Weapons of Mass Destruction :: Photography Served
http://www.photographyserved.com/Gallery/Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction/56260

Pictures of atomic weapons, good greeble reference.

We all understand that action movies are cheesy escapism. After all, could one commando really take out a whole compound full of bad guys? Actually, yes. It turns out the history books are full of stories of soldiers doing things so badass they'd hesitate to put them into a film for fear of killing the realism. Like these five, for example.

Here are a few of their best stories—for the record:

this is an awesome article.

Sailors are given 30 seconds to answer or they're kicked out of the program. If they say they want to keep going, they're given another 30 seconds to recover and then they're thrown back into the pool. It may sound sadistic, but the Navy is simply trying to identify who will survive the most dangerous missions and who won't. Through this grueling test, it finds soldiers and sailors who refuse to give up, who can suppress the need to breathe, who trust that they'll be rescued if something goes wrong and who are prepared to lose consciousness—or even die—following orders.

Tying the hands of a person who is speaking, the Arab proverb goes, is akin to "tying his tongue." Western soldiers in Iraq know how important gestures can be when communicating with locals. To close, open and close a fist means "light," but just opening a fist means "bomb." One soldier recently home from Iraq once tried to order an Iraqi man to lie down. To get his point across, the soldier had to demonstrate by stretching out in the dirt. Translation software could help, but what's the best way to make it available in the field?

iPod is becoming tool of choice for US Military

Apple’s New Weapon To help soldiers make sense of data from drones, satellites and ground sensors, the U.S. military now issues the iPod Touch.

The US military has been looking for a device that is both versatile and easy to use to help its soldiers make sense of information they receive from satellites, drones, and ground sensors while in the field. The iPod Touch has become that new device. It's cheaper than the current devices distributed to soldiers and Apple has already done all of the necessary research and manufacturing for the devices. As the iPod Touch gains more functionality, it is hoped that soldiers will gradually be able to shed soem of their other devices and just carry the iPod.

To help soldiers make sense of data from drones, satellites and ground sensors, the U.S. military now issues the iPod Touch.

The New York Times' David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow's exposés: Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended. By whom were these "ties to companies" undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as "analysts"? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. Th

CNN ran an 898-word story on the various Pulitzer winners -- describing virtually every winner -- but was simply unable to find any space even to mention David Barstow's name, let alone inform their readers that he won the Prize for uncovering core corruption at the heart of CNN's coverage of the Iraq War and other military-related matters. No other major television news outlet implicated by Barstow's story mentioned his award, at least as far as I can tell.

Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism awarded to journalist who uncovered complicity between Bush-era military and US media. His award goes unreported in same media. Shameful.

The outright refusal of any of these "news organizations" even to mention what Barstow uncovered about the Pentagon's propaganda program and the way it infected their coverage is one of the most illuminating events revealing how they operate. So transparently corrupt and journalistically disgraceful is their blackout of this story that even Howard Kurtz and Politico -- that's Howard Kurtz and Politico -- lambasted them for this concealment. Meaningful criticisms of media stars from media critic (and CNN star) Howie Kurtz is about as rare as prosecutions for politically powerful lawbreakers in America, yet this is what he said about the television media's suppression of Barstow's story: "their coverage of this important issue has been pathetic."

Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended. By whom were these "ties to companies" undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as "analysts"? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow's story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs.

Database of soldiers who fought in wars during the Medieval era, including the Hundred Years War. Not sure how to use this just yet...

A team led by Dr. Adrian Bell and Prof. Anne Curry, with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, have put up a stunning new database of military service records of medieval soldiers serving from 1369 and 1453: While the database’s primary purpose seems to be exploring the lives of individual soldiers of note, There are great many potential applications for large observation (large-n) quantitative studies of conflict and health. Variables in the database include: First Name, Last Name, Status, Rank, Captain’s Name, Commander’s Name, Year of Service, Nature of Activity, Reference Number, and Membrane. Read the project details for more information.

Recent scenes from Afghanistan

Saber que crianças sofrem horrores por causa da ganância de poder e dinheiro de alguns homens, me dá um nó na garganta. http://is.gd/q7AM [from http://twitter.com/llagerlof/statuses/1440607522]

Colonialism in the Congo - Leopold II and Belgium

Why PowerPoint kills decision making

As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool

Sub-hed: "As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool"

"Unfortunately, by using PowerPoint inappropriately, we have created a thought process centered on bullets and complex charts. This has a number of impacts. First, it reduces clarity since a bullet is essentially an outline for a sentence and a series of bullets outline a paragraph. They fail to provide the details essential to understanding the ideas being expressed. While this helps immensely with compromise, since the readers can create their own narrative paragraphs from the bullets, it creates problems when people discover what they agreed to is not what they thought they had agreed to. Worse, it creates a belief that complex issues can, and should, be reduced to bullets. It has reached the point where some decision-makers actually refuse to read a two-page briefing paper and instead insist PowerPoint be used."

