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23 Minutes of Life on the Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Avenue, August 2021.

Watch as much as you can stand. 3-minute soundtrack below. That’s probably the limit. File under: “Everything the Democrats touch turns to shit.”

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Wildman September 7, 2021, 5:57 PM

    I will bet that the rats that run the city know how to reach every broken person in the video in order to have them vote

  • Sid V September 7, 2021, 6:20 PM

    I’m semi familiar with this part of town via a job I had in the early 90s doing work all over Philly. This area, sometimes called “The Badlands”, has been like this for at least a third of a century now, but has become particularly pronounced of late. Heroin historically, but fentanyl (thank you China and open-borders Democrats) has only exacerbated things. The politicians have largely tolerated this activity, hoping it will just remain confined to this area, which it largely has.

    The original Springsteen music video for this song was filmed right near here in “Northern Liberties”, with the little commie shuffling along the streets. I dislike most of Springsteen’s music (think “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”), but this is a good tune.

    • Sid V September 7, 2021, 6:28 PM

      Here’s the original music video:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ

    • TrangBang68 September 9, 2021, 10:19 AM

      A bunch of spice smoking in the video, a bunch of those zombies bent over in unnatural positions are probably high on spice. Welcome to Joe Biden’s America. It may look like 10 pounds of feces in a 5 pound sack, but in reality it’s 20 pounds of feces in a 5 pound sack.

  • Charley Waite September 7, 2021, 6:27 PM

    Where have you gone, Frank Rizzo?

  • Mumblix Grumph September 7, 2021, 7:36 PM

    I knew it was bad, but not THIS bad. It looks like a video game with malfunctioning NPCs. This will not end well.

  • brian September 7, 2021, 7:54 PM

    Thanks for posting this video. Looks like the zombie apocalypse. Just what China would like to see in America. BTW, is the stop motion, stooped postures fentanyl ?

    • TrangBang68 September 9, 2021, 10:22 AM

      I’d bet spice. If they were high on opiates they would be more apt to sitting in a nod not folded over. It’s all originating in China, spice, fentanyl and the precursors for meth; China to Mexico and over the open border.

  • John P Coggeshall September 7, 2021, 9:15 PM

    Gerard…where to start…I wish I knew…
    Hmmmm…I had no idea this was so close to me…I live in Maine…I lived in Boston for 25 years…I thought this was all 3,000 miles away…

    But…why bring in Bruce Springsteen…a lovely song about something else…do you think Bruce is going to contribute anything to this…today…now…considering all the politicians and all the policies he has STRONGLY supported for the past 30 or 40 years?

    I wish I had the answer…

    If I knew the way…I would take you home…

    I worked for 11 years, for the City of Boston, trying to solve these problems…

    If I knew the way…I would give you a home…

    But…at least you and I now know…The Democrats don’t have the answer…does anyone?…

    My choice would be Thomas Sowell…

    Thanks for all you do…

  • Anonymous September 7, 2021, 9:51 PM

    Okay, Ger…I watched the entire 23 Minutes and 1 second…and…I still wish I had the answer…
    I worked on it for 11 years…my wife [psychiactric nurse] worked on this for about 40 years…

    But, here’s what I do know: It does not take a village to raise a child…it takes parents…

    The village does not provide a place to live…it takes individuals who want a place to live…

    Within 20 miles of each and every homeless person [on the East coast] is an abandoned home or apartment…probably at least 2 or 3 per family or person (maybe 30 or 40 miles, for Boston or New York—not sure)…each one of those abandoned dwelling units could be brought back to use for roughly 1/2 to 1/4 what a “new” dwelling unit would cost…maybe less with “sweat equity” (the occupants would do some work {and appreciate the new home})…or maybe 1/8 t0 1/12 if the Government were involved…

    But nobody is willing to try this…

    • orcadrvr September 8, 2021, 8:19 PM

      You could give each one of these zombies a mansion, and in 30 days it would be a stinking smoldering pile of rubble.
      There problems are not lack of housing, they are to a man, severe mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism.
      They need to be humanely institutionalized, not enabled by giving them homes.

    • TrangBang68 September 9, 2021, 10:23 AM

      Every leftist run city in America looks all or part like this.

  • gwbnyc September 8, 2021, 2:45 AM

    I worked outside at the corner of B’way and E12th St (Strand Bookstore) in NYC c.1985 and I can confirm from that experience and reviewing the video the Good Lord in his wisdom prevents junkies from ever falling down.

    • FWTB IV September 8, 2021, 6:46 AM

      … until the last time they fall down, when they’re about 46 years old.

      • gwbnyc September 8, 2021, 7:10 AM

        seen ‘em go past sixty, but yeah right around there.

  • Brewvet September 8, 2021, 3:23 AM

    I’m assuming nearly everyone there is Opiated to the gills, not to mention Metholated and HIVved.

  • Dan Patterson September 8, 2021, 3:28 AM

    There is nothing surprising about any of this, though it is certainly painful.

  • Kevin in PA September 8, 2021, 3:37 AM

    I could only stand to watch about 2 minutes. It is depressing. It is embarrassing. And look who run Philly. The mayor, the city council, the D.A. They are the problem. They are the poverty and race hustlers. They make their living off their suffering by always promising to help, but they never help.
    And to the anonymous poster suggesting that someone should offer free/low cost homes to the street urchins, you and your stupid ideas are part of the problem. Giving anything to a junkie will not fix the problem.
    The real choice is get clean, stay sober, get a job and keep it. Or die.

    • Jack September 8, 2021, 8:47 AM

      I agree but most of this condition is self wrought. Against all advice to the contrary these folks chose the lowest road they could find and never looked back. But at this stage of their game getting clean, staying sober and working for a living is beyond their ability and in our hearts we know that to be true despite our wish for them to exist otherwise.

      Rehab is one thing but killing drug dealers is another and I place much of the blame for this problem and others upon all spineless politicians who refuse to act en masse despite the various ‘war on drugs’ that they proudly bluster about while drug dealers and even the local hustlers do not face the death penalty that should await them immediately upon conviction.

      Bottom line: Solutions to this problem cannot be mandated nor will mandates be enforced. Prevent and cure has to come from the heart and hearts without the Lord Jesus are as barren as those streets in Philadelphia.

      • Fletcher Christian September 9, 2021, 7:39 AM

        I agree, but with one slight change. The current War on Some Drugs is not working and will never work with current methods. The profit is too high and the consequences both trivial and unlikely. It is well known that the real reason for harm caused by the use of illegal drugs is that they are illegal – leading to high prices, crime to support the habit, drugs of uncertain potency (leading to overdoses) and doubtful purity, and the use of dirty equipment. It also leads to the race between law enforcement and the dealers, in the matter of “legal highs” most of which are more toxic than the well-known drugs they replace.

        The WOSD is also corrosive to the rule of law and personal freedoms, in all manner of ways.

        I propose one of two responses to illegal drugs. Either legalise everything, and thus cut the dealers off at the knees, or a drastically more severe approach; cold turkey withdrawal and a sentence of at least 30 days as standard for possession, and shoot known drug dealers on sight. (Which also includes prison guards who smuggle the stuff into prisons, a well known problem.)

        The former approach would lead to a great number of deaths in the short term. So what?

    • Joe Krill September 8, 2021, 10:11 AM

      Kevin, Very well said.

  • ghostsniper September 8, 2021, 4:38 AM

    A small percentage of any population is doomed to be failures and when that population increases so do the failures. The destruction of the family is at the root of it.

    • FWTB IV September 8, 2021, 7:11 AM

      They are not “doomed” to be failures. They are ignored and remain ignorant from infancy to their “social promotion” from education/jail that has replaced graduation from some many public schools in our cities. After that, the sad bastards are subsidized, encouraged and funneled into every failure and awareness-free f**k-up for the rest of their lives by a society gone mad — one that spends trillions keeping a heavy lid on the pot that confines them. This is where an ever-increasing amount of what was once public wealth increasingly goes, to no effect. The forebears of the men and women who are now crack addicts, habitual criminals and domestic violence perpetrators and victims once held jobs, lived lives of love and fulfillment, supported religion, learning and law and order when I was a child, just a generation or two ago. This happened because powerful people wanted it that way.

    • TrangBang68 September 9, 2021, 10:24 AM

      I agree 100% about the family

  • Anonymous September 8, 2021, 4:47 AM

    I recently heard audio of an EMJones interview. He had what I thought was a very inciteful comment. He said that Jesus Christ was crucified between two thieves. The bad thief was communism, the good thief was capitalism. If this analogy is true, then it would follow that no matter the economic system, or perhaps political affiliation, where Christ is not King, there is folly.
    I look around, and at this post, and cannot conclude otherwise.
    On a not unrelated note: No death penalty, no justice. For the above, someone, lots of ones, need to go.

  • Alexandria September 8, 2021, 4:58 AM

    1. Everyone seems to be living in harmony.
    2. No one is smoking!
    What’s the problem?

  • PGT Beauregard September 8, 2021, 5:18 AM

    The problem is there is a lack of men who are willing to commit violence, which is what it will take to stop this.
    Violence against everyone in power who tolerates, promotes and benefits from this.
    Then, and only then, can these sad people be helped.

  • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 5:39 AM

    A man who watches this video will have one or more of four responses:

    1. He will claim to know the cause of such societal dysfunction. He will blame this political party or that political party; he will blame this politician or that politician; he will blame drugs; he will blame some foreign nation; he will blame a lack of faith in Jesus…and on and on.

    2. He will then claim to know the solution of the dysfunction. He will proclaim bromides such as: “We need to get tough on drugs (or crime or homelessness or vagrancy)!” “We need free and fair elections!” “We need to defeat the [fill in the blank] Party!” And so on.

    3. He will throw up his hands in despair. Some common yelps are: “What can anyone do?” “We are beyond hope!” And on and on.

    4. He will simply shrug and say, “What losers! They made their own bed. Screw ‘em!”

    But wait. What if the solution is to admit that…there is no solution. Nothing can be done by government or private citizens to solve the societal breakdown so dreadfully obvious in our major cities. Trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of “social workers”—what the Hell do these noisome throngs actually do?—hundreds of clinics, a thousand new programs, and…the problem only worsens.

    But this dysfunction will indeed come to an end. And perhaps sooner than anyone can believe. How?

    All of those in this nation who “have eyes to see and ears to hear” know what is coming. Civil War is coming. And if you thought Mother Nature is “red in tooth and claw”, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Once the shooting starts all bets are off. All those in the video will be cut off from their drugs, from their government handouts, from their free food. It will take about one week, and they will be gone. If you need just one historical example, please study the end of the Thirty Years War in what we now call Germany.

    Harsh? Yep. Cold? Yep. True? Yep.

    Those in the video, surrounded as they are in a marijuana haze, their veins suffused with heroin, their minds benumbed with fentanyl, are adults. They are where they are because of decisions they made in the past. Whatever hope they once had in their earlier lives has been forgotten. They have no future; they don’t even have a present. To deny that they are the cause of their fate is to deny them Free Agency, to strip from them their own humanity. For they, like us, are creatures of the Living God. Given Free Will, they chose poorly.

    It has been thus since Adam and Eve. They chose poorly as well.

    • FWTB IV September 8, 2021, 7:31 AM

      I love the Bible, but Genesis has always puzzled me. It mostly records the names (and rarely one syllable more) of those who reproduced. The exceptions are Adam and Eve (failures who colluded to get thrown out of Paradise for their inability to do the one thing asked of them) and Cain and Abel (the first murderer — another sinful failure — and his victim). It’s an inauspicious start to humanity-ever-onward, although it does effectively distract the reader from the larger implicit divine commandment that fills most of the chapter: Keep on reproducing! (Today many of us don’t do that very well, either.)

      • Jack September 8, 2021, 8:55 AM

        Well said but I tend to think that humanity caught on to that ‘keep reproducing’ thing pretty handily. It’s one of the few things that some do well and it makes me think of a verse written by an old Southern homespun bard, when I was only a kid. I read it as a dire warning and have never forgotten it. Negros though….all of them read it and hold it as a mantra:

        Oh, what a glorious life we lead
        Nothing to do but eat and breed.

        • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 1:36 PM

          Dear Jack:

          I saw an interview with an obviously proud negro some years back. He was the father of more than ten children, all from different mothers. As the camera rolled, he began to dance around and sang out,

          “I be the humdinger!
          I be the baby bringer!”

          For these sorts—13 percent of America—there can be no hope.

      • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 1:30 PM

        Dear FWTB IV:

        I am glad you mentioned the names of the first murderer and his first victim.

        Please remember that the first murderer, Cain, was also the founder of cities.

        All of History is contained in that fact.

      • Vanderleun September 9, 2021, 5:16 PM

        “I love the Bible, but Genesis has always puzzled me. ”

        Me too. Until I understood that Genesis gives you two creation stories.

        1. In the beginning….

        2. In the Garden of Eden…

        • Joe Krill September 9, 2021, 7:57 PM

          Gerard, your understanding is just the beginning of wisdom regarding Genesis 1 &2

    • Jack September 8, 2021, 9:05 AM

      Wait a second please, Mike. The four responses to the problem you posted are genuine and fair. All of them apply and without going into any detail about it, they all point directly to your final suggestion that there is no solution. And you are also right to state that civil war will fix it but it’s not going to fix just that.

      I’ll also suggest that Left Wingers who fill their yards with signs or slap bumper stickers on their automobiles of the candidate they support are going to get a hefty dose of “what fer” when the fighting starts. After all, these left wing communists didn’t elect themselves and they will be chump change when so many of their supporters are so visible and well known.

      • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 1:52 PM

        Dear Jack:

        It is unpleasant to state—not for me, but for some folks—that any society would be better off if some claimants to membership in said group simply…disappeared. Victory in wars both civil and foreign throughout History were accomplished because the victors practiced this maxim. Recall Sherman when asked by Lincoln how to win the Civil War. Sherman said, “Mr. President, as soon you give me permission to kill 200,000 of their young men, the war will end.” Lincoln did, Sherman did, the war ended.

        So much of History is wrapped up in that simple fact. From Curtis LeMay: “If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”

        This is one bloody calculus. And?

        Until Christ returns—and oh my God will He be…’upset’—this is how things are. And those who proudly display the flags of Lucifer?

        “Farewell, we never knew you.”

  • Arty September 8, 2021, 7:18 AM

    Wow! Covid is really hitting Philly hard.

  • Dirk September 8, 2021, 8:43 AM

    Imagine, What a pound of Fentanyl could accomplish.

    Every city in the nation has these people. These people are tools of the left.

    The sad part is this. Drug money has become integral in the worlds economy. Employees millions of third world people,whom consider what they do as legit. It’s not those workers faults that society is chalked full of weak people.

    Hard to believe but those folks are not worldly thinkers. Perhaps their blessed. For them it’s about putting food on the table for their families.

    Don’t shit yourself, this has been incorporated into the grid by every govt in the world.

    Our world is a lie!, our history a joke!

    VI

  • Dirk September 8, 2021, 8:48 AM

    Forgot this,

    The only really important history is ones legacy, what we do for our own people, our children, what we do to help others in need. The minute that family history is recorded, it’s manipulated by someone, out of spite, or jealousy, or hatred.

    Natives had it right, an oral history will last to infinity. A written history is nothing but lies compounded on more lies. Don’t believe me, go to the library.

    VI

    • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 2:08 PM

      Dear Dirk:

      The only ‘legacy’ that matters is written in the Book of Life. Nothing written or remembered on earth matters at all.

      Oral history is not History. It is the garbled and romanticized, vague and shadowy, hazy remembrances of a people too lazy, worthless and incompetent to develop writing. It is a bunch of ten year olds playing ‘telephone’. Oral “history” changes every few years. People write silliness like “The History of the Comanches” when the Comanches had no writing. The only ‘history’ they can possibly claim is that written by…wait for it…the White Man.

      History is writing. Everything else is fairy tale, vague senile recollections, fantasy from a defeated people.

      • Dirk September 8, 2021, 3:39 PM

        Mike, History is a lie! American History is a Fucking lie. Huge difference. More truth in your fairy tale, then history books.

        Anymore I question what I actually know to be truth, simple as adding a letter here a period there.

        Words are the single most manipulated stuff in the entire world.

        VI

        • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 4:13 PM

          Dear Dirk:

          “History is a lie! American history is a f***** lie!”

