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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
The article is posted on http://blog.wired.com/ and is therefore blocked by the filter it's complaining about.
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
"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.
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.
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?