RAF technician deletes blog after criticising Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Afghanistan
from the frontline
...Sensei Katana is, (or was), only one blogger, but his story begs the following questions: Do these same concerns mean other British servicemen don’t blog? And does this episode help explain why there are so few British blogs written by military personnel?
Apart from the Commanding Officers of HMS Somerset and Nottingham, a blog by a member of the TA, and a new project with The Guardian, there aren’t many British milblogs. In fact, I challenge you to find another one that is updating from theatre.
After the launch of Lachlan MacNeil’s 'blog’ (note: there’s no space to comment) in conjunction with The Guardian, Audrey Gillan wrote this article.
I thought she was going to address the key issue that her article hinted at all along – why are there so few British milblogs when there are so many US servicemen and women publishing their experiences?
But she didn’t. I don’t really have an answer either but I am willing to offer a few more ideas.
It’s not because the regulations are different. US military regulations on blogging (OPSEC AR530-1) appear to be fairly similar to those of the Ministry of Defence...
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(MOAA) Fifteen months ago Army wife and journalist Jan Wesner started a blog to educate civilians about military life. But her posts took on the feel of diary entries when her husband of 17 years deployed to Iraq — with one difference: Anyone can read and respond to a blog.
"I talked about the times when I drank too much and how I started smoking and how I worried if we would be different when he got back," says Wesner, who lives near MacDill AFB, Fla., and whose blog,
Because of her openness, Wesner was able to form friendships with military spouses from across the country she had never met.
"There are things I say on my blog that I would never say to someone face-to-face," she says.
Virtual community
Welcome to the military spouse blogosphere, where "milspouse bloggers," as they are known, share experiences and opinions, rally support, seek resources, and find friendship in the virtual world. In many ways military spouse blogs are a fusion of the unit newsletter, holiday greeting card, snail-mail letter, and journal entry.
"Describing how it feels to be a military spouse is extremely important. There are so many spouses out there who can turn to spouse bloggers for therapy, for friendship, for guidance, and for so much more. Plus, troops on the front lines can turn to their blogs to keep tabs on home and see how everyone is doing," says Jean-Paul "JP" Borda, a deployed guardmember who is the founder and webmaster of Milblogging.com, an aggregator site of nearly 2,000 military-related blogs that features more than 200 spouse blogs.
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(A Soldier's Perspective) I get a lot of solicitations for links and other things in my inbox. Most of the time I delete them. It's not that I don't support their cause or believe in their product, it's just that I don't usually have the time to personally respond to each one.
But, today I got an email and for some reason I decided to click on the link and see what it was about. What I found is probably one of the neatest sites I've personally come across. It's called Alltop and helps you "explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web."
The thing that caught my eye that I thought you all would be interested in is the military page. One visit to the site and you can see which of your favorite milblogs have put up new content.
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
The article below titled "Return to Sender - Iraq Veteran Gets the Call Again" was written by Colby Buzzell and appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, May 8, 2008.
According to the article, Colby is headed back to Iraq for a second time. However, it's anyone's guess if he'll be able complete the mobilization process or if he'll even blog again.
(San Francisco Chronicle) When I voluntarily enlisted in the Army, I remember asking my recruiter about the fine print on the contract about being called back up to active duty once my enlistment was completed. He assured me not to worry, that every contract said that and it would only happen if "World War III" broke out.
That was a little over five years ago. After serving in Iraq, I elected to use my GI Bill to enroll in a photography course at San Francisco City College. I felt good, and I had a feeling that the days to come were all going to be good as well.
On way out of my building two weeks ago, I checked my mailbox and found a letter from the Department of the Army with "Important Document" printed in all caps on the middle. I immediately felt sick, so I went back to my room, locked the door, grabbed a beer from the fridge and stared out my window for a while.
Read the entire story here.
Thanks to Mary Ellen for the tip.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
I wanted to wish my Mom and my wife and all the Mothers reading this post a Happy Mother's Day.
I decided to post a recent photo of myself for my Mom. That’s me on the far right. Her "little noble". Yup, that's what she called me growing up as a kid.
Since it is Mother's Day, I have to say, don't believe that baloney about quality time, flowers and gifts on Mother's Day. My Mom's "little noble" (that's me) used to go all out by scribbling with Crayon on paper bags and I'd tell her it was a Mother's Day card. I know what you’re probably all thinking: “Ahhhhhhhh, what an amazing son! Why can’t mine be as thoughtful?”
Yeah, I know. And to top it off, I was 23 years old at the time and living at home. I mean what more could a Mother ask for?
So, uh, all you Moms out there eat your hearts out on this Mother's Day!
[ 4 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
The NEA will host 25 writing workshops across the country this year, including several at veterans centers for the first time, according to program directors. Nationally acclaimed writers such as Jeff Shaara, Andrew Carroll, Tobias Wolff and Marilyn Nelson will lead the monthlong workshops.
The program, now in its fourth year, is linked to the Endowment’s open call for essays, poems and short stories about life in combat. Officials said they’ve received more than 1,200 submissions since 2004, about 100 of which were featured in a nonfiction anthology two years ago.
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(Stars and Stripes) Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Minor has watched friends die on combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the teenage translator killed by a grenade tossed into a Kirkuk street. Minor gave his Purple Heart to her family.
He was a college student in Ohio until recently, when he decided to return to Iraq, he said, so that a new father in his Reserve unit wouldn’t have to go.
“I’d take a dozen of him for 20 of my soldiers,” said Sgt. 1st Class John Pumma, Minor’s former first sergeant with the 2100th Military Intelligence Group in Ohio. “He’s a super solider.”
But Minor, 30, was recently threatened with legal action and with being kicked out of the Army by his new command in Iraq.
What had he done?
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
This year's festival will also have a milblogging panel called "The GI in the Media Discussion". It's an opportunity to join some of the nation’s most popular milbloggers in a spirited discussion on how GIs and military families are portrayed in the media and on film.
The panel discussion takes places on Sunday, May 18th at 11:30 AM. Right now there are 70 seats available for the panel. The cost is $5 per seat.
For more information on the festival, visit the website.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Milblogs, as blogs authored by members of the military are called, have revolutionized the way soldiers in war can communicate with the public, allowing people from Tennessee to Montana to read, on a daily basis, first-person accounts of the battlefield.
“It’s more than writing letters home, it’s writing letters for the world to see,” said Alan Rosenblatt, a professor and author on digital media, politics, and blogging. Through milblogs, soldiers in war can stay connected to their life back home, and the public can experience war through the eyes of a soldier, which offers them a much closer connection than perhaps they even imagined.
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Thirty one seniors from Belfry High School situated in Kentucky were inspired by Bad Voodoo's War and got together after watching a taping to send us care packages, t-shirts, and copies of the school newspaper, which incidentally, was dedicated entirely to Bad Voodoo.
I especially like the "Redneck Questions for Bad Voodoo" section, that included questions like, "Is a .50 cal good for squirrel hunting?"
And I thought I'd take the time to answer it...
But damn, this question is tough -- I hadn't really thought about using a .50 caliber machine gun for squirrel hunting in awhile. Or at least not since the summer of '03 when I did my Annual Training in Indiana and used an AT4 anti-tank weapon to go bass fishing.
True story.
[ 3 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Blocked blog access on Air Force networks. A Navy blog opposed by Public Affairs. Crackdowns on YouTube and other social media. The military has really struggled to come to terms with the internet era -- in stark contrast to jihadists, for whom the internet is the major medium for recruiting and spreading tactics and weapons plans.
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
You'll be happy to know we've completed our final mission just a few days ago. All Bad Voodoo soldiers are safe and off the road. Pictured above is myself and "SGT Q" (a fellow Bad Voodoo Team Leader) posing for a photo during our last mission. We both happened to serve in Afghanistan at the same time from 2004-2005, but we were in different units. "SGT Q" was actually a member of the 25th Infantry Division. I served with the Virginia National Guard during my tour, but I was also awarded the Tropic Lightning during my Combat Patch ceremony.
