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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.
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...
Are you kidding me? Seriously?
Ok, I asked myself, and the answer was. . . I was there. I grew up in that situation. My Dad was a Military man, still is actually, 28yrs later. And I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to speak of. where meals many a times consisted of potatoes we grew in the garden, and only those potatoes at times. I grew up as "red neck" as it comes. Gravel road that in the winter took 3-4 days to get plowed out after a storm. Where it was nothing to walk the 5 miles to school, cause I had football practice. Where our only family vehicle was a Ford Festiva, and I had 3 brothers, all of us in highschool at the time, and we found a way to get us 4 in the back seat so we could drive the 40 min. to church on Sunday. Where our idea of a good time was swinging on a rope in the water hole out in the east field down by the railroad tracks in our underwear, because we didn't know they actually had clothes you was supposed to wear when swimin' cause 90% of the clothes we did wear was made by Mom for the first boy and handed down to the fourth, and patched along the way.
And guess what? I didn't join the military like my Daddy and my Brothers did. No, I saved up 150 bucks from corn detasseling the summer of my senior year, and bought a car. Well if you could call it that. And left town for the City. (Minneapolis) and I signed up for college at. . . . A PRIVATE ART COLLEGE, MCAD.
And how did I do that? with no money and all I owned in the back seat of my crappy Rustbucket of a Ford Tempo? It's called motivation. It's not. . .
It's called making my own opportunity, and busting my balls. It's called finding a job at the local Happy Chef working as many shifts as I can, and selling Blood Plasma 2 times a week for the entire time I was in college, and student loans to boot. Then graduating with a 4 year BFA Degree in Multimedia/3D Computer Animation.So don't spout that crap about opportunities to me. Make your own!
I hate these pour me I can't choose my parents, it's not my fault, I didn't have a choice people. You do have a choice, you just choose to not make it.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.