World War II re-enactors aim to preserve stories. The smoke of the cannon blasts rolled over the battlefield Saturday, its acrid smell filling the nostrils of the hundreds of spectators.  As the German army advanced, children cried out in dismay. The sound of gunfire, even without live ammunition, shook the ground.  At the end of the battle, the American camp was overrun, the soldiers killed or captured, but not really.  The World War II re-enactment taking place at Sommer Park is the largest central Illinois has seen since the event began four years ago...
(Journal Star)

WW1 diary displayed. A diary written by an Arbuthnott soldier from the trenches of the First World War will go on display in the Grassic Gibbon Centre this week.  Robert Walker, a farm labourer from Arbuthnott, was called up to war in August 1914 and never returned. His name is featured on the war memorial outside the Grassic Gibbon Centre and his medals and diary have been sourced from his daughter who now lives in England.  His notepad, fragilie and elegantly written in pencil, was kept from moment he left Aberdeen until his death. One of his first entries stated it took 21.5 hours to get from Aberdeen to Plymouth before being deported overseas...
(Mearns Leader)

Military To Breastfeeding Military Moms: Don't Nurse In Uniform AND Have Your Picture Taken.  Earlier this week, photographs of two military moms breastfeeding their children went viral. Washington state-based National Air Guard Members Terran Echegoyen McCabe (nursing her twin daughters) and Christina Luna wanted to show how they nurse in uniform for Mom2Mom's support group. Echegoyen McCabe explained, "I'm proud to be wearing a uniform while breastfeeding. I'm proud of the photo and I hope it encourages other women to know they can breastfeed whether they're active duty, guard or civilian." But the military is not pleased...
(Gotahmist)

Jill Biden writes children's book based on son's deployment. Her son has been home from Iraq for nearly three years now, but tears still well in Jill Biden's eyes when she recalls the Christmas Eve dinner the family had to have without him.  "We all would pretend that nothing was wrong," the wife of Vice President Biden says, sitting in the sunroom of their official residence. "But just looking down the table: There were 25 of us there, and just not seeing Beau. …"  That was one of the hardest moments during a difficult year when Beau Biden's Delaware National Guard unit was deployed to Camp Victory in Baghdad — difficult both for her and for his daughter, Natalie, then 4...
(USA Today)

Army general's blog post on suicides draws sharp rebuke from Joint Chiefs chairman. A blog post by an Army major general calling suicide a "selfish act" has drawn a sharp rebuke from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey.  According to a Pentagon news release, Maj. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard wrote the comments after attending a January memorial service for one of his soldiers who took his own life. He reportedly added that he was "personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess."  Dempsey told reporters Thursday that he disagreed "in the strongest possible terms" with Pittard's characterization of suicide.  "I've been in contact with Army senior leadership and know they share my concerns," Dempsey further stated...
(The Warner Robins Patriot)

From warfighter to app writer: Army sends soldiers back to school. As part of broader efforts to get mobile devices into the hands of troops, the Army has created a program designed to teach personnel how to write programs for commercial handhelds.  Launched in 2010, the Army Mobile Applications Branch began as part of the Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications (CSDA) program, which is testing a variety of commercial handheld devices for use by soldiers. When the CSDA was launched, it was thought that mobile applications were easy to write, based on the success of commercial ventures such as Apple’s App Store, said Lt. Col. Gregory Motes, chief of the Mobile Applications Branch at Fort Gordon, GA...
(DefenseSystems)

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The North County Times has a good story (via the Associated Press) on the website Together We Served, an online military network that enables veterans and active duty personnel to re-connect with lost brothers and sisters.

Although closed to non-members of the military community, the story discusses one of the site's latest initiatives that allows the public to access the previously-private profiles of more than 100,000 people who have died in modern American wars.

“Called the "Roll of Honor," the site uses public military records to create basic profiles of the fallen. Family members can contact site administrators to claim and customize the information about their loved one for free.”

In the article, Bernie and Anita Laguna discuss how the site has helped them. Anita's brother Raymond Bernal Jr., died while serving in the Army in 1966.

The Roll of Honor can be viewed online here.

Full story here.

