Andy Mcnab
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>>By BushisaManiac (Wednesday, 19 Jul 2006 21:16)
Oh and i dont have to live in the UK either..thank god...although I have the extreme misfortune of being on contract here for the last 7 months....whatever did i do so bad to deserve having to stay in essex for so long :-(
never mind long weekend back home starting tomorrow :-D
>>By BushisaManiac (Wednesday, 19 Jul 2006 21:19)
Fony, being 'critical' and being 'anti' is not quite the same thing. And for being 'critical' I think for most of us, at least for me, goes a bit higher up than the rank of soldier. Or sergeant for that matter.
The training that becomes 'dehumanizing' (see page 272) is something I can understand - unless someone comes up with a better way of 'making' soldiers who are able to do their job in warzones (or other) and survive it. However, this dehumanizing is messing with peoples minds - so I do think the military has the obligation to take care of their soldiers afterwards, whether that be after a mission or after leaving the army even. It seems even prisoners are in programs to prepare them before re-integrating in the 'real' world.
Then of course there's the question whether governments should drag their soldiers into illegal wars but that's a discussion I'm not gonna start here, if interested go look for the "Jack" discussion ;-)
I do have another question, don't have to be answered (though welcome) but it's one to think about.
From At Hell's Gate (C.A.Thomas)
~ "Again and again I find myself asking, “How much violence are we willing to tolerate so that we don’t have to feel uncomfortable?“ And, “How much violence are we willing to tolerate so that we don’t have to alter our lifestyle?“ These are questions that echo in my mind as I move from place to place. They apply not only to the obvious fighting taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan; they address the roots of violence that exist within me and within each one of us." ~
;-)
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 19 Jul 2006 23:26)
Fony's last post (page 273) was excellent. I'm glad I criticised, because we got what seems a very realistic and mature way of looking at the matter of soldiering as a career. Fony raises a good point, as well--why are those of us who are critical of the military so damned interested in it?
Speaking strictly for me, reading about Andy McNab is sort of like reading about Ted Bundy. No, I don't equate them morally, but I'm interested in both simply because they did what most people can't (in the case of Andy) or wouldn't (in the case of Ted, and to an extent, Andy) do.
Also in my case, I do enjoy having a little fun at McNab's expense.
As to Lynn's question...I, like most Americans, am willing to alter my lifestyle so that we might have peace, and so that others in the world might not starve. Unfortunately, the average American has no influence on the greedy elites (both Republican and Democrat) who run this blood-drenched capitalist empire.
Heh, just wanted to sound like a commie.
>>By Just Jon (Wednesday, 19 Jul 2006 23:57)
Jon,
...I, like most Americans, am willing to alter my lifestyle so that we might have peace, and so that others in the world might not starve. Unfortunately, the average American has not influence..
But they have influence at least some of their habits? Like.. what if Americans who own more than 1 car would get rid of all the extra cars? Suppose a war would all be about oil (I know, silly silly thought) would it do any good if there was 'some' less oil necessary?
Just thinking out loud.
>>By Lynn (Thursday, 20 Jul 2006 18:52)
Does anyone here speak French?
Apparently, this French SAS-reenactor group is VERY fond of the greymansland.com Andy McNab website...
http://22sas12.over-blog.com/article-3327133.html
As to Lynn's question--the military is the single largest polluter in the U.S. Followed by industry. Sure, I wouldn't buy an SUV, and neither would many other Americans, but in the end individual habits will make little difference unless we Americans decide to quit spending billions forcing "democracy" on others and instead bring real democracy and real change to our own country.
>>By Just Jon (Thursday, 20 Jul 2006 22:13)
Holy Gay Jon!
Translation please ??
>>By Lynn (Thursday, 20 Jul 2006 23:09)
Mmm, indeed not many French speaking I suppose.
Lisle found this snippet.. and since publicity is publicity no matter how small.. ;-) Thanx L.
Lee Child: LEE'S THE HARD WAY TOUR BLOG
Friday, July 14, 2006
UK Day 5
Lincoln has a cathedral—right outside my window, used as a stand-in for Westminster Abbey in the Da Vinci Code movie—and a castle with one of two extant copies of Magna Carta in it. So did I do tourism? No, I rolled over and went back to sleep. The Bradmobile left for Norwich at 11am ... early enough for me. We dropped in for a cup of tea with fellow author Andy McNab on the way ...
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 14:32)
Does anyone read lee child? just started reading a few of his and although i much prefer Andy but have enjoyed Childs books also went to the signing thing in norwich.
>>By Psicosis (Wednesday, 26 Jul 2006 20:28)
love the jack reacher books and the latest is an outstanding read
>>By fony (Thursday, 27 Jul 2006 18:07)
I've only read the Persuader , One shot and now the Hard Way and the Hard way to me has been the best by far of the others what would you recommend Fony?
>>By Psicosis (Saturday, 29 Jul 2006 18:57)
i'm gonna have to dig it out but it's set in texas and it was the best book i have ever read and my first lee child book. but i have this affinity with reacher we just think in the same way.
>>By fony (Sunday, 30 Jul 2006 02:48)
LOL! The Lee Child site gives Reacher-rounds measurements, just to help those readers with zero imagination fantasize about being him! And--holy shit!--he got demoted! He's the hard guy who doesn't like the bueracracy...such a novel concept. If it were a movie, his boss would be a hard-assed black guy with a politician breathing down his neck, right?
At any rate, I know it can be difficult waiting for the next installment of your fantasy life to appear, so in the meantime...
I'll give ya'll this so you can have a fall-back plan for fictional characters to identify with:
Name: Hank Diddler
Age: 35
Measurement: 10 inches
Military Experience: Marine sniper, kicked out after killing a suspected gay Marine. Volunteered for Delta Force after seeing his wife raped and killed by liberals.
Job: Secret. He takes on the missions the American people don't want him to take on--the ones that no normal citizen thinks is justified.
Catch-phrase: "Smells like fish."
Side-kick: Someone just like you, if you're not aggressive enough to imagine you're Hank Diddler himself.
Problems: Surrounded by whiny liberals and people who want to "hold him back," when his killing skills could bring about world peace in a matter of months. Also, women want him to have "feelings" and he's just too hard for that. He prefers the company of his men, who he understands and kind of likes wrestling naked with.
Educational Accomplishments: He can read a map.
There. Thank me later. You can fall back on ol' Hank when you're out of patience waiting for some other gun-toting idiot to make his next appearance in fiction and justifying your inability to cope with civilized society. I'd write you the book, but...gee, kinda been done a hundred times.
>>By Just Jon (Monday, 31 Jul 2006 01:49)
you're a cynical bastard jon, lol
>>By fony (Monday, 31 Jul 2006 09:45)
Erm ... about this map reading thing J.J., it sounds to me that your erm .. hero .. has a feminine side cos every man knows, only a true woman can read a map ;-)
>>By Ninjawoman (Monday, 31 Jul 2006 17:03)
woman read a map?, god she must be drunk
>>By fony (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 00:06)
hey guys/gals.... dont think it has been posted yet, but sorry if it has.....
another Nick Stone book due to release on 6th Nov...... below is the amazon details........
=============
RECOIL
=============
Product details
* Hardcover: 400 pages
* Publisher: Bantam Press (6 Nov 2006)
* Language English
* ISBN: 0593055578
Synopsis:
Recuperating in Switzerland after a job that cost the life of one of his closest friends, ex-deniable operator Nick Stone is looking for a quiet life. But when his private life starts to disintegrate, Nick is reluctantly forced back into action. The trail leads him to Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it isn't long before his dark past comes knocking on his door..."Recoil" is another pulsating example of modern thriller writing at its very best: compelling, authentic and utterly real. McNab has worked for many years behind the headlines and he knows only too well what makes them...
i hope this book is as great as all the others... :-)
==============================
on another similar note, new chris ryan book due..... called " Ultimate Weapon "
Synopsis:
This title features three people, three stories, and a desperate race for survival in a country in the midst of war. Nick Scott fought in the SAS during the first Gulf War. Captured and tortured, he was left a broken man. His daughter Sarah Scott is a beautiful young scientist who has cracked one of the scientific secrets of the age. Now, she has vanished. Her lover Jed Bradley is one of the SAS's toughest young agents, dropped behind enemy lines in the build up to the Iraq War to find the truth about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Caught up in a global power play, Nick and Jed must fight their way through a war-ravaged Iraq as the regime of Saddam Hussein collapses around them. It is a desperate race to find the woman they both love and to unlock the secret of the Ultimate Weapon.
>>By Shoot-To-Kill (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 00:09)
"sorry if it has....." ???
Can't be told often enough S2K :-)
The interview in Pressgazette from last october (page 254) now has different url but also a different picture (??)
Nice interview so I post it again:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/201005/
press_conference_andy_mcnab
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 12:47)
scrap url part.. my mistake. Picture correct.
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 12:50)
About The Grey Man.. had not seen this one before:
Quick Reads: The Grey Man, by Andy McNab
Book Blurb
Kevin Dodds has a nice life. Dull, maybe. Uneventful, certainly. But safe. Until the day he decides he’s had enough of letting people walk all over him. The day he’s had enough of safe. The day he decides to rob a bank.
Key themes
There are a number of interesting themes in this book. One of the main ones that runs
throughout the story is about the way we live our lives today. For so many people, life is
about spending week after week in a monotonous job that brings little sense of satisfaction
but where social rules keep us in our place and force us to put up with all sorts of bad
behaviour – often from the boss! Too often, work is not a place of pleasure and creativity,
but rather a means to an end, a way of paying the mortgage, renting the DVDs, running the
car and perhaps once in a blue moon managing to afford that trip to Greece rather than the
caravan holiday in Southwold.
The book makes us question what is important in life. Do we live to work or work to live?
How many of us get through our working days by fantasizing about the possibility of another
life out there, like Kevin did?
(or you just Google for Andy McNab info.....oh my, mabye it is time for some reflection???)
;-)
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 16:31)
Ooopsss... I wasn't ready yet..
Linked with this theme is the question of what we can really do to change our lives. It
questions how much of a risk we are prepared to take in order to break out of the
conventional life we’ve ended up with. For most of us, changing our lives wouldn’t
necessarily involve robbing a bank like it does for Kevin! But it would involve an element of
risk. And it is this risk that the book makes us assess and think about.
Another theme is about relationships. Kevin and Linda (thinking of changing my name, much bettehr than Lynn) have been together since their schooldays and are still madly in love. To many people, their relationship may sound dull. Regular bingo nights, regular DVD nights, regular shopping nights. But they are happy with this. The book raises questions about how we find happiness in our relationships, and makes us see that one person’s dull may be another person’s dream come true.
Ultimately, the book asks, Are you happy? If not, what would it take for you to be happy?
And are you prepared to do it? It doesn’t suggest bank robbery as a way to find personal
fulfilment! The story is almost a metaphor for breaking out of the mould life has carved out
for you and, instead, carving your own.
See full article:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/raw/pdf/
reads/greyman.pdf
Definitely good one to think about ;-)
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 16:37)
Robert Rigby:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/content/articles/
2006/06/19/blast06_avenger_
robert_rigby_feature.shtml
And the BBC seems to be looking for the most famous "Herefordian"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/
content/articles/2006/07/12/famous_
herefordians_feature.shtml
The do make some suggestions and first one is:
Andy McNab
The former SAS soldier Andy McNab, who wrote books on his experiences in the first gulf war, used to live here with the regiment.
:-)
>>By Lynn (Wednesday, 2 Aug 2006 20:59)
Whew! I'm just glad my mate Fony knows when I'm just being a sarcastic prick!
It's cool that you, Lynn, mentioned The Grey Man, though, because it sort of makes the point I'd want to make, which is that Nick Stone (or any McNab character) is different from your "Dirty Harry" type hero. Nick always assumes he's doing wrong and just says "fuck it"--he's not like the heroes of so many action series who are basically Nietzsche's "superman."
The Nietzscheian philosophy was tested and failed--see Nazi Germany--so I find it foolish that so many authors (like Vince Flynn) revive this idiotic notion and get away with it. Never in his non-fiction or fiction did Andy play the role of the "hero" who could save us all if it weren't for inconvienent laws, etc...(see the Rogue Warrior series or Clancy or basically anyone else who writes this stuff for examples of the idea that a "superman" should be allowed to exist above the law and indeed above morality).
I always said McNab could write about something other than SAS-type stuff, and it seems "The Grey Man" has proved it. Big cheers.
>>By Just Jon (Thursday, 3 Aug 2006 18:04)
JJ >>Never in his non-fiction or fiction did Andy play the role of the "hero" who could save us all if it weren't for ..
