Once again the folks over at militaryphony.com have posted another guy who claims to be a Navy SEAL.
It appears Paul Allen Martins has claimed to be a Navy SEAL a whole bunch of times.
No need to list them all, I think you get the picture and the rest of them are here. Some of them you might find a bit disturbing, like this one:
Making those kind of claims where real Navy SEALS read them will lead to getting a FOIA for records. Martens is not listed in the UDT/SEAL database as having completed SEAL Training.
Paul Allen Martins was a Disbursing Clerk and an E-4 at discharge. He should have just been proud of the service that he did have.
The people at militaryphony.com sent us their case on Anthony Provost who leads people to believe he was a Naval Special Warfare Officer and Navy SEAL.
Ya, well they don’t think that his claims are true.
The records are pretty straight forward. He did do an enlistment in the United States Navy. The records show he was a Yeoman 3rd Class, or E4. A yeoman is an enlisted person within the United States Navy that performs administrative and clerical work. They deal with protocol, naval instructions, enlisted evaluations, commissioned officer fitness reports, naval messages, visitors, telephone calls and mail. There is no listing of SEAL Training and he is not listed in the UDT/SEAL database.
It also appears he spent some time in the Navy Reserves. You can visit their site for all the rest on this guy.
I ran across this while following a link in comments to Jonn’s article about the death of Fidel Castro. To give some perspective to Castro’s “accomplishments”, thought I’d post links to what I found here.
According to Totten, Cuban officials don’t allow foreign journalists routine entry to Cuba. After reading the article, the reason why should be fairly obvious.
Totten nonetheless managed to lie his way past customs and spend some time in that “Communist Utopia”. But unlike Michael Moore and others, he made it a point to get outside the “tourist zones” and see how the Cuban populace actually lives.
The documents his firsthand observations regarding the conditions when he visited Cuba in 2013 – the conditions outside Havana’s “tourist enclaves”. Totten went out of his way to spend time outside Havana’s “tourist enclaves”, and observe – and later record – what he’d seen. In short, he went to those places where Cubans actually live.
The article can be found here. It’s longish, but it’s definitely worth reading.
Here’s a little excerpt for one TAH reader we all “know and love”. I’ve added emphasis in a few places.
Cuba was one of the world’s richest countries before Castro destroyed it—and the wealth wasn’t just in the hands of a tiny elite. “Contrary to the myth spread by the revolution,” wrote Alfred Cuzan, a professor of political science at the University of West Florida, “Cuba’s wealth before 1959 was not the purview of a privileged few. . . . Cuban society was as much of a middle-class society as Argentina and Chile.” In 1958, Cuba had a higher per-capita income than much of Europe. “More Americans lived in Cuba prior to Castro than Cubans lived in the United States,” Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, author of a series of books about Castro and Guevara, tells me. “This was at a time when Cubans were perfectly free to leave the country with all their property. In the 1940s and 1950s, my parents could get a visa for the United States just by asking. They visited the United States and voluntarily returned to Cuba. More Cubans vacationed in the U.S. in 1955 than Americans vacationed in Cuba. Americans considered Cuba a tourist playground, but even more Cubans considered the U.S. a tourist playground.” Havana was home to a lot of that prosperity, as is evident in the extraordinary classical European architecture that still fills the city. Poor nations do not—cannot—build such grand or elegant cities.
But rather than raise the poor up, Castro and Guevara shoved the rich and the middle class down. The result was collapse. “Between 1960 and 1976,” Cuzan says, “Cuba’s per capita GNP in constant dollars declined at an average annual rate of almost half a percent. The country thus has the tragic distinction of being the only one in Latin America to have experienced a drop in living standards over the period.”
Yep. Just your garden-variety Socialist “worker’s paradise”. Sounds quite a lot like accounts I’ve read of the former Soviet Union, actually.
Rot in hell, Fidel. If even a small part of that article is true, you richly deserve it for what you did to your own nation and countrymen. Even the thoroughly corrupt and morally bankrupt bastard Batista was a piker by comparison.
Hat tip to TAH commenter HMCS(FMF) ret for linking to an article in his comments. A link embedded in the article he linked ultimately led me to the gem above.
They say that, “A bad penny always turns up”. We now have another example of the truth of that old proverb.