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On Social Media, State Department Stands Alone. As other parts of the federal government begin to examine their own practices toward social media and publication review, the State Department stands alone in clinging to a 19th century model emphasizing lack of transparency and message control. That State seeks this modus in a largely unclassified world and while other agencies move toward change makes ripe State's policies for a judicial challenge.  The State Department's regulations also trail behind other government agencies, particularly the military. Military regulations concerning blogging and social media are not onerous and do not involve pre-clearance requirements...
(Huffington Post)

US military in row over Facebook breast-feeding picture. The Washington National Guard has criticised two servicewomen for being photographed in military uniform while breast-feeding their babies.  The photos were posted on the Facebook website by a support group at Fairchild Air Force Base called Mom2Mom. The group's leader, Trysta Chavez, said the photos were meant to promote World Breast-Feeding Week in August.  Military officials said it was a breach of the rules to use the uniform to promote non-military causes.  National Guard spokesman Captain Keith Kosik told the BBC that there was no regulation against breast-feeding in uniform...
(BBC)

Terror on Twitter.  JERUSALEM – One of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world maintains an official Twitter account, which it has been using to spread propaganda against Israel while working, in its own words, to “evoke the spirit of Jihad.”  The Al Qassam Brigades, the so-called military wing of Hamas, sends out numerous English language updates on its Twitter account, @AlqassamBrigade, with most of the tweets linking to the terror group’s official English website...
(WND)

Shore Patrol: WWII-era submarines tell a story. The World War II National Submarine Memorial-West, at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, is offering itself for a time of reflection.  Several hundred people attended a dignified ceremony this Memorial Day to remember the sacrifices of servicemen and women.  But plans are now being developed to improve the site, possibly with a museum and library, said Ed Barwick, memorial director.  The plans also include efforts to showcase the histories of the 52 submarines lost during World War II. Memorial Day's "tolling the boats" ceremony included only the name of each mourned submarine and the number of lost crew members...
(Press-Telegram)

Beware of Help-a-Vet Mail Scams. Sucker Lists: Memorial Day arrived Monday, followed on Tuesday by a fresh batch of help-a-vet scam letters in my friend Paul’s mailbox.  Paul (not his real name) is a Vietnam veteran, and even though he doesn’t have much to donate, by doing so, he’s gotten on every sucker list in the book.  I’ve checked some of these patriotic appeals and found that many range from outright rackets to those that collect millions but devote little to those who sacrificed so much. Yet the good-hearted Americans who write the checks have no idea that often most of the money goes to expensive fundraising outfits, and to those who draw fat $100,000-plus salaries operating scams with noble-sounding names...
(Independent)

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Twitter mentions of the U.S. Coast Guard spiked last week on news that three US Coast Guard personnel were shot at in Yemen.

According to reports, Yemeni officials first said the three were U.S. Coast Guard members, but the Coast Guard has since disputed that.

No surprise that the news spread quickly via social media sites.

The website OhMyGov! provided some social media analytics saying, "over 17,000 references to the branch were recorded on the social media site according to OhMyGov Analytics, following accounts by CBS and the Associated Press that at least one Coast Guard trainer was injured in Sunday's shooting near the Red Sea port city."

More here.

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Proud military wife defends her photograph of servicewomen breastfeeding in uniform after online attacks. A photograph of servicewomen breastfeeding in public while wearing uniform has ignited a global debate.  The picture shows two mothers, Terran Echegoyen-McCabe and Christina Luna, both in active service, nursing their babies on an Air Force base.  The striking image has seen a flurry of comments, from supporters who say breastfeeding is a 'fundamental right' to another who compared it to 'defecating in uniform'. The photos were taken for the Mom2Mom Breastfeeding Support Group, set up by a military wife and mother-of-three to raise awareness of all women's rights to breastfeed in public...
(Daily Mail)

JRTC homepage gets redesign, launch date scheduled for June 1. The change will be seamless for those wishing to access the homepage. NEC has been working for weeks with the Public Affairs Office to renovate the home page with an eye-catching redesign, reorganized links and up-to-date Army and Fort Polk news headlines.  The home page will feature a Facebook feed (the Fort Polk Guardian's Facebook page) that will allow PAO personnel to keep the community informed of inclement weather and other breaking news in a timely manner -- and as it happens...
(Leesville Daily Leader)

Fort Bliss launches new Facebook page. Fort Bliss families looking to connect with U.S. Army officials now have another way to get their questions answered.  “Tell It To Col D” is a new Facebook Page launched Wednesday to help families learn more about post...
(KFOX14)

Boy, 9, gives away Disney World trip to family of fallen soldier. Brendan Haas earned a prize any young kid would appreciate — an all-expenses paid trip to Disney World. Instead of going, though, the Massachusetts boy gave the vacation to the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.  Haas earned the trip through a trading contest on Facebook he set up to help out a military family. He got the idea from the story of a man who traded up from a red paper clip to a house.  In February, Brendan and his mother Melissa set up the "Soldier for a Soldier" Facebook page in an attempt to trade up from a toy soldier to a Disney trip...
(MSNBC)

