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== The accusations listed about Father Corapi under "controversy" are false. I suggest you remove them immediately. This will also be reported to the Missouri Attorney General's office. ==

POW Network under Investigation by

VA Inspector General

WWW.FIREBASENETWORK.NET
By Staff Writer: Rick Townsend
firebaseadrian@tc3net.com

June 29, 2006

According to recently released documents Chuck and Mary Schantag of the POW Network, (www.pownetwork.org) are under investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Veterans Rights advocate Jere Beery has received confirmation from the VA Inspector General’s office that a case number had been assigned to the investigation and that their findings would be forthcoming.

The POW Network WWW.POWNetwork.ORG is a registered 501-3 corporation operated by Chuck and Mary Schantag of Skidmore MO, and has been in existence for over 16 years. The organization claims to be involved in the accounting of prisoners of war and missing in action from the Vietnam War. Their web banner states: “Since 11/11/89, dedicated to information distribution on our Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Servicemen”. However, in recent years they appear to have branched-out into other areas and expanded their mission. The Schantags now claim to be ‘investigators’ for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Last month the Schantags claimed they met with the VA Inspector General to turn over information on five veterans they suspected were receiving veteran’s benefits that they were not entitled to. In addition, the Schantags have claimed to have ‘friends’ within the VA IG’s office they fear compromising.

The current VA investigation of the POW Network is the direct result of a formal complaint filed with the VA IG on May 2, 2006 by Vietnam combat veterans Jere Beery and Gene Simes. Both men feared their personal information and confidential medical records were being accessed by unauthorized persons, specifically Chuck and Mary Schantag of the POW Network. In a series of emails from the Shantags they stated they had ‘friends’ in the VA that would sift through military and VA records and provide them with personal information on anyone they requested, and that they did not want to compromise these ‘friend’s’ identity.

The POW Network web site maintains an active list on hundreds of veterans ‘they’ say are frauds. They call this area on their site, “Phonies & Wannabees”, and its intent is to publicly humiliate and dishonor individuals they have declared guilty of some infraction. Photographs and personal information on these individuals appears on their site as well. It is important to realize the vast majority of these veterans have not had the benefit of the legal process to prove their innocence in a court of law. In fact, most of the veterans listed have committed no crime at all. In some cases, a mere internet chat room war story has launched a full investigation by the POW Network of a veteran’s service records because a certain individual was questionable, they would ask the Schantags to do their investigation.

Several years ago Jere Beery posted a copy of his DD214 & DD215 on his web site for public viewing. As a veteran’s advocate Beery felt compelled to verify his service publicly. Several months ago, Air Force veteran, Ms. Diane Weller, (aka: ‘Gunny Di’) took issue with two entries obviously added to Beery’s DD214 and that the posted copy was not certified. According to Jere Beery, he did in fact add two corrections to his DD214, but the correct information he added was not misleading or embellished. The real injustice here appears to be Jere Beery’s original DD214. His discharge paper doesn’t come close to reflecting his service in Vietnam. Even with three separate DD215s, all of the corrections have yet to be made.

In early May of this year, Diane Weller contacted Chuck and Mary Schantags of the POW Network and asked them to investigate Jere Beery’s military records and report back to her on what they discovered. Weller was publicly accusing Beery of lying, embellishing, and altering his military service record. Evidently, the Schantags had provided this investigative service for Ms. Weller in the past. Three weeks ago, the Schantag’s released 18 pages of Jere Beery’s military documents which do appear to have come from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO. However, they are not certified either. But, the documents do confirm the two corrections Beery added to his DD214 were 100% accurate. The Schantags also sent Beery’s 18 pages of service records to a number of individuals that had requested to see them.

Gene Simes just received 6 pages of his military records from Diane Weller which were provided to her by the Schantags. “My personal information was blacked-out on the documents, but I don’t know if this information was blacked-out before, or after the Schantags received it,” Simes stated. “The point is, these people have received my military records which I did not authorize for release,” Simes said.

Jere Beery says he has been contacted by several other veterans complaining of similar shake-downs by the POW Network. According to one veteran, his Social Security number was stolen by factions associated with the POW Network and eventually led to identity theft and thousands of dollars of unauthorized charges in his name. In another case, a veteran had a pending law suit against the Schantags for defamation and invasion of privacy, but the case was dismissed in January of this year because the veteran died before justice was served.

Gene Simes has reservations about the current VA IG investigation into the operations of the POW Network. In a FBN telephone interview Simes compared the VA investigation to ‘the fox guarding the hen house’. “I don’t put a great deal of confidence in the VA investigating itself. If the Schantags really do have ‘friends’ in the VA IG office, I expect very little to happen. The only way the VA IG could conduct a proper investigation of this matter is to review every single person listed on the POW Network’s web site to see how the Schantags got their information. I don’t see the VA IG doing that,” Simes stated.

Jere Beery is more optimistic about the VA IG investigation. “Protection of veteran’s personal information is a very hot and sensitive topic right now. I expect this investigation to change the way these organizations get their information in the future. It appears to me that these people are using the sacred POW/MIA issue as a front for more sinister reasons,” Beery said. “In view of recent catastrophic failures with the security of veteran’s personal information, the last thing the veterans of this country need is some mom & pop ‘Columbo team’ with ‘friends’ in the government they don’t want compromised,” Beery concluded.

Jere Beery says he has contacted the Schantags by email several times requesting that they release a public statement clarifying their findings. Diane ‘Gunny Di’ Weller still contends the Schantags have proven Jere Beery to be a liar and fraud. However, to date, the Schantags have refused to publicly comment on this matter.

The FBN will continue to follow this developing story.

Revision as of 20:36, 20 July 2008

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The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXVII (May 2008)

The May 2008 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 01:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Gila Monster

What's up, my fellow AAR compatriot? I'd like some help with the Gila Monster article. I introduced a new section scheme to serve as the basic outline, but it could use some cleanup and some more meat on its bones. bibliomaniac15 17:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. We'll need a taxonomy section, so it can go in there. bibliomaniac15 18:40, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

RCC FAC

Mike, your comments are very good. I made substantial additions to the text per your suggestions. I did not know to which Trad group you belonged, there are schismatic ones that exist, I was just stating a fact. I did not know you belonged to a non-schismatic one but I am happy that is the case. Please come see the additions to the text and let me know if I have resolved your concerns. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 05:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

This message is being sent to all opposers of the Roman Catholic Church FAC. Thank you for taking the time to come see the page and give us your comments. I apologize for any drama caused by my imperfect human nature. As specified in WP:FAC, I am required to encourage you to come see the page and decide if your oppose still stands. Ceoil and others have made changes to prose and many edits have been made to address FAC reviewers comments like yours. Thank you. NancyHeise (talk) 23:57, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Christianity Newsletter

The Christianity WikiProject Newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line  |  Editors

The Christianity WikiProject Newsletter
Issue VI - June 2008
Project news
Member news
  • The project currently has 233 members, 15 joined & 1 leavers since the start of May 2008.
Other news
Related projects news
  • New Projects and/or work groups have been proposed for Christian theology and Christian denomations.
Christianity related news
From the Members

Welcome to the Sixth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.

Luckily, you all won't have to see my comments very often, as very little I have to say is really that important. But I would like to take the opportunity to say that I hope everyone finds the new General Forum page useful for discussing ideas relevant to Christianity in general, and feels free to make any additional comments regarding general Christianity there. Also, if any of you feel that you want to place a comment here in the future, please let us know what you want included. We would encourage all members to get more involved and if you are wondering what with, please ask. Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.

John Carter (talk), Lead Coordinator

Newsletter challenge

We are initiating a new feature here. Every month, we will list one misisng article. The first person to start the article will be mentioned by name in the next newsletter, as well as any others should they help get included in the Main Page DYK's section.

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.
This newsletter is automatically delivered by TinucherianBot (talk) 08:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Feature Article Candidate Roman Catholic Church

The nomination of the above article was archived by the Featured Articles Director, with the comment that the page had again grown too long. He has asked that all remaining objectors produce a list of their specific problems with the article in its current form. These will then be addressed by the article's editorial team before re-presentation for FA status.
Can you therefore please post a complete list of any specific remaining objections you may have on the article's talk page at: Talk:Roman_Catholic_Church. If possible can we have this list in by the end of June, so that editors can begin to address them all in detail in July. To prevent the nomination again becoming over-long, we would ask that you raise ALL of your remaining concerns at this stage, making your comments as specific and comprehensive as possible. It would help if all your comments were gathered under your name in a single heading on the page. Thank you. Xandar (talk) 01:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Talk:War of Heaven#Appeal for intervention

If it is not too much trouble, I would like you to express your view. Not many people visit the page. Lima (talk) 12:25, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

You're not trying to canvas are you? Those entries are not quite enough to convince me you are, so forget it. However, I will let you know that I put an RfCreli on the talk page to drum up interest so we might want to step away from personally notifying other editors lest it look like canvasing. Padillah (talk) 12:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
No, I was not trying to canvas. As you can see from the list you made, I began with the two editors who were already involved, one of whom (as you can see on my Talk page) was until then quite hostile to me. To get more people involved, what could I do - since I did not know of the method that you have kindly used on the article's Talk page - but get some Talk links from my Talk page, starting from the bottom (the most recent)? If you look at what they wrote, you will see that not all of them have always been in agreement with me; but I thought that, in this matter, the more, the better. I felt sure that scarcely anyone would support the claim of the "owner" of the article to control the gateway to editing it. If one of those I contacted is the editor who has since attacked Sherurcij anonymously, I was and am quite unaware of any previous conflict between him and Sherurcij. Lima (talk) 13:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Cyclura cychlura

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Cyclura cychlura, and it appears to be very similar to another wikipedia page: Cyclura cychlura cychlura. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 04:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Cayman Islands

In the article on the above, in the history section it states the folloiwng:

The Cayman Islands enjoy a low global standard of living (which is a high standard for the Caribbean region) fully dependent upon tourism and tax-haven dependent banking

the Cayman Islands have a high global standard of living in terms of gdp per capita in relation to the wider world and certaily the Caribbean.

Please correct.

Tony Walton —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonywalt (talkcontribs) 14:31, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Sebenza

Hi, Mike. Thanks for helping me with my edits to the Sebenza page. As you can probably tell, I'm quite a novice at this. A question for you -- the page states incorrectly that the Sebenza was introduced in 1990 with an S30V blade; however, it occurs to me that the reference #4 may be incorrect. Unfortunately, I don't have access to reference #4. Is it reasonable to simply correct the statement to read "ATS34" instead of S30V, or my I chase down the reference to insure that the reference is correct? Thanks, Crk historian (talk) 01:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I would be willing to write an article on CRK. Tonite, I've tried to author my first article, on the Umnumzaan. It's not in very good shape -- I've messed up on my references and need to go back and fix them, and I need to insert pictures to help readers with the mechanical understanding. Crk historian (talk) 07:46, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXVIII (June 2008)

The June 2008 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 19:37, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Christianity WikiProject Newsletter - July 2008

The Christianity WikiProject Newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line  |  Editors

The Christianity WikiProject Newsletter
Issue VIII - July 2008
Project news
Member news
  • The project currently has 239 members, 10 joined & 1 leavers since the start of June 2008.
Other news
Related projects news
  • New Projects and/or work groups have been proposed for Christian theology and Christian denomations.
Christianity related news
From the Members

Welcome to the Eighth issue of the WikiProject Christianity newsletter! Use this newsletter as a mechanism to inform yourselves about progress at the project and please be inspired to take more active roles in what we do.

As many of you will know, we currently have several articles relating to the same basic topics. The articles in the Category:Baptism are one example of such. It is really in the interests of all of us to try to place as much content in the main article of such topics, and then have the other articles "branch off" from there and making the central article as good an article as possible. We also now have a proposal for a new general "Christianity" related award, similar to the Military history project's chevrons, at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Christianity/General Forum. John Carter (talk), Lead Coordinator

Newsletter challenge

Last month's new article challenge, Church of Daniel's Band, was begun by User:Jack1956 and was included in the Main page's DYK section on June 15. Thank you to Jack1956 for his great work on creating this article!

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.

This Newsletter was automatically delivered by TinucherianBot (talk) 08:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The accusations listed about Father Corapi under "controversy" are false. I suggest you remove them immediately. This will also be reported to the Missouri Attorney General's office.

POW Network under Investigation by

VA Inspector General

WWW.FIREBASENETWORK.NET By Staff Writer: Rick Townsend firebaseadrian@tc3net.com

June 29, 2006

According to recently released documents Chuck and Mary Schantag of the POW Network, (www.pownetwork.org) are under investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Veterans Rights advocate Jere Beery has received confirmation from the VA Inspector General’s office that a case number had been assigned to the investigation and that their findings would be forthcoming.

The POW Network WWW.POWNetwork.ORG is a registered 501-3 corporation operated by Chuck and Mary Schantag of Skidmore MO, and has been in existence for over 16 years. The organization claims to be involved in the accounting of prisoners of war and missing in action from the Vietnam War. Their web banner states: “Since 11/11/89, dedicated to information distribution on our Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Servicemen”. However, in recent years they appear to have branched-out into other areas and expanded their mission. The Schantags now claim to be ‘investigators’ for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Last month the Schantags claimed they met with the VA Inspector General to turn over information on five veterans they suspected were receiving veteran’s benefits that they were not entitled to. In addition, the Schantags have claimed to have ‘friends’ within the VA IG’s office they fear compromising.

The current VA investigation of the POW Network is the direct result of a formal complaint filed with the VA IG on May 2, 2006 by Vietnam combat veterans Jere Beery and Gene Simes. Both men feared their personal information and confidential medical records were being accessed by unauthorized persons, specifically Chuck and Mary Schantag of the POW Network. In a series of emails from the Shantags they stated they had ‘friends’ in the VA that would sift through military and VA records and provide them with personal information on anyone they requested, and that they did not want to compromise these ‘friend’s’ identity.

The POW Network web site maintains an active list on hundreds of veterans ‘they’ say are frauds. They call this area on their site, “Phonies & Wannabees”, and its intent is to publicly humiliate and dishonor individuals they have declared guilty of some infraction. Photographs and personal information on these individuals appears on their site as well. It is important to realize the vast majority of these veterans have not had the benefit of the legal process to prove their innocence in a court of law. In fact, most of the veterans listed have committed no crime at all. In some cases, a mere internet chat room war story has launched a full investigation by the POW Network of a veteran’s service records because a certain individual was questionable, they would ask the Schantags to do their investigation.

Several years ago Jere Beery posted a copy of his DD214 & DD215 on his web site for public viewing. As a veteran’s advocate Beery felt compelled to verify his service publicly. Several months ago, Air Force veteran, Ms. Diane Weller, (aka: ‘Gunny Di’) took issue with two entries obviously added to Beery’s DD214 and that the posted copy was not certified. According to Jere Beery, he did in fact add two corrections to his DD214, but the correct information he added was not misleading or embellished. The real injustice here appears to be Jere Beery’s original DD214. His discharge paper doesn’t come close to reflecting his service in Vietnam. Even with three separate DD215s, all of the corrections have yet to be made.

In early May of this year, Diane Weller contacted Chuck and Mary Schantags of the POW Network and asked them to investigate Jere Beery’s military records and report back to her on what they discovered. Weller was publicly accusing Beery of lying, embellishing, and altering his military service record. Evidently, the Schantags had provided this investigative service for Ms. Weller in the past. Three weeks ago, the Schantag’s released 18 pages of Jere Beery’s military documents which do appear to have come from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO. However, they are not certified either. But, the documents do confirm the two corrections Beery added to his DD214 were 100% accurate. The Schantags also sent Beery’s 18 pages of service records to a number of individuals that had requested to see them.

Gene Simes just received 6 pages of his military records from Diane Weller which were provided to her by the Schantags. “My personal information was blacked-out on the documents, but I don’t know if this information was blacked-out before, or after the Schantags received it,” Simes stated. “The point is, these people have received my military records which I did not authorize for release,” Simes said.

Jere Beery says he has been contacted by several other veterans complaining of similar shake-downs by the POW Network. According to one veteran, his Social Security number was stolen by factions associated with the POW Network and eventually led to identity theft and thousands of dollars of unauthorized charges in his name. In another case, a veteran had a pending law suit against the Schantags for defamation and invasion of privacy, but the case was dismissed in January of this year because the veteran died before justice was served.

Gene Simes has reservations about the current VA IG investigation into the operations of the POW Network. In a FBN telephone interview Simes compared the VA investigation to ‘the fox guarding the hen house’. “I don’t put a great deal of confidence in the VA investigating itself. If the Schantags really do have ‘friends’ in the VA IG office, I expect very little to happen. The only way the VA IG could conduct a proper investigation of this matter is to review every single person listed on the POW Network’s web site to see how the Schantags got their information. I don’t see the VA IG doing that,” Simes stated.

Jere Beery is more optimistic about the VA IG investigation. “Protection of veteran’s personal information is a very hot and sensitive topic right now. I expect this investigation to change the way these organizations get their information in the future. It appears to me that these people are using the sacred POW/MIA issue as a front for more sinister reasons,” Beery said. “In view of recent catastrophic failures with the security of veteran’s personal information, the last thing the veterans of this country need is some mom & pop ‘Columbo team’ with ‘friends’ in the government they don’t want compromised,” Beery concluded.

Jere Beery says he has contacted the Schantags by email several times requesting that they release a public statement clarifying their findings. Diane ‘Gunny Di’ Weller still contends the Schantags have proven Jere Beery to be a liar and fraud. However, to date, the Schantags have refused to publicly comment on this matter.

The FBN will continue to follow this developing story.