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Are Marines Censoring Web Access for Troops in Iraq?
Gavin86 and others have submitted links to This Wonkette article (profanity warning) about the Marines Corps blocking access to some Web sites for their people in Iraq. This article was a follow-up to an earlier Wonkette post. Before I posted these links, I looked for verification of this problem but found nothing but links to Wonkette, so I cannot say for sure whether this is true. Hopefully, alert Slashdot readers (like you) will post confirmations if, indeed, there are any to be found. Meanwhile, if this is true, it's eerily reminiscent of an experience I had when I visited Saudi Arabia in January, 2004.
The Wonkette post contains this list of sites blocked and not blocked, allegedly sent by a Marine serving in Iraq:
I spent several hours in my Riyadh hotel room one evening checking sites suggested to me by Slashdot coworker Jamie McCarthy via IRC (which was not blocked by the Saudi filters). Among them were sites decrying Holocaust denial, which were blocked, although many sites espousing the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion antisemitic lies were not.
A number of sites that talked about human rights -- especially women's rights -- were also blocked. Sites that glorified Islam were, of course, fine. Interestingly, Jamie and I found that some (but not all) sites that were blocked when the 2002 Harvard Law School article, Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, was released had been unblocked by the time of my visit.
And when I met with Eyas S. Al-Hejery, the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's Internet Serice Unit and told him about some of the blocked sites Jamie and I had found, including several innocuous Israeli government ones, he agreeably unblocked them.
I have no way of knowing whether Eyas reblocked those sites as soon as I left his country, but he told me more than once that he did not, himself, decide which sites should be blocked but only reacted to complaints from Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police and submissions from concerned citizens, which he said numbered up to 200 per day, total, while he only received a "trickle" of requests to unblock sites.
Now comes a big question: If the charges of Marine Internet blockage are true, will the Marines unblock incorrectly-blocked Web sites as quickly as Eyas did in Saudi Arabia?
But first, another big questions must be answered: Is the Wonkette story true? It's been up and spreading around the Internet since March 1st, and no official Marine spokesperson has bothered to either debunk it or admit that yes, the Marine Corps is blocking Web sites for political reasons.
It's going to be interesting to see if, here in a country where we supposedly hold freedom of speech dear, we expect our overseas troops to submit to the same sort of censorship that is an everyday thing in Saudi Arabia, a famous breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism our Marines are supposed to be fighting against.
- Wonkette - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion."
- Bill O'Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
- Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
- Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
- ABC News "The Note" - OK
- Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
- G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK
- Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies."
I spent several hours in my Riyadh hotel room one evening checking sites suggested to me by Slashdot coworker Jamie McCarthy via IRC (which was not blocked by the Saudi filters). Among them were sites decrying Holocaust denial, which were blocked, although many sites espousing the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion antisemitic lies were not.
A number of sites that talked about human rights -- especially women's rights -- were also blocked. Sites that glorified Islam were, of course, fine. Interestingly, Jamie and I found that some (but not all) sites that were blocked when the 2002 Harvard Law School article, Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, was released had been unblocked by the time of my visit.
And when I met with Eyas S. Al-Hejery, the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's Internet Serice Unit and told him about some of the blocked sites Jamie and I had found, including several innocuous Israeli government ones, he agreeably unblocked them.
I have no way of knowing whether Eyas reblocked those sites as soon as I left his country, but he told me more than once that he did not, himself, decide which sites should be blocked but only reacted to complaints from Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police and submissions from concerned citizens, which he said numbered up to 200 per day, total, while he only received a "trickle" of requests to unblock sites.
Now comes a big question: If the charges of Marine Internet blockage are true, will the Marines unblock incorrectly-blocked Web sites as quickly as Eyas did in Saudi Arabia?
But first, another big questions must be answered: Is the Wonkette story true? It's been up and spreading around the Internet since March 1st, and no official Marine spokesperson has bothered to either debunk it or admit that yes, the Marine Corps is blocking Web sites for political reasons.
It's going to be interesting to see if, here in a country where we supposedly hold freedom of speech dear, we expect our overseas troops to submit to the same sort of censorship that is an everyday thing in Saudi Arabia, a famous breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism our Marines are supposed to be fighting against.
Fighting for freedom are we?
While I can't speak for The Core, when I was in Kuwait for the Army, we had full access to everything. For that matter, the Internation version of CNN or the International MTV were always on the TV in the mess hall.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Fighting for freedom are we?
Yes....Wherever there's trouble, GI Joe is there
Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away. They can and will punish spreading of dissent or other insubordination. Sometimes very severely.
The military also censors what it's members can say. This is necessary to avoid inadvertantly informing an enemy, but like everything else, it can be abused. Also part of service life. It ain't pretty.
See Daily Kos discussion here.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Lets hope Hampster Dance is among the blocked. No need to expose new cultures to that kinda stuff.
Is it just me, or is a profanity warning kinda redundant when we're talking about Marines?
Obligatory Marine joke:
News reporter: "Now that you're back from Iraq, what's the first thing you're going to do?"
Marine: "Fuck my wife!"
News reporter: "Well, we can't go to air with that. How 'bout the second thing you're going to do?" Marine: "Then I'm gonna take off these fucking combat boots!"
useless junk DOT ORG muahahahhahaha
Q: Are Marines Censoring Web Access for Troops in Iraq?
A: I would hope so.
Morale of the troops is more important than giving them access to what MoveOn.org has to say about the job they are doing. They can engage in political discourse when their tour is over, but for now everything about their life is being managed for the sake of keeping them in the best possible combat-ready state of mind and health. Wide-eyed idealism is for civilians. Soldiers do best (read: live longer) with a narrower focus.
I happen to be a fan of the conservative side of the spectrum (O'Reilly, Hannity, etc), but there is no way in hell I can agree with this censorship.
Even if they need to limit bandwidth usage, they should block all or nothing.
(Yes, I'm an AC, I don't feel like being attacked for my beliefs).
Does Slashdot, as a news source, really have to spread this sort of unconfirmed information?
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Freedom of speech? You need to ask permission to speak freely in front of a superior officer.
Press? Nope. Leaking information is a punishable offense.
Religion? Well, "thou shalt not kill" isn't exactly a respected commandment...
I could go on, but I think you see the point by now. Militarism is a poor way to defend freedom and individual rights.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
First: the fact that this claim has made its debut on a leftist website - not from a soldier even, but from some unnamed "correspondent" - calls it seriously into question. Second: even if the blocking is accurately reported, there is no reason to assume that U.S. Military Policy has led to the blocking. These filters are administered by individuals, who exercise their own judgment. Sometimes they screw up. Third: there's no reason to assume that the opinions or views expressed by these sites are "forbidden", just the sites themselves. For example, if they were blocking Democrats.com, DailyKos, Indymedia, DemocraticUnderground, MichaelMoore.com, or any number of other leftist bullshit factories, they would have mentioned that.
I am in Baghdad right now and I am a network admin here. I am aware of no blatant censorship (but we do have filtering software). I was able to read the linked article. Here is one of the comments posted on that page:
Curious if www.pattillmanfoundation.org is blocked.
The article, nor the page referenced are blocked. This article is bullshit.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I read about the Pentagon blacklisting non-warmonger websites, but favoring the warmongers, at Daily Kos.
--
make install -not war
Interesting. I have no idea if her claim is true or not, but it is at least consistent with another oddity that I noticed a few weeks ago, when the poll results showed that a majority (IIRC) of the US service personnel over there thought that we were in Iraq "because of what they did to us on 9/11," despite the fact that pretty much everyone over here (apart from a few trolls) now knows there was no connection at all between Iraq and 9/11.
When I heard that my first thought was: how could they not know this?!?
But perhaps there is a simple explanation after all.
--MarkusQ
So much for the military claim to be a-political. Obviously thet are prefering right wing sites over left wing sites.
so can I roll my eyes now? Or is Home Land Security going to investigate my lack of patriotism for our Fundementalist Overlords
OMG they are restricting internet access to U.S. soldiers!!! OMG!! It is the end of the world!!! OMG OMG where's my shuttle I need to escape to Mars!! OMG! *panics* $#@^%&%$%@#$%##$%%^^^^[NO CARRIER]
Before people start all the suppressing soldiers rights chatter... this is nothing new and I'm sure its being done to all the forces, not just the Marines. The military has always kept a tight grip on incoming and outgoing information. In WWI and WWII, mail was looked at for sensitive information and photographers had their pictures looked at. The was especially true in Vietnam. I'm not justifying it, but I don't think most people are in a position to judge if you yourself haven't led troops in combat or fought in a war yourself. Having served in the Marines myself, I can say that good morale is vital to a mission's success. It's so important that it may even be worth losing some freedoms to maintain it. Anyone who has served in the armed forces will tell you that you give up your rights when you enlist. The military is a serious game and normal rules don't apply often. May seem strange to many, but its reality.
gasmonsoAre you free to surf any website you want on your company network? Do any of us really think that the military lets troops surf anywhere they please on a government owned and operated network that is there for "Official Use Only"? The same network that carries Command & Control data that is vital for operational information.
I think if I were a Marine/Soldier/Sailor/Airman in the zone, I'd rather be limited in what websites I can surf from the combat zone in exchange for having the available bandwidth that lets an alert message come in about an impending attack.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy and go well with ketchup.
two things:
/. (i.e games.slashdot.org) are blocked. look, if you don't own the computer, or the bandwidth, and are on the clock, it's not censorship. if firms don't filter web content into their networks, there's security and legal issues.
a) at least they're not being partisan, blocking rush limbaugh and al franken.
b) my school filters tons of stuff. I can't read most blogs and even parts of
seems much ado about nothing.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Dynamic page content detected, any further access is denied, please contact the authorities for an unblock request.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Keeping the troops segregated from anyone but pro-war Republicans isn't part of the military's job. ;p
The best part is that one of those proxy machines is on slashdot's banned list, so I have to try and find one of the others to read/post from time to time.
While I love a good conspiracy as much as the next guy, I'm sure the Marines are just trying to keep crap out of their boxen.
Its not that military is censoring, it's that it's censoring with a clear political bias. When you add in recent appearances of military personnel in uniform as participants in political events in clear violation of the law, it is appearing more and more like the US military is becoming a subsidary of the Republican Party.
I was in the middle of Iraq. Our connection was filtered with the same list as CONUS bases.
I know everyone is looking for some vast right-wing conspiricy, but to me it looks like the blocked pages had free streaming radio, or public forums. I can see cases where administrators may block streaming media for the purposes of saving bandwidth, and potentially public forums for a huge number of security and public relations reasons.
It just so happens the Air America lets you listen online for free (becuase they are not trying to turn a profit), and Rush Limbaugh does not. I'm not so certain theres any bias going on here.
At the worst, it seems like a case of stupid network rules, which happen to be the same as at my company. (No streaming media, no forums).
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
I saw in TFA that they tryed to use anonymiser, but since its host is well know it is often blocked.
/.
Has anyone tryed using the old CGI Proxy Trick on this one?
this offers several options, though i dont know if someone who could confirm this would read
If Marines are connecting to the internet though a DoD network, plenty of sites are being blocked. Thousands of sites are blocked at all military post. Also it's pretty obvious that any email, forum posting, or blog entry that they send are also cached. That being to make sure they aren't sending information that they should not be. (Anything that can comprimise the mission, sensitive information, or the lifes of their buddies) What's the big deal? How many corporations do the same thing?
You honestly can't think of a single reason to filter traffic other than censorship?
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
isn't this the same thing that they bitch about China doing? If one of the basic tenants of our "democracy" (representitive republic) is "Freedom of Speech", how is it that the military blocks websites? And, in particular, websites of people with political opinions pertaining to getting the troops out of another failed war?
Research or knee jerk?
Wonkette is run by others.
Poor troll, nonetheless.
While I can agree that members of the military give up some rights because of their job, they still should enjoy the basic constitutional rights that all Americans have. For example, Troops in the Army who live on base are not allowed to have any political posters of any kind. There are no signs of "I support X for congress". Military troops also have less rights in criminal cases. They don't always get a jury, sometimes it is a tribunal. There have been cases when their contract for service has expired but they are forced to continue service.
On the other hand, when we enter another nation, we must respect their laws. There is no freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia. If they want to censor the internet, it is their right. The USA can not dictate to Saudi Arabia how to live, what values to have. Muslim nations have a right to form religious states where their doctrine determines laws. Just like the USA can form a state based on our values.
move along. The part that isn't stressed that these are on the USMC Workplace computers, not the recreational computers (based on the followup to one of the Wonkette articles). Though I agree that all those sites should be censored, blocking on workplace computers is the norm, not the except in many workplaces around the world.
It would be pretty funny if people post here to say that the Marines are doing the right thing censoring the troops and then it turns out that they actually aren't..
For what it's worth, when I was serving in Tikrit in '05, I didn't see much political bias on the filtering- just porn and stuff- but I'm not a Marine, so I don't know what they do.
Preposterous.
One of my closest childhood friends commented to me in 1999 that on a carrier (the ship, not the service provider) their web access was censored.
Furthermore, they were forbidden by their CO from watching any news other than Fox News in the mess. Apparently, due to personal preference of the CO, not because of military policy... but after checking with and other parts of his ship, they all had the same mess/recreation policy.
See, dissenting points of view could harm troop morale, and diminish their effectiveness. The military is allowed to get away with a lot of things in the name of protecting morale. You wouldn't want any doubters to risk the lives of brother soldiers/shipmen/airmen because of their conscience, would you?
The armed forces, including all the men and women in them, are responsible for the execution of war -- not the morality of war. The Congress is responsible for those decisions, so the armed forces have no reason to hear dissenting points of view. Right?
Since the Revolutionary War in the US, that has been how it has worked. Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, and all that. As long as Congress is respnsible for the ethical decisions of war, then censoring information accessible to the troops is fine. Oh wait...
