Monday, February 2, 2015

Ex-Navy SEAL Accused of Scamming Other SEALS

Ex-Navy SEAL faces up to 12 years for scheme that ensnared brothers in arms
FoxNews.com
By Malia Zimmerman
Published February 02, 2015

A Navy SEAL who admitted he shattered the elite special force's code of brotherhood by stealing from his brethren to finance his luxurious lifestyle and gambling faces up to 12 years in prison, not to mention the scorn of men who served with him but now consider him “the most repugnant scum on Earth.”

Jason Mullaney, part of SEAL Team Five until 2003, convinced 11 SEAL team members and one civilian to invest a collective $1.2 million into his company, Trident Global Financial Holdings.

Named after the Trident SEAL symbol, Mullaney said his company would award loans to credit-challenged small businesses and individuals for high interest rates, secured with assets that covered the principal and profit. Investors would receive back their investment plus a 24 percent profit within a year, Mullaney pledged.
Former Navy SEAL Jason Mullaney tried to change his plea, but a judge would not allow him to.
(Courtesy: 10News ABC)
“Jason, I wish you the worst and hope that you rot in Hell for what you did to all of us – you are the most repugnant scum on Earth.”
- Former Navy SEAL Alexander Sonnenberg

Instead, Mullaney ran a pyramid scheme, and, rather than repay investors, he spent their money on a new Mercedes Benz, an extravagant home and on gambling in Las Vegas, according to prosecutors. And even though Mullaney pleaded guilty to four charges on Sept. 8, 2014, including three counts of grand theft and one count of securities fraud, he has shown no remorse, and even tried to revoke his plea, a maneuver that was nixed by the judge last month.

The SEALs had no idea they were cheated until some tried to collect on their investment. Mullaney, they reported to the FBI and San Diego District Attorney on April 27, 2011, had vanished with their money.
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PTSD changed you for a time, but you can change again!

The list of times I faced traumatic events is long but I can tell you that this report on Salon is not the total truth. Yes, the trauma stays with you just as every other good event in your life. Everything that happens become part of you at this moment in time. Your past tags along.

Yet when you think about the fact that you kept changing up to and including the "big one" setting off PTSD, you can keep changing. You can keep healing, finding peace and live a better quality of life. PTSD changed you for a time, but you can change again! It doesn't have to win.

“There is no cure for trauma. Once it enters the body, it stays there forever”
Survivors say the day of their trauma marks the end of a chapter in their lives.
The IED attack in Iraq was mine
Salon.com
DAVID J. MORRIS
FEB 1, 2015

We are born in debt, owing the world a death. This is the shadow that darkens every cradle. Trauma is what happens when you catch a surprise glimpse of that darkness, the coming annihilation not only of the body and the mind but also, seemingly, of the world. Trauma is the savagery of the universe made manifest within us, and it destroys not only the integrity of consciousness, the myth of self-mastery, and the experience of time but also our ability to live peacefully with others, almost as if it were a virus, a pathogen content to do nothing besides replicate itself in the world, over and over, until only it remains.

Trauma is the glimpse of truth that tells us a lie: the lie that love is impossible, that peace is an illusion. Therapy and medication can ease the pain but neither can suck the venom from the blood, make the survivor unsee the darkness and unknow the secret that lies beneath the surface of life. Despite the quixotic claims of modern neuroscience, there is no cure for trauma.

Once it enters the body, it stays there forever, initiating a complex chemical chain of events that changes not only the physiology of the victims but also the physiology of their offspring. One cannot, as war correspondent Michael Herr testifies in “Dispatches,” simply “run the film backwards out of consciousness.” Trauma is our special legacy as sentient beings, creatures burdened with the knowledge of our own impermanence; our symbolic experience with it is one of the things that separates us from the animal kingdom. As long as we exist, the universe will be scheming to wipe us out. The best we can do is work to contain the pain, draw a line around it, name it, domesticate it, and try to transform what lies on the other side of the line into a kind of knowledge, a knowledge of the mechanics of loss that might be put to use for future generations.
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US Attorney Nominee, Sister of Late Navy SEAL

Loretta Lynch keeps her late Navy SEAL brother's memory alive during attorney general confirmation hearings
Although her big brother has been dead since 2009, President Obama’s nominee for U.S. attorney general found a way for him to be by her side during her confirmation hearing last week when she brought his Navy SEAL trident medal with her to face the Senate Judiciary Committee.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
BY DAN FRIEDMAN , BILL HUTCHINSON

