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Turkish Hackers Target Vatican Website After Pope's Genocide Comment
An anonymous reader writes Turkish hackers have brought down the official Vatican City website, following Pope Francis' statement in which he referred to mass killings of Armenians by Turks as 'genocide'. According to reports, the website www.vatican.va was first taken offline on Monday evening with a Turkish hacker, named @THTHerakles, announcing that he would continue to target the website should an official apology not be issued from the Vatican City. The hacker said that the Pope's comments were "unacceptable" for a respected religious figurehead. "Taking sides and calling what happened with the Armenians genocide is not true ... We want Pope [Francis] to apologize for his words or we will make sure the website remains offline," he added.
Because killing over a million people of a certain way of life is not genocide...
Not sure how he thinks he's going to come out on top in the public eye for attacking the clergy. Sure, he'll be the hero of his hacker friends, but most of the world has a pretty low opinion of people who attack the clergy.
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It was a genocide. Genocide, genocide, genocide. The mass killings of the Armenians by the Turks 1925 was a genocide.
Now, vailant Turkish hax0rs, go ahead and take down the Internet.
Yeah, the best way to not get caught it to tell people you're going to continue hitting a specific target. No way you could get caught with that strategy.
I would have thought that most of his Turkish friends would have a low opinion of him already for choosing a Greek handle.
>most of the world has a pretty low opinion of people who attack the clergy.
And that is the top reason the clergy has an issue with pedophiles in their ranks. Protection from public opinion or investigation, even if it is self-imposed.
Soon the Pope will be saying the US genocided the Native Americans. US hackers will then hack the Vatican as well. Of course, in that instance, the church was part of the genocide.
How the fuck am I supposed to get my daily "Pontiff's Postings" and "Cardinal Glick's Fav Flicks" newsletters now, you Turk cocksuckers??
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
What would the Inquisition be considered?
Yeah, i wonder what the Turks would call it, if as many Turks were slayed by the Armenians? Payback? Yeah right.
Huh? Ask the remaining Armenians. Why not admit it? Good for the Pope. I would like more comments on bad behaving countries and also priests.
The Turks are a touchy bunch. Seems like the Turks bullied HP to pull their last major security report a couple of months ago because it said (correctly) that the Turks allowed nasty things to be done online, some in support of ISIS. Now the Turks want the Pope to apologize for saying (correctly) that genocide includes killing a million people of a specific ethnicity? Wanting to save face and placing honor before truth is way too common, but come on. The Turkish reaction on these and many many other issues is just idiotic in the face of overwhelming evidence and worldwide understanding. Take your lumps like the Germans did and move on. Oh, and quit letting ISIS cyberjackasses use your fat pipes in support of their non-cyber butchery.
I really would like the media to stop referring to people who DDoS as "hackers". All they're doing is sending a pile of requests to a service and overloading it. I'm not impressed, neither is anyone else here.
Love sees no species.
Never mind that when the Pope says something into a microphone somewhere, it's rebroadcast through satellites to every corner of the globe - you took down Vatican City's web site!
That'll fix their little red wagon!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The Turks are hardly the only people who deny their past ill deeds. While the Japanese were forced on the international stage to admit to the atrocities they committed before and during WWII in their quest for an Asian Empire (in particular the astonishing abuses in China and Korea), at home Japanese school children by and large learn little or nothing of these evil acts.
Even in the Americas, we tend not to talk overly much of what the Europeans did to the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The Spanish were certainly the worst, but the English colonial regimes were at times just as harsh, and superior firepower was used right from the earliest days of colonization well into the 19th century to push Indian peoples of their lands. Still, one can openly admit in most countries in the Americas that the indigenous peoples were mistreated, and in many cases whole tribes and ethnic groups were wiped out, without some crazy ass Mexican, American or Chilean hackers shutting down your website.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This would be the perfect opportunity for the Pope to fire a second salvo by commenting on the Turkish oppression of its Kurdish minority...
>most of the world has a pretty low opinion of people who attack the clergy.
And that is the top reason the clergy has an issue with pedophiles in their ranks. Protection from public opinion or investigation, even if it is self-imposed.
No, the top reason the clergy have this issues is because they're human. That's not an excuse, it's a fact. It's been shown time and time again that the incidents of pedophilia in the clergy is no higher than the general population. The real problem is that we bury our collective heads in the sand. We want to believe that there's an evil organization hiding, protecting pedophiles so that we don't have to think about the fact that it might be our next door neighbor or, more likely, our son or daughter's teacher.
