Monday, August 15, 2011

Medal of Honor Citation: USMC Sgt Dakota L. Meyer


The President of the United States in the name of The Congress
takes pleasure in presenting the 

MEDAL OF HONOR 

to

CORPORAL DAKOTA L. MEYER

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS


For service as set forth in the following:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the repeated risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a member of Marine Embedded Training Team 2-8, Regional Corps Advisory Command 3-7, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on 8 September 2009. When the forward element of his combat team began to be hit by intense fire from roughly 50 Taliban insurgents dug-in and concealed on the slopes above Ganjgal village, Corporal Meyer mounted a gun-truck, enlisted a fellow Marine to drive, and raced to attack the ambushers and aid the trapped Marines and Afghan soldiers. During a six hour fire fight, Corporal Meyer single-handedly turned the tide of the battle, saved 36 Marines and soldiers and recovered the bodies of his fallen brothers. Four separate times he fought the kilometer up into the heart of a deadly U-shaped ambush. During the fight he killed at least eight Taliban, personally evacuated 12 friendly wounded, and provided cover for another 24 Marines and soldiers to escape likely death at the hands of a numerically superior and determined foe. On his first foray his lone vehicle drew machine gun, mortar, rocket grenade and small arms fire while he rescued five wounded soldiers. His second attack disrupted the enemy’s ambush and he evacuated four more wounded Marines. Switching to another gun-truck because his was too damaged they again sped in for a third time, and as turret gunner killed several Taliban attackers at point blank range and suppressed enemy fire so 24 Marines and soldiers could break-out. Despite being wounded, he made a fourth attack with three others to search for missing team members. Nearly surrounded and under heavy fire he dismounted the vehicle and searched house to house to recover the bodies of his fallen team members. By his extraordinary heroism, presence of mind amidst chaos and death, and unselfish devotion to his comrades in the face of great danger, Corporal Meyer reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.



THE OTHER GREATEST GENERATION

Civil war veteran soldier footage, captured between 1913 and 1938.

SEA CHANGE



Heads up, Team - up until this time I've been posting more or less on a daily basis; that is going to change as my business activity is really ramping up. The model seems to be one or two 'quality posts' (like yesterday's Herculean effort) and then the good sorts of things y'all send in to fill in the gaps in between. Hope you like what we've dished up so far and YES OF COURSE the BIRDS remain a popular feature.


- STORMBRINGER SENDS


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Sunday, August 14, 2011

THE CHINOOK CRASH - DISPELLING THE MYTHS



This was so predictable - it wasn't even twenty-four hours after we got the terrible news of the Chinook tragedy SEAL Team 6, other US and Afghani military personnel in a non-SpecOps bird shot down by the Taliban, that the rumor mill started churning out speculation and outright misinformation. A reader emailed me asking if there was anything to a spectacular conspiracy theory making the rounds, and he included the base document: essentially, the SEALs had been set up for ambush by an individual within the Obama Administration in an attempt to silence them about the truth of who was or was not in that compound they entered during the Osama hit. Somehow of course this is all tied in to the Birth Certificate nonsense.

I sent a reply discrediting the conspiracy, why and how it could not possibly be, but had no intention of taking it any further - this site is dedicated to honoring our warrior class and there is no honor in re-transmitting this kind of horse hockey. This is a legitimate military blog, not a forum for the MoonBats of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade that populate every nook and cranny of both sides of the aisle.

Then early this morning Blogmeister Theo - mentor of STORMBRINGER and Enfant Terrible of the worthy site Last of the Few - emailed me and asked, "Is this bullshit or is there some thing in it?" Attached was the same email that I'd seen a week earlier. I include the text here only so that I may dismantle this outrageous theory by the numbers, and in doing so see that our warrior's honor may remain intact and that their spirits may rest in the Hall of Heroes in Valhalla, which no doubt is where they are now.

