Military PCs in Iraq forbidden to view liberal blogs/websites

[Roland99]

http://wonkette.com/politics/wonkette/our-boys-need-gossip-158687.php

Unfortunately anonomizers don't work out here (never have). Anyway, I had a few minutes today and thought I'd look and see what else was banned on the Marine web here. I think the results speak for themselves:

* 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.”

More at site

[wicket]

1. Wish I were surprised

n/t

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. We should contact Lautenburg's office about this

He was the Senator that pushed to get a liberal voice on AFR.

[Roland99]

3. I'll contact my Rep. (Geoff Davis), too.

He replied back w/a form letter that the DoD is open to all forms of media back when Ed Shulz was being kept from Armed Forces Radio.

[Kurovski]

4. Even the troops aren't allowed

the freedom they're supposedly fighting for.

How could the state of this country be any clearer?

[Roland99]

5. Pretty damn sad, eh?

[FtWayneBlue]

6. Apparently it is the WORK computers that are blocked, not

the personal or entertainment PC's. Maybe they will be next.

[Roland99]

7. Does that make it better or worse?

Seems that's almost setting policy allowing right-wing sites to be viewed but not liberal sites.

[Babel_17]

8. Wow, this topic made it to /.

That's a pretty famous site for geeks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlashDot

Slashdot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from SlashDot)


Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website, updated many times daily with articles that are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. Front page stories generally receive at least 70 such comments, with especially popular or controversial articles reaching totals of more than 1,000 comments. The site resembles a blog in many ways, albeit with threaded comments. The summaries for the stories are generally submitted by Slashdot's own readers with editors accepting or rejecting these contributions for general posting. The site also sometimes features movie or book reviews, interviews, and "Ask Slashdot": queries from users requesting information from the readership.

The site's slogan is "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." Slashdot is often criticized for posting story summaries that are inaccurate and/or misspelled, and for intentionally posting articles that many find highly biased, and/or defamatory and often incite flamewars, while ignoring news or commentary on issues which outsiders may consider more serious or important (see Slashdot subculture). It is also infamous for the Slashdot effect, when thousands of Slashdot readers read an article and connect to the linked website, flooding it with unexpected traffic, and at times bringing the site down in a manner similar to a Denial of Service attack. The use of "slashdot" as a verb refers to this effect.

Officially, the name "Slashdot" was chosen to confuse those who tried to pronounce the URL of the site (h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org).

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/03/07/1613236.shtml


Are Marines Censoring Web Access for Troops in Iraq?
Posted by Roblimo on Tuesday March 07, @11:55AM
from the very-bad-if-it's-true dept.
Censorship Politics
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:

* 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."

The political bias is obvious. And this is what reminded me of Saudi Arabia's Internet blockage, because there, too, it wasn't just obvious porn or "anti-Islamic" material that was being blocked, but plenty of political information.

[file83]

9. I wonder what the soldiers think they are fighting for...

...because it sure as HELL isn't for freedom of speech.

[NVMojo]

10. I spent 8 hours with some reservists last week who were repukes

unbelievably they are faithfully O'Leilly followers and can't wait to go back to Iraq to blow away more Iraqis. Sigh ...

[paineinthearse]

11. My rep is on the armed services committee, let's see what he has to say nt

[eridani]

12. There is a way around this!

Sounds like it might work for others dealing with blocked sites also.

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/armed-forces/wonkette-blocked-no-more-157745.php

Here's the Good News You're Not Hearing from Iraq:

Our boys overseas might — just might — still be able to access Wonkette. A source in Quantico tells us that a simple switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox might allow access to lots of supposedly blocked sites.

Alas, a Marine tells us that the situation is even worse than we could've imagined:

They also block The Onion, Comedy Central, and all computer gaming sites. We were told it is done to save bandwidth and to prevent people from loafing off at work.

<snip>

I also think it might be based on what people are reading. If a site gets a lot of traffic and it's not considered necessary for Marine Corps business it gets shut down. Well, except for ESPN and other sports sites. They'd have bloody riots on their hands if they did that.

He also added that these rules apply only to official work computers, and Wonkette is still available on computers in the charmingly named Morale, Welfare, and Recreation facilities. But if you don't want to wait in that lengthy line (and those computers still block the porno), another operative gives the simplest workaround yet:

Tell the soldiers to go to http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en, go to the section labeled “Translate a Web Page”, type in wonkette.com, and select “translate from: portugese to english”. Google will try to translate your site, but since it probably won't find any portugese words, it'll spit the site back out in English.

But hosted on the non-blocked Google server. So we can write anything we want!