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Military Steps Up War On Blogs
An anonymous reader writes "The military's war on blogs, first reported last spring, is picking up. Now the Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read. One senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so 'utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.'"
Is Bush going to come out in a month and give a 'mission accomplished' speech after we defeat all the blogs?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
He should read the blogs that are out there... I see this as a way to keep military personnel from losing intelligence.
>One senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so 'utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.'
Presumably he didn't post that on his blog...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
First the embedded reporters disappeared, how can we get any thrustworthy information about the battlefield now? can't we handle the truth?
Bullets are ineffective and dropping a high voltage electrical wire onto blobs doesn't do anything. In fact, it sets diners on fire. A carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is the best way to stop ... oh, wait. You said 'blog'. Sorry.
It's ironic that in the "Land of the Free" by joining the organization tasked with defending it you lose your Freedom to virtually congregate and by extension freedom of thought among peers.
Shh.
The article is posted on http://blog.wired.com/ and is therefore blocked by the filter it's complaining about.
How many hundreds of hours of training do warfighters get on the operation and maintenance of their M16 rifle?
How many hours of training do they get on the topics of personal publishing, viral marketing, and information security awareness in today's age of instant global communication?
-516
-crack-
-sizzle-
This is your brain on blogs.
This does however remind me of that story a while back about soldiers trading pretty grotesque pictures for access to pr0n sites.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
... when I clicked "Read More", I was told the article was unavailable. That's FAST censorship!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
So lets list our favorites, or good ones, or whatever...
http://michaelyon-online.com/ - embedded reporter with no corporate sponsor, etc. Does it all on his own, takes *amazing* photos, and writes well...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Looks like they learned something from Vietnam after all.
The American public is very happy to support war so long as 'war' is sort of an abstract thing happening "over there". They're more than happy to 'support the troops' and make grand speeches about the trials and tribulations and the suffering of "our boys overseas"--so long as they don't -see- it.
Once any given generation -sees- the dirty, bloody, nasty physical reality of war--the coffins coming home, the frontline reports with people getting blown up on camera, the interviews with the troops who have been worn down by months of stress--they stop supporting the 'cause' and start making ugly noises about bringing the troops home.
So they started with disguising the casualties--excluding people from photographing the coffins. No highly visible casualties? Then any losses are, for everyone outside the families--families that are, by and large, "in" the establishment itself (base housing and that sort of thing)--abstract. Just numbers.
Then quietly weed out the embedded reporters. Reasons of security, you know. Have to make sure the press stays 'safe'.
And now making sure that there's as little other information exchange between the armed services and the outside world as possible.
It's all to be expected, really.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Incidentally, you might not have noticed it amongst all the great News happening around us, but oil is back knocking on the door of the all-time record high (yes, adjusted for inflation) set in April 1980. Strange the way timings go, isn't it.
In Soviet Russia the government limits what you can talk about. In contemporary America you are sheltered for your own good.
"you give away your Freedom to virtually congregate and by extension freedom of thought among peers."
The distinction is important, and not just semantically.
And I can't figure out how you think they're losing "freedom of thought", as far as I'm aware, the military has no way to know what you're thinking (I hope...) so that part of your post really doesn't make any sense.
Bear in mind I am not American, but from what I understand it is fairly costly to go to university there, and one of the easiest ways for people not born into money to finance themselves is to join the military for a bit before they go.
Now, centres of power have an uneasy relationship with academia. On the one hand, healthy universities are vital to maintaining a countries technological and scientific edge. On the other hand, putting lots of smart, young people with fresh ideas in one place and giving them free time often breeds 'disrespectful' thinking.
But the US government seems to have found a solution. Get the kids to join up so the military has first swing at their impressionable minds. Give them the states point of view and only the states point of view, and teach them that opposition to this point of view is treason. Create the us-and-them mentality cults use to make their victims hostile to information that might free them from the lies they have been told. Or, to save time, let Rupert Murdoch do it for you.
Now, this might be a bit tinfoil hat for you, but it doesn't require anything secret or anything that violates physics or the boundaries of current technology. It just requires that the people in charge of your country are totalitarian shits who will exploit any opportunity to control the environment and thus the minds of the people, especially young people.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
How is it that the summary goes a little far by directly quoting the article? Unless the article is completely wrong, this is about limiting which blogs can be read.
I can't read blogs, myspace, or facebook at work either. This is far from censorship.
and repercussions for going over the line.
