4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d 1346
gobbo writes "The buzz amongst my Muslim acquaintances is that the al-Jazeera site is under "cyber-attack." Shortly after posting photos of mangled Iraqi children the server became unavailable. I don't have satellite TV to see if they are reporting anything on al-Jazeera itself, but pinging their name servers fails too. For those who don't already know, the al-Jazeera channel is a pan-Arabic satellite TV channel out of Qatar." While I am certain many h4x0rs are political, I can't help thinking that script kiddies are like moths to the flame of rising page views. (this was initially posted incorrectly, and has been moved to the proper date)
First Post?!? (Score:3, Informative)
use P2P (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, we've all heard claims that P2P networks are only used to steal music, movies, etc. This is about the first good example of P2P being used for a valid cause - to share news and avoid censorship. (aren't we supporting freedom of speech after all?)
More (Score:5, Informative)
Re:First Post?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Do you mean... (Score:3, Informative)
Try this server instead (Score:1, Informative)
ABC cuts gore from injured child's Iraq war photo (Score:5, Informative)
Australia's ABC (TV, I suppose) has reportedly
cropped the portion of a picture of a young
girl's feet, which were to be seen dangling,
after apparently having been blown loose by
an explosion, in the ongoing Irag war.
The report of this "editting" the gore away,
to make a photo more acceptible to Australian
viewing audiences, as well as other revealing
aspects of media censorship, were mentioned on
this morning's Media Report, now available via
audio-on-demand, in RealAudio format, at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/audi
This 27 March program included British photo-
journalist Tim Page talking about this kind
of selective reporting & sanitizing of war
images, eg, from Vietnam to Iraq.
Come back in about a week for the transcript,
eg at URL:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/st
War solves nothing... unless, of course,
your company is selling to Defense...
Re:Weird (Score:5, Informative)
Before the current war, it was a lot like a cross between CNN, with news & comentary, and Discovery, with documentaries.
It has an interesting history. As I understand it, the prince of Qatar funds it, but leaves it in the hands of the station to do all their own editorial control.
It definitely had an Arab point of view, but to me that makes sense. Looking at it from that point of view, I would almost say that it is fairly balanced. Just as an American would probably find CNN fairly balanced.
They don't hesitate to put Americans on (translated - unless you're former embassador Dennis Ross - he showed up on a debate show and handled it all in BEATUFIUL Arabic!). Rice and Powell have both been on there, but so has Saddam, and Tariq Aziz.
Is there an anti-American slant? Well, even though few Arabs like Saddam and his regime, very few are very keen on the idea of a superpower coming in and taking out an Arab regime. The whole region has an unpleasant history of colonialism and occupation, and for many, this just appears to be another chapter in it. A lot will depend on how we handle the post-Saddam iraq.
Another thing that is interesting... it's not a new thing that they're showing dead bodies and such. For as long as I've watched, they've not had a probelm with showing dead Palestinians or dead Israelis in that conflict. They don't talk over it either - sometimes just several minutes of showing what is going on or what has happened.
So, I've rambled on, not really answering your question, but I don't often get to talk about Al-Jazeera.
Re:Those "banned" pics: (Score:1, Informative)
No, those pictures are available to anyone able to type `halabja` into google. Mind you, they`d find out a little bit more about the wonderful US government if they typed in `halabja rumsfeld`...
Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
I noticed an add on
went out of curiosity and saw "We help fund anti-war organizations
like EndTheWar.org" EndTheWar.org This site is truely disturbing,Using the
Al Jazeera photos of young kids with their heads blown off for propaganda.
After doing some more digging on just who these people are I found links
all over the place for WPK (workers party korea) led by General Secretary
Kim Jong il and International A.N.S.W.E.R. headed by Brian Becker who just
with a simple google search [google.com]shows up ties to WPK. Other more disturbing things that
I do not want to say because this was a few days ago and I cannot provide
links until I get access back the machine I was using at the time.Feel free to
look it up yourselvs you may find something I didn't.
I hope slashdot will pay closer attention to who's adds they are promoting
Content still available... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure I'd buy into the organized DDOS, but rather into a (near) world-wide slashdotting type effect. I've been frequenting their website quite a bit over the last week, and it's been fading in and out of existence (at least for my locale) quite often.
Most of the 'scandalous' images have been slurped from various sources and they're available in plenty of places. One such site is http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ [thememoryhole.org] (be gentle!), which includes the pictures of the supposedly executed soldiers.
I hope Al-Jazeera beefs up their infrastructure and expands their newly launched minimal english service... it's nice to have news from outside sources (ie: outside the US sphere of influence) with an opposite view-point.
Re:Do you mean... (Score:3, Informative)
There is a difference between
http://dearraed.blogspot.com/
and
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
the latter is the original, and the former is a mirror. The latest entry on the latter is a test message, and doesn't show on the former. Its also a few days old.
I hope the guy (or girl) is alright. There is news this morning that a bomb hit a market, killing 14 civilians. No definite answer as to which side fired it, but I hope no one else gets hurt or killed.
