Yesterday the Army issued a “clarification” to its new rules governing soldier-bloggers, stressing that “in no way will every blog post/update a soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor.”
The folks at Entropic Memes call that “bumpf.”
Disingenious bumpf, at that, which is directly contradicted in no less than four places by the actual text of Army Regulations 530-1. It’s a PR stunt, and I think everyone so far recognizes it as such, because even the most gung-ho milblogs to print the text of the “fact sheet” so far have neglected to include the final bullet point, found on page two – “Commands have the authority to enact local regulations in addition to what AR 530-1 stipulates on this topic” (emphasis mine.)
AR 530-1 isn’t a guideline to be followed where convenient, or a set of “best practices” that the Army is expected to try to implement. It’s a set of regulations, set out in (PR bumpf notwithstanding) completely unambiguous black-and-white terms.
Jack Holt, blogger liaison at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, acknowledges the confusion: “I’m still waiting on the Army to clarify the clarification.”
But he adds that the new regs simply codify what has been policy since 2005, and that the spirit of that policy is quite simple: “It requires soldiers to represent the Army well and to make sure they don’t get anyone killed.”
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[...] Despite Hight’s assurances that the YouTube ban is all about preserving precious bandwidth and has nothing to do with operational security, it’s hard to ignore the coincidence. Two weeks ago the Army announces new, more restrictive rules governing soldier-bloggers. This week the Pentagon cracks down on the major outlet for soldier-videographers. The DoD YouTube ban doesn’t totally restrict soldiers’ access to the popular video sharing site, but it is a first step in that direction. [...]
[...] Despite Hight’s assurances that the YouTube ban is all about preserving precious bandwidth and has nothing to do with operational security, it’s hard to ignore the coincidence. Two weeks ago the Army announces new, more restrictive rules governing soldier-bloggers. This week the Pentagon cracks down on the major outlet for soldier-videographers. The DoD YouTube ban doesn’t totally restrict soldiers’ access to the popular video sharing site, but it is a first step in that direction. [...]
This is in reference to Chinese Navy by David Axe’s article. There is an overestimation of chinese naval capabilities. It is still considered as a Green water Navy as compared to Indian Navy which is considered as Blue Water Navy. In chinese ships they still do not have any desaliation plants. They need to use the stored water. Indian Navy is far superior to the chinese Navy due to armaments, such as, Aircraft Carier, Delhi Class Warrior ships etc. China does not have any capacity to conduct an amphibious assault on a small Island of Taiwan. Technologically and Milatarily, Chinese Navy is far behind to countries like USA, Russia, Japan and India. China biggest weekness is they buys all their milatary equipment from Russia. Russsians are not going to give all the latest and uptodate technologies to China. Since 1989, Western countries put sanction on chinese armed purchases. It is still a controversy, that since 1972 to 1989 western countries in
general and USA in particular gave armaments to China to counter Russia. For any questions, please contact me at (212) 459 7852.