WW2 tree carvings and bark grafitti unveil private lives from the past. Chantel Summerfield, 24, is studying the inscriptions engraved into tree trunks by troops during the two World Wars as part of her archaeology PhD.  Often using just a name, initials or date, she traces the military and family history of the soldiers involved to re-create fascinating wartime stories...
(Telegraph)

Hunger Strike of Tunisian Blogger Trigger Wave of Support. Today, the hunger strike of Tunisian blogger and activist Ramzi Bettaib entered its third day. Bettaib has refused food in protest of the confiscation of two of his cameras while reporting on the Thala and Kasserine Martyr’s Trial at the military tribunal in Kef on May 21, 2012.Ramzi conducted a hunger strike once before in 2005, and was imprisoned during the Ben Ali era because he refused to acquiesce to internet censorship restrictions over his cyber shop in Kram...
(tunisialive)

Pakistan to Twitter: 'Yes We Ban!' My friend in Pakistan was unable to tweet this quote on May 20: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and conveniences, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Yes, it was more than 140 characters, but the bigger reason was Pakistan's ban on Twitter...
(Huffington Post)

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The DoD's Armed with Science technology blog which writes about cutting-edge research and development at the Department of Defense, recently mentioned that it will begin funding an Office of Naval Research sponsored project aimed at developing Web applications to help multinational navies police the world’s ocean.

That's right - "Pirates, ye be warned!" the story says.

The International Collaborative Development for Enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness (ICODE MDA) was one of 14 projects selected by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics to receive $1 million awards beginning this fall through the Coalition Warfare Program, which funds international collaborative research efforts.

The ICODE MDA project is a research alliance between ONR and Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific). ONR is partnering with scientists in Chile to build widgets, or Web-based applications, for use by sailors and maritime operators to analyze data and other information to combat pirates, drug smugglers, arms traffickers, illegal fishermen and other nefarious groups.

“A lot of maritime threats occur in developing parts of the world,” said Dr. Augustus Vogel,associate director for Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in ONR-Global’s Chile office. “Our goal is to develop partnerships with countries that have maritime threats to help solve those problems.”

Full story here.

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Blogs rip MSNBC's Chris Hayes on 'heroes'. Conservatives in the blogosphere slammed MSNBC’s Chris Hayes for saying on his show Sunday that he feels “uncomfortable” calling fallen soldiers “heroes.” Hayes apologized for his remarks later Monday...
(Politico)

Veterans History Project collects first-hand stories told by war veterans. It took Don Jakeway 40 years to start talking about the things he experienced fighting in World War II."I put everything away. Most guys do," he said. "My own kids never knew how badly I'd been wounded."
(Newark Advocate)

G.I. Film Festival Dedicated To Service and Sacrifice. Being the military brings with it a very unique set of sacrifices.  It’s not uncommon for the movies to portray the military in ways that some service members may find slightly skewed from their experiences.  The G.I. film festival is dedicated to celebrating the service and sacrifices made by the Armed Forces through the medium of film in a way that reflects more accurately the experience of being in the military...
(DoD Live)

Students fascinated by WWII speakers. E.V. Cain Charter Middle School students circled around World War II veteran Commander Francis Ferry as he shared his war stories — namely co-leading the team that sunk the Japanese warship YAMATO at just 25 years old.  The eighth grade students who are working on their annual heroes project lean in as he talks and ask questions about his medals. In all Ferry has won a Navy Cross, a Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and five Air Medals...
(Auburn Journal)

Your U.S. war stories. We asked readers to share the story of their American war experience. Here are their photos and words dating back to the American Civil War (slightly edited for clarity)....
(USA Today)

Army soldier digs into story of missing World War II pilot. A Fort Campbell soldier has turned his lifelong passion for finding military artifacts into a mission to discover what happened to a young World War II pilot missing since 1945.What started as a hobby for Sgt. 1st Class Danny Keay followed him throughout his career in the U.S. Army, where he currently serves at Fort Campbell, Ky., in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, a unit that dates to World War II...
(Commercial Appeal)

Kenya: #NairobiBlast Rocks Nairobi, Trends on Twitter. An explosion struck one of Nairobi's major roads, Moi Avenue, in Kenya's capital Monday afternoon. Initial investigations suggest that the blast resulted from electric fault in the area. Kenya's Police Commissioner has refuted rumors of bomb attacks linked to Al-Shabaab...
(Global Voices Online)