          Ok then. Calm yourself my friend. First, if that were true, how would you know? Second, I am a trained Historian—stop laughing—who has taught History at all levels in thee nations. (Argentina was cool. Ten years there, college courses and…well, extraordinarily beautiful women. But more about them some other time.)

          If you question everything, well that is good—for a start. But the purpose of questioning is to arrive at the Truth. If all one does is “question” this or that, then one is but a child.

          If you deny the Truth from any written source—even the Bible, which is Truth through and through—then you are lost. You have no logical stance to accept anything. All is Maya—the Hindu goddess of confusion.

          Good luck with that.

          • Dirk September 8, 2021, 5:44 PM

            Hi mike, I’m not angry or upset. Once thought I’d like to teach history. Admire your career choice. As a career historian, you will recognize this.

            The winners write history. While it may be in some part truth, I’ve met those on the other side who witnessed nothing close to the history written.

            Talk to native Americans, or talk to Philippino’s who were dealt with by General Black Jack.

            Truth, of history wears many many faces.

            I appreciate what you say, just not been my observation.

            Have a good evening.

            Dirk

          • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 6:38 PM

            Dear Dirk:

            I never thought you angry or upset. I thought you wrong.

            As for talking to Native Americans: All I have to do is look into the mirror. (I am half Chihuahua Indian.) I have done this many times. The resultant conversations have been…well, one sided.

            As for “The winners write history.” Well, as you know that is a quite popular cliché. All historians agree that the most influential history ever written was Thucydides’ “The Peloponnesian War.” Thucydides was an Athenian—on the losing side in that struggle. I could regale you with many other examples, but I will spare you.

            I taught Filipinos on occasion. Neither they nor their parents had outstanding complaints about the Americans. All were extremely grateful that the Americans expended their own blood, toil, tears and sweat to save them from the depredations of the Japs.

            As it turns out, I just finished “Honor in the Dust” by Gregg Jones. He spent much ink on what the Americans did to the Philippine guerrillas under Aguinaldo Beastly behavior on both sides. But we won. Is there something else that matters in war? If so please advise.

            And whatever things to Americans did to the Philippine guerrillas, understand that what the Japs did to them was cosmically worse. Ask any adult Filipino today about the Japanese occupation.

            I did not choose teaching; the profession chose me. And that is one heck of a story. From a solo backpacker, ex-bartender, ladies man and general asshole, I became a teacher of History, Philosophy and Economics, renowned and admired on five continents.

            God is good. I am not.

  • Gagdad Bob September 8, 2021, 9:52 AM

    The Garden of Urban Delights

    • Vanderleun September 9, 2021, 5:16 PM

      That’s the old Gagdad Bladerunner. That’s the old magic.

  • Snakepit Kansas September 8, 2021, 11:01 AM

    There is no gubmint or man-made solution to this. Divine Intervention only can solve this. These folks are doomed and you cannot help the unwilling. We can do something about adding to the quantity of folks getting into this endless quagmire of destruction: Close the border FFS, to keep illegals from carrying in backpacks full of heroin. Solve the opioid problem by spinning the agent orange program back up for Afghanistan. Virtually no Americans left, so refit some C123s like in Nam and start dusting poppy fields. Temporarily suspend civil rights and put together death squads to kill all the pushers. How about the Antifa folks too? We need a modern day Phoenix Program for undesirables. What could go wrong?

  • Jake September 8, 2021, 11:12 AM

    Are they picking up money on the ground?
    Why is everyone bent over?
    Those drugs are too strong.
    What a waste of human life.

    Please God help us.

  • wv.citybilly September 8, 2021, 11:24 AM

    This de-evolution is true where I live too.

  • Thud Muffle September 8, 2021, 11:28 AM

    Sadly there isn’t a solution that doesn’t involve kicking over a whole bunch of semi VIP rice bowls. Every one of those people filled out an absentee ballot for Biden and whichever local pols were favored. The favored locals funded their campaigns with cash from the drug (and sex) trade. The cops look the other way because not looking the other way is a career ender. It’s a closed loop. Now I think I’ll go watch auto racing videos.

  • EX-Californian Pete September 8, 2021, 11:39 AM

    I am at a complete loss to understand how people can sink that low and exist like that. Especially in numbers that large. Is it because it’s “tolerated” by the locals and those in office?
    How could someone abandon all drive, hope, and ability to succeed and thrive, and instead choose to live (literally) like wild rats in a sewer?
    As far as mankind has advanced and evolved over tens of thousands of years, how is it that we have such huge numbers of these folks living like primitive, subhuman scavengers- ruining entire areas like the above.

    And what’s the solution? When it reaches a scale of that magnitude, it appears to be hopeless.
    The only solution I can suggest is to corral all those junkies and subhumans and send them to Mexico- as an “exchange program” for all the illegals, cartel members, dope dealers, criminals, and sex traffickers that have invaded the USA.

    And what is it with all those bent-over junkies that look like marionettes with half the strings missing? Are they looking for crack rocks on the ground, or have their spines collapsed?

  • ghostsniper September 8, 2021, 1:07 PM

    Suppose it became extremely dangerous for people like that to hang out on the street, do you think they would go elsewhere? Lemme put a point on it. Imagine a squad of barren hoonz with serious hickory sticks in each hand walked down that skreet crackin’ skallz left and right. Do you think the non-victims would haul ass? Or stand there and get their skallz cracked too? Seems to me folks choose fairly safe surroundings to hang at. If an area becomes unsafe they move on. But then, the squad of barren hoonz follow them, crackin the whole way. Eventually all skallz get cracked or they have moved to distant locales.

