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Censorship Politics

Turkish Hackers Target Vatican Website After Pope's Genocide Comment 249

An anonymous reader writes Turkish hackers have brought down the official Vatican City website, following Pope Francis' statement in which he referred to mass killings of Armenians by Turks as 'genocide'. According to reports, the website www.vatican.va was first taken offline on Monday evening with a Turkish hacker, named @THTHerakles, announcing that he would continue to target the website should an official apology not be issued from the Vatican City. The hacker said that the Pope's comments were "unacceptable" for a respected religious figurehead. "Taking sides and calling what happened with the Armenians genocide is not true ... We want Pope [Francis] to apologize for his words or we will make sure the website remains offline," he added.
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Turkish Hackers Target Vatican Website After Pope's Genocide Comment

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  • Mass Murder (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:32AM (#49469573)

    Because killing over a million people of a certain way of life is not genocide...

    • Re:Mass Murder (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:44AM (#49469659)

      People who don't actually look at facts, but at feelings they have do to patriotism, ethnocentrism, or other sorts of values don't really care about accuracy in labeling. They also don't like unacknowledged but horrible national acts brought up because it stains their sense of nationalism and machismo.

      It was a genocide. There may have been awful things happened to precipitate it, but it was a genocide and the record is fairly clear on this.

      It would take courage for Turkey to accept this part of their past, apologize for it, and show that they are big enough to accept the bad and the good in their past. But they aren't, nationally, and these hackers are an example of that.

      Until you can be brutally honest with yourself about the warts on your nation's past, you can't ever really be a great nation. You have to be able to look your mistakes and misdeeds in the eye and say 'yeah, I own that... not proud of it.... and there were reasons.... but I own that'.

      When and if Turkey can ever do that, they'll show they (as a country and Turks as a national population) have grown and are not so fragile as to need to hide, deny, and otherwise act like an ostrich in the face of their darker moments in the past.

      Most nations have them. The number that have the guts to face up to them and try to accept the dark parts and maybe even do something to commemorate or make restitution are not that large. Turkey is hardly alone in living in denial.

      • Re:Mass Murder (Score:5, Informative)

        by khallow ( 566160 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:55AM (#49469739)
        I think a big part of the reason it's so taboo is that the founders of modern Turkey were probably involved in the genocide, including Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the president of Turkey from 1923-1938. To admit that the leaders of Turkey of the past, were involved might call into question the legitimacy of Turkey today (particularly among minority groups like the Kurds and the hardcore religious) and undermine its secular myth building.
        • Re:Mass Murder (Score:5, Interesting)

          by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @09:42AM (#49470259) Homepage Journal

          To admit that the leaders of Turkey of the past, were involved might call into question the legitimacy of Turkey today

          The past leaders of many countries have been involved in genocides. Heck, current US Law is that racial interment is legal and the wars against the previous nations here are thoroughly documented.

          But say that and most Americans will say, "what assholes" (or conversely "Happy Columbus Day!") but the scimitars will remain sheathed. I seems like an awful case of fragile identity. Weird jingoistic nonsense.

          Then again, most Americans don't even care that the legitimacy of the governments are called into question every time they violate their operating agreements.

          • by PRMan ( 959735 )
            I don't know why Columbus always gets dragged into this. HE didn't kill anyone. In fact, he greatly regretted the inevitable genocide that he saw coming.
            • Most people that hate on Columbus are using http://theoatmeal.com/comics/c... [theoatmeal.com] as their reference. The fact is most historical figures are not saints or devils, but people with complex motivations living in a world very different than ours. (disclaimer: I still think Columbus wasn't a "good" guy.)

          • One of my favorite "Fuck you, we're the USA" moments in history is the overthrow and occupation of the still technically sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii, now just nice beach real estate and a leftist paradise.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

          And the answer to that is those who look at Turkey don't see a difference between the Turks under the Ottoman Empire and those in today's Turkey. They're both Turks living in Anatolia. They may have benefited from the genocide via their ancestors. Or not. Who can really say?

          And let's not forget that the Turks aren't done with ethnic strife, considering their conflicts with their Kurdish population.

          These Turkish hackers are proud of Turkey, and that is causing them to want to revise history. In one sens

    • by rnturn ( 11092 )

      So let me get this straight...

      They are okay with the deaths being politely described as "mass killing" but calling them "genocide" is too much? So they're upset about the negative connotations that "genocide" brings to the table?

      Yeah... OK... They make all kinds of sense.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      And turning a blind eye to Daesh is not helping the world view Turkey in a favorable light. Erdogan has no problems with Daesh killing all non-Sunnis.

