Stratfor Uses Bosphorus Naval News As A Source. So Why Don’t You?

Today I was reading one of the hacked e-mails from the private US intelligence company Stratfor. Last year in December a hacker collective known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for crashing the Web site of the Stratfor Global Intelligence Service. The hacker declared that they have obtained the full client list including their credit cards information, as well as over 200 GB of email correspondence.

Since the beginning of March these e-mails are being published by Wikileaks and other associated websites. So of these e-mail especially those about Turkey and Turkish politics found a large audience in Turkish media.

While I was reading this particular e-mail with the subject line “Re: Discussion – Turkey/MIL – The Turkish Navy” dated “Jul 2, 2009 20:01″ with Email ID 982788, I have realized that one of the indicated sources in the attached word file and used for the basis of the analyses was my own blog.

My blog post on the acquisition plans of 2 three masted schooner type training ships was one of the referred sources. I was delighted to see that Stratfor used my postings as a source for their work but I was also saddened that I have been largely misinterpreted by the Stratfor analyst.

Well, read the Stratfor mail and my blog post and decide for yourself.

Bosphorus Naval News Is On War Is Boring

 One of the most interesting and influential blog of the military blogsphere, War  Is Boring, published a photo from this website.

The photo showing Turkish frigate F-241 TCG Turgutreis and British assault  ship L-15 HMS Bulwark  was first published on this blog on 16th April 2009.  The photo was taken during the Egemen 2009 naval exercise.

Unfortunately the bloggers at War Is Boring forgot to mention my blog as  the source of the photo, but the watermark on the photo is visible. So now you know were that photo came.

Click here for the original blog post with the photo or click here just for the photo.

Third Anniversary

Today is the third anniversary of this blog.

Last year two important changes have happened. First I had to change my service provider from Google’s blogger to wordpress as most of the Google’s IP addresses were blocked by a court order in Turkey for a considerable duration of time.

The second and in my opinion the important change was the merger of my other website the Unofficial Homepage of Turkish Navy with my blog.  I have started my website about the Turkish Navy way back in 1998 before the official site of Turkish Navy was online. But those pages were, because of their nature very static, very Web 1.0 compared to blogging. Today the information on those pages are  accessible through the menu at the header of the blog.

This is the 597th post on my blog. I have become a little more prolific writer in the last year. This due to the fact that currently I am between jobs and have more time to write for my blog.

I have received 276 comments and hundreds of spam. I thank each and everyone who has taken some time to write a comment or send me an e-mail.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it.