    One thing for certain, coddling them makes it worse.

    • EX-Californian Pete September 9, 2021, 12:08 PM

      Ghost-
      Amen. One of Clint Eastwood’s best lines from the movie Pale Rider- (right after beating the crap out of several a-holes with an axe handle)

      “There’s nothin’ like a good piece of hickory.”

  • Steph September 8, 2021, 1:11 PM

    There appears to be more trash in Kensington than in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

    Other parts of North Philly are almost as bad. There are numerous methadone clinics along Broad Street. The addicts do the “dip” while they cross 6 lanes of 40 MPH traffic. I commuted up N Broad St every work day for almost a decade, and remain amazed that I never ran over any of these folks. I’ve seen a lot of near misses. Luckily for them, the gangs of quad runners don’t hit the streets until later in the day, when most of these folks are no longer wandering through traffic.

  • Jack Lawson September 8, 2021, 1:54 PM

    Watched enough of it… seen it before other places.
    I thought I was back in Zimbabwe or South Africa…
    That’s not Kensington Avenue… that’s the Philly landfill.
    The Human Condition.

    • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 3:36 PM

      Dear Jack Lawson:

      “I thought I was back in Zimbabwe…”

      I lived and worked in Argentina for ten years, 1993 – 2003. One of my colleagues was from Rhodesia. He would never ever refer to his homeland as Zimbabwe. One afternoon I had dinner and drinks with him and with the military attaché from South Africa. They told me stories about the wars in Angola, South Africa, the Congo and Rhodesia that would turn the stomach of a normal man.

      I rather enjoyed them.

      • Jack Lawson September 8, 2021, 5:38 PM

        Hello Mike Austin…

        Zimbabwe refers to the shytte hole formerly called Rhodesia. The name Zimbabwe is an insult to the blacks and whites still there… but many of the whites still there were the Communists who stirred the pot and supported the ‘liberation fighters’ while it was Rhodesia for the ‘equality’ of mass misery they now all share (except the rulers).

        How ironic, many of the whites still in Zimbo stayed to usher in the Communist paradise mugabe was to give them… but they’re now trapped and broke… and utopia didn’t materialize.

        The equality hit them about two years ago when both white and black (same Commie whites leading the blacks) were machine gunned by the army when some 20 APC (armored personnel carriers) pulled up to their ‘We’re Starving’ protest and open fired. The .50 caliber round from the APC does substantial damage to the human body. Didn’t see it on any news… but a video was smuggled out about that incident in ‘paradise,’ and told 200 killed, but who knows?

        Stories?? I’ve got a few of them. I’ve learned more about war, barbarism, racism, killing than 25 people would every know in a lifetime. A couple of snipet comment to amuse you… read on…

        Jack Lawson on August 5, 2021 at 19:58
        The Rhodesian Light Infantry carried the FN MAG (the current U.S. Army M-240) in the 7.62 X 51MM NATO round on Fire Force and external camp raids. Each ‘stick’ of four troopers had one unfortunate soul who had to carry this monstrous 24-pound gun along with 500 rounds of belted ammunition… the other 3 troopers carried the South African version of the FN assault rifle of same caliber, or R1 rifle, and additional belts.

        I unfortunately got picked at one time to carry this beast but never jumped with it… as my stick’s gunner, Alan Underwood did many times. He was the physically smallest of us and the best with the FN MAG. Alan jumped with an 81 MM mortar tube strapped to his scrawny body once too. He actually seemed to like the behemoth FN MAG. But I did learn how to use the FN MAG… there are 26 places to open a beer bottle on the FN MAG, I’ll let you know.

        During our Green Leader camp raid into Zambia we captured the Russian quality made RPD. The Chinese made version we captured in Mozambique on earlier camp raids… like everything else Chinese made… was junk and of questionable reliability.

        We captured so many Russian made RPDs in Zambia that the MAG squad automatic weapon was replaced with the RPD in all four of our Commandos. Brand new out of the box… or what wooden box was left after the termites got through with it. We must have blown their store of drum magazines into next Wednesday with air attacks… because we had none, so had to use our canteen pouches attached to the RPD to hold the belts. Much lighter and not so dangerous to jump with… and Alan fell in love with the RPD. I’ll bet he married a giant of a woman.

        The Russian made RPD… a fantastic weapon!

        Jack Lawson
        Associate Member, Sully H. deFontaine Special Forces Association Chapter 51, Las Vegas, Nevada
        Author of “The Slaver’s Wheel”, “A Failure of Civility,” “And We Hide From The Devil,” “Civil Defense Manual” and “In Defense.”
        “The Rhodesian Light Infantry… was the toughest and most mission-oriented people since the Roman Legions.”
        Quote about my unit from a friend of mine, a retired Major General of the U.S. Army and former commanding officer of the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

        Jack Lawson on August 7, 2021 at 02:33
        Hello ‘Him,’

        Hey, a Rhodie! Thanks for you putting yourself out there and your involvement and dedication to one of the greatest societies, causes and special people, like you, that this planet has ever seen… it was like the Battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan 300 versus the World.

        I assume you know that Green Leader was the result of the massacre of survivors of the two airliners they shot down out of Kariba. All were out for blood… and we got plenty of pay back.

        We left from Kariba Airport and came back through Mana Pools on Green Leader. I was on loan from RLI to ‘C’ Squadron SAS and jumped with them into Westland Farms about 150 klics north of Lusaka, Zambia. My parachute got fricking hung up in a tree but I had 60 pounds of explosives in my drop pack and the tree eventually got tired of holding me and that up.

