Thought-provoking book…raw, kind of a flat humor without hatred even though a US military drone killed his brother, and Saddam killed numerous other family members. Some quotes :

“Solitude was such sweetness to me that it was worth risking my life for some time alone” – when staying at an aunt’s empty house in Kufa during bombing, because he wanted to paint

I love this geography professor – “A joke started to circulate about [Ba'ath] Party officials telling a geography professor he must integrate party philosophy into his lessons. “How? I teach geography.” They insisted. So he told his students “Iraq used to have a cold, wet climate in the winter and a hot, dry climate in the summer, without a drop of rain.” (which is the reality). “But,” he’d continue, “thanks to the Ba’ath Party, it’s nice all year round now.” ”

“He (a cousin in Kufa) was arrested (for being a member of the Dawa Party, a militant Shia religious party), and later his body was returned to the family along with a bill for 72 dinars for the bullets used to execute him. He had been an only son…Later, the government sent my cousin’s family a letter saying the accusation had been a mistake, and apologizing for the wrongful execution.”

“In times of extreme desperation, in the face of adversity, sometimes the only thing that saves us is our own irrational capacity for pride and egotism, a faith in ourselves that has perhaps no logical basis but pulls us through nontheless” (relating to the character in Cast Away

He says that Terence Young, director of James Bond 007, helped Saddam create a fake ‘war crime’ video of a soldier being torn apart by trucks that Saddam used to stir up support for the start of the Iran-Iraq war. He said Young also worked on the pro-Saddam biopic The Long Days. This is supported by this site: http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/terence_young_saddam.php3 At the time Young made ‘The Long Days’ Saddam was considered a pro-Western ruler. The site does not mention the fake war crime footage.

About living in a refugee camp: “When the Americans were there, they would clean the communal bathrooms every day. But after they left, no one wanted to clean the bathrooms, and they quickly became filthy.”

“I just want to emphasize the point that we are disconnected from reality”

This seems really key to me. Most people are decent if they have their eyes open to what is going on and how it affects others. But we hide stuff and let it be hidden from us because its annoying, inconvenient and disturbing, so we just let it happen ‘somewhere else’.
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Also this seemed very significant to me, about the male role in Arab culture:

” I realized that buried under that layer of cruelty he [Wafaa's father] was a very sentimental person….People see Arab culture as a patriarchal system that oppresses women, which it is, but men are also oppressed – they oppress themselves with the rigid expectations and roles they must fill or else be shunned. In this vise-like social grip, my father repressed all his frustrations and shattered dreams and humiliations, ending up with nothing but the cruel and crazy outbursts.”

Bandersnatch by Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. A first novel, which I generally like – fresh if sometimes rough. Here’s a book-length fable to go with Hillel’s “If I’m not for myself, who will be?” – in Bandersnatch’s world, if you don’t stick up for yourself you become a target fast.

Wanda Gag’s papers…but not avail online. There is a biography by Karen Hoyle but not an autobio.

Anything by William Greider : http://williamgreider.com/

been meaning to read Count Zero by William Gibson. Neuromancer was my introduction to the idea of cyber-immortality, many years back.

Citizen Journalism (Global Crises and the Media) Stuart/Einar
We the Media Dan Gillmore

The original book the children’s book Mother to Tigers was based on

More stuff on L. da Vinci, he is way cool.

Going to read shortly: Ruby Best Practices, and Clean Code

One day I took a walk in the Santa Cruz wash, happened to be after a city sweep of the homeless camps. They had pretty much bulldozed them, so leftover things and trash were scattered around. I found a book, that one of the homeless folks had owned. It was some kind of psychic text that sort of blamed problems on society in a kind of ranting way. I can’t remember the name of it now but it struck me that this book probably wasn’t going to be the one to help someone get their life back together.

On the other hand, some books are truly powerful and inspirational. I posted somewhere else about the prisoner with a quote from Anne Frank’s diary tattooed on his back. And that is not even one I would have chosen. Maybe Victor Frankl? My Shadow Ran Fast by Bill Sands?

I am curious, what books people have found to be really helpful in changing their lives. Especially that would be relevent to prisoners today.