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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.
What would the Inquisition be considered?
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.
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...
There's a difference between conquering and/or outcompeting a people and lining them up for systematic mass slaughter. The Romans didn't commit genocide against the Gauls, they conquered them. I would be interested to know which part of Native American history you think remotely equates to the Armenian genocide.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
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.
Exactly. To me, this article had one bit of news for nerds: The Vatican has a website. Who knew?
"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.
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.
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.
Ahemm.. extermination of the American BIson... anybody? By the 1860s numerous US military figures advocated the extermination of the bison as a method to subjugate the American Aboriginals. General Philip Sheridan even stepped before Congress to plead for permissions to slaughter the bison herds to starve Native Americans into submission. There is probably about as much proof of methodical and premeditated extermination of the Native American by the US Government as there is for the genocide of the Armenians being part of some plot carefully and extensively planned and executed at government level in Turkey. It was a policy aimed at 'pacifying the native peoples', any mass deaths were probably regarded as a bonus. That having been said millions of people died as a result of the actions of a government against a certain ethnic group and we call that genocide whether it was acerbically planned like the Jewish Holocaust or a spontaneous disorganized series massacres like the Armenian Genocide or the near extermination of the Native Americans.
Source, with a shit-ton more similar quotes from politicians and leading citizens: http://obrag.org/?p=1412.
By the way, wiping people out has been pretty common in historical conquests in general. People only seem to have really even started feeling guilty about it in the last few hundred years.
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...
Ahemm.. extermination of the American BIson... anybody? By the 1860s numerous US military figures advocated the extermination of the bison as a method to subjugate the American Aboriginals. General Philip Sheridan even stepped before Congress to plead for permissions to slaughter the bison herds to starve Native Americans into submission.
Was the blockade of the South during the Civil War an attempt at Genocide? How about blockading Germany during WWI/WWII? That's not an example of genocide, that's trying to defeat an enemy by targeting their ability to wage war (can't fight without food). As I said, it was more a low intensity guerrilla war than it was a genocide.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
What do you mean "diseases which no one understood at the time."? We understood smallpox just fine - maybe not all the biological details, but we knew the avenue of infection quite well enough to intentionally infect millions(?) of natives. Then there was the buffalo extermination, encouraged in large part to collapse the economies of the tribes on the Great Plains.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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'
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.
Ahemm.. extermination of the American BIson... anybody? By the 1860s numerous US military figures advocated the extermination of the bison as a method to subjugate the American Aboriginals. General Philip Sheridan even stepped before Congress to plead for permissions to slaughter the bison herds to starve Native Americans into submission.
Was the blockade of the South during the Civil War an attempt at Genocide? How about blockading Germany during WWI/WWII? That's not an example of genocide, that's trying to defeat an enemy by targeting their ability to wage war (can't fight without food). As I said, it was more a low intensity guerrilla war than it was a genocide.
Was the population of the American South reduced by 75% as a result of the blockade? No? ...because the Native American population was systematically reduced by 75-80% first by the colonial authorities and then by the US government who really stepped up the speed of the eradication process. Entire tribes were wiped out in one way or another in the name of 'Manifest destiny'. Genocide is the systematic eradication of an ethnic group by a government or other organisation and if you manage to wipe out 75-80% of the Native American population then that is genocide in my book.
Indian land rights are not what they look like. The land is normally held by the US government on behalf of the tribe, for example, so it can't be sold, and mineral extraction rights are negotiated by the US government, not tribal government. In the cases I know about (mostly Lakota), the Federal government also made commitments for things like medical care, and routinely disregards these commitments when inconvenient.
The gambling rights aren't concessions or reparations. They are the logical result of tribes having some trappings of sovereign nations. (Remember treaties? Who do you make a treaty with?) State law doesn't completely apply on Indian lands. Unfortunately, only some of them make significant money that way.
As far as I know, the practice of kidnapping children, cutting their hair off, putting them into boarding schools run much like prisons, not letting them see relatives, and punishing them brutally if they spoke any language but English has fallen out of favor, but it was fairly prevalent well into the Twentieth Century;
So, no, the US doesn't admit to, or own, all its "mistakes".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes