Hi Luis:

Can’t access any of the three Republican sites from Australia, and I’ve been trying for over a month. Like you, my requests have always timed out ? odd, indeed. Especially as the two Democrat sites come up instantly.

Thanks, Chris. This should be interesting. I wonder if the sites are viewable from Europe, or, more interesting, from Canada?

Makes you wonder what they have to hide.

Although, come to think of it, it could be that they’re simply trying to cut down on the odds of getting hacked/attacked. By filtering the IP requests out by domain, and ignoring any that come from a domain that is in a foreign land, they effectively limit the number of people who could launch attacks to just those in the USA.

I can get through to the web sites, but of course I’m in Washington state.

Perhaps I’ll drop a line to them and ask what the deal is…

Paul:

I thought of that too, but it doesn’t make sense to me. After all, U.S. governemnt sites for the use of US citizens don’t do that, neither do any US-only business sites that I know or have ever heard of. And if anyone were really determined, it would be relatively simple for someone to get around that–I’m sure it could be easily hacked, and if not, someone just needs to get, hire, or take over a computer in the US and channel their attack through there..

A side-effect, of course, is that it makes it impossible for Americans abroad to access the sites; for example, I’ve contributed to Kerry, and if his site were inaccessible from here, I’d’ve had a much harder time doing it. Not to say that I disapprove of Bush and the GOP cutting themselves off from an entire area of support, but it does make you wonder.

Other possibilities may include a simple nationalistic and exclusionary mindset–clearly what the Bush administration has had these past four years.

Am in the UK and can access the sites fine and quite quickly. But then again we’re Bush’s “best friends” so that’s not a surprise.

Luis,

I can access all three Republican sites without any problem, as well as the DNC & Kerry sites. I’m between Osaka and Nara, but have no trouble from the office in Osaka either. I’m also using YahooBB, in case the ISP matters.

Let me adjust my tin foil hat here… On a cynical side, have you signed any petitions or voted in any online polls lately that would show you as being against Bush and/or the Repubs? Could eager beavers in the WH and/or Republican party staffers be busily identifying websites/blogs that are liberal/leftist in nature and then physically blocking them from accessing their websites? Is there some kind of blacklisting going on, IOW? Checking with other liberal blog owners who live in Japan or elsewhere overseas, as well as in the States for that matter, might be a thought. One tidbit so far… Kinuk’s blog above is not noticeably anti-Bush, so access is allowed. And yes, the UK is a dear friend of the US, but so is Japan, right? Testing the theory one blog/website at a time… 😉

I know it’s awfully far-fetched, and though Paul’s idea about domain filtering to ward off attacks is probably more valid, but from what I’ve seen of the BushCo administration, Rove’s gyratory manipulations (where the end ALWAYS justifies the means), and all of their amazing insensitivities to law and good decency, I’d say that just about anything could be possible from them. And that unfortunately it wouldn’t surprise me all that much if such blacklisting were occurring. Hopefully, I’m wrong, of course.

On a another note, is it possible you have some cookies and/or blocks inadvertently set up somewhere, either in your browser, or (if you use them) your popup blocker or firewall? Just brainstorming now…

Hi Luis,
Republicans are not my best friends, but I have no probems to access the 3 official Republican web sites you mentioned at 1h44am Japan Time (from Yokohama, Japan).

Hmm–two locations in Japan and they’re not blocked, though there is blockage elsewhere internationally. It seems like it may not be completely a regional matter after all–curiouser and curiouser… Though still I wonder if anyone inside the U.S. is blocked.

Of course, it could just be really sloppy site maintenance–i.e., they got spammed or hacked or something and blocked an entire range of IP addresses, not caring that they block legit addresses while cutting the swath. Or, as Ron said, they may be denying IPs identified as unfriendly–though that doesn’t explain my school’s IP, different from home, and I don’t recall having done anything political from there.

Whatever the case, it is interesting that all three sites seem to be blocking the same IPs–so far, everyone here either sees all three or sees none.

Ah.

I think I figured at least part of it out. All three sites I listed, plus some others (www.gopteamleader.com and rnchq.org, for example) all seem to be run by the same outfit. A WHOIS check revealed that all share the exact same DNS information:

NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET 65.172.162.66
A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET 209.61.172.168

Which means that they probably share IP blocking information as well. But that still doesn’t explain why they’re blocking the addresses they’re blocking….