        We caught them with their pants down. They never thought we’d go that far north of the capitol. Good God… I probably would have shat my pants and stayed in the plane if I’d known we were out numbered as we were. Something like 100 to 1 or more as I was told later. That arsehole Ken Flowers, head of CIO, was letting Brit MI-6 know about our operations and they in turn informed the Terrorists. May he rot in hell. They were a little slow in doing so on this one though. Even though the soccer field and most of the camps were empty… Rhodie Intelligence found out where they’d gone and hit them there too… like about twenty miles away and stomped the shytte out of them there.

        Got 1437 of them total on the op and one of ours wounded. Bombers, gunships and Lynx got most of them. But great by anyone’s numbers. If you’d seen what they did to the Rhodie farm families and their own tribal people you would understand why none of it weighs on my conscience… and then maybe you did see. Humanity is far better off with those arseholes removed from the planet.

        We captured so much ordnance that the C47s flew around the clock hauling this back to Rhodieland. Not the Chinese stuff… but the primo Russian stuff. Brand new Russian RPD, AKMs, TM 57 mines, RPGs with sophisticated sights. We had so much ordinance we put what we couldn’t carry off under and around a pile of sudza the size of a house. Then the engineers blew that into next week and when I left on the chopper it had turned about ten football field sized areas of Africa white and it still looked like it was snowing at Christmas. Sudza given to the terrorists and labeled on the bags “World Council of Churches, Methodist Synod.” That permanently severed my ties with the church I was baptized in.

        60 Minutes did a full hour on the World Council of Churches and their aid to the Communist Terrorists. But the Commies had taken over Rhodesia and that’s the only time 60 Minutes tells the truth… when it’s too late to do anything about it… and their broadcast served a dual purpose… to discredit Christianity. My combat partner, another American in SAS, was a former Vietnam Marine from Tennessee. He and I would check for booby traps and then pick the weapons boxes up and the bottoms would come out… termites.

        Green Leader Raid… great recording on the internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p1NRLFso6Q. I like the pilot’s warning at 4 minutes.

        The SAS guy directly in front of me was the only casualty out of 400 of us… we were sweeping a tree lined dry river bed and adjoining fields when a terrorist popped out… fired at us and fucked off before we could get a bead on him. He hit the front sight of the SAS guy’s FN… bullet fragmented into his abdomen and bicep and the remaining fragments flew lickity split past all of us around and behind him. I remember he was cursing because his wedding was in a few days. But he survived.

        Four two barreled 14.7 MM anti aircraft guns had been firing at us after we jumped but by the time we were all down, these terrorists saw the light, threw the bolts from their AA guns into the bush and were all butt cheeks leaving the area. Two terrorists were captured about a half mile away and had hightailed it out of their underground quarters just before we rocked up. These were some of the unhappy POWs you saw, I suppose. They were fresh off a Russian Aeroflot flight to Lusaka and hadn’t even had time to unpack their gear. Still had their Aeroflot dinner menus from the day before in their packs.

        They’d spent the last year at the Patrice Lumumba University in Gorky, Russia. ‘Agricultural Training,’ as the university is known for (Sarcasm). Oddly, they had the same colored training notebooks the Rhodies had. Blue cover, white paper. They looked like they were made by the same printer… probably the company my Father In Law owned… ha ha!

        All their instruction was in English. Detailed sketches of how to lead the target and shoot down paratroopers in one section…. ha! In one pack I found a photo of about 25 students standing between two ancient cannons at this Russian agricultural university. Races and people from all over the world… and I assume all commie terrorist graduates. We force marched to the area the terrorists had moved to prior to our raid to search and destroy in that area. I remember we had no water and were miserable for a day and a half until they got some to us.

        Major H. asked for a volunteer to go into their underground bunkers and I jumped into the trench entrance and was the eager tunnel rat with my flashlight, 9mm and a stupid look you would have seen on my face if it hadn’t been so dark down there. Found nothing but two packs and was worried they’d been booby trapped… but I carefully checked them then went through them.

        I also found a Walther PPK .380 and a Sten Submachinegun in fricking .45 caliber with Russian markings and two HE grenades. Martin O. and I disassembled and hid the Sten, pistol and grenades in the battery compartments of one of our radios which we closely escorted back to Rhodieland.

        Someone ratted us out and they took the Sten from us, but Martin put the pistol and grenades in his personal pack. I found out later that he buried them somewhere in a flower bed in one of the parks in Salisbury. I suppose someday a gardener will tug on his rake and find a grenade pin on one of the tines.

        Now it is equal misery for both black and white… except if they’re in the leadership. The equality of Communism.

        Good to hear from a Rhodie!

        Good God I miss that place…

        Jack Lawson
        Associate Member, Sully H. deFontaine Special Forces Association Chapter 51, Las Vegas, Nevada
        Author of “The Slaver’s Wheel”, “A Failure of Civility,” “And We Hide From The Devil,” “Civil Defense Manual” and “In Defense.”

        As one member of our Commando wrote in later years: “That country (Rhodesia) has cast a long shadow over our lives, has it not?”
        As one struggles to endure the daily mundane of life, I realize he is right. He wrote on…
        “Rhodesia is a woman whose name is forever written upon our hearts – against whom no earthly flesh and blood of female can ever compete. We shed our blood, sweat, tears and the blood of others answering her siren call. Now that the winds and the rains have washed away the stench of the rotting corpses, we remember only the flair of our youth as we jousted lockstep with an opponent equally as determined to rid the world of us, as we him.”
        “Anoma – Anoma – Anoma!” Swahili for “I am a poor man – I am a poor man – I am a poor man!”
        “But I am a rich man and she (Rhodesia) has made me so. We loved her like no other. Oh, how I miss her and my friends so!”
        What amazing words, from yet another one of the guys in my Commando who appeared so ignorant that I didn’t think he knew how to read, let alone capture the spirit of then with such eloquent words.