(WARNING: This stuff is straight out of the Bush-did-9/11-to-start-an-illegal-war-for-oil-New-World-Order-Illuminati-Bohemian-Grove School of Philosophy and I'm including as much of Part 1 and Part 2 here as I can stand - poor grammar, spelling errors and all - but I'm not including the link to the video because my Bullshit Meter is pegging out enough already as it is. For the same reason I'm not including the link to this Ann Barnhardt chick's website - I'll not be a party to propagating her garbage. - S.L.)



SEAL TEAM SIX - INVESTIGATE THE WHITE HOUSE!

The Execution of SEAL Team Six (Part 1) Posted by Ann Barnhardt - August 6, AD 2011 4:08 PM MST

On May 5th I had an email conversation with a retired military man with spook contacts . . .

(Bullshit Flag #1: "retired military man with spook contacts" could be ANYBODY - Hell, I've got "spook contacts" in fact at one point I WAS a spook, even though the spooks didn't call us that they called us Sneaky Petes and we just called ourselves Snakeaters.)

All were in total agreement that the Bin Laden episode was pure theater. The SEALS were sent into a compound as evidenced by the lost chopper on site. But Osama Bin Laden wasn't in that compound. Osama Bin Laden has been dead for years. Bin Laden had a genetic condition that caused renal failure (this genetic condition is common among deeply inbred Saudi arab muslims). Bin Laden had been on dialysis BEFORE 9/11.

(Bullshit Flag #2: The-kidney-failure-dialysis-theory had been going around for years prior to 9/11 in fact back in '98 an analyst at CIA explained to me a school of thought: just leave bin Laden alone and let him die of kidney failure that way we don't make a martyr out of him. Absolutely no proof one way or the other on the condition of bin Laden's kidneys and if you looked at his videos and photos he certainly didn't LOOK like a candidate for dialysis)

Dialysis is difficult enough for people in first world countries who can have it done in outstanding facilities. Bin Laden was having it done either in caves or in homes post 9/11. People in renal failure having dialysis done in fricking caves do NOT live for ten more years. Period. There was no dialysis equipment found in the compound the SEALS raided on May 2. Of course there wasn't. Bin Laden wasn't in that compound because Bin Laden has been dead for years.

(Bullshit Flag #3: Could it be the absence of dialysis equipment simply confirms that the whole bin Laden kidney failure thing was a pipe dream concocted at Langley in the first place?)

This is why the "body" was declared "positively identified" faster than any known DNA testing process in existence - and this DNA testing was carried out not in a lab mind you, but inside a Chinook and/or V-22 Osprey helos en route to the USS Carl Vinson. The body was then dumped into the Indian Ocean in a mad dash to ensure that "burial" took place within 24 hours of death in order to "honor" musloid burial traditions. Not a single picture of the so-called "Bin Laden corpse" has ever been released - and never will.

(Bullshit Flag #4: The DNA results weren't immediately available they took time, and don't be in such a hurry to claim that no picture will ever be released - while I personally disagree with the decision not to release the picture that whole episode was carefully stage-managed and Obama is such a crafty pol I wouldn't be at all surprised if photos emerge some time prior to the election to make him look like a hero. Either that or the fact that bin Laden was shot in the back of the head and they CAN'T release THAT - Law of Land Warfare and all that . . .)

The entire Bin Laden episode was stagecraft. It was pure theater that was designed to give Obama a boost in the polls and give distraction and cover. Distract from what? Cover from what?

April 20, 2011: The release date of Dr. Jerome Corsi's book, "Where's the Birth Certificate" is announced as May 17, and pre-sales begin on Amazon.com. Corsi's work is known to be extremely thorough and meticulous. Within hours, Corsi's book is #1 on Amazon.com - fully 28 days before its release. The Obama regime is panicked.

(Bullshit Flag #5: This is where the conspiracy theory really gets complicated . . . I know this is an ordeal but bear with me here people . . .)

April 27, 2011: In order to diffuse and undercut the Corsi book, the Obama regime releases a PDF image purported to be a scan of his original long-form Hawaiian birth certificate. Within hours, thousands of graphic designers, many of whom are self-professed Obama voters and supporters, isolate and demonstrate with dozens of objective proof sets that the PDF released by the Obama regime is not just a forgery, but an astoundingly incompetent and obvious forgery.