How Do Social Networks Get Hacked? A Lulzsec Case Study. How do social networking sites get attacked by hackers? What methods are used?  Why are attacks successful? What can be done to improve security on social networks?  These are just some of the questions that are addressed in a recently-published Hacker Intelligence Report by Imperva. The report’s executive summary offers an intriguing glimpse into the hacktivist world that threatens almost every online service...
(GovTech)

Veterans networking site focuses on jobs. After spending time serving their country, many veterans face difficulty finding a job and adjusting to normal life back at home. A new social networking site aims to help connect veterans with peers and employers. Entrepreneur Jonathan Lunardi started Veteran Central after hearing the story of former Navy officer Michael Barrett...
(WTOP)

Diary entries show the absurdities of war. The faded black-and-white photo from World War II shows a smiling Army radioman Lawrence Harris sprawled on the ground on a Pacific island, cigar in hand.  Not in the picture, but on the other end of the radio line, was Frank Parks, Harris’ foxhole buddy for four  years...
(Fredericksburg.com)

'Like' this: Salutes to troops to flood Facebook feeds. Salutes to troops past and present will be showing up every few seconds, this weekend, if the pace of posting is anything like Memorial Day 2011. Experts and everyday Facebook users say the social media Goliath has rearranged our thinking of how to mark this and every other holiday...
(USA Today)

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Blackfive's Laughing Wolf posted a link to a New York Times story titled, "As Memorial Day Nears, a Single Image That Continues to Haunt". 

If you haven't read this story yet and seen the photo, I encourage you to do so this Memorial Day.

Lily Burana writes, "In the run-up to every Memorial Day weekend, for the past several years, a certain photo takes top spot in those most circulated among my fellow military and veteran wives. On blogs, on social media sites, it is shared and “liked” over and over. Taken by the photographer Todd Heisler from his 2005 award-winning series for The Rocky Mountain News, “Jim Comes Home”  — which documents the return and burial of Second Lt. Jim Cathey of the Marines, who lost his life in Iraq — the photo shows his pregnant widow, Katherine, lying on an air mattress in front of his coffin. She’s staring at her laptop, listening to songs that remind her of Jim. Her expression is vacant, her grief almost palpable."

Full story here.

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Holland dad deployed to Afghanistan uses Facebook to get birthday message to son. Holland Army National Guard Spc. Benjamin Brockington promised his soon-to-be-7-year-old son, Malachi, he would call to say “happy birthday” this week. Malachi turned 7 Thursday.  Brockington of Holland has been deployed since September to Afghanistan with Bravo Troop 1st Squadron 126 Cavalry Regiment based out of the Manistee Armory.  Then, as often happens in war, the unforeseen changed his plans.  A barracks fire destroyed the belongings and personal communications equipment of Brockington and his unit...
(hollandsentinel)

DoD contractor admits attacks on journalists. The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted Thursday that he was behind a series of websites used to discredit two USA Today journalists who had reported on the contractor.  The online “misinformation campaign,” first reported last month, has raised questions about whether the Pentagon or its contractors had turned its propaganda operations against U.S. citizens. But Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries and its former president, said he was responsible for the online activity and was operating independent of the company or the Pentagon...
(Army Times)

‘Honor Flight' documentary tells story of effort to send remaining WWII veterans to National Memorial. A powerful forthcoming documentary tells the story of the "Stars and Strips Honor Flights" project, in which a nonprofit group sends World War II veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit the National World War II Memorial and pay respects at Arlington National Cemetery.  The film follows the plight of Honor Flight volunteers in Wisconsin who are working to send every local veteran to the memorial at no cost to them.  About 1,000 veterans from the war die each day on average, so the group's organizers see the effort as a race against the clock...
(ABC News)

Memories of war captured on video. Frank Rines Jr. sat in a studio at the Morse Institute Library. Lights glared and the camera rolled. Questions flowed, and soon Rines, better known by his buddies as Bud, was in a time machine, transported across oceans and decades.  Wearing a sweater and jacket, Rines, 92, a chief radio officer in the US Merchant Marine during World War II, looked quite comfortable, considering the task.  He was being asked, as one of the recent contributors to the Natick Veterans Oral History Project, to recall the details of his service over some 22 voyages, including about 15 “lucky crossings’’ of the Atlantic Ocean when it was infested with German U-boats...
(Boston.com)