Apologies in advance for the tongue-in-cheekiness.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's mostly radio shows - my University blocked far more than this, and my employer blocks even more. Just because they deal with political issues don't make those websites sources of political information. I've never heard a well balanced intelligent opinion from any talk radio host. It's always extremely liberal, or extremely conservative, or extremely something else. Of course, everybody has the right to listen to this stuff, and read their websites, which is why any citizen can view them from their own home, internet cafes, libraries etc. The soldiers, however, are employees and they're not there to listen to political rhetoric or read some guy's nonsensical opinion. Sure, there is some hypocrisy with Bill O' Reilly's site being OK and others being blocked, but this isn't anything new. This was going on in WW2, Vietnam, and any conflict during any time there was an operating press. Do you think during WW2 US soldiers would have been allowed to read pro Hitler papers while operating in France? It's not a freedom of speech issue either. If you have soldiers doubting themselves, doubting their role in Iraq, because they read liberal, or anti war material (which lets face it, is just as much propaganda as the pro war stuff), then they're not going to be fully committed to their jobs. A soldier who's not fully committed to what he's doing and has doubts about whether he should be there or not is probably going to do something stupid that gets himself killed, along with a few of his buddies. Nothing to do with freedome of speech - they're rules and regulations the army have had for decades and will continue to have. There's plenty of political information around for a soldier to form his own well balanced opinion. It's perfectly understandable that they dont' want their soldiers listening to propaganda (whether its true or not) that will adversely affect how they feel about their job.
The issue is SmartFilter which the DoD uses on all networks. They have certain policy combinations that get blocked based on how those sites are listed in the SmartFilter database.
DoD sets the Forum/Bulletin Boards tag for site as blocked for example. If you look at wonkette.com in smartfilter database its tags are set as Politics/Opinion, Forum/Bulletin Boards. The Forum/Bulletin Boards is what policy is being blocked, so that site doesnt go through, while Rush Limbaugh is only listed as a Politics/Opinion site which isnt blocked.
On the air America and Al Franken, its the Internet Radio/TV flag that is blocked.
I'll take this one step further and state that the commanders over there are actively misinforming the troops about the reason why we/they are over there. Look at Zogby's recent poll of the troops stationed in Iraq and tell me why 90% of them think they're fighting because of what Saddam did to us on 9/11. You don't get numbers like that unless there is active collusion and misinformation taking place.
This guy's the limit!
Many businesses have policy or software in place to prevent individuals from viewing inappropriate.
Is military censorship different?
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
Only a far right wingnut moron would mark that as a troll. Mod parent up!!
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I work for the USAF as a contractor. All the sites listed above are not blocked solely to those serving in Iraq, or just the Marines.
They are blocked by the Air Force with the same reasons listed. I just tested them all.
It's not just the fact that some two star wants/doesn't want his/her troops going to political sites that are against his/her party, it's the simple fact that the sites that ARE allowed simply haven't been blocked because people haven't been swarming to those sites.
From what I have noticed, being a Work Group Manager (PC Admin for the AF), the more a site get's visited, the higher it stands a chance to be blocked, unless the site is required in order to complete the mission.
In other words. The sites that are blocked are so because the higher ups don't want people chatting up forums when they should be supporting the mission. (hmm, speaking of chatting, I think I hear the blocking police calling me!)
Remember, not everything has a political agenda. On the other hand, not everything isn't. But we tend to fall towards blaming politics. And as much as I hate politics, it's not always to blame.
L8r
From what I can tell here (a Military facility in the US), Internet filtering is hit and miss and often changes back and forth without notice depending on filtering software upgrades and back-ups. I don't think our IT people spacifically filter out any political sites, I've been able to access stuff all over the spectrum. I think because the military used a commercial product that comes with pre-configured profiles, what is filtered and what is not is very hit and miss. Several of my associates who are "down range" tell me that no real organized filtering takes place except for porn and certain ecommerce such as eBay and stock market. On recreational systems, generally, only porn is filtered out.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Of Course! Not to sound like a red-dog republican, but of course they censor the internet for the troops. Their job(and thier life) depends on being focused on their job, not what's going on at the Underground Asian Showgirls(TM)website. Censorship is something that has always and will always occur in the Military. When you join the military you give up several freedoms due to how a military works. There is no free press, free speech, and free will(within limits), etc. in the military.
All you "everyone has a right to do whatever the hell they want" people need to get your collective head out of your collective rears so you can see what actually happens in the world.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Wow! Looks like you've solved the "is this really true" puzzle, haven't you!
YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
The above post is being modded down for no good reason. The links point to a discussion of the article, and provide additional information; it is on-topic and is in no way a troll.
--MarkusQ
Confirmed. I was there in '02 and they blocked all stock-trading sites...
Since my previous post was modded into oblivion and I have karma to burn, I'll link to another discussion. I'd suggest that those who are angered by this other discussion go there and participate in the discussion, rather than simply making it disappear here, in order to avoid the irony of "trollmodding" a link to a political site into oblivion on a censorship story.
See Daily Kos discussion about this topic here.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"at least they're not being partisan, blocking rush limbaugh and al franken."
Actually, if you took the time to actually read the (brief) article, the ruckus is that the Marines are not blocking right-wing commentators like Limbaugh and O'Reilly, but are blocking their left-wing equivalents.
I hear that if you join the military they can ask you to do stuff that's dangerous. You might even get shot or blown up. Given that you've given up sovereignty of your own body, do you really care whether or not you can get to Al Franken's web site?
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
To bad we can't get any moderation any more.
The Consertives are going nuts pusing their agenda and the liberals are going nuts pushing their agenda. The moderates are accused of being too Liberal and Consertive. The Media has both are both Consertive and Liberal controlled. The Consertives give tax breaks to the that only help the Rich. The liberals make government services that only the rich (Who are normally higher educated) can figure out and go threw the burocracy and get access too. Globalization is only bad for the party that is not in power, otherwise it is a good thing. The Liberals support Unions who protect the workers rights, The consertive are against Unions who makes operations so expensive that the companies are forced to lay off all the workers. The Consertive are for Right to Life except for the Death Penality, the Liberals are for ProChoice except for when you choose to keep the child who may have down-syndrome, or if the guardians wish to keep someone alive and it is to expensive not to. The Consertives want to kill the public school system so the rich only have access to good schools. The Liberals want to keep the current failing school systems and throw more money into what doesn't work.
My God justs becuase their are two view points it doesn't mean that one side is right and the other is wrong. They could be both right and what is usally happening both are wrong. We can debate these sides for ever, but why doesn't anyone try a new approach.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm told by a Desert Storm (Iraq War v1.0) veteran that troops then weren't allowed to carry Bibles or any symbol of Christianity into Saudi Arabia. This isn't really surprising given that bit of information.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I am pretty sure I can say that I am actually surprised that anyone is worried what they can view on the web, since I'm not sure exactly how many of them(us) can actually use a computer.
As long as they allow the dancing banana.
What's more American than peanut butter and jelly?
Those sound like replies from a SonicWALL firewall that has its Content Filtering Service turned on. Have the marines type their default gateway (run: ipconfig /all) into a browser and see if I'm right. (they'll get a blue page, sonicwall logo and admin logon)
It may just be that someone forgot to turn off the kiddie filters... Someone probably pulled the firewall out of the box, activated the content filter to restrict adult content, and didn't notice that they have to fine-tune the rest for their organization...
The military has censored anything they wanted from troops in every war ever.
*** hand hits buzzer ***
Um, "What does 'Grantanmo' prove we don't really believe?"
*** ding ding ding ding ***
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You missed the memo. The regulations on what functions military personnel are allowed to perform in the federal government have been changed. Participation in political events is now allowed, but criticism of the Government is not (which effectively means that only participation in political events that are pro-Government are allowed). In theory, GW could sack the entire civil service and replace it with active military personnel, at any time. The only missing link is that the military are not yet allowed to replace civilian police.
I have to agree with the parent. I am state-side at the moment, but I think filtering policy is mostly targeted at porn, and some ecommerce, primarily stock trading sites. Most of the facilities I've seen use commercial applications, so what is filtered and what is not can be hit and miss. I think that the story is bullshit.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Do you realize how awkward it is to tell someone that's been putting their life on the line for their country, and is going back to do it again, that they're a sap that's been suckered into invading a country for no good reason apart from political expediency? That they might die, not for the good of humanity but for a for a lie? I've had a very hard time doing it, and I doubt most families care to spoil a visit with politics.
If they're going to learn the truth, it will be gradually over there through the media, gossip, etc. or as painful culture shock after they come home at the end (like with 'Nam).
--MarkusQ
U.S. action in Kuwait was overwhelmingly supported by the international community.
Iraq received serious opposition from the word go.
The White House & the armed forces have been repeatedly embarrassed by video and pictures being sent out over the internet. Everything from prisoners being tortured & people who've had their heads blown off to nudie pics of female American soldiers. The military censors mail, but how the hell are they supposed to censor e-mail going out of someone's hotmail account?
Now polls are showing that military support for remaining in Iraq is failing.
The military has been taking more and more extreme measures (since the beginning) to prevent all of the above. They've limited e-mail acces, internet access and now they're limiting the flow of information.
Don't forget that soldiers sign away their rights when they join up. We don't like this alleged internet censorship, but the soldiers may not have any right to uncensored net access.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Your claims are a mix of fact, fantasy and fiction. While out of uniform, or in one's residence signs of support for a party or a candidate are perfectly acceptable. There is always a right to jury at a courts martial, and unlike in the civilian sector you can be certain that those judging you are your peers. The cases where the contract "expired" but they were forced to continue serving are mostly a misunderstanding from the civilian sector of how the contract works.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
It reminds me about the joke about the kid who says to his parents:
I am sooo sick you telling me what to do! I am running away to join the army!
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Anyone out there with military experience know how out-of-bounds this kind of thing is?
Although the military may indeed (as pointed out by others here) be blocking certain web sites or access, another major source of censorship may be who owns the Internet pipe the military is using.
In some cases, the deployed units are getting access directly via sat-links to US owned or operated internet pipes, but in others, they are relying on a host nation provider. In the case of an Islamic country, the ISP itself may be censoring a lot of sites and filtering a lot of traffic before it even gets to the military IT department serving a base.
So it may not be the fault of the military per'se, but rather the internet pipe they've tapped into.
I was in Iraq for a year as part of the United States Army.
Internet access was always a little iffy, since it's expensive and the troops have a very high demand for it. There were several ways to get internet access while I was there, some of which are still around and some of which are not.
#1: US Government provided independent internet cafes.
Status: Removed.
Reason: Not cost effective. They decided to go with a consolidated large provider instead.
I ran one of these while I was deployed. The closest I got to 'filtering' was running a caching ad-blocking squid proxy. I did this for speed reasons, because *I* wanted to provide my Soldiers with fast internet access. (PS: f*ck doubleclick.net)
#2: US Government provided Internet Cafes.
Status: Still around.
This is one of the biggest and most commonly accessable internet accesses in Iraq. The US Government contracted for some massive amount of bandwidth through some satellite provider. You can't bring in your own laptop, you have to use their locked-down desktops. But I didn't see any politically motivated filtering going on, and I checked.
#3: Privately funded Internet Access.
Status: Still around, but usually kept on the quiet.
Unit commanders occasionally try to stop them out of generalized fear, but I never saw one go away. It's not against any regulations. It's just expensive. ($1400/month for 128u/512d)
#4: Contractor run public Internet Cafes.
Status: Still around.
If you can make money at it, someone will try to do it. Zaid (http://www.russianwolf.com/) was one that I dealt with on a regular basis. He not only provided the hardware for our cafe, but he ran several others on a for-pay basis. ($20 would let you browse for an hour) Filtering was not in place in any of his cafes. Not cost effective. Consider this my plug for him. He's a good guy.
#5: US Government 'NIPR-net' (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) access.
Status: Still around.
This is what people use for official communications and internet access. This is for non-secret data only. The closest they got to filtering was publishing what unit and individual computer was browsing the internet more than anybody else on a weekly basis. This network was VERY overloaded and SLOW SLOW SLOW. But it was filtered for sexual content I think, not that I ever tried. But it was not filtered for political content.
In summary, the common methods that people use to access the internet in Iraq are not filtered for content of a political nature. What the Marines may be doing is not something I know, but I saw plenty of Marines using these other access methods that I know were not filtered. Any filtering is either a new thing or isolated to a small unit. It was not the policy of the Department of Defense to filter internet access for political content as of Feb2005 (when I was there last)
Nathan Brazil?
I see nothing wrong with cencorship on some levels for the troops, either. This is normal, and always the case. We give up rights when you put on that uniform. Adultery will get you time in jail as a solder, but not as a civilian. It's not like they don't tell you that upfront.
For the record, I'm a vet myself; 98-02 USAF, and both my father(64-67) and grandfather(44-45) served before me. We all volunteered, and hate even the idea of a draft.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Let me get this right - people are shocked to find out that ground troops, in war, have their communications monitored, or are not informed of outside events? And as good liberals, we're supposed to rage against The Man, for blocking our freedoms? Get a clue folks. If troops knew that a truce was imminient, who would fight? If they knew the full scale of disasters back home, would they fight as effectively? If they were allowed unrestricted access to a global communication network, isn't it probably that eventually classified information would either leak, or be actively transmitted?
These guys are at war, whether you want to believe it or not. I'll throw up my own straw men... What's next, complaining that they don't get to pick their own weapons, their own missions, and their own gear?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A relative of mine, of whom I'm very proud BTW, served as a US Marine in Iraq, and wanted to send some pictures back to his family. I sent some basic instructions to his hotmail account, but my mail never got to him. He didn't receive any of my subsequent messages either, although to be fair, he did admit he was busy fighting 14 hours a day, and had little time for e-mail, so some of them may just have been overlooked.
Anyway, I had the distinct impression that the US military had a hidden "delete" button over his e-mail Inbox.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I would have been surprised if they didnt
What Service?
I'm surprised you got modded up without substantiating your statements with even 1 fact.
Unless 4 Mods know something about you that I don't?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Here in Europe, and in the middle east the common tool is Websense to block selective things. How they determine what they block and don't block changes. Sometimes it is set to limit access to High Bandwidth sites (like the army's own webmail site), but then later in the day, that access is removed. Beyond that, all bets are off on what is/isn't blocked. It is a official network, no different then any corporate one. In this case though, if you don't like it you have to wait up to a year for your tour of duty to end.
r ticle=33734&archive=true
Here is an article describing the filtering done in Europe by the military, from an end users perspective.
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&a
After this article, lots of the URLs mentioned changed availability.
Cheers,
Mstaj
Well, past censorship acts may have been for political reasons, but I'm guessing Don and Mike were blocked mainly because they suck.
ps. as for irony, the work I have to type in to post is 'disarm'
Assume such a rumour is true... Folks, it's always been the job of the military -- any military -- to brainwash its troops. They train their personell to kill people, hundreds of them, and not feel guilty about it. They train them to continue doing it and to hate the enemy more than anything else in existence.
And we're up in arms about them censoring a few websites? Come on folks... give them cigs, beer, and porn. That's it. They exist to "preserve democracy (increase oil reserves), not to practice it".
This sig used to be really funny...
Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away.
What makes you think it's done at the military level? It's not as if we don't know that political appointees are overseeing this process.
Ed Shultz, the talk radio host, got his talk show nixed from Armed Forces Radio at the "deputy assistant secretary" level. Now Ed's a guy who likes to call himself a "lefty", but he's really pretty smack dab centrist. He's also very pro-military; he just happens to be anti-Bush. If Ed is a "lefty", I'm friggen Che.
And if I'm Che, I'm going into the T-shirt business right now. Which proves I'm not Che.
In any case, if we're talking left/right here, exactly where did the practice of having Zampolit oversee the political thought of troops come from?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Contractor for the Navy and posting from a Navy domain right now. Some of those links above just didn't work. But I was able to connect to Wonkette with no problem. I also read Dailykos every day. mail.yahoo.com results in the following message: "Access to this site has been denied by Navy directive in order to comply with the Department of Defense rules governing the use of government information and telecommunication systems." And then provides a link to those rules. Realize though that this is only one domain within the Navy, and the military as a whole. The Marines are on a completely seperate network, not to mention that the deployed soldiers are on a completely different network than the network available on base. The only way to find out would be to talk to a soldier in theater and get them to respond. Its possible for a deployed user, and a user sitting on base in Nevada to be on more or less the same network but operating under completely different rules governing the internet connection. But as a rule, all webmail IS blocked and for a damn good reason. Its OK for webmail to be blocked. But websites... thats a different story.
Of course it is. And what's the problem with that? Nothing. They want to promote a pro-military atmosphere at all times.
A brief Googling seems to indicate that they're using Secure Computing SmartFilter as the content filtering service.
The Secure Computing site lists "A United States Defense Agency" as one of its clients. Said agency also uses the Sidewinder product as a firewall.
Of course, this is all conjecture.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Bullshit. It's quite clear what Slashdot is trying here. Just look at the posts! There aren't people trying to confirm or deny it, there is the presumption of guilt until proven innocent. This is absolutely obnoxious -- Slashdot readers have neither the resources nor the credibility to determine the validity of the claim. When your only source is the Wonkette, you shut up until the story is confirmed by a credible source.
But hey, if Slashdot can play that game, so can I. I heard that RobLimo eats babies. Now, I don't know if this is true, guys! I'm just the messenger! But it would be similar to an experience I had once, just so you know. Discuss.
First, and absolutely foremost, let me say this: the security and safety of both our armed forces women/men and the security and safety of our country are absolute trump cards. Period.
With that said, if the armed forces is a bit clampy about keeping access to/from the interweb filtered and monitored, I don't really blame them. Although our forefathers/foremothers paid dearly for our bill of rights, including some level of free speech, I don't think that reasonable filtering of information access is a bad thing. In a world (the world of being in the armed forces) where you can easily be harmed or killed, information is a powerful weapon - and correctly-kept information is a powerful armor.
Before anyone yells at me (yes, I 'r' ThinSkinned), I do find this troubling: If TFA's target articles are true, then I don't understand why http://www.alfrankenshow.com/">propaganda is filtered, but http://www.billoreilly.com/">propaganda is not. Politics and war have always been uncomfortable bed-buddies, but the latter issue makes me very uncomfortable.
A Passionate Independent Musician
That's not completely true.
Military members are allowed to say what they want, but not while in uniform, or in *any* way letting on that you're in the Military. The UCMJ strictly forbids people stating their own opinion in any way that someone might misunderstand it to be the opinion of the U.S. Military.
The fact is, even when I served in the U.S. Air Force at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, our Internet access was being censored. I was learning a "new" language (looking up ASP 3.0 code, because the server admins were *afraid* of PHP on our web servers), and MANY of the sites where I would go to look for code were being blocked. ("Category: Chat/Bulletin Board systems") I've gotten "Category: Culture" before, and "Category: Criminal Activity" as well. I'm not really convinced it's for intentional political bias, so much as it's just that they take filter lists without caring what they say, and then open up specific sites if someone above them likes that site. I suppose it's more like "indirect bias." Many sites were being blocked for legitimate reasons. ("Category: Humor/Entertainment", "Category: Comics") But interestingly enough, homestarrunner.com stayed open, despite the increased popularity. I don't believe this is because the people running the filter didn't know about it. I honestly believe it's because a few Colonels enjoyed looking at the site while at work. This would stand to be the same reason we had so many sites blocked for "Category: Shopping," yet eBay remained open for the full 3 and a half years I was there. I'm certain plenty of news sites, political sites, political opinion sites, etc, were being blocked by default, and it was just someone at the top who complained that got some of them opened. Not to be unfair, just that they only asked for the sites they wanted to access, which would match up with their opinion.
Another interesting thing to note, I couldn't access any sites hosted in other countries. Not because of the SmartFilter, but because we actually had *firewalled* ourselves from them. Furthermore, when I attempted to download Java, Sun's site gave an error message saying that we couldn't download Java, because we are in an embargoed country (In Nebraska).
Safeguards like this are put into place to prevent leaks that could compromise the troops.
The military has NEVER been 'open' during action for this reason, so why should it start now just because its 'the Internet'?
Get real.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I can say, having been deployed over there once with the Marine Corps (and headed back), that some sites are blocked. Of course, politics is the last thing on my mind there. I wanted the porn sites! Not seeing females for months suck...
(1) Body Armor
(2) The Truth
So anyhow, I do a dig/nslookup on the IP and discover it is "n-mnstci-142.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil" - the edit is coming from United States Central Command's Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq. Thus, my tax dollars are going to some guy so he can rewrite history that I had written. And I had been so excited about Wikipedia because I thought, here is finally a medium of information that is not controlled by multi-national corporations, like say the channels on my television. Instead I have to contend with some modern-day version of a bureaucrat in the bowels of some Orwellian Ministry of Truth.
What really concerns me is that everything in our political discourse is being broken down along this liberal versus concervative spectrum. If you are an activist, your activism is immediately pigeon holed into liberalism or conservativsm. Take, for example, the war in Iraq. If you're for it, you're a conservative and if you're against it, you're a liberal. Really when you analyze the positions closely, one could readily argue that it's a conservative perspective to not rush into a war.
Howard Dean is another good example of this. He was labeled an angry radical lefty. But if you look at this positions on the issues, he was really a moderate. Hell most of the truly radical left was a bit nervous about Dean because he wasn't all that liberal. What got him labeled though was that he did things differently in how he organized.
Today if you look at where the energy is in the Democratic party, the biggest movement is the "fighting dems". These are Iraq and Afghan war vets who are now running for congress. If you look at these people, by and large, they aren't that left leaning, yet the community of blogs, etc are hugely supportive of them. You find those "radical left" sites backing Paul Hackett, over Sherrod Brown even though Hackett is clearly the more conservative candidate.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The USA can not dictate to Saudi Arabia how to live, what values to have. Muslim nations have a right to form religious states where their doctrine determines laws.
But we can dictate what Iraq does? Interesting...
Spiral out. Keep going...
I am currently a network admin for the USAF. Please remember that this has nothing to do with politics. This has everything to do with government employees using government computers.
If what they are doing is not required for the mission then they do not need to be doing it on a limited bandwidth out of Iraq.
Furthermore it is a COMSEC issue when military personnel currently stationed in a hot zone to discuss their duties on messageboards.
It has been a long standing policy since I have been in that government computers are not for PERSONAL use.
I dont hear people complaining State side that webmail, gmail, yahoo mail, and hotmail access are blocked from on base/government computers. I know ACC blocks them.
So what is the big deal? It looks like someone is running their mouth without knowing what they are talking about.
Welcome to freedom of speech I guess...
Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away.
You mean like Rumsfeld, who dismisses requests for adequate body armor by telling the troops, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want?"
Now that's a morale-booster.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
...and this is what is wrong with the whole blogging routine.
ONE source--and that source is something as blatantly downright tawdry as Wonkette. She occasionally digs up something mildly amusing, but she's basically a Washington barfly...and they are legion, at least at the bars I hang around on a daily basis in this town. I suppose I should start up a website and "blog" from my barstool too...it'd have as much credibility.
That's not what people are complaining about. They are disturbed by the obvious bias in what they allow through. If you really want to have a good time, then use one of your three wishes to get a politicized military. Or, you can just look to several other nations as examples of what happens when the military decides they want to back a political party instead of a constitution.
It ain't pretty, and we don't want to make our kids scratch for food as a stable government is replaced with a succession of military governments.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
File a FOIA request for a copy of the block list for the Armed Forces Internet. Simple. Then you can read the whole list and parse out any meaningful information. Honestly, I'm not even a journalist and it seems completely obvious to me. This is the whole reason the FOIA process exists: to give transparency to the operation of the federal government.
Now, perhaps there's a chance that the federal government will come back with some kind of excuse like "releasing the block list gives aid and comfort to the enemy" but that alone would be a story worth the price of admission. Wonkette is an idiot, so of course this simple idea wouldn't occur to her or her readership. I'm I hope that a real investigative journalist picks up the story so he or she can actually do some investigating and find out the truth. I think that it would be hilarious to compare the Chinese block list with the American block list. Wouldn't it be a hoot to find out that the Americans are blocking more?
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Only a Republican can do this:
All that aside, much of the attitude is summed up as: "We protect Democracy, we don't practice it."
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
...and I was trying to surf nuditity (sic) whilst stationed in the sandbox.
It can't be done, at least not easily or in a manner in which I was comfortable. It was filtered. I also tried reading about the death of Johnny Carson on CNN.com, and it was blocked for the same reasons... (Why? Who knows. I'm pretty sure there were no references to Rachel Welch's cat in there.)
So if you're going to get riled up, go for the whole enchilada. You can't have sex, you'll get court-martialed for cheating on your spouse, but let one of them send you a suggestive picture via email and see what happens.
(Although I found Al Franken a strange choice... he is one of the few "support the troops" liberals that actually support the troops through USO appearance.)
While I agree with you, there are some issues with what you were suggesting. That sort of data is all kept on a secure network ("SIPRNET") that has no Internet access. Due to the security rules in place regarding classified data, classified data is not allowed to be on a system connected to an unsecured network *in any way*. The filtered web sites are not filtered to conserve bandwidth.. In fact, on Offutt, all our Internet traffic for the entire base went through a single (underpowered) proxy server.
Various posters are commenting about similar situations in their workplaces where they can't visit any website they choose for one reason or another.
Most are missing the point. Why are they only censoring sites that tend to be anti-war or liberal in nature? I can accept arguments for general Internet censorship while in the armed forces, but I've yet to see a good argument for why only sites that espouse a particular viewpoint should be censored while others should not.
Look we don't even know if this is true yet. But taken for a moment that it is I seriously doubt this has anything to do with respecting Saudi (or Iraqi) law.
Are you telling me that the Saudi or Iraqi follows American politics and entertainment enough to know that Wonkette = Bad and Rush Limbaugh = Good?
If true this seems to me to be an obvious attempt to shut out the dissenters at home.
I understood your argument about morale, whether I agree with it or not.
But the whole "respect for a sovereign nations' laws" argument is just a straw man...
--
Bring your towel.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Too bad that very few of the posters here seem to be in a place to confirm or deny the report. (Which, I beleive was part of the posters request: Is the story true or not?)
There are a few who have responded with constructive comments to this:
- High Bandwith sites (Radio) are blocked.
- Porn is blocked
- This is how Internet access exists: YXZ
Too bad that many of the people here are knee jerking their wan(ers and saying *Conspiracy* or *Conspiracy of the Left-Wing Unpatriotic Types*
The fact is: If the personell there have time to check the Internet (aka: Down Time), they should not have biased access: The (unverified) story is that they do. Hopefully someone can actually provide a meaningful list of what's blocked - or not. And Hopefully, the list will not be biased by politics.
$.02 - now pay up
Yes, they absolutely are. They also monitor outgoing phone calls and instant message conversations. One of the major goals, it seems, is to cover up the large number of 'enemy' casualties (e.g., several days ago there were over 500 deaths in one area when the sectarian violence spilled out onto the street. They shut down the computer center for 2 or 3 days following that.)
Sorry about the AC: this is all straight from my brother, serving in Fallujah. It seems that we went in with a fundamental misunderstanding of regional politics, and are now paying the price.
~AC
This is true however the message I receive on: http://www.airamericaradio.com/
is actually "Web site Category: Politics/Religion, MP3_Sites"
The article references another location, I happen to be in the western US. So much for free speech right? LOL ~ doesn't bother me none.
You are correct and here I stand... corrected.
At least I know there is no such thing as an ex-Marine.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Every modern military which provides it's soldiers with Internet access does so through at least two seperate networks. One network is always meant for internal traffic and protected communications between members, with access to the world wide web only being allowed for work-related purposes. As such, this network would be accessible primarily by personnel in leadership positions (not your average grunt) and are heavily monitored and filtered to avoid abuse. The second network is open to all members, and is only lightly monitored, and rarely filtered. As such, does it really matter that the "work-only" network which is inaccesible by the majority of members anyway happens to filter out some leftie websites? Especily when any member can go and log on to the public network, and access that same information without any filtering?
The US isn't the only country to do that, the Canadian, Brit and Aussie forces do it the same way.
> Please understand: People who go into the armed services of any nation are giving up rights that civilians enjoy. This is one of the things that makes conscription so reprehensible.
OTOH, conscription ensures (well, supposedly) that your armed forces represent a cross section of society, and thus reduces the danger of praetorianism. (In principle it should also make the leaders of democracies be more careful about what wars they get involved in, though in practice it seems to just motivate them to stage "incidents" and do a better job of lying about the wars.)
But back to the subject at hand:
> Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away.
Even if the story is correct, and there's a marked political bias in what the troops are given access to, are the right-wing demagogues still expressing a pro-war position? I thought even the True Believers were abandoning ship on this one.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No credible poll shows a lack of support for OIF by those who serve or have served in Iraq.
Then you deeply misunderstand what 'enlistment' in the MILITARY means.
As far as the Bill of Rights:
* First Amendment - Freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government = mostly lost. You are not allowed to speak freely, assemble other then as ordered, nor to petition the government except as through the chain of command.
* Second Amendment - Right to keep and bear arms. = mostly lost. You are only entitled to arms as ordered.
* Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. = lost. The army can assign you to bunk with someone or someone to bunk with you at any time, for any reason.
* Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. = lost. The military can search your private effects at any time.
* Fifth Amendment - Due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, private property. = IANAL, not sure how many of these are still available during a Court Martial, but I know that many of them DON'T apply.
* Sixth Amendment - Trial by jury and other rights of the accused. mostly lost = no jury trial, you get a counsellor, but are tried by a panel. There is not necessarily an appeal, as you can be summarily executed in situations judged to be in extremis.
* Seventh Amendment - Civil trial by jury. Dunno about civil matters while you are subject to the UCMJ.
* Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail, as well as cruel or unusual punishment. Again, I don't know that there IS bail for military prisoners.
* Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
* Tenth Amendment - Powers of states and people - not applicable
Enlist in the military they OWN you. You can, in situations, be ordered to perform what amounts to indirect suicide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCMJ
-Styopa
because we are in an embargoed country (In Nebraska):
Well, Offutt is in Sarpy county, home of the most corrupt county government in Nebraska.
Enlist in the military they OWN you. You can, in situations, be ordered to perform what amounts to indirect suicide.
And you'd better LIKE IT!!
May the Maths Be with you!
Well, being stationed here in Iraq... any website with "Internet Radio" is blocked. While one person listening to the radio factor will not harm bandwidth usage... what happens when you have 100, or 1000 people listening to internet radio. It brings the military network to its' knees. Anything with forums in the key words is equally blocked... it is to enforce OPSEC (operational security). This is on the military network. I cannot speak for the moral interet computers as I do not use them... I have my own Huges Receiver :) Another thing is what they are using to block websites is biased against what is in the keywords. You can go to www.foxnews.com all day. However if you try to watch a streaming video clip from Fox News... you get the usual popup box for the video, but it is blocked (Streaming media). It is sensorship to a degree (porn, internet auctions, straming media) but it is also common sence.
You got her down to the glitch that she really is. You deserve a +5, Informative. Moderators, give this good man a hand!
Over the hill and far away.
--MarkusQ
If you know a marine, ask him if he can see http://maddox.xmission.com/
...and at the same time, censoring it!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Moral would dip if they knew just how much we don't like Oil Wars. Support the troops! Let them believe they are doing the right thing and do not under any circumstance question the motives of your leaders. Illegal war.
MOD PARENT UP. Or mod it unfunny. Why overrated? That is the crappiest moderation, it is used by people who want to smack others down, but don't want to get meta-moderated.
Plenty of us do. Luckily, Most people vote party-line and are idiots. Right and left wingers tend to cancel each other out, leaving the rest of us, who can actually form our own opinions outside of political bias, to control the elections. Meanwhile, they are shouting lies and half-truths fed to them by their sheephearder overlords in the media and Washington, DC.
I'd just like to thank them for making my vote one of the ones that really count. Suckers!
Commercial email programs are locked out due to security concerns and leaks over routes and time tables or other sensitive information.
If Joe Schmoe can use Yahoo, or Hotmail then he can purposely or accidentally leak out sensitive information about real operations that could put lives in danger.
It would be nice to trust everyone, but let's face it a lot of the USMC are 18 and 19 year old kids, and as much training and coaching as they are given are prone to mistakes just like anyone else.
One email from a Marine to thyeir girlfriend about when the convoy leaves the base and where they are going, to keep her from being worried, will undoubtedly endanger the lives of the entire convoy.
The military is a different animal and the USMC is whole separate community. The rules and policies are there to fight battles and keep the Marines alive. Unless you have been a part of that community you will not understand. There are many activities that Marines do regularly that normal society or civilians would gasp at and balk at and they have.
The USMC has a mission to accomplish and if screening a few websites helps to accomplish that mission then they will do it.
It's the damn military. Unrestricted Internet is not a right, especially when you're supposed to be working.
...from a mil domain in the states, and the results are the same.
http://law.freeadvice.com/government_law/military_ law/military_us_constitution.htm
You can check it now if you want, but the information is accurate.
Does putting your words in bold, or random words off of a some strange website you found, make you think people will feel they are more legitimate?
Was that really necessary? If you wanted a link, all you had to do was ask for it. What have you added to the discussion apart from animosity and ill will?
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Every time one of you "progressives" tries to explain "the facts" to us, we get a hell of a kick out of it. Guys coming back from leave have a great time exchanging stories about how they dealt with such situations. I don't know what's more fun: being accused of being a baby-killer, or being told that I'm a deluded idiot helping prop up the Corporate Hawk Faschist War Criminal Bush And His Evil Oil Syndicates. Either way, don't worry about offending us; we have a great sense of humour, and find you extremely amusing.
This is a religous war that's being fought.. and the troops are supposed to be non-partisan.
What kind of fucked up logic dictates that you fight a war and somehow remain non-partisan?
No wonder the US is losing Iraq to the mobs.
I don't think anyone is upset that streaming audio and video are blocked. I think the problem is that it's A-OK to head over to Rush Limbaugh's website and read his Oxycontin-induced ramblings, yet you are not allowed to go to Wonkette's website and read her tequila-induced ramblings.
Perhaps you don't have a clear understanding of how the Marine Corps is. Marines have a job to do. When you sign up as a Marine, you do what needs to be done and do it how you are told. You are not given a choice. Every minute of your day is accounted for and you are held to account for all your actions. The Marines are much more disciplined than the other services. I know this from first hand experience. If the powers that be in the Marines or other services decide that the Liberal whinning and anti-war, "boobs not bombs" protesting is bad for the overall mission, than filter away. It's the right of the Marines' leadership to give the Marines everything they need and filter the crap they don't need. Marines are either at war or training for war. Period. What they are fed is what is needed to accomplish a mission, whatever mission that may be. I don't want someone defending my country and fighting terrorists in another country to be brought down by some stupid liberal propaganda. If this means showing Marines only pro-war information, than so be it. At least they won't give a second thought as to what they are fighting for.
You got that tool nailed, sir. Wonkette has NO insightfulness, whatsoever. She is meretricious to the crowd and trys to stay one step ahead of everyone else with her quasi-rebellious, flagrant demeanor--and people still read this garbage. What she has on her "blog" is 60% opinion and 40% made-up (think implications).
How someone can become so popular for being such a whiner--someone who can't even justify herself--I don't know. If she could argue a little better, it would be different, but until then...
...like it protected New Orleans.
For crying out loud, it is NOT the Federal Governments responsibility to 'protect' a city from a natural disaster. It is the job of the STATES, particularly the National Guard. The Governor of Louisiana is the one who should be blamed for being incompetent NOT BUSH (not saying Bush isn't incompetent, he is).
That being said, Bush should be blamed for taking away most of Louisiana's national guard to fight in the "War on Terrorism"(TM) in Iraq, thus leaving the state ill prepared to handle a natural disaster of such magnitude.
The national guard are the first responders and if additional help is needed then surrounding states can send their national guards to help.
Chances are, the Corps is taking commercial off the shelf filtering software, installing it and running with the default packaged filter list. Then modifying it as needed. These lists are huge and the people at the ISV's that compile them tend to lean conservative.
This situation happens a LOT. Sysadmins are instructed to install a filtering package and instead of doing all the work to compile their own list or pour through the list and unblock acceptable sites they just roll with the default config, tell their boss mission accomplished and only modify the list when nagged.
Seriously, if you're in an institution that's running filtering, there's likely a large number of sites that are blocked and the people running the filter don't even know that they are.
So the remedy? Marines should request unblocks through the chain of command or whichever channel has been set up for this. It's likely that the list just isn't being given much scrutiny. And as for fears of retribution because you expose yourself as a non-consrvative... you get more respect standing up for yourself than you do for rolling over. At least that was my experience in the Corps.
Seriously, I think that could take care of the whole situation.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
"they still should enjoy the basic constitutional rights that all Americans have."
That is so naive I hardly know where to start.
If the Marine Corps determines that a particular site will lower troop morale, then I would hope that they'd block it. Failing that, they should cut off web access, cable news, or whatever it takes to keep the blinders on. A Marine who doubts is one who dies.
And I want the ones on the other side to die.
Someone in the military, especially in time of war, lives a different life, under a different set of rules. They have less liberty. They have to cut their hair. If they are late to work or tell the boss off, they can go to jail.
On the other hand, they can get in a fight with their coworker and the boss just asks who won and tells them not to waste time. Or he knocks their heads together and makes them run 10 miles holding hands. Or they get the book thrown at them.
The last thing a Marine needs is to be given civilian rights, and thus be judged by civilian standards. He has to think differently, so that when the time comes he won't hesitate to rip his bayonet through the throat of his enemy.
All so you can post on Slashdot.
sigs, as if you care.
OTOH, conscription ensures (well, supposedly) that your armed forces represent a cross section of society, and thus reduces the danger of praetorianism.
Or more likely increases it, as you now have a large segment of the population who have "accepted" that being forced at gunpoint to do the will of those is command is OK. Society learns to become regimented. People believe rights are "earned" by military service rather than inherant, and so can be just as easily taken away by the military from an "unworthy" weak populace.
Conscription is slavery. People run this backwards and forwards and make up all kinds of rhetoric, but at the end of the day compelling anyone, by force or law, to work against their will is slavery.
Citizenship is not earned by military service. No one should have to "do" anything to gain human rights. If you want to, you can, by choice, take up employment as a civil servant, working as a professional soldier. If so, that's your job. But it doesn't grant you any additional basic rights or status in society other than kudos and thanks for a job well done, if even that.
May the Maths Be with you!
/rant NMCI is an excuse to give sweet contracts to civillian buddies. EVERY implemtation of it I have seen (in several states and 2 continents)has resulted in an increase in costs, and a decrease in service and functionality.
Example #1 When it was implemeted at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, they charged $60 A MONTH to "maintain" a single PDA. Oh, and all those PDAs the ships bought for themselves? They now belonged to the contractor (as well as any other hardware that had been bought with ship's funds). If the ship had more computers than the contractor deemed necessary, the excess (even if bought by ships funds) were disposed of. What was deemed necesarry? Well, for my office of 18 people, we were alloted 2 desktops, one of which was dedicated for the Department Head's exclusive use.
Example #2 Trouble call response time went from same day (when they were handled by the base IT department) to a sliding scale that depened on the users rank (which meant that an enlisted person with a critical application was screwed, but the Admiral's printer could be replaced in two hours). As above, the Group Commander was promised 2 hour service by contract, while my submarine Captain had 48 hour service (and this is not "worst case scenario... service actually did take 48 hours, and was never much sooner than that). The enlisted people had much longer wait times.
One thought comes to mind. The US military has to obey the laws of host nations. So, internet and regular mail sent to kuwait is censored. Normal USPS mail sent from states to an APO in Kuwait (the mail is never handled by any non USPS worker) is censored. In Arifjan(US Base) Kuwait you have access to the internet. But the internet is censored. You can get to any site that is baned in Kuwait. For instance you can not get to the Victoria Secrets site. This goes the same for normal mail they do not allow the Victoria Secrest Catalog to be sent to Kuwait because both their site and the catalog are banned in Kuwait. When I moved up into iraq the internet and mail wasn't censored(I never experienced it).
Why is the mainstream media censoring the good news coming out of Iraq?
And, in regards to your last paragraph, eat me. Is that intelligent enough for you?
Let's just say it's consistent, and about what I expected.
Please dumb down your next intellectual rant so my feeble immature mind can understand it, you fuck.
I doubt that would be possible.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
It's interesting you mention this. From what I understand, basic recruits are only given an hour to two hour lecture on the theories of Just War Doctrine and what qualifies as a "Just War". This was something that my dad took into consideration as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
--Chag
The Marine Corps rarely forcibly prohibits anything - they submit orders to not to do certain things or go certain places (Tiajuana, for example). If they're filtering, it's likely because an order has been issued some time, some where.
I have my doubts, however, that this is going on to the extent Wonkette claims.
Wow, what war movie from the 60s did you get these ideas from?
First Ammendment fully available except while in uniform or performing official duties
Second ammendment, not only are you allowed to own and possess personal weapons, you are also occasionally given official weapons and the training to use them
third, Irrelevant
4th, only while on an installation(oh and if you as a civilian go onto federal property you lose those rights too.Read the sign over the door at the post office
Fifth, all are included in the courts martial process
sixth, How would you like to be tried by a jury of your peers(people who have shared similar life experiences, heartaches, joys and pain)?
Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten
you can in this situation be a complete and total idiot.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
"soldier Audio pronunciation of "soldier" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sljr)
n.
1. One who serves in an army.
2. An enlisted person or a noncommissioned officer.
3. An active, loyal, or militant follower of an organization.
4.
1. A sexually undeveloped form of certain ants and termites, having large heads and powerful jaws.
2. One of a group of honeybees that swarm in defense of a hive."
Sorry you cocksucking moron, but you're wrong.
I don't give two shits what you and your idiot buddies want to be called, that's not what the definition is.
I work for the federal goverment as a reservist and a civilian. A requirement of my civilian job is that I maintain service as a reservist, but that is a whole other story. I have confirmed that each of these sites are blocked or permited on the USARC (United States Army Reserve Command) exactly as described above. I am located in Utah on federal property so it should not be a "war zone" issue. This is a government computer, so they have the right to limit viewing as per user agreements, but this seems to be a freedom of speech issue. Good Night and Good Luck.
Last weekend, USA Weekend, the widely distributed Sunday newspaper magazine suppliment, had an article,http://www.usaweekend.com/06_issues/060305 /060305military_blogs.html, with excerpts from 4 soldiers serving in Iraq. The article included the web addresses of the soldiers and while I am sure they were overwelmed with e-mails, one could check with them on their take on censorship of the web where they are. Messages from home are always appreciated, be nice.
I saw Platoon!
TWICE!
Oh - gotta go. Mom says the pest control guy is here to fumigate the basement.
I do know one thing, Offutt AFB (home to some of the most interesting aircraft in the world) does have access to wikipedia and to my personal annoyance, are not afraid to use it to censor stuff.
What is this tripe, and why is slashdot giving wonkette traffic? What I see coming out of this is baseless whining that people with a job to do can't read a site denoncing the work they are doing. It makes sense to block those sites from our troops overseas. If they could be read, and the people at those sites (airamerica and alfranken for instance) would almost ramp up their propoganda against the war. It's a morale issue not a civil issue.
.mil. I'd like to see where she got her information and whether the soldiers that are sending out email had any other email accounts or just their .mil accounts. Beyond that, the fact that their email goes through filtering or some sort of monitoring makes sense. It's for security to make sure that there is no sensitive information leaked out that might compromise their mission(s).