Convicted felon and former KKK-dipsh!t David Duke is back in the news these days. Seems as if he’s announced he’s running for office yet again. This time, Duke’s announced that he’s running for the US Senate from Louisiana.
Duke does this periodically. He ran for the Louisiana State Senate in 1974 and 1979 – as a Democrat. He also ran for President in 1988, also as a Democrat; when that didn’t turn out well, he successfully obtained the Populist Party nomination. He’s run for a number of Louisiana and Federal elective offices since. The only public office to which he’s managed to get elected was the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989 – in a special election where his runoff opponent was stupid enough to come out in favor of raising property taxes in a suburban district; Duke ended up winning by just over 200 votes. (That gig didn’t last very long for Duke; his tenure in office ended in 1992.)
Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and has been described by some of his former colleagues in that organization as “nothing but a con man”. He also used Klan funds to largely remodel his home in the 1970s, justifying this by claiming that “most of his home was used by the Klan”.
Duke’s also a convicted felon. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and filing a false tax return in conjunction with a mail solicitation scam (he admitted to having engaged a multi-year direct-mail solicitation campaign from which he diverted funds to support personal investments and gambling trips); he did 15 months time. Predictably, he now claims the charges were brought to derail his political career.
Duke’s also managed to get arrested and thrown out of the Czech Republic in 2009. He managed to get himself banned from Europe’s Schengen area by a Swiss court as well.
He’s also made apparently bogus “secret squirrel” claims, claiming to have participated in clandestine missions in Laos in 1971. (Duke’s father worked in Laos at the time; Duke visited in 1971, and his father managed to get him a short-term job teaching English to Laotian officers. Duke managed to get himself fired.) Those claims have been effectively discredited by former Air America pilots, who’ve pointed out that Duke’s claims are don’t square with their operating procedures; Duke also can’t recall the name of any airfield in Laos from which he flew.
Oh, and for completeness: Duke’s also a racist, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, and IMO an all-around evil bastard. (I probably shouldn’t have to spell all of that out since he’s a former KKK Grand Wizard, but unless I do maybe some might not make those connections.) He also apparently formerly wore Nazi regalia on a regular basis and sold Nazi literature out of his office.
Nice guy. Too bad he hasn’t yet consumed excrement and afterwards expired.
Unfortunately, neither being a convicted felon nor a freaking racist idiot nor a damned liar are disqualifying for Federal elective office. So he’s running for office yet again.
Wonder if it’s time to break out those old “Vote for the crook – it’s important” bumper stickers again. Hopefully the Louisiana electorate will body slam the old racist fool hard enough this time that he finally quits politics for good.
The views expressed here are personal and do not represent the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.
I’ve recently written about Brandon Bryant, ex-Air Force drone sensor operator (or as they apparently call them in Norway, a “pilot”) over on my blog, PickYourBattles.Net. Brandon is the star of a new Norwegian documentary called Drone, where his personal story is apparently the meat of the flick. There is just one problem. Brandon Bryant is a liar.
In the short video embedded above, at one point Brandon claims, to an audience in New York City, that the FBI called him to inform him that he was being targeted by ISIS. Then the video shows him telling that exact same story to an audience in Germany, where instead of ISIS he says that the FBI told him he was being targeted by a conservative right wing “Christian Patriot” group. This is par for the course. Sadly, most in the media seem to ignore Brandon’s utter lack of credibility. Or at least they don’t carefully research him. I guess I can’t really blame them. After watching more than forty videos of Brandon running his yap, I do not begrudge them for passing up on the experience. Still this charlatan needs to be exposed.
I know Brandon hates him some TAH so I had to show up over here. And when asked to pile on as a guest blogger, I just couldn’t say no. Kind of like Bryant couldn’t say no to violating his oath of office because he was scared that he might be “ridiculed.” Yeah he said that. In public.
To be fair, those of us in the defense business know that ridicule strikes fear into the hearts of even the most courageous soldiers, strike that, “warriors.” Mortars, rockets, small arms, and anti-aircraft artillery are one thing, but we’re talking about ridicule here. This ain’t X-box, ridicule is the real deal, it’s like being in “the shit.” In fact, I may have just now developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) simply from the thought of ridicule. I am viewing a computer screen right now, so there is a case to be made. If you’re Brandon Bryant, of course, or one of his Legion of Jerkoff superhero sidekicks.
Not only does Brandon claim PTSD from being a drone operator with only a handful of lethal actions from ten thousand miles away from the battlefield, but he has also publicly stated that he’s waiting on his VA benefits so that he can have a place of his own. He’s too good traumatized to get a job and he claims to be homeless. Never mind that he lives with his mother in Missoula, or at least he did, and was using the generous GI Bill to go to school; a bounty that comes not just with full tuition, but also with more than $1000 a month in Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH). Still, Brandon will tell ya, he’s homeless and he’s a “disabled veteran” with no income. He says he has nothing. He touts a “physical injury” from his time in the service, but somehow that doesn’t keep him from literally doing back flips on internet video. If you don’t watch this video for any other reason, it’s worth watching just to see that. But to be fair, I can’t swing a stick without hitting a homeless disabled veteran doing gymnastic maneuvers. So there’s that.
But show some compassion, dear reader. Brandon is too disabled to work. Especially not while also fitting in his globe trotting and fine foreign dining, and giving speeches and attending long Q&As about his European film. That poor bastard really pulls on my heart strings.
I’ve known Brandon online for some time now. When I first became acquainted with him, I thought he might have something of substance to offer to an important discussion. Turns out I was wrong. His story morphed over the years from wanting to be a voice for drone operators serving under bad leadership, to him later claiming that distance technology is cowardly and bad. Of course, there are many who agree with him on that point. We in the biz call them the enemy. They hate our distance warfare capability as much as Brandon does, and they prefer making hand-to-hand IEDs. You know, what Brandon would call honorable combat. Practically a fist fight.
Now this self-proclaimed expert on war is writing letters to the President of the United States, as though he has some kind of moral authority despite the fact that he directly violated his oath of office while he was serving. That doesn’t stop him from making lofty proclamations, though.
Not only have I learned that Brandon will lie without a second thought, as the video above demonstrates, but his motivations are not pure. They weren’t pure when he was in the military, and they’re not pure now. It’s still all about him. He knows nothing of service despite his collection of Reader’s Digest quotes to the contrary. He admits that he’s always wanted to be a hero and that he grew up with comic books. I think it’s fair to say that him plagiarizing the words of Captain America from a Marvel comic both at his Tedx talk, as well as during his ramblings at the Drone documentary premiere in New York City, shows that he hasn’t lost that love of fiction. Brandon is all about spreading fictions.
But public service and public discourse are not the stuff of fairy tales. And there is an important discussion to be had about our nation’s national security and how our military capabilities are utilized. Sadly, Brandon is hurting this discussion and the credibility of better people who inexplicably enable his shenanigans. For some reason, these more serious people are not relegating Brandon to the kid’s table where he belongs. Perhaps these journalists and lawyers are just taking their time, as I did, figuring out his lack of character. I suspect, however, that many of Brandon’s foreign friends, like Tonje Hessen Schei, are not too troubled by his character so long as he follows a particular script.
And that script is infecting and hurting an important discussion all over the internet. Hopefully the fine folks at TAH can help foster and improve the discussion by continuing their fine tradition of exposing this guy for the fraud that he is. Brandon likes social media and a lot of people are eating up the piles of manure he’s feeding them. I hope that those who hate liars as much as myself, and who love their country and want our capability to remain strong while we debate the proper use of that capability, will help get the word out on Facebook and Twitter about this scoundrel.
I’m sure you recognize the fellow pictured above. His name is Norman Reynolds, he’s from Elkhart, Indiana and he was arrested there a few weeks ago for shooting at two shoplifters;
Reynolds, who served 24 years in the Army and Air Force and has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, told ABC57 reporter Taylor Popielarz that he pulled out his gun to try to keep the suspects from getting away. He said the suspect who was in the passenger seat vanished from sight momentarily and Reynolds was afraid he might reappear with a weapon. He told ABC57 that he shot at the truck once just behind the passenger seat in an effort to frighten the suspect.
“I wanted them to stay there until the police arrived,” Reynolds said.“I figured if he had a weapon, he wasn’t gonna use it then.”
Reynolds told the TV station that he has handled firearms for 45 years and that he never intended to shoot anyone. “There’s no way the bullet was going anywhere else” other than the truck, he said.
Since the incident, Reynolds, whose next court date is early next year, has kept a low profile and no longer carries a gun.
I’m glad he’s not carrying a gun if he thinks that shoplifting carries a death sentence. But, yes he is a veteran. This is what he was wearing in that jacked-up uniform he had on;
His records say that he earned most of that stuff, but that he doesn’t have master jump wings – there is no mention of jumpmaster training.
I think I remember something about the XVIIIth Airborne Corps’ Recondo Schools becoming their PNCOC back in the day and that’s probably why he’s wearing the 101st Recondo patch. But, yes, he even has the Expert Infantryman Badge. He got out of the Air Force as an E-6 Technical Sergeant.
So, yeah, you can light him up for wearing his uniform like a homeless bum, but, other than the Master Jump wings, it looks like he earned the rest of it. And those boots. Screw him with those boots.
Updated 4-15-2016; Norm was sentenced after a plea deal to 18-month suspended sentence, probation and a $300 fine.
Since an Army general has finally demonstrated the backbone, rarely seen nowadays among his peers, to defy the White House and proceed with the prosecution of Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the liberal media is doing its very best to downplay the possible seriousness of the charges. Even conservative venues are repeating the deceit that the desertion charge carries a maximum penalty of five years confinement while the lesser known second charge can result in a life sentence at maximum.
I hate to disappoint all the liberal Democrats and their media mouthpieces whose war heroes always seem to be tainted, often so much so as to be heroes to our enemies, such as John Kerry and Jane Fonda, both venerated by Communist Vietnam, but the truth is that both charges against Bergdahl do, in hard fact, carry the death penalty. For the charge of desertion, it is this subparagraph from Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that puts the lie to the liberal misinformation campaign:
(c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.
Any person subject to this chapter who before or in the presence of the enemy-
Runs away;
Shamefully abandons, surrenders, or delivers up any command, unit, place, or military property which it is his duty to defend;
Through disobedience, neglect, or intentional misconduct endangers the safety of any such command, unit, place, or military property;
Casts away his arms or ammunition;
is guilty of cowardly conduct;
Article 99 continues with several additional offenses but the money phrase is the one with which it concludes:
Shall be punished by death or such punishment as a court-martial may direct.
So, as you can see, while the media is doing its very best to sugarcoat Bergdahl’s treachery, they are clearly wrong and their boy Bowe is in big trouble, particularly if any infantry NCOs, his true peers, are seated on that court-martial panel. The reason for the media’s deception is patently clear; they are seeking desperately to cover for their beloved Obama, who foolishly traded the equivalent of five enemy general officers for this one sorry slug of a deserter who is not even a legitimate sergeant. Bergdahl, a private first class when he deserted, was promoted in absentia in accordance with military policy regarding POWs. There must be millions of us former sergeants across America, who earned our stripes the hard way, who would dearly love to rip those chevrons from Bergdahl’s arms and make him eat them.
Or maybe save one set of stripes and make that worthless wimp in the White House choke it down.
So, the Bergdahl Theater began yesterday, you know, the part where the Army acts as if they’re going to punish the little Jason Bourne wannabe for deserting his unit on the field of battle and he went over to the enemies’ side of the war for five years. At least they made his nasty-leg-ass take off that maroon beret. But, Stars & Stripes writes about Navy SEAL master chief Jimmy Hatch who was severely wounded in an attempt to rescue Bergdahl from himself. His partner, Spike, a Belgian Malinois died in that attempt. The Army denies that anyone died looking for Bergdahl, you know contrary to evidence to the contrary, but they haven’t been clear if anyone was injured. Hatch, could testify to that point actually.
Hatch, his femur shattered, went through 18 surgeries in two years. He lost his military career and suffered from debilitating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He nearly took his own life. His fate inextricably tied to Bergdahl’s, Hatch said he would readily testify if he is called upon.
“I would tell them about the sacrifices of the group of individuals that went out with me on the night I was wounded,” Hatch said. “About the risks they took on behalf of Mr. Bergdahl because of his decisions.
“I would like Mr. Bergdahl and his family to hear what his decisions did to me and my family. I’d like to tell him about my injuries and about the difficulties my family and I continue to have.”
The Washington Post noticed that Bergdahl isn’t wearing the POW Medal in the picture above. However he is wearing two Good Conduct Medals, so I guess his Haqqani network captors didn’t give him any negative reports on his conduct.
