Voice of America Site Forced Offline By 'Iranian Cyber Army'

angry tapir writes with this excerpt from TechWorld: "The pro-Iran hacktivist group that defaced the Baidu and Twitter Web sites a year ago has hit another target: the US Government's Voice of America news site. Voice of America was knocked offline temporarily after hackers were able to change the organization's DNS (Domain Name System) settings, redirecting Web traffic hitting Voice of America sites to another site controlled by the hackers."

Comments

Well, you got to feel pity for them

[SmallFurryCreature]

Here they are raging against the great satan intervening in Islamic countries all the time, to little effect and then voila, couple of weeks and their Muslim brothers put the entire region on fire and overthrow government after government. Some in Iran must be pissing their pants by now. The world is changing and so far NOT to the extreme. All those cries for democracy in Muslim nations, that just ain't right is it. No burning of US flags, no cries for battle against Zionists. Just cries for democracy. Crazy stuff AND it is working.

The changes of it all working out okay are... well lets face it, nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen, if you had created a scenario in which North Africa would be in one big movement to overthrow local leaders last year, people would have told you to stop being a hollywood fantast and get a grip on reality. Just look at the map, a ribbon of rebellion and the end is not in sight. If Libya also falls... well then even outrageous violence doesn't work anymore or for that matter giving at least some of the oil wealth to the general public (Gadafhi might (now) be completely insane, but he was not as corrupt as some of his counter parts and at least the west of the country generally benefitted a bit from the oil income)

So, lets give the Iran cyber army its last few twitches before this guy will be in front of the firing squad for his allegiance to a overthrown regime.

Re:Well, you got to feel pity for them

[mjwx]

High schoolers and students are the first people used as foot soldiers for any anti-government actions

1969 is calling, he wants you to know the government is bad man, also have you got any weed. A lot of popular, non violent revoltutions are lead by youth. This is also why the Iranian government is using Arabs (primarily from HAMAS and Hezbollah) as troops instead of Persians, a young Persian will think long and hard about firing on his own people, some of them his friends, a brainwashed Palestinian or Lebanese wont give it a second thought. Why do you think Gaddafi first bought in troops from Chad as opposed to ordering the Libyan army in?

The Iran-Iraq war of the 80's depleted Iran's youth. This is why their population is seriously skewed towards the younger ages, after the war everyone started having babies because there were no kids left. As a result the generation was somewhat spoiled (Persian parents normally spoil their kids, but this was extra). Also the memory of the Iran-Iraq war lingers in the minds of older Persians. Also, literacy is very high in Iran, I can also tell you've never met one, they are not the brainwashed automata you believe them to be, in actual fact young Persians are quite well educated.

But the whole reason why the Theocratic government will eventually fall is because the youth, which is now starting to enter adulthood wants change (war ended in 1988). They are the ones that protested in June 2010. The theocratic government is used to pandering to the needs of the older generations, the younger generations are finding themselves restricted and now that they are a rising force in Iran, they're pushing back. Iran has quite a few youth problems that they dont like advertised, in particular smuggling in of western culture (movies, music) and a rather nasty heroin problem (who do you think is buying all the poppies being grown in Afghanistan). Iran's response to this was to arrest users, shoot dealers and ignore the causes, obviously the problem remains.

This is why any self-respecting government is prepared to face those "protests" and "revolutions", and defeat them.

What do you think they did six months ago.

Also, you said "defeat" not wait them out like western governments but ironically that's exactly what they do, they wait out the protest or use false flag operations to make quashing them a popular move (just like western governments). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932010_Iranian_election_protests Give that a quick read. They know how to deal with protests, as I said they are not stupid by any measure. Which is why they wont disappear overnight like Mubarak has and Gaddafi will.

Re:Good!

[TubeSteak]

Funny. If anything, VoA has been criticized for not being American enough. The running gag is that throughout its existence, VoA hadn't even created an English language version of its broadcast.

That's because, as the GP accurately said, VoA is propaganda.
Even the US government considers it so and, as such, it is illegal to disseminate to a US audience.
Here's the relevant law: Smith-Mundt Act of 1946

There was an article in Foreign Policy magazine (a year or two ago) talking about how VoA turned down a US radio station that wanted to rebroadcast some of the VoA's foreign language programs.

I can't say for sure what, if any, law constricts the Dept of Defense, but they operate under the same "not for domestic consumption" policy.

Just one tiny problem

[SmallFurryCreature]

Everything you said has been said before to explain why North African countries won't rebel. And then they did.

New game, new rules. Why do you think western leaders allowed themselves to be photographed hugging the Libyan leader whatever his name is (see comment below) and indeed the British PM is on a weapon selling trip while the weapons sold in the previous trip are busy killing civilians? A bit embarrassing?

You also seem to have forgotten the violent repression of the earlier uprising in Iran. These are not the actions of a government willing to change. Neither are there continued attempts at making nukes. It was Libya that stopped, not Iran.

Really, LOOK at what is happening. Something has changed. Even if Iran stays the same for now, the Middle East has changed. The power balance is gone. If Egypt and Tunesia truly become democratic they would side far closer to Turkey then dictatorships. That is going to leave the remaining dictatorships far more isolated. Rewatch the fall of the Soviet Union. Once dominoes start falling,it is hard to stop.

I think all bets are off and considering Iran's reaction so far, they think the same thing. Why else block access to these events if they are sure their own people will stand behind the government?