John Urwin

My reading mojo has been suffering from a bit of a lull in recent weeks and I have found myself starting several books only to put them aside after 50 or so pages. I am convinced that these are not bad books, it's just that they don't really grab my attention at the moment. In an attempt to kick start my mojo I decided to indulge in some book shopping and I bought 6 non-fiction books covering a variety of subjects. Two of these books are of the action military memoir type which are fun to read but usually don't do much more than that. One of these books was The Sixteen by John Urwin. I was drawn to this because the blurb sounded interesting and I hadn't heard of anything like it in the past.

I really wish I had sat down and read the first few pages of the book before buying it, this book is absolutely hilarious and not in a good way. The author is a complete fantasist and offers no proof of any kind that his claims are true in anyway. I am frankly disgusted that the publisher is happy producing this supposed work of non-fiction with no evidence to back up its claims. Urwin claims that he was talent spotted at the age of 18 during his national service in the 1950's. He was an unremarkable soldier who had received no military training and spent a lot of his time being made to repair roads and dig latrines. His lack of training was such that he wasn't even instructed in how to use a rifle. Despite this he managed to impress members of some shadowy organisation, it would seem primarily based on the fact that he was quite fit and he didn't drink or smoke. During his first meeting with his team he underwent what he thought was a day of hard mental training but it ended up being a 4 day hypnosis/mind control session where he was turned into some kind of ninja. During this session he lost all his fear and ended up being taught 'the machine' an unarmed combat system. Ohh and to top it all of he became adept at using some esoteric weaponry which is never really described. One of these weapons comes up repeatedly and is a belt of sorts which when the buckle is hit flies through the air and kills an enemies in the vicinity.

So what is the purpose of The Sixteen? They are there to carry out the dirty work of either the government or to battle the Illuminati (who control the government, talk about confusing) depending on what part of the book you are reading. It doesn't stop there though. One of the missions is to assassinate Gamal Abdal Nasser, the then president of Eygpt who is extremely well protected. As it turns out, the day they go to get him, he isn't in but as luck would have it there is someone else there who they are told is also a high value target. None of the missions are to be carried out using guns, everything has to be done silently using their unarmed combat skills. They kill this other target and make it look as though he has shot himself. How does Urwin make it look like suicide? Easy, he has an ingenious idea to use 5 very light fishing lines from outside the closed door to 1) move a chair across the room 2) wedge this chair under the handle of the door 3) turn the key in the lock, 4) manoeuvre the keys into the pocket of the dead man 5) slide the deadbolts across the door, double locking it.

This isn't the end of the insane claims though. There is also an incident where one of his colleagues repairs the outside of a helicopter during flight, UFO's and alien technology. In short, Urwin is a genius version of Neo from The Matrix, Jason Bourne and Batman all rolled into one. Yeah right. Avoid this book at all costs, it's a shocker.… (meer)

Het bloedstollende verhaal van de best getrainde en meest geheime speciale eenheid ooit.

In de onstabiele politieke situatie ten tijde van de koude oorlog is een dreiging van een kernoorlog reëel. Groot-Brittannië leidt in het diepste geheim een groep van zestien mannen op om mensen die een bedreiging vormen voor de wereldvrede uit de weg te ruimen. Hun training behoort tot de beste ter wereld en overstijgt de gevechts- en overlevingstechnieken van de SAS. Hun operaties voltrekken zich in het diepste geheim.

Nu, na 40 jaar stilzwijgen, besluit John Urwin – mede door de gebeurtenissen van 11 september – zijn verhaal te doen.

Urwin stelt dat het platbombarderen van landen als Afghanistan en Irak geen enkel effect heeft op de dreiging van terrorisme. Men is er immers nog steeds niet in geslaagd Saddam Hoessein, Osama bin Laden of de strijdkrachten van Al Qaida uit te schakelen.… (meer)