Фотоальбомы немецких солдат. (Photo albums of German soldiers.)

MeFi, Photo albums of German soldiers:

“Photo albums of German soldiers. Fully scanned photos from the personal albums of German soldiers from the Second World War and the years preceding it.”

“A few days ago an anniversary for the blockade of St. Petersburg city during the World War 2. For more than two years the city was in the tight circle of German troops. The front line was already in the suburbs and the downtown was bombed constantly. People suffered from the hunger and illnesses. Tens of thousands died. For those who survived it’s a great day, and those guys dressed in WW2 uniforms dedicate this show for them, the heroes of the blocked city.”

:-w          Our current leader speaks with forked tongue.

“Timers from washing machines and dryers, like these for sale at a parts store in Baghdad’s Rasheed Street district, are used by insurgents to detonate improvised explosive devices.”

Noah Shachtman, How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not Electronic:

“(…) The Defense Department wasn’t blind to the power of networks, of course — the Internet began as a military project, after all, and each branch of the armed services had ongoing “digitization” programs. But no one had ever crystallized what the information age might offer the Pentagon quite like Cebrowski and Garstka did. In an article for the January 1998 issue of the naval journal Proceedings, “Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future,” they not only named the philosophy but laid out a new direction for how the US would think about war.

Their model was Wal-Mart. Here was a sprawling, bureaucratic monster of an organization — sound familiar? — that still managed to automatically order a new lightbulb every time it sold one. Warehouses were networked, but so were individual cash registers. So were the guys who sold Wal-Mart the bulbs. If that company could wire everyone together and become more efficient, then US forces could, too. “Nations make war the same way they make wealth,” Cebrowski and Garstka wrote. Computer networks and the efficient flow of information would turn America’s chain saw of a war machine into a scalpel.”

There are 48,000 ‘security contractors’ in Iraq, working for private companies growing rich on the back of US policy. But can it be a good thing to have so many mercenaries operating without any democratic control?

An extract from Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, by Jeremy Scahill.

Zie ook Robot Magazine.

Part 1: Secrets, Sources & Spin.

“After being called to emergency reserve duty two weeks ago and much indecision on the part of the officers of how we would be utilized in the raging conflict, my unit was assigned a complicated mission.”

Het eindigt als volgt:

“I was released from the hospital a few hours ago after being treated for severe dehydration and exhaustion. I just wanted to let everybody know that I am fine. Sorry if I made you guys worry too much.”

Blogcentral.jpost.com: Lone Soldier: War – Posted by LONE SOLDIER