In the spirit of Veteran’s Day, the You Served blog and VAMortgageCenter.com has put together this Virtual Veterans Day Parade. In many cities across this country, our military is still disrespected as the city councils have put politics over patriotism. In honor of those patriots frustrated and powerless about this, we offer you this special parade. On behalf of each of these floats and in honor of all Veterans, the VAMC is making a generous donation to Soldier’s Angels’ Operation Valour-IT, which helps provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries.
Grab your lawn chair and find a good spot as we set off on our virtual “parade”:
A Reuters article discusses the ease with which developments in cell phone technology are rapidly enabling mobile payments, replacing credit cards and other instruments controlled by traditional financial institutions.
"Japan is leading the way in this regard. KDDI, for example, is a Japanese telecom operator that has recently set up a bank along with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest wireless carrier, offers credit cards and lending services as part of a tie up with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Japan's third-largest bank. Outside Japan, telecom industry and financial players are still in the midst of working out how the wallet phone payment business would operate, who would get a cut and when. 'Traditional financial industry met telcos by going mobile. Now telecom operators want to play a part in that chain. These talks are well under way,' said Gerhard Romen, Director for Strategic Alliances & Partnering at Nokia."
The Reuters article said little about the downside of the new technology. But terrorist financing experts in and outside government have long been worried that the mobile payment development is outpacing regulators' and law enforcement's ability to detect and prevent use by terrorists. In their new report on terrorist financing, "The Money Trail: Finding, Following, and Freezing Terrorist Finance," Contributing Experts Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute discuss terrorists' use of cell phones to transfer funds. "M-payments, where cell phones are utilized to transfer money electronically, are growing in importance, as is the transfer and storage of funds via online entities such as cashU or e-gold. In countries where the formal financial sector is less than robust—such as in many African countries—using cell phones is a far more attractive option for transferring funds. In some cases, terrorists are suspected of using the internet to obtain logistical and financial support for their operations... One factor is the evolution in terrorist financing, including the use of cell phones and cash couriers to transfer funds, abuse of charities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and trade-based money laundering." As I wrote on February 29, the State Department labeled mobile payments a "growing threat" for their use by narco-terrorists.
Cell phones also enable the user to access stored value instruments, such as as an embedded chip in the phone, a hard card, or a cloud account, issued by financial institutions and other companies. As the Reuters article and a report by the Australian Government's Institute of Criminology noted, MasterCard is pushing the development of "phone wallets," through which cardholders can access their stored value account by sending text messages from a registered mobile phone (what one expert calls "Cell-a-Card").
Mobile payment systems are being deployed at an incredibly rapid rate. A recent article in a banking systems subscription newsletter recently noted that each of the top 10 banks in the U.S. will have a mobile banking platform opened by the end of this year. Last year, the Gartner Group predicted $2 trillion in mobile transactions by 2012. Workshop titles at recent cell industry conferences include “Convergence of Financial Tools on Cell Platforms” and “The Mobile ATM.”
The Obama Administration and next Congress need to get on top of this issue next year.
Arlington: Field of Honor, presented by Snagfilms.
National Geographic presents a portrait of one of America’s most sacred places. Once little more than a potter’s field, Arlington National Cemetery has become a national shrine and treasury of American history. Now, discover how this revered site came to be, and how it serves as the final resting place for both the famous and obscure, from John F. Kennedy to the Unknown Soldier. Through rare archival footage and captivating, true-life accounts, experience the moving stories of heroes and heroines and witness the daily activities and official rituals of the dedicated staff who strive to honor those who are laid to rest here. From fallen soldiers and daring explorers to political leaders and other honored Americans, the hallowed history of Arlington reveals a powerful portrait of this iconic and venerated landmark.
Google always puts up special graphics on special days. If you go to www.google.com today you will see this modification to their normal Google logo as a way to honor vets. I have to say this is a pretty cool one.
President Bush leaves President-elect Obama broad latitude for covert action in countries with which the United States is not at war, powers that Obama could scale back along with other Bush presidential orders now under consideration for rescinding.
Dozens of crewmen were fast asleep on a nuclear submarine when freezing Freon gas poured over them from a firefighting system, survivors said Tuesday in the first eyewitness accounts of the Russian submarine accident that killed 20 people.
The U.S. Army is expected to begin draining and neutralizing a container of lethal nerve agent on Wednesday, almost 15 months after a one-gallon leak was identified at a Kentucky storage site for chemical weapons.
Dozens of masked gunmen blocked a mountain pass and hijacked a convoy of trucks carrying military vehicles and other supplies bound for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.
President George Bush, marking Veterans Day at a Manhattan pier that is home to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, praised veterans past and present who have defended U.S. freedom. The Intrepid returned last month to the pier where it has served for 24 years as a military and space museum.
A report entitled ‘International Terrorism’ drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence in the UK, was leaked to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper in the UK. The document outlines the continued high threat to the UK from international terrorists aligned with al-Qaeda and in particular the severe threat to the Government Security Zone (GSZ) in the center of London, which covers the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall and Buckingham Palace. The report also highlights the continued presence of extremist 'enclaves' in the UK within Birmingham, Luton and South East England.
What is particularly interesting about this report is how little the extremist human and geographical terrain has changed within the UK over the past ten years. Similarly, the core actions of extremist networks have remained consistent in spreading their message, training, funding and procuring non-lethal military equipment to support Jihadi’s in Pakistan - this report really could have been written in 1998. What has of course changed is the explicit domestic targeting of the UK, which was less apparent ten years ago. The UK government’s response to extremism and international terrorism has also drastically shifted - I just hope they aren’t fighting the battle they should have fought in 1998.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s), myself included, and not intended as a directive or recommendation. Your ability to in turn express your opinions are just one of the rights I defended as a United States Army soldier. I respect and encourage that right. I ask only this; if you disagree with any of the material presented, either by the author or by posters, take a deep breath and think before you post. Be introspective. Be concise. Form a complete, well thought, and above all polite response before posting. The inability to communicate politely and succinctly on emotionally charged issues will do nothing to promote productive sharing of viewpoints. We must speak rationally and intelligently to each other as individuals before we can ever hope to do it as a country. To do anything less is to denigrate each other, hide away the truth, and perpetuate that which we seek to overcome.
