Our soldiers in Iraq will find MySpace, YouTube and eleven other websites blocked

[dajoki]

The Iraq Information Crackdown
Nicholas von Hoffman
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/howl2

If you believe in coincidences, then you will not be surprised by this one.

In the space of twenty-four hours what passes for the Iraqi government announced that news photographers, video and still, are forbidden to record images of the mayhem and murder after a bomb has gone off. No more of those pictures of the survivors, hands clapped to head, screaming in front of a smoking ruin, parts of human bodies, men racing to put the maimed into cars while sirens call the news of new horrors.

At almost the same time, the Pentagon had an announcement of its own to make. Henceforth our soldiers in Iraq will find MySpace, YouTube and eleven other websites blocked when they try to write home or post pictures and videos from military computers. This is the latest in an ongoing crackdown on our people blogging from Iraq. Never mind that much of what we know about this war comes not from commercial news outlets but from what servicemen and -women have sent back home through cyberspace.

The Pentagon says that the communications ban is needed because private messages were clogging Internet capacity and getting in the way of priority war communications. It did not add that some of what our people were sending back home were pictures of events and actions the Administration does not want shown. The President long ago refused to permit pictures of our own war dead returning home in flag-draped coffins, so he must have been going nuts over what active-duty soldiers have been posting on YouTube.

<<snip>>

If you do not believe in coincidences, you will conclude that these actions are calculated to insure that henceforth all the American public is going to learn about the "surge" will be coming from official sources. If that's the case, does it mean that things are going even less well than many already fear?

<<snip>>

The government needs to invent new ways of smothering information. With the talent they have in the White House and the Pentagon, surely they must be able to come up with better ways of keeping us in the dark. They went to Harvard and Yale and they pray a lot, so they can do better than this set of coincidences.

The news-consuming public ought to sympathize with the government's desire to deceive. We're all on the same side, aren't we? If the surge is failing, then what else are they to do but get out the eyeliner and the lipstick and get to work on the pig? But they have to do a better job of applying the cosmetics, because most of us know that coincidences like this one rarely happen.

[L. Coyote]

1. I discoverd that the State of Utah Education Network blocks domains.

Which ones? Why? Evidence of election fraud was one possible reason. Writings about evolution another. Who knows for sure except the IT guy doing it??

There is far more of this going on than realized. I also discovered a wi-fi hot spot company blocking domains.

Time for all of us to start keeping track of which and by whom. Collect evidence when you encounter this, especially when it is done by government agencies.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Nicholas von Hoffman!!

Let's put it this way, would they be doing this if things were going well?

[dajoki]

3. We all know...

how bad it is, they are just confirming it.