Pearl Harbor from above, 1941-2011

Seventy years after a "date which will live in infamy," this satellite image of Pearl Harbor shows the symbols of a war's beginning and end.

The symbol of the end is more evident: The USS Missouri sits at its dock at Ford Island in the Hawaiian harbor, serving as a museum ship. In 1945, the "Mighty Mo" was the stage for the formal Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. After almost a half-century of service, the battleship was decommissioned for good in 1992 and took its place on Pearl Harbor's Battleship Row in 1998.

The Missouri wasn't even afloat on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese airplanes bombed the harbor and drew the United States into the war. But the battleship Arizona was. In the picture above, snapped by the GeoEye-1 satellite, the outlines of the Arizona are barely visible at upper right, beneath the surface of the water. The USS Arizona Memorial is the white structure sitting above the ship.

GeoEye-1, a polar-orbiting satellite operated by the GeoEye commercial venture, focused on Pearl Harbor on Sept. 24 from a height of 423 miles as it sped over the scene at 17,000 mph.

The scene was quite different in 1941, on what President Franklin Roosevelt dubbed a day of infamy. The aerial photograph you see below, taken from U.S. Navy archives, shows the wreckage in the harbor on Dec. 10, 1941, three days after the attack. Dark trails of oil stream from the dead and damaged ships. From this altitude, you get a sense of the attack's toll on the U.S. fleet, but not of the human cost: 2,390 Americans killed, 1,178 wounded.

Today, veterans, family members and dignitaries are gathering at Pearl Harbor to commemorate the 70th anniversary. Flags are flying at half-staff. And Americans are looking back at the events of 1941 from a remote perspective, as if from a great height.

Alan Boyle writes

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/07/9263923-pearl-harbor-from-above-1941-2011

Wreaths Across America Day: Saturday, December 10, 2011

100,000 wreaths to be placed on gravesites

at Arlington National Cemetery.

Twenty years ago, wreath company owner Morrill Worcester and a dozen other people laid 5,000 wreaths on headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. It was Worcester’s way of giving thanks to the nation’s veterans with leftover unsold wreaths.

This year, Worcester has arranged for up to 100,000 wreaths to be placed on grave sites at the military cemetery Dec. 10 in his biggest wreath-laying undertaking yet.

A convoy of more than 20 trucks left Worcester Wreath Co. in the eastern Maine town of Harrington on Sunday to begin the six-day journey to the cemetery in Arlington, Va., outside Washington, the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of veterans and a tourist site that draws 4 million visitors a year. Along the way, there will be ceremonies at schools, veterans’ homes and in communities in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland.

Worcester never expected the wreath-laying effort to grow from a single tractor-trailer carrying a few thousand wreaths to 84 big rigs delivering wreaths to Arlington and hundreds of locations. Besides the Arlington ceremony, his Wreaths Across America organization has also organized more than 700 other ceremonies at veterans’ cemeteries and monuments across the country and overseas involving 225,000 wreaths.

“We haven’t really tried to push it; it’s really just grown on its own,” Worcester said. “We have a hard time keeping up with it.”

Worcester, who has never served in the military, came up with the idea of a wreath-laying ceremony 20 years ago when he found himself with an extra 5,000 wreaths in December, too late to bring to market. He decided upon Arlington National Cemetery, which he had visited as a child.

After that first year, Worcester continued donating wreaths and holding ceremonies at the cemetery. The event remained relatively small with little fanfare until a photo, showing thousands of green wreaths with red ribbons nestled against headstones on a snow-covered ground, made its way around the Internet about five years ago.

After that, Worcester got thousands of emails and letters from people wanting to donate, and inquiries from others asking how they could hold wreath-laying ceremonies of their own to pay tribute to those who have served in the military. So he and his wife founded the nonprofit Wreaths Across America to take in donations and organize hundreds of wreath-laying ceremonies at veterans’ cemeteries.

