Memorial Day, 2009

[Big Train]

When is National Camera on Every Street Corner Appreciation Day in the UK?

[FORD]

When is National Camera on Every Street Corner Appreciation Day in the UK?

Maybe the same day it is in LA?

[Seshmeister]

When is National Camera on Every Street Corner Appreciation Day in the UK?

I'm not a fan but I think there's some confusion about that.

The cameras are not all run by the same people. In a street the bank might have a camera for security, then the local gas station, then one by the roads people to monitor traffic and so on. After a crime the police can get a warrant from court to get access to these different videos from their owners. The stuff in the Bourne film for example was fantasy.

At least we don't need a permit from the government in order to have a protest against the government like you do in the land of the free...

[Seshmeister]

Maybe the same day it is in LA?

"What happened in London was horrible, but video surveillance was obviously not an effective deterrent despite the fact that London was the most surveyed city in the free world," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty project for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's foolish law enforcement."

I kind agree and disagree with that. I don't know what the fuck deterrent you can use against someone that is going to blow themselves up??? Maybe that's his point.

What he doesn't mention is that the camera evidence after the event meant that the people involved can be identified and you can then see if they are part of a bigger cell.

In any case even without terrorists subway systems by their nature obviously have to be closely monitored, you need to keep an eye on obstructions to the track, fire risks and so forth.

[Blaze]

Footnote in history:
The first two named commanders, Mythological or otherwise.


黄帝 (Yellow emperor)


蚩尤 (Chi You)


Photo by Ben Eenhoorn

[Nickdfresh]

Ummm...Sesh?
OK, enough sidetracking nonsense. Yep, the words to our national anthem include the words
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

...inherent militarism agreed.

Yet...

This day is offered to recognize those that made the sacrifice.

If you can not honor that without feeling a need to "stir up shit", then fine. It speaks far more about your own personal integrity than anything else.

And good luck with that.

Those rockets were British ones being fired at a US fort (McHenry) during the Battle of Baltimore...

The music is actually from an old English drinking song...

[Seshmeister]

Don't get me started on national anthems, the British one was written to celebrate the slaughter of a Scottish rebellion...

[Big Train]

Maybe the same day it is in LA?

The only ones that work are on the trains and occasional lucrative traffic cams (where employed people don't have time to fight the $500.00 rolling stop tickets). Downtown and the east side, not as many cameras.

Ours for the most part don't work. Half of them are not in operation due to funding cutbacks and the rest are just tagged over.

[Full Bug]

Here is one American you would want on your side, thats for sure.....

Badass of the Week.

Ron Speirs



"The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."

It's Memorial Day weekend here in the United States -- a special time of the year when we all take a moment to honor the memories of all those brave men and women who died in the service of our country. Our friends at the History Channel, for their part, generally choose to acknowledge this solemn day by basically running the incredible HBO miniseries Band of Brothers non-stop for like seventy-two hours straight, which, quite honestly, is something pretty much all of us should be able to get behind.

So I guess let me start by saying that American paratroopers are seriously fucking badass. I mean, there really aren't a whole lot of people out there willing to jump out of a fast-moving airplane several hundred feet above the ground under ideal conditions, let alone attempt it in the middle of the pitch-black goddamned night wearing sixty pounds of battle gear while crazy Germans are trying to ram a bunch of anti-aircraft flak cannons up your ass. While you�d think it would be basically impossible to get anybody to actually volunteer for this line of duty, the paratroopers don't seem to give a shit. These guys just go out there and do their job, and they don't really give a crap about trivial garbage like blindly leaping into unfamiliar territory teeming with hidden enemy soldiers or constantly being surrounded by people trying to kill them.

Now, among this aforementioned brotherhood of hard-drinking, hard-fighting badasses, few men have been more respected or feared than Captain Ronald Speirs of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. This tough-as-fuck Scottish-born Bostonian crotch-stomped his way across Europe in World War II, generally just kicking asses, ruining German lives, and making a name for himself as a completely fucking insane asskicker who didn't show fear, didn't back down, and didn't hesitate to pop a cap in the face of anyone who pissed him off for any reason.

Speirs was a Lieutenant in Company D of the 506th when he combat dropped into France in 1944 and immediately went to work softening up Nazi positions for the D-Day assault on the beaches of Normandy. He probably best effected this when he and Captain Dick Winters led a dozen men on the Brecourt Manor Assault � single-handedly attacking the four German 105mm artillery guns that were shelling the American positions on Utah Beach. During the battle, it was Spiers and his boys that captured the fourth artillery piece in an appropriately badass manner - by charging across a couple hundred feet of open ground (running full-speed towards a gargantuan gun barrel roughly the width of a pimped-out Volkswagen), leaping muzzle-first into the German entrenchments, and taking down a couple squads of elite Nazi paratroopers by bodyslamming them onto some TNT. To this day, the Brecourt Manor Assault is studied at West Point as one of the best examples of small-unit tactics and large-testicled badassitude ever demonstrated. In fact, I'm pretty sure the after-action report is required reading in Asskicking 101.

That's just how Speirs operated � the dude was completely fearless, aggressive, and didn't give a shit about trivial things like bullets flying around his head or artillery shells blowing up in his face. He was going to kick serious asses, and nothing was going to deter him from his mission to grab a couple SS troopers and crack their helmets together so hard that their heads exploded. And by the same token, Speirs inspired the sort of fear that you generally don't hear about any more these days. Countless rumors circulated about this guy being an insane, cold-blooded asskicker � some claimed that he once lined up twenty to thirty German prisoners of war, gave them cigarettes, and then gunned down all but one of them. Another rumor circulated that he shot one of his own Sergeants in the head for being drunk and/or repeatedly disobeying direct orders on the battlefield. Speirs, for his part, did nothing to dissuade these rumors. He, like a real badass, didn't need to talk about how fucking hardcore he was, and the fact that he never confirmed or denied any of these rumors only made everybody under his command fear him that much more. Sure, maybe earning a reputation as a man who will just whip out his sidearm and shoot you in the balls for the most trivial of offenses might not be the most ethical way to keep your men in line, but you really can't dispute its effectiveness. Nobody wants to argue with the meanest, toughest son-of-a-bitch in the whole regiment.



Speirs also won the Silver Star during the Arnhem Campaign for going on a borderline-insane one-man �lone wolf� reconnaissance mission deep into enemy territory. When he was ordered to scout enemy positions on the far side of the Neder Rijn River near Rendijk, Holland, Spiers (in the true balls-out fashion we�ve all come to expect from the man) just waited until the middle of the night, jumped in the water, swam across the river, and started sneaking around the enemy camp like a ninja with a Tommy gun. He scouted out positions of enemy machine gun nests, mortar teams, and artillery positions, stole an inflatable raft, and then burned rubber out of there while the German gunners took potshots at him. He got capped by an MG-42 while hauling ass across the river, but this apparently only served to make him more angry and bitter. Speirs made it back to Allied lines intact, and his intel was vital to the combat operations of his unit.

What Ron Speirs is best known for, however, is the utterly fucking badass way he handled the assault on the Belgian town of Foy during the infamous Battle of the Bulge. After somehow surviving a brutal siege of Bastogne in the dead of winter, where the 101st Airborne was completely surrounded and getting pounded day and night by the most elite SS Panzer Regiments the Germans had to offer, the men of Company E of the 506th Parachute Infantry launched a counter-attack on Foy. Well their commanding officer, Lieutenant Norman Dike, was basically a worthless moron who couldn't lead his way out of a quart-sized Ziploc freezer bag if you gave him a welding torch and a machete. Dike split up the assault team into two forces, and promptly went about getting both sides of his divided force utterly ass-reamed by German tanks and artillery. After a couple minutes of watching his best buddies get torn apart by the Nazis, Major Dick Winters had enough of that bullshit. He grabbed the first officer he saw, who just so happened to be Ronald Speirs, and told him to go deal with the situation.

Speirs didn't even fucking blink.



The young, battle-hardened officer just grabbed his submachine gun and started sprinting across the field toward Foy, determined to bail out the pinned-down Americans and shove his foot up some Nazi asses. He ran over to Lieutenant Dike, who at this point was basically so shell-shocked and brain-dead that he probably couldn't remember how to tie his bootlaces, and told him he was taking over as company commander. Dike, utterly awed by being in the presence of such an unflinching hardass who obviously meant business, simply nodded.

Spiers ran over, gave out orders for a mortar team to take out a German sniper position, regrouped the soldiers, and provided Easy Company with some much-needed tactical direction. The assault continued, morale was bolstered, and the Americans stopped getting their fucking asses handed to them on a silver platter.

