Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
I would have thought that most of his Turkish friends would have a low opinion of him already for choosing a Greek handle.
People who don't actually look at facts, but at feelings they have do to patriotism, ethnocentrism, or other sorts of values don't really care about accuracy in labeling. They also don't like unacknowledged but horrible national acts brought up because it stains their sense of nationalism and machismo.
It was a genocide. There may have been awful things happened to precipitate it, but it was a genocide and the record is fairly clear on this.
It would take courage for Turkey to accept this part of their past, apologize for it, and show that they are big enough to accept the bad and the good in their past. But they aren't, nationally, and these hackers are an example of that.
Until you can be brutally honest with yourself about the warts on your nation's past, you can't ever really be a great nation. You have to be able to look your mistakes and misdeeds in the eye and say 'yeah, I own that... not proud of it.... and there were reasons.... but I own that'.
When and if Turkey can ever do that, they'll show they (as a country and Turks as a national population) have grown and are not so fragile as to need to hide, deny, and otherwise act like an ostrich in the face of their darker moments in the past.
Most nations have them. The number that have the guts to face up to them and try to accept the dark parts and maybe even do something to commemorate or make restitution are not that large. Turkey is hardly alone in living in denial.
This would be the perfect opportunity for the Pope to fire a second salvo by commenting on the Turkish oppression of its Kurdish minority...
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.
Where do you go to school? I had that hammered into me in grade school.
Soon the Pope will be saying the US genocided the Native Americans.
That's a bit of a stretch. The aim of the US western expansion wasn't to kill all traces of Native American peoples and culture, it was to gain control of their land. While there certainly were numerous instances of massacres, they seemed to be more due to individual ignorance, prejudice, or misunderstanding than any systemic attempt to wipe out all Indians. Not even considering all the treaties and reservations set up (the quality-or lack thereof-of the land provided on the reservations can again I think be attributed mostly to apathy or ignorance as opposed to outright malice), the numerous attempts at integrating and Westernizing Native Americans shows a (misguided perhaps) desire to help them and make them become "Americans". In reality, the Western expansion was in effect a protracted, low-intensity guerrilla war, and there are plenty of cases of these types of conflicts to show that they very often lead to instances of overreactions of force, excessive non-combatant casualties, and mass killings.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
No, it would not be "A-OK" (thanks for putting words in my mouth) but it would not be genocide. The word loses its meaning when it's overused. It's like using the word "rape" to describe a subway groping. Groping someone in a crowded subway car is not acceptable in a civilized society, but it's not rape, and you do the lexicon a disservice when you equate the two.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"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.
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.
For a nation in denial you should have a look at the Japanese...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
First of all, genocide had a well accepted meaning before a bunch of self-appointed lexicographers in the UN or whatever got in a room to come up with their own definition.
If you're going to argue based on the etymology of a word, maybe you should look up the etymology of the word before making crap up. The term "genocide" was coined based on the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman government. Therefore this is not only an example of genocide, it is the example of genocide.
It's even worse than that ... Turkey actively supports ISIS by buying oil from the oil-fields the terrorists have taken-over. (Something the rest of the world frowns upon.) This is one of the reasons that ISIS is the best funded terrorist group in history.
From the article:
Another showing of Turkey's true colors came when the Turkish army (soldiers, tanks, etc) literally stood by and watched ISIS slaughter Kurds in the neighboring town of Kobani: Turkey’s act of abandonment may mark an 'irrevocable breach' with Kurds across the region