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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)
Military targets? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the US military claimed that Iraqi TV, as it was providing information and instruction to Iraqi troops, was a legitimate military command and control target. Would similar online media outlets be similarly classified?
More importantly, would hackers, even script kiddies, be considered combatants if they attack such a military target in a time of war?
I don't think this has any practical implications, just philosophical...
Re:Unfortunate timing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember that Al Jazeera is independent, they don't just broadcast what the government wants to broadcast.
For some information from inside baghdad, try this blog. Of course, there is nothing to prove it is really from why they say they are, but there is no reason to believe it anyway.
English Al-Jazeera (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth will remain elusive.
Slashdot effect on a global scale? (Score:5, Interesting)
While consulting, I've come across companies doing all sorts of dumb or just lazy things which make their sites slow and not very scalable. Then they get a big burst of unusual activity for whatever reason, their site crashes, and they like to claim conspiracy because it means it's not their fault.
I'll believe this is a DDOS when I see the IRC transcripts from the people claiming to be the perpetrators (if that's not proof, I don't know what is :) Till then, this is Al-Jazeera crying because their site couldn't handle sudden worldwide interest.
Those "banned" pics: (Score:1, Interesting)
Freedom Of Speech (Score:2, Interesting)
All I have to say to all this is welcome to free speech. People can't stand in front of the Al-Jazeera ofices since they are in Quatar. Personally I think their broadcasts encite riots and extremists actions. They get the inside scoop with wonderful governments likethe Taliban and Saddam Husayn by acting as their propaganda arm.
I used to have a translation website where I could read their site and when I read what they were posting last week and watched their broadcast, the first thing that came to mind was to write a tiny app to pass around that would start DOSing their site. In the end I didn't since Al-Jazeera seems to be gettign the treatment it deserves. They've even been tossed out of Iran.
Freenet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would it be a good idea for Al-jazeera to publish their content on freenet [sf.net]? Their articles would then be immune to any kind of censorship like they claim they are victim of.
Re:Unfortunate timing... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've watched some A.J. and try to keep up on what's said in the Middle Eastern press.
A.J. doesn't have lovely things like the Saudi Daily Al-Jazirah had in 2002. "Jews Use Blood for Baked Goods." But they are not totally without bias.
Al-Jazeera for instance reported that Jews had been informed in advance of September 11 not to go to work at WTC.
Al-Jazeera refers to those who blow themselves up in Israel as "martyrs".
Al-Jazeera is bankrolled by Sheikh Hamad of Qatar, it's not a pearl of independant media in the Gulf.
declare fatwah on Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot effect on a global scale? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had some friends discussing this yesterday and someone was quick enough to snag the IP from cache and email it to a few of us. I haven't looked at the photos myself, but I did verify that this IP worked yesterday. Now, it appears to be not responding any better than its name servers did yesterday.
IP Address was 217.26.193.10 (Score:3, Interesting)
I investigated that IP earlier today via several international Looking Glasses with no luck at all. As was pointed out elsewhere, there ain't no routes..
No Post is Too Late: Send the Iraqis to Allah (Score:1, Interesting)
When we hear the 3 Iraqi almost weep in tears about the torture, we know that we must send the Iraqis to Allah. God damn Saddam Hussein.
Did you trace to that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone is either shut some pipes off to stop the problem, it's REALLY big, or the IP is a typo.
My bets are on a typo. Did you modify a hosts file and use that? or just the IP in a browser...
Re:No Post is Too Late: Send the Iraqis to Allah (Score:3, Interesting)
Most news organizations distort news to increase its appeal. Ever watch local TV "news at 10?" For the sake of increased local appeal, they always start bellowing "the LOCAL connection to the major news story", a connection that's flimsy or meaningless half the time.
There is no nobility in commercial journalism. The only difference between the New York Times and the Weekly World News is that one has annoying registration requirements, and the other has Bat Boy pictures.
OTOH, if you take everyone stretching the story in a different direction, perhaps the obvious distortions and contradictions tend to cancel out. The larger the number of voices you see, the better.