April 27 through May 2: The Obama regime is now in a blind panic. Deeming it too risky, instead of commissioning the forged birth certificate from document and photo illustration experts within the CIA or NSA, the Obama regime instead farmed the project off on someone inside the White House with a functional but middling knowledge of photo illustration programs. To the thoroughly inexpert eyes of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett, the forged certificate file appeared extremely convincing, and was thus released with fanfare. Within hours, they knew that they had not only made a mistake, but a massive mistake that could land them all in prison. The forger was so incompetent that he/she didn't even flatten the image thus compressing and masking the component layers before posting it. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of glaring flaws and errors. The mainstream press was, so far, completely complicit in the cover-up of the forgery, but Rathergate proved that if the forgery debunking generated any mainstream traction whatsoever, the end could come swiftly. The Obama regime needed a big distraction and they needed it fast. They had been planning on holding the staged Bin Laden capture and killing until 2012 - for the thick of the campaign, and perhaps as an "October Surprise", but it would have to be moved up to now.

May 2, 2011: The Bin Laden operation occurs. In all likelihood, a low-to-mid level Taliban or insurgent leader is killed.

(Bullshit Flag #6: As with most conspiracy theories, this one falls flat on it's face right here with the sheer number of individuals required to keep their mouths shut in order to keep the whole thing secret and therefore effective against the public. First of all two entire platoons of SEALs have to be in on the scheme, then there's the medical personnel and whoever else accompanied ST6 on the raid - JSOC operations are "Joint" and typically include EOD attachments at a MINIMUM not to mention Delta guys were there as well, the mortuary personnel on board the Carl Vinson who prepared the body for burial at sea, and then everybody in the chain between the Whitehouse and the tactical operations center the raid launched out of. How many people are we up to by now? Somewhere between two to five hundred, I'd say.)

May 3, 2011: Within hours, Vice President Joe Biden destroys any notions of OPSEC and bellows to the entire world in public remarks at a dinner at the Ritz Carlton that the Bin Laden raid was carried out by "the SEALS".

(Bullshit Flag #7: There is no way known ANYBODY would make Biden a member of their secret conspiracy - unwitting participant or otherwise - the man is simply TOO STUPID to be depended on to do anything short of f*cking it up completely. In fact that's his value to Barry Soetero; he's Obama's Life Insurance policy - as long as Biden is #2 in line to the throne NOBODY is going to off Obama because the alternative is simply too unbearable to consider, even for the Democrats.)

Within hours Obama regime had gleefully leaked that the raid was carried out by "SEAL Team 6?, also known as DEVGRU. Up until this point in history, all DEVGRU activities and information had been highly classified. Now the term "SEAL Team 6" was blasted across every newspaper in the world, with Disney even moving to trademark the name. The Obama regime wanted the ENTIRE WORLD to know the name "SEAL Team 6".

(Bullshit Flag #8: The term "SEAL Team 6" isn't classified and DEVGRU is a part of the deception game the military has to play to keep the Freedom of Information Act requests from busting out servicemembers assigned to classified units - just like the Army denies the existence of a "Delta Force" and technically speaking they're right - officially it's SFOD-D and I'm not going to blurt out the other acronym but take my word for it who "SEAL Team 6" are and what they do has been open source knowledge for decades . . . just because the writer of this tripe didn't know and some Gen Xer over at Disney thought they could copyright a military unit's name and numerical designation only means two things: A) Jack, and B) Sh*t)

May 5, 2011: As I said earlier, I conversed with retired military contact with spook contacts regarding the obvious theatrics of the Bin Laden episode and the need for a cover-up by the Obama regime. The conversation ended with the following exchange:

(SEE: Bullshit Flag #1)

Ann: I'm on the US Military casualty email list. It would be NO PROBLEM to "hide" casualties. It's a steady stream out of Afghanistan.

Contact: look for training accidents in the eastern mountains.

May 6, 2011: Obama travels to Ft. Campbell, KY to openly "meet and congratulate" SEAL Team 6 members.

(Bullshit Flag #9: DEVGRU is stationed in Little Creek Virginia - everyone knows this. Everyone, that is, except this moonbat. 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) a.k.a. Task Force 160 a.k.a. the 160th a.k.a. Task Force is stationed at Ft. Campbell. Obama probably had a photo op with a bunch of rotorheads. Very special, elite rotorheads, but rotorheads nonetheless. There is no way on God's Green Earth that ST6 operators - or Delta for that matter - are going to pose in front of a bunch of cameras and let the whole world know who they are. Ain't gonna happen, no way known. How stupid is this Ann Barnhardt bird?)

This receives huge press coverage, and the press declares the incident "a huge boost [for Obama] going into 2012." Video citation here:

(Like I said I'm not propagating this bird's craziness. Simply not gonna do it, not no how, no way.)


PART TWO:

The Execution of SEAL Team Six (Part 2)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - August 6, AD 2011 4:07 PM MST

August 6, 2011: A Chinook helo is shot down in Tangi, Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Within hours, before family notifications could possibly have been completed, global press accounts positively confirm that 22 of the 30 Americans killed were not just SEALS, but members of SEAL Team 6. Again, DEVGRU operations have been, up until now, highly classified. Today, the Obama regime made a point of immediately revealing the unit identities of the SPECOPS forces among the dead.
In the past, DEVGRU men and other SPECOPS men have been killed in action, but their missions were so secret and so crucial to OPSEC that their deaths were covered-up by the government and attributed to such things as "training accidents" and the like - and I have no problem with that.

(Bullshit Flag #10: MoonBat Annie has never heard of Blackhawk Down, apparently - or did I miss the memo that we'd somehow convinced the world that the entire Battle of Mogadishu was one giant training accident?)

These men understand going in to intense units such as DEVGRU that OPSEC is paramount, that they will never be publicly acknowledged for their heroism, and that if they are killed or captured in action, the government will lie about that in order to protect OPSEC and to prevent the enemy from gaining a propaganda and morale coup.

(Bullshit Flag #11: The Delta operators (and Rangers) who died in the Mog' were identified after the fact - I know because I helped bury one of them - Griz Martin is clearly identified in the book Blackhawk Down.)

Compare that reality with what happened today. The Obama regime distributed this information, and the Obama regime's lapdog press instantly splashed headlines declaring this as the Taliban's "REVENGE" for the "death of Bin Laden." As I write this now, the Drudge Report headline in bright red reads, "REVENGE: SEALS WHO GOT OSAMA KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN."

I'll say what everyone else is thinking but is too scared to say. The Obama regime is almost certainly directly complicit in these deaths. The time, location and most especially, the PASSENGERS in the Chinook were passed to the Taliban. Additionally, you can't take out a Chinook with small arms fire or even standard RPGs such as the Taliban use. The Taliban needed serious weaponry to take this helo down, and that serious weaponry needed to be in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time, ready to fire.

(Bullshit Flag #12: An RPG will blow a hole straight through either of a Chinook's two jet engines - one on either side of the rear tail - or the transmission and all the gears and shafts located between the two engines. Or you could blast away at the cockpit - hell, a .22 long rifle could pop through those plexiglass windows so you know 4.5 lbs of rocket-powered shaped charge (which is what an RPG is) could do the trick any day of the week.)

Why would the Obama regime kill Americans? I think the question is, why WOULDN'T the Obama regime kill Americans? The Obama regime is composed of Marxist-Leninist psychopaths. A glancing, superficial survey of 20th century history shows one glaring fact above all others: MARXISTS MURDER PEOPLE WITHOUT COMPUNCTION. Marxists also hate Americans, by definition.

(Bullshit Flag #13: I don't know about you, but conspiracy to commit murder is a BIG ethical dilemma for most people, and participating in the killing of people is NOT as easy as it sounds. There might be some wild-eyed, politically inspired leftists in the Whitehouse but if they were willing to go this far, I imagine we'd be having a whole lot more political killings on a local level than a complex operation like this one calls for.)