Incidentally, the problem with pedophilia in the Catholic Church is one if pederasty which is actually a problem with homosexuality, which is okay now.
I agree with most of your words, but the Spanish weren't certainly the worst. In former Spanish colonies more than 70% of the population has indigenous ancestors. In English colonies the indigenous were almost exterminated, the population is mostly white or black and racism persist in one or other way until today.
As a Greek i know what Turks are - not "was", but "are"! Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, e.t.c., know also...
If i write here what Turks done to Greeks, starting from 1453 (the hordes of Muslims inside Constantinople), continuing in the centuries following the struggle of Greeks to free themselves from them (that's why you still see us Greeks dressed as "Tsoliades" -the warriors with the "funny skirt"-, it's because we try to honor those who liberated us from them), and ending to the invasion in Cyprus (2/3 of the victims were woman and children - we still find them -women and children- buried...) it would look like a fucking Greek trying to attack poor Turks. The same it would look if i was an Armenian, an Assyrian, a Kurd (did you know that Kurds are still not permitted to teach their language; They are not even permitted to wear a certain compination of coloured dresses, because...!!!)
We Greeks fought German too (in the WW1 Germany and Turkey were allies, in WW2 the were "sillent allies", and Turkey declared war to Germany one day before Germany surrenders). Hitler inspired the genocide of Jews from Turks (he asked his officials: who remembers the Armenians?). But Germany did the right thing: no one, not even Jews, can claim that Germany denies what it did, on the contrary Germans almost turture themselves with their continued auto-critisism. That is why Germans are Germans... and Turks are Turks!
But i am a Greek so...
Honestly, I personally know one who thinks the numbers are inflated, that the Western story ignores the violence Armenians brought against Turks, and that moving the Armenians was a necessary operation for safety and security. She's not a bad person, but when it comes to her country's problems, she's brainwashed; there's not enough healthy skepticism.
as have Canadians.
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And people still excuse the internment of Americans of Japanese descent in WW2. Granted, not a genocide, but people were essentially thrown in prison and expropriated for where their parents were born.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Typical Muslim response to the truth. Ban it, bar it, become the victim.
The inquisition was political killing, which was deliberately not in the definition of genocide, and it was to suppress, not exterminate, which also, is not under the definition of genocide.
"When you cut out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say." -- George R. R. Martin
Circumcision is child abuse.
maybe this report about "Exorcists warn Vatican over 'beautiful young vampires' and satanic yoga" also scared them http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Soon the Pope will be hiring hackers to take back the Holy Land from the Turks.
I don't know about Chile (having never been there or met any Chileans), but I get the impression that Mexico did a much better job of preserving the native culture and absorbing the Spanish into it (rather than the other way around) than the United States did. (I'm not saying Mexico has necessarily done a good job, just that it's been less bad than the piss-poor job the US has done.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In which former spanish colony? Tour Central America sometime: everyone you meet will be hispanic or black. The native cultures were annihilated. A few reservations exist, and they're about as nice as reservations usually are. Racism is the same everywhere. (I will note one exception, the Kuna Yala have a pretty good thing going on.)
But the real measure here should not be ancestry, it should be language, as a proxy for cultural identity. The number of people who speak something other than spanish (or english) as a first language is tiny. The spanish did their job well. Columbus' genocide of Hispaniola (e.g.) doesn't make the Spanish the worst offenders but there is nothing good about their legacy, and you should not claim otherwise.
Good catch. He might not get on well with his neighbors.
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Attacking the clergy of their religion, yes. Attacking the clergy of other religions, not really.
Well, that's pretty much incorrect. The mistreatment of the natives was made pretty clear to us in public school in the 70s and 80s. I highly doubt there is any recent attempt to reverse that progress.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The dominance of Mayan and Aztec culture is long gone, but empires rise and fall. Tho populations themselves, however, largely survived and are still the genetic backbone of the region. Have you actually been to southeastern Mexico or Central America? If you have, you'd know the Mayan bloodlines are still exceptionally common. There may be (almost certainly is) a level of economic oppression going on due to race, but as a race, Mayans are aanything but dead. I can't speak for Aztecs (although many people identify themselves as such) because I haven't been to the areas where they might claim dominance. In any case, not even the members of the class themselves claim to be endangered. They are not. Their culture is another matter.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Morality is not relative.
