BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

AMERICAN BAD ASS

Sgt. Seth E. Howard

On the morning of 6 April 2008, a pair of American Chinook helicopters zoomed in low over the Shok Valley in the unforgiving mountains of rural Afghanistan.  This impenetrable, rocky ravine was unfamiliar and unfriendly territory to the Western powers – a heavily-fortified network of caves laced the canyon walls, concealing a massive network of terrorist freedom-and-pie-hating insurgents from the prying eyes of Allied warplanes and satellites.  No NATO force had ever dared venture into this daunting region, and even the Soviets had been repeatedly turned away from this area bydetermined Mujahedeen fighters when the Russkies had launched their ill-fated invasion in the 80s.  Today, things would be different.

Staff Sergeant Seth E. Howard of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces wasn’t impressed by this harsh bastion’s seemingly-terrifying reputation.  He was a fucking Green Beret.  He was part of the same unit as uber-yet-fictional badass John Rambo, and the rest of the world had to worry about him.  Not the other way around.

The treacherous, rocky canyon floor wasn’t conducive to setting down a couple of giant twin-propellered transport choppers, but the twelve men of Howard’s Special Forces team couldn’t have cared less if you’d paid them to.  These ridiculous hardasses just strapped on sixty pounds of battle gear, grabbed their rifles, and fucking jumped ten feet down from the chopper door to the uneven rocks below.  They didn’t even use ropes or anything, because apparently things like “safety” and “not breaking your ankles” is for total pussies.

With the men on the ground, the choppers took off and headed for home.  The team broke into two squads – one group, led by the unit’s commanding officer Captain Kyle Walton, began working their way up a narrow mountain pass towards a nearby village known to be a bastion of the afore-mentioned terrorist guerillas.  Howard stayed on the canyon floor, keeping an eye out for possible Taliban snipers, while the command squad worked their way towards their objective.

Well when you're a heavily-armed guerilla fighter, you don't spend twenty years living in a place like the Shok Valley without preparing for the possibility of being attacked by some badass commandos.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a few hundred guerilla troops opened fire on the Americans with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, slingshots, handguns, sniper rifles, and Super Soaker 9000s (the most badass of all super soakers).  The opening salvo struck the Afghani interpreter attached to the Special Forces command squad, killing him instantly and sending the poor guy face-first into the dirt like a lump of meat.  Captain Walton and the rest of his team scrambled for cover, but were basically completely fucked, sitting out in the open while an entire army of insurgents used their gourds for target practice.

Well screw that.  From his position at the bottom of the canyon, Seth Howard decided it was time to show those motherfuckers what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a running ballnock of Democracy. He grabbed his weapons – a totally sweet sniper rifle, a combat knife, and an 84mm recoilless rifle, and went to work turning terrorist brains into giant grayish-colored cranial explosions.

Now, before we go a whole lot further, let me clarify something.  I assume that everybody who reads this website knows what a sniper rifle is, but before you go thinking that a “recoilless rifle” is some kind of sissy cross between a bolt-action .22 and a BB gun, here’s a picture to illustrate what this weapon looks like:

This isn’t a dinky paintball gun, my friends.  It’s a fucking rocket launcher.  So Sgt. Howard was out there switching between anti-personnel and high-explosive weapons like a frenetic first-person shooter protagonist, blasting terrorist fortifications with insane death missiles and using his badass sniper weapon to pick off anybody stupid enough to stick their heads out from their hiding places.  When he wasn’t killing people personally with some random variety of pain-causing instrument of asskickery, he was coordinating gunfire on the Taliban positions, repositioning the remaining members of his squad, or dunking the fuck out of a basketball.

Thanks in no small part to Sgt. Howard’s powers of asskickery, the command squad was able to get to cover in a small cave near the top of the pass.  Unfortunately, while the initial threat of being overwhelmed by superior numbers had temporarily subsided, shit was still looking pretty bleak for Captain Walton and his homedogs.  Guys were taking hits all over the place, enemy reinforcements were rolling in, Walton’s rifle barrel had been blown in half, and the command squad was in a very real danger of being overrun by the guerillas.  Shit, at one point one of the Special Forces operators had the lower half of his leg blown off in an explosion (in an insanely epic act of badassitude, the guy actually used his boot laces to tie the leg onto his thigh so he wouldn’t lose it and then just kept on fighting.  How hardcore is that?), and yet another member of the team was also critically wounded by shrapnel and gunfire.  Howard soon realized he was going to need to bust a move and do something epic if he was going to save his team members.

So Sergeant Seth Howard flipped out like the hardcore assbeater that he was, jumped out from behind his cover, and ran along the edge of a 60-foot high cliff towards his wounded allies.  Bullets were flying all over the place, fucking shit is exploding like nuts, and he’s firing from the hip in the general vicinity of the enemy while sprinting towards his imperiled team members and doing his best to not plummet to his death below.

Luckily, this berserking Green Beret was more bulletproof than a Steven Segal movie, and he reached the small cave where the wounded men were taking cover and tenaciously fighting for their lives.  With dozens of kill-crazy guerilla fighters bearing down on the Americans’ position, Sgt. Howard unhesitatingly rushed forward and placed himself between his wounded comrades and the enemy.  He pushed ahead, alternately taking cover behind the body of the incredibly-dead interpreter and a small, 12-inch-high boulder, all the while directing accurate sniper and rocket fire on the oncoming rebel hordes with his one-man arsenal of balls-out terrorist nut-destruction.

Special Forces soldiers at the Shok Valley

Meanwhile, the rest of the command team had formulated a daring plan – they were going to make a break for it.  The seriously jacked-up soldiers started making their way down the sheer cliff face towards the floor of the canyon, nearly 60 feet below.  While Captain Walton and his team began evacuating the wounded, Sgt. Howard kept up his fire on the enemy, trying to draw their attention away from the wounded Americans. He knew that eventually the Taliban were going to need to pay attention to the ripshit pissed-off motherfucker with the bazooka.  He was right.  This one-man demolition derby was blasting fortified positions with rockets, popping dudes’ heads off with his rifle, and marking targets for US air strikes, which were now being called down almost directly on top of his position.  Shit, at one point, a 2,000-pound bomb landed about 300 feet away from him and nearly blew him off the edge of the cliff, but a little something like “almost becoming human charcoal” wasn’t going to deter this guy from his mission.  He continued providing suppressing fire while the command team made its way down, destroying several enemy weapons teams and wasting over 20 enemy troops – including 4 highly-trained Taliban snipers.

Even though he was almost completely out of bullets, Howard continued to defend his position, single-handedly holding off the insurgent fighters while the rest of his team escaped.  It was only after the command squad was at the extraction point that he began to pull back, making his way down the cliff to safety and using the bombs from the F-15s and Apache Gunships as cover.  He would wait for the explosions, and then move during the confusion.  Bombs were going off everywhere, and this guy was like fucking Stallone running in slow motion in front of a fiery explosion in some kind of over-the-top awesome action movie.  He eventually made it down to the LZ and was extracted with the rest of his team.

For their insane actions battling terrorists in the Shok Valley, the members of the 3rd Special Forces were awarded 10 Silver Stars – the most issued in a single day since the Vietnam War.  Six soldiers were wounded – four critically – but they took down over 200 of the enemy, with Sergeant Seth Howard personally accounting for dozens of enemy troops, snipers, and RPG nests.  For successfully preventing the command squad from being overrun by the enemy on two separate occasions, Howard also won the Silver Star – the third highest award for bravery offered by the United States.

More importantly, every member of his unit survived the battle.

Links:

KODACHROME PAUL SIMON

Bukowski: Born Into This

Biography18 Comments

Director John Dullaghan’s biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle.

Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski’s poetry readings are interviews with the poet’s fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski’s friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski’s life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski’s legendary status.

Born Into This relies on interviews with Bukowski for biographical information instead of cheesy voiceovers, bringing the viewer even closer to the author.

For example, in one amazing sequence, Bukowski rides the viewer around in the backseat of his car, telling us through his rear-view mirror of his stint as a post office worker which inspired the novel, Post Office.

Scenes splicing interviews with Bukowski’s ex-wife, Linda Lee, and R. Crumb’s comic strip panels portraying Bukowski as a sex-crazed maniac, set the tone for bawdier parts of the film.

Occasionally the film displays lines of Bukowski’s poetry on the screen, as reminders that he was not only a raging alcoholic with a fierce sense of humor but also a talented and beloved writer.

With so much hilariously shocking footage of “Hank,” Bukowski: Born Into This presents Bukowski as a troubled but classic genius.

THE WAR YOU DON'T SEE

THE HOUR OF OUR TIME - THE LEGACY OF WILLIAM COOPER

CAMP FEMA - AMERICAN .LOCKDOWN

WACO; RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The Waco Massacre

Note regarding links: Much of the Waco information once available on the web has "disappeared" and quite a few of the links on this page have expired (a few are marked as such) or no longer lead to the original page. An expired link at least shows that the page once existed. Some pages which no longer exist on the web can still be recovered by entering the URL (right mouse click on the link to get the URL) into the Wayback Machine.And as an amusing exercise in provoking censorship try adding a link to this page from Wikipedia's Waco Siege page and see how long it takes to be deleted.

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Many people believe that David Koresh (or the Branch Davidians) were responsible for the deaths of the 74 men, women and children who died in the inferno at Waco on April 19, 1993. This is the story that the FBI put out. It is a lie. The guns they had were legal. The local sheriff investigated and found no basis for complaints against them. These were law-abiding American citizens, even if they thought differently to most other folks. They trusted the U.S. Constitution to ensure their political rights, but they were murdered by agents acting under the authority of the U.S. government. Read this page if you believe otherwise. If you still have doubts, get the video Rules of Engagement for visual evidence. Or read the book Armageddon in Waco. Or see the film Waco: A New Revelation.

Waco occurred under the presidency of Bill Clinton, with Janet Reno and Wesley Clark in supporting roles. Already back in 1993 the US government demonstrated its contempt for the American people by carrying out a massacre in order to "demonstrate" (on prime time TV) its supposed "authority" (a tactic favored by fascist governments). Following the usurpation of the presidency in 2000 by the psychopath George W. Bush, and the subsequent installation of the insane John Ashcroft as Bush's Himmler, things became much worse. On 9/11 about forty times as many people were murdered as at Waco. In both cases the murderers have so far gone unpunished.

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Few Americans realize that on February 28, 1993 when BATF agents in National Guard helicopters zoomed in on the Branch Davidians' church and home, Mount Carmel Center, they did so with guns blazing, like Americans raiding a Vietnamese village in that far off war. ... It is likely FBI agents deliberately sabotaged negotiations with Davidians to prevent their exiting Mount Carmel. Their goal was to destroy the building and its damaging evidence, even if that meant the massacre of dozens of men, women and children, all witnesses to the brutal attack. — Carol Moore: Overview of Davidian Massacre

After the February raid by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) of David Koresh's dissident religious community at Waco, Texas, the FBI and the U.S. Army took over, mounting a 51-day siege. This included such psy-war tactics as sleep deprivation of the inhabitants of the community by means of all-night broadcasts of recordings of the screams of rabbits being slaughtered.

Finally, despite David Koresh's pledge to surrender upon completion of his written explanation of the meaning of the Seven Seals, the FBI and the Army attacked. At dawn on April 19, 1993, and throughout the morning, tanks rammed holes in the main building and pumped (in the FBI's words) "massive amounts" of CS gas into the building, despite knowing that inside were more than a dozen children. The tanks demolished parts of the compound and created tunnels for the wind to blow through. The buildings at this point were saturated with inflammable CS gas and spilled kerosene.

Around midday two U.S. military pyrotechnic devices were fired into the main building, igniting a fire which (because of the holes in the walls allowing the wind to gust through) spread rapidly through the complex of buildings and became an inferno. 74 men, women and children died — including twelve children younger than five years of age. Fire trucks were prevented by the FBI from approaching the inferno. After the compound had burned down the BATF flag was hoisted aloft to signify 'victory'. Subsequently the burned-out ruin was razed in an attempt to remove all evidence of this premeditated murder of innocent civilians by agents of the U.S. government. Thus occured an atrocity which many Americans believe could never happen in their country. A look at the evidence presented in the film Waco: Rules of Engagement (and in the BBC documentary broadcast in the U.K. on November 28, 1998) shows that it did happen.

The lawyer for one of the survivors said at one of the U.S. government 'investigations' (or rather, whitewashes): In this country when people are accused of a crime they are arrested and given a trial — that's 'due process'. If found guilty of murder then maybe they are killed. We don't just kill them first — which is what happened at Waco.

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Here are links to documents on this website concerning this tragedy.

• Linda Thompson: What Happened at WacoAfter the BATF and FBI learned that the American Justice Federation had released a press release stating that the use of military troops against United States citizens violated federal law, specifically, the Posse Comitatus act, the BATF released a cover story, claiming that the tanks were "really" not Army, they were national guard, and had been brought in under the "Drug interdiction act" because they had heard there was a "methamphetamine lab" — three weeks after the FBI had already publicly announced there was never any question whatsoever of drug involvement.
  
• Linda Thompson: The Big Lie
• By Carol Moore:
  
  • The Davidian Massacre
  • Report On Senate Waco Hearings
  • Waco Questions Congress Refuses to Answer
• Burning Questions, a review by Jacob Sullum, a senior editor of REASON, of Armageddon in Waco and two other books about Waco: The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation and Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America.
• Transcript of Waco Negotiations

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Armageddon in Waco
Critical Perspectives on the Branch Davidian Conflict
Edited by Stuart A. Wright
The University of Chicago Press, 1995

On February 28, 1993, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) launched the largest assault in its history against a small religious community in central Texas. Approximately eighty armed agents invaded the compound, purportedly to execute a single search and arrest warrant. The raid went badly; six Branch Davidians and four agents were killed, and after a fifty-one-day standoff, the United States Justice Department approved a plan to use CS gas against those barricaded inside. Tanks carrying the CS gas entered the compound. Later that day, fire broke out, and all seventy-four men, women and children inside perished.Could tragedy have been prevented? Was it necessary for the BATF agents to do what they did? What could have been done differently? Armageddon in Waco offers the most detailed, wide-ranging analysis of events surrounding Waco. Leading scholars explore all facets of the confrontation in an attempt to understand one of the most confusing government actions in American history.
The book begins with the history of the Branch Davidians and the story of its leader, David Koresh. Chapters show how the the Davidians came to trouble authorities, why the group was labeled a "cult," and how authorities used unsubstantiated allegations of child abuse to strengthen their case against the sect.The media's role is examined next in essays that consider the effect on coverage of lack of time and resources, the orchestration of public relations by government officials, the restricted access to the site or to countervailing evidence, and the ideologies of the journalists themselves.— From the back cover of the book.

Here is the Summary at the end of the chapter "Self-Fulfilling Prophecies" by James R. Lewis:

The implications of these studies and supporting arguments for the Waco situation should be clear. The Branch Davidians' chances for a fair hearing were severely damaged as soon as the label "cult" was applied. After that, the mass media selectively sought out and presented information about Koresh and his community that conveniently fit the stereotype. It was only a matter of time before law enforcement and the media had completely demonized Koresh and his followers. Anticult organizations provided ample fodder for the ritual and symbolic castigation of this little-known religious sect, simplistically reducing the beliefs and practices of the community to vapid, inane categories of brainwashing rhetoric. After this demonization had been successfuly accomplished, the entire community — men, women, and children — could be consigned to their tragic fate with little more than a peep of protest from the American public, a public which overwhelmingly approved of the FBI's tragic final assault on Mt. Carmel.

Or more exactly, a public which would appear to consist mostly of gullible idiots, with no sense of injustice (except when it affects themselves), believing what they were told (with the help of a willing media) by their ill-informed, ill-advised and violence-obsessed (and, as it turned out, murderous) government, a public which overwhelming approved of a shameful instance of government-sanctioned slaughter of people who had broken no law (it is legal to protect oneself against attack), including twenty-one children under the age of 16:

Lisa Martin	13		Sheila Martin, Jr.	15
Rachel Sylvia	12		Hollywood Sylvia	1
Joseph Martinez	8		Abigail Martinez	11
Crystal Martinez	3		Isaiah Martinez	4
Audrey Martinez	13		Melissa Morrison	6
Chanel Andrade	1		Cyrus Koresh	8
Star Koresh	6		Bobbie Lane Koresh	2
Dayland Gent	3		Page Gent	1
Mayanah Schneider	2		Startle Summers	1
Serenity Jones	4		Chica Jones	2
Little One Jones	2

Click here for the complete list of Branch Davidian victims.

Marijuana: A Chronic History

Drugs105 Comments

The fight against drug use in America has been going on since the turn of the last century but the term War on Drugs only became part of our national dialog in 1970 when it was first used by President Richard Nixon.

The President later formed the DEA and started a push to outlaw drugs of all kinds. Among the most discussed drugs in this war is Marijuana.

This special will look at the storied and strange history of Marijuana in America. Probably one of the better documentaries, mostly seems pro-cannabis and by far the most pro-cannabis documentary thus far released by the History Channel.

The documentary attempts to educate everyone who still has a Reefer Madness mindset, who still thinks cannabis prohibition is reasonable, and who have no idea that widespread cannabis use is relatively harmless compared to alcohol, tobacco, and especially pharmaceutical and other drugs.

Watch Marijuana: A Chronic History in Educational & How-To  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Paradise Lost

Society88 Comments

Paradise Lost is a 1996 documentary film directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about the trials of three teenage boys in West Memphis, Arkansas for the murder and sexual mutilation of three prepubescent boys.

The boys on trial for the crime are: Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, also known as the West Memphis 3.

Despite a lack of any significant evidence indicating that they are connected to the case at all, the three boys are charged and tried for the murders.

A common theme throughout the film is the treatment of the boys based on their appearances and tastes in music, possibly as a Satanic ritual abuse.

During the course of the filming, John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the victims, gives the filmmakers a knife which has blood in the hinge.

The filmmakers turn the knife over to police, who examine it; the DNA is similar to that of himself and the boy but the evidence is nonetheless inconclusive since the DNA evidence produced was fragmented and can not provide concrete links. Other evidence is lost. All three teenagers are convicted.

The film was followed by a sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000), which suggests that further evidence was missed or suppressed and attempts to prove Echols’ innocence.

THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB - RY COODER

BESSIE SMITH ST LOUIS BLUES 1929

MEET ME IN ST LOUIS

St. Louis: The Most Dangerous, Racist City In America

Madison Moore

happysteve

My grandmother lives in Florissant, Missouri, a northern and really black suburb of St. Louis County. It’s not like “the hood” or anything like that, there’s just a whole lot of black people—a few too many for those prejudiced tea partying white folks hiding among us. For me, coming back to St. Louis for the holidays has always been really strange because I’m just not used to bigotry. But in St. Louis, the level of separatism only leads to deeper racial hatred and stereotyping.

So I’m at the St. Louis Bread Company, right? All I wanted to do is escape the house to work on my Tina Turner project. I get in the cafe and see that it’s super packed, totally full, and I waltz over to the front counter to place my order. Waiting for me is a very cafeteria-looking lady (short, with a hairnet, gigantic glasses) with a nasty look on her face the second she sees me. I’m not wearing anything particularly outrageous, this outfit is as suburban as I go. But she just stares at me, doesn’t say “HOWAREYOUDOINGWELCOMETOBREADCOMPANY!” all excited like she did for the white peeps who just ordered ahead of me. So I’m like, “Ain’t this some shit,” and I literally just stand there, waiting for her to greet me. This is a test. And something like 15 seconds flies by—no joke—before she acknowledges me; I’m just standing right there.

I order and she is just pissed the hell off. She snatches the muffin and rolls her eyes and snatches the Apple juice and huffs and puffs and talks at me like I’m a fucking idiot. So when she hands me my breakfast, which at this point I’m not that into anymore, I’m say, “Hey, lady! If you’re too good to hand me a damn muffin, maybe you should get a different job!”

I guess when you live in New York, or in any cosmopolitan city, you forget that there are still bigoted people in the world. But remember: this is the city that saw over 100,000 people gather under the Gateway Arch to catch a glimpse of Barack Obama before he was elected president. But it’s also the same city that back in the Spring of 2009 had a fit when the weekly Riverfront Times ran a cover story with a picture of a black and white couple kissing.

Where does all this hatred come from?

In St. Louis, white people run from black people, because black people are very scary, obviously. The day of the After-Christmas-Sales at the St. Louis Galleria (the high-end mall), a bunch of black dudes looted cars in the mall parking lot and it made the nightly news. When I saw this on the television, I got so pissed off when the anchors specified that black males did the stealing. Really? Did they really need to specify the race? What new details does that add to the story, other than turning up the sentiment that You Need To Grab Your Purse When You See Black People? And then there were your average mall goers, saying things on-air like, “The Galleria has become pretty sketchy as of late.” Translation: There are too many damn black people here!

It’s true that there are a lot more black people at The Galleria now than there were several years back, and it’s especially “troublesome” because The Galleria is located in a crisp, very wealthy neighborhood that has long been among the wealthiest in St. Louis. If The Galleria collapses, there goes the neighborhood! And that’s why the mall instituted a policy where if you’re under the age of 16 and in the mall past five p.m., you have to be chaperoned. And that adds to the perception of crime, and to the perception of black people as innate crime doers, which leads to bitchy old white Tea Party ladies like my BFF at Bread Company who cringe at just the sight of black people.

The irony, to me anyway, is that nowadays in most other cities, white people don’t run from black people, but actively take over their neighborhoods. They asses just move right on in! White Flight, as it’s called, was about white people getting the hell out of cities and into the safe bosom of the newly developed suburbs. In New York, white people aren’t afraid to move deep into the hood for a renovated kitchen, hardwood floors, and $1200 rent for a two bedroom plus balcony. You might get mugged on your way home, but it’s a small price to pay for exposed brick and an express train stop! Besides, with the right amount of white people in the hood, it’s only a matter of time before an Organic Grocery/Art Gallery/Coffee Shop pops up.

But in St. Louis, the exact opposite trend is happening. Everything is painfully segregated, and white people keep moving farther and farther away. Downtown St. Louis will never amount to much until the city’s deep-rooted racism is adequately addressed.