As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool By T. X. Hammes

keyring

also watchbands, kevlar thread, tiny pen, etc

A&P Key Rings, They Do So Much. On A Visit To Our Local Airport We Noticed All The A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) Mechanics Were Sporting These Nifty Rings To Keep Their Keys And Small Tools Organized. We Thought They were So Cool We Had Some Made For Us. They Are Made From Stainless Aviation Cable With Brass Screws And Barrels. 6 Inch Cable 12 Inch Cable

Wu Zhongyuan

Amazing high resolution flight pictures

Just beautiful pictures.

In order to get the highest possible score on the test you’d have to perform 20 pull-ups, do 100 crunches in 2 minutes, and run 3 miles in 18:00 minutes.

Elég fitt vagy?

Today we're going to give ourselves a gut check by taking a physical fitness test. 200906253026

wow .... this spectacle will be better then Olympics opening

Fantastic photos as always.

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

Soviet War paintings

A fascinating collection showing how horrific World War II was for the Soviet Union.

An interesting photo essay over two and a half years of the journey of an American infantryman.

For 27 months, Ian Fisher, his parents and friends, and the U.S. Army allowed Denver Post reporters and a photographer to watch and chronicle his recruitment, induction, training, deployment, and, finally, his return from combat.

via kottke ... deeply depressing

I can’t begin to imagine how hard it would be to leave my family for months at a time, especially if my destination were Iraq or Afghanistan. And I don’t know how I could deal with my wife being deployed overseas. These reunion videos—for me, at least—shed a tiny beam of light on how emotionally draining being a military family can be. They’ll also make you want a dog. To commemorate Veterans Day, here are some overjoyed dogs greeting returning soldiers.

Enkele porties geluk (niet alleen honden, ook kinderen).

To commemorate Veterans Day, here are some overjoyed dogs greeting returning soldiers.

hooray!

If this doesn't reach you, nothing will

[Image: Ruined swimming pool at Uday 's Palace, Jebel Makhoul, Iraq (2009)

"Vast, self-indulgent halls of columned marble and extravagant chandeliers, surrounded by pools, walls, moats, and, beyond that, empty desert, suddenly look more like college dormitories. Weight sets, flags, partition walls, sofas, basketball hoops, and even posters of bikini'd women have been imported to fill Saddam's spatial residuum. The effect is oddly decorative, as if someone has simply moved in for a long weekend, unpacking an assortment of mundane possessions."

Photos of abandoned Manhattan Project facilities

out experiencing a sense of awe at what was accomplished. The scientific, engineering, managerial, labor, and logistical challenges that were met and overcome are separately impressive but, taken together, simply astonishing. It is all the more incredible that this was done in

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator

Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

Militants in Iraq have used inexpensive, off-the-shelf software to intercept video feeds from Predator drones.

US Aircrafts hacked by Insurgents from Iraq

"I was in Gaza and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in the drawing."

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills."

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

Main article on the 4th bomb in BBC by Gordon Corera "The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968, a BBC investigation has found."

Wikileaks leaking gratuitous US military killings. When they nonchalantly shoot journalists (or any people) someone still has to tell the people. I wonder what kind of consequences will come from this (for Wikileaks rather than the officials in charge, who'll – without doubt – have just done their job as usual).

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

#armamentos

'Information is beautiful'

A couple days later I found out from a detainee who was on that block that the older detainee was just scared and that when we placed him on his knees he thought he was going to be executed. He then went on to tell me that this man had seen some of his friends and family members executed on their knees. I can remember guys coming up to me after it was over that night and said "Man, that was a good job; you got you some". .......... Former President George Bush and Former Vice President Dick Cheney will never be held accountable for the decisions they made. It's the detainees and the guards like myself that will have to live every day with what they went through, saw, and did while there.

On December 4, 2008, Specialist Brandon Neely approached CSHRA with testimony he wished to contribute to the Guantánamo Testimonials Project. He believed that insufficient attention had been paid to "the hell that went on at Camp X-Ray." He would be in a position to know, as he arrived in Guantánamo while the cages of Camp X-Ray were still being welded, and escorted the second detainee to hit the prison grounds. In this interview, Specialist Neely provides testimony of the arrival of the detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, possible isolation regime of the first six children in GTMO, utter lack of preparation for guarding individuals detained

testimony of guard at GTMO

The bus doors opened, the escort teams were lined up right next to the bus to take the detainees off the bus and put them in the holding area. You could hear the Marines screaming at them "Shut the fuck up! You're property of the United States of America now."