How to watch Iraqi TV on the Web... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Weird (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps you should read it.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Informative)
[OT] Video Feed Mirror (Score:1, Informative)
While other people have posted links to various [cryptome.org] sites [thememoryhole.org] that are hosting images and the Al-jazeera [aljazeerah.info] news feeds and images, I decided to mirror the news feeds as an attempt to help move these feeds [triumvirate.net] to people who are curious about the hype circling this situation, but unable to see it in the news.
I've rarely been moved like this situation moved me. After reading about these Al-jazeera clips showing dead American soldiers and captured American POWs, I wanted to actually see them to see if the hype matched the furvor. They aren't completely gruesome, but they definately show that this war won't be a week jaunt through the Middle East.
I don't mind having the news censored for security reasons, but when the rest of the world can view these clips, and Americans can't, my whole opinion of the situation changes.
Posted anonymously. Mod accordingly.
Re:Military targets? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
If it was also a state owned mouthpiece of the government, of course.
Iraqi TV and al-Jazzera are different things, which some posters seem to have confused.
Check out international media (Score:3, Informative)
I do, and Foxnews and CNN look like 24/7 Pentagon infomercials in comparision to serious media.
Point of fact (Score:3, Informative)
A short history of how the U.S. got into this mess (Score:3, Informative)
From reading the comments, I've realized that few Slashdot commenters know much about the history that leads to the present war in Iraq. So, here is a very short recounting. The details given here have been reported by many reputable news sources. There seems to be no disagreement about these facts.
All the actions by the U.S. government mentioned here were largely hidden from U.S. citizens. United States citizens paid the bill, but were mostly unaware of what their government was doing. Even though the U.S. government is presently at war with Iraq, only a small percentage of Americans can find Iraq on a map. It is said that a high percentage support the U.S. government's war in Iraq, but this is a blind kind of support that does not mean that there is comprehension.
Thread 1, Iran: Hidden elements of the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted to reduce the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government supported a very weak man, the Shah of Iran, who became very brutal toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iraq overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence to come.
People in Iran began supporting terrorism against the United States, in retaliaton for hidden U.S. government interference with the Iranian government.
To counteract Iranian support of violence against the U.S., the U.S. goverment began supporting and encouraging Iraq in a war against Iran. This was very profitable for U.S. weapons manufacturers. Weapons manufacturers in the U.S. were delivering weapons to Iraq under long-term contracts up until the same month as the U.S. began war on Iraq the first time.
April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq, encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. She said,
"I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." [my emphasis]
She also said, "I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. [my emphasis]
Here is a complete transcript of the meeting [montclair.edu] between the U.S. ambassador and Saddam Hussein. (http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspi e.html)
Ambassador Glaspie acted on instructions from Secretary of State James Baker [infoplease.com], as she said. Later, she denied knowing that she was encouraging war. (Mr. Baker is a friend of George Bush and was later White House Chief of Staff.)
It is not known why the U.S. government would support Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. However, in the meeting mentioned above, April Glaspie said, "We have many Americans who would like to see the price [of oil] go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states."
The fortune of George H. W. Bush was heavily dependent on oil profits, and Texas is an oil-producing state. If the U.S. government is successful at gaining control of Iraq, profits for some companies in the U.S. will increase enormously because Iraqi oil will be sold directly to U.S. companies, rather than to Turkish companies, as it is now.
Thread #2, Afghanistan: There is a huge amount of oil in one of the countries inland from Afghanistan. However, the only good way to get the oil to people who would buy it is to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. The Soviets wanted to get
Re:Those "banned" pics: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Do you mean... (Score:3, Informative)
(Go ahead and try and cut-and-paste that link. You should arrive at Slashdot.)
That link becomes this [1109654166] after going through Slashcode. slash_dot.org becomes slashdot.org.
Go ahead - try it. Paste:
<a href="http://slash_dot.org/">Test Link</a>
into a reply a punch Preview. It should come out slashdot.org. Punch submit at your karma's own danger :)
Re:Freedom of the Press (Score:2, Informative)
Al Jazeera is based in Qatar. We did not bomb anything in Qatar.
So, what was that line of crapola again?
Al Jazeera's Italian site is still up (Score:2, Informative)
If nothing else, though, they have lots of images which help to fill in the gaps left by other news media.
Note that it isn't spelled the same as in English - "i" instead of "ee".
http://www.aljazira.it/
Re: Government censorship, NOT dos, h4x0rs etc.. (Score:2, Informative)
The IP for the english one is 64.106.198.16 which is blocked,
Re:Military targets? (Score:1, Informative)
As a European let me tell you this.
American media is not balanced. CNN feeds you lies and holds back the truth. They have a very obvious agenda, and are useless to me. I haven't seen any lies reported on Al-Jazeera, but they do of course see the war from an Arab/No to war perspective.
Re:Unfortunate timing... wrong url for enlish site (Score:2, Informative)
is working just fine for me
Say what you want about Canadians... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/
http://www.canada.com/national/features/iraq/
http://iraq.ctv.ca/
Pretty well balanced sites IMHO.