tagged w/ Air Force
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These are the sickos that are going to be your local police and law enforcement officials when they are done with their tours of duty killing Arab Muslims and Christians.
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The Air Force has launched an investigation into a controversial photo that shows several non-commissioned officers posing with an open casket, in which a fellow airman poses with a noose around his neck and chains over his body.
The Air Force Times received a copy of the photo over email, which includes the caption, "Da Dumpt, Da Dumpt …. Sucks 2 Be U." The casket is similar to those used to transport deceased U.S. soldiers home from the battlefield.
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told the paper that investigators were mounting an inquiry of the grief the image might cause for families of fallen service members. "We take this matter seriously. [Air Education and Training Command] has initiated a commander directed investigation," Donley said in a statement.
"Such behavior is not consistent with our core values, and it is not representative of the Airmen I know. It saddens me that this may cause additional grief to the families of our fallen warriors."These are the sickos that are going to be your local police and law enforcement... more
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CNN...
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General: Ashes from service members' remains went to landfill
From Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
updated 10:07 PM EST, Wed November 9, 2011
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The mortuary at Dover Air Force Base handles the nation's war dead. Some remains were dumped in landfills, a general says.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The practice was stopped in 2008; ashes from partial remains are now disposed of at sea
An Air Force official emphasizes the remains were 'parts of bone and other DNA material'
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(CNN) -- The ashes of cremated body parts from some of the nation's war dead were dumped in landfills until 2008, unbeknownst to their survivors, an Air Force general acknowledged Wednesday.
The practice was stopped, and remains from cremated body parts now are disposed of at sea, Air Force Chief of Public Affairs Brig. Gen. Les Kodlick said.
The landfill disposal of the ashes was first reported in The Washington Post.
Kodlick issued a statement describing instances prior to 2008 when families had authorized portions of remains to be disposed of. Another Air Force official, speaking on background, emphasized that these situations did not involve bodies but "parts of bone and other DNA material."
Military escorts accompanied the remains to a crematorium near Dover Air Force Base Mortuary, which processes remains of service members killed overseas, the statement said.
After cremation, the ashes were escorted back to Dover, Kodlick said, and then turned over to a contractor "for further incineration and disposition in accordance with medical disposition."
"The common practice was that any residual matter remaining after incineration was disposed of by the contractor in a landfill," Kodlick said.
"We could have done it better," he said.
The Air Force official speaking on background emphasized that families had authorized disposal of those remains, but did not know the ashes would be put in a landfill.
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General: Ashes from service members' remains went to landfill... more
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"We modeled the controller after the PlayStation because that's what these eighteen-, nineteen-year-old Marines have been playing with pretty much all of their lives.""We modeled the controller after the PlayStation because that's what these... more
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Cabal
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4 months ago
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Here is a talented bunch in our military - talented military band cover's Adele's hit single, 'Rolling In The Deep'.
The singer is awesome. No information on who the singer is... if you know, post a comment below.
Update: the singer is SSG Angie Johnson. Originally from St. Louis, MO. Pride of Ritenour High School. You are awesome, Angie!Here is a talented bunch in our military - talented military band cover's... more
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In this scene from "4th and Forever" episode "There's No Tomorrow," a slightly nervous Dabness sits down with team secretary Starr Scott and reveals that he is going to attend the Air Force Academy. He received offers from Ivy League schools, but the Air Force Academy was the only school offering him a scholarship, salary, and the option to play football.
"4th and Forever"" chronicles the 2010 football season of Long Beach Polytechnic High School, touted by Sports Illustrated as the "Sports School of the Century" and boasts the largest roster of high school players who have gone on to the NFL. After decades of success, Poly had a down year in 2009. They had their worst season in 15 years and lost to local rival Lakewood for the first time in over 25 years. After years of being pegged as "the team to beat," the aura of invincibility is gone. The players are worried that their hopes for a college scholarship have dimmed. The clock is ticking and the question is: Can Head Football Coach Raul Lara pull the team together for one more season of greatness? And, can the players avoid the temptations of the street, succeed in the classroom, and emerge victorious on the field?
Tune in Thursdays at 9/8c for all-new episodes of "4th and Forever."
For more, go to http://current.com/4thandForever
Current Media, the Peabody-and Emmy Award-winning television and online network founded in 2005 by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, engages viewers with smart, provocative and timely programming -stories that no one else is telling in ways that no one else is telling them. Current's programming shines a light where others won't dare and boldly explores important subjects -- opening minds, sparking conversations and forming deep connections with its viewers. The channel's audience is comprised of affluent, curious, social and connected adults who crave the kind of entertaining, enlightening, witty and informative programming found on Current's TV and online properties. Current is now available via cable and satellite TV in 75 million households worldwide - 60 million households in the US - through distribution partners Comcast (Channel 107); Time Warner ; DirecTV (Channel 358 nationwide); Dish Network (Channel 196 nationwide); Verizon and AT&T. In the UK and Ireland, Current is available on BSkyB (Channel 183) and Virgin Media (Channel 155), and in Italy, Current is available on Sky Italia (Channel 130). Viewers can also find Current online at http://www.current.com.In this scene from "4th and Forever" episode "There's No... more
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In this scene from "4th and Forever" episode "We're Not Finished, Yet" Devin meets with military recruiter SFC Felix Quintero to discuss ways to pay for college. Devin did not receive a football scholarship and is considering the on-campus ROTC, where he can begin his service while still in school as a pathway to a military scholarship.
"4th and Forever"" chronicles the 2010 football season of Long Beach Polytechnic High School, touted by Sports Illustrated as the "Sports School of the Century" and boasts the largest roster of high school players who have gone on to the NFL. After decades of success, Poly had a down year in 2009. They had their worst season in 15 years and lost to local rival Lakewood for the first time in over 25 years. After years of being pegged as "the team to beat," the aura of invincibility is gone. The players are worried that their hopes for a college scholarship have dimmed. The clock is ticking and the question is: Can Head Football Coach Raul Lara pull the team together for one more season of greatness? And, can the players avoid the temptations of the street, succeed in the classroom, and emerge victorious on the field?
Tune in Thursdays at 9/8c for all-new episodes of "4th and Forever."
For more, go to http://current.com/4thandForever
Current Media, the Peabody-and Emmy Award-winning television and online network founded in 2005 by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, engages viewers with smart, provocative and timely programming -stories that no one else is telling in ways that no one else is telling them. Current's programming shines a light where others won't dare and boldly explores important subjects -- opening minds, sparking conversations and forming deep connections with its viewers. The channel's audience is comprised of affluent, curious, social and connected adults who crave the kind of entertaining, enlightening, witty and informative programming found on Current's TV and online properties. Current is now available via cable and satellite TV in 75 million households worldwide - 60 million households in the US - through distribution partners Comcast (Channel 107); Time Warner ; DirecTV (Channel 358 nationwide); Dish Network (Channel 196 nationwide); Verizon and AT&T. In the UK and Ireland, Current is available on BSkyB (Channel 183) and Virgin Media (Channel 155), and in Italy, Current is available on Sky Italia (Channel 130). Viewers can also find Current online at http://www.current.com.In this scene from "4th and Forever" episode "We're Not Finished,... more
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Camp Shelby is sending 77 Air Force Cadet personnel to local hospitals in the Hattiesburg area for medical evaluation after being in the area of a lighting strike.
http://exm.nr/jij9a3Camp Shelby is sending 77 Air Force Cadet personnel to local hospitals in the... more
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By Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis
When all you have is bombs, everything starts to look like a target. And so after years of providing Libya's dictator with the weapons he's been using against the people, all the international community -- France, Britain and the United States -- has to offer the people of Libya is more bombs, this time dropped from the sky rather than delivered in a box to Muammar Gaddafi's palace.
If the bitter lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us anything, though, it's that wars of liberation exact a deadly toll on those they purportedly liberate -- and that democracy doesn't come on the back of a Tomahawk missile.
President Barack Obama announced his latest peace-through-bombs initiative last week -- joining ongoing U.S. conflicts and proxy wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia -- by declaring he could not "stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy, and... where innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government."
Within 24 hours of the announcement, more than 110 U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired into Libya, including the capital Tripoli, reportedly killing dozens of innocent civilians -- as missiles, even the "smart" kind, are wont to do. According to the New York Times, allied warplanes with "brutal efficiency" bombed "tanks, missile launches and civilian cars, leaving a smoldering trail of wreckage that stretched for miles."
"[M]any of the tanks seemed to have been retreating," the paper reported. That's the reality of the no-fly zone and the mission creep that started the moment it was enacted: bombing civilians and massacring retreating troops. And like any other war, it's not pretty.
While much of the media presents an unquestioning, sanitized version of the war -- cable news hosts more focused on interviewing retired generals about America's fancy killing machines than the actual, bloody facts on the ground -- the truth is that wars, even liberal-minded "humanitarian" ones, entail destroying people and places. Though cloaked in altruism that would be more believable were we dealing with monasteries, not nation-states, the war in Libya is no different. And innocents pay the price.
If protecting civilians from evil dictators were the goal, though -- as opposed to, say, safeguarding natural resources and the investments of major oil companies -- there's an easier, safer way than aerial bombardment for the U.S. and its allies to consider: Simply stop arming and propping up evil dictators. After all, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi reaped the benefits from Western nations all too eager to cozy up to and rehabilitate the image of a dictator with oil, with those denouncing him today as a murderous tyrant just a matter of weeks ago selling him the very arms his regime has been using to suppress the rebellion against it.
In 2009 alone, European governments -- including Britain and France -- sold Libya more than $470 million worth of weapons, including fighter jets, guns and bombs. And before it started calling for regime change, the Obama administration was working to provide the Libyan dictator another $77 million in weapons, on top of the $17 million it provided in 2009 and the $46 million the Bush administration provided in 2008.
Meanwhile, for dictatorial regimes in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, U.S. support continues to this day. On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even gave the U.S. stamp of approval to the brutal crackdown on protesters in Bahrain, saying the country's authoritarian rulers "obviously" had the "sovereign right" to invite troops from Saudi Arabia to occupy their country and carry out human rights abuses, which included attacks on injured protesters as they lay in their hospital beds.
In Yemen, which has received more than $300 million in military aid from the U.S. over the last five years, the Obama administration continues to support corrupt thug and president-for-life Ali Abdullah Saleh, who recently ordered a massacre of more than 50 of his own citizens who dared protest his rule. And this support has allowed the U.S. can carry out its own massacres under the auspices of the war on terror, with one American bombing raid last year taking out 41 Yemeni civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, according to Amnesty International.
Rather than engage in cruise missile liberalism, Obama could save lives by immediately ending support for these brutal regimes. But for U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, arms sales appear to trump liberation. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute documented that Washington accounted for 54 percent of arms sales to Persian Gulf states between 2005 and 2009.
Last September, the Financial Times reported that the U.S. had struck deals to provide Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman with $123 billion worth of arms. The repressive monarchy of Saudi Arabia accounts for over half that figure, with it set to receive $67 billion worth of weapons, including 84 F-15 jets, 70 Apache gunships, 72 Black Hawk helicopters, 36 light helicopters and thousands of laser-guided smart bombs - the largest weapons deal in U.S. history.
Instead of forking over $150 million a day to the weapons industry to attack Libya or selling $67 billion in weapons to the Saudis so they can repress not just their own people, but those of Bahrain, we -- the ones being asked to forgo Social Security to help pay for empire -- should demand those who purport to represent us in Washington stop arming dictators in our name. That might drain some bucks from the merchants of death, but it would give nonviolent protesters throughout the Middle East a fighting chance to liberate themselves.
The U.S. government need not drop a single bomb in the Middle East to help liberate oppressed people. All it need do is stop selling bombs to their oppressors.By Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis
When all you have is bombs, everything starts... more
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Does a code of ethics still exist in Intelligence firms? Does it disappear behind closed doors, dirty deeds done in the dark and used against the American people who are supposed to be free to express themselves?D
By Darlene Storm, Computerworld Feb 23, 2011 2:03 pm
It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors.
EFF previously warned that Big Brother wants to be your friend for social media surveillance. While the FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook (PDF) mentioned using "covert accounts" to access protected information, other government agencies endorsed using security exploits to access protected information.
It's not a big surprise that the U.S. military also wants to use social media to its benefit. Last year, Public Intelligence published the U.S. Air Force social media guide which gave 10 tips for social media such as, "The enemy is engaged in this battlespace and you must engage there as well." Number three was "DON'T LIE. Credibility is critical, without it, no one cares what you have to say...it's also punishable by the UCMJ to give a false statement." The Air Force used the chart below to show how social media influences public opinion.
more at link...
So glad I got off Facebook.Does a code of ethics still exist in Intelligence firms? Does it disappear behind... more
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Novek
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12 months ago
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Two high-ranking Libyan air force pilots have who fled to Malta in their aircraft are reported to have told officials they escaped rather than carry out orders to bomb civilians.
The officers defected as Libyan diplomats in several countries and international organisations resigned in protest at the regime's violent response to the deepening crisis. They included Muammar Gaddafi's ambassadors to China, India, Indonesia and Poland, as well as Libya's representative to the Arab League and most, if not all, of its mission at the United Nations.
Omar Jelban, head of the London People's Bureau, flatly denied an al-Jazeera report he too had quit. Jelban was earlier called to the Foreign Office to hear what William Hague, the foreign secretary, called "our absolute condemnation of the use of lethal force against demonstrators".
The two Mirage F1 jets touched down in Malta after the pilots said they urgently needed to refuel and sought emergency clearance to land. The Times of Malta reported on its website the pilots had told officials they flew to the island after being ordered to bomb protesters occupying Libya's second-biggest city of Benghazi.
One report said they had also brought with them two other members of the Libyan armed forces. The pilots – both colonels – said that, after taking off from Okba Ben Nafi base, they flew low through Libyan air space to avoid radar detection.
The pilots were being questioned by Maltese police who were also trying to identify seven other people who landed from Libya in two civilian helicopters shortly before the arrival of the jets. The helicopters took off from Libya without official clearance and a source in Malta said they appeared to have been in haste, with only one of the seven people aboard carrying a passport.
All seven said they were French. The helicopters' passengers said they were working on an oil platform off Benghazi when the violence in Libya erupted.
The two military jets were at Malta international airport near Valletta, away from the commercial area.
A spokesman for Libya's delegation at the UN told Reuters its members had declared their allegiance to Libya's people, not the government. The spokesman, Dia al-Hotmani, said: "The members of the Libyan mission are representing only the Libyan people and not anyone else."
The deputy UN ambassador told the BBC: "All the Libyan people want Gaddafi to go." Other members of the UN mission had said they were resigning to support anti-government protesters: "We are aware that this will put our families back home in danger, but they are in danger anyway," said member Adam Tarbah.
In New Delhi, Ali al-Essawi accused his government of deploying foreign mercenaries against protesters. And three local employees of the Libyan embassy in Sweden said they had quit in protest.
"It would be hypocritical to assist the Libyan government while we see them attacking people in the streets," said Sayed Jalabi.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/libya-pilots-flee-to-maltaTwo high-ranking Libyan air force pilots have who fled to Malta in their aircraft are... more
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When Hosni Mubarak shut down Egypt’s internet and cellphone communications, it seemed that all U.S. officials could do was ask him politely to change his mind. But the American military does have a second set of options, if it ever wants to force connectivity on a country against its ruler’s wishes.
There’s just one wrinkle. “It could be considered an act of war,” says John Arquilla, a leading military futurist.
The U.S. military has no shortage of devices — many of them classified — that could restore connectivity to a restive populace cut off from the outside world by its rulers. It’s an attractive option for policymakers who want an option for future Egypts, between doing nothing and sending in the Marines. And it might give teeth to the Obama administration’s demand that foreign governments consider internet access an inviolable human right.
Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, spent years urging the military to logic-bomb adversary websites, disrupt hostile online presences, and even cause communications blackouts to separate warring factions before they go nuclear. What the military can turn off, he says, it can also turn on — or at least fill dead airspace.
Consider the Commando Solo, the Air Force’s airborne broadcasting center. A revamped cargo plane, the Commando Solo beams out psychological operations in AM and FM for radio, and UHF and VHF for TV. Arquilla doesn’t want to go into detail how the classified plane could get a denied internet up and running again, but if it flies over a bandwidth-denied area, suddenly your Wi-Fi bars will go back up to full strength.
“We have both satellite- and nonsatellite-based assets that can come in and provide access points to get people back online,” Arquilla says. “Some of it is done from ships. You could have a cyber version of pirate radio.”
Then there are cell towers in the sky. The military already uses its aircraft as communications relays in places like Afghanistan. Some companies are figuring out upgrades: FastCom, an effort led by the defense firm Textron, is a project that hooks up cellular pods to the belly of a drone, the better to keep cellular and data connections in the air without pilot fatigue. Underneath the drones, a radius of a few kilometers on the ground would have 3G coverage.
Sharon Corona, a spokeswoman for the project, says that there’s an obstacle to using a technology like FastCom for an Egypt-like situation: The recipient devices need to be able to talk with the cell and data signal. But compliant phones or netbooks — small and lightweight — could conceivably be smuggled into a denied area.
Alternatively, operatives could smuggle small satellite dishes into a country. Small dishes were crucial to getting the internet back running in Haiti after last year’s earthquake. It’s how cameramen in war zones rapidly transmit high quality video from the middle of nowhere.
Of course, slow-flying drones or a broadcasting center in the sky have an inherent weakness: They’re sitting ducks for any half-decent air defense system. (And did we mention that Hosni Mubarak became a national hero for his air defense prowess in the 1973 war against Israel?)
That leads to another possibility: “Just give people Thuraya satellite phones,” says John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. The cheapish phones hunt down signals from space hardware.
Even expanding access to the military’s own satellite communications networks is theoretically possible, Arquilla says. But he won’t say more than that: “Let’s just say that’s an area decided at the level of the commander-in-chief.”
In the absence of those options, there’s always the old-school methods of jamming a government’s communication frequencies and broadcasting favorable messages. That’s the Commando Solo’s specialty. “Jamming is something we think about in the context of shooting wars,” says Arquilla, but “it may have its place in social revolutions as well.”
The trouble is, if a government follows Egypt’s lead and turns off the internet, it’s not going to be keen to see a meddling foreign power turn it back on.
That act might not be as provocative as sending in ground troops or dropping bombs. But it’s still an act of what you might call forced online entry — by definition, a hostile one.
In situations like Egypt, siding with an uprising against a longtime ally is a difficult choice, whether analog or digital.
That might be why the military hasn’t done it. Asked about whether the Pentagon would consider deploying mobile connectivity to restore internet access for a social uprising, all a senior official would say is that such a situation was “hypothetical.”
And all that underscores how Egypt’s internet shutoff pushed the poorly defined limits of cyber hostilities. Foreign actors don’t really have a blueprint for responding. The U.S. military “has a great deal of expertise on rebuilding communications network, but that’s … very different when the government is interested in resisting,” Arquilla says. “This is far less an engineering problem and far more a political one.”
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/secret-tools-force-net/When Hosni Mubarak shut down Egypt’s internet and cellphone communications, it... more
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Hosni Mubarak rose from Egypt’s Air Force to his country’s presidency following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. His nearly 30 years in rule have been marked by strong ties with the US and strong hand against opponents in Egypt.Hosni Mubarak rose from Egypt’s Air Force to his country’s presidency... more
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On Jan. 23, China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, ran a story about an air force training exercise .
The footage has been removed from CCTV’s website. But Real Time China Report notes that Chinese media has in the past been caught red-handed lifting fictional U.S. material in news reports.On Jan. 23, China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, ran a story about an air force... more
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"The White House has ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, which will require eventually shrinking the Army and Marine Corps and seeking controversial increases in the fees paid by for retired, working-age veterans for their health insurance, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday.""The White House has ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its... more
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The A-10 Thunderbolt II is an American single-seat, twin-engine, straight-wing jet aircraft developed by Fairchild-Republic in the early 1970s. The A-10 was designed for a United States Air Force requirement to provide close air support (CAS) for ground forces by attacking tanks, armored vehicles, and other ground targets with a limited air interdiction capability. It is the first U.S. Air Force aircraft designed exclusively for close air support.
Enjoy The Flight!The A-10 Thunderbolt II is an American single-seat, twin-engine, straight-wing jet... more
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