MORONIC U.S. ARMY BRASS

Army leadership is a byword for stupidity and bungling but this is REAL foot-shooting. As Atlas says: "The military is going to leave all of the war reporting to the jihad-loving mainstream media? We're screwed for sure!"

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update. "This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

Source. Some good comments here. And note how the Australian situation differs. The Australian army chief gave the censors a good kick. He WANTED to hear what his troops were saying.

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Brookes News Update

The US dollar and China's impending recession, part II: It is vitally important to understand that China is undergoing a massive inflation-driven boom. Like all such booms it is being funded by credit expansion. Further, trade with China does not determine the value of the dollar or US interest rates
Does inflation promote economic growth or does it damage it?: Mainstream economics views inflation as general rises in commonly accepted price indices. It is held that the rate of growth in economic activity is a key factor in determining the rate of increases in price indices. This is dangerous nonsense
The Australian economy: the case for free trade restated: One does not need a complicated theory to make the case for free trade. As Adam Smith observed, it is much better for people to produce those goods in which they have a cost advantage and then trade them for goods in which they have a cost disadvantage
Defending capitalism against Lynda Newnam: Charles Murton defends capitalism against one of its critics
Prodos: The Liberal Party and Australia: Liberal Party member Prodos Marinakis presents his case
Harry Reid should resign.but he won't: Most Americans are appalled at Harry Reid's declaration of American defeat in Iraq. Reid's actions are tantamount to treason. If the Democrat Party was genuinely patriotic it would force Reid to step down instead of trying spin his treason
Cho was a terrorist! Did leftists teach him to hate: What's the difference between Cho Seung-Hui and the many hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian and Islamic terrorists worldwide? It's a three-word answer: choice of weapon. Everything else is the same

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ELSEWHERE

There is here a fabulous collection of postcards that were created 100 years ago in an attempt to prophesy what our present would be like. Only one of them (about TV) is roughly right.

9/11 Conspiracy Film on Virgin Airlines: "This qualifies as one of the outrages of the year: Virgin Atlantic Airlines is showing the evil, dishonest 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change as inflight entertainment. Are these people insane? Maybe next they can have a retrospective of the works of Leni Riefenstahl."

There is a big post here about the appalling ignorance of Presidential candidate John Edwards.

World Bank hypocrisy: "Ms. Riza was eventually given an external assignment at the State Department with a salary (paid by the bank) of $193,000, up from the $133,000 she had previously made at the bank. To Mr. Wolfowitz's critics, this was improper and excessive, especially given that Condoleezza Rice makes about $10,000 less. But this is highly selective outrage given normal procedure at the bank. Of its roughly 10,000 employees, no fewer than 1,396 have salaries higher than the U.S. Secretary of State; clearly "fighting poverty" does not mean taking a vow of poverty at "multilateral" institutions. At the time of Ms. Riza's departure from the bank, she was a Grade "G" (senior professional) employee; the typical salary in that grade hovers around the $124,000 mark. For the next level, Grade "H"--the level to which Ms. Riza was due to be promoted--salaries average in the $170,000 range, with an upper band of $232,360. No fewer than 17% of bank employees are in this happy bracket." [More about World Bank corruption here]

Media Israel-hatred: "Here's yet another instance of what I like to call "selective" truth:-We're presented initially, via our intrepid (by which I mean "totally uninquisitive") photographers, with news that a man was found dead, shot somewhere in the Gaza Strip. This, as far as anyone can tell, is true. Cue: crocodile tears. We're also told, via captional inference, that the Israelis are being blamed for this shooting. Hello, conjecture. Finally, we're told that, according to Israeli records, no soldiers were in the area at the time. Enter, truth. This type of thing happens far more often than you'd ever think, yet time and time again, the press falls for the immediate blame-da-JEWSism spewed at them by the hostile locals and repeats the claims unquestioned. And time and time again, when the facts come in, the inital storyline is almost always shown to be false."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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