Three tacks:

1. The men on board the Chinook may have been some of the same men who participated or had direct knowledge of the staged Bin Laden raid and were killed to permanently silence them.

2. These DEVGRU men were killed to send a signal to the surviving DEVGRU men who carried out the Bin Laden raid to keep their mouths shut.

(Bullshit Flag #14: I know what kind of men these SEALs are because I'm of the same tribe and let me tell you, we don't scare easy. If I suspected for one micro-second that someone in my chain of command was responsible for the deliberate deaths of my comrades, THEY'D be the ones put on notice and their physical survival would involve going to ground and becoming invisible FAST because me and a lot of guys like me would going after them.)

3. Certainly, the release of the unit identity of the dead within hours - before even family notification could have been made (which requires an IN PERSON visit to the family, remember) was an obvious bow to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the entire muslim world.

(Bullshit Flag #15: The individuals who perished on the Chinook were not identified for days after the family notification. This crazy bird simply does not understand how the family notification process works. Identifying the unit, and identifying the individuals are two completely separate things.)

This event was INSTANTLY propagandized by the Obama media as "revenge" exacted for Bin Laden's death. And remember, Bin Laden has been dead for many years. The raid of May 2 was pure stagecraft to distract the world from the release of the forged Obama birth certificate.

I am not a conspiracy theorist.

(Bullshit Flag #16: If you're not a conspiracy theorist, then how come you're spreading this incredible conspiracy theory that strains the imagination and fails the common sense test at every twist and turn of your convoluted theory?)

I can't stand Alex Jones or any 9/11 truther. I have turned down dozens of interviews with such types. In fact, I am a huge believer in the Lex Parsimoniae, which is sometimes called "Occam's Razor", which states that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. I teach this as part of my job, namely that the cattle markets are neither manipulated nor impossible to operate within at a profit. The reality is that the cattle industry participants do not make money because they are functionally incompetent. It is very, very simple. True conspiracies are very rare.

This entire Obama situation is a conspiracy, and I say that without the slightest hesitation. Obama is not a citizen of the United States, he is a puppet front for a cabal of Marxist-Leninsts including Soros, Ayers, Dohrn, Strong, Jarrett and many, many others. These people are enemies of the United States. These people are deeply psychologically damaged, and are capable of ordering people murdered in order to protect themselves and increase their own power. The three dead homosexual black men from Trinity United Church of Christ, Young, Bland and Spencer, all of whom were sexually linked to Barack Obama, were probably the first people specifically murdered by the Obama regime.
(WHATEVER - This is really getting crazy here.) The hundreds of Mexicans and the two American agents Terry and Zapata were murdered by Operation Fast and Furious in order to advance and increase the power of the Obama regime. These SEALS and the others on board that Chinook today were almost certainly betrayed and murdered by the Obama regime.

(Bullshit Flag #17: Just think it over for a second here; in order for this to have occurred as MoonBat Annie lays out, there would have to be an agent of the Obama administration located within the JSOC tactical operations center WILLING TO COMMIT HIGH TREASON and have a hotline to the Taliban located in that particular valley, so that the moment he became aware of the mission - because the Oval Office is not in on it each and every time a helo scrambles with some Special Operators on it - he's got to get on the phone to the enemy - from within a tightly controlled classified environment within a highly secured compound - and say, "OK Mohammed, the Infidels are on their way just as we planned it, so make sure you have The Device ready for their annihilation!" That right there is too impossible to pull off.)

Why did the Obama regime immediately reveal the unit identity of the SPECOPS forces involved in the first place, despite the fact that DEVGRU was highly classified? Why was the personnel composition of the Chinook released IMMEDIATELY today after the helo went down - before even family notifications could be made? WHY?

(Already went over this one - SEE: Bullshit Flag #14)

Why would you hand your enemy, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a massive propaganda coup? WHY?

I'll tell you why. Because the Obama regime IS THE ENEMY. They are Marxist tyrants who hold the lives of Americans not just cheap, but in scathing contempt. They will say anything, they will do anything, and they will murder ANYONE in order to protect themselves and consolidate and increase their power. Please, I beg you, for the love of God and all that is good in this world, read the history of the Soviet Union. Read about Lenin and Stalin and how they murdered people without any hesitation. Read about how Hitler was constantly ordering the murder of his own officers. Read about Communist China. Read about Mao and the millions upon tens of millions of murders he ordered. Read about the killing fields of the Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia led by Pol Pot. PLEASE. Marxists MURDER PEOPLE. That is what they do. The Obama regime is MARXIST to the bone. If the Obama regime is not stopped, the 30 Americans murdered today in Afghanistan will be just the beginning. I promise you that.

Here, again, is the clip of Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the Weather Underground Marxist terrorist organization in the 1970s. The Weather Underground was founded by Obama's political godfather, communist mentor (along with Frank Marshall Davis), murderer, and ghostwriter of "Dreams From My Father", Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. In this interview, taped in 1980 while Obama was still just an unknown undergrad foreign scholarship student at Occidental College, Grathwohl describes the leadership of the Weather Underground (which is Ayers and Dohrn) discussing what will be done with the "un-reformable, diehard capitalists" once they have overthrown the government of the United States. The answer is extermination in camps in the Southwest.
(This is way out there MoonBat-ism at it's best, folks.) The estimated total that would need to be killed? 25 million, which was 10% of the population at the time. Ayers & Dohrn already have overthrown the government of the United States via their puppet protégé, Barack Obama. They have guaranteed that the economy will collapse. The only thing left for them to do is suspend the Constitution and open the camps. I'll see you there.

WHY WEREN'T OUR NAVY SEALS AND SPECIAL OPS FORCES IN THEIR NORMAL, UPGRADED ARMORED CHINOOK! WHY WERE THEY IN AN UN-ARMORED REGULAR CHINOOK


(Bullshit Flag #18: MH- series helo's aren't necessarily armored to any great extent more than conventional helos. You can up-armor certain portions of the passenger compartments and the fuel cells are self-sealing, but the engine and transmission housings have to be able to radiate that heat off, and they have enough of a hard time mitigating the heat signature never mind cladding the things in armor that will keep the heat in. This is where this MoonBat bird goes straight to Double-Extra-Stupid-Ville and does not pass "GO", does not collect $200.)

The fact of the matter is that the Chinook crash is what it looks like right on the surface - there are simply too many good, honorable men and women in the chain for a convoluted conspiracy like this to even exist, never mind to keep it secret after the fact. The fact that she has no credible sources should alert everyone's BS meter. These SEALs were on QRF duty when the call came out to go to the sound of the guns, and they flew out on the first thing smoking. The Taliban had set up a helo ambush - hello? War against the Soviets, anyone? WE taught them this tactic, from our experience against the Communists in Vietnam who taught it to us. It is a tragedy of national proportions, and to be sounding off this kind of alarmist bullcrap over the bodies of dead American heroes is disgraceful, dishonorable and is a shameful thing to do to the families and fellow warriors of those who perished in the Chinook crash.

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

SEAN LINNANE SENDS



Honor Them.



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Saturday, August 13, 2011

THE PARIS WIFE

Today we have something new and different from Rachel Ryan - friend of STORMBRINGER and fellow freelancer over at FrumForum. Rachel reviews a book that covers a time and place near and dear to my heart: Paris in the 1920s, and The Lost Generation - S.L.




The mid-20th century certainly had to have been one of the most interesting times to roam the streets of Paris. Conversing with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and virtually any other famous expat, required simply that one walk into a cafe in Montparnasse. In her book The Paris Wife, Paula McLain offers a detailed account of Hemingway’s early years in both Chicago and Paris from the perspective of his first wife, Hadley Richardson.

The reader encounters Stein in her atelier, Fitzgerald on the beaches of southern France, and the Pamplona bull fights that inspired Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

McLain stays impressively close to historical record, adding very little to the story that is imagined.

