Vietnam Veterans of America Pinellas County Chapter 522 Newsletter 25-01.pdf · 2017-09-06 ·...

Vietnam Veterans of America

Pinellas County Chapter 522

“Five Double Deuce”

Serving Veterans

and the

Community

Meeting Location

VFW Post 4256 12901 Gulf Boulevard

Madeira Beach Florida 33708

www.vva522.org

Mailing Address PO box 551

Indian Rocks Beach, FL 33785-0551

“Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.”

Volume 25

Issue Number 01

January, 2016

VOLUME 25, ISSUE 01 FIVE DOUBLE DEUCE PAGE 2

By Dick Ammon, Newsletter Editor

2015 was a very good year for Chapter 522. We celebrated our 25th anniver-

sary of continuous operations. Not many VVA chapters have reached that milestone. It is a testament to our members, the officers and directors, and to the support we

receive from our community.

Chapter 522 will end the year in strong financial condition, in large part due to the volunteer work of our members, our valuable AVVA partners, and friends of our

organization. In turn, we were able to provide financial assistance to needy veterans, veteran-related organizations, and local organizations. Our 9th Annual Dwight Harrah

Memorial Golf Tournament was very successful this year.

The chapter created a formal color guard in 2015, providing their services at a

number of functions and events during the year. Chapter 522 was recognized by the Florida State Council by winning the 2015 Newsletter of the Year and 2015 Website of

the Year awards. We held successful elections during the year and enhanced our com-mittees. We maintained our membership level at about 100 and converted several

annual memberships into life memberships.

With 2015 nearly gone, it’s time to start thinking about the new year. Are you going to make any new year resolutions? Are you going to actually keep those resolu-

tions? Surveys have shown that the vast majority of resolutions are never achieved.

Most people make resolutions to project a degree of optimism as they close out the last 12 months.

What goals would you like to see our chapter set for 2016? This is an issue that

we need to talk about at our monthly meeting on January 4th. Your input is very im-portant so give it some thought. Here are a few questions:

1. How can we get more members involved in the chapter?

2. What enhancements would you like to see to our newsletter and/or website?

3. What type of fundraiser ideas do you have for early 2016?

4. Are you interested in being a member of the color guard?

5. What help do you need as a Vietnam Veteran?

Looking Back and Looking Forward


January Monthly Meeting

Monday, January 4th, 1900 hours 12901 Gulf Boulevard, Madeira Beach, FL 33708

Monthly Veterans Lunch

Sponsored by Chapter 522 and VFW Tuesday, January 5th, 1200 hours VFW

12901 Gulf Boulevard, Madeira Beach, FL 33708

Tampa Bay Lightning vs. Carolina Panthers Hockey Game Sunday, January 17th, 1700 hours Amalie Arena

$20.00 Per Person

(must pay in advance at January 4th meeting)

Important Dates

President Mike Bousher pre-

sented Alan Thompson with his 25-Year VVA Member award at the De-

cember meeting. Chapter 522 has 8 other members who qualify for their

25-year pins but were not at the meet-ing to receive their awards.

The next presentations will be for

those members who have at least 20-years of VVA membership.

Congratulations to all those “old guys”!!!!


Mike Bousher was invited to play

flag football with the members of the Wounded Warriors Abili-

ties Ranch.

Mike Alstott was the designated quarterback for both teams. Five

of the players were in wheel-chairs. Every participant caught

a touchdown pass from Bucs Number 40.

Mike Bousher, playing as a rush defensive end, was never able

get to the quarterback. But a good time was had by everyone

at the event.

Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come,

whispering that it will be happier.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He who mistrusts most should be trusted least.

Thognis

Happiness is the way station between too little and too much.

Channing Pollock

You can’t lose weight by talking about it. You have to keep your mouth shut.

The Old Farmers Almanac

It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.

Zelda Fitzgerald

Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.

Thor Heyerdahl


What Kind if a Chap Are You?

Are you one of the chaps who can take his rap

And still not hit the floor;

Who’ll stick by the gun till his task is done

And then look ‘round for more?

