Friday, May 25, 2012

Seal Target Geronimo

The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden


By Chuck Pfarrer


The depth of this book caught me completely off guard. I expected a riveting, but somewhat shallow, description of the Seal operation that took down Osama couched in a lot of US rah rah. Instead, this book is a detailed, deep and thought provoking look at SEALS, the history of the middle east, the life and persona of Osama and, of course, the operation that took down Osama. With great skill, Pfarrer 


"It's been said that SEAL training is not so much a battle of wills, but a struggle against oneself. No amount of physical conditioning is enough to prepare a student to meet the challenge. Students are made to come to grips with misery. The test is always against oneself." Pg. 26


"On the nights of September 16, 17 and 19, 1982, Christian militiamen killed more than two thousand Palestinian men, women, and children in an orgy of destruction. The Israelis watched the murderers come, and then they watched them go. Israeli artillery units fired flares over the camps so the murderers could set about their work. It was one of the most cold blooded massacres in human history." Pg 89


"America turned a blind eye, but the Arab world was shocked and disgusted. The images of Sabra and Shatila did more to fuel anti-Israeli and anti-American feelings than any other event in the twentieth century. yet it hardly blipped in Western media. . . Tens of thousands of Arab men, those who considered themselves religious and those who were purely secular, vowed revenge for the innocents killed at Sabra and Shatila.
One of those men was Osama bin Laden." Pg 89 - 90


"The views of Osama and his ilk are not those of the world's Muslims. They are the beliefs of a handful of twisted psychopaths who have had to claw out a justification for murder by distorting the Koran." Pg. 96


"Osama bin Laden was not born to be a monster. He was raised in an affluent and moderately religious Saudi family. He was a soft-spoken, retiring, impressionable boy who lost his father at a tender age. Like thousands of other Muslims who became extremists, Osama bin laden came under the influence of men who were ruthless, brutal and amoral. The only difference between Osama and a teenage body bomber in Palestine is that Osama bin Laden had money - lots of it. And because he had money, he was sought out by men with extremist views. Hate requires capital to manifest itself in violence." Pg 96 - 97


"Azzam had the jihadi credentials and Osama had the cash." Pg 105


"Radicalism can only take root in the absence of hope. The Nazis rose to power in the poisonous environ forced upon the German people by military defeat and economic crisis. In a like manner, the Global Slafist Jihad was a siren call to a generation of Muslim men who felt thwarted and embittered." Pg. 107


"To perpetuate the myth of 'no WBD in Iraq' the media and the US government has had to scrupulously ignore facts on the ground, the testimony of victims, half a dozen United Nations reports, and medical journal articles discussing the treatment  of soldiers exposed to nerve gas. Clearly, big media in the United States wanted nothing to do with the issue. Presented with facts, it ignored them. The facts wouldn't go away. Confirmation of the chemical attacks would come from a very unlikely source: the US military itself. Enter Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks Papers." Page 148


"The WikiLeaks documents and the events of the past thirty-six months suggest first, Saddam did not destroy his chemical arsenal. And second, Al Qaeda is manufacturing its own chemical weapons using legacy materials from Iraq's stockpile as well as material produced in their own clandestine laboratories. Instead of preventing Weapons of Mass Destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq has accelerated the acquisition, manufacture, and use of chemical weapons by Al Qaeda." Pg. 142


"Courage, SEALs learn at BUD/S, is not the absence of fear. The absence of fear in combat is the result of insanity, or an extreme lack of situational awareness. SEALs learn not to ignore fear but to channel it." Page 176


"When a room is entered, SEALs go into a state like satori - a wide-awake Zen consciousness that allows them to perceive and react with a minimal space between for thought. It puts them instantly in the here and now - connected not only to the situation, but tapping into the thoughts and intentions of the enemy." Page 191


To read more about:
- Menachem Begin
- Ariel Sharon
- Sabra and Shatila


Recommended reading: The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright


Book 41

Sunday, May 20, 2012

The Aquariums of Pyongyang


Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag


By Kang Chol-Hwan


This is the survival story of Kang Chol-Hwan's 10 years in the North Korean Gulag.  His family's story starts in Japan, where they were wealthy and his grandmother was a staunch North Korean communist. Her fervor for her beliefs drew them, along with helpful propaganda, to abandon their life of freedom and material comforts to the lies of North Korean communism. The aquariums in the title are a symbol of his lost life in North Korea where he had wall to wall aquariums with exotic fish until he was taken to the camp.


Interesting to note - George W. Bush read this book and summoned him to the white house to discuss the gulags. Perhaps influencing North Korea to be included in the Axis of Evil speech?


"At the age of nine, I had been taken to one of them in Yodok, South-Hamkyung Province, due to my parent's alleged guilt by association to my grandfather. I was destined to spend ten years of grim existence there." Page vii


"Now the term ' concentration camp' has become inextricably linked to HItler's holocaust. But how on earth could I ever explain that the same - and in fact far worse - things are being repeated in this twenty-first century in North Korea, a relic of a failed experiment in human history called communism?" Page xii


"To my childish eyes and to those of all my friends, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were perfect beings, untarnished by any base human function. I was convinced, as we all were, that neither of them urinated or defecated. Who could imagine such things of the gods?" Page 3


"His story . . . mostly demonstrates the force of human illusion and its awesome power to render us utterly blind." Page 24


"But that first day of class remains a horrible memory. I felt something tear inside me then - something that connected me to the only other life I had known." Page 66


"There was no such thing as individual responsibility: one's work only counted as part of the collective output." Page 72


"The irredeemables were all lifers. They knew they were never leaving the camp. No matter how long their hearts continued to pump, or their lungs to breathe, they would never again live as citizens. Their children, too, would suffer this fate. As the official propaganda never tired of remind us, it was necessary to 'desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, exterminate every last one of them.' That's the actual word the North Korean authorities used: exterminate - myulhada. These prisoners were tossed into a world of phantoms and nonentities, a world so devoid of hope it didn't even require its citizens to display portraits of Kim Jong-il or the learn the 'lessons of Kim Il-sung's Revolution,' or attend sessions for criticism and self-criticism." Page 79


"The sweatbox breaks even the sturdiest of constitutions. It is possible to survive it, but the cost is often crippling and the aftereffects are almost always permanent. It is simply grisly: the privation of food; close confinement, crouching on one's knees, hands on thighs, unable to move. The prisoner's rear end presses into his heels so unrelentingly that the buttocks turns solid black with bruising. Hardly anyone exited the sweatbox on his own two feet. If the prisoner needed to relieve himself, he raised his left hand; if he was sick, he raised his right hand. No other gestures were allowed. No other movements. No words. . . . If he talked, he was beaten; if he moved, he was beaten." Page 96


"Poor woman. She had given everything she had to communism. For fifteen or sixteen years she militated for its ideas, believing she was realizing them in her beloved homeland. And this same country had taken away the man she loved and sent her and her family to a camp. She felt so guilty that she couldn't stop asking for our forgiveness. Yet it was the lamentation and regrets - coming from a woman who was once so indomitable and strong - that really shook us to our core." Page 98


"And yet our hunger remained, piercing, draining." Page 104


"I began to see them [rats] as useful, even precious, on par with chickens and rabbits. I was truly grateful for their existence, and still am. Absurd though it may seem to those who have never known hunger, I actually felt a connection with them." Page 116


"These memories come back to me whenever I go skiing and see high, snow-covered mountains with sheer black crags. I try to explain my feelings to my South Korean friends, but have little success. Where they see an ideal landscape, I see the natural barriers of Yodok, a place conceived for human misery, whose gloom still has the power to overwhelm me." Page 118


"So do I dare admit it? Some mysterious bond had come to attach me to that place." Page 125


"I attended some fifteen executions during my time in Yodok." Page 141


"Hunger quashes man's will to help his fellow man. I've seen fathers steal food from their own children's lunch boxes. As they scarf down the corn, they have only one overpowering desire: to placate, if even for just one moment, that feeling of insufferable need." Page 141


"The death of compassion was responsible for worse acts than this." Page 143


"A clear-eyed view of the hell I had landed in certainly would have thrown me deeper into despair. There is nothing like thought to deepen one's gloom." Page 152


"My most poignant memories were attached to the place where I had suffered the most. It was a strange, complicated feeling, for Yodok was still a hellish, inhuman place." Page 158


"The only lesson I got pounded into me was about man's limitless capacity for vice - that and the fact that social distinctions vanish in a concentration camp. I once believed that man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion. In the camp, there was no difference between man and beast, except maybe that a very hungry human was capable of stealing food from its little ones while an animal, perhaps was not." Page 159


"Listening to the radio [South Korean] gave us the words we needed to express our dissatisfaction. Every program, each new discovery, helped us tear a little freer from the enveloping web of deception." Page 185


"It's clear: North Korea is a total sham." Page 195


Book 40

The Hidden Gulag

Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps


Prisoners Testimonies and Satellite photographs


By David Hawk


This is a human rights record documenting known escapees experiences in the gulag's of North Korea. 