Wreaths Across America put 24,000 wreaths on Arlington headstones last year, and initially hoped to put them on virtually all 220,000 headstones this year. That initiative fell short, but Worcester said he’s still pleased that they’ll be able to put out 100,000 of the laurels.

Of the 325,000 wreaths in all of this year’s ceremonies, Worcester is donating 25,000. His company makes the rest, but they are paid for through donations from groups and individuals and through corporate sponsorships.

The growth of the event doesn’t surprise Joanne Patton of Hamilton, Mass., the daughter-in-law of World War II Gen. George S. Patton and the widow of Patton’s son, Maj. Gen. George S. Patton IV, who is buried in Arlington.

On Monday, Patton will receive one of Worcester’s wreaths in a ceremony in Topsfield, Mass., which she will then lay on a tank in Patton Park in Hamilton, Mass. She has participated in past Wreaths Across America events as well.

“It’s an amazing expression of honoring the spirit of service,” she said.

Figuring out the logistics of resting so many wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery was complex enough when there were only 5,000 to worry about, said Wayne Hanson, who is in charge of coordinating the ceremony at Arlington. If the weather is nice, Hanson expects more than 10,000 people to participate in Saturday’s event.

Hanson is optimistic that some year soon all the Arlington headstones will have wreaths placed on them for the ceremony.

“We can work toward doing the whole cemetery for our 25th anniversary,” he said.

Morrill Worcester, president of the Worcester Wreath Co., and founder of Wreaths Across America.

For more information on the mission and Mr. Worcester click on the links below:

http://www.worcesterwreath.com/

http://www.wreathsacrossamerica.org/

Honoring Our Vietnam Veterans by Education!

The Education Center by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

There is a great need to educate our future generations about the honor and sacrifices made by those who served our country during the Vietnam War. The importance of building the Education Center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial needs to be shared, talked about and explained to local business owners, community members and Veteran's Groups as well as students of all ages. Citizens from all areas must come together as one and continue to raise awareness of the Education Center, it's important roll in US history and the funding that is needed to build it.

More than 25 years ago, Vietnam veteran Jan C. scruggs took $2,800 of his own money and set out to build a national memorial to those who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War. Thousands of Americans stepped forward to help fund the construction of the Wall.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, built entirely with private funds, was dedicated on the National Mall in 1982. 

Now, Scruggs and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund are partnering with the National Park Service to build The Education Center at The Wall, an underground learning facility that will tell the stories of those who served, allowing visitors to connect a face and a personal story to the more than 58,000 names on The Wall.

The Education Center was authorized by Congress and the President in 2003. Since then, the Center has received site approval and will be built underground on land near The Wall, so it will not detract from the historic vistas of the National Mall and the design will keep with that of The Wall.

The Education Center was conceived as a way to help put faces to the thousands of names on The Wall, to educate future generations about these honorable men and women who gave everything for their country and to give a glimpse into their lives. Exhibits will be tied to the seven values embodied by all American service members: Loyalty -- Duty -- Respect --Service -- Honor -- Integrity -- and Courage.

The Center will include The Wall of faces -- showing large scale photos of the fallen on their birthdays. A National Call for photos was launched in September 2009 to gather more than 58,000 photos needed for this display. The Collections Wall -- exhibiting some of the more than 100,000 items left in tribute at The Wall since 1982. Timelines of the Vietnam War and the creation of The Wall. The Legacy of Service displaying images of service members who served in all of American's wars.Educational Resources to include additional information on the fallen and the Vietnam War that will be made available onsite, offsite and online.

The capital campaign is reaching out to corporations, organizations, unions, and individuals to raise the approximately $85 million necessary to build the center. You can contribute to this cause by clicking HERE for a donation form, or by visiting online at http://www.buildthecenter.org or by calling 866-990-WALL. Please join me in supporting this worthy project!

The Wall Wants Photos
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the organization that supports the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (The Wall), is working on a project to gather photographs of all of the 58,272 men and women whose names are inscribed on the Memorial. So far, VVMF has collected about 23,000 photos. They will be displayed in the Education Center at The Wall, which is under construction, and also will appear on line on VVMF’s Virtual Memorial Wall page.