That being said, FDR was a villain, and not just for the Japanese internment.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
... the Pope.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Similar "hackers" were some of the most prolific spammers on Usenet in the early 90s. Everybody who administered a news server back in the day probably remembers the incident, and many of us felt like mass murdering these guys in response. They practically invented the spambot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Wow, all the other 16 year olds must think you're so edgy...
>Incidentally,
No, call it what you like, but I think the public outrage is not because it's commonly a homosexual act, but because it's a sexual act pressured on children by an adult in a position of trust and authority.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Speak for yourself. Atheists are not some sort of organized institution that all agree with your own embittered position.
The irony is that the Ottoman empire murdered half a million Pontic Greeks.
Indeed. The fact that there are a lot of Mestizos and Indians in Latin America does not mean there was not a concerted effort to wipe out the indigenous cultures in the Spanish colonies. And yes, the English and their descendants in both British North America (later Canada) and the United States committed a good many atrocities as well, some that must certainly be regarded as at the very least cultural genocide.
It is actually a wonder that Indians anywhere in the Americas managed to hang on to their cultural identity and languages. Some, like some of the tribes in the Amazon and tribes in the more remote areas of the Americas managed to do so simply because they enjoyed full or partial isolation. For others, it has been a concerted effort to either maintain or rebuild their traditions and languages, in some attempt to reconstruct a portion of what has been lost.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You do of course realize that the frequency with which pedophilia occurs with clergy has been overblown by the media, right? I'm not excusing it or saying that it's ever going to be in any way acceptable, but the entire reason it that pedophilia in churches was ever such big news is not because of how frequently it was occurring, but because of the emotional response that such news effectively creates. Per capita, in fact, it is not any more probable in a church setting than what statistically occurs elsewhere... far less, in fact... it considerably more likely, for example, to be occurring inside one's own home, but because spinning the story in this way provokes a much stronger emotional response because it is something outside of one's own immediate control that people can get angry about, creating a sensationalistic media haven, and a veritable breeding ground for people to have passionate rather than well-reasoned responses, while just talking about pedophilia in homes, while certainly not any less wrong, would tend to produce a much more defensive response such as "well that doesn't happen in *MY* home", and thus are more dismissive of it.
Of course, none of this should be taken to ever *excuse* the clergy, or anyone for that matter, who abuse children in this way... my point is only that focusing only on how clergy commit pedophilia can take focus off of the fact that it is actually the crime that is truly abhorrent, and not the institution itself. Again, the institution was far less likely to harbor pedophiles than a home itself would be.
So perhaps that's actually part the problem, because the institution has a very communal flavor to it and there tends to be a stronger sense of trust, similar to what one might encounter in one's own home, among the people affiliated with such organizations than what may otherwise occur in a more contemporary public setting, it can conceivably make it statistically more likely to happen in that kind of organization than other types, and may be a contributing factor. Still it happens with disturbingly far more frequency in homes and in family settings than in a church.
Most churches today, owing in no small part to the sensationalistic news that was created about them when stories about them abusing children first broke out in a big way, now have a *LOT* of checks and balances in who they have in positions of authority and how they treat other people, small children or otherwise, and it is thankfully far safer in such environments in that respect now than even what it used to be. Is it perfect? No... but it's getting better, and that shouldn't be ignored.
As they say...The more you know
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course morality is relative. Three hundred years ago it was perfectly moral to purchase slaves. One hundred and fifty years ago depriving over half the population of most English speaking areas of political and even full property rights because they were born with a vagina and instead of a penis. The Spartans thought it perfectly moral 2,400 years ago to leave weak infants exposed to the elements to die. For centuries Christianity promoted ideas like anti-Semitism and the Divine Right of nobility to have political and economic rights that no one else could enjoy. If you go back to the Old Testament, it was perfectly moral, if not a legal and moral requirement, to execute witches and adulterers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Pre eternal September you could count on Seder to post long, rambling and confusing anti-Armenian screeds whenever turkey was mentioned. Made talking about Thanksgiving dinner interesting. I guess the web is too big to grep nowadays.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Who cares whether or not you believe in God. Religion is still responsible for people helping other people. Not required, of course, but it provides guidance to many.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
People of Celtic origins are still the backbone of the British Isles, and yet culturally the vast majority of that region are West Germanic. Or take the Turks and Syrian and Palestinian "Arabs" as another example. Genetically, these people are simply the descendants of the East Mediterranean populations that have lived there for thousands of years. For instance, the Palestinians and Jews are closely related, simply because they're both descendants of the Canaanite peoples that had been hanging out there since before the Bronze Age). But linguistically, culturally and ethnically these are all seen today as independent and in some ways quite distinct populations, much as the Scots and English are seen as distinct despite the fact that genetically they are closely related.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A part of modern Turkey's wealth was built upon what they took as booty from the Armenian Genocide.