Wartime story wins award. A Wartime diary and a lot of hard work have turned the tales of an unknown soldier into an award-winning children's book.  Nice Day For a War: Adventures Of An Average Kiwi Soldier in World War I is by comedian Matt Elliott and cartoonist Chris Slane and is a combination of comic strips, photos and text.  It is based on the diary Mr Elliott's grandfather Cyril wrote while serving in Europe.  It has been named book of the year at the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards...
(Auckland NOW)

BEWARE: Scammers Using Military for Love Scam. 3 On Your Side has exposed an Internet scam which uses our military personnel to bait victims. This one is really going to make you angry.  Our military men and women serving overseas have plenty to be concerned about, but now they have to worry about scammers using their identities in order to rip them off.  "I don't really meet a lot of people that I really want to go out with and I really don't have a lot of guys running their grocery carts into mine," Lisa Kiser said.  Kiser said the dating world is tough so she decided to take a new chance at love...
(azfamily.com)

How Lulzsec cracked MilitarySingles.com. A military dating site attacked by hackers in March had serious security flaws, a report has found.  MilitarySingles.com, whose users' details were dumped online by Lulzsec hacktivists, failed to prevent the upload of malicious user content and did not properly encrypt its password database, according to data security company Imperva.  The report concludes that user-generated content is not just the lifeblood of the modern internet but also its Achilles' heel...
(TechRadar)

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The crew at Ranger Up who won the 2012 Best U.S. Army blog for The Rhino Den, are teaming up with USA Rugby 7s 2012 Collegiate Rugby Championship to provide the “Official” tail-gate party.

There are free tickets for military personnel (past and present).

Here are the details if you're interested:

Ranger Up and American Sin Bin have teamed up with the  USA Rugby  7s 2012 Collegiate Rugby Championship to provide the “Official” tail-gate party. In turn, we have acquired a ton of tickets to the event, procured enough food, drink and booze to sustain the Ranger Up Nation and have our travel plans in place.  So what do you need to do?

Email trex@rangerup.com with your full name and email addresses for each recipient of the people in your party for the tickets.  We only ask that one member of the party be either active duty or a veteran, pretty simple.  We have to account for the tickets and won’t be able to freely hand them out at the event so it is imperative that you email now!

Get to Philadelphia and party with us!

Here are the specifics:

Dates: 2-3 June (but we’ll be there partying out and about in Philly starting Thursday night)

Time: 9am until the kegs run dry and we can no longer stand!

Location: PPL Stadium, 1 Stadium Drive, Chester, PA 19013 (Chester is a Suburb of Philadelphia)

Uniform: Rock out in your Ranger Up or American Sin Bin apparel.  Don’t have any? Shame on you, but no worries, we will have our mobile store available for you to purchase the latest American Sin Bin T-shirts.

For more details and updates, go here.

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RomanceScam.com, a site dedicated to fighting Nigerian and Russian romance scammers, has published emails, instant messages and photographs they received from someone claiming to be Gen. James Mattis, reports Marine Corps Times.

The Mattis case likely will be transferred to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Typically, these scams get shut down when officials identify the source via the scammer’s Internet protocol — or IP — address.

Marine Corps Times contacted NCIS, but the agency was unable to provide additional information about its procedures for addressing such crimes.

The messages with Mattis’ name on them originated from an IP address in the West African country of Ghana. The wannabe general leads his victims to believe he’s deployed in Afghanistan. After exchanging romantic messages about engagement rings and future travels he’d like to take together, the scammer starts asking for money, directing the mark to send wire transfers to a “sergeant” in Ghana, who will tote the funds to Afghanistan.

Here's a link to the thread on the RomanceScam.com forum from way back in April.

I quickly scanned the thread and posted a copy of one of the fake emails written by the scam artist posing as Gen. Mattis.

Re: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

FROM: General James Mattis
TO:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Love,

Thanks for the forwarded message from the company#Have you contacted the attorney as instructed?

Keep me posted my love

I can't wait to kiss you and put my hands around you

General James Mattis

Read the full news story here.

