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)
Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
First time I've seen a story that doesn't appear on the main
I do have to say that I am saddened to see this happen because although Al Jazeera may have been biased on the side of Iraq, it is good to have alternative news sources to get the other side's story from. And despite what many people may whole-heartedly claim, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NBC, etc all do have a sense of American bias in them. That's besides the fact that half of their reporting is so horrible, it is actually hard to watch sometimes. I've found myself turning off the TV numerous times in response to my disgust for some of the stuff they hack out as "news". Although, I have found the embedded reporter's reports quite interesting, and you can always catch the various briefings, latest field updates, and general news easily enough. But, these agencies spend way to much time on sensationalism, heart-string-picking, etc.
I hope Al Jazeera can get their site back up soon.
Not to be picky but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Submission Title Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a serious issue that should be generating lively debate here on
I rather doubt "script-kiddies" are involved in this, and as I write this the sites are even more down than they were yesterday (DNS lookups fail).
Regardless of what you think of this development, it's pretty obviously both "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" - and styling it as "n00z 4 n33rD$" is a disservice to this forum.
(Yeah I know my hacker-writing is a bit rusty.)
Re:L4$T P$0T! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot effect on a global scale? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the article you cited, the DDOS attack is being directed at their name servers, and not the web server (which is why I'm not getting "unable to resolve host" messages). Name servers generally don't wither under high volume - this seems more like a deliberate attack than a large-scale Slashdot effect.
Re:use P2P (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Excercising the rights that generations have fought and died to protect is unpatriotic. John Ashcroft says so.
Freedom of the Press (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the apathy on this site towards the possible gagging of a media organization disturbing. On a TV report [abc.net.au] this week, I learnt a lot about al-Jazzeera. Yes, they are pan-Arabic. Yes, they are critical of the US. They've also been threatened by every single Arab country in the region - closed down, ambassadors recalled, physical attacks. And it was bombed by the US in the first Gulf War when it reported the killing of civilians in a supposedly military target.
You can't have it both ways, even in a war. The Net is being used for some of the most blatant propaganda I've ever seen, but shutting down the Arab side of the argument isn't going avoid bigger problems later.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
The article also mentioned that BBC seems to be doing a better job trying objective than US stations.
Re:Little orphan postie (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll criticize both CNN, FOX and NBC for not being clear enough at times distinguishing what is "confirmed" from what is an initial report. The pundits have been even worse. The "chemical weapons plan" from Sunday night was very embarrassing. So was the "uprising" in Basra. Of course to be fair, that was the BBC that the American media outlets then picked up. So it is hardly an American phenomena.
Further most of the outlets have had a very narrow view of things. Very few questions and, in general, superficial reporting. One of the generals working for CNN has been pretty good and I was quite impressed with the CNN interview with the New York Times reporter last night. But overall they've not done that great a job. Further they seemed *shocked* that there were casualties and that the war didn't end in a week.
I think the media could do much better, for sure. But I suspect that they will improve with time. One hopes anyway. But while they tend to have a pro-American bias, that's hardly surprsing given their audience. But I don't think it is necessarily a pro-Administration bias.
On the other hand all of the other networks have had their biases. As for Al Jazeera, the following was an interesting discussion on them.
CNN Money [cnn.com]
I can't speak for their bias, as I've not watched Al Jazeera. But clearly many have problems with them.
Re:Military targets? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a "similar" outlet. Unless you mean to bomb any foreign media that don't toe Rumsfeld's line. In spite of David Letterman sketches, al-Jazeera is neither Afghani or Iraqi, but is based in Qatar.
See this article [msnbc.com] on its origins.
They've also got a new English service [aljazeera.net]. (Which was heavily overloaded even before this, so you'll have a hard time seeing it.)Journalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Parading POWs before the cameras is a violation of the Geneva conventions regarding the treatment of those prisoners. Subjecting them to humiliation or public curiosity is not allowed. Of course, I don't think anyone really thought that Saddam would follow ANY rules, but it's a bit wrongful for Al Jazeera to aid and abet such actions.
They defended it as "journalism..." Hmph... keep backpedaling, boys.
I'd like them to come right out and admit their prejudice against the United States... really. At least then we could have an honest conversation. Instead, they'd rather cloak their actions under the guise of "journalism."
I'm not a fan.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
News networks aren't evil. And they aren't really biased. They're just fucking lazy.
Re:Those "banned" pics: (Score:1, Insightful)
The Arab world is a fucking rat's nest. The fact that the US didn't kick ass and take names for that has a lot to do with what has happened in the last 25 years -- in 1984, we were an awful lot more concerned with Iran than Iraq. In 1988, Iraq was still building its portfolio, so to speak.