Re:Did you trace to that? (Score:2, Interesting)
From my former university:
$ traceroute 217.26.193.10
traceroute: Warning: Multiple interfaces found; using 136.176.49.21 @ hme0
traceroute to 217.26.193.10 (217.26.193.10), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 rsm1.bradley.edu (136.176.48.1) 1.275 ms 1.263 ms 2.331 ms
2 bu.i2-f0.1.bradley.edu (136.176.2.33) 0.877 ms 0.775 ms 0.961 ms
3 bu.i2-f0.1.bradley.edu (136.176.2.33) 0.565 ms !H * 0.725 ms !H
Looks like your traceroute isn't the only place it gets blocked.
Re:Content still available... (Score:2, Interesting)
It is interesting to note that the Iraqi minsters themselves are complaining about Al Jazeera because of they believe it is pro the war, or at least not anti the US. It may relay what Iraqi TV is saying as well as other Arab TV channels, but so does the BBC (which also runs Iraqi press conferences live. Boy are those speeches long and rambling). It is up to the viewer to decide as to the validity of the information it is receiving. In amoungst the crap there is news. They will have reporters where the west cannot and news from the military is not always exactly accurate. The US said they'd picked up the pilots from the downed Apache, but they turn up on Iraqi TV.
I believe anyone who is pro free speech has to support the channel.
Al Jazeera is available (Score:1, Interesting)
The pictures of the mangled children are available on the first page itself. Bear in mind that mangled just doesn't capture the essence of the pictures. I could not bear to see anything below the fourth pic or so.
Re:Weird (Score:2, Interesting)
I think an equal concern is the small number of unique news agencies in the world. The majority of US newspapers with a reasonable circulation, for example, are owned by just a few large parent companies and therefore carry similar if not identical information. The risk here is that misinformation from the source can spread through all distributors yet appear as a series of corroborating stories.
Re:Weird (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard on Rush Limbaugh that Bush's administration was really wanting those critical questions from Arab journalists. They want to answer the tough, accusatory questions in order to get their message out to the anti-Bush protesters.
News networks are ... lazy.
Lazy? They're risking the lives of their best reporters to find out what's going on! It's not like they can speed-dial Saddam's henchmen on a cell phone from their humvee (or newsroom, for that matter). I can imagine some jackass reporter running around in the desert during a sandstorm, hopping over mines, ducking mortar shells, trying to interview fanatical, gun-toting Arabs, who don't speak English anyway and would be sure to lie to any American or European journalist if they had any valuable information.
Normally, I wouldn't say this, but give the media a break. They're risking their lives to report the war as best they can. The disseminated intelligence is the most reliable information they have to go on. If it happens to be biased, it's not their fault. There's usually no way to verify it.
Look, most of the American media would be far more enthusiastic about regime change in America than in Iraq. They're still seething over Florida 2000. If they could disprove what the adminstration is saying, they would jump at the chance to get that scoop. Did it occur to you that the "biased" information might actually be true?
Re:Military targets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does AJ show pics and video of Iraqi troops hiding among civilians and using them as shields? No
Has this been independantly corroborated? No.
Does AJ show report on the Iraqi troops using a hospital for a weapons cache? No
Has this been independantly corroborated? No.
Does AJ report on the use of explosives at the oil well heads? No.
Yes. Yes they do
Does AJ report on the ecological disaster of lighting oil filled trenches on fire? No
Yes. Yes they do.
Who modded this retard and her/his americentric point of view up?
Few people think al-Jazeera is unbiased, to compare it to CNN is frankly laughable.
CNN and al-Jazeera (Score:3, Interesting)
Now the interesting bit is that Aaron Brown pointed out that their newsroom monitors al-Jazeera and other networks. That they would pick an al-Jazeera piece to air... over a relatively minor story... seems to indicate a certain nod of approval to the Arabic network.
Sure. Bias exists. But perhapse there is enough truth to be recognized by professionals no matter what side of the bias divide they favor.
Re:Did you trace to that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did you trace to that? (Score:2, Interesting)
traceroute to 217.26.193.10 (217.26.193.10), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 bflets-ba-as-tokyo-1.dsnw.ne.jp (61.213.134.52) 3.123 ms 1.516 ms 1.039 ms
2 61.213.134.49 (61.213.134.49) 1.190 ms 1.343 ms 1.087 ms
3 61.213.134.13 (61.213.134.13) 1.783 ms 1.525 ms 1.627 ms
4 202.239.171.105 (202.239.171.105) 1.162 ms !H * 1.221 ms !H
Looks like someone doesn't want us to reach the information. Isn't this kind of denial of freedom one of the things the USA was accusing Iraq of?