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Recruiting 140 characters at a time: terrorists take to social media. How do you incite terrorism in 140 characters or less? With ease, according to Australia's counter-terrorism ambassador Bill Paterson who says Twitter, Facebook and other social media networking sites are hotbeds for terrorist activity.  Mr Paterson is in Brisbane to raise awareness of the increasing use of social media and computer technologies by terrorist outfits to radicalise and recruit users...
(Brisbane Times)

Man uncovers 13 tombstones buried in backyard. A Memphis man was shocked to find more than one dozen tombstones in his backyard. Now, he is making it his mission to find the families to which they belong.  Jason Blackburn unearthed 13 headstones in his backyard this weekend.  It all began when he decided to landscape the area.  "They were buried in the dirt," explained Blackburn.  He first noticed a number engraved in the corner of a white slab of stone buried behind his Overton Park area home.  When he turned it over, he realized it was a tombstone.  "I followed it around and found 13 were around the edge of the backyard," he said.  His mind started reeling... 
(WMC-TV)

Researcher: Alleged breach of dating site shows flaws in military’s social media policies. The apparent hack of a military online dating website suggests the need for U.S. defense personnel to disguise their identities on social networks, says a computer researcher who studied the alleged penetration.  An affiliate of the LulzSec hacker activist sect on March 25 claimed to have compromised militarysingles.com and published the names, email addresses and passwords for 170,937 of the site’s members, including the work emails of Army and Navy personnel. An individual purporting to be militarysingles.com’s site administrator posted a denial of the attack on an online bulletin board that reports data breaches...
(NextGov)

Pakistan to Twitter: ‘Yes we ban’. My friend in Pakistan was unable to tweet this quote on May 20th: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and conveniences, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Yes, it was over 140 characters but the bigger reason was Pakistan’s ban on Twitter.  Why was the popular site banned? Because social media activists were tweeting to promote a Facebook page titled, “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”
(Washington Post)

'Good life' for 104-year-old female World War II veteran. There's a 104-year-old military veteran living in our area. Not a man - as you might expect - but a woman.  She will sit among the honored guests Monday when they commemorate Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery.  "I've had a good life," says Cornie McGrath, reflecting on her 104 years from her rocking chair in Annandale, Va. "Just good genes, I guess."  She was raised on a farm in Kentucky. One of her teachers down at the one-room schoolhouse was Earle Combs...
(MyFoxDC)

Get Garcia: Military Wife Says Craigslist Landscaper Scammed Her Out of $1,000. From construction to tree trimming, California laws are meant to protect consumers from unscrupulous contractors, but the laws don’t always work. Just ask Regina Aleman.  Aleman and her three young children wanted to move to 29 Palms Military Base to be with her husband, Marine Sergeant Christopher Aleman. But first, Regina needed the backyard of their house in Upland landscaped so she could rent it...
(NBC Los Angeles)

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Captain Carroll “Lex” Lefon, USN (ret), better known as Lex on the internet for his military blog Neptunus Lex, was killed in a jet crash in early March when his F-21 Kfir crashed at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada.

According to the Daily Press, "Airborne Tactical Advantage Company, a Newport News based defense contractor, said it has temporarily suspended flights after a second crash involving one of its pilots in the past two months. On Friday, Thomas "T.C." Bennett, was killed in a plane crash near Naval Base Ventura County, Calif. Bennett was 57."

"No words can express the utter and complete shock the company is in, losing two pilots in less than 100 days in completely un-related accidents, in different aircraft, in different weather conditions and in different locations," ATAC told the Daily Press.

Lefon was laid to rest in late March.

Since first launching his military blog in the early 2000s, the blog had over 5 million unique visitors and logged over 10 million page views.

Before the Neptunus Lex website was taken offline, thousands of online tributes and condolences had been left on an Open Thread.

Read the full news story here.

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Journalism students train as embedded journalists for the Army at Fort Bliss, Texas. Riding in a military Stryker with a group of soldiers was not something that Kristian Hernandez imaged he would ever be doing as a college journalism student.  But on the morning of May 8, he and several other UTEP students experienced what it is like to be an embedded reporter with the military, as part of a training program on Ft. Bliss designed to train soldiers who will be deployed to Afghanistan later this year...
(Borderzine)

Army wants to train on its own private Internet. The U.S. Army wants to build a customizable, on-the-fly Web portal that mimics the Internet in order to conduct scenario-based social media training. Conceived as almost a fake Internet, the password-protected U.S. Army North Exercise Media Web Portal would support training events ranging from 20 users at a single site to national, multivenue events for 1,200 users, with up to 1,000 of them on the site simultaneously, according to a request for information submitted by Army Contracting Command New Jersey on behalf of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)...
(GCN)

General’s Blog Entry Reignites Army Suicide Debate. Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard commands Fort Bliss, one the nation’s largest Army bases, so his blunt comments about suicide has raised eyebrows throughout the military. “I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act,” he wrote on his official blog recently. “I am personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us.”  The posting was subsequently scrubbed from the Fort Bliss website, but the comments are adding new fuel to a contentious debate about whether the record numbers of troops who are taking their own lives are acting out of weakness and selfishness or because of legitimate cases of depression and other psychological traumas...
(National Journal)