    • Re:Mass Murder (Score:4, Informative)

      by lyovushka ( 4075741 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @11:44AM (#49471459)
      Mass murder of over a million people of certain way of life after which only 50000 [wikipedia.org] remain is genocide.
  • by ClayDowling ( 629804 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:32AM (#49469579) Homepage

    Not sure how he thinks he's going to come out on top in the public eye for attacking the clergy. Sure, he'll be the hero of his hacker friends, but most of the world has a pretty low opinion of people who attack the clergy.

    • by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:36AM (#49469605)

      I would have thought that most of his Turkish friends would have a low opinion of him already for choosing a Greek handle.

    • maybe this report about "Exorcists warn Vatican over 'beautiful young vampires' and satanic yoga" also scared them http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
  • Genocide. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:33AM (#49469589)

    It was a genocide. Genocide, genocide, genocide. The mass killings of the Armenians by the Turks 1925 was a genocide [wikipedia.org].

    Now, vailant Turkish hax0rs, go ahead and take down the Internet.

    • Re:Genocide. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:42AM (#49469645)

      In fact, Raphael Lemkin, coined the term "genocide" in 1943 describe the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. Those acts were the inspiration for the term.

      Armenian Genocide [wikipedia.org]

      Raphael Lemkin was explicitly moved by the Armenian annihilation to coin the word genocide in 1943 and define systematic and premeditated exterminations within legal parameters. The Armenian Genocide is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, because scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out in order to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.

  • Intellegent (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yeah, the best way to not get caught it to tell people you're going to continue hitting a specific target. No way you could get caught with that strategy.

  • Well, great (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by NotDrWho ( 3543773 )

    How the fuck am I supposed to get my daily "Pontiff's Postings" and "Cardinal Glick's Fav Flicks" newsletters now, you Turk cocksuckers??

    • Since you ask, I recommend @pontifex_ln [twitter.com].

      (Seems @pontifex_tr doesn't exist. Makes some sense: that's not exactly Latin-rite territory, more Byzantines and Orthodox and Syriac churches that don't go for the filoque [wikipedia.org] or the Immaculate Conception. Do any of the eastern patriarchs have Twitter accounts?)

  • Just curious (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What would the Inquisition be considered?
    • Murder, torture, and more murder.

      Next question?

    • by Pope Hagbard ( 3897945 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @09:05AM (#49469827) Journal

      Unexpected.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Christianity has long ago admitted its past mistakes, and thrives in cultures whose secular liberals endlessly rake over the evils of the past. Not so with that other religion that dogs our headlines.

      To bring in some News For Nerds relevance, the Vatican made up for its treatment of Galileo by setting up its own observatory, which in modern times has stayed on the front wave of astronomical technology:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... [wikipedia.org]

      The irony is that to get this very facility built, Rome had to wage anothe

    • Re:Just curious (Score:5, Informative)

      by GLMDesigns ( 2044134 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @09:35AM (#49470165)
      The Inquisition. You mean the 2,000 - 10,000 (at the most) that were killed over a period of 300 years; with the overwhelming majority done over a few decades in Spain?

      Compare that with Hitler 11,000,000 and Stalin 20,000,000+, and Mao 40,000,000+ and the Inquisition begins to pale in comparison.
  • by KermodeBear ( 738243 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @08:59AM (#49469769) Homepage

    I really would like the media to stop referring to people who DDoS as "hackers". All they're doing is sending a pile of requests to a service and overloading it. I'm not impressed, neither is anyone else here.

    • by Bongo ( 13261 )

      DDoS? Come to think of it, that would explain why God never answers prayers.

      • by PRMan ( 959735 )

        He never answers YOUR prayers. He answers mine quite a bit.

        The Bible says, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." James 5:16

        "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." 1 John 5:14

    • This.

      I really pisses me off when people confuse lock picking with loud music.

  • Never mind that when the Pope says something into a microphone somewhere, it's rebroadcast through satellites to every corner of the globe - you took down Vatican City's web site!

    That'll fix their little red wagon!

  • by tao ( 10867 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @09:02AM (#49469799) Homepage

    This would be the perfect opportunity for the Pope to fire a second salvo by commenting on the Turkish oppression of its Kurdish minority...

  • by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao AT hotmail DOT com> on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @10:11AM (#49470549) Homepage

    "When you cut out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say." -- George R. R. Martin

  • ... the Pope.

  • by chandoni ( 28843 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @11:10AM (#49471129) Homepage

    Similar "hackers" were some of the most prolific spammers on Usenet in the early 90s. Everybody who administered a news server back in the day probably remembers the incident, and many of us felt like mass murdering these guys in response. They practically invented the spambot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]

  • by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2015 @12:14PM (#49471827)
    Pre eternal September you could count on Seder to post long, rambling and confusing anti-Armenian screeds whenever turkey was mentioned. Made talking about Thanksgiving dinner interesting. I guess the web is too big to grep nowadays.

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