Category: Military

  • AFTN Station Manager Meeting 1969 in Korat, Thailand

    AFTN Station Managers Conference, Korat RTAFB, Thailand [Photo from Facebook: Mort Cherim]
    AFTN Station Managers Conference, Korat RTAFB, Thailand [Photo from Facebook: Mort Cherim]
  • Fox News – “Propaganda Machine”

    Fake News
    Fake News

    “Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association,” Col. Ralph Peters wrote in an email to colleagues. “Now I am ashamed.” [1]

    On March 1st, I informed Fox that I would not renew my contract. The purpose of this message to all of you is twofold:

    First, I must thank each of you for the cooperation and support you’ve shown me over the years. Those working off-camera, the bookers and producers, don’t often get the recognition you deserve, but I want you to know that I have always appreciated the challenges you face and the skill with which you master them.

    Second, I feel compelled to explain why I have to leave. Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.

    In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

    As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin’s agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the “nothing-burger” has been covered with Russian dressing all along. And by the way: As an intelligence professional, I can tell you that the Steele dossier rings true–that’s how the Russians do things.. The result is that we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.

    I do not apply the above criticisms in full to Fox Business, where numerous hosts retain a respect for facts and maintain a measure of integrity (nor is every host at Fox News a propaganda mouthpiece–some have shown courage). I have enjoyed and valued my relationship with Fox Business, and I will miss a number of hosts and staff members. You’re the grown-ups.

    Also, I deeply respect the hard-news reporters at Fox, who continue to do their best as talented professionals in a poisoned environment. These are some of the best men and women in the business..

    So, to all of you: Thanks, and, as our president’s favorite world leader would say, “Das vidanya.”

    References:

    1. Buzzfeed, March 20, 2018, Tom Namako – An “Ashamed” Fox News Commentator Just Quit The “Propaganda Machine”

    Judgment at Appomattox: A Novel (The Battle Hymn Cycle)

    Available from Amazon.com

    Judgment at Appomattox
    Judgment at Appomattox – by Ralph Peters – Available from Amazon.com

    The ferocious final weeks of the Civil War come alive in Judgment at Appomattox, the final novel of New York Times bestselling author Ralph Peters’s breathtaking, Boyd Award-winning series

    A great war nears its end. Robert E. Lee makes a desperate, dramatic gamble. It fails. Ulysses S. Grant moves. Veteran armies clash around Petersburg, Virginia, as Grant seeks to surround Lee and Lee makes a skillful withdrawal in the night. Richmond falls.

    Each day brings new combat and more casualties, as Lee’s exhausted, hungry troops race to preserve the Confederacy. But Grant does not intend to let Lee escape…

    In one of the most thrilling episodes in American history, heroes North and South, John Brown Gordon and Phillip Sheridan, James Longstreet and Francis Channing Barlow, battle each other across southern Virginia as the armies converge on a sleepy country court house.

    Written with the literary flair and historical accuracy readers expect from Ralph Peters, Judgment at Appomattox takes us through the Civil War’s last grim interludes of combat as flags fall and hearts break. Capping the author’s acclaimed five-novel cycle on the war in the East, this “dramatized history” pays homage to all the soldiers who fought, from an Irish-immigrant private wearing gray, to the “boy generals” who mastered modern war. This is a grand climax to a great, prize-winning series that honors―and reveals―America’s past.




  • Free Flu Shots for Veterans

    In additional the your VA facilities (Directory), you can go to any Walgreens (Directory)  with your VA ID, Photo ID.  Use Group ID: VAFLU.  Available through March 31, 2018.

  • AFTN Udron Station & Living Quarters – Circa 1968

    RTAF AFTN Udorn Station
    RTAF AFTN Udorn Station – Photo by Roger Tremaine
    AFTN Living Quarters
    AFTN Living Quarters – Photo by Roger Tremaine

    References:

     

  • Broadcasters: Untold Chaos

    Broadcasters: Untold Chaos by Rick Fredericksen
    Available from Amazon.com on Kindle

    Broadcasters: Untold Chaos by Rick Fredericksen

    Tantalizing details of news stories are often never told. That changes in “Broadcasters: Untold Chaos,” where a veteran journalist sheds new light on a career reaching from Saigon to Sioux City. These insider accounts—little-known or never told—include threats against CBS News, lunch with Ferdinand Marcos, a shocking on-air protest ignited by censorship and a military TV station destroyed with 100% casualties.

    One central story recounts a tense confrontation on September 11, 2001. Just hours after two pilots had taken possession of a Cessna aircraft and were flying over the Midwest, their small plane was targeted by F-16 fighter jets. The civilians may have been the last Americans to learn that our country was under attack. These hand-picked stories were selected from a 50-year career by former military and civilian news broadcaster Rick Fredericksen. “Some events and news makers deserve more attention,” according to the author, who reopened his old reporter’s notebooks to reveal hidden accounts stretching from the Vietnam War to the war against terrorism. The tragic saga of CBS war photographer Vinh Ve is a recurring theme through the first chapters. He would suffer terribly after the fall of Saigon—even finding himself at odds with the network that made him a legend—only to re-emerge years later when General Norman Schwarzkopf returned to Vietnam. Other topics include real life stories and characters at the American Forces Vietnam Network, made famous in the movie “Good Morning, Vietnam”; a field investigation on the suspected impact of Agent Orange on Vietnamese civilians; and the downfall of a world-famous pop star in Bangkok.

    Broadcasters: Untold Chaos” includes 27 historic photographs in a nostalgic journey for broadcasters, news junkies and Vietnam War enthusiasts. This written record was made possible by a treasure trove of documentation that was left behind in the shadows of the day’s bigger headlines. “Broadcasters: Untold Chaos” is a salute to the actual broadcasters themselves, especially foreign correspondents who are sometimes confronted with grave danger. Author Fredericksen is the last Bangkok Bureau Chief for CBS News.

    About the Author

    Rick is an American writer and journalist who lived in the Asia-Pacific region for more than 14 years before returning home to the Midwest. He is a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War. Rick covered stories throughout Southeast Asia for multiple news agencies during a decade of residence in Thailand. His latest book, “Broadcasters: Untold Chaos,” is part memoir and part history as he re-tells major stories from an insider perspective. Few journalists can claim Rick’s diverse experience, which encompasses radio, TV, print and online journalism, practiced during a career in commercial, public and military broadcasting. He is the last Bangkok Bureau Chief for CBS News. Rick’s first eBook, “After the Hanoi Hilton: An Accounting” chronicles the search for POWs and MIAs after the war in Vietnam.