb shelters; Lebanese citizens are sleeping with bombs."
Nice soundbite, it makes it sound like the children are complicit in missle launches, but of course they were just innocent victims. Did they choose or even know who was next door? You are using the vague phrase 'Lebanese citizens' to try to blanket transfer blame from SOME terrorists to A WHOLE COUNTRIES POPULATION.
This strategy can never work. Consider the case of the IRA in Northern Ireland. We faced their bombs regularly in Britain, yet we never did anything so foolish as to bomb huge sections of ireland in the hope of flushing them out. It would be counter productive, it would simply create more terrorism.
In the same way this strategy can't possibly ever fix the problem Israel has with its northern border. It will simply increase the terrorism, and decrease their security.
MacOS = BSD based = 'nix.
It's unfortunate that the world is full of so many morons who (a) cannot tell propaganda from bullshit, and (b) can't creatively channel their frustrations. Hacking a NASA website won't stop a single Israel bomb or Hezbollah rocket from falling on civilians.
I know how things are in Japan, and let me assure you that while there were people there who hate the U.S., and many who regard it with suspicion, the reputation of the U.S. has taken a steep decline since the Bush administration came to power, and especially since the war on Iraq. There was a brief surge of sympathy and compassion following 9/11, but the president is just too loathsome to ignore. I think it's safe to say that he is the second most disliked foreign politician, after Kim Il Jong.
Look, the fact that a bunch of people in the middle east go around burning American flags should not suprise you. What should be worrying is the fact that one of your closest allies now thinks you guys are power-mad and dangerous. I don't think either Japan or the UK will help you in your next war.
You seem to think that one either loves the U.S. unconditionally, or you hate it absolutely like those guys celebrating 9/11, and that there is no changing of opinions. The fact is, most of the world is not extreme and set in their ways like that, and your actions do have an effect on how they percieve you. Your administration has been pushing people away from liking you, so you might want to reconsider your actions.
...but the US has never been loved by much of the world, ever
That isn't correct.
After the second world war and before the cold war really got going, America was much loved by the rest of the world. Particularly after things like the Marshall plan. America was seen as a place of freedom and indeed an example. In fact I think you might even be able to stretch that back to post WWI to shortly after WWII.
And since you mention 9/11, in much of the world (outside many muslim countries), there was a lot of sympathy for America as a result of 9/11. That isn't quite the same as being loved, but it is getting there.
meh
That stupid lazy "hacktivist" attack NASA websites, to protest the atrocities in Lebanon, because they are easier targets than say for example cia.gov, while Israel pummels Lebanon, because they are easier to make war with than the real villians behind Hizbollah, i.e. Syria and Iran.
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
First off, I want to add my voice to those that say: Fuck Israel and Fuck Hizbollah. Fuck Hizbollah for dragging Lebanese civillians into a war where they are utterly defenseless. Fuck Israel for so utterly disregarding civillian lives (accidents my fucking arse).
Fuck Israel for being so fucking dumb as to not have learnt its lesson from the last time they invaded Lebanon. Hizbollah won then and Hizbollah is no weaker now. Fuck Israel for being so stupid as to always make disgustingly bad excuses for the wholesale slaughter of civillians. Fuck Israel again for being so numbingly stupid as to not realise that every bomb that falls on Lebanon makes Hizbollah more popular in the Arab world. And again, fuck Israel for achieving what no Iranian Mullah or politician could: unifying the Shia and Sunni sects against Israel and the west.
You think Israel can disarm Hizbollah? You must have also thought that the US could pacify Iraq. Look how well that turned out and how "disarmed" they are.
And Fuck Bush and his cabal of poodles in the UK who are too stupid to see where this is going: Destroying whatever miniscule amount of credibility the US and the UK had in the Arab world and dragging us one step closer to World war 3.
And you know who must be laughing so hard at all of this that they must be pissing themselves: The Russians and the Chinese.
And the hacked rover wrote "I dig Osama" in the Martian sand.
Table-ized A.I.
There have certainly been spy sattelites launched from the shuttle, a quick google will reveal stories about those missions that appeared in major newspapers.
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.