As this is what appeals to us most: to the women who want to 'rescue' him from his misery and to the men, who get confirmed that even with their short comings they can do heroic stuff.... was McNab
a) very smart for creating this character
b) just coincidentally lucky his character turned out to be so succesful
c) neither, his ghostwriter was the smart one
(and no, C is no real option)
;-)
>>By Lynn (Thursday, 3 Aug 2006 19:47)
Jon, I don't recall any 'above the law' stuff in either Marcinko or Clancy. In fact, Marcinko in particular goes to great lengths to appear fallible and remember he got nicked in real life for such acts. Am I misunderstanding?
>>By camban (Friday, 4 Aug 2006 11:41)
Well, Cam, I'm a Marcinko fan--even ordered the "Red Cell" video, so I'm glad you asked. Marcinko seems to me to think that he and others like him can't do their jobs if there is civilian oversight. He and his men did torture Americans just to prove a point after all--the video makes this clear. At least Marcinko was right in that he was trying to wake up the military establishment to the terrorist threat (by the way, he posited passenger airliners as weapons well before 9/11), so I don't fault him too much.
Vince Flynn, though...HIs "hero" character joins ex-Special Forces in killing politicians they don't like in Flynn's seminal work. The message there is that we mere civvies are too weak and foolish to vote, we need supermen to make our decisions for us.
As for Clancy, his ex-SEAL character (sorry, can't remember his name), goes vigilante to punish drug dealers, pimps, etc...rather than donating time and money to attack the root causes of such crimes. I can promise you, Clancy won't write a book where his hero kills Rush Limbaugh for being a druggie.
Clancy also wrote about a secret team (again, can't remember name, which should tell you how much Clancy's crap stays with me) who is above all law and all government. They decide who to kill because politicians and by inference the American people are too weak and stupid to do the right thing.
Is fiction like that fun? Sure, of course. But it's read and appreciated by idiots who don't know the story behind the "Horst Wessel" song and other examples of fake heroes.
I just don't think one man has the right to make decisions for the majority, yet that is exactly the idea that most action-military fiction supports.
>>By Just Jon (Saturday, 5 Aug 2006 01:26)
I've got the "Red Cell" DVD Jon, but it doesn't play properly as it's Region 1 format, that must be why I got it wrong! No knowledge of Vince Flynn so can't comment. But Clancy's Jack Ryan series (with the odd exception) really did make me yearn for a new world order where we return to the origins of democracy (about 600 years in the UK) when there were no professional politicians but people of extraordinary achievement who were persuaded to stand for parliament by their peers and constituents, That is the only way to achieve genuinely popular politics I believe. There is an adage: anyone who actually wants to be a politician should be automatically excluded. Think how different our world would be....
I have not read any of the Clancy clone books though as I agree with your perspective on those; load of crap. Fact is, every time I read autobiographies by military men of outstanding achievement, Eric Haney for example, I can't help reflecting on the sheer waste of allowing such men to fade into obscurity. They have such broad experience, compassion, and intelligence. In addition, almost every warrior's story will tell you how much interference from politicians and non-combatant officers have turned potentially successful military campaigns into disasters, causing huge loss of innocent life; it all started with Vietnam and continues to date. Heck! I am reading one right now "Among Warriors in Iraq" written by an experienced soldier turned journalist concerning situations only two years ago in Iraq where the soldiers have the bad guys in their sights but the higher-up non-comms are afraid of infringing the terrorists' human rights! I ask you?
>>By camban (Monday, 7 Aug 2006 12:26)
Uhm Cammie, you suggest we leave decisions wether it's violation of human rights to individuals? Can we infringe human rights if it (proven to be) terrorists? Aren't we terrorists if we infringe human rights? Is there ANY excuse to infringe ANYONE's human rights?
I find most of these questions very hard to answer if I think about them myself.
>>By Lynn (Monday, 7 Aug 2006 12:54)
I'm not sure but I think I should lighten up a little ;-)
At least over here.
>>By Lynn (Monday, 7 Aug 2006 17:27)
You saying you are overweight Lynn?
The greatest and number one human right is to be NOT blown up by some deluded maniac, OK? That's what we need soldiers for. There is a quotation, something like: good people can sleep easy in their beds because rough men stand ready to defend them. Sorry if it's wrong but the message is accurate.
>>By camban (Tuesday, 8 Aug 2006 11:59)
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