I haven’t written a post in a while dear readers, it has been actually pretty slow in the news department with regard to the Army Reserve community. I have often thought of branching out subject matter for this blog site… but that would not necessarily encourage more readers and would be a little dangerous if I discussed anything about my current position with the Army as a civilian employee.
That second piece is a token recognition of the fact that Army Civilian employees also lose the right of free speech to a degree as we must observe all the same PAO approval, message filtering, content approval if we want to express ourselves in the media in any way…. I’ve written about the Orwellian oversight of bloggers within the military before…little has really changed.
At any rate…I just turned 49 the other day… just 11 more years until I will be able to draw a retirement check for my 24 years of active and reserve service. There has been little movement in efforts to reduce the retirement age for those of us that answered the call to active service before 2008… with impending budget constraints; I doubt the momentum to consider such a reduction is very strong.
I received a counterpoint comment to my experience at the VA the other day. I do believe the VA is a great thing and apparently does serve many pretty well. I have been having issues with them and I can’t argue that I have a different perspective than many…but… I won’t just lie down and let certain personnel in that system run over people when they are in a position of public service… Thanks to songdoglady for widening my perspective.
On to other topics – if you have an interesting topic related to retired or Active Army Reserve status…send me a comment and I’ll try to take it on.
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Let Soldier’s Blog
General Caldwell is quoted in Government Executive Com, Jan 30th issue in an article by Greg Grant
As you have read here – there is a significant counter position to allowing such free reign to Blog sites, video sites and the like within the walls of the Pentagon. General Caldwell has clearly grasped that the digital internet era warrants a relook at the resources we have in soldier Blooging. Therein lies the potential to have a sustainable information warfare counter to the information battle that is being waged across the internet spectrum.
He suggested in the article that unit leaders be given camcorders to document combat operations and daily life. He grasps that there is an importance in being able to immediately access an audience of millions. Noted in the article is the fact that there are MilBloggers out there willing to overcome the red tape imposed by the August 2006 Pentagon memo which forbade personnel from placing any information on public Web sites unless it was reviewed for possible security violations and approved for distribution by commanders.
I have noted here previously that it is a struggle to overcome bureaucratic reluctance to allow blogging within the military establishment. The resistance extends event to retiredreservist at times as a result of the Pentagon restrictions. These restrictions quantified in the current rules are subjective to to a wide range of interpretation. Within the milblogging community this may be translated to absolute censorship or open latitude for bloggers. The restriction on using military computers (often the only machines available in theater) further suppresses the good message from our soldiers in the field.
General Caldwell has got it right with regard to the need to relook the current policy and improve our counter message to that of the enemy. We must realize that our soldiers come from a great cross section of the country they serve and as a result are best positioned to influence the masses on notion that we are doing good work.
To compete in the global information war played out on Web sites and e-mail, soldiers in Iraq should upload videos of their experiences in the combat zone to YouTube and post their personal stories online.
As you have read here – there is a significant counter position to allowing such free reign to Blog sites, video sites and the like within the walls of the Pentagon. General Caldwell has clearly grasped that the digital internet era warrants a relook at the resources we have in soldier Blooging. Therein lies the potential to have a sustainable information warfare counter to the information battle that is being waged across the internet spectrum.
He suggested in the article that unit leaders be given camcorders to document combat operations and daily life. He grasps that there is an importance in being able to immediately access an audience of millions. Noted in the article is the fact that there are MilBloggers out there willing to overcome the red tape imposed by the August 2006 Pentagon memo which forbade personnel from placing any information on public Web sites unless it was reviewed for possible security violations and approved for distribution by commanders.
I have noted here previously that it is a struggle to overcome bureaucratic reluctance to allow blogging within the military establishment. The resistance extends event to retiredreservist at times as a result of the Pentagon restrictions. These restrictions quantified in the current rules are subjective to to a wide range of interpretation. Within the milblogging community this may be translated to absolute censorship or open latitude for bloggers. The restriction on using military computers (often the only machines available in theater) further suppresses the good message from our soldiers in the field.
General Caldwell has got it right with regard to the need to relook the current policy and improve our counter message to that of the enemy. We must realize that our soldiers come from a great cross section of the country they serve and as a result are best positioned to influence the masses on notion that we are doing good work.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Interesting site of fellow Blogger
This site works to build continued support for our military. They sell some unique T-shirts from which 20% of proceeds go to military family support. Consider supprting them and buy yourself a neat shirt in the process....
http://www.takepride.com/blog/
http://www.takepride.com/blog/
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