I think the important part is that people forget that when you join the military (ex Air Force here) you give up a lot of your rights. You do so willingly. You do so with the expectation that it is for the common good. Don't take this as an ego trip, but for me today's soldiers are the people I look up to. To willfully put yourself in harms way in support of others, the majority of which will never know your sacrifice, is to be a true hero. Not some insipid hollyweird starlet, some sports player, or the latest American idol. These soldiers are of the same stock as firemen and policeman. They step up so the rest of us don't have to. Yet we don't always respect their contribution or what they give up. Some of them might not fully understand the later but I put this as coming from a society of entitlement viewpoint that comes to a screeching halt when you join.
So while I do not find too much wrong in limiting what they can say, especially with the fact that enemy of the day has near instant access to it, I think it does deserve a good amount of thought before it goes too far into restrictive. I know my friends letters from the first Desert Storm were monitored but that was easy to do, all mail went through the military. With the internet a big exposure is created and any attempt to close it appears as an affront. It is, but its one voluntarily entered. The military cannot afford to be all open and exposed. It doesn't work well in that environment. A good military works best when it can control the variables. There are some it can and this is one area where it can do something. Your there to do a job and the people around you don't need extra risk because you slipped up.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This has never been the Land of the Free. There's always exceptions. People have fought and died to free Native Americans, blacks, women, immigrants, all of whom live inside the United States. We haven't had true equality among our own citizens - and I mean, in a purely legal capacity - until the 70s. Even now, Native American reservations aren't truly sovereign, as they are supposed to be.
Anyone who thinks the American military gives a shit about anyone's rights hasn't been paying attention. These are the same guys (currently, this is literal - half of the executive branch are old white men from the Reagan administration) who sold weapons to a sworn enemy during wartime in order to fund right-wing guerrillas who were busy raping and murdering everyone from indigenous people to other Americans daring to raise awareness about the genocide. (Read about Dianna Ortiz - she was a nun who was abducted, tortured, and gang-raped for twenty four hours at the direction of the CIA).
Hell, look at Palestine. We hem and haw about freedom, but if we don't like who you elect, we try to economically sabotage and militarily exterminate the new government. This has been consistent US policy since the 50s. (Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama...) America isn't much better than the British Empire was in the 1700s. We just have a much better PR department. By the way, who's suspending habeas corpus now? Oh, that's right...
In short, America does not give a fuck about freedom. We care that you do what you're told. That's why Saddam Hussein is underground and the King of Saudi Arabia is making out with our president in Texas.
Actually, yes, they were instructed on what rights they were giving up, given a valid enlistment contract to sign, and then swore an oath in the presence of a commissioned officer that they were performing such actions.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
This limit is not on what blogs a soldier can read, but on which ones the soldier can post. They don't care what information is coming into the soldier, they just don't want a solider inadvertently leaking classified info..
Neither Clinton nor Obama are promising single payer health care. They both propose half-assed privately run plans which ensure the for-profit health care industry remains intact. Their plans will do little to move us toward a genuine national health care system. Hardly surprising considering the vast sums of money they both receive from the industry.
Too bad you posted AC, but I served 26 years in the AF (retired last year) and will happily confirm everything you posted. What civilians don't get is how mellow the AF life really is. BFD if they filter a few sites or snivel about blog posts.
If you are going to post controversial shit you just omit your name and rank so it does not appear to have AF sanction.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The question is, is free speech actually a right or is it merely a privilege that the privileged are granted? If it is the former, then that is absolute and inviolate. There's no two ways about it. If it is the latter, then yes, certain jobs may withdraw certain privileges that would be granted to others.
What you can't have is it both ways. I honestly don't care which American society wants to define it as being, as it is using an ambiguous interpretation that is far too often more about convenience than about standards in life. Less ambiguity, even if more restrictive, can't be any worse.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
plenty of those offenses are lame (marijuana should be legal of course), but i think chinese and russians would complain about too many criminals running around the streets due to corruption and laziness, not celebrating their vast freedoms as compared to the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"As the article notes, that's more prisoners per capita than Russia or China"
I'm not sure referencing two notoriously lawless countries makes the point you think it does.