Virtual Terrorism: Al Qaeda Video Calls for 'Electronic Jihad'. Al Qaeda may be turning its destructive attention to cyber-warfare against the United States. In a chilling video, an al Qaeda operative calls for "electronic jihad" against the United States, and compares vulnerabilities in vital American computer networks to the flaws in aviation security before the 9/11 attack.  The al Qaeda video calls upon the "covert mujahidin" to launch cyber attacks against the U.S. networks of both government and critical infrastructure, including the electric grid. The video was obtained by the FBI last year, and released today by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs...
(ABC News)

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According to a press release, “Memorial Day” was named Best Narrative Feature at GI Film Festival's "Best of the Festival" film awards ceremony Sunday night in Washington, D.C.

"An original screenplay by Marc Conklin, MEMORIAL DAY is about a 13-year-old boy who discovers his grandfather's (James Cromwell / THE ARTIST, BABE) World War II footlocker on Memorial Day. Though reluctant to talk about the war, Cromwell's character Bud, strikes a deal with his grandson to pick any three objects inside, and he'll tell him the stories behind each one. As we flash back to Bud's WWII experiences, we also flash forward to Kyle's future as a soldier in Iraq, where he experiences friendships, loss and moral dilemmas that parallel his grandfather's--bringing a new meaning to that day on the porch."

If you want to learn about the film, visit the official website on memorialdayfilm.com.

Read the full press release here.

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Military Addresses Double-Edged Sword Of Troops On Social Media. Inside a plywood shack at a combat outpost in Marjah, in Afghanistan's Helmand province, three Marines sit before a bank of computers provided by the military to help keep up morale. The dingy outpost is made up of a collection of tents where troops live among swarms of flies and the constant hum of generators. One Marine talks with his wife on Skype and another is on Facebook. The sites allow troops to keep in touch with their families, but commanders in Afghanistan have mixed feelings about them. Troops' constant access to social media has led to headaches for the military, including the inadvertent release of the names of American dead before families are officially notified, as well as the release of gruesome pictures of war dead to the American public...
(KETR)

Pakistan Blocks Access to Twitter Over Cartoon Contest. The Pakistani government blocked access to the social networking service Twitter for much of Sunday, after publicly holding Twitter responsible for promoting what it described as a blasphemous cartoon contest taking place on Facebook, officials said. The restoration of Twitter service late in the evening was as sudden as its suspension earlier in the day. No official statement or explanation was given for an act that some rights campaigners saw as much as a warning shot at the media and public expression as a reaction to controversial content...
(The New York Times)

Social Media and Suicide Prevention. What would you do if a Facebook friend updated that they were depressed and thinking of ending their life? What would you do if you observed a group of individuals bullying another person on a social media site? Would your actions be the same if the person was a friend or a complete stranger? Your answers to these questions may have important implications for how these scenarios turn out. Fortunately, there are resources in social media to help you reduce the risk for suicidal behavior and to get help...
(Armed With Science)

Navy SEAL recounts Iraq war in new book. Personal Story" segment tonight, you may know the name Marcus Luttrell. He's the Navy SEAL who wrote the big best-seller, "Long Survivor," which chronicled the brutal shootout in Afghanistan.  Well, now Mr. Luttrell has a new book called "Service: A Navy SEAL at War." It's about Iraq. He joins from us Dallas tonight. First of all, what did you do in Iraq, Marcus?
(Fox News)

Books tell stories of WWII bombardiers. When I read the obituary for Gordon Manuel this spring in the Bangor Daily News, it really wasn’t his years as a television newsman here that came to my mind first. Rather it was the 1946 book “70,000 to 1,” which I read in the 1960s.  Written by Quentin Reynolds, the book was the story of Manuel’s dad, Lt. Gordon R. Manuel, a bombardier whose airplane was shot down over the Pacific in World War II. He survived with the help of “friendly locals” in the area and eventually met up with two other airmen who had been shot down before the three were rescued in 1944. Some 6,000 acres in Linneus in Aroostook County are named the Lt. Gordon Manuel Wildlife Management Area...
(Bangor Daily News)

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Leavenworth Times has posted a story that discusses how Ryaja Johnson Rhone, a former Captain in the United States Air Force, who deployed in 2007 to Manas Air Base, published a book about the experience.

"While deployed, I kept a daily journal in which I emailed weekly to family, friends and co-workers as a means to stay in touch", Rhone told the Leavenworth Times.

