TSF Book Club
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<p><span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">First thing that struck me was the obvious SBS v SAS stuff, although he does go on to say that the Units do work closely together despite the assumed superiority and public view of the SAS.</span></p>
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<p>Considering that the SBS selection process is every bit as tough as the SAS one there are no grounds for a pissing contest anyway</p> -
<p>John Clarke - The Tournament</p>
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<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;">Imagine, if you will, 128 of recent history's greatest writers, thinkers, scientists, musicians, actors, etc., participating in a two-week tennis tournament. Sarah Bernhardt versus Coco Chanel; Aldous Huxley versus Paul Robeson; Vladimir Nabokov versus Henry Miller--matchups that seem wildly inappropriate and delightfully perverse. Norman Mailer is covering the tournament for </span><i>Tennis </i><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;">magazine; the tournament referee is Charles Darwin. It's a wacky idea, and although it's mostly played for laughs, the author has somehow managed to make this preposterous premise pay off. The novel, which is structured like a day-by-day report on the progress of the tournament, is completely original, a crash course in the history of twentieth-century culture. The dialogue is cheerfully nutty, as most of the characters speak lines that parody themselves (Gertrude Stein: "A win is a win is a win"). This is one of those novels that shouldn't work and yet somehow it does, leaving us shaking with laughter and possessing a vivid sense of the competition between ideas and points of view that shapes our culture.</span></blockquote>
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<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.amazon.com/Tournament-Novel-20th-Century-ebook/dp/B0055DYBC0/ref=asap_B001HPDE28_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416535125&sr=1-2'>http://www.amazon.com/Tournament-Novel-20th-Century-ebook/dp/B0055DYBC0/ref=asap_B001HPDE28_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416535125&sr=1-2</a></span></p> -
<p>Not exactly a book, but I did just read the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine, which is allegedly literature, so hope this qualifies. Especially interesting story from their <strong>"Annals of Extermination"</strong> series titled:</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:24px;"><span style="font-size:36px;"><strong>THE BIG KILL</strong></span> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:24px;"><span style="font-size:18px;"><em>New Zealand’s crusade to rid itself of mammals.</em></span> </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:14px;">BY <span style="margin:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;"><span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;">ELIZABETH KOLBERT</span></span> </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:14px;">Available online here:</span></p>
<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill'><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill</span></a></p> -
<p>OK, so I just finished reading American Sniper, and can see why a movie based on this book - even treated with kid gloves - would upset a lot of people, as well as bringing the lion's share of gun-totin' 'Muricans out of the woodwork, chanting "USA! USA! USA!"</p>
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<p>The initial chapters, dealing with his pre-Navy life, read like distilled Texan arrogance. His constant references to "You Yankees would call it a..." really started to shit me, and gave me an insight into the headspace of the stereotypical American ignoramus. The ones we all like to laugh at about not appreciating or even understanding the world outside his own borders. Fuck - he didn't even sound like anywhere outside of Texas was anything goood!</p>
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<p>The flow of the book started to get a bit weird when he joins the Navy - starts explaining a training maneuver then just stops dead, with a statement like "but there have been other books written about that so go read them if you want". Kind of like that guy down the bar who brags about being a black belt and how he can stop your heart with the five-point palm strike, but isn't allowed to fight because he doesn't want to get arrested for murder.</p>
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<p>The stuff inside the Navy was at times refreshingly honest but his absolute demonisation of the people fighting against him started to rub raw after a while. It really showed the ignorance of other cultures and their circumstances when he was talking about the slums and the filth. </p>
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<p>He was right about one thing: getting in there and suppressing the insurgents with brute force was the only way to bring the local tribal powers to the negotiating table, but his justification of the reasons why are the kind of pro-war shit that Bush Jnr got smacked for when it turns out there were no WMDs found, ever.</p>
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<p>I had to suspend my disbelief at points - he writes "these savages who had taken so much from me" when his unit hadn't even suffered a casualty early on! And its when you start to count the numbers of friends he <em>does</em> lose against the piles of insurgents they took out, you start to wonder what the US doesn't get about its own foreign policy.</p>
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<p>The public's hands are wrung and the protests ring out for the loss of a few thousand US troops, while the insurgents are counting ten times that number most like.</p>
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<p>He goes on to criticise the command structure, the review process of his tactics, and the legal system. Basically the guy is just fucking angry about anything except shooting people!</p>
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<p>There is the stuff from the home front - his wife making ultimatums and saying how "proud she is" of him defending 'Murica but telling him he's a terrible father and husband for not being there with her. One minute she's got his back, the next minute she's knifing it. So, as a married man, that was probably the most realistic part of the whole book for me.</p>
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<p>There were a couple of afterwords from the wife and the screen writer which were interesting from another view point. But the guy who helped Kyle author it must have had the tug-o-meter cranked up to "Stars n Stripes" for the most part.</p>
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<p>I'm hoping Cooper brought at least one other dimension in the film version. That would make two.</p> -
<p>I'm going to read it again , at the time I thought he was a jerk . i agree those people are fucking animals though and i reckon they'll behave like animals until another strongman takes over the country and beats them down.</p>
