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)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ 1 comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

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

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

U.S. Army soldier from Round Rock found dead in Afghanistan. The United States Army is reporting the death of an Army specialist from Round Rock from over the weekend.  Alex Hernandez, 21, was found unresponsive in his room in Kandahar Province of Afghanistan Saturday.  Earlier the same day, Hernandez posted a message on Facebook which said, in part, “To everyone who ever knew me, I hope the best for you. To my family, I love you always and even though I never showed it , ife is worth every precious second. I thought I’d be stronger but I can’t deal anymore,” said Hernandez...
(KVUE)

Local veterans record war stories in studio. Close to two dozen World War II veterans told their old war stories into a studio microphone. They met at the American Sound Studios in Bakersfield where the Bakersfield College drum line honored them with a cadence.  "I carried supplies for the front line," said Elwon Williams, a truck driver in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1943. "That was really interesting for me." He will be joining other veterans for the first Honor Flight from Kern County to the Nation's Capitol in less than two weeks...
(KGET)

Bennigan's Employee Honors Fallen Soldier With Facebook Memorial. Hannah Hobbs, an employee of Bennigan's Borger, TX restaurant, has recently sparked the national restaurant chain to create awareness and help raise funds for the families of U.S. military personnel and wounded warriors. During the month of May, Bennigan's Restaurants will be launching a social media effort on its Facebook page entitled the "Wall of Heroes," to pay tribute to our servicemen and women. Hobbs recently served a guest who ordered a beer for his friend who was a fallen comrade...
(MarketWatch)

Slain journalist Marie Colvin remembered in London. Leading politicians and journalists gathered in London on Wednesday to pay tribute to slain war correspondent Marie Colvin, a woman they remembered as fearless, dedicated and kind.  Colvin, 56, was killed on Feb. 22 when army shelling struck the building that served as a makeshift media center in the Syrian city of Homs. She worked for the Sunday Times of London...
(USA TODAY)

Blogger Shines Light on U.S. Shadow War in East Africa. An innocuous-seeming U.S. Air Force press release. A serendipitous satellite image in Google Earth. Snapshots from a photographer on assignment at a Spanish air base. The crash of an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber in the United Arab Emirates. These are some of the fragments of information that Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti has assembled to reveal the best picture yet of the Pentagon’s secretive war in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa... 
(Wired)

Iraq war veteran uses rap to treat his PTSD. On one of the many days Leo Dunson wanted to die, the Iraq veteran put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The loaded weapon misfired. For the troubled former soldier, it was another inexplicable failure, like his divorce or inability to make friends after returning from the war.  In a Las Vegas recording studio, Dunson rapped about his life: "What's wrong with me? Got PTSD. These pills ain't working, man, I still can't think."
(USA TODAY)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

Via Tech. Sgt. Karen Tomasik, Air Force Public Affairs Agency

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO -- LACKLAND, Texas (AFNS) -- Airmen and families have a new resource at their fingertips with the recent release of an updated and revised social media guide by the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in San Antonio, Texas.

The guide features sections geared toward all Total Force members and their families as well as Air Force leaders. It highlights topics including using social media effectively, security awareness, social media platforms, public affairs programs and social media policy among others.

"Our social media team has made great strides in updating this guide," said Larry Clavette, Air Force Public Affairs Agency director. "Airmen and families will see a lot of information they can apply to their social networking practices, whether they've been using social media for years or are just coming onboard with the technology."

While information on social media has been around for several years, the types of platforms people use evolve and new ones start up nearly every day. No matter which social media platform you use, and whether you use social media personally or professionally, many basic principles apply.

Operations security ranks first and foremost in the minds of many military members, but the casual nature of social media can easily lead to inadvertent sharing of sensitive personal information via personal profiles and accounts. Everyone should make sure they share personal information only with people they trust and understand that no matter how secure they set up their own accounts friends can unintentionally share details about their lives with people who may have malicious intentions.

Though the desire to protect personal information is one reason people may not join social media platforms, unfamiliarity with the platforms is another commonly cited reason for staying out of the social media arena.

"By now, many people are already using social media so this guide doesn't focus on how to set up new personal accounts," said Capt. Amber Millerchip, the deputy director of public communications at AFPAA. "Instead, we focused on how to communicate more effectively on some of the most commonly used social media platforms. We hope everyone finds something in the guide they can use in their personal or professional communications on these platforms."

Full story and link to Air Force social media guide here.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

Deployed unit returns home from Afghanistan and shares frontline experiences on ArmyStrongStories.com. During a year-long deployment, a group of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, “Task Force Duke,” dedicated themselves to sharing their experiences bringing security and stability to the Khowst and Paktya provinces in Afghanistan. They did this on Army Strong Stories – the U.S. Army's premier blog and story-sharing program where every soldier is invited to blog about his or her day-to-day life in the Army.  Based out of Fort Knox, Task Force Duke was made up of soldiers from a wide array of branches including public affairs officers, field artillery specialists, infantrymen, medical specialists and many more...
(dvids)

MilBlogger’s Conference – The Impact of Defense Budget Cuts. I attended the MilBlogger’s Conf in Arlington on May 12. It turned out to be a very interesting event. They were focused on military personnel, military spouses, and military issues. The attendees were animated, it was a relaxed atmosphere and it was a family-like environment. Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) was the keynote speaker. He exhorted the audience to understand that they are making a difference. Bloggers that have military experience and connections may not know all the answers, but they are among the few folks asking the right questions...
(Security Debrief)