"In the fullest possible sense, the contemporary leaders of North Korea are the intellectual and moral descendants of these Stalinists. From the testimony presented so vividly in this volume, it is clear, first of all, that the North Korean camps were built according to a Stalinist model, and that they continue to be run this way." Pg 9 


"Totalitarian regimes are built on lies and can be damaged, even destroyed, when those lies are exposed. The greater and more detailed evidence that can be provided, the more damage the truth can do." Pg. 9


From the preface by Anne Applebaum author of The Gulags


"Most of the information in this report comes from former prisoners, who during their interviews described in detail the situation of their imprisonment, their living and work units, and their treatment and observation while imprisoned or detained." Pg. 14


"Semi-starvation yields large numbers of informants among the prisoners, leading to a prison culture of distrust and hostility. Prisoners fight each other over scraps of food or over the clothing of deceased inmates. The camps feature the gamut of abnormal and aberrant human behavior that results from treating people like animals." Page 25


"According to Ji, the theory of the prison was that with their strength and spirit broken by hard labor, the prisoners would repent through self-criticism and change their mentality." Pg 48


"Deaths from mining accidents were a daily occurrence, including multiple deaths resulting from the partial collapse of mine shafts." Pg. 49


"Apart from the torture during interrogation, and the high levels of death in detention reported by the former detainees, repatriated pregnant North Koreans thrown in to the interrogation-detention system face ethnically-motivated infanticide and forced abortions, a particularly reprehensible phenomena of repression. . . " Pg. 59

You can read it for free at:
http://www.davidrhawk.com/HiddenGulag.pdf


Book 39


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Insurgent

By Veronica Roth


The hotly awaited sequel to Divergent, the first book I have ever pre-ordered, Insurgent did not disappoint. It picked up right where the last book left off and continued the pulsing story of those who find themselves different among an ordered society. I really enjoyed the depth of the characters, including the love interests, who did not fall back on flat stereotypes about how they were supposed to be. Instead, they had layers of complexity not always found in the genre. The action was palpable and believable. And the end! OMG, I cried but also wanted to throw the book (my iPad) across the room. Don't make me wait for the next book! It looks like my second pre-order is in the works. I continue to love Roth's descriptions of complex emotions and the realities of human interaction. I will definitely re-read the first two books before the third comes out. 


"I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be." Kindle location 639


"Using pain to relieve pain." Location 1982


"He sits next to me and puts his arm on the back of my chair, leaning close. I don't stare back - I refuse to stare back.
I stare back." Location 3788


"The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere - all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. 'I promise.'" Location 3866


"Telling me the time is a small act of betrayal - and therefore an ordinary act of bravery. It is maybe the first time I've seen Peter be truly Dauntless." Location 4621


"People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them." Location 6154


Book 37

Lake

By Banana Yoshimoto


Another wonderful book by Banana.


"When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening." Pg. 41


"You don't necessarily have to want to become an adult; it happens as a matter of course, as you go, making choices. The important thing, I think, is to chose for yourself." Page 136


"Love isn't a matter of fussing over each other, hugging, wanting to be together. Some things communicate, inevitably, precisely because you keep them in check. The heartfelt feelings that find their way to you in the form of money and imported gourmet ham." Pg. 137


Book 38

The Magic Study & The Fire Study

Sequel to Poison Study


By Maria Snyder


The Study Series is one of my favorite YA series for a number of reasons. First, the world created is unique, compelling and consistent. The issue of consistency is an important one and when it is achieved it creates a greater sense of depth in the story. The story is more believable, less choppy, less distractions from the story itself. Snyder also does a lot of research on the subjects she is diving into, which is reflected in the story.


Second, Snyder bravely defies the YA romance formula and provides a non-perfect heroine with a love-interest which doesn't cannibalization her individuality, her determination, and her profession. This brave depth on Snyder's part creates a much more realistic relationship that actually models some great mature elements stereotypically found in adult relationships. It was refreshing. 


Third, Snyder manages a feat I find very rare: the second in the series was probably the best book! Often in trilogies, the middle book is almost a place holder for the first and third books. This series proves that does not have to be the case.


Finally, one of my favorite things about this series is that it addresses very heavy subject matter (murder, rape, etc) which many YA authors and publishers may shy away from. I think it is brave of Snyder to include these and it is part of what brings a depth to the story that I really appreciate. 


There is a spin off series from this called the The Glass Series which I am definitely interested in reading. 


Books 35 - 36

Iron Fey Series


By Julie Kagawa

The Iron Fey series
(The Iron King, The Iron Daughter and The Iron Queen)

I couldn't put this series down, although it is hard to pinpoint exactly why. The world was creative, unique and because of this compelling. The characters were fairly flat, with not much complexity and quite predictable across the series. However, I thought the discovery of the main characters gift was done very well. The process unfolded in a way that worked well for the story. As with most series, sometimes there was a bit of inconsistency with the powers and what and when they used them. The traditional YA romance formula was employed and didn't waver much throughout the series. Although, I have not read the last one which inevitably must change this up a bit so we will see.

"Because science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat, logical, well-explained packages. The fey are magical, capricious, illogical, and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of fairies, so naturally, we do not exist. That type of non belief is fatal to fairies." Iron King, Page 177


"'I am a cat,' Grimalkin replied, as if that explained anything." Iron King, Pg 178


"'Grim, wait. Are you sure you'll be alright?'
Grimalkin smiled. 'I am a cat.'"
Iron Queen, Page 291

Books 32 - 34