Word: terrains
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Training of S.A.S. recruits-all volunteers from other British army regiments-is exceedingly rigorous. The initial four-week selection course has a 90% failure rate. For starters, recruits are sent crawling through noxious sheep-dips and marching over mountainous terrain in Wales carrying 55-lb. backpacks on a 37%-mile, 20-hr, trek. In one ten-day exercise, half-naked recruits are set down at the mouth of a Welsh valley, harried by deafening sirens and an infantry force firing real bullets. Those who pass these tests are then taught such skills as demolition, lock picking, sabotage, unarmed combat, mountaineering...
...first scene is promising, though. As Neil Young wails into the title song, Linson's camera pans across a snowy Western terrain to a secluded cabin where Hunter Thompson, amidst his strange interior decoration, struggles to meet his latest deadline. He guzzles liquor as he types, shoots his telephone, and cavorts with his Doberman, who is trained to attack on the word "Nixon." But, all too soon, our hero begins reminiscing and Where the Buffalo Roam slides into the quicksand of banality...
...Stallion is jampacked with electronic gear. The aircraft that flew into Iran were loaded with even more equipment. An infra-red device, for example, was added to scan the territory ahead of the helicopter at night and give the pilot a TV-like picture of the approaching terrain. Even in a pitch-black night and at altitudes as low as shrub level, the pilots of the Sea Stallions would be able to see clearly where they were heading...
Long became interested in the idea of leaving a tangible record of his path on the landscape. He would gather together local materials such as stones, branches and brush, arranging them in circles or lines often reflecting the contour of the terrain. In "England" Long picked flowers out of a field, leaving a green X of plain grass. Long's groupings are all of a temporary nature--patterns in sand that wash away with the tide, clumps of desert grass that will be scattered by the wind. Long's two photographs of man-made structures are significant: Windmill Hill, home...
...required bribes at border posts have risen accordingly. As a result, mujahidin in the hills have no meat, rice or corn. Above the Pich valley, they eat only stale millet bread and sairai leaves, which resemble holly in texture as well as appearance. "Because of Kunar's terrain I don't think we can be eliminated with guns," concludes Wahid, a 24-year-old former Kabul University chemistry student who serves as liaison between Jamiat units in Kunar and the headquarters in Peshawar. "But conditions are already so inhuman that I fear that many will starve...