Published: Saturday, January 31, 2015

Loretta Lynch has her own Navy SEAL watching her back — from heaven.
On Wednesday, Loretta Lynch honored Lorenzo during her Capitol Hill hearing, telling senators she brought his Navy SEAL trident medal with her 'to ensure I have both my brothers with me today.'
Although her big brother has been dead since 2009, President Obama’s nominee for U.S. attorney general found a way for him to be by her side during her confirmation hearing last week when she brought his Navy SEAL trident medal with her to face the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“That was our son,” Lynch’s proud mother, Lorine, said of the family’s military hero.

She said Loretta Lynch, 55, and her two brothers, Lorenzo, and the Rev. Leonzo Lynch, a church pastor in Charlotte, N.C., pushed each other as kids to be great.

“They were all very close,” Lorine Lynch of Durham, N.C., a retired school librarian, told the Daily News. “One helped the other in reading and competing.”

On Wednesday, Loretta Lynch honored Lorenzo during her Capitol Hill hearing, telling senators she brought his Navy SEAL trident medal with her “to ensure I have both my brothers with me today.”

Her brother Leonzo beamed with pride as he attended the hearing with their father, the Rev. Lorenzo Lynch Sr., and about 30 family members and friends.

“He told us at least a year before that the VA Hospital was not giving good medical service,” the father said. “And we didn’t believe him . . . We thought he was using it as an excuse not to go.”

A national audit of the hospital in 2014 confirmed the younger Lynch was right. The audit, spurred by patient complaints at VA hospitals across the country, showed employees at the Durham facility falsified records from 2009 to 2012 to cover up shoddy treatment, including making veterans wait an average of 104 days for medical appointments.

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Sunday, February 1, 2015

UK Memorial Service Has No Room For Parents But Enough For Politicians?

Parents of soldiers killed in Afghanistan are prevented from attending St Paul's Cathedral memorial service to make way for VIPs and politicians
Parents of fallen soldiers 'furious' they have been excluded from service
St Paul's Cathedral service will remember the 453 servicemen killed
Just 906 tickets have been dished out to wives and a 'plus one'
Jacquie McDonald, 53, said she feels parents have been 'cast aside'
Janette Binnie, whose son Sean was killed, said decision was 'humiliating'
Military chiefs, politicians, royals and veterans have been handed tickets
By JENNY AWFORD FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 14:52 EST, 1 February 2015

Sean McDonald, 26, having his last cuddle with mother Jacquie, 53, who feels parents have been 'cast aside' after not being invited to memorial service
Parents of soldiers killed in Afghanistan are 'furious' that they have been excluded from a memorial service - while politicians and VIPs are expected to pack the event. The service, set to be held at St Paul's Cathedral two days before Mothering Sunday, will remember the 453 servicemen killed and thousands injured during the 13-year conflict. But just 906 tickets have been dished out and only the spouses of fallen soldiers have been invited along with a 'plus one' leaving hundreds of grieving parents disappointed.

Jacquie McDonald, 53, from Edinburgh, who lost her son Sean, 26, in 2010 after he stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED), said she feels as though parents have been 'cast aside'.
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Idaho Vietnam Veterans "brotherhood that looks after its own" and others

Local Vietnam Veterans Give Back 
KMVT News
By Ben Lyda
Jan 31, 2015

Twin Falls, Idaho ( KMVT-TV / KSVT-TV )

Being a veteran of war is being part of a brotherhood that looks after its own. One local group is doing everything it can to give back to those that have put their life on the line for others.

The Vietnam Vets and Legacy Vets Motorcycle Club seek out vets in need to help in any way possible and on a sunny afternoon in Twin Falls that is exactly what they did.

"Our mission is to help all veterans that we can. First of all we try to be accounted for all POW/MIA's that have never come home, we ride our bikes for the brothers and sisters who never made it back, who gave the ultimate sacrifice, but our goal is to help all veterans whenever we can”, explains

Bucky Gingell, state president of the Vietnam/Legacy Vets MC. Helping individuals such as Vietnam vet Don Gibson, who lost a leg and was in need of a new electric wheelchair.
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