Do you grin at your work or sulk and shirk

When the job seems hard to do;

Are you there with the grit to do your bit;

Can the boss depend on you?

Is your conscience clear, with nothing to fear

As you punch the clock each night;

When you leave the job, do your pulses throb

With the thought of a task done right?

Is it pleasure or dread when you pillow your head

And think of the coming day;

Do you breathe a prayer for strength to bear

Does your job mean simply play?

Just pause a bit and see if you fit

In the class that’s pictured here—

For it’s never to late to clean the slate

And start on a record clear.

Frank A Collins

If fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your tooth.

Persian Proverb


Parking for passengers with disabilities is available 24

hours a day in all airport parking areas, including

Short Term, Long Term, and Economy Parking. Upon enter-

ing the parking facility, please follow standard signage sym-

bols for designated disabled parking spaces, commonly lo-

cated adjacent to nearby elevators.

Standard parking rates apply, except that the airport

provides free parking in accordance with section 316.1964 of

the Florida Statutes which requires that free parking be

maintained in airport parking facilities for those vehicles with

specialized equipment, such as ramps, lifts, or foot or hand

controls, or which display the State of Florida Toll Exemption

Permit.

NEW: The airport offers free parking for all indi-

viduals with disabled veterans tags on their vehicles.

For additional information, contact parking contractor, ABM, at (813) 870-8791.

Parking for Disabled Passengers at Tampa International Airport

VVA Continuous Member Year Pins

Listed below are the members of Chapter 522 that have at least 20 years of continuous mem-

bership in the VVA. Pins will be issued to each member present at the January 4th meeting of

Chapter 522.

Donald Lilga Robert Klase

Peter Blume Stephen Jones

Kevin Begley Gerald Goleman

Stephen Ray David Miller

Andrew Hulse Joseph Brisciano

Dale Nichols Jack Brown

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day

he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself he becomes wise.

Alden Nowlan


Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Samuel Butler


Some Useful Quotes


By Catherine Herridge, November 23, 2015 FoxNews.com

Editor’s Note: Does this remind you of Vietnam? They say history repeats itself!

Analysts at U.S. Central Command were pressured to ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat and were even told in an email to “cut it out,” Fox News has learned – as an investigation expands into whether intelligence reports were altered to present a more positive picture.

Fox News is told by a source close to the CENTCOM analysts that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line.”

Separately, a former Pentagon official told Fox News there apparently was an attempt to destroy the communications. The Pen-tagon official said the email warnings were "not well received" by the analysts.

Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.

The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.

Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product

-- during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept "kicking the can down the road." The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a differ-ence.

The IG probe started earlier this year amid complaints that information was changed to make ISIS look more degraded than it really was.

Among the complaints is that after the U.S. air campaign started in August 2014, the metrics to measure progress changed. They were modified to use measures such as the number of sorties and body counts -- a metric not used since the Vietnam War -- to paint a more positive picture.

Critics say this "activity-based approach" to tracking the effectiveness of strikes does not paint a comprehensive picture of

whether ISIS is being degraded and contained.

The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the IG investigation was expanding and adding more investigators, and that the office had taken possession of a trove of documents and emails as part of that probe.

Asked about the report, House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said Sunday that his committee and oth-ers are involved in the investigation.

“We heard from a lot of whistle-blowers and other informants who have given us information. And not just … related strictly to the latest allegations,” Nunes said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Citing the renewed focus on ISIS after the Paris terror attacks, he added: “So the president, to have a successful strategy, is going to admit that they've got it wrong and they need to relook at a larger strategy that deals with north Africa, the Middle East, all the way over to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then work closely with our NATO allies with what appears to be a command and control structure that ISIS has created successfully in Europe.”

President Obama, speaking at a press conference in Malaysia over the weekend, said he expects to “get to the bottom” of whether ISIS intelligence reports were altered – and has told his top military officials as much.