Another thing, this is the military we're talking about here. As a soldier you don't have specific civil rights when you're serving your tour of duty, as you signed them away when you joined. If they tell you to eat shit, you do it, and you do it with a smile. So please, let's quit crying censorship. These guys signed up for this. Let's call it censorship when they start drafting us, ok?
Also, my best friend is serving over in Iraq right now (as a marine), and I know for a fact he can get email out through places other than
I'm sure that other forms of communication are monitored even further, but, I've chatted with my friend more than a few times since he's been over there on one popular IM service.
While there may be some filtering, I'd hardly decry it as censorship, since a thrifty soldier will always find a way to do whatever if it's that important to them personally. At any rate, I hardly see reading Wonkette as being high on anyone's priorities, especially people with guns living in tents.
That's what I think; and he's too lazy to preview. He wanted the quoted text in
bold
and failed to close the tag.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I am a bit mystified why this would surprise anyone. Maybe those who spent zero time actually considering it are typing out a knee jerk reaction. Anyone who considers the whole picture will say, "Yeah, I suppose so."
The networks that the Marine Corps is running in Iraq have a primary focus: The Mission. That is supporting the forces there, allowing information to organized and passed quickly between those who need to coordinate their work. Marines are permitted to use the network for personal reasons when it does not affect the mission in any way and that use is subject to a number of restrictions. No viewing, transmitting, or storing obscene material, hate speech, chain letters, etc. The normal list of rules for the network is about two pages, courier new type, 10 pitch - including spaces for the user to fill in their name, rank, billet, sign (etc.) and for the approving officer to validate that the Marine needs a network account.
There can also be several layers of filtering for access. There could easily be several firewalls between a user and the Internet. We had one at our division level, then another at MEF. There is usually a something of a standard list of which sites are blocked, but each little network could be unique. We had a problem with idiots downloading large files from one or two Internet sites. It was affecting the performance of the whole network. Not only did I go find those users (and their Staff Noncommissioned Officers), but we cut access to the problem sites.
Oh, and when the unit suffers casualties, the Data Chief cuts access to email and the Internet for everyone except a list of critical users. That stays on until the families are notified by the Marines (in the US) who perform the casualty call. The last thing a parent, wife, or fiancee needs to get is an email with a subject line of "John is dead." That would also leave open the door for cruel hoaxes.
The point is that the Marine Corps allows Marines to use the network, in a limited fashion, for reading their personal email and accessing websites because it is good for morale and we usually have the bandwidth to support it. However, it is a military asset, just like a 7-ton truck. If the truck is being used by someone to clean out their garage, when it is needed to move supplies, there is obviously a problem.
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
Having worked for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force G6 (Communications), I also had the luxury of working in the internet cafes. With that said, I can give you the straight scoop and not these purported theories. We have dedicated hardware to handle filtering and devote hardly any resources to monitoring the activities of the servicemembers. With that said we operate mostly on a lock everything down and ask permission for access mentality.
In the Internet Cafes owned and operated by KBR, and serviced by McDean, they rely on BlueCoats for the filtering. Once again, due to fighting a war we're not going to devote the time to locking down websites manually. At these Internet Cafes you can pull up anything any everything you want. Now there are standard policies in place as to what you can and can't look at, and that's an honor system (for the most part). Big brother is always watching, and generally that was me. The reason we watch is to ensure classified information isn't leaked.
To wrap this up, there is no polticially motivated conspiracy to prevent people from seeing certain sites. You can more or less blame the filtering hardware for that. Now if there are some sites that you really want to see go and talk to your local admin and see if they will unblock it for you. More times than not they will accomodate your request. But if you're on a government laptop (non Internet Cafe) don't start asking for MySpace as after all... it's for official use only. We can't have the taxpayers thinking there is "waste, fraud, and abuse".
I have confirmation at least 3 stateside soldiers cannot reach my website, DarkPoetry.com, while on military networks.
The reason is probably that many have posted opinions on the Iraq war, and I have personally posted humorous images which could be considered anti-Bush.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
I did preview, and I did close the tag.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I spent two years in Iraq, half of which was spent as a network engineer and I tell you from my extensive knowledge of DOD networks that the Marine Corps in particular does "content filtering" based on catergories. For example if a site is known to be political, humours and have explicit matieral the filter will take the highest of them (explicit in this case) and then block that site. This is for moral reasons as well as international reasons. Countries like Iraq have laws against pornographic material. There was even a point where we were almost not allowed to have Stuff magazine and the likes. Another comes down to security. If a Marine is on duty and is surfing the internet or chatting then they are not alert to what they are doing and their surroundings. This can cause issues if something happened while that Marine was on post. Another reason is because YOU the tax payer, pay for that Sat bandwidth we have over there. How we can we justify to the DOD for our next Fiscal year that we need more money for bandwidth if half the traffic is non work related? YES they look at those stats!!! Not EVERYTHING is cut off, we do have moral computers in the internet cafes that allow anyone to surf anything as long as it is not X-rated pornographic material, once again this is due to international laws. The other DOD bodies have different regulations. The Army is less restrictive because they have more money in thier budget to buy more Sat bandwidth. They can afford to surf "junk" to put it plainly. The Marine Corps is not like and will NEVER be like any of the other armed services. We stand a notch above the rest and as such have a responsibility to set the example and pave the way for the other armed services. From internet to operations we are the best as what we do and that can not be argued. We are the elite fighting force of America. We take an honorable and moral high ground to be stay that way; since 1775. Semper Fi 1337P1rt3
Websites! Who cares about websites? Base commanders frequently put local establishments on a black list forbidding any military personel from visiting them. How many Constitutional rights does that violate?
This tactic was used with great effect to break down discrimination against black soldiers back in the old days. You don't allow black soldiers in your restaurant? Fine, no soldiers are allowed in your restaurant whatsoever.
That, and if you decide to quit at the wrong time, your commander can shoot you. Talk about a rights violation!
No, as a Christain, and a gentile, I am not under the law but under grace. As christains we are bound to follow the two greatest commandments:
Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Mat 22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
In these two verses we see what the true sprit of the law is. However, there was a discussion about this exact problem of the law and grace that came up in the early Church. The result?
Act 21:25 As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written [and] concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from [things] offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.
But what exactly is fornication? Well according to scripture (2Ti 3:16) we can use the OT to define the NT. So, we go back now to our original verse, and find God's view on fornication and sexual sin in Lev 18.
And this is supported in these verses:
1Cr 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
1Cr 6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
1) Military uses websense
2) Websense doesn't catch everything
3) Article goes on Slashdot
4) ?????
5) Profit!
To do/say the political crap Bush wants during office time? as opposed to the one that he does not want. If the political crap is not OK, is not OK being lefty or righty. If it's OK to be righty, then it should be OK to be lefty.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. = lost. The army can assign you to bunk with someone or someone to bunk with you at any time, for any reason.
You lost me by #3. If a soldier owns a house next to base, the government cannot order the soldier to house other soldiers without the owner's consent.
The barracks is government property.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Which is weird because Al does USO shows ALL THE TIME... but i guess the subject matter of his shows aren't political..
in your Saudi Arabia experience piece you say ..
.. "reality"
.. but i think you and many others are very naive about common peoples level of awareness and tolerance of the world around them .. but then again the most people are pretty common .. especially ones who have gone through the public education system(Mass Brainwashing) and are subjected to Private Mass Media(Propaganda) ..
..
..
.. not for having killed someone else .. just simply for having made a mistake ..
"No normal citizen of a secular "western" nation would tolerate this level of interference with his or her"
no offence intended
i would suggest you investigate the work of Stanley Milgram http://www.stanleymilgram.com/ to get a feeling for what common people will tolerate
basically 65-70% of any average population is willing to put someone to death on the word of an authority figure for having done nothing more that make a mistake
not for having committed a crime
While I wouldn't neccesarily laugh at all veterans who oppose the conflict, I will laugh at many.
I'd certainly laugh at the ones who only joined "to go to college" thinking they'd never have to do anything. What kind of a nimrod joins an army expecting to never have to deal with violence? That's got a LOT of comedy potential right there.
Or the ones like Jeremy Hinsman, who suddenly become "consciencious objectors" because of "what they've seen". Even though what they saw consisted only of pots, pans, and the occasional toilet bucket that had to be emptied. They're certainly worth laughing at. How can you NOT laugh at someone who claims to have become opposed to violence as a result of washing dishes in a warzone?
Then there are the military families. Well, I can sum that one up in two words: Cindy Sheehan. The only way she could be more amusing is if she went out and got size 20 shoes and a red foam nose.
Granted, not all military families who oppose the war are as retarded as she is, and many do deserve respect and understanding. But losing a relative to the war does not give them some sort of moral high-ground, nor does it make their opinions any more correct. Does losing a relative to a car accident make you an expert on motorized vehicles?
Supporters of the troops? You know, saying "I support the troops" doesn't make you a supporter of the troops. Just like when the terrorists claim to beleive in the peaceful religious teachings of Islaam, it doesn't really mean their actions have anything to do with true Islam, or peace.
And your green beret link didn't work, so I'm not sure how to respond to that. However, a green beret would also fall under the category of "Iraqi war veterans", so you can just scroll up a bit and see my response to that one.
I also laugh at anyone who uses the word "progressive" to describe their beleifs, regaurdless of what their beleifs may be, simply because I get a kick out of envisioning just how much ego, ignorance, and attitude it must take to truly beleive that your beleifs are truly progressive. If conservatives insisted on refering to themselves as such I'd laugh at them too, but it's 10 times funnier when those with regressive beleifs do it.
I run www.eDodo.org, a humor site by and for USAF Academy grads and cadets. It's blocked at many bases, including the ones in the Middle East. That's the way the military works--you use their connection, you play by their rules.
(this month's eDodo cover probably didn't help my case for unblocking the site...)
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
censorship of the internet in Iraq. In my experience, if I was on a government computer, there was stuff I couldn't get to (though that list did not include email sites), but at the internet centers that were set up, I never ran into any site that had been blocked.
-- Napalm sticks to kids.
You sir, are a wacko.
And shortsighted individuals who claim that our only reason for being in Iraq is WMD and Oil tend to piss me off.
Shortsighted? Point blank, as a fact, the only reason that the US agreed to send troops to Iraq was that the Bush administration told us that they knew that Saddam had WMD, that they knew where they were, and that if we waited for the smoking gun it would likely be "a mushroom cloud" (that's a quote). They also told us that Saddam was connected to 9/11, that he had the ability to attack within 45 minutes, that there was no need to plan for the "occupation" since we would be welcomed as liberators, and that the costs would be minimal because the oil fields would pay for it. If they had not told us all these things, none of which, as it turns out, were true, We The People would not have given them permission to invade.
Get this through your head: the only reason the US invaded Iraq was that we were told a bunch of un-truths. If it pisses you off, join the club, though you might want to direct your anger at the people who made the original statements, rather than at the ones who point them out.
--MarkusQ
Howdy!
/. is visible through the firewall . . ..
.Org names usually get missed by the category definitions.
.. Actively attempting (let alone succeeding), or even simply encouraging others to make attempts, to bypass security procedures is a violation of the UCMJ. The firewall and specific Websense implementation is specifically a security procedure.
..
I am a Communications Senior NCO in the USAF. I have recently served in both Qatar and Iraq. I currently serve in a Field Operating Agency Headquarters back in the good ol' USA.
ALL official USAF networks have Websense in place, and every instance is SUPPOSED to be using an identical primary filter file, with local exception changes authorized.
I am sitting at my desk as I type this, so it should be obvious
Much material is blocked by general category, not by site. All the techies out there already know building and maintaining a by-site list is prohibitive at best. Yet, the article above tries to use a by-site list to demonstrate a prejudice. Honestly, with the same amount of effort, the list could have demonstrated exactly the opposite prejudice.
In reality, pretty much everything listed SHOULD be blocked.
The point is, however, that the military networks are being treated as WEAPON SYSTEMS. We recognize that we need them in order to best carry out the fight. The point of the filters is to eliminate as much of the unneccessary traffic from work networks as possible. As sites which are not blocked but should be get identified, they are added to the blocked list.
Forward locations block more sites than rear echelon locations. At a forward post, they try to block all web mail, chat boards, blogs, etc. for one very simple reason: Operational Security. There is a fear (created not by paranoia, but by the track record of posts) that forward deployed members will provide detailed specific information about troop strengths, locations, and condition, so that the enemy, potentially, has better specific info about some of our units than the commanders who are supposed to be utilizing and protecting them.
As for ways to bypass such security . .
I think I'll leave any further self-identification off of this message . .
LOL this is stupid. I am in the Marine Corps. Our Internet access is censored even in the United States! You can't even get to Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, for example. I don't think there is any particular political bias in the censorship. It does make the Internet a hell of a lot less useful the way they have their proxy configured.
The funny thing is how much effort they put into censoring web access, when they let a shitload of spam and virus crap into their email servers, and use shitty Windows systems and Internet Explorer which get infected regularly with shitware.
When I was in Iraq, I used a civilian satellite ISP most of the time, which was so much better than the military network.
The military's IT (or at least the USMC's) is incompetent, hindered by leaders that don't understand IT, and probably underfunded and/or the funding is misguided.
Allow me to enlighten on this. Their contract didn't expire. You see, when you join the military you are signing up for eight years. That's right, eight years. Now, in most cases you are allowed to do those 8 years as 2, 3, or 4 years of active duty, followed by 4 years of inactive reserve. In peacetime, it pretty much always goes down that way, and most people who sign up are betting that it'll go down that way. In wartime, however, all bets are off. They can conceivably keep you on active duty for the full eight years and it's still within the limits of the enlistment contract. So those whiners who are being "held over" are really whining about two things: A) they believed their recruiter, and B) they didn't read their enlistment contract. I was 18 years old when I joined and although it took a little harassing, I was able to get a copy of the enlistment contract I was going to sign from my recruiter. I have no sympathy for anyone who's been in the Army for 3 years who is shocked when he finds out that there was a provision in the contract where he gets the shit end of the stick. Well big effin' surprise! They've been handing you the shit end of the stick regularly for three years-- that's what military life is frequently about-- and they did it again! Who'd of thunk it!
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Nuts. When people come back stateside, I guarantee their first thought isn't "gosh, I'm going to go read old newspapers and catch up on months old political scandals."
