Dad gave me The Execution of Charles Horman for Christmas in 1978, I think. It was a good gift – Mom and Dad always gave well-chosen books – but I remember Dad also talking about his personal motivation in giving me a cautionary tale quite relevant to my political activities. He said he didn’t want to one day be searching morgues like Ed Horman. I first saw The Battle of Chile in 1978 or 1979. Remember reading Assassination on Embassy Row in 1984 I think.
We flew out of SFO on 9/15/2001, the first day it was reopened. It was a Saturday. Wolfie bounced around London in his backpack. There were candlelight vigils, statements of solidarity in London and Hamburg. After some discussion the white-haired docent at a concentration camp in southern Denmark chose his words carefully: Given US actions in the world we could understand al-Qaeda’s bringing down the towers. Many Americans couldn’t.
Recently finished Ben Anderson’s No Worse Enemy. Yesterday started Michael Hastings‘ The Operators. Really liked taz’s headline this morning: Alte Fehler, neue Fehler; In seiner mit Spannung erwarteten Rede zur US-Strategie gegen IS gibt Obama den Bush: Die Radikalisierung in der Region wird so weitergehen. Had a discussion about the address with someone seriously asking why Obama doesn’t drop thermonuclear weapons on Iraqi cities to combat IS.