If you have a photo of someone who perished in Vietnam, you are invited to bring it to the venues to scan. You may also submit the photo online. For info on the latter, go to www.vvmf.org/pafwan

About the VVMF Education Center at The Wall
The Education Center at The Wall is a place on our National Mall where our military heroes' stories and sacrifice will never be forgotten. Like the Wall, The Center will be funded entirely from private donations. It will be a state-of-the-art visitors and learning center featuring the faces and stories of the 58,272 men and women from across America whose names are etched on the Wall. The Center will honor and tell the stories of those who fell in Vietnam, those who fought and returned, as well as all brave patriots who have served in the military from the Battle of Bunker Hill to the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Center will be located nearby both the Lincoln Memorials and the Vietnam Wall. With a planned groundbreaking in November 2012, construction will commence once all funds are raised. Support the Education Center at The Wall by visiting www.buildthecenter.org, calling 866-990-WALL, or by texting "WALL" to 2022.

Goal: $1,000,000~ACHIEVED~$1,212,978 Raised & Matched!

Full Tilt Poker Makes Its Case!

Why It Has Been Unable to Pay Back Players...

Full Tilt Poker, which was the world’s second-biggest online poker company until two of its founders were indicted by the U.S. government in April, on Tuesday released its most detailed explanation for why it has been unable to pay back poker players who bet on its site.

In a one-page statement, Full Tilt blamed the April indictment coupled with U.S. government cash seizures over many years and a massive theft perpetrated by one of its payment processors for overwhelming Full Tilt’s ability to smoothly manage its financial affairs.

“As is obvious from the events that have transpired since April 15th, Full Tilt Poker was not prepared for the far-reaching, US government enforcement effort of Black Friday,” Full Tilt said in a statement. “Full Tilt Poker never anticipated that the DOJ would proceed as it did by seizing our global domain name and shutting down the site worldwide.”

Full Tilt Poker did reach an agreement in April with the Justice Department that was supposed to help facilitate the return of funds to players who had large cash balances with the company, but Full Tilt’s inability to pay money back has infuriated its players and the poker world at large. In its statement Full Tilt said that U.S. Justice Department actions over the last few years against online poker payment processors resulted in the U.S. government seizing $115 million of player funds located in U.S. banks. In addition, the company claims it was the victim of a massive heist in which one of its key payment processors stole $42 million from the company. “Until April 15th, Full Tilt Poker had always covered these losses so that no player was ever affected,” the company said, adding that it experienced “unprecedented issues with some of its third-party processors that greatly contributed to its financial problems.”

For years the Department of Justice took the position that online poker violated U.S. law while online poker firms like Full Tilt that built massive online businesses claimed online poker was not prohibited by anything that was on the books. In April the cat-and-mouse game that had been going on came to a head when federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted founders of Full Tilt and its biggest rival, PokerStars, while launching a $3 billion civil lawsuit against the companies and shutting down their U.S. facing web sites.

The Justice Department’s recent actions against the online poker industry have indeed caused big problems for Full Tilt, a company that was clearly taking big risks. According to the plea agreement entered into with the U.S. government by one payment processor, Bradley Franzen, Full Tilt was dealing with a $60 million shortfall earlier in 2011 that was created by crediting player accounts despite not being able to debit funds from customers through financial transactions. In late June the Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspended Full Tilt’s main egambling licenses because of issues that arose as part of a special investigation.

Since the indictment Full Tilt has been trying to find investors who could put some cash into a business that desperately needed some. Full Tilt now says that six investment groups, including hedge funds and operators of other Internet firms, have visited Full Tilt’s Dublin headquarters and that the company has hired an unnamed financial advisor to “assist us in our search for an infusion of cash as well as a new management team to restore the site and repay players.”

Nathan Vardi, Forbes Staff

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2011/08/30/

full-tilt-poker-makes-its-case-explaining-why-it-has-not-paid-back-players/