“One of the things I insisted on the day I walked into the Oval Office was that I don’t want intelligence shaded by politics. I don’t want it shaded by the desire to tell a feel-good story,” Obama said Sunday. “I believe that the Department of Defense and all those who head up our intelligence agencies understand that, and that I have made it repeatedly clear to all my top national security advisers that I never want them to hold back, even if the intelligence or their opinions about the intelligence, their analysis or interpretations of the data contradict current policy.”

At the same time, he said, “As a consumer of this intelligence, it’s not as if I’ve been receiving wonderfully rosy, glowing por-traits of what’s been happening in Iraq and Syria over the last year and a half. … [I]t feels to me like, at my level at least, we’ve had a pretty clear-eyed, sober assessment.”

The president’s call for a thorough investigation was greeted with cynicism by those involved in the 2014 intelligence assess-ments, since the administration did not act on the earlier raw intelligence that painted a dire picture of developments, especially in Iraq.

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

Emails show DOD analysts told to 'cut it out' on ISIS warnings;

IG probe expands


Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago the United States had declared war on

Islam and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!

At the height of the eighteenth century, Muslim pirates were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of

the North Atlantic.

They attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected

to barbaric treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their government and family members to

pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.

These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers – col-

lectively referred to as the Barbary Coast – and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new Ameri-

can Republic.

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S.

declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France. How-

ever, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.

Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy. Beginning in1784, seventeen years before he would become president, Thomas

Jefferson became America’s Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim

adversaries by following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States rather than

engaging them in war.

In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Dye of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom

of $60,000. It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any

further payments. Instead, he proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who together

could force the Islamic states into peace. A disinterested Congress decided to pay the ransom.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Great Britain to ask by what right his

nation attacked American ships and enslaved American citizens, and why Muslims held so much hostility towards

America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

The two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was

founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran that all nations who would not have ac-

knowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they

could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who

should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim nations, as well as the objections of

many notable American leaders, including George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and

would only further embolden the enemy, for the following fifteen years the American government paid the Muslims

millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in

ransom and tribute amounted to over twenty percent of the United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Why the Marine Hymn Contains the Verse "To the Shores of Tripoli"


Jefferson was disgusted. Shortly after his being sworn in as the third President of the United States in 1801, the

Pasha of Tripoli sent him a note demanding the immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for every

year forthcoming. That changed everything.

Jefferson let the Pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with his demand. The Pasha responded by

cutting down the flagpole at the American consulate and declared war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and

Algiers immediately followed suit. Jefferson, until now, had been against America raising a naval force for anything

beyond coastal defense, but, having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thugery for long enough, decided

that is was finally time to meet force with force.

He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean and taught the Muslim nations of the Barbary Coast a

lesson he hoped they would never forget. Congress authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels

and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli and to “cause to be done all other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of

war would justify.”

When Algiers and Tunis, who were both accustomed to American cowardice and acquiescence, saw the newly inde-

pendent United States had both the will and the right to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to-

Tripoli. The war with Tripoli lasted for four more years, and raged up again in 1815. The bravery of the U.S. Ma-

rine Corps in these wars led to the line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Hymn, and they would forever be

known as “leathernecks” for the leather collars of their uniforms, designed to prevent their heads from being cut

off by the Muslim scimitars when boarding enemy ships.

Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of their prophet and their god, disturbed Jeffer-

son quite deeply.

America had a tradition of religious tolerance. The fact that Jefferson, himself, had co-authored the Virginia Stat-

ute for Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no other religion the world had ever seen. A religion

based on supremacism, whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers, was unac-

ceptable to him. His greatest fear was that someday this brand of Islam would return and pose an even greater

threat to the United States.

This should bother every American. That Muslims have brought about women-only classes and swimming times at

taxpayer-funded universities and public pools; that Christians, Jews, and Hindus have been banned from serving

on juries where Muslim defendants are being judged; Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been

banned from workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities; ice cream has been discontinued at certain

Burger King locations because the picture on the wrapper looks similar to the Arabic script for Allah; public schools

are pulling pork from their menus; on and on and on and on….