CamoConnect links military family, friends. The next social networking site isn't coming from some Harvard genius in Silicon Valley; it was started by a 20-year-old college student who missed her boyfriend.  Allee Campbell was sitting in church two months after the deployment of her Marine boyfriend, listening to the priest give a sermon on the greater good and how to help others – and the idea just came to her: A Facebook website where military loved ones can connect online - CamoConnect.com...
(WAFF)

Jerry Davich: War diary to feed the mind, soul and body. The makeshift diary is more than six decades old, yet still in remarkably good shape.  It’s made from a cardboard box and brown paper bag pages, strung together with leftover string and a thread of hope. “Notice: Entries in the log are for my own personal use. If you don’t like them, (expletive) you,” wrote its World War II author, Doyle W. Waggoner, a U.S. Navy ordnance specialist who was originally from Shreveport, La...
(Post-Tribune)

Army Corps of Engineers in Center of Twitter Gossip. The Army Corps of Engineers may not be on the minds of many Americans right now, but they were on the minds of thousands of Twitter users last week. According to OhMyGov Analytics, the agency experienced an increase of Twitter mentions for the period May 5 to May 11, amounting to 1,406 references to the Corps of Engineers — an elevation of 65.4 percent from the previous week. The sudden spotlight on the Corps came amid opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to approve the corps' plan to rubber stamp the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a would-be mechanism which would allow the US to pump synthetic crude oil from Alberta, Canada to mult...
(OhMyGov)

[ 1 comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

What were supposed to be sexy photos for her husband's eyes only also turned up online on Facebook.

According to WRAL.com, "A Fayetteville-area mother paid for a private boudoir photo shoot at her home. It was an anniversary gift for her deployed husband. She purchased a deal from Groupon for $65."

However, when her husband who is deployed went online to learn more about the photographer, he found the very same photos on her Facebook page. 

"The photos were among dozens of pictures of other women in lingerie."

If you're planning to do the same for your military spouse, you may want to read this story first.

Full story here.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

A couple weeks back I wrote about professional golfer Lexi Thompson looking for a date for her prom taking place on May 18th.

Well, she's announced the winner.

Her choice according to ESPN:

United States Marine Corps wounded warrior and Purple Heart recipient Lance Corporal Mark Scott.

Full story here.

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

Hollywood Stars and 42 Film Screenings Mark Sixth Annual GI Film Festival, May 14 - 20, 2012, in Washington, DC. The award-winning GI Film Festival (GIFF), the nation's only military-themed film festival, is pleased to announce the full schedule of events for the 2012 event, which will feature premiere military film screenings, celebrity appearances, red carpet parties and more. The festival will take place Monday, May 14 through Sunday, May 20, 2012 in Washington, DC. For ticketing information and the program schedule, visit www.gifilmfestival.com . The 6th annual GIFF film line-up offers 42 film screenings representing every branch of the military and spanning five wars. Over the course of the six-day event, the festival will offer 23 narrative films and 19 documentaries covering every genre conceivable - from action and adventure to drama and romance. And with at least a dozen World Premiere screenings, GIFF offers plenty of opportunities to discover emerging directors, writers, producers and actors. GIFF is proud to welcome many promising and established military veteran filmmakers as well...
(MarketWatch Press Release)

G.I. Film Festival recalls history's great war movies. Do you love the smell of napalm in the morning? This week brings a special way to honor the military as we march toward Memorial Day.  The G.I. Film Festival kicks off Monday and runs through Sunday, with movies being shown at various locations around the District.  The films focus on the sacrifices of the military, including "Doughboy" (2012), which features real-life vets sharing thoughts on patriotism, freedom, and the attitudes of today's youth...
(WTOP)

Homefront Heroes Takes Compelling Wounded Warrior Stories to GI Film Festival. For those not directly connected with an active-duty military person or a veteran, you often only hear their stories vaguely, or in passing. Now, two very different people have created Homefront Heroes to deliver veterans' stories to you in a very compelling, human way.  Mike Allen, a Microsoft executive in their public sector division, and Brad Keller, a producer and film distributor, live 2,000 miles apart. Despite the differences in their jobs and location, however, they have teamed up to commit their free time to telling the stories of the wounded warrior community...
(HuffingtonPost)

'Army Wives' actors coming to GI Film Festival. The GI Film Festival is taking place this week with former presidential candidate Ross Perot kicking things off Monday and cast members of the show "Army Wives" coming to town this weekend. Actress Sally Pressman, who plays army wife Roxie LeBlanc, and actor Brian McNamara, who plays Major Gen. Michael Holden, will be on hand at an event Saturday at 7 p.m. at the U.S. Navy Memorial to accept the "GI Family Award" on behalf of the entire cast of the Lifetime show...
(Washington Examiner)

D.C.'s Unique GI Film Festival Brings Our Warriors Close to Us. The GI Film Festival (GIFF), the nation’s only military film festival, begins Tuesday, May 15, and runs through Sunday, May 20. The festival of "Reel Stories, Real Heroes" commemorates, depicts and celebrates those of our citizenry who go to war in defense of our nation and of us. One big attraction will the May 17 advance screening of the action movie, "Battleship."
(Georgetowner)

[ Add comment ]   |  [ 0 trackbacks ]   |  permalink  |  Discussion  |  Digg this  |  Add to del.icio.us

---

<< <Back | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | Next> >>