Especially interesting are the descriptions of various relationship dynamics. Jazz Age Paris was a progressive time to say the least. Women were forward, powerful, and unabashedly sexy. Men had mistresses. Everyone drank, everyone smoked, and everyone lived each night as if morning would never come. Unlike Ernest Hemingway “[who] was 21 and white hot with life,” Hadley Richardson was “29 [and] feeling almost obsolete.” She was desperately in love with her husband but, living in Paris, the two could not be more different.

Upon finishing the book, I initially recommended it to everyone, man or woman. “Anyone that is even remotely interested in Paris and the host of expatriates the city inspired would just love this book!” I, however, stand corrected. Though the book is historically compelling, simultaneously pulling on the heartstrings of any Hemingway fanatic, it is distinctly “girly,” filled with romantic clichés such as, “I can do anything if I have you with me.”

But francophilic gents, don’t despair. The famed historian David McCullough has written an even more impressive, entirely historic account of expats in Paris. His newest book, The Greater Journey is the most educational, inspiring piece of literature I have ever read. The reader learns about everything ranging from Thomas Jefferson’s Paris neighborhood, to the invention of the telegraph, to the making of John Singer Sargent’s painting, Madame X, and socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau. Suffice it to say, I learned more about the history and evolution of modern medicine from McCullough’s descriptions of Paris Médicale than I ever did as a Johns Hopkins student (Johns Hopkins University that boasts the #1 medical school in the world, by the way).

Whether you are a lover of all things French, an avid reader of Hemingway, or simply an intellectual spirit looking to enhance your knowledge of one of the most influential cities in human history, both The Paris Wife and The Greater Journey promise a satisfying, educational read.



Rachel Ryan studied Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, l'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy and l'Université Paris - La Sorbonne Diderot (Paris VII) in Paris, France. You can follow her on twitter @rachelryan1004





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S.L.: In my youth I was inspired by Hemingway, and studied his writing style; the epitome of brevity, down-to-the-bones. I sought adventure so that I’d have something to write about, and made a career out of adventuring. I even learned to speak French and Spanish.



Along the way I began to look at Hemingway’s stuff with a jaundiced eye – especially his later stuff. His early stuff was good, and so was the fish story but toward the end there he churned out an awful lot of tripe.

Still, that must have been some rarified atmosphere, back there during the Paris years . . . “the Lost Generation” . . .

Now that I’ve got a kit bag full of adventures, I find it very difficult to write, because it always comes out sounding like a war story – and the only difference between a war story and a fairy tale is a war story starts out with “There we were, no sh*t . . .” and a fairy tale starts out with “Once Upon A Time . . .”

Having said that, upon the advice of my muse I am locking myself in my office this weekend and writing . . . we’ll see where it leads . . .


- STORMBRINGER SENDS



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TRAINING RESOURCES

With a little imagination and an arc-welder, you can put to good use all those sea-land containers stacking up at our port cities, to fabricate training facilities. I know the guys who built this rappelling tower - some of you have even seen it before.






Sorry about the poor quality of the photos - that's the best you get on my phone, when it's covered with grime from a couple weeks in the field.


- STORMBRINGER SENDS


Today's Bird HERE


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Friday, August 12, 2011

CORRECTION on WHISKEY POST




Theo's Mississippi rep has brought to my attention that Armon Sweat was a representative in the Mississippi House from Alcorn County, MS. This speech is apparently read on the floor of the house each year. A great speech. Texas, being a little more . . . proggresive . . . issued their first license in 1933. Like Mississippi, there are still "dry " counties in Texas today.

Our friend remembers standing in line with his Daddy in 1966 at the first liquor store in Jackson. Prior to that we went to the bootleggers who, as Rep. Sweat states, paid a black market tax to the state to sell illegal whiskey.

Me, I get my share of the good stuff - the "under the counter" sippin' whiskey - whenever I'm back down there in Pineland.


SEAN LINNANE SENDS


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