If you look at everything trying to find pure white airy Ivory Snow freshness, you are going to get fucked. Are you suggesting that the US simply walk away from Iraq and hope that Saddam doesn't spread chemical weapons (which he clearly has) or bio weapons? Should we just rely on good 'ol Saddam to do the right thing? Are you really that fucking moronic?
I guess that fewer Iraqis and americans will die if we just let Saddam go. Wasn't it just a few years ago that the leftys were wailing about the sanctions killing 100,000 kids a year? What the hell is the US supposed to do?
Oh wait...I guess the US should walk away and lift the sanctions. Then Saddam can do whatever he wants. I suppose that won't involve killing thousands of people until he dies, and the lets Odai or Qusai take over. They certainly aren't murderous thugs, or anything.
The simplest and straightest way to solve this problem is to cut the Gordian knot and oust Saddam. Granted, in retrospect, maybe the US shouldn't have been playing footsie with him, but this "past guilt" theory of the left just doesn't help to solve today's problems.
Bitch about the war all you want -- I have yet to see a better solution to dealing with Saddam right now, today, with the cards that are on the table. You can't change the past, and any alleged wrongdoing in the past is not a valid basis for precluding action by the US today.
Re:The sad thing is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not even close to the same thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The US also doesn't have soldiers making a show of displaying dead iraqis, lifting them up by the hair so you can clearly see their faces...
The Iraqi state TV deliberately made a show of displaying their grisly war trophies. I've seen the US media show occasional pictures of POWs in passing, but nothing to the degree that Al Jazeera did.
Intent counts for a great deal... Iraqi TV's intent was not innocent, it was to make a show of their grisly dead American "trophies..." I'm surprised they didn't cut off their ears and make necklaces right there on the camera.
Exploitation of prisoners is against the laws of war... don't whitewash it; it's wrong.
Re:Those "banned" pics: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't. However, what other dictators is the US flirting with right now?
The simplest and straightest way to solve this problem is to cut the Gordian knot
Why do you assume this is a Gordian Knot that you can just cut through and solve?
I have yet to see a better solution to dealing with Saddam right now
I agree. However, I have yet to see the US trying to act differently to avoid creating another Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden elsewhere. US diplomacy has failed to get even western nations to endorse the war, and has Arab nations almost unanimously against it. The US has effectively thrown away most of the compassion it gained on 9/11.
Yes, war against Saddam Hussein was probably inevitable, but where's the long term solution to the actual problem?
Re:Military targets? (Score:5, Insightful)
CNN portrayed as lying, deceitful, mouthpiece of the US administration.
al-Jazeera portrayed as a font of wisdom and truth.
Both statements are crap CNN may well sanitise its stories, and portray the US side (hey..it's a US company)
But al-Jazeera is at least equally as bad.
In reference to the current fighting...
Does AJ show pics and video of Iraqi troops hiding among civilians and using them as shields? No
Does AJ show report on the Iraqi troops using a hospital for a weapons cache? No
Does AJ report on the use of explosives at the oil well heads? No.
Does AJ report on the ecological disaster of lighting oil filled trenches on fire? No
If you want to say CNN is not reporting 'fairly', OK..that may well be true.
But please do NOT hold up AJ as the bastion of truth and objectivity.
Re:Content still available... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong in a couple of ways, I think. First, Al Jazeera, while most cerainly outside U.S. control, is far from being outside U.S. influence. It is truly said that "he who angers you controls you". Al Jazeera is run by people so opposed to the United States and its policies that they violate every tenet of journalistic professionalism in their efforts to make Americans look bad. The result is a "news" service that disdains superficialities like fact-checking and citing sources. They are worse than useless for stories involving the U.S.
Second, it is flawed to believe that one can hear reports biased FOR America on one hand and reports biased AGAINST America on the other, and somehow synthesize the two into the truth. I grant that the American media is lacking both in objectivity and in sources other than the U.S. government. Please don't think, however, that getting "information" from Al Jazeera can somehow help you see through the crap. In the end, I think you're going to have to accept that everyone involved has an interest in lying to you (or at the least, putting a spin on the facts--and you'll play hell telling which is which), and sit back and wait to see how it all plays out. If Iraqis end up running their own free country, and happy about the change (and if we don't bankrupt the U.S. Treasury in the process), then it was a net good (in my opinion). If it all goes to shit in any of the countless ways it possibly could, then it was a bad idea, and whose intentions were good and whose were bad will be pretty much irrelevent.
Re:Those "banned" pics: (Score:3, Insightful)
"He had the best motives for getting into the worse trouble"
I believe that aptly describes our foreign policy.
Re:Military targets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover to a viewer saturated with American media, these other sources are likely to appear as 'biased'
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Weird (Score:1, Insightful)
It's an American's DUTY to not trust the government. Look at the way the constitution was set up. If everyone just needed to trust the President, then we wouldn't need checks and balances with the legislative and judicial branches, right?
There's a reason people yammer on about 'Freedom of Speech' and 'Right to Bear Arms' and such. The United States was created knowing full well that all governments had the potential to be abusive. They created the complex balances for the sole purpose of negating these problems as much as possible.
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m (Score:5, Insightful)
I wont go into details here, I will allow one to read the material themselves. You can also watch the video as PBS online is currently hosting a story frontline did about the mess.
In brief:
The Project for the New American Century [newamericancentury.org] is a DC based think tank that has imagined a world under complete US military and economic domination (or "freedom" as it were). They have fiddled with and written documents concerning a post cold war world where the USA has become the Worlds Only Superpower and what that means from a Strategic viewpoint.
In the early days, Paul Wolfowitz produced a document that detailed the expansion of the American empire that seemed too radical at the time and was cleaned up and rewritten and stowed away. Over time, and through the most recent Coup by this incredibly radical group of men, this updated document, with the help of the PNAC, became the National Security Strategy Of the United States [whitehouse.gov]. Most chilling about this turn of eventls and policy is the new found policy of "pre-emption". Which I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state [nytimes.com].
Also chilling (to me anyway) is the fact that this is the "official story", the one being reported by the obviously biased media.
Anyway.. some more links..
CBC.ca's [www.cbc.ca] take.
More Canadian Insight [thestar.com]
The Frontline Special [pbs.org]
Re:Military targets? (Score:3, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
You tell 'em, elmagil!
It is clear that the embedded journalists are there to ensure that we get the best quality, most up-to-date propaganda ever seen in the history of the world.
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m (Score:3, Insightful)
You people are full of shit...
Excellent story on NPR (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing that they didn't go on to say in the story was the effect that this should have over the long term. If news outlets, being commercial organizations, are going to present news that enforces people's preconceived notions, it leads to a natural polarity of belief. People who are liberal will tend to get liberal news from liberal sources and find themselves even further removed from conservatives or the truth that exists somewhere in the middle. Vice versa for the conservatives.
Re:Weird (Score:3, Insightful)
the US has lost 24 soldiers and has gained a large portion of Iraqi territory, and has killed at least 1000 Iraqi soldiers, (fox is reporting something like 35,000 dead Iraqis, but I don't buy that at all) but the 3ID estimates that it has killed 800 Iraqis at the cost of 1 American... how is that heavy losses for small gains??!!
Re:Hate to mess up the |-|@0R auguement, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
can't have anything contradicting our propaganda, can we?
Re:Military targets? (Score:1, Insightful)
How can you say that. The coaltion forces are hardly occupying Iraq! They are invading it, occupation comes later.
Re:No Post is Too Late: Send the Iraqis to Allah (Score:2, Insightful)
If this is the case, then why didn't they post pictures of the 5000 children who died monthly under Hussein's regime? Or the thousands of others tortured or killed by his regime for any number of "offenses". Do you know why Iraq has no international representation worth mentioning in the Olymipcs or other sporting events? Because Hussein's son, who runs Iraq's athletic organization, tortures athletes that lose. No Iraqi wants to become an athlete now. The stories are endless.
Al Jazeera is all too ready to inflame the Islamic world with anti-American propaganda, while omitting much, if not all, of the other side of the story. If you call that "the truth", then you're either naive or have the same twisted agenda as they do. If they actually gave the truth to their viewers, they'd lose their ratings overnight. They know what their viewers want, and they feed it to them with little concern for the truth.
Re:No Post is Too Late: Send the Iraqis to Allah (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to Western news organizations like CNN, which go out of their way to be [snort] objective and cover all sides of an issue?
Get real. You want unbiased content, go to Google News [google.com], and when something comes up between, say, the French and the Brits, read about it from both a French and Brit news source. Same goes for Pakistan/India, Israel/Palestine, and US/just about anyone else.
Al-Jazeera changes DNS and backbone providers (Score:3, Insightful)
Al-Jazeera has changed DNS providers. Their "whois" data changed in the last update. Datapipe and Nav-Link are out, MyDomain is in. Four different DNS servers are listed, in different netblocks.
