Being Hacked is a Badge of Honor We OEN Members Must Defend Our Site

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Being Hacked is a Badge of Honor

We OEN Members Must Defend Our Site

A Message from Rob...

We have been dealing with a denial of service ATTACK on OEN. It shut us down for hours on Monday, slowed us down on Tuesday and is still ongoing. We've taken steps to deal with it, but these attacks are insidious, using virus infected computers from all over the world. We're being assaulted by computers in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Israel, Bulgaria, Brazil--all over the world. It's taken up way too much of my time and wasted a lot of users' time, causing lost submissions. 

Best thing to do is do all your writing in a text editor, not on OEN. We seem to have it somewhat under control, using a beefed-up firewall. But it's still not over. It's amazing it took this many years--we're going to celebrate our 6th birthday next month--to be hit with one of these. 

We're fighting on, keeping at all the issues we care about. 

thanks for all you do,

rob kall

If you have been hacked, you may skip my scribble below. The hackers use ever more powerful viruses. They have gone from simple ad tracing market research programs to bugs that reduced my computer to scrap metal.

This was an affront to my personal liberty.

In one day several years ago I earned my place on the enemies list. In the morning I studied the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Immediately, they countered by converting my wallpaper to 24 images of the self-styled terrorist Al Ameriki. He uttered his propaganda in English with a Brooklyn accent.

In the afternoon I reviewed Israel's wall to keep the Arab infiltrators out. Suddenly, my Service Provider began to dun me for late payment. Considering I had arranged the fees to be taken automatically from my bank account, I thought my ISP was over-zealous.

My confusion lasted for months until The Angry Arab from Germany refused my contact because within my computer a deep bug was monitoring my every communication. Even after I located and destroyed it the curse returned every time I opened my computer.

As a prelude to the 2006 mid-term elections, the right wing agitators invaded my blogging site in great numbers. Aside from one fellow who made noises like Bill Buckley, they indulged in personal attacks and calls for racism.

They had nothing positive to offer the site except the money they used to buy out the owner. The threats increased against the leftist bloggers. If we fought back, many of us received warnings that we would be dumped from the site. Several of us lost the Internet connection for weeks at a time. One of our technically proficient colleagues traced our woes to a source located in Langley, Virginia. Already a certified CIA enemy, he re-located to Southeast Asia. Those of us less wealthy migrated to a new blogging site operated by the owner who had sold his original site to our tormentors.

With most of the lefties congregated on one site, we became bored. There was too much agreement and too little controversy. In a funk, I joined Blogspot, as an insignificant drop in the ocean. My 400 articles there did not draw a single comment.

Last September I checked out my former blogging site and they hit me with a virus that destroyed my computer. I salvaged enough parts to restore an old Pentium IV I had, but I remained off the Internet until after Obama's election.

To thwart another attack, I bought a new computer with the Vista operating system. While I was replacing it with the more comfortable XP system, the villains struck again disabling [but not destroying] my newest device.

No sooner than we were up and running again, my former nemesis the Jerusalem Post hit me again. An Iranian friend asked me to post his article in Israel. It was controversial concerning his arrest, torture and imprisonment in Iran. After his escape to the USA, he put together a lawsuit that centered on his torture. The Americans had helped him in many ways, but they did not dare to sue the Iranians. [I could never figure out why the Americans planned to nuke Iran, but were afraid to take her to court.]

When I submitted my friend's article to the Jerusalem Post, all the automatic alarm bells rang. Although I am sure no human being actually read the document, my ISP took down my site within a few hours.

If I were given to conjuring up conspiracy theories, I would suspect collusion among American, Israeli and Iranian authorities. They share a common need for Asian paper tiger villains, for military funding and for perpetual warfare. God forbid, if the hapless citizens began to think for a change, they might start a meaningful peace process.

I reject conspiracy theories out of hand. The leaders distrust everyone in their station. Co-operation and co-ordination among them are rare verging on the impossible. Anyway, the leaders are too dumb and too venal to do anything that smacks of cleverness.

Their recent moves have left them knee-deep in Middle Eastern oil muck and the Depression floods have increased the water level to chest high. They are running out of other people to blame. Some bloggers report the news, but a pitiful few take part in shaping the events. At most we provide background music in the manner of Muzak on the elevator. We can be annoying, but never decisive.

We are too much like Shakespeare, who scribbled about Kings, Queens and noblemen. However dramatic this is the stuff of gossip columns. To paraphrase Ed Murrow, if the Internet serves only to amuse, divert and delude the audience, it will never be anything more than pretty lights on a box.

The real story is yours and mine. Every day our individual struggles, hopes and fears shape our lives for good or ill. We fashion our destinies nobody else can unless we allow them to control us.

Since they can't torture or maim all of us, their threats are meaningless only a rear guard action. They haven't the manpower to monitor free speech. When they abuse target individuals, we become aware of their weakness.

This is why being hacked is a badge of honor.

It's all a matter of liberty.

Authors Bio:
Born a month before Pearl Harbor, I attended world events from an early age. My first words included Mussolini, Patton, Sahara and Patton. At age three I was a regular listener to Lowell Thomas.
My mom was an industrial nurse a member of the AFL/CIO. My dad was a painting contractor. We shopped at the Working Man's Store.
Dad's reading matter was the Old Mole the house organ of the Socialist Workers Party. I played the saxophone and became a young fan of Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Duke Ellington. Naturally, I gravitated to the Civil Rights movement.
After college to avoid the draft, I joined the US Army Reserve. Alas, this came to crowd control, which was a euphemism for busting radical potheads. When I ducked out of this duty, my commander bundled me off to a unit doomed to go to Vietnam. Ironically, my old unit went to Vietnam and the new one stayed home.
I studied economics in graduate school where I watched America go mad with war. Afterwards, I joined the rat race for a decade.
When Ronnie Reagan became President, I took up residence in Israel.
The 11 books listed below describe my adventures in Israel.
The articles reflect additional thoughts that expand on the author's ten volumes Genesis Begins the Millennia. The work begins in 1995 with a fictional account of ordinary Israelis absorbed with everyday events. There are extraordinary happenings the characters gradually recognize as portents of the Messianic Age. Volumes four and five show why the Messiah decided to delay His arrival.
Volumes six through ten [Tradebombers] begin six weeks before the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy. Again, the characters portray ordinary citizen reaction to extraordinary events.