It’s death by a thousand cuts, or inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most Americans have no idea that this bat-

tle is being waged every day across America. By not fighting back, by allowing groups to obfuscate what is really

happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our own culture, the United States is cutting its own throat

with a politically correct knife, and helping to further the Islamists agenda. Sadly, it appears that today’s America's

leaders would rather be politically correct than victorious!

Any doubts, just "Google Thomas Jefferson vs. the Muslim World."

IN GOD WE TRUST


By Yoni Heisler, Published December 01, 2015

Illustration file picture (REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Files).

While most people associate the “Dark Web” as a murky underworld where users can easily buy and sell anything from drugs, counterfeit passports, and even advanced weaponry, it’s also proven to be a popular destination for users to traffic in stolen data. From banking information to online streaming credentials, the extent to which our private and financial data is readily available to anyone willing to pay for it is downright scary.

Recently, McAfee Labs published a report titled The Hidden Data Economy. As the name suggests, the report pro-vides us with a number of interesting insights into the economics that govern stolen data on the dark web. Suffice it to say, any and everything imaginable is available for the right price.

For instance, the report touches on the going rate for banking login credentials. As evidenced below, the granular-

ity of what is available is simultaneously impressive and jarring.

Average estimated price for stolen credit and debit cards: $5 to $30 in the United States; $20 to $35

in the United Kingdom; $20 to $40 in Canada; $21 to $40 in Australia; and $25 to $45 in the Euro-

pean Union.

Bank login credentials for a $2,200 balance bank account selling for $190.

Bank login credentials plus stealth funds transfers to U.S. banks priced from $500 for a $6,000 ac-

count balance, to $1,200 for a $20,000 account balance.

Bank login credentials and stealth funds transfers to U.K. banks range from $700 for a $10,000 ac-

count balance, to $900 for a $16,000 account balance.

Online payment service login credentials priced between $20 and $50 for account balances from $400 to $1,000; between $200 and $300 for balances from $5,000 to $8,000.

Also interesting is how the going price of a stolen credit card number increases with each additional piece of card owner information provided.

It’s also worth highlighting that the dark web has become a marketplace where users can even traffic in login cre-dentials across varying streaming services, including Netflix, premium cable channels, and sports streaming sta-tions.

“Many online streaming entertainment media services are commonly sold,” the report notes. “Both HBO NOW and HBO GO accounts can be found for less than $10 as well as other cable TV-branded streaming services. Clearly, video streaming services are in high demand. Even premium professional sports streaming services can be pur-chased for $15.”

But without question, the scariest aspect of stolen data on the dark web is full-on identity theft.

Here's how much your stolen data is worth on the Dark Web

http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-hidden-data-economy.pdf


For additional information, please visit our website at www.vva522.org.

Disclaimer

The views or opinions expressed within this publication are not necessarily the opinions of the publishers, advertisers, members, National Headquarters or that of Pinellas County Chapter 522.

Disclosure Statements

“100% of your gift/donation will be used by VVA, Chapter 522 of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc., Pinellas County, Florida. Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Registration Number CH11513.”

Registration does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by the state. Call 1-800-HELPFLA (1-800-435-7352) for a copy of the official registration and financial information.

Position Name Telephone E-Mail Address

President Mike Bousher 813-917-2688 [email protected]

Vice President Dick Ammon 727-816-9080 [email protected]

Secretary Paul Laurence 727-481-7768 [email protected]

Treasurer Jack Meyers 727-776-9341 [email protected]

Chaplain Larry Lee 727-365-7400 [email protected]

VVA Chapter 522 Contact Information

Director Bruce Witham Newsletter Publisher Mike Bousher

Director Rick Goodfellow Newsletter Editor Dick Ammon

Director Joe Ellenberger Newsletter Photographer Peilian Ammon

Membership Alan Thompson Website Administrator Dick Ammon

Vietnam Veterans of America Pinellas County Chapter 522 Newsletter 25-01.pdf · 2017-09-06 ·...

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