You know, I spent two years in Iraq and we never had to do this. During the second tour they tried, but there was a simple fix for all of us. We bought a satellite dish and a year's subscription to the internet from a company in Italy. Divided among 30 people it wasn't very expensive at all. The leadership tried to get in on it so they could censor, but a few "anonymous" whispers to embedded media later and they left us the fuck alone. Damn the leadership hated me.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I can't even scream this loudly enough if you were here in person. China is a communist dictatorship which I have no control over. Russia is a pseudo-democratic dictatorship that I have no control over. When my government is doing evil, I complain bitterly about it. What good does bitching about China or Iran do? Absolutely nothing! Which is the only thing these so called pundits and reporters do - bitch about things that we cannot control, while ignoring the fact that WE have a part to play in our own destiny.
Vile regimes? How about Saudi Arabia? How about Pakistan? How about our One China policy? You completely missed the point of my first post. America does not care if you're a vile regime, as long as you do what we tell you to do. That's why Saddam had our public support - we removed him from our Terrorist States list in the early 80s so we could sell him weapons. Weapons which he used to exterminate hundreds of thousands of people, which didn't bother us in the slightest. Like the slaughter of the people of East Timor, also in the hundreds of thousands, didn't even cause us to stop selling weapons to Indonesia.
You are paying attention to the smoke and the mirrors, and not the real issues. This is not a pissing contest. This is a matter of injustice, and what we can do about it. So, if saying that the US is as good as Russia helps you sleep at night, by all means, get back in front of the TV and tuck in. Celebrate your freedom by doing fuck all. Trust the government. Ignore the fact that the president today is asking the public to provide immunity to telcos to spy on the public. Ignore the blood in the streets in Baghdad. Ignore the cries of injustice in the inner city. Ignore the fact that we spend more money on the military than any other expenditure in our budget, and more than any other country by any measurement (per capita, GDP, whatever.)
The sad thing is, you are the perfect American citizen. Because you are listless, thoughtless, you follow orders, and you ask no questions. If this sounds familiar to communist ideals, perhaps that should be alarming?
Way to go, take away rights from the people who are fighting to protect them.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
Let me clarify this. This ONLY Applies to networks and computers you use at work.... You only use these when you are at work.. if you are not using these for work it is to kill time, and there are a MILLION ways to kill time on the internet, that the censors have not gotten around to blocking, so this is not really a big issue. If you want to read something, read it when you get home.
The article failed to mention that this would only apply to computers connected to Air Force owned and operated networks. It's not any different than a company you work for blocking access to blogs on official work computers. The article made it sound like they were trying censor ALL Internet activity...
The Article: "The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read..."
The Truth: "The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read while at work..."
The cause of the violence is people who have control over the U.S. government wanting to make a profit. I don't have time now to give a lot of links, but there are some below.
What started the violence between the U.S. government and Arabs was the U.S. government, not the Arabs. Having the U.S. taxpayer pay for violence to make a profit works only because most voters don't know the history of U.S. government action.
See, for example, Coups Arranged or Backed by the USA. Most or all of that corruption happened for profit, such as kickbacks of U.S. government foreign aid. When the governments of Israel or Pakistan buy weapons from U.S. manufacturers using money from "foreign aid", that is embezzlement of taxpayer money.
For one example of profiting from violence, read How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power or Bush-Nazi Link Confirmed: Documents in National Archives Prove George W. Bush's Grandfather Traded with Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor.
Apparently Slashdot editors agree with at least some of this, because now and for the last 2 months or more, this has been on the main Slashdot page, on the right, under Book Reviews: "The Creature from Jekyll Island is a compelling look at the history of the Federal Reserve system and asks if it's a system that has run it's course. (Michael J. Ross's review)"
"The Creature from Jekyll Island" discusses how the U.S. monetary system is manipulated by rich and powerful people for their own profit. It says that wars are started for profit.
The Cooperative Research History Commons is very valuable for those wanting to do their own research.
The poorly edited but very interesting free movie Zeitgeist explains in three parts that 1) People who believe in myths are easily manipulated. 2) It is common that people are manipulated through fear. 3) The U.S. monetary system is controlled for the profit of a few individuals. (Note that the movie used respected sources for the first part which were later shown to be somewhat in error. The underlying issues are correct, however.)
When you talk about U.S. government action, don't say "we". Whoever does the secret decision making would kill you and your family if they thought you would cause trouble for them.
When people try to calculate the total number the U.S. government killed, they arrive at figures like perhaps 3 million killed directly since the end of the 2nd world war, and perhaps 8 to 11 million total if the people killed by the destabilization the U.S. government caused are also included, not including the people killed in Iraq. Partly the killing happened as a result of the U.S. government invading or bombing 25 countries.