Did you trace _who?(Was:Re:Did you trace to that?) (Score:2, Interesting)
I would be much more interested in seeing more info on how the site is blocked (ie., is it really a DDOS attack, is it directed to the sites or to the DNS servers, could it be stopped merely by reconfiguring the DNS servers) and whether the routes are blocked too.
After we know that, we can start discussin if this is a case of international censorship and who is responsible for it.
And only then can we say who is trying to abolish such things as intellectual freedom, freedom of the speech, trans-frontier communication over the Internet etc. Only then, political discussion of this issue is possible.
But if we do want to turn this into a political discussion, I found it very interesting that many local media are talking about a cyberwar in terms of attacks of pacifist hackers agains american institutions' web sites. Has anybody seen any of that? Curious.
Re:Those "banned" pics: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't buy this. Most of the countries whose populations and gov'ts had any REAL sympathy were already our friends.
You really, really should. Do you count Italy and Spain, to name only a few, as countries where the population had real sympathy for te US? Well, _overwhelming_ majority of the people in those nations is against the war in Iraq, and against the current US administration!
I don't think the people in the US fully appreciate the massive amount of damage your president has inflicted upon US's image in the rest of the world. I'm not talking Middle East or Asia here. I'm talking worldwide. For example, polls show that majority of the people in Europe consider Mr.Bush a greater threat to world peace than Saddam (no joke).
Nowadays the US is largely percieved as a bully with no regard for differing views (either you're with us, or you're against us - Pres.Bush) of anyone, even it's closest allies. Furthermore, US actions appear totally devoid of any foresight and planning beyond the immediate short-term agenda.
I think the Onion put it best in naming the current US campaign 'Operation: Piss off the planet'.
The saddest thing is that the situation really didn't have to play out this way.
They wouldn't touch reporters (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AlJazeera DNS and routing tampered with. (Score:2, Interesting)
Al-Jazeera hacker's page (Score:1, Interesting)
Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia [networld.com]
The Inquirer [theinquirer.net] denies that Al-Jazeera's been hacked, but we all know how reliable the Inquirer is.
The Memory Hole [thememoryhole.org] has posted pictures [thememoryhole.org] of the prisoners of war and other victims, similar to the pictures which got Yellow Times [yellowtimes.org] shut down by its ISP. WorldNet Daily [worldnetdaily.com] and Forbes [forbes.com] have the full scoop [scoop.co.nz] on YellowTimes [yellowtimes.org]'s shutdown.
The censored videos can be obtained at Ogrish.com [ogrish.com] and on Kazaa (just search for "pow", "iraq", or "jazeera").
For the latest news on the war and attempts to hide information about it, visit AntiWar.com [antiwar.com] and Stop-Fascism.org [stop-fascism.org].
But be careful out there [indymedia.org]. If Patriot II passes [villagevoice.com], you can lose U.S. citizenship for "supporting" a terrorist organization. Someone like Ashcroft might interpret "supporting" to mean simply posting a link to a website critical of the government because its ISP's weekend operator is a Muslim who goes to a Mosque where a certain terrorist goes to.
Re:Weird (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone thinks that they are centrist. Anyone right of them is conservative, anyone left is them is liberal. Which is why Democrats call ABC, CBS, and NBC conservative news, yet Republicans call it liberal news. That is also why Democrats call Fox News very conservative, and Republicans call in "balanced". But, the important thing is, that both the liberal and the conservative views are legitamite.
In order to report the news in an unbiased way, the reporter must assume an equidistant view from both warring sides. That is, the American news sources would have to decide that the Americans aren't automatically correct, and that Saddam isn't automatically wrong. The problem is, that legitamizes Saddam's regime to many who think it illegitamite, and that is something many do not want to do.
Also, unbiased reporting (which I don't believe exists) wouldn't have the flare behind it the biased reporting does. When people are biased, they go the extra mile to prove their point. I like that a lot better.