They've also switched to the Telia backbone. Telia is Scandanavia's largest backbone carrier, and is headquartered in Sweden.
It looks like they're getting the connectivity problem fixed. They're still on overload, with frequent "connection refused" messages, but sometimes you can get through.
Re:No Post is Too Late: Send the Iraqis to Allah (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean the Iraqi children who die because funds from the "oil for food" program are misappropriated and diverted to Swiss bank accounts, military development, and nonessentials? Iraq is allowed to sell enough oil to supply its people with sufficient food, clothing, medical care, etc., but do you suppose the Iraqi government actually cares about the Kurds and Shiites, or even those people who are "ethnically acceptable"?
So who was it who kept our team out the the World Cup the time before last? Was that the other Iraq?
They didn't win the world cup, did they? Can you tell me the fate they suffered as a result? Why not read about it. I'd rather not repeat what happened to members of Iraq's soccer team. Needless to say, recruits are not flocking to Iraq's athletic programs.
But all you are doing is simply rabbiting US propaganda
That would be parroting. But you have some valid points. The US is extremely guilty of supporting nasty dictators and other unsavory types. And they come back to bite us often. For example, the Mujaheddin, Manuel Noriega, Saddam, and so on. We never learn. Or rather, the US government never learns. And yes, the US media is twisted in its own way, and is of course very biased. But that doesn't mean Al Jazeera isn't worse, and I think evidence shows that it surpasses the US media in this regard.
Re:Military targets? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m (Score:3, Insightful)
LOL. Yeah, just like temporary military rule turned Japan into the 51st state. Oops, that makes Iraq the 52nd state. Oh yeah, I forgot, we also conqured Afghanistan. That makes Iraq the 53rd state. Wait a minute, I forgot South Korea. Iraq is what, the 54 state? 55th? 56th?
You can certainly be opposed to the war, but assuming the US does in fact win the war then what would you suggest they do differently than described in the NY times article? If the Sadam government is gone then you need some sort of government to avoid anarchy and disaster. When a war ends the military is in defacto control of the country. It then takes time to create and transition to a new local government.
Suggesting that the US will not transfer control over to a local government is at best totally unfounded speculation. The US has publicly declared that it will hand over control to the Iraqis and that they will not take any of the oil. If the government broke either of those commitments it would be crucified internationally and domesticly.
I can understand some people have fears of "colonialism", but it is simply not the way the US works.
-
Re:Military targets? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No Post is Too Late: Send the Iraqis to Allah (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to be forgetting the only reason the weapons inspectors were back in the country at all was because of the US. And as for "weakening his position", that's highly a matter of conjecture.
The Iraqi people may well have eventually overthrown Hussein (or one of his descendants), but how many innocent people would have died in the meantime ? Would it have been *less* than the number who will die in this invasion ?
In ~12 years the UN managed to do precisely diddly squat about Hussein (and he's just one of *dozens* of like-minded psychopaths that need to be dealt with). The reason is simple - you can't negotiate with people like that *because there is no common ground upon which compromises can be made*.
About the only thing the latest situation has done with regards to the international community is drive home just how worthless the UN actually is in actually coming up with (and carrying out) solutions. I like the idea of the UN in principle, but in practice its usefullness is limited to things like "expressing outrage".
Re:Weird (Score:3, Insightful)
Makes sense to me both ways. The radio operator is 'embedded', but would be considered part of the 'force'. Do you really think after 4 journalists being killed, if the Americans were overrun, the journalists wouldn't fight to survive?
The embedded journalists ARE moving with the force, therefore 'we are being held back' is just as valid as 'they are being held back'.
Anyways, the reason the embedded guys are there in the first place is to make sure everything (too much if you ask me) is reported right away.
Re:Military targets? (Score:1, Insightful)
While I'm sure this is true, I have to admit, I've been pretty impressed with the BBC coverage. In addition to making their broadcast available over RealMedia 24/7, I've noticed them having a large number of long interviews and discussions with a variety of experts and politicos with various positions.
For example, they regularly talk to some of te opposition leaders in Britian.
Of course there *is* one bias: they spend a lot of time talking about the British troops involved....for some reason.
I do have to support your statement about the News Hour, though, it really does have a great format compared to the sound-bite nature of most TV news.
Finally, I think at least some (not all) of the "bias" of Al-Jazeera is also just cultural difference. The display of graphic images of death and injury, for example, which is pretty much done indiscriminately by them. I think that's just the style they and their audience expect.