Well, I’d suggest running a traceroute to the sites; to their nameservers; ping each as well.

I also took the liberty of emailing the sites’ webmaster to ask what’s up with it. No answer yet, I’ll post when I find something.

PL

All of them worked fine with me. I’m from UAE

The only site which is accessible from China is the Kerry Campaign site. All the rest give me a timed out message.

All three block me: Yokosuka and Zushi Japan YahooBB. I was wondering if it might be an over aggressive anti-spam blocking technique gone awry (some mail servers don’t accept mail from servers in dynamic ip blocks), but others one YahooBB are getting through. I’m kind of stumped.

Yes, well I’m KDDi Dion, but I don’t know what we use at school.

Like you, UltraBob, I’m leaning towards believing a rather foolishly aggressive spam-blocking strategy. Foolish because you tend to throw out more baby than you do bathwater.

I too had this problem for a while a few months ago and didn’t really think about it until Sako brought it up in March. But later that evening I was able to open http://www.georgewbush.com/ no problem from my home (Sagamihara, Japan) and office (Tokyo, Japan) .

How about sending an email to the webmaster or someone at the campaign asking what the issue might be? BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com

I am still waiting for a reply from my email to the webmaster about this situation. Dunno if they’ll bother.

I can access the rnc & gop sites but not the bush one. Tokyo; GOL, ISDN

Louis,

I had no trouble accessing all Republican Sites. Is this a Democrat Ruse?

No, just selective IP denial on the part of the GOP’s web host admin, apparently.

Hello,

From Singapore and Japan, can access rnc and gop sites, but not GeorgeWBush.

Usually those who have managed to get through to Bush out here have gone through a US proxy server first.

Thanks–
CAPitALLism.org

I can access the bush site from Chile. Go figure.

I can access the bush site from Chile. Go figure.

I am hoping I can find some help here or at least some advice on where I might get help with the following. I am a ardent Republican but seem to be surounded by Democrats. I am constantly bombarted with e-mails from friends, relatives and associates about how the republican party and mainly the Bush adminstration policy’s are wrong, evil etc.. I would like to know where I could post some of these e-mails so that I could get help in responding to them. I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this request. At minimum maybe someone could suggest a web site that may be more appropiate. I got here from google.Please e-mail me at dhgfla@bellsouth.net

thanks in advance..

dg

I cant access the sites from New Zealand.
I would like to see what rubbish the bush site has to scare voters into voting for him, which i cant understand. This US election could effect the world much more than any other election so please vote wisely

Hi Everyone,

at least I found out not to be the only one… can’t access georgewbush.com for over 24 hours now. First thought about a DoS-attack and searched around the net for it. Now I see what’s going on: pure censorship in my eyes or just the idea to block users outside the US of A to save bandwith for bushies in bible belt counties… I don’t know. Still, I would love to read that site, could anyone here explain how to use an american proxy or any other way to visit it (no geek speak please as a translator for that is missing here). Any help appreciated. Thanks, Chris

We can’t access http://www.georgewbush.com/ from France.. I guess George W’s holding a grudge. What have they got to hide?

ciao!

People who can’t access the site, try this:

http://www.anonymization.net/http://www.georgewbush.com
for the other sites, just replace http://www.georgewbush.com by the wanted url.

voila!

enjoy

Thank you, Rotaman,

that was exactly what I needed. Now, anyone who ends up here to find out more about the banning of foreign requests to the http://www.georgewbush.com website may read this article on Netcraft from the UK to find out more.

Hi! I can�t access the http://www.georgewbush.com from Sweden either.
but I have an adress that lets you get in.
It�s a litle bit slow but it works.

http://proxy.guardster.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/010100A/687474702f7777772e67656f72676577627573682e636f6d2f

A more detailed story can be found here.

No problems accessing these sites from London. My ISP is HomeChoice (http://www.homechoice.co.uk)

hello, i cant access these either, i’m in england but been using proxy link like above fine. So the New World Order is banning websites now? see http://www.infowars.com for more NWO info

The reason why you cannot see the george bush website is that it is behind a secure layer protocol.

try

https://georgewbush.com

it worked from here..using a proxy takes care of the secure layer but I think the george bush website would still not work in america without the https link

Norbert: Doesn’t work for me…