Being "exposed to the media" doesn't mean that you suddenly get up to speed on any particular topic, and unless someone points them out to you you are unlikely to ever get up to speed on most subjects. Even people who's job it is to stay on top of the news have a hard time doing it and generally only follow a few subjects.
And as for sticking to the point, your original post was a red heiring to begin with. The survey results aren't speculation: the vast majority of the service personnel surveyed stated that we invaded to retaliate for Saddam's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Yet almost everyone back here knows that he had no involvement whatsoever with 9/11. How do you propose to explain this discrepancy?
--MarkusQ
I for one am SICK of China's censorship of the web. Some day the people are going to get fed up with this heavy-handed, close minded, opressive political culture and demand their rights. Fortunately they can look to the U.S. as a model for their political freedoms. Our system is so obviously superior to their Big Brother style censorship! Those damn commies think they can control... Uhm, wait a sec... you mean this is the U.S. that is doing the censorship? Oh, err... well I'm sure we have a good reason. Go USA!!!
But slaughtering patriot "volunteers" are okay?!?! Soldiers that want out of Iraq did not volunteer to invade it! The poor bastards that wanted to keep our country safe, not invade countries that did not represent a credible threat to the US! They did not volunteer to be kept beyond the year tour in Iraq (stop-loss).
You think conscription is so reprehensible, well, get ready for it. Because Bush is making promises the VOLUTEER military can't keep. You young losers can get ready to lose a limb for being born in this country, and for supporting, or ignoring, that lying chimp.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I was a net admin in Iraq earlier this year, and while we had Websense to control bandwidth on working computers, there were no limits I know of for some commercial ISPs that troops had access to.
Now, some commercial ISPs censored materials due to local laws. This sounds more like what is happening - the Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) generally require troops to follow host nation laws. If the host nation thinks liberals are scandalous, it ain't our fault. If we want to live in their country, sometimes we have to live by their laws.
As I mentioned the last time you trolled me, I'm a conservative, not a liberal-hiding-behind-a-codeword. There are plenty of reasons a conservative ought to object to frittering away our military on a land war in Asia based on false statements and propaganda, and in the process running up enormous debts and treating the constitution like last week's junk mail. In fact, it amazes me that any conservative can get behind this sort of "we're going to fix the world 'cause the poor fools are too dumb to fix themselves" nonsense. It's a classic liberal sort of foolishness, and it's just as foolish coming from a so-called Republican like Bush as it is coming from a Democrat.
So are you on active duty, or are you just trying to make it sound that way?
--MarkusQ
And every time you Re-enlist, they tack on some inactive time, such that by the time you reach "retirement" you owe them till 65 or 62.5(if they want you back).
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Howdy!
.. We're the military being housed? Those who are under orders to live on base are housed at the conveniance of the military. Some get multiple people living in bays (all of the services used to), where as the USAF goal is one person per room, with a shared bathroom and kitchenette area per two rooms (same sex only, please). Those who live off base have the same property rights as anyone else in the area.
.. Because of this particular option, cases usually don't get sent to court unless the government is VERY CERTAIN of a conviction. This also leads people who don't see the whole picture to assume the military system is less forgiving. After all, there is an unusually high conviction rate when compared to civilian courts.
Communications Senior NCO from the USAF, again.
Yes, when we take the oath, we explicitly give up certain freedoms. Primarily we give up the right of free movement.
Other rights are curtailed, but not over-ridden.
I LOVED the comment that we give up our right not to be forced to house the military! Errr . .
Military members give up their right to unlawful search and seizure? Well, no. A sign outside every military base warns that anyone entering the facility may have their possessions searched at any time, but it (honestly) is an exaggeration. The military police have to have either probable cause (just like civilian police), or directed authority to perform the search (similar to acquiring a search warrant, except there's only one person on a base with the authority to approve a search).
Right of free speech? Wrong again. I can say ALMOST anything I want as long as I fulfill some very simple requirements. The big limit? I'm not allowed to make negative comments about elected officials that have authority over the military service, or who serve the immediate area where I am posted. Gee. It is bad for me to say the boss is stupid. I find it hard to see this limit as either tough or unusual. The other significant limit is that I have to ensure that what I say can not be attributed to my specific service, or the military in general. Anything said by a servicemember can be presented to the public as the official military position in a situation. Since our military is explicitly not allowed to be involved in any part of our internal political process, any suggestion that there is a specific military position about the "right" candidate, or about the "right" course of action for the administration to take in a situation is unacceptable. The exception? People assigned to Public Afaris, whose job includes providing public release of formal military positions. Note that in these cases, they will still not identify if they personally agree or disagree with that position.
Due process? Trial of your peers? Legal rights? The Supreme Court has upheld that the UCMJ supports and upholds these rights for military members more than once. The truth about a trial of your peers in the military is that your peers are likely to be less forgiving than a smaller panel of professional judges (which it is the accused's right to select between, not the system's). Self incrimination is not allowed. Right to face your accusers is upheld.
The system is not identical to the civilian system. Among other things, there is a method of "plea bargaining" available (Captain's Mast or Article 15) where the Chain of Command can offer the accused a punishment that doesn't include a criminal record . .
So, as an old enlisted military guy, I think all this argument about what rights I do or do not have is badly misdirected. I did give up some rights. I did so of my own free will, with full awareness of the effect it would have on my life, in order to help ensure that everybody else keeps the full set of rights they are supposed to have. Well, okay, like most people I didn't fully understand what I was in for the FIRST time I took the oath, but that's been over 20 years and at least three additional times taking the oath ago.
Ooops,
Next to last line should have read
Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten.... HUH??
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
To quote Henry Kissinger, "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy."
That attitude must be shared by the Bush Administration, because apparently they will only permit radio programs that speak favorably towards its policy to be heard by the livestock.
Its too late to get the gov't to treat the enlisted like the patriots they are. Bush was elected. If you think speaking out is going to make a difference, then you're going to have to make the truth hurt, and crawl out of your anomymous hidey hole.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
My experience:
"In Country" USMC provided NIPR: Slow - didn't even try to use it for Morale type purposes.
"In Country" MWR provided internet cafe: was able to access gmail, hotmail, Yahoo! mail, moveon, foxnews, boortz, slashdot...
On ship USMC/NAVY provided NIPR: was able to access gmail, international versions of Yahoo! mail, moveon.org, wwdn, fark, slashdot, boortz (to include the streaming audio), nytimes, cnn, drudge, Bob and Tom.
I never tried Limbaugh or Wonkette or O'Reilly, etc...
My unit did not filter for political content - pornography only. A few guys were caught for that, but nobody was ever taken to task for anything else on the network. Web email was discouraged because of operational concerns. And the "filtering" consisted of a Marine sifting through the proxy logs.
A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.-Mark Twain
Believe it or not, liberal or not, the general public doesn't think our troops are the bad guys, and given the stresses involved would give you all the slack in the world anyway. I'm very concerned that a lot of things I've heard from servicemen seem to indicate they feel we're the enemy. Considering this is one area where you guys have all the skills and experience, that's pretty scary.
As far as slanted reporting goes, apparently every bit of info we got going into the war was slanted towards war, and it's hard to not report things blowing up. That's no different from domestic reporting. "Good kid wins science award" is covered in the local school paper, not the large press. "Chemical plant blows up" IS covered.
If the countryside isn't safe enough for the reporters to get out of the Green Zone, how would they know about the good stuff? If it's not safe enough to go out, how good can it be?
An Iraqi general just got blown up going to the airport, and the military has made it clear they're putting out disinformation... "psy-ops"... I understand they may feel they need to, but how are we supposed to know the difference?
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Go read some history.
On second thought, never mind. Your just a troll on recruiting duty.
Likely worse actually.
Your probably from one of the many U.S. Military/Government departments of propoganda, your job of which is to "work" the internet. Something which is increasingly noticable and notable.
You drank the koolaid. Research the facts, and get back to me.
Oh, that's convincing. Every point I made is public record. Unless you care to offer some specific persuasive argument or source to the contrary, you aren't going to convince anyone with that kool-aid drivel. I suspect that most of the people reading this thread will be at least familiar with the headline stories of the last few years, and would likewise welcome new information, if you have any.
There are all sorts of things you could do to blast holes in my argument. Tell me where the WMD are, or explain who it was that I heard telling me about them (a Bush impersonator perhaps?). Substantiate the link between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks--heck, if you could do that, I'll bet the Bush administration would be glad to hire you on at a cushy salary. There are probably hundreds of interesting, substantive ways to challenge my post.
But this wasn't one of them.
--MarkusQ
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
As for the websites, it's not a matter of political bias, it's a matter of morale and welfare management that causes the apparent political slant to which sites get blocked. Rush is an idiot, but he's an idiot that isn't constantly saying "Pull the troops out now, they're fighting an illegal war, etc, etc". If he began to do so, you can be sure he'd be blocked as well. It's easier to maintain a fighting force's morale by limiting their exposure to that kind of speech, and it's within the rights of the military to do so.
Great, but don't forget that these military folks are also voters. It seems to very, very convenient for one side or the other to define a common political view as "bad for morale". Then they can block their opponents outright. If political speech is so dangerous to morale, the filtering is at least as dangerous to our democracy, since it allows one side or the other to sculpt the political opinions of a large portion of the voting population.
You did read the original post, right? We're talking about the context of soldiers serving in a war zone.
.44 automag to Baghdad? I didn't know that, if that's true.
s _2002_Wntr/ai_103136519/pg_1 that very clearly lays out the distinct differences in the way a proceeding would occur using a criminal in the State of VA vs the same criminal as subject to the UCMJ.
So your exceptions for the first are irrelevant. They ARE in uniform and performing official duties.
Second amendment: so you're saying that Joe Private in the Army can bring his collection of hunting rifles or
Third (for the poster below) - ok yes, if your quarters are OFF BASE then yes, it still applies. But for the soldiers in army housing (again, we're talking about the soldiers SERVING in a war zone) it does apply.
Fourth - probably also applies WHILE IN A WAR ZONE.
Fifth through Ninth: I'll say it again, I'M NOT A LAWYER, but I invite you to read carefully the interesting article at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6007/i
I don't like to insult people, but you can in this situation be a complete and total idiot. Learn2Read, then post.
-Styopa
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. That you got a +5 shows that the mods don't know anything about the military either.
* First Amendment - You have the right to speech, press, religion, and assembly. The restrictions are that you do not have those rights while on base, in uniform, or on duty. Of course, most employers don't like you holding political protests while at work and on the clock. You are expressly allowed to contact your your elected officials.
* Second Amendment - You have the same right to bear arms as everyone else. You cannot carry them on base, but neither can any civilian. Security regulations apply. The same is true of most courthouses and other government buildings.
* Third Amendment - The government cannot force quartering of troops in your private residence. A bunk in the barracks is not a private residence, that's owned by the government. Just like a dorm room is owned by the college. If you have your own house or apartment off-base (as most military members do), no one can force you bunk up with anyone.
* Fourth Amendment - The military can only search your personal effects on base. And they can search any civilian's personal effects on base too. If you happen to live on base, then you do not have any private areas. Off-base, it appies the same as with anyone else. It's not like the MPs can search your private home for no reason.
* Fifth Amendment - You do have due process, the process is simply different in a military court than in a civilan criminal court. You are protected from self-incrimination. Double jeopardy cannot occur.
* Sixth Amendment - The number of people on the panel trying the case depends upon the severity of the case. For offenses like murder, it is not at all unlike a jury trial. For minor offenses it may be only a judge (or commanding officer, in the case of NJP). You are provided with counsel. You are allowed to call witnesses. You are allowed to cross-examine witnesess against you.
Fanatical Islamic Superpower + Fanatical Christian Superpower = Armegeddon
You used the word "enlisted" that word does not mean war zone.
Learn to follow the topic as it branches, sometimes topic deviations can be confusing.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
We stand a notch above the rest
Then uphold that part of the oath that claims you "support and uphold The Constitution". The part about 'treaties are the law of the land' as an example.
Or does that happen in 2009 if the people who claim GW Bush will still act as commander in chief are right? (Assumes no reversal of the ammendment limiting terms)
The article is more or less accurate, I'm not sure how it supports the idea of an abridgement of any of the rights enumerated in 5-9.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
You crazed coveter of freedom! What you don't see is that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, so Bush is taking those away to protect us from the terrorists! Simple, brilliant plan.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Just a quick scan reveals that A LOT of U.S. military folks are replying to this thread.
Yes, the article is B.S. But so what? Get back to work!! Slackers!!!
Thanks for the lucid response. While I intended to be offering a supposition in my original post, and not a drawing conclusion as you have assumed, I will let that point slide in the interest of good sportsmanship. The rest of your points are sound, and I accept them without further qualification. Sample bias is always a prime suspect in cases such as this, and I have no basis on which to discount it.
--MarkusQ
"Those photos were real photos."
The United States has actively been deploying new satellites above the Middle East since the Fall of 1996. In January 2003 the USA replaced a 10-year-old GPS satellite station above Iraq, which was no longer working, and thus wasn't able to take photographs. Images sent from the live satellite would be in color, not black and white, as Powell shows. It is therefore unknown when the pictures Powell shows us were taken. The Poker bluff. The USA couldn't let the world know they were madly deploying new satellites above Iraq, therefore discrediting their claims Iraq held weapons.
Furthermore, the USA does monitor live images. Why didn't Powell show this? If you recall, the Bush administration claims against Iraq predates these images by one year. Powell and the Bush administration claim they had proof of Iraq weapons in January 2002, but via satellite, they fail to marry images with claims.
Good, so tell me, if a marine is viewing web sites on a military computer, how much chance would it be that he is on base, in uniform, or on duty?
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
it's the Marines and not the Army or the Air Force doing it?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written [and] concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from [things] offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.
The apostle Paul is later asked about a group of Christians who were eating food which was sacrificed to idols, and he emphasised that, while one church might reject such a practice, it was perfectly fine for another church to accept it.
It seems more than reasonable to me to apply that same wisdom to any practice which is not specifically "unrighteous" yet flies in the face of Hebrew dietary and sexual behavior laws.
To believe otherwise is to believe that "the effeminite" are all damned to Hell, which is bad news for the majority of Southern Baptist preachers I've meet, as many of them strike me as being rather swishy.
Overseas votes were in fact counted. These ballots are counted by the individual precincts, just as any other absentee ballot.
Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry -- Mark Twain
Personally, I'm glad Saddam was overthrown regardless of the status of his WMD programs at that particular moment,
Good. Then be a man and PAY for it. Yup. Rather than borrow that cash, ASK for taxes to be raised to pay for what you think is fine, pay for it.