For Turkey to admit the Genocide is not a matter of not having the courage to say "sorry" but a matter of facing the consequences of their actions.
Consequences that imply repair to the victim's families and borders to Armenia. That is why the negation of the Genocide is so important for the Turks. To the point they'll jail their own scholars if they mention it.
Disclosure:
I am a descendant of a survivor of the Genocide. My great-grandmother who died at 96 when I was ~10, told me, and I now 45, remember clearly, how all her children, but my yet unborn grandmother, were killed in front of her and her husband eyes. She could later escape disguised in a carriage of dead bodies.
I think this sort of response rather vidicates the Pope's statements.
The last one to try to kill a pope was a Turk too.
The problem with pedophilia in the Catholic Church isn't just the prevalence of it, or the fact that the clergy are in a position of power. The problem is the way that they covered up the cases and protected the abusers. The right thing to do when discovering a pedophile priest would be to hand him over to the police, but the church would often keep things secret and move the priest to another location, to try to make the problem go away. This culture of secrecy went all the way up to the pope, and when an organization as large as the Catholic Church has systemic problems like this, it completely justifies the amount of media attention that they received.
Even in the Americas, we tend not to talk overly much of what the Europeans did to the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
I would disagree, in a sense. In the US people who are informed are happy to talk about it. The problem is that we're not taught it in high school history class. And most history teachers tend to punish students for contradicting the textbook - which happened to me in American History where she would give me C's (she tried giving me F's but I complained to the principal, so she couldn't actually fail me, apparently I was a defiant brat which of course only made that bitch hate me more) for well researched papers that contradicted the textbook on topics much less important than the genocide of the the Native Americans. If I knew then what I know now, I could have had so much fun messing with with that bitch. Okay, I digress...point being it's not taught in school and in most schools students are prevented from contradicting the textbooks' propaganda.
Even in the Americas, we tend not to talk overly much of what the Europeans did to the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Just FYI, we're on the same page for most of your post until here. I was born in Turkey and had dual citizenship until I was 18. Is it the case that outside of the USA this stuff is brushed under the rug? I really don't know, but I don't fully understand the reasoning as to why it'd be the case...
As for the USA, I wouldn't consider these things swept under the rug in the USA whatsoever. I was first exposed to the trail of tears and smallpox blankets and such in grade school, and this is in fairly conservative midwest public schools. It doesn't come up in normal conversation, but neither do a gazillion things that don't factor into peoples daily lives.
Having relatives in Turkey, none of this is surprising. Turkey is a beautiful country and a fascinating place, but for those who don't know it's history here is a cliffnote version. It had a dictator (Mustafa Ataturk), who was called a president, who was a military officer who took over when the Ottoman Empire lost out in World War I. Instead of returning it to something like a caliphate under divine rule (imagine Iran), he basically abolished it and set about modernizing the country along the lines of France and other western countries while tweaking things to fit the culture and grinding out dissent whether it was religious or personal. Sharia courts were tossed away and replaced with something more western, universities were reorganized as mixed-sex and on and on and on, with secularism enforced (you were welcome to practice a religion). This all sounds amazing, and there's a whole lot to like... the problem is that most of the country wasn't really for this, and still isn't -- none of it was really happening naturally. If you talked too much about Islam or against the policies you'd be tossed out or "disappear." There's too much to go into here, but there were several military coups where those elected were tossed out, secret killings, etc. By the time you get to Ataturk's role in putting armenians to the sword (and literally driving them into the sea) it isn't a narrative even educated-turkish are ready to hear. It'd be like finding out George Washington was a serial killer and the rest of the world had known it all along.
