Paul,
Please understand that I am mature enough to not regard hacking as something "cool" or the "in thing". I understand that it can disrupt peoples lives, and destroy companies and organizations.
With that maturity comes the ability to admit when my mind's been changed, so thank you for educating me on the accolades and legitimacy of Al Jazeera.
However
I quote a british official when I describe their choice to display photos of Iraqi citizens dancing on the chests of coalition corpses as completely irresponsible. It is possible that I just have higher journalistic standards. Yes Are body counts newsworthy? Yes. Are hostage situations newsworthy? Yes. Are these types of photographs newsworthy? No, they are deplorable. Again, this may just be my standards being too high, but I am glad to not see American news organs running these videos.
If Al Jazeera deserves a third of the credit you give it, then surely it would realize that these types of photos are best left to the tabloids and the shock-jocks.
In light of my newfound respect for Al Jazeera (despite their best efforts to ruin it) I don't feel compelled to retract my opinion of what these hackers did as justified. I remain convinced that if Al Jazeera hadn't gotten it's collective head stuck up its collective bung-hole then they wouldn't have gotten hit like this. They were laying pretty low until they made that move.
thanks again for convincing me that they are not a tool of a regime, now it's up to them to continue that by being responsible. . .I respectfully await your further attempts at changing my mind.
Gerber