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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.
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
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 If you want to see it yourself, it has now been archived so go to "Previous News" and look under 5/12/99.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 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
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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
as of 09:10 EST5EDT
don't forget Canada. We interned just about everybody - Ukranians, Japanese, even Italians, I think...
I know these little countries. My dad is Greek and comes from a small island. They have very long memories. It's no surprise to them. Their histories will always be written in blood (no optimism here!)