Things have turned, where slowly the more fervant have taken power and in our modern world turned the tables and become actively pro-muslim and turning away from secularism... the military won't step in because the current president had a bunch of generals put on trail for conspiracy against democracy and other things. It's one of those things where the educated are only taught what Turkey wants them to know (and participate heavily in the same conspiracy-culture as Arab cultures, like Egypt) and fully embrace the narrative of the benevolent dictator who turned the country into a stable and prosperous place after its humiliation, while the uneducated are religious fundamentalists who are starting to use their strength in numbers to turn the country in that direction. It doesn't look good for the secularists and more progressives, and family members are starting to make an exit plan.
It's a total mess, and really, really sad. Being exposed to it from both sides has personally informed me how great a force indoctrination and nationalism really is, and it isn't something the USA can relate to. Our "humiliating defeats" and having to find excuses and rationalizations for them are minor, as are the levels of corruption and other things, so when you talk to someone from Turkey with a PHD in mathematics from a western university who'll seem educated and western until Israel or another topic comes up... and then it's all out the window.
English colonies usually refers to colonies under the English (Britain) Empire from the XVI-XX centuries. As Mal-2 said, the indigenous population in Latin America Spanish colonies survived, but in American colonies under English domination their populations were almost exterminated. So, I disagree with the phrase "The Spanish were certainly the worst".
It coulld be another effect of the 'extinction wars'.
As every witness is destroyed, who would assertain the genocide?
Any lie could pervade.
I think you'll find the teachings of many of the world's major religions (from all points on the compass) encourage -- and even compel -- the followers to help other people.
I always find it a bit amusing that when the war of ideas starts going badly for one side that the hackers rise up to to fight, as if attacks on the other side's computers will actually do anything useful except make you look even worse.
What are you afraid of, Turkey? Becoming a modern state like Germany? Cuz, you know... I'm pretty sure they've admitted to it and it wasn't the end of the world.
And the way this was done was identical to how child abuse can remain undetected in a family for years....
My point is that the real problem is not with the church or how it is organized, it is more deeply rooted in a type of social disfunction that can occur in any environment where there is implied element of trust. Such trust is not typically associated with public organizations outside of a church or similar setting, which is why it appears to happen more frequently in churches than elsewhere. In truth, it unfortunately happens more than an order of magnitude more frequently in families and people's own homes, often without anyone else being the wiser. Should we abolish families because of that?
While certainly religions of all kinds, including Catholicism, have been used to condone absolutely abhorrent behavior in the past, it is all that anyone can do to realize that mistakes have been made, and to at least try to avoid repeating the same ones, which is the policy that the Catholic church attempts to utilize.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I think a big part of the reason it's so taboo is that the founders of modern Turkey were probably involved in the genocide
You guys should take a step back and look at the larger picture
The problem is not Turkey per se, but the religion that most Turkish people believe in --- Islam
Look at Germany --- it too committed genocide not that long ago, but in the case of Germany it has the guts to admit what it had done and to seek forgiveness for it
There are many differences between Germany and Turkey, but the one thing that sets them apart the most is the religion
Christianity had done many bad things in the past and the religion ( at least many practitioners of Christianity ) has acknowledge the past sins
Germany has the guts to acknowledge what it did to the Jews partly because of the religion Germany relies on - Christianity - and when Christianity readily admits its past sins, Germany follow suit
On the other hand, Islam has never apologize for all the wrongs that it was involved in. Similarly, Turkey, being an Islamic country, will never acknowledge the genocide it has committed against the Armenians
And people still excuse the internment of Americans of Japanese descent in WW2. Granted, not a genocide, but people were essentially thrown in prison and expropriated for where their parents were born.
Not once have I heard anyone excuse that. Disgust is the only reaction I've ever seen.
The rate of sexual molestation of children is frighteningly high in all organizations I looked at, and the Catholic Church is not out of line there.
What the Church got really blamed for was its actions with such molesters. The priests would normally be shuffled off somewhere else where'd they be inconvenient to investigate, frequently working with children again. It wasn't just that they were covering up abhorrent crimes, but that they were giving the criminals more opportunity to pursue their crimes in safety.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Religion is also responsible for people hurting other people. I don't know what the total net effect is.
Religion often makes people absolutists about their prejudices. A tremendous amount of harm is done by people convinced that they know what's right, and go with that rather than dealing with whoever it is on a human basis.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes