Connie > Recent Status Updates

Informative and a reminder that people and governments are pretty much still the same.

Masterful. The straightforward documentation covering decades of political manipulation and war by veteran reporter Patrick Cockburn spares no one. Not the Middle Eastern despots and dictators, the Western Coalition, journalists and media, presidents or prime ministers, generals nor rebels, and certainly not the terrorists. A must read for anyone serious about a study of the current wars and rebellions.

Powerful. This straight forward eyewitness account from a career journalist with intimate and decades experience in the warring nations of the Middle East is a must read.

"What you do to your enemies today, you do to your friends tomorrow" pg 27. An old Afghani proverb and a true observation of human behavior.

My nephew and his lovely wife gifted me with this at Christmas.I have not read C.S. Lewis in a few years, I am looking forward to revisiting that friendship.

"I could feel his demonic obsession with an ideology that unleashed the psychopath in him" (Alios Maria Ott, Lansberg Prison's teacher and practical psychologist, in his conclusions about Adolf Hitler).

I had forgotten the allure of this little gem and the lessons it holds for all of us still. There are many worthy quotes in this book but I find the words on page 174 especially meaningful as we end another year in which our children and the children of other countries continue to return home so very damaged. "Such is the legacy of war...the discarded dreams of children...the waste. The tragedy."

"Inevitably aspects of this book have been questioned or criticized. I welcome this as a sign the ideas are worthy of argument." (Vogel, Christopher xvi)

I read this and thought- the very opposite of current political thought among certain individuals and groups.

The passions and courage of the individuals who are striving to save our foods humbles me. An example of this is Ahmed Amir and his colleagues who saved nearly 150,00 seed samples including ancient grains as the Civil War was approaching Aleppo, Syria (p. 259).

"...China is the only country in the world where all species of hops are found" p 205.

"Every person involved in craft chocolate knows if we don't make conservation a priority , cacao won't survive"(99). Imagine a world without chocolate. A good reason to become a conservationist.

"Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch's ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature-fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place" (306). This is such a centrally powerful sentence. I just had to stop reading and feel.

A perfect fit for someone like me.

It is slow going because there is a lot to take in. It definitely lays to rest any ideas that capitalism did not depend on government intervention and support in order to succeed. It also shows how war capitalism transitions into industrial capitalism, introducing the concept of a wage class (industrial labor).

"The coercion and violence required to mobilize slave labor was matched only by the demands of an expansionist war against indigenous people" location 2174 in ebook format. The domination of the growing cotton industry engulfed the United States leading to the forced removal of native peoples as well as the rapid rise in the number of enslaved Africans.

I get distracted by researching events and data the book highlights.

"Cotton, quite simply, was exotic to Europe. The fiber grew in far away lands, and many Europeans reportedly imagined cotton as a mixture of a plant and an animal-a "vegetable lamb." Stories circulated in medieval Europe about sheep growing on plants, and bending down at night to drink water; other fables told of sheep attached to the ground by low stems (page 22)

This is not my first time delving into this book. The woe is me factor aside, it provides the aristocratic viewpoint as well as important historical information for those researching the Revolutionary War. My interest is in the Southern campaigns, all too often overlooked in favor of the events in the North.

Discovered this on the library new book's shelf. The reviews intrigued me and I can never say no to history.

This is a chapter at a time book. I need time to assimilate. How courageous she was to defy her family and escape an arranged marriage. I am more convinced than ever that intelligence coupled with determination and sheer stubbornness can overcome all obstacles. Either you eliminate them, move them, climb over them, or just ignore them.

Refreshingly blunt so far. We can no longer whitewash the violence perpetrated as religious teaching. Separation of religion and the state is a necessity in the modern world.

An interesting look into censorship in the United States. The United States Postmaster's ability to censor the publics reading material will be difficult for many modern Americans to understand. The decision that Ulysses was not obscene had a major impact on censorship throughout the western world.

"And I remembered how hard it was for serious writers to live these years and months and days...I have done the best I could, and I failed"(197) John Quinn, lawyer defending the 'Little River' and the content of "Ulysses" from obscenity charges and the verdict of guilty.