And what about minimal force? SOPs say IRFings have to use the minimal amount of force necessary. And guards' reports that have been released say they were conducted in this way as well. On the other hand, you say that the Number 1 Man of the IRF team had to "hit the detainee as hard as he could with the shield". That does not seem consistent with minimal force… All I can say to this question is I am sure a lot really has changed in the way the day-to-day activities take place. Especially with regards to IRFing. But at Camp X-Ray, especially before ICRC (or International Committee of the Red Cross%2

Excised

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB260/index.htm Very interesting history of a once "black" agency.

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers — referred to as PowerPoint Rangers — in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader’s pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan. Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs.

Great article about misuse of powerpoint!

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander

bullets create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control...not to mention the huge waste of time in creating the things in the first place

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control... Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” --Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster

"Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.... 'When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,' General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter...."

【鎧を着ている以上盾は必要なかった】 日本では非常に古くから全身鎧が用いられるようになりました。 大鎧（大鎧は板金に漆を塗った積層装甲である小冊を重層構造にしたもので一種のチョバムアーマーでした）が用いられていた当初、例えばヨーロッパはまだ板金鎧を実用化出来ていません。 ちなみに当時の彼らが着ていたのは柔らかい鉄を延ばした針金で作った鎖帷子でした。 【外国人と日本人の体格差について】 ここではヨーロッパとの比較についてですが結論から言いますと戦国以前の日本人と当時同時代のヨーロッパ人とでは体格差はありません。 ヨーロッパでは１９世紀以前はゲルマンなど一部の地域を除き160センチあれば大男でした。一方日本では東国部者などは170センチ台がごろごろいました。

へー！！！

soliders Raping women

Those torture photos Obama won't release are, according to the telegraph, rape pics. http://tr.im/mY1h [from http://twitter.com/thegrumpyowl/statuses/1982217964]

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

2009-05-27: Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

RT: whoawhoawhoawhoa @problemchylde I want to cry. http://bit.ly/12zc46 I want to cry. [from http://twitter.com/kismet4/statuses/1950798238]

RT @chrisguillebeau: Wired: Army Orders Bases to Stop Blocking Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites - http://bit.ly/y9kle [from http://twitter.com/gvillearchitect/statuses/2112505130]

Army unblocks social media tools

"...a click in the right direction for the armed service which seems to be making a slow but steady recovery from its lingering hostility towards social media."

The Army has ordered its network managers to give soldiers access to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, Danger Room has learned. That move reverses a years-long trend of blocking the web 2.0 locales on military networks. Army public affairs managers have worked hard to share the service’s stories through social sites like Flickr, Delicious and Vimeo. Links to those sites featured prominently on the Army.mil homepage. The Army carefully nurtured a Facebook group tens of thousands strong, and posted more than 4,100 photos to a Flickr account. Yet the people presumably most interested in these sites — the troops — were prevented from seeing the material. Many Army bases banned access to the social networks.

He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was a standardized Bush Administration tactic–the importance of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating criminal law accountability for contractors. The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes. While these techniques have long been known, the role of health care professionals in implementing them is shocking.

Harper's Magazine

Army Private Brandon Neely

It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president's ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

For the first time in 100 years, and contrary to a long-standing legal prohibition, an active duty military unit is permanently assigned inside the U.S.

2008/09/24

An interesting list of things that can not be seen on google maps

If terrorists were looking for potential targets, they now have a nice list...

// What a great article.

The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e-mail communications. Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual – blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks – McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the "most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine." The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too "Gucci." He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops.

Got the guy fired 06/23/10 ; ideally should get a bunch of others fired too, but probably won't, or not the important ones anyway.

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Questi sono alcuni dei risultati di un'inchiesta portata avanti per due anni dal Washington Post. Dice @riotta su twitter che non ci sono scoop, però.

Great piece of journalism from Washington Post: Top Secret America, A hidden world, growing beyond control. http://is.gd/dyx7L #Terrorism

Interesting.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

tl;dr Government is too big.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

RT @redlog: RT @ananny Phenomenally good reporting from the Washington Post: "Top Secret America", http://bit.ly/9Ja5Fi

invetigaciones especiales acerca del gob de EUA

tl;dr Government is too big.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

RT @redlog: RT @ananny Phenomenally good reporting from the Washington Post: "Top Secret America", http://bit.ly/9Ja5Fi

invetigaciones especiales acerca del gob de EUA

tl;dr Government is too big.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

RT @redlog: RT @ananny Phenomenally good reporting from the Washington Post: "Top Secret America", http://bit.ly/9Ja5Fi

75,000 field notes from the US Military ground operations

RT @wikileaks: WikiLeaks is tremendously overloaded. Please use http://bit.ly/9RlJQA

Wikileaks Afghanistan

The Afghan War Diaries an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.

Afghanistan: The war logs [guardian.co.uk] http://goo.gl/XHW4

WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan. The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war.

Kabul War Diary [Wikileaks] http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

75,000 field notes from the US Military ground operations