babyfinland posted:hekmatyr is a son of a bitch
in the movie of Charlie Wilson's War they made it out like Massoud was the main recipient of funding whereas Hekmatyr got the largest chunk lol
Hitler posted:just finished bros karam by postoyevski. amazing, amazing, author is the master of making characters with depth. the best char is the marxoteen with the dog
best line that kid spit was when he called the doctor an apothecary just to be a d-bag
Ironicwarcriminal posted:babyfinland posted:hekmatyr is a son of a bitch
in the movie of Charlie Wilson's War they made it out like Massoud was the main recipient of funding whereas Hekmatyr got the largest chunk lol
massoud got basically nothing, hekmatyr got almost everything because we gave everything to ISI and they did with it what they pleased
Ironicwarcriminal posted:the ISI is pretty fascinating, do you know any material by any insiders or whistle-blowers or whatever about how they operate and what their aims are?
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Al-Qaeda-Taliban-Beyond-Laden/dp/0745331017
this is suppsoed to be good
theres ghost wars and all of that too im sure youre familiar
just started reading Heading South
Ironicwarcriminal posted:the ISI is pretty fascinating, do you know any material by any insiders or whistle-blowers or whatever about how they operate and what their aims are?
Mohammad Yousaf wrote a book about running the ISI during the soviet invasion, its pretty decent
http://www.amazon.ca/Afghanistan--Bear-Trap-Defeat-Superpower/dp/0971170924/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1346670739&sr=8-7
cleanhands posted:In my book it just covered the rise and decline of the islamic enlightenment during the abbasid dynasty
groaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
cleanhands posted:hey im a beginner to this shit, if you got suggestions nows the time
that book (destiny disrupted, right?) is a good introductory survey from what i understand, but it leans on old tropes like that that make me puke my guiness world record setting burger lunch
if you want to read a good treatment of the whole "rise and decline" argument, check out george saliba's islamic science and the european renaissance (thats not the exact title, its somehting like that)
if you want a nice fat comprehensive history of the islamic(ate) world, the venture of islam by marshall hodgson is good. ira lapidus has an encyclopedic work on various islamic societies if you want something more like that.
if you want to read something more about the "meaning" of what it means to be a muslim from a semi-historical kind of perspective, islam and the destiny of man by charles le gai eaton is really good. it has a good (though conservative) defense of the umayyads (which you dont often see) and the mainstream sunni tradition even though it flirts with perennialist heresies when he discusses theological stuff.
oh and maria rosa menocal's ornament of the world is a great book on islamic spain, she emphasizes the literary culture in really interesting ways. i'd probably reccomend this to you next actually unless you want to get into something heavy
Edited by babyfinland ()
babyfinland posted:cleanhands posted:hey im a beginner to this shit, if you got suggestions nows the time
that book (destiny disrupted, right?) is a good introductory survey from what i understand, but it leans on old tropes like that that make me puke my guiness world record setting burger lunch
if you want to read a good treatment of the whole "rise and decline" argument, check out george saliba's islamic science and the european renaissance (thats not the exact title, its somehting like that)
if you want a nice fat comprehensive history of the islamic(ate) world, the venture of islam by marshall hodgson is good. ira lapidus has an encyclopedic work on various islamic societies if you want something more like that.
if you want to read something more about the "meaning" of what it means to be a muslim from a semi-historical kind of perspective, islam and the destiny of man by charles le gai eaton is really good. it has a good (though conservative) defense of the umayyads (which you dont often see) and the mainstream sunni tradition even though it flirts with perennialist heresies when he discusses theological stuff.
oh and maria rosa menocal's ornament of the world is a great book on islamic spain, she emphasizes the literary culture in really interesting ways. i'd probably reccomend this to you next actually unless you want to get into something heavy
i heard a song of ice and fire is pretty good if you want fantasy novels too
im not really bothered by this kind of thing though, he says in the intro that he had the idea while writing like a us highschool book so its to be expected that it's all icecream sundaes and baby talk rather than an immaculately sourced reference.
i'm also reading my biography, dreamer of the day, which would be a lot more enjoyable if it didn't have a large, uncomfortable swastika on the cover. i felt pretty weird at the library checking it out while wearing my 18 eye black boots and 1-guard length clipped hair!
KilledInADuel posted:the seven storey mountain by thomas merton
me too!
innsmouthful posted:hi rhizzone. currently i'm reading democracy in america by tocqueville for some poli-sci class i'm taking. the dude is goofy.
i'm also reading my biography, dreamer of the day, which would be a lot more enjoyable if it didn't have a large, uncomfortable swastika on the cover. i felt pretty weird at the library checking it out while wearing my 18 eye black boots and 1-guard length clipped hair!
dress normally freak
cleanhands posted:in the first few pages of the next chapter he says that the abbasid empire was too large to be centrally managed which strikes out his theory that one philospher's greco-muslim synthesis could unravel the entire ginormous project
im not really bothered by this kind of thing though, he says in the intro that he had the idea while writing like a us highschool book so its to be expected that it's all icecream sundaes and baby talk rather than an immaculately sourced reference.
is that a way of explaining the turkish administrative organization that took over
littlegreenpills posted:dress normally freak
lol look at this kid, mad at how i dress. maybe if you don't like it you should devote your life to destroying liberal cosmopolitan society rather than making posts on an internet forum that 15 people read?
innsmouthful posted:littlegreenpills posted:dress normally freak
lol look at this kid, mad at how i dress. maybe if you don't like it you should devote your life to destroying liberal cosmopolitan society rather than making posts on an internet forum that 15 people read?
maybe you should, fucker
babyfinland posted:KilledInADuel posted:the seven storey mountain by thomas merton
me too!
Hey!
And so it is an indication of the intellectual instability of Communism, and the weakness of its philosophical foundations, that most Communists are, in actual fact, noisy and shallow and violent people, torn to pieces by petty jealousies and factional hatreds and envies and strife. They shout and show off and generally give the impression that they cordially detest one another even when they are supposed to belong to the same sect. And as for the inter-sectional hatred prevailing between all the different branches of radicalism, it is far bitterer and more virulent than the more or less sweeping and abstract hatred of the big general enemy, capitalism.
KilledInADuel posted:babyfinland posted:KilledInADuel posted:the seven storey mountain by thomas merton
me too!
Hey!
And so it is an indication of the intellectual instability of Communism, and the weakness of its philosophical foundations, that most Communists are, in actual fact, noisy and shallow and violent people, torn to pieces by petty jealousies and factional hatreds and envies and strife. They shout and show off and generally give the impression that they cordially detest one another even when they are supposed to belong to the same sect. And as for the inter-sectional hatred prevailing between all the different branches of radicalism, it is far bitterer and more virulent than the more or less sweeping and abstract hatred of the big general enemy, capitalism.
some bitin analysis therE
stegosaurus posted:yeah he doesn't discuss the eastern republics at all, in the index I'm only seeing stuff for eastern europe specifically and I assume when he's talking about this stuff he's talking about the russian part of the ussr. it's still funny to read stuff from the revolutionary union that talks about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in a totally garbled way and is completely unspecific and lame and then to see szymanski discussing labor courts and stipends for retraining and how plans are put together union-wide.
yeah it is cool, which book is this again