Go on. Show us your tax returns where you took all the money you made and gave it to the Government to pay for what you consider is a good idea.
Anything less shows you are a moral coward.
He could provide a way of checking his IP address so that we know he's actually posting from Iraq, for one thing. (E.g. post an anonymous edit to a wikipedia article - My userpage (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fangz) would do.) That shouldn't violate any secrecy clauses, since he's revealing it already to the slashdot software, and is fairly hard to fake.
The thing is, he's made a number of dumb assertions elsewhere in the thread. He said that:
we serve all of Afghanistan and Iraq through satellite here in Baghdad.
This makes most people think he's bluffing.
Hello,
When I was in Qatar, the internet worked as normal. In Baghdad, (in the green zone) the net wasn't censored at all, not even a corporate filter system... it was wiiide open. Likewise with the internet cafes that the Iraqis ran: internet uncensored. Kuwait had state controls and filtered the internet mildly.
The strongest filtering I experience is on base here in the US.
As I said before, one way to prove this:
Post an anonymous edit to my wikipedia userpage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fangz
This will record the IP you are editing from, and should prove whether or not you are editing from Iraq - or at least from a military base.
The mission of the Marine Corps is to serve and protect as the President sees fit.
Huh. Funny thing is the documents I have say something different:
From the Oath:
I (state your name) do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
Guess you are excused to think for yourself and determine what is not Constitutional.
Oh wait, the 6 codes of conduct:
ARTICLE II:
I will never surrender of my own free will.
Guess you have to think for yourself.
Whoops.
Just shows you are a poser like James Dale Guckert. (You even use a 'handle' ala Jeff Gannon.)
What about burnout? Is sanity optional too? Or is busting your balls just a state of mind? I doubt that working 2 shifts while going to a 4-year university and selling blood plasma is really plausible. Actually, no offense, for those of us not on drugs, that is downright impossible. Otherwise, burnout would occur in maybe 1 or 2 semesters and then you're back to square one.
I have been there. I worked 2 campus jobs, did SEO freelance work and web design, and took classes full-time and a half. It was absolutely a slice of hell.
Although I hate the stupid filter and how well the administer it, I see the reason for it, besides all the security implications. When you're working, you're supposed to be working. Marines and anyone else deployed get extra pay for doing so. They knew by signing up that deployment was likely. Nobody expects a deployment, especially Iraq, to be Club Med.
The political bias referred to by the original poster doesn't seem accurate either, and if anyone feels that a site that is being blocked should be unblocked they can petition for that site to be unblocked.
"But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'."
It has nothing at all to do with conservatives. It has to do with large numbers of people who like to think of themselves as conservative, who really don't have a clue what conservativism is about, because they've been told by Rush Limbaugh that it's about "pissing off commie terror-loving liberals". For about 90% of the self-proclaimed conservatives I talk to about this, that's what the conversations almost always boils down to. Liberal-bashing.
Makes sense. It's sort of become a running joke in my crowd (which runs the spectrum from Goldwater conservatives, Rand-thumping libertarians, to neo-Kennedy whither-Camelot liberals*): we'd love to get back to arguing about how a free society ought best be run, and will, once we find ourselves in one again.
The last few years have been kind of an eye opener for us; although we thought we disagreed with each other politically at a pretty fundamental level, it turns out that there is an even deeper level at which we all agree. We've found ourselves gradually coming to exactly the same conclusions regardless of where we stand politically. As one friend put it, if you find yourself in a burning theater, you tend to want to do something about it, and even a Marxist and a plutocrat are likely to agree under those circumstances.
--MarkusQ
* We also have one progressive, but he's a Macaulay/Whigg style progressive, not a neo-Liberal.
Blame websense... that's what the military uses, and that's who they trust. I don't know if websense lobbied the military into using it with political adgendas, but they useit ans I have personally set it up for them in Iraq when I was at Al Basrah. Doesn't surprise me really. The military is a corporation that is willing to take 16 year old boys and girls with no real education and brainwash them into their belief systems. I'm glad I got out, I just wish it had been sooner, but hey I was young, and needed the money.
Silly question, but why did you bother with the underwear at the water hole?
You sir, are not fit to kiss my shit encrusted boots
Anyone who has served in the armed forces will tell you that you give up your rights when you enlist.
I spent most of my free time in Iraq at the MWR using the internet. There were a ton of blocked sites. Every proxy site that Google will spit out is blocked. Then I got the idea of uploading a proxy script to my own host, but I was afraid my site would get blocked and I wouldn't be able to update it anymore. So I didn't. Eventually they blocked FTP anyways. I know the Air Force guys use mIRC, but they must allow only a certain server, because I couldn't get it working. I do know there are multiple networks, typically the internet in the office is more strict than MWR. In the office you can't even check yahoo mail. Most of the largest free blog sites like blogger were blocked too. Nothing to do with Marines, btw. The Air Force and some of the Civilian guys control the intarweb.
Shouldn't the general public be "in" wars? I mean, they're being fought for, and to some extent, by the general public.
If the general public isn't good and convinced of the need for a war, should we be fighting it?
They say they are blocking web sites to preserve bandwidth in the area of operations... What's ironic about that is instead of allowing me to download a web site which is about 1mb or less in size, I have to download about 20-30mb of google searches and incorrect pages just to find the information I want. They would actually save triple the bandwidth just by letting me do what I want to do... Haha... Silly data dinks...
You, sir, are on crack.
It's a surprisingly common myth that when you sign up for military service, that you suddenly lose all protections afforded to you under the United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other legal documents that grant Americans specific freedoms. However, the UCMJ also applies and does place some additional restrictions on what military members can say and do, but only in very specific circumstances.
For example, almost all of the restrictions you talk about are those that apply only when in uniform and/or when on duty. Why? Well, because a person in uniform is expected to be held to a higher standard than your average civilian.
Here, let an Airman explain it to you.
* First Amendment - Freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government = mostly lost. You are not allowed to speak freely, assemble other then as ordered, nor to petition the government except as through the chain of command.
Wrong. You ARE allowed to speak freely about any topic you wish, you CAN assemble all you want, and you CAN petition the government. But NOT when not in uniform.
What you're not allowed to do is support or endorse a political group, movement, or perspective while identifying yourself as a member of a military service. Do it as an American citizen, that's fine, but offering your support while publicizing your military status is definitely a no-no. Not only might it lead the clueless to draw an incorrect assumption (that the military itself supports whatever you're supporting), it's also an unethical use of the uniform and rank. Whereas it's ethically wrong for celebrities on TV advertisements to use their status to promote a product, it's wrong and illegal for service members to use their uniform to promote a political opinion.
* Second Amendment - Right to keep and bear arms. = mostly lost. You are only entitled to arms as ordered.
Wrong. Many of my fellow service members owned guns. Depending on base regulations, they had to be registered with or stored at the armory, but those in the military certainly are entitled to arms, so this assertion is just plain false.
* Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. = lost. The army can assign you to bunk with someone or someone to bunk with you at any time, for any reason.
Have you really gone that insane? Just where do you want them to sleep? Individual hotel rooms? (I mean, for those in a branch of service other than the Air Force.)
* Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. = lost. The military can search your private effects at any time.
Wrong. The only time the military can search your residence without a warrant is if you are occupying military barracks, billiting, housing, or lodging. If you own your own home off-base, as many active duty members do, the military police have no jurisdiction over it. The civilian police do. (And if you asked me to choose between the two, I'll take military police, thankyouverymuch.)
* Fifth Amendment - Due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, private property. = IANAL, not sure how many of these are still available during a Court Martial, but I know that many of them DON'T apply.
* Sixth Amendment - Trial by jury and other rights of the accused. mostly lost = no jury trial, you get a counsellor, but are tried by a panel. There is not necessarily an appeal, as you can be summarily executed in situations judged to be in extremis.
You may be right here. However, this isn't the full story. The military spends hundreds of thousands of dollars providing for and training a single individual over the course of a four-year enlistment. Since the whole military runs on money, that fact alone means that they have absolutely NO interest whatsoever in locking up their innocent members.
Of all the cases that I've known about first-hand where somebody ended up in a court martial, it's because they really REALLY fucked
Your give good reasons for justifying blocking in general, and even blocking political sites in particular. I don't object to either per se. But the problem doesn't lie in the general blocking of political sites. The problem is that, assuming the information is accurate (which is admittedly in question), the blocking appears only done on some of the political sites, with a bias in the blocking based on the political lean of the site. That would be a lot harder to justify. Not impossible, but harder.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Yes.
George Bush Jr.
I remember once reading that slaves are never fired, but sold...
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
The only sites from the list in the article that I can't access from here are "http://www.airamericaradio.com/" and "http://www.alfrankenshow.com/". But I wonder if these sites offer [more] streaming media than the others on the list. After all, here I am posting on Slashdot, so it can't be all that bad. Usually, the only sites that I've noticed are blocked are porn, games, illegal activities, dating/personals, and shareware/freeware. Web mail is intermittantly blocked. Note that these restrictions exist on/from the cemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil domain. In other words, these are computers that are [supposed] to be used for work purposes. Everyone has the option of walking 1/2 mile to the Camp Fallujah Internet Cafe for unfettered access. Most of us would rather just come into the HQ office (aka the "Combat Operations Center" or C.O.C.) and put up with the restrictions.
First off, to clearly understand the situation there you have to know what the internet there is for. First and formost it is a non secure means of communication and access to programs that run for our administration and command personnel. Secondly it is a means for our Marines to contact their families by email and to do financial/educational buisness. Anything more that that is a bonus. I personally just got back from there and I just so happen to be one of the Sys/Net admins that maintained one of the larger networks out there. The basic idea behind most of the blocking is to provide the best service and the most bandwidth to the users on those networks. Bandwidth is meager at best and excess surfing just makes it harder for people at remote sites to communicate with the rear. There are blanket like policies set out for these things to protect access but if a user with a valid need for a specfic website to do finacial or educational buisness, it is passed to the admins that take care of that and through proper authorization are allowed to view that material. As far as I am concerned there is no freedom of access act any where that applies to a war zone. There are Marines out there that don't get to touch a computer for weeks months even. If when they do have a chance to settle down and send an email after waiting for the other Marines in his unit to get done he/she does not need to wory about some Tard going to his favorite WWW.Ihateevrythingthatisntfreespeach.com website and bringing down the network with a virus or somthing and not being able to tell his wife and kids that he loves them. At no time did I ever find that a person with a valid need was ever told no. Believe me as an admin out there you have so much pressure to provide the best service you can with what you have got. You have alot of people coming in from the states expecting to get broadband like access out there like they get at home. I am just giving my personnel 2 cents worth here
Note that the line "As for the Gentile believers," does not come from a passage of universal law or spiritual instruction, but rather from a passage which is quoting the instruction of one group of believers to Paul (and said passage makes no judgement about whether their instruciton was the wisest course of action... in fact, following their instructions later results in a lot of trouble for Paul), and only pertains to a specific group of recent non-Jewish converts which they became aware of and were generally happy about, but also alarmed over.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I wonder if sites viewed on military networks tend to be ad-free?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
this has always happened in one form or another, its not suprising that it is happening now. The funny thing is watching the government try to cencor from a work prospective then go home and se it.
I'm glad you succeeded. But don't convince yourself that because you did it, anyone can. It's similar to the phrase, "Anyone can succeed in America," being misinterpreted as, "Everyone can succeed in America." (usually followed by a phrase like, "if they'd only get off their butts and work hard.") The two are not the same. Our economic system limits how many people can succeed. You need to look at the larger picture and the systematic obstacles which exist. Simple example: you having a job kept another person from having that same job. If you haven't noticed, there aren't enough to go around...
Having said that, signing up to kill people would not be my idea of a solution to lack of educational and employment opportunities.
We stand a notch above the rest and as such have a responsibility to set the example and pave the way for the other armed services.
p hp
0 6_02_26.php#0078020 6_02_05.php#007661
Right. That is why Marines were pimp'n for Musgrave.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007802.
And more to show the parent poster is a boast'n loser.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_20
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_20
From internet to operations we are the best as what we do and that can not be argued.
In your head, sure. In the real world, not so much.
We are the elite fighting force of America.
I'd be willing to put some money down that Navy SEALS and Army RANGERS would be willing to call you a boasting little shit.
We take an honorable and moral high ground to be stay that way
Yea, that's why they show up in uniform at GOP dinners. Leading the way!
The idea that blocking sites reduces bandwidth usage is insane. Because of the blockages, I spend at least 5x longer on the computer and thus download 5x as much data trying to find the information I am looking for. I need a copy of winrar to open an archive of photos of my children my wife emailed to me. You think I'm going to stop when download.com is blocked? Not a chance. I scoured the internet for 2 hours until I found some college student's personal home page that was not blocked. What could have been a 2mb internet transaction turned into a 30mb transaction and took me away from my duties for an inordinate amount of time.
.mil web sites for an 8-hour period. Those things are fine, but when you start blocking things that give me the ability to comunicate in various ways with our families, that is just assinine. It is also assinine to block any news outlet, especially given the circumstances. I think we deserve as much information as we are willing to absorb.
Even MySpace is blocked now. I have a marine here with me right now that has never used a computer in his life, but his wife taught him how to use MySpace before he left and it is the only way he knows how to get in touch with his family. The Marines robbed him of that link to home.
I understand the "minnimize" condition when a unit takes casualties. I understand the newly-implemented ".mil Fridays" where you can only view
The USMC allows its network to be run by sub-22 year-old kids that think they are "h4ck3r k1dd13z". Since most of them have net admin access, they are not restricted by the blockages, thus are willing to block everything under the sun. Believe me, I know this for a fact after speaking with many of them.
Hopefully, someone will write a congressman and let him know what kind of BS is going on out here. Not all of us have the secret clearance required to get to the aforementioned "Segovia Center" which is located inside a guarded clearance-only facility.
DISA is the backbone provider for NIPRNET. They have sites all over the globe. Filtering is more of a local camp/site issue because DISA works alot like an ISP, they don't need to be bothered with filtering packets.
To say that all the traffic goes thru Baghdad and this one dude is Mr. Power and controls it all is pretty funny actually. I bet he is sitting back right now surfing Slashdot with a nice cup of coffee in front of him. Look closely, because the logo on the side of the cup reads "MNC-I HELPDESK".
I don't have enough time to disprove all of your dishonesty, lies and half-truths, but I suspect that was your point: pepper us with so many lies that a lot of them get through unchallenged.
