What are you currently reading?

[Tennessean]

American Terrorist. Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck.

What's the author's opinion: was he acting alone or a scapegoat?

[red solo cup]

The authors did extensive interviews with McVeigh and there wasn't a hint of other people than those indicted. And for the record, McVeigh never scouted inside the Murrah Building and was unaware of the day care center. He said if he had known, he wouldn't have set the bomb on a weekday.

[Tennessean]

Yeah. Its thanks to him we have a surveillance state. He got off easy.

[Michael Wilson]

A traditionalist priest saw McVeigh before he was executed; McVeigh went to Confession and received Holy Communion. He had been away from the faith for a while.

[Tennessean]

A traditionalist priest saw McVeigh before he was executed; McVeigh went to Confession and received Holy Communion. He had been away from the faith for a while.

I had completely forgotten he repented, or was even Christian. I remember Ruby Ridge (or was it Waco?) incited him to attack the government.

[Elizabeth.2]

American Terrorist. Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck.

If that's the one I read from 25 + years ago, it's super informative!

[Michael Wilson]

It was revenge for the massacre/sucide at Waco with the Branch Davidians.
Here is one article from the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2001/06/16/in-his-final-hours-an-appeal-to-god/9c015727-da69-48e1-82f5-6e9b662dc5b1/

[Prayerful]

John Matusiak, James I: Scotland's King of England. James I is claimed as an early Freemason. It makes no mention of that. James I was tolerant enough according to the values of the time, with his wife Anne of Denmark becoming Catholic, in part due to her friend with a Catholic noblewoman, but also due to a deep loathing she formed of the Scottish Kirk and its ministers. His writings after the discovery of the Gunpowder plot made clear he no issue with Catholics who kept in their lane, seeking no converts. James famously loathed the new habit of tobacco smoking, even though it ensured the survival of his otherwise near doomed colonial efforts. James was also likely a homosexual (with a tunnel from his bedroom to that of his favourite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom one Puritan writer and translator Lucy Hutchinson called him a prostitute and a Huguenot poet used earthier, clearer language). Unlike the stereotypical Scot, James was not mean, although it a generosity with taxpayer money, not revenue from the royal demense or estate. Down to our day, rulers can be very generous with other people's money.

[Tennessean]

It was revenge for the massacre/sucide at Waco with the Branch Davidians.
Here is one article from the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2001/06/16/in-his-final-hours-an-appeal-to-god/9c015727-da69-48e1-82f5-6e9b662dc5b1/

The Oklahoma bombing and the Olympic Park bombing truly instigated the surveillance state. The technology had caught up. Not long after we would all be volunteering our every move on facebook. In the 90s you read essays by men like Col Ralph Peters list "retrogrades" among America's enemies. Its always irritating to hear these sorts of "people" calling others terrorists, when terrorism is their own regime's tactic. I'm sure they've buried spies in the traditionalist movement.

[red solo cup]

https://timothybcb.substack.com/p/ripples-of-kabul-by-victor-davis

[Prayerful]

Reading or re-reading Afghantsy: The Russians in Afghanstan 1979-89 by Rodric Braithwaite, a one time UK ambassador to Russia, economic advisor to John Major, banker. The Soviets who opposed the intervention over Amin, the PM murdering his President Taraki, the founder of the Afghan Communist Party, foresaw what would happen, when Charlie Wilson and others made it the Soviet Vietnam, but were to a degree trapped. The soldiers were largely ignored by the political class who sent them in when it ended. No Soviet leader came to see them off, and the war was to a degree officially never was. It dispels myths like the Soviets dropping bombs disguised as toys. It derived from a sort of coloured daisy like munition which was copied from the US. The later US occupier relied to a extent on contracted ex Soviet helicopter pilots, both for the helicopter and their skills.

One point is that the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan lasted three years after the Soviets withdrew and nearly a year after Boris Yeltsin halted aid. It was a Communist state, abhorrent to most Moslems, while the just fallen Islamic State of Afghanistan was supposedly a state after the values of the Quran. It makes the US effort seems doubly awful. Billions spent for nothing but better weapons for the Taleban. Maybe they should have got them delivered in a sort of Great Game move, cheaper for some discount lapis lazuli.

[red solo cup]

My Invented Country. A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile by Isabel Allende

[Hannelore]

The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom.

[Hannelore]

I tried reading Jakob the Liar, but I don't like the tone.

[Mono no aware]

Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan