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Yugoslav Internet Shut Down?
An Anonymous Reader wrote in to say "Beograd.com is reporting that the US has ordered the shudown of satellite feeds into Yugoslavia. This may just be rumor, but I read www.rts.co.yu and www.serbia-info.com on a daily basis. As of this morning, both Serbia-based sites are now inaccessible. "
I aso haven't managed to find confirmation of this, but I've
heard it from several folks too. This is a scary form
of warfare.
The internet is one of the few sources of independent news avaliable to Yugoslavia. Cutting it off is just playing into the serbian's hands.
I live in America. It is so scary how much the media and the government control the people's thoughts. People who did not even know the existence of Yugoslavia 60 days ago are rabid supporters of the bombings today. After coming here, I saw a completely new aspect of human nature (certainly there are several exceptions). Give them the material goods and they give you their power to think, analyse and question. Take the material goods away and everything is questioned. For those who are willing to read, I am listing some books which discuss how the "FREE" press in "FREE" America is so very tainted. It would be nice if you bought them. These journalists, although hard working do not have the financial backing of organisations like NBC (which is owned by GE, the largest arms manufacturer).
Secret State Silent: new militarism, the Gulf and the mordern image of warfare. By Richard Keeble
Politics of War, By Walter Karp
The second front, By John MacArthur
20 years of censored news, By Carl Jensen
Keeble is English. The other two are Americans. If you are more interested, there is a journal called "Index of censorship"
This post getting a score:5 illustrates that some moderator is an extremely biased
supporter of war against Yugoslavis. He also believes that everything is fair, including people's right to knowledge and people's right to
express. I will be surprised even if one in 1000 people in Yugoslavia have computers. This is aimed directly to prevent
the American people to know what is happening or what the views of people there are. They may be doing something which may take away the people's support of war here in America.
Firstoff, I have no problems reaching the
mentionned sites from Switzerland. So this might
be an US-only problem.
Second, what we have in Serbia is not "just some
poor people getting bombed by evil forces", but
some Big-Brother-type dictator Milosevic
whose politics are strikingly similar to those of
a certain Adolf Hitler in 1938.
- dispossessing people of a ethnic minority
- ethnic "cleansing"
- crushing in-serbian opposition (Radio B92...)
What we have is the rise of another fascist state.
I'm not very pleased with the bombing, but I see
it as a necessity to do whatever is possible to
crush that governement.
This goes not against you serbian people, this
goes against a fascist governement. Do something
about this.
Kirth
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Posted by noflesh:
I agree it would be a very bad thing to cut off the internet connection. We need more information flowing back and forth not less.
Here's the big difference between NATO and the Serbian military though: the Serbs are trying to hurt and murder people while NATO is trying not to.
I'm not saying the bombing is the right thing to do but when you talk about NATO propoganda you're disregarding the voices of thousands upon thousands of suffering people. If you do disregard these people you're just one step above the raping, murderous scum at work in Kosovo.
Posted by patg:
This whole conflict is a pathetic failure and waste!
What has it acheived? Who is better off for it? Who's going to foot the huge bill to pay for the damage and military expenses?
Clinton is trying so desparately to have some sort of legacy other than lecherism and dishonesty, and it's a huge failure. You don't solve problems in a region with such a long history of problems by simply dropping bombs. So much rationalism for this that could be applied for so many other conflicts in the world such as Rwanda, that nothing was done about. To risk global conflict for this is utterly insane. It was bad enough, now they "accidently" drop a bomb on the Chinese embassy (China, by the way, is the country who was able to get missle technology from the US due to to political favours by transfering technolical trade regulation from the State dept. to the commerce dept. making it all that much more easy for them to get this information from the US) was that a mistake, or another distraction on top of a distraction? Now something that the Chinese really weren't involved in (this conflict) they have been drawn into (and are more likely to be against it)
What a pathetic sham of a campaign. On top of that, Yeltsin's rule is in question, and the Russians aren't exactly thrilled about this conflict. This is a volitile situation that Clinton and alot of the american public doesn't understand the repercussions of. There's two sides to every story, and only one is being propagated in this situation.
Just another example of Clinton's inability to properly utilise the military (which he's professed in the past to "dispise the military").
and inability to comprehend effective foreign policy.
What an embarassment!
Well, it's all about who's controlling the diamond production. After all, we have to make sure that our "moral" obligations are placed correctly...
No, it isn't uncool to be pro-american, the thing that is uncool is the behavior of the american goverment towards the rest of the world. You only need to take a look to the list of countries that the US army have attacked: all the way from Mexico to Serbia, including in the tour Morocco, Cuba, Vietnam and Afganistan, among many other places that I don't remember right now. So it isn't come as a surprise that too many people around the world like to bash the U.S., specially when the Dept. of State keeps feeding them with new material to work...
"They cite foreign news sites which contradict US news as proof the US media is lying." Personally, I didn't find-yet- a US news service lying, but, no matter if it is the Discovery Channel or NBC, the US media is very prolific at the time of spread half-truths and overreact about anything. This stuff couldn't be a big deal, if the US media only reached US, but they cover the entire world, and, in the places that they didn't reached, you will find a lazy producer that will make a copycat, with all the innacuracies of the original, and some new ones.
"People die from bombs, or they die from small arms fire (ground troops poindexter...) Either way they die. I'd prefer they die from bombs, as that means less of my fellow citizens would lose their lives for this cut-rate region who's inability to act civilized has caused much more trouble then it could ever be worth."
Where is the need for your "fellow citizens" to go there and lose their lives in that country in the first place? This war isn't about human rights, Kosovo or the evil Milosevic. It's just a lesson to the world to teach about NATO's and US goverment's power, and how the only way to be safe for a country is building nukes like Russia, China, India and Pakistan, whose goverments can kill at pleasure and still get loans, weapons, and privileges from the western democracies, but, if in some country without nukes appens to have a leader that doesn't share the "democratic principles", it's OK to bring him down, even if him was elected democratically (for example, Francisco I Madero in Mexico, or Salvador Allende in Chile; two civilian goverments crushed by the militia, with the back up of -surprise!!- the US goverment).
Anyway, you have a good reason to be upset for all those people that keeps talking about "all those evil americans" and doesn't stop to think that maybe, maybe all the americans, serbs, albanians or mexicans are people like them, and have more things in common than they can even wonder.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
ujans@ullisys:~ > date && traceroute www.serbia-info.com Thu May 13 18:12:43 MEST 1999
traceroute to www2.EUnet.yu (194.247.192.60), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 router.pond.sub.org (192.168.1.129) 2.309 ms 1.521 ms 1.466 ms
2 pond-gw.ilk.net (10.10.10.9) 167.92 ms 164.426 ms 153.316 ms
3 cs1.ilk.net (10.10.10.1) 173.428 ms 154.921 ms 191.488 ms
4 194.122.227.61 (194.122.227.61) 227.502 ms 155.431 ms 156.134 ms
5 frankfurt.core.xlink.net (194.122.225.42) 160.131 ms 160.496 ms 156.474 ms
6 * Ffm-ar02.eunet.com (134.222.19.1) 167.689 ms 166.677 ms
7 Asd-nr02.NL.EU.net (134.222.228.45) 170.753 ms 164.811 ms 168.695 ms
8 Asd-nr12.NL.EU.net (134.222.186.12) 164.431 ms 186.031 ms 168.671 ms
9 Belgrade1.YU.EU.net (134.222.34.2) 630.23 ms 640.8 ms 702.692 ms
10 Belgrade10-E2.EUnet.yu (194.247.193.123) 684.487 ms 669.633 ms 570.612 ms
11 www2.EUnet.yu (194.247.192.60) 658.286 ms 615.495 ms 735.829 ms
The Internet *does* route around the blockage! (Especially look at the ping time difference between hop 8 and 9, which IMHO appears as a satellite leg)
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
During the past couple of days NATO has bombed a bread truck, an elementary school, a farmers collective, a hospital, and yes, plain old villiages full of people.
The undeclared objective in this conflict is to break the resistance of the Serbs to get them to capitulate. The only way life can suck any more for these people is if NATO expands its civilian bombing.
Obviously, NATO doesn't want the rest of us to see these images of clusterbombs and dead civilians, which is why they have been going after Serb TV like crazy. Of course the media blackout is incomplete with all these Serbs posting war information and pictures to their websites.
Toink! There go the satellites.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Let's clear up a few things here. Our government
...
has not always been clean as the brits preceeding
them. There were the brits who eliminated part
of the people in Acadie while stealing their
country. There were the brits followed by the
Americans who killed thousands of natives.
I am of Acadian and native descent
I'm sure we can compare Kosovo with what happened
in this country, on the other hand whatever
happened here years ago is past and the rules
of laws are observed in this great country of
today and despite the past I feel home here
just like any other American.
So to the morons who try to compare today's USA
with Kosovo : Get a life!
Michel
http://www.netonecom.net/~bbcat
Here is the info that went out yesterday on beograd.com. If you want to see it yourself, it has now been archived so go to "Previous News" and look under 5/12/99. We have no confirmation yet of whether it will go down today or not:
*
.yu:
* * .yu ISPs found here:
**********************************************
LATEST UPDATE: [5/12/99]
US shuts down Yugoslav Internet - For immediate release
BELGRADE, MAY 12 - We have reliable information that the US Government ordered shut down of satellite feeds for Internet customers in Yugoslavia, as a result of NATO air war against this country.
This action might be taken as soon as later tonight or tomorrow (May 12 or 13, 1999).
This is a flagrant violation of commercial contracts with Yugoslav ISPs, as well as an attack on freedom of the Internet.
A Web site in protest of these actions should be up shortly. We will supply you with the URL. In the meantime, please be so kind to inform as many people as possible about this tragic event for the Internet community in Yugoslavia and Europe.
BeoNET
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
***********************************************
Here is info on the ISPs in
Eunet Yugoslavia
Obilicev Venac 4
11000 Beograd
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Contact : Radoslav Stankovic
Phone : + 381 11 328 2608
Fax : + 381 11 328 2760
E-Mail : info@Yugoslavia.EU.net
WWW : http://www.Yugoslavia.EU.net/
(DI = modem access number(s))
BeoTelNet www.beotel.yu/
Telefonija www.telefonija.co.yu/
SezamPro http://www.sezampro.yu/
Bits http://www.bits.net/
***********************************************
Here is an article with more specifics on the
From Yugoslav Net:
Yugoslavia's Internet is a rickety structure that could easily be taken out by NATO bombs. If that happens, one of the few lines of communication from the war zone will be severed. Asked how long the Internet infrastructure will hold up under the assault, the administrator of the Yugoslavia top-level domain said he did not know.
"My answer will be extremely short, since I have to write it between two air strikes," wrote Berislav Todorovic in an email. "The Internet service providers in Yugoslavia will do their best to keep the current quality of service, as long as it is technically possible.
"I can't and don't want to give out any speculative predictions about the possible effects of this disgraceful act of the NATO to the national Internet infrastructure.
"All I can [say] and want [to] say is -- we shall see."
The nation's four large public Internet service providers seem to rely on only three land lines and a single satellite link out of the country.
"As soon as the NATO decides to stop violating basic principles of international law and justice and cease their aggressive actions in the country, I'll be glad to give you a better, more detailed story."
With the country's telephone network running beyond capacity, it is almost impossible to get a connection out. The Internet may become the only way for Yugoslavs to communicate with the rest of the world.
Network engineers beyond the country's borders said the situatuon looks bleak.
"It doesn't look very robust," said Scott Ellentuch, a communications security specialist with Internet consultancy TTSG.
"It's not like the United States, where there's a lot of connectivity redundancy and if lines are taken out, the network would heal itself quickly and you'd hardly notice."
Ellentuch said the country's ISPs -- EUnet Yugoslavia, BeoTelNet, SezamPro and BITS -- appear to rely on only three pipes and a single satellite link.
One of the pipes runs through London and is owned by EuNet, a large European network operator.
"It's overloaded," said Pierre Baume, a EuNet network engineer based in Amsterdam. "But it's been overloaded for as long as we can remember."
Meanwhile, the administrators with Eunet Yugoslavia appear to be lying low.
"As a result of recent NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, Eunet Yugoslavia is unable to provide its customers with payment services and customer support," says an notice on the site. "We hope that we will return to normal operation soon." This story belongs to Wired News. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Copyright © 1994-99 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
This is not a matter of 1) OR 2).
Would you rather have internet access while your country is being bombed so you can at least get the message out, or would you prefer losing your net access as well as getting the shite bombed out of you?
And besides, I do think this sort of information warfare is more scary than bombs. Bombs are straightforward, they drop and go bang, and that's that.
Information warfare is way more sneaky than that, because when you shut up your enemy you can say what you want about them because there's nobody who will deny it, so the gullible masses will just assume it's true.
This was what made the cold war so succesful. You only heard one side of it, and that was the american propaganda.
My dad once told me that he and a lot more people back then thought that those people in russia could never be human, that there were some kind of monsters living there. So sure, go ahead and bomb the crap out of them, then. This is what propaganda does to people!
Now the great thing about the internet is that you can just contact people worldwide and ask them what things are like on the other side. It's about knowledge. If people know what's really going on, the propaganda doesn't work anymore, and then people might conclude that this whole shit isn't good and that it should stop.
I have yet to hear of a government harnessing the Internet for propoganda purposes...
I checked the Serbian news site. It would seem that they're doing a good job of this already. Click here.
I think the main point is that the government of the United States hasn't hacked this site to insert their own messages yet. No surprise -- it's probably a violation of Federal and International laws to do so. Sure, in theory, you could do all kinds of cool things: hack pages, flood news channels, spam users, &c, with NATO propoganda. NATO is so tied to their lawyers that I do not see this happening.
Finding God in a Dog
It is scary, in that by cutting off the 'net to Yugoslavia they are cutting off one of the most important means of *independent* communications. It's no longer possible for 'just anyone' to read the point of view of everyday people within Yugoslavia.
The Internet is a boldly subversive technology, once you realize that you don't have to get your information from Turner or Murdoch. You can get it from anyone prepared to give it. The Internet is the samizdat of the new world order, and it serves to undermine the Milosevics as well as the NATOs of the world.
In the last few weeks Yugoslavia has been transformed from a moderately wealthy industrial nation (with an oppressive government) into an underdeveloped one.
It has lost its oil refineries, its power stations, its television studios, its clothing and munitions factories, major bridges and gas pipelines. And yes, these losses mean more to the long-term future of the country than the loss of a few lives.
The public, who a year ago were vocal in their opposition to the President and to Yugoslav policy in Kosovo, are now almost unilaterally behind Milosevic. And it doesn't take a genius to see why.
Meanwhile ethnic cleansing has continued apace. Before NATO action, approx. 100,000 people had been "relocated" from Kosovo, with "several thousand" deaths. Now 3/4 of a million -- half Kosovo's Albanians, and most of them women & children -- have been moved, while many of the men have been shot or mobilized in the KLA.
This war is now on a par with that of Turkey against the PKK. Except that Serbia does not have the benefit of Western investment, commercial broadcast media, low-wage export industry and the drug trade -- it will have to beg for that later.
J
I was just able to access Radio Television of Serbia at 08:22 CST, so it's either up or I got a cached copy from somewhere. So this particular item may be more rumor than fact. However, it wouldn't have surprised me if it were true, and it would have been a major mistake if that were the case.
Why? Because the more people who have access to information, the better. It's important for the people of Serbia to be able to get information from outside their own (state-controlled) media, and it's also important for the citizens of NATO countries to be able to understand just what the Serbs are thinking, rather than getting it through their own (possibly slanted) media. It's sort of like Radio Free Europe, except that the information transfer goes both ways. The more people who can access all the facts and form their own opinions, rather than getting their opinions prepared by CNN or Radio Television of Serbia, the better.
Let's face it, it's a lot harder to fight a war when every day you see what's happening to the other side - that they're people too. I don't think we're going to see governments whipping up their citizens through propaganda during wartime as much in the future, because anyone can find out exactly how their nation's actions are perceived by the rest of the world. In a way, this will bring war into the home the same way that TV coverage of Vietnam did. Once individuals can see the effects of war on other people, they will be swayed less by nationalism and patriotism and more by simple humanity.
Of course, none of these factors are working at 100% right now. Most citizens still get their news from TV, radio, or newspapers, which have local or national distribution rather than international. And some countries even try to block access to the Internet when there is information that they don't want their citizens to know. But in the long run, I see everyone connected to the global network as a matter of course. When that is the case I don't think any government will be able to effectively block information transfer from one citizen of the world to another.
This is why the U.S. would be making a mistake in cutting off 'net access to Yugoslavia. If the U.S. and NATO are on the moral high ground in this conflict, then there's no reason not to let people in Serbia find out about it on the Internet. Conversely, if it turns out that the Serbians are the victims, then the rest of the world should be able to get that information as well. Without this exchange, the people of the world are forced to follow their government's national policy, because they can't find out about their other options. That would be the real tragedy of disconnecting Serbia from the rest of the world.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Gee, I thought all those arial photos of mass graves were real. I guess I was wrong. I guess all those Kosovar women and children showing up at the border talking about how their husbands and fathers were shot into ditches were lying..I guess they had all that time marching to Macedonia to get their story straight.
We won't get the "proof" until the conflict is over and ground troops are in place. Then they will be able to do what my brother did while on tour in Bosnia - stand guard over a UN Forensic Anthropology Team while they exhume human remains for the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.
Maybe the lack of "proof", as you put it, shows that the NATO action is actually preventing Milosovic from doing what he did in Bosnia - we should keep it up.
Besides, I don't know where your from (although I have an Idea) but up here in Canada, support for NATO is actually increasing, not eroding, as it is in most NATO countries.
Serbia is wrong. They are murdering, raping and driving people (who make up the majority of the province - 90%)out of the homes they have had for over 600 years. Whether they kill 100 or 1000000 makes no difference - Serbia is wrong and NATO is trying to stop them. It's just that simple.
Maybe some right thinking Serbs should get rid of the War criminal Milosovic and do the right thing.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
"Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it". To effective isolate Foonia you need to make sure that *every single connection* to the net is disabled, which requires massive cooperation from everybody.
Let's say there is another country, Quxia, which is not all that enthusiastic about the embargo of Foonia. If Foonia has a connection to Quxia, you would not be able to lock out Foonia without locking out Quxia as well. Yes, you can try to block based on originating host, but there are many counters possible. And don't forget plain-vanilla dial-out over POTS.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Even leaving aside the propaganda that comes out of Milosevic's camp (didn't the Serbs shoot down the whole NATO air force by now?)...
Bombing many many civilian vehicles, and then telling the people "oops"
Are you saying NATO does this intentionally, on purpose? If so, could you tell us all what that purpose might be?
eradicating civilian journalists (Serb and Chinese)
Do you want to say that US intentionally targeted the Chinese embassy in order to kill Chinese journalists? Really?
Not to mention the sheer audacity of flouting all international law in order to maintain one's "credibility"
International law is very vague with regard to waging war, for obvious reasons. Could you specifically tell us exactly which law is NATO breaking?
trying to reconquer ancient Serb territory from the neo-nazi KLA
KLA are not angels, but they have are fighting for survival. And "ancient Serb territory" -- how about Germany trying to recover ancient German territory -- Prussia -- from Poland and Russia? Or Poland recovering traditional Polish lands from Ukraine and Belorussia? Or Azerbaijanis recovering their land from Iran? I could go on and on...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You are mixing up "powerful" and "having a lot of mostly very poor population". The countries you listed are populous, but not powerful. Also, governments in countries like China are not known for expressing the views of their people.
Besides, since when the majority view has anything to do with what is the right thing to do and what is not?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Just because nobody knows for sure how many people were killed in Kosovo this year doesn't mean that nobody was killed. We just don't know now. It may turn out that a couple of hundred were killed, it may turn out that several thousand were killed -- it's too early to tell.
Besides, does driving people off their land, looting, burning, raping, etc. count for anything?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I'm not saying US media is lily-white. But I want to point out that:
(1) Media lives and dies by its reputation. Tabloids aside, any publication that was caught intentionally lying is in big, big trouble. Everybody knows it and it is a good incentive to avoid blatant misinformation (but not subtle/clever one, of course).
(2) Published photos are routinely tweaked using PhotoShop and similar editors. It's normal to remove a bit of extra waistline from model pictured on the cover. Make her legs longer? Sure. Hide the unsighty mole? No problem. Done every day. Given this I wouldn't be surprised to see Clinton artificially "elongated", but so what? Besides, I suspect most of the effect comes from the perspective of the shot (if you are closer to the camera, you seem larger than the people behind you; also taller if the photographer is standing lower than Clinton). Intentionally faked satellite shots is another matter, but I haven't heard much about it outside of paranoid conspiracy theories.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I live in America. It is so scary how much the media and the government control the people's thoughts. :) But really, there is nothing specific to US here. A majority of people in any country in the world are likely to belive whatever the media/government wants them to believe, if the propaganda is done skillfully enough. You might argue that this is a regrettable aspect of human nature, but still this has nothing to do with US. If anything, the Anglo-Saxon world (UK and US) has a much deeper distrust of the government than the rest of the world. So be glad you live in US, otherwise you probably would not be thinking these thoughts at all.
Well, obviously they don't control yours all that well
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I'm glad you like the argument :)
For your information, UN Charter has no sections. It is divided into Chapters and Articles. I assume you refer to Article 2, which reads, in part:
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles (italics mine, so that you pay attention to this word).
1.The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2.All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3.All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4.All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
...etc.
These are *principles* which are not legal obligations and are not binding on the members. Phrases like "All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means" clearly describe how the world *should* work, but, again,
do not prohibit anyone from going to war against another state.
And if you want to be lawyerly, you can even argue that the NATO war against Serbia is not "against the territorial integrity or political independence" since all NATO claims it wants (it is lying) is to enforce the unsigned Rambouillet Agreement. This, of course, doesn't make any sense, but NATO didn't come up publicly with a resonable goal for this war.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
First, get your Latin straight: it's "a priori", not "a priora". Second, Kaa's Law is empirically derived -- I formulated it based on my own personal observations. With regard to your superset of the law (er.. do you know what a superset is?), I, at least, do not recall meeting anybody who called himself an Anonymous Coward.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
England is the cradle of the Anglo-Saxon world. :) Obviously. Press in France or India -- I am not sure about it. I think that what's happening is that in US the political mainstream is fairly narrow. You do get all kinds of publications, very critical of govt, but the mainstream publications tend to be bland copies of one another (e.g Time and Newsweek). In Europe the mainstream is wider, especially towards the left. Socialist and even communist publications (especially in Italy, France) are considered to be part of mainstream. That's why people argue that the press in Europe is more free, but they are wrong. The press is actually more free in the US (mostly because of First Amendment), but the European mainstream press is more diverse and tends to present more points of view. However if you want a different point of view in the US it's easy to find one, it just will not be a 'mainstream' publication. As to the press in the developing countries (e.g. India) I have a feeling that it's more rude than free.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Well, the original point put forward by Squeeze Truck was that NATO breaks all of international law by waging war against Serbia. I asked him to show what specific law was being broken and he came up with "section II" -- I assume he meant Article 2 -- of UN Chapter. I looked it up and replied, saying that Article 2 imposes no legal obligations on the UN members (leaving aside all issues of moral authority and the way world *should* work). I don't see anywhere here using UN as it suits me (and did I say anything about Iraq?). You seem to be confusing me with the American government. Thankfully, I'm not it.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I wonder if we'll start seeing more of this sort of thing. Let's say some random country, which we'll call Foonia, has been doing stuff that a few heavyweight Western nations disagree with. These nations can sever their IP connections to Foonia, or refuse to accept incoming Foonian traffic. In effect, you've implemented an information embargo on this country. In the future, this could be as devastating as a "normal" trade embargo.
If this is true, and it is quite possible,it is indeed scary.
The US government and others in NATO have protested against the censorship in Serbia, and the fact that State media acts as a mouthpiece for the government.
Yet here we have a situation where the US/NATO/whoever is removing any chance of accurate/non-state-approved information being available.
What is the aim? The only thing I can think of is that it will make Serbians feel even more cut off and alone, and increase their determination to oppose the attacks on them and their country. Why have all NATO tactics had this (predictable) result?
The NATO attack is in breach of international law. If the Serbian government (it is poor tactics to try to personify it as only being Slobodan (sp?)) is attacking Kosovars, as claimed by NATO propoganda, then there is a moral imperative to take effective action. The keyword though is effective - and the action to date has merely been murderous, destructive and cowardly.
Andrew
I'd rather go down in familiar flames than be lost in that endless blue.
If the Serbian government and military are communicating via Internet, they are being patently stupid. Were I a NATO general, the last thing I would want to do would be to stop this communication. My first instinct would be to petition the US for NSA resources. Crack the transmissions, then use the intercepted data and insert our own datastreams. The NSA has a literal army of Federal crackers, and the general assumption is that they are competent.
I have yet to hear of a government harnessing the Internet for propaganda purposes; I'm not quite sure that it is technically possible. Remember Kremvax during the Russian coup attempt? IIRC, that was the only reliable datastream into or out of Moscow.
If the NATO mission is to get the people and/or military to rise up against the Milosovic regime, you want to destroy Government-controlled media while assaulting all possible bandwidths with your own media. Assuming Milosovic doesn't control the Internet feeds (how could he?), those feeds are more subversive than Radio Free Europe.
Milosovic has all the reasons to isolate Serbia's Internet from the global net, but NATO has all the reasons to keep those connections open. Of course, NATO may have still selected Internet feeds as targets for other reasons, or not thinking about the exceptional strategic uses of the Internet. How many geeks wear stars on their shoulders?
--The basis of all love is respect
you probably mean yugoslavia, but you could very well be talking about the US which leads to an even scarier concept...
all of this [as well as the persecution of many more minorities other than simply ethinicity-based] is going on in your own back yard.
think about it!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
I don't think this is scary at all. We're bombing them as US made sattelites provide them with services? We're destroying their TV stations, now we deprive them of Internet.
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
but when they started cross-posting propaganda into unrelated newsgroups (like soc.culture.japan!?) they WENT TOO FAR!
Lets kill those bastard pornographers while we are at it. I am sick of not being able to read a technical news group without 30 posts on how to get 10 asian girls a day in my mail box. My mail box is just not that big! I know some asian women are small, but geeze.
as of 09:10 EST5EDT
I'm not sure how net access is controlled in Yugoslavia (if its unrestricted or is like Chinas) and here I'm assuming their access is for the most part not restricted.
Yugoslavia has government controlled tv, which means they're seeing mostly nothing but government propaganda against the allies. (Our TV in the US is propagated too, I know, I know.) Now, the only gateway to outside information that wasn't handed down from the government is generally going to be through the Internet. If the allies were to take out satillites that provided net connectivity, then the government would have even less to worry about when it comes to the Yugoslav people being informed about the atrocities their own country is commiting against the Albanians, and would make it even more simpler for the government to control what they know.
It just wouldnt make sense, in my eyes, for the allies to take out their net access.
Anybody have any info on this, like the URL for the often mentioned, never revealed, website?
If Geocities pulled it, anybody have a cached copy?
UK ACTS TO STOP SPY WEBSITE...
SPY POSTER CALLED: TRAITOR...
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL