A major headline that has dominated the military news this past week is "Women in Combat". It’s a hot term in the news and there are literally thousands of articles on the subject.

Facebook pages have sprang up.  There's a Wikipedia page dedicated to "Women in Combat".  There's even a domain company called BuyDomains that has the web address for sale for $1,894.  

I decided to run down some of the more interesting news headlines of the week and post them below.  It gives you an idea of what journalists are thinking.

Women In Combat: What Do Troops In Afghanistan Think?

BOYKIN: Common sense, emotion and women in combat. A lack of front-line privacy would be humiliating

Why women in combat is a mistake

Jon Stewart Tackles Women In Combat Controversy (VIDEO)

Panetta's cowardice on women in combat

The Truth About Little Women Carrying Big Wounded Men in Combat

Women in combat: It's their choice

Women in combat: But don't girls just wanna have fun?

For women in combat, the big threat isn’t behind enemy lines

Women in Combat: Listening to Those Who Have Been There

Women in combat no victory

Women in Combat: A Debate that Deserves More than Giggles

Women in Combat Already Here

Women in combat a dangerous experiment

A Brief History Of Women In Combat

Image credit: Defense.gov

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An Officer and an Auction. Sips with Socialites and the GI Film Festival cordially invite you to our January Fundraiser hosted at the GIFF January Fundraiser at The Embassy of Austria.  Join us on Thursday, January 31 -- from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm -- to take part in a military bachelor auction.  Bring your highest bid to win a dinner date with the single gentleman of your choice, or come to test your luck on great raffle prizes, free drinks, appetizers and a very special musical performance by C*A*M*M*O*...
(GIFF)

Al Jazeera America Has Received More Than 8,000 Applications. Within 24 hours of posting openings for the majority of their new positions, Al Jazeera America received 5000 applications for open positions, a number that has grown to 8,063 over the past three days, a network source told BuzzFeed.  Al Jazeera caused a stir earlier this month when it was announced that the Qatar-based network had bought the struggling liberal channel Current from Al Gore for $500 million, and would use it to expand into American coverage...
(BuzzFeed)

Mark Bowden's War Stories, From the Killing of Bin Laden to U.S. Drone Bombers. The day after President Obama announced the U.S. military had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden was approached by a film producer who felt Bowden should be the one to write the movie version of the raid. So he emailed Obama press secretary Jay Carney and asked if he might be able to interview the players involved...

(Philadelphia Weekly)

Caution: Graphic Images - Sixty-Five Found Executed In Syria's Aleppo -Activists. Amateur video purports to show dozens of dead bodies with their hands bound lying by a small river. Activists said that at least 65 people, apparently shot in the head, were found dead with their hands bound in a district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday (January 29)...
(YouTube)

Humanitarian law, ethics, and journalism in Syria. A small number of journalists reporting from Syria have recently interviewed prisoners of war under highly coercive circumstances. In doing so, they have ignored the protections that are due to prisoners under international humanitarian law, or IHL...
(CPJ Journalist Security Blog)

Group Launches Second Mil-Writing Contest, Anthology. The Warriors Arts Alliance has published a call for submissions to a second volume of military-themed fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and photography. The non-fiction category includes creative non-fiction, essay, and oral history.  Both the anthology and a related contest are open to all military personnel, veterans, and military family members...
(Red Bull Rising)

In Mali, a war 'without images and without facts'. The French army is often called la Grande Muette, or "the Great Silent." The war in Mali confirms the French military's well-deserved reputation of being secretive about front-line actions. "Locking the information is more in the culture of the French army than of the U.S. army," says Maurice Botbol, director of La Lettre du Continent. In the first two weeks of military operations against Islamist militant groups in Mali, the French army has released only a blurry video of an air attack at an undisclosed location...
(CPJ Journalist Security Blog)

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Image of Brenda Marrocco via Twitter

A number of news sites and blogs, including The New York Daily News, are reporting that Brendan Marrocco, a soldier who lost all four limbs in 2009 in Iraq, is recovering after undergoing a double arm transplant and a bone marrow transplant.

But it’s not just the media reporting about the transplant and recovery, Marrocco himself is sharing his story with the rest of the world through the microblogging site Twitter.

A month after the operation took place on December 18, 2012, at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, Marrocco tweeted, “Ohh yeah today has been one month since my surgery and they already move a little”.

Marrocco (who tweets under the username @BMarr86) joined Twitter on December 2011, and to date, has published nearly 2,000 tweets.

With a Twitter tagline of “Live Fast, Love Hard, #DieYoung #EatBacon”, Marrocco has been tweeting nearly daily, only taking off a few days for the 13-hour operation.

Since the news broke yesterday about the transplant, Marrocco has continued to remain lighthearted and cheerful on Twitter, sending messages to followers that included:

“ahhhhhhahahaha!!! Seems I’m way more famous then last time. This is like legit famous”

“I guess it’s a decent day to be that Brendan Marrocco kid”

“Wow front page of yahoo…maybe I really am a big deal.”

Marrocco and surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference later today.

You can follow Marrocco and his amazing story on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/BMarr86

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Hear from the unseen soldier behind widely viewed Afghan war video. Hear from the Army private whose first-person video of a firefight in Afghanistan has received more than twenty-three million views on YouTube. The small, mountable cameras are often used for tactical means, but hours of combat footage taken by these helmet cams have also been viewed by millions on the Internet.
(Washington Post)

Looking behind the sightlines of an American soldier under Taliban fire. The video would be viewed more than 23 million times, making it perhaps the most-watched footage of the Afghan war. It began last April when Pfc. Ted Daniels pressed the record button on his helmet camera. 
(Washington Post)

Timbuktu library – a treasure house of centuries of Malian history. Timbuktu's main library, officially called the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Research, is a treasure house containing more than 20,000 manuscripts covering centuries of Mali's history. 
(Guardian)

Twitter launches advertising services in Middle East. Twitter Inc launched advertising services in the Middle East and North Africa on Sunday as the social media firm seeks to exploit a tripling of its regional subscriber base following its widespread use during the Arab Spring protests.
(Reuters)

Group seeks World War II veterans to tell their stories. The Potomac Highlands World War II Roundtable is seeking veterans who want to tell their stories of serving in the military as part of a preservation project sponsored by the Friends of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
(herald-mail.com)

Women train for Afghanistan frontline. The women of this Air Force group are training for the frontline of battle in Afghanistan. CNN's Don Lemon reports
(CNN)

Dan Nygard’s war stories explore military life at home and away. There is a lot of pressure to get it right when you write a war story. You must balance humanity with violence, explain impossible politics, convey the essence of a military culture that is largely hidden from society, and move through constant tragedy without getting bogged down.
(MinnPost)

Sniper! On Embedded Journalism and the Killing of an Al Jazeera Reporter. Journalism is a tough job. It’s a tough job, that is, if you aren’t one of the people who are content to sit in plush air-conditioned offices regurgitating material handed to you by various interested parties or randomly pulled off the internet and passed off as “news
(Subversify)

Iranian journalists arrested in raids on newspapers. Security officials in Iran have raided at least four newspapers and arrested several journalists in what appears to be concerted action aimed at intimidating the media in advance of the presidential elections in June. 
(Guardian)

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Some very cool news this weekend for fans of military blogger Lee Kelley, who was once featured in the December 2006 Time Magazine “People of the Year” issue.

This e-mail just landed in my inbox:

Former Army Captain and milblogger Lee Kelley (Wordsmith at War) has landed a major book deal, which is described in a recent issue of Publisher's Weekly:

“St. Martin’s Press has acquired a new book about the “first” helicopter. Michael Flamini bought world rights, at auction, to Marine Colonel Ray “Frenchy” L’Heureux’s Inside Marine One: Flying the World’s Most Famous Helicopter. L’Heureux, who’s flown the vehicle for several presidents (from George H.W. Bush through Barack Obama), was represented by agents Todd Shuster and Jacob Moore of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary; L’Heureux is co-writing with military blogger Lee Kelley.

The book will explore the helicopter itself, as well as the elite squad that operates it (and that L’Heureux oversaw), HMX1. The book is slated for spring/summer 2014.”

Click the link, then scroll down to the section titled "SMP Boards Presidential Chopper" to learn more.

If you’d like to catch up on what’s been happening with Lee Kelley over the years, I wrote up a “Where are they now?” story on Kelley last June.

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Social media has played an important role in the Arab Spring that began in 2010.

Facebook, Twitter, Skype, YouTube and other social networking sites have been used to spread information, images and video directly to the masses.

But that’s not all the sites are good for…

A story published on NPR’s website tells how activists have found love on Facebook during the Syrian uprising.

“Mohsen, an activist from Hama, says he first met Sara, his girlfriend of nearly two years, on Facebook.

She sent him a friend request because she saw he worked in the field of journalism, and for months they chatted casually about the Syrian uprising. Then, after government troops stormed Hama, Moshen fled to Damascus, where he and Sara finally met face to face.

"The revolution is what brought us together. ... It was the thing that pushed us toward each other," he says. "Without the revolution we were never going to meet in person."

Full story here.

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The Twitter account of the militant Islamist group al-Shabab has finally been suspended.

The Associated Press reports that Twitter suspended the account on Friday after al-Shabab used the microblogging site earlier in the week to announce a death threat against Kenyan hostages.

This has been a long time coming as I’ve been griping for years (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), along with plenty of others, that Twitter needs to crackdown on terrorist accounts.

It’s suspected that al-Shabab has several Twitter accounts already springing up online, but this is a step in the right direction, although it’s a bit ridiculous it took this long.

Al-Shabab tweeted under the username (@HSMPress).  Visitors are redirected to a Twitter page stating the account has been suspended.

In mid January, al-Shabab published photographs of a dead French soldier, and then days later tried to defend themselves after an uproar.

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Google Earth exposes North Korea's secret prison camps. Human rights activists are turning to Google Earth to identify the vast network of prison camps that dot the North Korean countryside and hold as many as 200,000 people deemed hostile to the regime. Rights groups are pushing the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to open an international investigation into Pyongyang's "deplorable" record on its citizens' rights, including a system of political prisons that has operated for more than 50 years...
(Telegraph)

‘Rise of the Drones’ Is Mostly a PBS Infomercial for the Military Defense Industry. The widely-acclaimed PBS program, NOVA, premiered a documentary on unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. The documentary, “Rise of the Drones,” was produced to explore how the technology is revolutionizing warfare and creating the next generation of cutting-edge surveillance. It was created to provide a glimpse at how the technology has advanced and how innovations might progress in the future...
(The Dissenter)

Tweeting the news: Andy Carvin test-pilots Twitter journalism. Andy Carvin’s official title is Senior Strategist, Social Media Desk at NPR, but that bureaucratic fog undercuts the scale of his work. More emphatically, The Columbia Journalism Review has called him a "living, breathing real-time verification system," while The Washington Post declared him “a one-man Twitter news bureau.”
(The Verge)

Time running out for old war stories. AN appeal has been launched to find the stories behind the names on St Clears's war memorial.  Philip Lanc, of Tenby Road, is trying to trace information on the men whose names are etched into the Pentre Road monument.  He said to many people it is just a list of names and he wants to provide the people of the town with the stories behind the men before it is too late.  "At any stage we could go and look at the military service record," said the 57-year-old...
(This is South Wales)

Video Suggests Missile Hit Syrian University.  At least one of the two explosions that killed more than 80 people at Syria’s Aleppo University last week was caused by a missile, according to two analysts who examined new video of the attack posted online by Syrian opposition activists.  Traces of what appears to be a missile descending moments before the huge blast can be seen in three still frames taken from the brief video clip, which seems to have been recorded on the university campus as the second rocket shattered a dormitory...
(The New York Times)

Almost all in Congress use Twitter; if only bills could be as short as tweets. Four years ago, when President Barack Obama was first inaugurated, the savvy social media politician was among the first to use Twitter to his advantage to get his message out to voters. Republicans also used the short-messaging blog back then to heckle the new president as he delivered a speech to Congress...
(NBCNEWS)

Serbia to review probes into killed reporters. THE Serbian government on Thursday appointed a team to review the probes into the unsolved murders of three Serb journalists killed during and right after the 1990s regime of strongman Slobodan Milosevic.  A committee composed of prominent journalists, top police and intelligence officials is ``tasked to examine facts collected during the probes and other circumstances related to the murders of Dada Vujasinovic, Slavko Curuvija and Milan Pantic,'' a government spokesman said...
(The Australian)

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Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, reports The New York Times.

Reporter Elisabeth Bumiller writes, "The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women have frequently found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 have served. As of last year, more than 800 women had been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 had died."

The New York Times tweeted a link to the story on Wednesday and the tweet ended up being retweeted by users nearly 1,000 times (749 at the time of this story being published).

People from all over the world took to Twitter to express their opinion and react to the news.

Here are a handful of the Twitter reactions, with some in favor, some against.

John McCain ‏@SenJohnMcCain
“I respect and support Secretary Panetta’s decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat”

Tammy Bruce ‏@HeyTammyBruce
“And btw, every line in today's world is the "front line." Women *have* been fighting in combat. Now they'll get paid/recognized for it.”

Desiring God ‏@desiringgod
"A man who endorses women in combat is not pro-woman; he’s a wimp. He should be ashamed" (John Piper, 2007)”

Kelly ‏@KLSouth
“Women in Combat directly impact combat effectiveness of our military. This is an attempt to further weaken America.”

The American Caliban ‏@substitute
“Women now permitted in combat in US military; 300 Hollywood scripts start.”

Malcolm Fraser ‏@MalcolmFraser12
“Women have been unofficially involved in military combat for years”

Jen Kirkman ‏@JenKirkman
“Once the ban is lifted on women in military combat, that draft better not come back.”

MJ Rosenberg ‏@MJayRosenberg
“Women in combat. Progress? Nothing about war is progress except ending it, not enlarging pool of victims.”

Zerlina Maxwell ‏@ZerlinaMaxwell
"women allowed in combat = Conservatives say, "but what about their safety!" 1 in 3 women raped in the military = Crickets."

Andrew Kaczynski ‏@BuzzFeedAndrew
“146 women have died in uniform since 2001, regardless of the ban on women in combat lifted today”

Political Dissident ‏@der_bluthund
"Personally, I think we should put all that energy used against women in combat roles into protecting civilians who get caught up in wars..."

Ron M. ‏@Jewtastic
“I guess since there were not enough women in his White House to please his base, the President threw them into combat instead.”

Jamil Smith ‏@JamilSmith
“Seems @davidfrum was for lifting the ban on women in combat before he was against it.”

Johnny Fuggin Bravo ‏@MrFitMarine
“How I feel about women in combat? BOOTS 2 ASSES. S/O to every brave woman who takes that step.”

Chris Regan ‏@ChrisRRegan
“Women now cleared for combat! Or at least the economically-disadvantaged ones.”

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Photo by Issouf Sanogo

A photograph of a French legionnaire in Mali wearing a skeleton face mask drew an angry reaction from the French military and government.

Reactions on Twitter and other social media sites range from condemnation to expressing support.  One Twitter user @phillycat writes, “It’s badass”. 

AFP photographer Issouf Sanogo took the photo on January 20th, which quickly went viral because of its likeness to the Call of Duty character "Ghost", a non-playable British character in Modern Warfare 2, who wears a pair of sunglasses and a skull-patterned balaclava, similar to the one worn by the French soldier.

Sanogo told the story behind the image to AFP:

“A helicopter was coming in to land and churning up tremendous dust clouds. Instinctively, all the soldiers grabbed their scarfs to avoid getting a mouthful of sand. It was evening, and rays of sunlight were pushing through the trees and into the dust clouds. It was a lovely light. I spotted this soldier wearing a strange scarf and took the photo. At the time, nothing about the scene seemed especially unusual or shocking. The soldier wasn’t posing and there was nothing staged about the image. He was just standing there, protecting his face from the dust, waiting for the chopper to land. No one tried to stop me shooting the picture.”

Here’s a look at the image of the Call of Duty character Ghost.

According to the video game news site Kotaku which calls the controversy “silly”, "The photographer at the heart of the controversy, AFP's Issouf Sanogo, is "surprised" by the resulting media storm."

Luke Plunkett writes, "French authorities are now trying to identify the soldier, presumably so they can reprimand/make a scapegoat out of him."

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Newest Forum for Military’s Ethics Debate: Twitter. There are two major venues for an uncomfortable internal debate about professional ethics currently roiling the U.S. military. One is the Pentagon, where the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is reviewing leadership training after a spate of embarrassing incidents suggested the military’s moral fibers have frayed. The other is Twitter.  While Rebecca Johnson, an associate professor at the Marine Corps University’s Command and Staff College, prepared to teach her ethics elective to a group of mid-career Marine officers, she decided she’d like to get all of Twitter involved...
(Wired)

DOD hopes to harness power of tweets, blogs and updates as intelligence tool. When is a tweet more than just a tweet? When that tweet - along with millions of other bits of digital data - is merged to create a network of real-time information, all that can be harnessed and used by the military.  How to harness and interpret such massive amounts of information is the goal of an initiative through the Department of Defense's Data to Decisions program, run by the Office of Naval Research...
(al.com)

Veteran stands up for 2nd Amendment at Chicago anti-gun forum. After enduring hours of derision and mockery by the panelists at a Chicago-area guns “forum” Sunday, one man in the audience stood up and addressed the crowd, identified himself as a veteran, and proceeded to give a straightforward but passionate defense of his support for the First and Second Amendments...
(Legal Insurrection)

Al Jazeera Is Hiring. Looks like someone is hiring. Al Jazeera just posted a list of over 100 job openings on their website for the soon-to-launch new U.S.-based news channel.  At the beginning of the year, Al Jazeera Media Network announced that it had acquired Current TV, the network founded by Al Gore, and would use the network’s distribution system to launch a new U.S.-based news channel for American audiences...
(Observer)

Some news orgs’ social media policies are on shaky legal ground. If your social media policy prevents employees from saying anything bad about the company, it might be going too far.  The National Labor Relations Board has weighed in on several cases where employees lost their jobs because of social media activity, Steven Greenhouse reports.  The board is standing up for the rights of workers to discuss wages and working conditions...
(Poynter)

Production Begins on DreamWorks’ WikiLeaks Project “The Fifth Estate”.  Principal photography has begun on the WikiLeaks drama “The Fifth Estate,” it was announced today by DreamWorks Studios. The film about the controversial website stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange and Daniel Brühl as Daniel Domscheit-Berg, as well as Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Peter Capaldi, Dan Stevens, Alicia Vikander and Carice van Houten.   Following Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Brühl), an early supporter and eventual colleague of Julian Assange (Cumberbatch), “The Fifth Estate” traces the heady, early days of WikiLeaks, culminating in the release of a series of controversial and history changing information leaks...
(Business Wire)

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The polls are open in the 2013 Military Spouse of the Year which honors military spouses of all ranks and from all branches of service.

This year, Military Spouse magazine added an installation level to the award, ensuring that each and every base, district (Coast Guard), and state (National Guard) has a representative.

Last year’s Military Spouse of the Year award went to Jeremy Hilton, an Air Force Spouse.

If you’d like to learn more, here’s a look at the timeline.

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I stumbled across this interesting post by Ahmad Shuja, an Afghan political commentator and writer/blogger currently based in Washington, DC.

The posting, called Afghan Blogs, offers a directory of English-language blogs written by Afghans on issues relating to Afghanistan, its people and the region.

I’ve come across other directories in the past, like the Association of Afghan Blog Writers website, which promotes blogging and online journalism in Afghanistan.  The AABW has actually launched several blogging workshops in several provinces around Afghanistan, according to its website.

Though the Afghan Blogs directory hasn’t been updated since July 2012, many of the blogs listed are still active.  The bloggers include journalists, students and people from all walks of life.

I’ve started going through both directories again to see if any provide a military perspective and will add them to the Milblogging index, if so. 

Although I may never find one, I’m still looking for a military blog written by an Afghan soldier or policeman, but have yet to find one.

If you happen to know of any military blogs written by Afghans, please feel free to submit them to Milblogging.com.

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42 year old Craig Slee who claimed to be Taliban has been jailed for 5 years after posting terrorist propaganda to the social networking site Facebook. 

Slee posted graphic pictures and videos including beheadings.

According to the news stories Slee was a "fantasist" who had fantasies about being a terrorist, but wasn't actually a terrorist.

“Slee created a false identity and set up a Facebook page using the alter-ego 'Hashim X Shakur'. He was also the creator and administrator of another Facebook account called 'FB Mujahideen'.

He posted links to a communiqué by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and uploaded several videos, which included gruesome beheadings and Islamist terrorist propaganda material. He also chatted to other people inferring he was a member of the Taliban which is a complete fabrication.

Slee was arrested in July 2011 in Windermere. As part of the investigation, officers also recovered a can of CS gas from an address in Preston linked to Slee.”

More here.

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Hey, There’s an App for That! Two Airmen supporting Joint Task Force-National Capital Region Public Affairs, the military people who support the Presidential Inauguration, have created a cell phone app just in time for the inaugural festivities.  The program, called “Inauguration”, is a free, user-friendly app that compiles news and other material related to the 57th Presidential Inauguration from across the Web...
(The Pentagon Channel)

'Catfish' Hoax That Snared Te'o Familiar to Troops. Many Americans were introduced to a new meaning for the word "catfish" Wednesday evening.  The term is being used to describe a hoax that has plagued the Army and civilian authorities for years.  A catfish, in social media terms, is someone who creates an online profile and pretends to be someone he is not, using photos and information taken from someone else...
(Military.com)

Bradley Manning denied chance to make whistleblower defence. Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of being behind the largest leak of state secrets in America's history, has been denied the chance to make a whistleblower defence in his upcoming court martial in which he faces possible life in military custody with no chance of parole.  The judge presiding over Manning's prosecution by the US government for allegedly transmitting confidential material to WikiLeaks ruled in a pre-trial hearing that Manning will largely be barred from presenting evidence about his motives in leaking the documents and videos...
(Guardian)

BuzzFeed Story on Gun-Toting Journalists Infuriates Reporters (Updated). BuzzFeed political editor McKay Coppins has a target on his back after posting a story Thursday that turned a sardonic eye on the shooting range trips of a cadre of well-known New York journalists.  With the debate over stricter gun control in the news after the mass-shooting in Newtown, Conn., last month, the story had the potential to be explosive, but it appeared to have blown up in the author's face after the reporters in question slammed the piece's characterization of their trigger happy activities...
(The Wrap Media)

War vet, dancing champ shares story of struggles. As a child, J.R. Martinez was scared of Freddy Krueger, the disfigured menace in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series.  After a bomb in Iraq ripped through his Army Humvee and burned one-third of his body — including part of his face — Martinez felt as if he had become the living embodiment of Krueger. He was horrified and, for a brief time, suicidal...
(The Columbia Dispatch)

Syria - Moment of Sniper Killing Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed al-Horani in Daraa.  Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed al-Horani, killed by a sniper in province of Daraa. Mohammed al-Horani was following the battle in Daraa province and was moving with the terrorists until he was shot by a sniper...
(YouTube)

Syria: Amateur video of Assad's air strikes. Amateur video from Syria appears to show Assad's air force attacking Homs and Damascus. Report by Rob Gillett...
(ITNNEWS)

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It was only days ago that I wrote about the first journalist deaths of 2013, after three journalists were killed in Pakistan, all in the same incident that occurred on January 13.

Al Jazeera English is now reporting that a sniper has shot dead Al Jazeera freelance reporter Mohamed Al-Massalma in the southern Syrian province of Deraa.

"The Syrian journalist, 33, used the pseudonym of Mohamed Al-Horani. He was shot with three bullets, during covering the fights at the front lines in the town of Busra Al-Harir in the countryside of Deraa."

Al-Horani isn’t the first reporter to be killed in 2013 in Syria.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonprofit organization that compiles data on journalist fatalities, wrote that a sniper has targeted two reporters in two days: international correspondent Yves Debay and Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed al-Mesalma.

As of today, six journalists have been killed in 2013.

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It’s the New Year and the U.S. Army is offering five social media predictions that may shape the way we view social media in 2013. 

It’s hard to know whether each of these predictions will play out.  Some are bold, like, Google+ putting Facebook on notice, but it’s interesting to see the U.S. Army make some of their own predictions for 2013.

Are these all trends that the U.S. Army is experiencing itself?  We’ll check back at the end of the year and see how things panned out.

Here’s a quick look at the five predictions:

"Google+ puts Facebook on notice"
Google+ has had its sights on Facebook since its inception in 2011, but has been largely unsuccessful in closing the gap between the two services.  But after some controversial changes to the platform, the tide may turn in Google's favor in 2013.

"If it's not visual, it's not working"
In 2013, visual social media content will continue to dominate bland social media content. Regardless of the message you're trying to convey with your social media post, if there is not a supporting visual element, the post will likely fail.

"Mobile: It's not the future anymore"
According to a 2012 Pew Study, 40 percent of cell phone owners use a social networking site on their phone. This percentage is sure to rise in 2013.

"Social media platforms break out"
Be prepared for several social media platforms to break out in 2013.  These could be platforms that have been around for a while like Tout, Quora or Snapchat, or they could be brand new platforms entirely.

"MySpace is back! But who cares?"
Yes, MySpace is back.  It's hard to say how successful it will be, but the butt of half of all social media jokes is working to reestablish itself in the social media space.

Full story here.

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In a particularly horrible series of tweets, the terrorist Al-Shabaab group posted photographs of a French soldier killed in last Saturday's rescue mission attempt.

Twitter inexplicably has yet to take any action, despite an uproar by many users of the microblogging site as well as lawmakers in late 2012.

In a pathetic attempt to pretend they’re the victims, Al-Shabaab has taken to Twitter to justify posting the photos.

Yesterday, Al-Shabaab published the following tweet:

3:07 AM - 15 Jan 13
How much of the gruesome details of war should be published without detracting from the accurancy and credibility of the event?

Here are a couple of the reactions by other Twitter users to the above tweet:

JustOneBullet ‏@JustOneBullet tweeted:
“@HSMPress "Accuracy".. Anyway, like I tweeted earlier, you publish pictures of corpses for propaganda purposes, not for journalism.”

Abdikhaliq Majid akm ‏@MajidAkm
“@hsmpress so now you have turned to journalism? Each day you get funnier.may be you guys should start doing stand up comedy.cowards”

Al-Shabaab sent several more Tweets including:

“When one of the Mujahideen leaders is killed, the news gets favourable covarage in the media, a kafir is killed & it's labelled "repugnant"

“Up to 35 European newspapers published the bloody image of Ghadafi on their front page. Was it newsworthy or a case of pure triumphalism?”

If you’ve been following the news today, in Al-Shabaab’s latest tweet, Al-Shabab has sentenced the French agent in captivity to death.  The announcement came via Twitter.

Al Jazeera English reports:

“The al-Qaeda-linked group released a statement on Tuesday saying it had "reached a unanimous decision to execute the French intelligence officer, Denis Allex".

"With the rescue attempt, France has voluntarily signed Allex's death warrant," said al-Shabab.

A senior al-Shabab official told the AFP news agency that Allex "has been sentenced and this judgement will not be changed".

"As far as we are concerned this man should die," he added . “

And once again, Twitter does nothing.

Is Twitter above the law?

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Facebook page targets unpatriotic regime supporters outside Syria.  BEIRUT: Supporters of the Syrian government have created a Facebook page that they vow will expose people who have fled the country for comfort abroad, focusing their rage on the children of state officials.  The page is entitled “Syria is not a hotel,” to drive home the idea that Syria’s citizens should not treat the decision to leave the war-torn country lightly. The page also highlights the dire conditions faced by Syrians who have fled the 22-month-old conflict for neighboring countries, where thousands of people have taken shelter in refugee camps...
(The Daily Star)

Cybersleuths Uncover 5-Year Spy Operation Targeting Governments, Others. An advanced and well-orchestrated computer spy operation that targeted diplomats, governments and research institutions for at least five years has been uncovered by security researchers in Russia...
(Wired)

IDF notes increase in attempts to hack army PCs. The IDF’s Information Security Branch has identified an increase in attempts by foreign hostile intelligence entities to listen in on army communications and gain access to military computers.  The increased threat includes a major attempt to eavesdrop on cellphones used by the IDF, as well as hacking attacks directed at army computer networks...
(JPost)

Afghanistan war veterans to tell their story. Four Army veterans of one of the most harrowing battles of the Afghani­stan War will participate Monday eve­ning in a public discussion at The Grand in Wilmington.  The four survivors of an October 2009 Taliban attack on their eastern Afghanistan outpost – a battle that killed eight of their 53-member detachment – caught the ear of Lt. Gov. Matt Denn, who has invited the soldiers to visit and be his guests at Tuesday’s inaugural activities...
(The News Journal)

The future of video journalism. The Time Magazine put Instagram image of Hurricane Sandy on its cover (above) in its 12 November issue.  The photo is pretty impressive but I am more interested in what it says, not only about the future of professional photography, but also videography... 
(Guardian)

Journalists in Greece Are Becoming Targets. The Greek police on Saturday were looking for the people responsible for detonating makeshift bombs at the homes of five journalists in Athens, the latest in a series of actions taken against reporters in Greece that have raised questions about a deteriorating climate for media freedom...
(NYTimes)

Vietnamese conscripts army of bloggers. The glorious Vietnamese Communist Party has hired an army of bloggers to troll online discussions and post comments supporting the Communist Party's policies. The party has confirmed that it operates a network of nearly 1,000 "public opinion shapers" who are assigned with the task of spreading the party line... 
(Fudzilla)

War stories wanted; local, national efforts run on parallel track.  A small news tip to the Journal led to a discovery: The American Legion wants veterans’ war stories.  Legion Commander Ed Miller and member Larry Waters confirm that about a year ago, they started asking members to submit information about themselves and their service history...
(River Falls Journal)

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In November, I wrote about lawmakers wanting Twitter to crackdown on terrorists.  Unfortunately, no action has been taken by Twitter to shut down the accounts.

However, the call for Twitter to do something will likely be rekindled once again.

Earlier today, Al-Shabaab posted photographs of what they claim is a French soldier killed in Saturday's failed rescue mission reports Daily Mail.

“Three pictures posted on Twitter show a white man wearing military pants and a blood-soaked shirt surrounded by three guns, ammunition clips and protective gear.

Militant Islamist group al-Shabab taunt the dead man's religion in their posts writing 'A return of the crusades, but the cross could not save him from the sword,’ and asking president Francois Hollande if it was 'worth it'.”

The Twitter account can be found here and is still online at the time of this story.  WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT.

Read more at Daily Mail.

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