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<p>By the way theres been a few stories popping up lately about the amount of US troops affected by the WMDs they found, no one seems to give a shit about the WMDs or the effects on the guys handling them <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html'>http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html</a></p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="jegga" data-cid="470264" data-time="1422860053">
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<p>I'm going to read it again , at the time I thought he was a jerk . i agree those people are fucking animals though and i reckon they'll behave like animals until another strongman takes over the country and beats them down.</p>
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<p>By the way theres been a few stories popping up lately about the amount of US troops affected by the WMDs they found, no one seems to give a shit about the WMDs or the effects on the guys handling them <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html'>http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html</a></p>
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<p>Equally no one gives a shit about the US soldiers & iraqi civillians with cancer & fucked up kids due to depleted uranium</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-considine/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3812888.html'>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-considine/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3812888.html</a></p>
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<p>Both cases its sort of not really a story anyone can make poltical use of, the WMDs found were empy drums that have enough stuff left in them so that they were unusable as weapons, but very bad if you set fire to them & stood there in the smoke. As the US did. Bit like cleaning up a bunch of empty Dioxin drums by setting fire to them.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="jegga" data-cid="470283" data-time="1422871255">
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<p>The huffington post got right on it and posted an article about how this doesn't prove Bush and Bliar were right.</p>
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<p>Well they weren't. Saddam wasn't manufactring WMDs, he did have a few 20 year old inopperable shells that did contain some nasty stuff & he did have a lot of old barrels that had once held bad stuff. Everything since - including the CIOA has categorically said there was no active WMD programe in Iraq & there hadn't been for years. Its like saying Chernoybl is an active nuclear reactor, then exploding it & going "ooh! look radiation!!".</p>
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<p>In contrast Syria had a fully running WMD program, then & in later years. No oil, but a stonking WMD unit....</p>
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<p>Back on the book front</p>
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<p>Girl With All The Gifts</p>
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<p>Basically if you have ever played Last of Us, or like post zombie stuff like 28 Days Later, but want an added level of thought, its fucking great. Already been optioned as a movie (of course). I actually lisstened to it (bought it off Audible), and I think that was better as the narrator was great.</p> -
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<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="jegga" data-cid="470264" data-time="1422860053">
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<p>i agree those people are fucking animals though and i reckon they'll behave like animals until another strongman takes over the country and beats them down.</p>
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<p>Yep but that's been their culture for thousands of years, then fucked with by colonialism and dictatorship. I'm not expecting them to just throw down their arms and find peaceful brotherhoods of love - too much politico-religious power struggle for that.</p>
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<p>As we've discussed elsewhere: once oil isn't a thing, and once foreign aid organisations just get their shit out of warzones, it will be a region returning to irrelevance.</p>
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<p>And if they want to step outside of their little shitfight, well... quite frankly, they make propaganda about American infidels killing innocent people with their technology. So instead of drones bombing them to death, send in ground troops and FUCK the Geneva convention. Its the only language they understand. </p> -
<p>Alternative sniper view:</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/american-sniper-garrett-reppenhagen-speaks-out-about-the-moral-cost-he-suffered-at-war/story-fnk853hr-1227206691479'>http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/american-sniper-garrett-reppenhagen-speaks-out-about-the-moral-cost-he-suffered-at-war/story-fnk853hr-1227206691479</a></p>
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<p>Selected bits:</p>
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<p></p><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote"><br><p><strong>American sniper Garrett Reppenhagen speaks out about the “moral cost†he suffered at war</strong></p>
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<p>Garrett Reppenhagen says the box office chronicle of the life of ‘America’s deadliest sniper’ unfairly paints Iraqis as “savagesâ€. He said he wasn’t surprised when he read that one hot-blooded American tweeted “I want to go kill some f***ing ragheads†after watching the movie.</p>
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<p>“As a sniper I was not usually the victim of a traumatic event, but the perpetrator of violence and death,†he said.</p>
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<p>“My actions in combat would have been more acceptable to me if I could cloak myself in the belief that the whole mission was for a greater good. Instead, I watched as the purpose of the mission slowly unravelled.â€</p>
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<p>He said a number of soldiers in his unit held similarly misguided notions of a “noble cause†while fighting in Iraq but that changed when he realised Iraq was not hiding weapons of mass destruction.</p>
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<p>“They were a friendly culture who believed in hospitality, and were sometimes positive to a fault,†he said.</p>
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<p>“The people are proud of their history, education system and national identity. I have listened to children share old-soul wisdom, and I have watched adults laugh and play with the naiveté of schoolboys. I met some incredible Iraqis during and after my deployment, and it is</p>
<p>shameful to know that the movie has furthered ignorance that might put them in danger.â€</p>
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<p>Speaking out against America’s “War on Terror†is nothing new for Reppenhagen, who addressed a Congressional briefing in 2006.</p>
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<p>Wonder how many people are lining up to call him "a goddamn pussy!" while masturbating into a picture of a bald eagle.</p> -
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<p>Alternative sniper view:</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/american-sniper-garrett-reppenhagen-speaks-out-about-the-moral-cost-he-suffered-at-war/story-fnk853hr-1227206691479'>http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/american-sniper-garrett-reppenhagen-speaks-out-about-the-moral-cost-he-suffered-at-war/story-fnk853hr-1227206691479</a></p>
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<p>Selected bits:</p>
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<p>Wonder how many people are lining up to call him "a goddamn pussy!" while masturbating into a picture of a bald eagle.</p>
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<p>Thats quite a revolting but vivid picture you paint there. Its nice that he got to know some of the locals and they earned his respect , did the article also give his opinions on suicide bombings, honour killings, beheading people on camera etc etc? </p>
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<p>Getting back to the " I cant wait till this part of the world is irrelevant" meme , I saw this today.Words fail me <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-preacher-who-raped-and-tortured-his-five-yearold-daughter-to-death-is-released-after-paying-blood-money-8480440.html'>http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-preacher-who-raped-and-tortured-his-five-yearold-daughter-to-death-is-released-after-paying-blood-money-8480440.html</a></p> -
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<p>Thats quite a revolting but vivid picture you paint there. Its nice that he got to know some of the locals and they earned his respect , did the article also give his opinions on suicide bombings, honour killings,<em><strong> beheading people on camera etc etc</strong></em>? </p>
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<p>The irony being the only place to see this used to be Saudi Arabia, top ally during the war. Now you can see it in the liberated Iraq. YAY!</p>
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<p>While you can see a good honour killing in England. Or, especially, in Turkey, the other top ally.</p> -
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<p>The irony being the only place to see this used to be Saudi Arabia, top ally during the war. Now you can see it in the liberated Iraq. YAY!</p>
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<p>While you can see a good honour killing in England. Or, especially, in Turkey, the other top ally.</p>
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<p>i thought it honour killings were also in Pakistan and Afghanistan too? I think it was in Iraq before the yanks got there, I was reading a book a while back about the early days of the invasion and despite what they had been told a bunch of british soldiers leered at a teenage girl and the next day her father killed her.</p>
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<p>Btw, who was the narrator on the girl with all the gifts audio book? I can see it being turned into a film, a bleak and depressing film like The Road.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="jegga" data-cid="470401" data-time="1422949423">
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<p>Thats quite a revolting but vivid picture you paint there. Its nice that he got to know some of the locals and they earned his respect , did the article also give his opinions on suicide bombings, honour killings, beheading people on camera etc etc? </p>
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<p>Getting back to the " I cant wait till this part of the world is irrelevant" meme , I saw this today.Words fail me <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-preacher-who-raped-and-tortured-his-five-yearold-daughter-to-death-is-released-after-paying-blood-money-8480440.html'>http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-preacher-who-raped-and-tortured-his-five-yearold-daughter-to-death-is-released-after-paying-blood-money-8480440.html</a></p>
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<p>That is awful. From the very start where a father questions the virginity of his 5yo girl, that is just fucking terrible. Its a great argument against religion in general, but shows how fucked the Saudis are. </p>
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<p>No idea what the other guy's stance on insurgent behaviour were - he was more concerned with distinguishing the enemy from the innocents in terms of their humanity I suppose.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="jegga" data-cid="470424" data-time="1422986771">
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<p>i thought it honour killings were also in Pakistan and Afghanistan too? I think it was in Iraq before the yanks got there, I was reading a book a while back about the early days of the invasion and despite what they had been told a bunch of british soldiers leered at a teenage girl and the next day her father killed her.</p>
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<p>Btw, who was the narrator on the girl with all the gifts audio book? I can see it being turned into a film, a bleak and depressing film like The Road.</p>
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<p>Flinty Williams (yes... thats a real name), usually when I hear a good narrator I look to see what else they've done as the narrator is often the key bit, alas Flinty has done Winnie The Pooh - The house at pooh corner & Winnie the Pooh- Piglet meets a heffalump. And if I'm going to read those I might as well just start on Harry Potter.</p>
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<p>Yep, honor killings everywhere there are people living in the stone age, its incredibly common in India too where folks hook up across castes.</p> -
<p>I'm currently reading I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (better known for writing the screen play for a couple of Mad Max films, Dead Calm, From Hell plus others) and I gotta say I am enjoying it. </p>
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<p>Plot isnt really a new one (terrorists, murder, secret agents etc) but it seems to flow really well at a good pace.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="gollum" data-cid="470517" data-time="1423041963">
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<p>Flinty Williams (yes... thats a real name), usually when I hear a good narrator I look to see what else they've done as the narrator is often the key bit, alas Flinty has done Winnie The Pooh - The house at pooh corner & Winnie the Pooh- Piglet meets a heffalump. And if I'm going to read those I might as well just start on Harry Potter.</p>
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<p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/fHAgmS9.jpg?1?8308" alt="fHAgmS9.jpg?1?8308"></p> -
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<p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/fHAgmS9.jpg?1?8308" alt="fHAgmS9.jpg?1?8308"></p>
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<p>shoulda said 'You know what the fuck I mean you little fluffybunny!' said Pooh.</p>
