Eideard

Fort Bragg has reached a truce of sorts with a group of Army atheists that opens the door for an event called Rock Beyond Belief on post next spring featuring music and speeches by noted secular humanists, including the writer Richard Dawkins .

On his Web site, Rockbeyondbelief.com, Sgt. Justin Griffith, the driving force behind the event, said this week that the post commander, Col. Stephen J. Sicinski, had authorized the group to hold the event on the post’s centrally located parade field, a major sticking point in earlier negotiations. Sergeant Griffith, who Fort Bragg officials said was currently deployed in Kuwait, said the event would be held March 31.

“This just might be the turning point in the foxhole atheist community’s struggle for acceptance, tolerance and respect,” Sergeant Griffith wrote on the Web site. “It’s an amazing time to be a nonbeliever in the U.S. military on the cusp of a major breakthrough.”

A spokesman for the fort, Benjamin Abel, confirmed that Colonel Sicinski had approved use of the parade field because Rock Beyond Belief had come up with enough money to pay for a stage, lighting, sound system and other expenses involved in setting up the grounds…Mr. Abel added that the fort would provide electricity, water and security for the event but not any direct financial assistance.

“This is not a Fort Bragg sponsored event,” he said. “We’re dealing with it the same as for other private organizations who have events on the installation.”

The idea behind Rock Beyond Belief began last year when the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association held an event at Fort Bragg called Rock the Fort. The base command, at the urging of its chaplains, provided some money and manpower for the event as well as a choice location on the parade field. Sergeant Griffith and other atheists at the post protested, arguing that the event was an Army-sponsored platform for the Graham organization to recruit converts, though the post command denied that…

Sergeant Griffith and other atheists in the military say their ultimate purpose is to gain acceptance within the Christian-dominated armed forces, including by winning the appointment of secular chaplains.

Amazing isn’t it? How long has it been since our freedoms were recognized by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Yet freedom from religion still takes political pressure and the threat of litigation for something as simple as an equal opportunity to address the public.

Rock on, folks. A little freedom of speech is a powerful thing.

“No – you can’t have a white one!”

U.S. paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division recently took part in a field exercise at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in which they experimented with a tool not normally used by the armed forces – a smartphone. And no, they weren’t playing Farmville. Instead, they were using custom phones running custom apps, to coordinate the swarming of a mock village and the capture of a high-value target. Judging by how the exercise went, smartphones could soon be showing up on battlefields everywhere.

The phones were ruggedized Android-based prototypes developed specifically for the project. They were plugged into the soldiers’ tactical radios, combining the capabilities of both technologies. Running on the phones were two apps – Joint Battle Command-Platform, or JBC-P Handheld, and Tactical Ground Reporting, or TIGR Mobile.

JBC-P displays a map of the battlefield, using GPS to indicate the locations of friendly forces, enemies, and landscape hazards in real time. TIGR allows soldiers to send photos back and forth, and swap historical information relevant to the operation…

Given that troops presumably wouldn’t want to be thwarted by coverage limitations, the phones communicated using the WIN-T secure terrestrial network provided by the soldiers’ HMS Manpack and Rifleman radios. The network allowed troops to share information with one another in the field, and with the battalion tactical operations center. WIN-T also links up to a secure satellite connection, to keep the higher-ups at headquarters in the loop.

Of course, the U.S. Army is confident that no one else in the world can match our tech know-how. Couldn’t possibly hack into battlefield cellphones and use the information against our troops.

We need a new generation of Navajo code-talkers.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is investigating last year’s series of fervent campaign “robo-calls” by Haitian presidential candidate Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, which led to evacuations at the Fort Bragg military base…

In the weeks prior to Haiti’s November election, anyone who had ever placed a call to Haiti received a string of pre-recorded calls from Martelly. After the Jan. 12 earthquake, the list included countless Haitian Americans, journalists, non-profit groups and the U.S. military.

They heard Martelly shouting in Creole, urging the Diaspora to support tet kale – the bald-headed one. His frantic tone even spooked the U.S. Army.

“There were people who didn’t understand what it was and speculated it was a terrorist threat in a foreign language,” said Fort Bragg spokesman Ben Abel. “Two or three buildings where the calls came in were evacuated.”

On Nov. 17, the Army criminal investigations team swept the cleared buildings for explosives and listened to recordings left on voice mailboxes, Abel said. “I listened to it and thought: ‘That’s not Arabic. That’s not Pashto. That sounds like French,” Abel said…

“We are aware of the situation and are looking into the matter,” said Robert Kenny, director of media relations for the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. “The Commission aggressively enforces provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which generally prohibits delivery of prerecorded messages to residential phones and also prohibits the use of automatic telephone dialing equipment in certain situations, such as calls to emergency lines, hospitals, and mobile phones.”

He noted that the law applies not only to calls made within the United States, but also to calls made from outside the country to U.S. phones.

Not only do we waste taxpayers dollars running and hiding from a freaking phone call because no one at an Army base recognized Creole – now, in their infinite wisdom, the FCC will waste more taxpayer dollars investigating what? That the calls took place? That they didn’t meet federal regulations? That they may apply exactly what sanctions to the company in Haiti that placed the robocalls?

The terrorists have won.

A founding patron of the Taliban in Afghanistan died in the hands of a younger generation of militants in the tribal badlands of Pakistan in the last few days, a victim of the vicious forces he helped create, Pakistani officials said Monday.

Brig. Sultan Amir, known by his nom de guerre, Colonel Imam, was captured by the Pakistani Taliban in northern Waziristan last March. Whether he was killed by his captors, or died of a heart attack as reported by the Taliban, remained unclear.

The demise of Colonel Imam comes 10 days after another veteran figure in the emergence of the Afghan Taliban, Gen. Naseerullah Babar, 82, died after a long illness at his home in Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan.

The death of the two men signified the end of an era of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that began in the 1970s, stretched into the American-backed mujahedeen resistance against the Soviet occupation and was followed by the coercive Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s…

Colonel Imam formed a close bond with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader who welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan…

A weathered figure with a long white beard and white turban who looked to be in his 70s, Colonel Imam was initially trained by the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1974, and completed a master parachutist course with the 82nd Airborne Division…

A senior Pakistani government official in the tribal areas, Tariq Hayat, said Monday that he had been informed by a Pakistani official in North Waziristan that Colonel Imam was dead. The militants were demanding a ransom for the return of the body, he said. Only after the body has been reclaimed would the cause of death be known, Mr. Hayat said.

Chickens coming home to roost land in the Pentagon about as frequently as any other center for the training of imperial flunkies.

RTFA for the details. If you have watched American policy in South Asia for a spell you ain’t about to be surprised.