RajaNews Hacked
Nov 4th, 2009 by pedestrian
UPDATE: they now redirect rajanews to farcenews.
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RajaNews is a website dedicated to die hard Ahmadinejad supporters (it’s supposed to be a “news agency” but really, Brad Pitt fan sites are more respectable than this shithole.) He’s free to have websites dedicated to worshiping his chivalry and eloquence of course. The problem is that RajaNews is a VERY well funded establishment – and we’re paying for it. The language they use on that site makes me sick to my stomach. Literally, it makes me sick. Sometimes, they are even worse than FarceNews.
If you go to their website today, their second headline (highlighted in red) is: (mocking) Photos of their great numbers! Photos of devilry on 13 Aban.
If you click on this link however (and all the other links for that matter), you’ll get this:
This site has been hacked for spreading lies, supporting the hated dictatorial government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all his thuggish allies.
Amen!
it would be better if the hackers had provided some really serious information – what has been done to detainees, what they were doing at the time of arrest (ie. nothing violent, nothing worth arrest, etc).. this is all very good but the greens need to recruit .. they need numbers
Inna, the only good thing to come out of this thing so far is that the very little (if anything at all) we know and have is known and owned by everyone.
So I don’t think the hackers, or even Mousavi himself knows more about these issues then I (or everyone else) do.
How does word spread? From my experiences in Iran, the only thing I ever saw anyone use the internet for was to chat or find themselves an American wife/husband. There are lots of internet cafes but speeds are so slow that video downloading is impossible. Even pages with large graphics are impossible. Some pockets of Tehran and perhaps the other large cities have ADSL now but the monthly costs are so prohibitive that the people who can afford it can also afford to speak on the telephone with friends and family abroad, have enough connections in high places to know what’s really going on, can travel to less restrictive places to catch up on their news, etc.
Interestingly, despite the amount of fuss people have made about it, the web doesn’t really play a direct role in these events. At best it is a secondary and indirect role. Word of mouth, via neighborhood gossip (on the phone or in person) and foreign satellite channels, is still the most effective form of news dissemination. It’s also a well-entrenched system. People haven’t just figured it out in the past few months. Anyone who has read an Iranian newspaper since practically the beginnings of modern journalism knows that many of the “important” articles are written in a “code.” For one, because they rarely give background information, it is merely assumed that the reader knows what the author is talking about. Secondly, because they are often in response to rumors spreading around town or the country which have never been officially addressed in the news before. Third, because there’s only so much you can say before you invite trouble for yourself and your sources. In that sense, the newspapers (like satellite tv) have been an extension of the word-of-mouth system, have taken into account the existence of word-of-mouth, and have not been its replacement as one might expect them to be. Hehe, just another slice of Iranian modernity.
supp, I completely agree with you on the internet hype – I was just writing about it here.
mhm, agreed – i understand that the internet “hype” is really just that.. but every little thing counts.
i’ve long insisted that an extensive “word of mouth” campaign would be the most effective. .. it would be lovely if someone would hack a newspaper