        Best time of my life Mike Austin… The Rhodesians were the finest people I’ve ever had the honor to associate with.

        This wandering American spent three weeks in Buenos Aires too on my travels. You were lucky to have lived there. Seemed like a great place… until I talked to Fernando “FerFal” Aguirre.

        • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 7:37 PM

          Dear Jack:

          Good God! You have lived! I could sit and talk to you—no, listen to you—for hours. Until the whiskey ran out.

          There is nothing I could say about Africa that you do not already know.

          I have in my hands David Lamb’s “The Africans”. It was required reading in college. The book given to me by the South African Military Attaché to Argentina is also in my hands: “Portugal’s War in Angola 1961 – 1974”.

          I studied African History for years, both in college and out, and mainly from the Boer Wars until decolonization. The Mau Maus, Kenneth Kuanda, Joshua Nkomo, Jomo Kenyatta, Mobutu, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Idi Amin—all of the pre and post colonial leaders had my interest.

          I was the “odd man out” in college in that I sided with Ian Smith and Botha in discussions.

          The World Council of Churches is a despicable communist front organization. There is nothing Christian about it. Patrice Lumumba University was a training ground for almost every Third World monster who ever came to power.

          It has been my view since I was in my 20s that Africa was better off under colonial rule than under so-called “Independence”.

          I follow FerFal on his YouTube channel.

          “Rhodesia is a woman whose name is forever written upon our hearts – against whom no earthly flesh and blood of female can ever compete. We shed our blood, sweat, tears and the blood of others answering her siren call.” (Any American who cannot say the same about the US is a dog.) No song, no words of praise, can equal what you wrote about Rhodesia.

          • Jack Lawson September 9, 2021, 9:28 AM

            Mike,
            You make me appear more remarkable than I am. I am not as impressive and ferocious as I sound… those were the Rhodesian people and especially farmers who braved that war.
            “Until the whiskey ran out…” Sorry, I no longer drink alcohol for my safety and that of the others I would stumble across in a stupor.
            As I wrote in the preface of my book “The Slavers Wheel,” Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, despite the mis-directed gutter ideology belief of Communism that he was forced to adapt to because of the greed and corruption of Western interests… is the type of man I would go to the wall for… if dying for any other cause could be as important.

            Jack Lawson
            Associate Member, Sully H. deFontaine Special Forces Association Chapter 51, Las Vegas, Nevada
            Author of “The Slaver’s Wheel”, “A Failure of Civility,” “And We Hide From The Devil,” “Civil Defense Manual” and “In Defense.”
            “As we fought for the ideals of freedom and for those on the left and right of us, we judged each other only by the most important of characteristics… nerve, courage and the willingness to stand in harm’s way for others… those abstract values that transcend the color of skin or the shape of eyes. During this respite from human pettiness, whatever our race, creed or ethnicity, at that time we were one.” – An anonymous Special Operations soldier

  • John A. Fleming September 8, 2021, 2:58 PM

    There are several things that the city can do:
    1. Keep the streets and sidewalks clean. If any of those people are on public assistance of any kind, they must spend “n” days per month in the morning, prior to the money showing up or the flop being available, sweeping the streets and sidewalk, picking up all the trash, and hosing the piss and grime into the gutters. Failure to show on any day, or show up stoned or malinger, will result in loss of next payment no exceptions. Work or die, their choice. Give ’em spiffy coveralls for their workday, collect them at the end of the day and launder them.
    1. Anybody living in a tent on a public sidewalk is also required to work “n” days, or the tent is confiscated with extreme prejudice. With the sidewalk being hosed down every day, the tent dwellers are going to find places and solutions to keep their s*** off the sidewalk.
    2. Put municipal trashcans everywhere, four per block. Empty daily, without exception. Every store must put out an external trashcan, those will be emptied also, daily.
    3. Put two or three kibos on every block. Clean daily, swap out regularly or when full. The local street denizens have to put up with each other’s s___, one way or another. There will always be people with broken minds who will smear and spray everywhere, maybe after their co-inhabitants have to clean up after them too many times a little street justice will be visited on the anti-social elements to bring them into compliance.
    4. Anybody assaults a street cleaner, gets immediately banished for life and a free ride to the farthest city border, confiscation of tents etc.
    5. Everybody, and I mean everybody, in the city government has to spend at least one day per month working and supervising the denizens, from the mayor on down. Same coveralls as the folks. They’ll be working right alongside ’em. We’re not going to have any Captains or Bosses. If the street aren’t cleaned, the employees lose their pay for that day.

    “I ain’t heard that much worth listening to just a lot of guys laying down a lot of rules and regulations”.

    Oh cry me a river. Work or die, just like everybody else.

    “What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it… well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.”

    • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 5:04 PM

      Dear John A. Fleming :

      Your ideas:

      1. Keep the streets and sidewalks clean.
      2. Put municipal trashcans everywhere.
      3. Put two or three kibos on every block.
      4. Anybody assaults a street cleaner, gets immediately banished for life.
      5. Everybody, and I mean everybody, in the city government has to spend at least one day per month working and supervising the denizens.

      All very cool ideas. All very impossible. What Democrat would ever—ever—agree to these?

      “Work or die, just like everybody else!” Yep. Just as Jesus said, “No work. No eat.”

      “What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach.” Ah…conjuring up the warden from “Cool Hand Luke.” Well done I say!

      The truth of the matter: Those “on the other side” must be defeated just as a cancer is defeated. Every part of it cut out along with nearby healthy cells just to make sure.

      Think of your enemy as the Amalekites of old. Once you do, all will be well.

      Happy hunting.

  • Plague Monk September 8, 2021, 3:24 PM

    I was a member of an unofficial club called “The Send a Junkie to Hell” club while working on the road over several years, in various large cities from the northern mid west to the east coast.We were all making very good money, and each of us pledged to give at least $50/week to the drug addicts pan handling the streets of the inner city. We would take photos of each of the people we donated to, and compare them. It got to the point that the engineering manager would pick the “best” photos and show them during our weekly staff meetings for everyone’s enjoyment. This occurred on several assignments, with different managers, but many of the same people.
    There were a few women participating in the frolics, but they were smart enough not to offer the 5s and 10s to males; only females. And of course most of us carried…
    I joined the group around 2015, and stayed with it for several assignments, but it faded away in early 2020, as the Kung Flu largely curtailed the contract industry.
    I now support legalizing all drugs, no age restrictions; to quote from one writer (speaking in another context, which is why I’m not naming the writer) “Think of It As Evolution In Action.”

    • Mike Austin September 8, 2021, 3:57 PM

      Dear Plague Monk:

      “I now support legalizing all drugs…”

      Of course, your writing is satire. So is mine. Maybe.

      Really? Do you also support the entire disruption of normal society that this would entail? You really would turn over what is left of civil life in America to the junky, to the pusher, to the cartels? You would enjoy the fact that every single public space would be the property of the addict and his supplier? I will be kind and ask if you have really thought this through. If I were unkind I would refer to you as a damn fool.

      There is one way—and only one way—to deal with the “drug problem” in the US. Make the possession of all of them a capital crime punishable at the moment of conviction. No judges; no courts; no juries. In six months drugs will have disappeared from our nation. Will there be injustices, illegalities and unfairness? Of course. So? How would this be worse than what we have now?

      A drug free society has a chance. A society where all drugs are legal would end up in a greasy room in Hell. And since drugs will be legal, let’s “legalize” murder, pedophilia, necrophilia, zoophilia—and whatever else you wish.

      There you go! Problem solved.

    • EX-Californian Pete September 9, 2021, 12:24 PM

      “Legalizing all drugs?”

      Since a lot of (illegally used/abused) drugs are also toxic or lethal, why stop there?
      Why not legalize “roofies,” chloral hydrate, cyanide, ricin, sarin, aconitine, etc?
      Heck- why not legalize murder? Despite the current laws against it, people do it anyway, right?

      Of course, I’m being sarcastic.

  • Dirk September 8, 2021, 3:50 PM

    “Several things a city could do”. Great point, these folks ARE serving a purpose, what your seeing is Billions and Billions in Federal monies, to administer those well oiled well tuned social experiments. From this short documentation I’d say the programs right on track.

    Cleaver corrupted men and women’s are making huge money off of these humans misery.

    Wouldn’t it be a favor to these people to give em a huge free line off fentanyl . After all these streets aren’t going to clean themselves. Those folks aren’t living,,, there more dead then alive.

    My grandpa use to tell me, “ set your goals low enough,,,,,, your sure to achieve them.

    VI

  • Dirk September 8, 2021, 3:54 PM

    Monk, Washington,,,Oregon,,,California all allow ANY drugs, with pretty generous bag weights.

    Monk this isn’t a Drug problem,,,,this is a weak people problem.

    Dirk

  • Kristin September 9, 2021, 5:05 AM

    The waste of all that went before these human wrecks landed on the streets….
    Their mothers ( and fathers?) holding them as babies, coaxing them to sleep, holding their hands on the same streets so they would feel safe, getting them up on time do they would not miss school, getting a better job so they could get the shoes they needed.
    Thousands of lives wasted despite all that was done in the early years. Or maybe wasn’t done….?
    Children left alone early on, mothers and fathers in the bars till early morning, no breakfast, no school.
    No love or care.
    None of this will end well.
    A matter of days for dozens of cases.
    A matter of weeks for some.
    A matter of months for a few.
    Who is living really on those streets?

  • EX-Californian Pete September 9, 2021, 12:36 PM

    Here’s something interesting- I got on Google.com maps and did a “virtual drive” through the same blocks of Kensington Ave in the above video.
    It showed the same area(s) in pics taken in 2019, and there were WAY less junkies and homeless folks then. There was less garbage on the streets, and a few junkies here & there, but nothing near the current numbers.
    Weird- Trump was President in 2019, but with Brainless Buffoon Biden in office, it’s (obviously) gotten massively worse.

    What a coincidence, huh?

  • EX-Californian Pete September 9, 2021, 1:07 PM

    THIS JUST IN-

    Hey, do ya think Philly could possibly get any WORSE?

    The answer- YES!
    Bumbling Brainless Biden just infected the city with more than 8,500 AFGHAN REFUGEES!
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/08/biden-flies-over-8500-afghans-into-pennsylvania-in-less-than-two-weeks/

    Of course, it’s a sure bet they’ll all be properly housed, fed, given free medical aid, and paid handsomely by Welfare, so they won’t end up on Kensington Avenue!

    Sorry about all those Americans abandoned in Afghanistan- these Muslim terrorists are WAY more important, RIGHT?