She goes on to say, “I received feedback that my entries were entertaining, informative, and exciting. I did not anticipate my everyday life would have such a powerful impact on numerous lives, in various ways. I believe God used my journal to inspire and connect. At the urging of family and friends, I turned my deployment journal, entitled “What’s Happening Now,” into a book, Chronicles of an Airman: Discovering Purpose 6,500 Miles from Home.”

You can read the full story here.

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Congratulations to all the finalists and winners in the 2012 Milbloggies.

Many thanks to everyone who submitted nominations and voted. 

Also, a Big Thank You to the staff at Military.com who helped make this year’s awards a success.

The winners were announced at last week’s Milbloggies ceremony during the Milblog Conference.

If you haven't received your website badge, please email me at milblogging@gmail.com.

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How Twitter mapped a ‘covert’ US drone operation in Yemen. Though the hour was late, Yemen’s social media was still very much awake. A US drone’s missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants. The attack – like all other US drone strikes outside warzones – was supposed to be clandestine. Yet within minutes Sanaa-based lawyer Haykal Bafana was reporting the strike in almost-realtime. Just after 1am on May 17 he posted the following on Twitter...
(The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

Seniors Tell War Stories For Book Project. When two people with talents in writing and computers decided to work on a joint project, “Stories of World War II” was the result.  Ann Parr, project coordinator and Marla Elmquist, project tech director, brought together seniors who could tell stories of 1940s US history and middle school students to provide computer support. Twenty senior citizens from McPherson County met with the students during 2011 and wrote about their personal World War II experiences.  The stories range from veterans to factory workers to those who managed the home front during the war. The students scanned images and formatted text until it was ready for publication. Combining seniors’ historical experiences and students’ natural curiosity has made for a book that is sure to be cherished and appreciated by many...
(KSALlink)

‘Stories of courage and inspiration’. Mike Allen comes from a military family, but the 48-year-old Vienna man and Microsoft executive never served.  But that hasn’t stopped him from making a difference in the lives of returning soldiers and their families.  Allen, along with partner and film producer Brad Keller of Dallas, Texas, recently founded the nonprofit organization Homefront Heroes, which since late 2010 has been producing short documentaries detailing the stories of wounded soldiers and their families...
(FairfaxTimes)

Pentagon Channel Introduces Movie Night to Programming. The Pentagon Channel has teamed up with the annual GI Film Festival to produce a movie night for its viewers in a two-hour block of feature and short films each week, Scott Howe, the channel’s operations manager, announced.  The first feature film on “The GI Film Festival on the Pentagon Channel” will be “Flag of My Father,” with William Devane and Tom Schneider, at 8 p.m. EDT tomorrow.  “This is different than anything you’ve ever seen on the Pentagon Channel before,” Howe said. “We have had individual documentary feature films, historical docudramas combining old footage with recreations, but we’ve never had narrative drama with scripts and actors with a blend of drama and news.”
(Department of Defense)

'Reporter's Privilege' Under Fire From Obama Administration Amid Broader War On Leaks. The Obama administration Friday morning continued its headlong attack on the right of reporters to protect their confidential sources in leak investigations.  Before a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a Department of Justice lawyer argued that New York Times reporter James Risen should be forced to testify in the trial of former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling, who is charged with leaking classified information to Risen about a botched plot against the Iranian government.  Rather than arguing the specifics of the case, DOJ appellate lawyer Robert A. Parker asserted that there is no reporter's privilege when a journalist receives an illegal leak of national security secrets...
(Huffington Post)

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If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can read U.S. Marine veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, Dakota Meyer’s blog called Action Not Words @ http://dakotalmeyer.blogspot.com/.

Meyer has been actively tweeting since last year using the handle @Dakota_Meyer and has been blogging for a few months since announcing the launch of the website back in March.

I wrote about his Twitter account and blog at the time they went online and he shares a lot of things including his struggles.

In his latest blog post entitled Struggle, Meyer writes, “So, I have to say this week was by far one of the hardest weeks of my life...They say time heals all wounds, but for me, it seems that the longer I wait and the more time that has passed, the harder it gets.  Marines are supposed to be the toughest men on Earth, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm struggling.  This week was especially hard because Tuesday was the 8th of the month.  My guys were killed on the 8th of September, 2009.  I'll admit that this week was filled with lots of tears, bad days and bad thoughts.”

To follow Dakota Meyer on Twitter go here.

To keep up with his story through his blog, go here.

Image Source: Defense.gov

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