For instance, the protest sign you mention is a myth, one I've never seen. I've seen a lot of protests, and I've yet to meet a "spit on the vets" type. In fact, I've met more and more fellow vets there (yes, I served in the US Army). Those who had military service under their belts have been the biggest opponents of this strategic blunder.
You also present a dishonest view of the evidence Bush had. We now know that he and Cheney went to the intelligence agencies and told them what answers they were supposed to give. Caveats and reservations were ignored, and foreign reports were taken out of context. The intelligence picture that we had then was that there was a slim chance that Saddam had forbidden weapons, but not likely. Even your vaunted photos of Syrian transports has been debunked TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
When even the United Nations reports that life was better under Saddam than under the US-led military occupation, when you realise that the US Army is facing a collapse soon due to equipment wear-and-tear, then it's time to admit that Bush was wrong to invade when he did, and is too incompetent to fix the mess he's caused.
Finally, you present your opinion as fact. My talks with returning vets and those in Iraq paint a different picture: the soldiers have become disillusioned to the point that all they care about is getting home in one piece. They feel that they are making no real contribution to helping Iraqis, and that it's all going to hell whether they're there or not. I personally feel we did them a disservice by sending them there, and are now doing them a disservice by leaving them there.
No, its more like you having your large guard dog guarding your cooler, which happens to be empty, and when he asks if he can look in the cooler you say sure, open the cooler, reach in, put your hand under your robe, walk over to the Grill with your dog and put your hand into the grill and close the grill.
Fine, but you left out two parts: one, there's no reason to assume that the cooler was empty; maybe I didn't want him swiping my beer, or maybe I had my Playboys stashed there, or my walet. And two, because the kid doesn't find his ball in my cooler he and his buddies still beat me up and strip search me, and the grill, and my wife and dog for good measure. And then make us pose nude with the dog so they can take embarasing pictures of us.
And I still don't have his stupid ball.
--MarkusQ
Yeah, but if you'd let him see in the cooler, you wouldn't have had any problems, but you Jerked him around.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I'm really, really impressed!
No, really.
You started off arguing very convincingly that Bush is a liar.
In the end you're arguing about a dog.
Now I KNOW why Bush is in power.
"I'm a snake if we disagree"-Jethro Tull, Bungle in the Jungle
Well as another soldier in the sandbox, I felt I should check all those links. All worked with the exception of www.alfrankenshow.com for which I received our standard network answer: Access Denied (policy denied)Your system policy has denied access to the requested URL. For assistance, contact your network support team. I'm an Army sergeant on an Air Force network in southern Iraq. I am one of the Computer Support Administrators on the Air Force net. I find that most of our network rules are for COMSEC (communication security) and bandwidth saving rules. Heavy emphasis on bandwidth saving. Internet service out here is limited and expensive. The personal internet I have in my trailer was set up by a local Sheik and costs us 1,500 a month for a slow satellite connection split 30 ways. I have not run into any site that won't load there. The internet at work is for work purposes primarily. So I can understand why we have to block many of the bandwidth intensive sites and applications that are not work related. I don't believe there are any preference made for political bias.
HTC EVO 4G LTE w/ CM 10.2 | NookColor w/ CM 10.2 | Samsung Epic 4G w/ CM 10.1
What is with your ref. to some gay guy? I have no idea what you are getting at with that one?
Dude, you ARE outta touch. Perhaps you need to be reading the blocked sites.
Because, ya see, James Guckart AKA Jeff Gannon is a prostitute who was operating under the color of having been a Marine. And he never was.
People without blocked Internet know about this and can look it up.
FYI: Using the word Faker is like taking a knife to gun fight. If you are going to come then come all the way asshole, you wont hurt my feelings.
Equating you with a gay who was pretending to be a Marine *WAS* going 'all the way'. Too bad your internet is blocked so you didn't know what has been going on in the bigger world.
Thanks for proving WHY censorship is a bad idea.
(And the rest of your text is just plain old ranting and straw men you set up and knock down. *yawn* Claims of hippie-dom is a fine ad-homen attack, but makes you look like you can't actually DEFEND your position. )
so it is ;-)
* First Amendment - Freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government = mostly lost. You are not allowed to speak freely, assemble other then as ordered, nor to petition the government except as through the chain of command.
Wrong.
Freedom of speech OFF DUTY is protected with few exceptions, such as political and religious proselytizing to ones troops. FWIW I'm a VERY open Atheist and have had zero problems in 24 years of service!
Freedom of assembly OFF DUTY is protected with the exception of some political demonstrations, membership in hate groups, etc.
You are free to petition the government through all the usual civilian means. Using the chain of command is encouraged because it makes the system function as it should, but one is not forbidden to "jump chain" if done properly. Most commanders have an open door policy.
* Second Amendment - Right to keep and bear arms. = mostly lost. You are only entitled to arms as ordered.
Wrong again unless you live on post. Off post you can have a (legal in conformance with civilian laws) arsenal if you like. Some of my hunting buddies have impressive collections and the whole military atmosphere is very pro-Second Amendment. "Arms as ordered" refers to bearing military weapons.
* Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. = lost. The army can assign you to bunk with someone or someone to bunk with you at any time, for any reason.
Wrong again! That protection is from quartering troops in CIVILIAN homes.
* Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. = lost. The military can search your private effects at any time.
On-post or on-duty only. Off-base requires a warrant.
* Fifth Amendment - Due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, private property. = IANAL, not sure how many of these are still available during a Court Martial, but I know that many of them DON'T apply.
IAASNCO (I Am A Senior NCO), and would much rather have the protection of the UCMJ and be represented by the JAG than go before some bottom dollar public defender. Attending a Court Martial (which are open, and the opportunity is typically broadcast so folks can go check it out) is eye-opening.
* Sixth Amendment - Trial by jury and other rights of the accused. mostly lost = no jury trial, you get a counsellor, but are tried by a panel. There is not necessarily an appeal, as you can be summarily executed in situations judged to be in extremis.
Gimme a Court Martial over trial by a jury of civilians who couldn't manage to ditch jury duty! An enlisted person can also opt to have enlisted members on the panel (effectively a jury) if he/she wishes.
* Seventh Amendment - Civil trial by jury. Dunno about civil matters while you are subject to the UCMJ.
Civil matters are subject to civil trial. Example: DUIs off-base cannot be tried on-base, though that conduct can result in punishment under other Articles. No double-jeopardy allowed. Some offenses under UCMJ are not offenses under civil law however.
* Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail, as well as cruel or unusual punishment. Again, I don't know that there IS bail for military prisoners.
There is no bail or bond for miltary prisoners, but they still get paid normally until sentence. They can be released to their organisation and put to normal duty, put to duty where they can be monitored, and so forth.Punitive duty is not allowed while awaiting trial. Boring does not equal punitive, but if a member has no security clearance (due to it being pulled while under investigation) there often isn't much they can do.
* Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Questions regarding those would require a JAG, which I am not, to answer.
* Tenth Amendment - Powers of states and people - not applicable
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
NMCI is evil. EDS is retarded.
We were asked to look to see if we could help identify how to integrate the legacy and C&C systems with the NMCI network.
I wouldn't touch that work with a 10 foot pole. It mystifies and annoys anyone working on it.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
*sigh*
I have to plead guilty as charged. The problem with trying to explain things like this to people who don't want to hear it is that at some point you wind up just feeding a troll. On another thread (not quite as bad as this) we wound up arguing about what constitutes a credible news source, and whether or not CNN and the Washington post were part of a "leftist propaganda machine," which was totally off topic. I probably should have just ignored the bait and asked him why he responded to my parting quip and not the two substantive points that preceded it.
Thanks for the reality check.
--MarkusQ
There is a reason why they monitor and limit access...it's called a "war zone". Most of you sit behind your cushy computers, doing nothing but criticizing the war, Bush and the military. Not even understanding or knowing the guts and pride in American that our military men and women have. Of course you will critique and play "Monday morning quarterback". Most of you would be too scared to even go through Paris Island. My husband left for yet another year deployment to Iraq last month and I can tell say, you have NO idea what they go through. This limit on what internet sites you can access is because of the security issues. Censorship is not what is happening here. It is keeping our Marines and Soldiers as safe as possible. When I even get the opportunity to talk to my husband on the phone, you just know that it can be monitored. That keeps my husband safe from terrorists that don't care about their own people let alone my husband. You watch your little clips the news give you and ONLY listen to what the PRESS wants you to hear (meaning...what gets people talking, not necessarily the entire story). They hold up this news man Bob Woodruff and report his progress constantly. What about the men and women who are hurt or injured every day there? Do they ever report in as much detail about them? Give me a break! Just another example of cushy reporters that are treated like they are doing something so outstanding when everyday my husband and others face worse danger. If they are censoring, they are doing a pretty crappy job because CNN and other news sources are on 24/7 in the chow hall at Camp Fallujah Iraq. Seriously, give me a break. Get off your butts and do something about this world rather than criticizing those who actually DO and who have over hundreds of years given you the right to be on a website like this and speak your mind!! Now, bring on your nasty comments because that is your right that my husband and the military affords you! Ooorah! Semper Fi!
I'm still waiting for a response to the substance of my post (e.g., page and/or chapter number for what you claim is in the report). I realize that the argument about strip searching people in their back yards (with or without their dogs) on the adjacent thread took up a lot of time, but we really ought to get back to the main point.
--MarkusQ
Like our troops over in Iraq need to hear the crud on Air America. If you were fighting for your life and safety and just trying to get back home, do you really want to hear Jeneane Garofalo bag on our troops? Or our politicians? THEIR BOSS?
Frankly, I do think that the censorship as reported by the Wonkette is bad. If you're going to do it, be even handed and fair across the board. They are using Websense it looks like, and it's so easy to set to do that. If you want to block Air America, you gotta block Rush too. That's what we do here in the office. Well, no one can have any streaming or entertainment access, period. That way, one person can't get their Napster files, but I can't listen to NPR either. I can't understand why Bill o'Reilly is permitted, he's not a harmless psycho... he IS a psycho!
But the truth of the matter is, it's all about the morale of our troops. And pretty much, your rights are government issue when you sign on, that's the way that it is, and you agree to it. And if that means that they tell you what you can and can't listen to while you're deployed, so be it. You're on Uncle Sam's time. You can do what you want when you're home, but when you are serving in Theater, you are to maintain combat readiness. And listening to tripe like Air America and getting your head filled with the lies of the ignorant (as defined as: Lacking education or knowledge.) is NOT going to prepare you to save your neck against Islamofacists that would sooner behead you than spit on you.
Sorry for the rant, my boys and girls are getting orders today out of their Corpsman school. Some are going to the show. Flame away.... I got my flame retardant lingerie on! This is just my opinion growing up military and knowing a lot about how things operate as such. Yours may vary.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
"Are Marines Censoring Web Access for Troops in Iraq?" = Oxymoron Question.
Think Military here.
Marines willingly waive their own freedoms as citizens of the US upon signing their enlistment contract to protect the freedoms of others. Therefore with the consent and rights waived well in advance, the correct term for restricting access to information or certain usage of Military resources is "Security".
There's also many other reasons why this is not "censorship" when it's directed toward Military and I would suggest to call upon a Marine to explain why.
The Military is not a democracy.
-Fiend-
I addressed that in my post that you were too pissed to actually read. Bad news gets priority. There's a lot of it. Yes, I understand things like "x out of y". Do you understand that at least half the US population didn't want to do this? HALF. How's that "x out of y"?
Are you denying that your generals and the envoy are talking about civil war?
Here's FOX, if you only believe the Republican news:
"Gunmen in camouflage grab as many as 50 security company workers; cops find 24 bodies".
"the gruesome discoveries followed a surge of sectarian violence unleashed by the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra and reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics."
"A former brigadier in Saddam's army was shot and killed in west Baghdad, police said. Gunmen also attacked the convoy of Interior Ministry Undersecretary Hekmet Moussa in west Baghdad, killing two bodyguards and injuring two others, police said. Moussa was not in the convoy.
A bomb exploded at the Basra headquarters of Iraq's South Oil Co., causing minor damage but no casualties. Crude production and exports were not affected, said Jabar Luaibi, the company's director general.
Also Wednesday, an Iraqi civilian was killed in a collision with a U.S. Bradley Fighting vehicle after failing to heed warnings to stop, the military said.
The death of the U.S. soldier that was reported Wednesday brought to at least 2,302 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians."
AP:
"Maj. Gen. Mubdar Hatim Hazya al-Duleimi, the commander of the Sixth Division of the Iraqi Army, was fatally shot by a sniper on Monday afternoon while driving in western Baghdad, according to American and Iraqi officials."
"In the deadliest attack of the day, a car bomb exploded in a marketplace in Baquba, just north of the capital, killing 7 people, including 2 young girls, and wounding 23, including 5 children, Diyala Province officials and hospital workers in Baquba said. The attack was one of at least seven on Monday involving car bombs."
NY Times, heathen commie paper:
"The top U.S. envoy to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday saying the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that ousted President Saddam Hussein opened a ''Pandora's box'' of ethnic and sectarian tensions. Khalilzad said the ``potential is there'' for an all-out Iraqi civil war."
Guess the special envoy wouldn't know what's going on huh?
How many more of these would you like? There are thousands. How many times has Dick Cheney said "they're on the run, it's petering out?" It clearly isn't.
Obviously people who live there have to go out, when they're not under DAYLIGHT curfew and NO VEHICLES are allowed on the streets. You think that's good news? I am sure there a bunch of schools and whatnot being built, fine, good, lovely. Wish my tax money was paying for MY local schools to be built.
Yes, there are millions who didn't murder each other today. But there's always tomorrow.
No reasonable sentient person is going to read this MINOR list of RECENT mayhem and say "things are looking good."
The revolution will NOT be televised.
. . . that anyone wants to stay in the military at all.
Patrolling ftw
Won't these sites at least show up if you use a service like www.loband.org which loads the site form server site and presents you the reults?
I lag
Are companies IT departments blocking political and alternative news websites? According to a blog at a computer security company they are. ... One document they used to help determine some sites to block was, "How to Identify Misinformation" by The U.S. Department of State. The goal was to use a HOST block file for a politically sensitive environment to mitigate possible workplace issues...."
:(
"The client referenced several sites and sources they wanted blocked on their company paid for Internet connection.
So censorship is occurring at all levels now in America - you cannot even web browse your favorite politically subversive website at work now!