Iraq the Casbah, Part Deux
(Iraq the Casbah, Part Un can be found here)
The shareef dont like it. And apparently neither does the DoD. In a ruling that conjures up shades of the Ayatollah Khomeni’s edicts outlawing rock and roll music in Iran, the Department of Defense has banned soldiers in Iraq from accessing MTV.com and Pandora.com, along with a host of other social network and video sharing websites.
Are they trying to contain the leaking of classified information or the leaking of politically damaging information?
And why block Pandora? Pandora is this cool site that builds song playlists based on the user providing one of their favorite songs. Pandora uses that song to assemble a stream of songs that the user would likely enjoy.
Is that either politically or militarily sensitive? Nope!
And while the DoD has blocked access to MySpace, Facebook, Orku, and a host of other online social networks are not off limits. Huh?
This move seems to be more about blocking soldiers from letting off steam by firting, viewing silly videos, and connecting with people away from the battlefield than about plugging leaks.
I am reminded of a letter sent to a newspaper in Sydney, Australia during the Monica Lewinsky affair. It read, “Thank god we got the criminals and the Americans got the Puritans.”
Is that what this is about?
Because it seems that, like the Ayatollah before, the DoD is trying to purge naughty behaviors out of its soldiers… hmmm… maybe this is a delayed response to Abu Ghraib?
Well, check out the story in the Washington Post and see if you can figure it out.
- Posted in: Digital Politics
