Bahrain's ISPs Must Block Google Earth

Bashar writes "A Bahraini newspaper reported today that Bahrain government, following the block of nude sites, have instructed all ISPs to block the Google Earth service, making them one of the few countries worldwide to block a major Google service that is used around the globe, and proving very effective. Here is the same news source, translated by Google to English."

google maps of bahrain:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is bahrain on the maps.google.com maps. [google.com]

Re:Censor

[MindStalker]

Bahrain is a little island between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It could be a military issue, they don't want their civilians being able to access satallite maps.

Possible reason why they are doing this...

[Shipwack]

Speculation at the Bahraini Blog Mahmood's Den (No link provided; google him if you're interested... I like him too much to slashdot) speculate that either the governement there doesn't want the people to see how much prime real-estate has confiscated... It has als obeen claimed that one person put anti-government / misleading labels on all the palaces (there are like five or more, I believe)which pissed off some royal type. Mahmoud included directions on how to get around the blocking, though, being the good guy that he is...

Bahrain is a fairly pleasant place, progressive for the most part. A major base for the US Navy 5th fleet is there. Slashdot admins have the place blacklisted though, for some reason... I could only post as AC when I was there, even after I wrote them about it. Oh well.

Re:gov't too

[El Torico]

This site is up - http://english.bna.bh/ [english.bna.bh]

As are most of the other government agency sites - http://www.newarabia.net/Bahrain_ministry.htm [newarabia.net]

Next time, try not to be such a sensationalist over one dead link.

Bahrain Govt & People Don't Get Along

[cmholm]

Because there's an imminent threat of attack from its own citizens?

Not right at the moment, but I'd agree that blocking GE isn't going to slow them down. The Sheik and his family are Sunni, while the majority of Bahrainis are Shia. For years, the Shia perceived that they weren't getting a fair shake from the sheik, and the revolution in Iran didn't help. The opposition has been coopted to some degree by the introduction of a two house Parliment and regular elections (The GE closing may be a result of conservative morality agenda w/in the lower house, which also led to blocked porn sites). However, this is offset to some degree by the Sheik's long standing policies to assist the US in the Gulf, which aren't popular with most citizens.