Well, pretty soon this place will just be a memory and I'll be looking at pictures from my deployment saying to myself, "Those were the days. Really takes me back..."
The 3,000 degree weather in full Battle Rattle. Back to back missions, over and over and over. Some times getting little or no sleep. Heck, throw in walking a mile to use the internet and eating sand during dust storms and I'm basically describing utopia.
[ 10 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(American Enterprise Institute) Stop-loss is now the subject of an eponymous film that tells the story of three soldiers who return from Iraq and attempt to handle the burdens of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while re-entering civilian life as sons and husbands. When Staff Sgt. Brandon King is stop-lossed and told that he will be returned to the war in Iraq rather than be released from the Army, he flees his post in an effort to escape the orders. King's flight forces his friends and family to choose whether to support him and ultimately brings him face-to-face with the costs of abandoning one's comrades.
Not surprisingly, the movie has met with an unkind reception among milbloggers. Terri, a blogger at A Soldier's Mind whose boyfriend has served three tours in Iraq, watched the movie and panned it as "unrealistic," "inaccurate" and "inconsistent." She points out numerous factual errors, such as the immediacy of King's orders to return to Iraq, the film's treatment of PTSD and the police manhunt for King. Her conclusion: "It's obvious that this is Hollywood's latest attempt to make the military look bad and to glorify desertion."
A more typical response among milbloggers was to pan the movie without having seen it. Both "SSG Thul" at Foreign and Domestic and "Deebow" at Blackfive cheered the movie's poor takings during its opening weekend, as the film posted eighth at the box office. Thul concludes that the film did poorly because "Americans don't want to go see a movie that tells them that they are stupid because they are Americans." Deebow asks why there have been so many movies that criticize the war but none celebrating real-life heroes who fought in Iraq and have died for their brothers in arms.
The one sympathetic milblogger review of "Stop-Loss" that I found was by Carissa Picard, on the Military.com Daily Election Center Blog. Picard, founder of the soldier's advocacy group Military Spouses for Change, attended the movie's sold-out premier at Fort Hood, Texas, and interviewed audience members afterward. A notable (and vocal) segment of the audience included members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which had organized a group to attend the premier and distribute anti-war literature. They agreed with the film's premises and thought that it provided a fair treatment of what they view as a betrayal of American soldiers. (AFJ staff writer Chuck Vinch reviewed "Stop-Loss" favorably, concluding, "'Stop-Loss' is not an anti-war film; if anything, it's pro-troops.")
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 1 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Below is some information about the 2008 Milblog Conference, along with the final agenda. I'm gonna keep everyone updated here about the conference as more information becomes available.
Date: SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
Location: Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
Registration Info: Coming soon...
Agenda:
10:30a – 11:00a: Opening Remarks
Presentation of 2007 Milbloggie Awards
11:00a – 12:00p: Are MilBlogs Still Relevant? In the wake of a successful military surge in Iraq, waning media attention and an election year, are MilBlogs as relevant to the national conversation on war as they once were?
12:00p – 12:15p: Break
12:15p – 1:15p: MilBlogging as a Community. A fascinating look at how the milblogging community was built, what it’s achieved and how deep and wide its reach has become. We’ll explore how milblogging gives a voice to supporters, parents and spouses of service members, and how that voice is effectively used to support an entire military community.
1:15p – 2:45p: Lunch Break
2:45 – 3:45p: The New Cadre of War Reporters. Reporting from the Green Zone is not an option for this gritty band of milbloggers. Today’s technology enables milbloggers and embedded reporters to report directly from the battlefield. We’ll talk with some of these milbloggers about their experiences in the combat zone.
3:45 – 5:00p: Free Time (Sit in on other panels or stroll the vendor floor).
5:00 – 6:00p: Panel TBA
6:00p: Closing Remarks
[ 5 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(Telegraph) In a ground-breaking departure for newspapers, The Sunday Telegraph has "embedded" a video camera with a front-line infantry regiment in southern Afghanistan.
Readers will be given a soldier's eye view of life in Helmand, where 8,000 British troops are locked in an increasingly bitter conflict against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.
The Sunday Telegraph will receive regular video dispatches from Corporal Billy Carnegie, a section commander with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the 5th battalion of The Scottish Regiment (5 Scots), which will appear on the Telegraph website on a regular basis.
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Smedley "The Camel Spider" is still living with us in our tent. I took it upon myself to do some scientific research so I went on over to Wikipedia and read more about camel spiders. Here's what Wikipedia says:
"In the Middle East, it is widely rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that Solifugae will feed on living human flesh. The story goes that the creature will inject some anaesthetizing venom into the exposed skin of its sleeping victim, then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. Solifugae, however, do not produce such an anaesthetic, and they do not attack prey larger than themselves unless threatened. Other stories include tales of them leaping into the air, disemboweling camels, screaming, and running alongside moving humvees; all of these tales are dubious at best. Due to their bizarre appearance many people are startled or even afraid of them. The greatest threat they pose to humans, however, is their bite in self-defense when one tries to handle them. There is no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound that is prone to infection."
I was a non-believer, until the other day. So I was packing my belongings and a spider ran out from underneath my duffel bag. I hit it with my boot several times and I'm not sure if he got away. Well, later that night while I was talking to one of my battle buddies --- and in the corner of my eye --- I swear Smedley was staring straight at me with those little beady angry eyes. Like he wanted to eat my flesh or something.
Smedley Update1: Turns out, Smedley escaped from his cage. He's small, just over an inch so it wasn't too hard. Not that I'm scared, but I now sleep with my eyes open. And all my body armor. And my M-4. Hell, I'm not ashamed, I even clutch a Woobie.
[ 4 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(Pier System) Since January, the Thirteenth District Public Affairs Office has been maintaining a blog and podcast as an additional way to tell the Coast Guard story. In the interest of transparency and to enhance our ability to tell the Coast Guard's story we are looking for motivated Coast Guard members, active duty, reserve, auxiliary and civilians, who would be interested in blogging about their Coast Guard experiences. Blogs can be written about almost anything that you are doing in the Coast Guard. Remember that this is an official blog so keep it to the Coast Guard and stay in your lane. Talk about your experiences, cases you've been involved in, boating safety, important topics, training, etc..
Read the entire story here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(The Patchwork Quilt II) Being a blogger, more so than being a member of Soldiers Angels, is what led me to meet the Founder of Soldiers Angels,Patti,when I attended the Milblog conference last year in DC. And also meeting Robert Stokely and briefly speaking with him, one of the most towering men of Christian faith I've ever had the privilege to meet. Over a year later, the brief conversation we had while in the lunch line still resounds within me, and, now that my husband/'s son is deployed, brings me a great deal of comfort and peace.
Read the entire story here.
[ 4 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
(Milblogs) The second annual
GI Film Festival will take place in Washington, DC from May 14-18. In addition to film screenings and other fun happenings, the festival will present a series of panel discussions.The festival has added a panel on milblogging to this year's agenda.
Read the entire post here.
[ Add comment ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Smedley is a camel spider that we caught while cleaning our weapons after a mission. He lives in our tent in a tiny terrarium Ranger Nievera bought him. Smedley is pretty much the cutest thing on the planet. Just look at those beady little eyes. And his legs? Not 1, not 2, not even 6 or 7, but 8 of the most adorable little furry legs you've ever seen. We're considering entering him into the "World's Cutest Pet" contest. I'll keep you updated on his story.
Smedley Update1: Apparently, people keep telling us Smedley isn't all that adorable. They say there's no way he could win any "Cutest Pet Contest". Puh-leeeassse. Once we dress up Smedley in a baby diaper and pacifier, I guarantee a win. We might even have him drive a little red fire engine. Oh, I smell victory.
[ 6 comments ] | [ 0 trackbacks ] | Permalink | Discussion | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us
Next