Then there was this whole issue of the assault force being stupidly divided into two teams, neither one really coordinating properly with the other. Speirs had a plan there, too, and it's got to be one of the most awesome/badass/crazy battlefield plans ever devised � Ron Speirs just grabbed his rifle and fucking ran directly through the German positions to reach the Americans on the other side. No shit, he fucking blew past Nazi artillery crews, riflemen, and Tiger tanks like he was out for a run around Boston Common on a quiet Sunday morning.

At this point basically every German firearm in the town of Foy was trying to bust a chunk of lead into Lieutenant Speirs' brain, but he didn't give a crap. He ran through the streets, bullets and explosions going off all around him, and reached the Americans on the other side. Then, once he gave them his updated orders, he fucking ran BACK THROUGH THE GODDAMNED TOWN to his original position. How nuts do you have to be?!

The plan worked; Speirs emerged unharmed, and the 101st captured Foy. Not only is this completely awesome, but it also makes for the greatest scene in the entire Band of Brothers miniseries. I just love the look on the faces of those 88 crewmen when Speirs blows by them like a camouflaged lightning bolt.

Speirs made Captain after the battle, and was placed in command of Company E. He led Easy Company through the rest of the war, oversaw the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest, and beat the shit out of some punk soldier who flipped out and shot one of his own men ("When you talk to an officer, you say 'sir'.") After the fall of the Third Reich, He still hadn't had his fill of ass-kicking, so he decided to stay in Europe despite the fact that he had more than enough "points" to go home. Hell, he didn't even limit his face-wrecking to the Nazis � after World War II, he commanded a rifle company in the Korean War, fought in Laos, served as an intelligence officer working against the Soviets in the Cold War, and was the US ambassador of Spandau Prison in Berlin, where he personally ensured that ex-Nazi prisoners-of-war didn't escape (they didn't). He passed away in April 2007, one of the toughest motherfuckers to ever wear the uniform and a man that nobody � even the most hardcore US Army Paratroopers � wanted to cross.

[Nickdfresh]

LOL Speirs retired a Lt. Colonel, and when men would come up to him at reunions and say they served under him, he would say, "which war?" Speirs stayed in the military and became active in special operations forces...

One interesting about him you didn't see in the HBO miniseries you learn when you read Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers," was that he married a British widow and essentially wanted to adopt her children. Her husband had been a British soldier that was "killed" in Africa I think. It turned out that he wasn't in fact dead, but was captured by the Germans and held until he was liberated after the Afrika Korp collapsed. He returned to Britain to find his wife had married a slightly psychotic US Army Airborne Officer. But, Speirs was magnanimous about it and he and he consented to an annulment but remained friends with not only his ex-wife, but her husband and was considered and American uncle by her children as he kept up a relationship with them...

BTW, Sesh might like to know that Speirs was born in Edinburgh prior to his family's emigration to the US...

[chefcraig]

Bump for 2010.

[Nitro Express]

I cunt believe that's another year gone already, this time last year I was in the States for the reunion tour thing.

I'm still struck by how many days you have for the glorification of your military - is it 3 or 4?

The US is kind of more Klingon than it would like to admit...

The UK doesn't glorify it's military? Your monarchy certainly does. Spit, polish, marching, rifles, bayonets, swords, pikes, fury hats, and royal men who serve. At least they aren't draft dodging or none serving chicken hawks like Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama.

[Nitro Express]

Don't get me started on national anthems, the British one was written to celebrate the slaughter of a Scottish rebellion...

Our national anthem was a pub drinking song that later had a poem used as lyrics. So you have to sing the celebration of the slaughter of your own people? Nice.

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Sesh's comments from last year on our "militaristic" culture resulted in me realizing how many American deaths we've sustained in supposed "defense" of a FOREIGN country....

World War II was basically a push.... While the Pacific campaign was clearly a result of Pearl Harbor, the European campaign for the US was a defense of our allies.... Ever wonder where your country would be today without American involvement, Sesh ??

Korea ?? All for South Korea....

Vietnam ?? All for South (as it was known then) Vietnam.....

Afghanistan ?? At first, snuffing out the Taiban, who were harboring Bin Laden... But now, who knows...

Iraq ?? Ask Bush....

[Blaze]

It will be a challenge for many families this year, no matter what reason for the wars were/are.
May God have mercy on all the families.