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.'"

out of sight out of mind?

[frietbsd]

First the embedded reporters disappeared, how can we get any thrustworthy information about the battlefield now? can't we handle the truth?

Re:PressedWords

[Critical Facilities]

Presumably he didn't post that on his blog...

Don't be so sure. From FTA:

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who replaced Petraeus as the head of the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, recently wrote (in a blog post, no less)

In Contemporary America

[xutopia]

In Soviet Russia the government limits what you can talk about. In contemporary America you are sheltered for your own good.

I fear this is even more sinister than it appears

[damburger]

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.

Don't be so melodramatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm am work, in the Air Force, and I can still read Slashdot, and post to it to. And no, it's not cleared with my "superior officer." Which, by the way, is just equivilent to a supervisor. I don't have to snap to attention, salute, report, and say "Sir! The airman requests permission to proceed with blog post!" I don't see it as anything other then a company filtering because of "lost productivity." Which you may or not be against, but regardless, it's like people bringing up children when talking about crime. Saying it's "military" is supposed to make it more dramatic, but it need not be.

Re:Land of the Free.

[qoncept]

Ever read the Uniform Code of Military Justice? You don't lose it. You waive it. Along with many other things. Did I mention how happy I am to be out?

Disobedience

[chuckymonkey]

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.