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In a Time of Monsters
- Travels Through a Middle East in Revolt
- Narrated by: Emma Sky
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
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In a Time of Monsters
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Publisher's summary
Returning to the UK in September 2010 after serving in Iraq as the political adviser to the top American general, Emma Sky felt no sense of homecoming. She soon found herself back in the Middle East traveling through a region in revolt. In a Time of Monsters bears witness to the demands of young people for dignity and justice during the Arab Spring; the inability of sclerotic regimes to reform; the descent of Syria into civil war; the rise of the Islamic State; and the flight of refugees to Europe.
With deep empathy for its people and an extensive understanding of the Middle East, Sky makes a complex region more comprehensible. A great storyteller and observational writer, Sky also reveals the ties that bind the Middle East to the West and how blowback from the West's interventions in the region contributed to the British vote to leave the European Union and to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 149
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, "Two tigers cannot share the same mountain." However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that mountain: China, Japan, and Korea, and they have a long history of turmoil and tension with each other. In his latest entertaining and thought-provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, the enmity is between these three "tiger" nations and what prevents them from making peace.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not much new here if you are already familiar
- By Anonymous User on 07-13-20
By: Michael Booth
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Balkan Ghosts
- A Journey Through History
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 291
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 248
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Anti religious/anti catholic hit piece
- By Daniel Calvert on 05-04-21
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Nine Lives of Pakistan
- Dispatches from a Precarious State
- By: Declan Walsh
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis....
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Fascinating Look at a Troubled Country
- By Dipam on 07-11-21
By: Declan Walsh
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Black Wave
- Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry that Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
- By: Kim Ghattas
- Narrated by: Kim Ghattas, Nan McNamara
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 451
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 386
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 385
With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research, and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. She explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to many events.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unveiling the darkness of the Middle East
- By Matty D on 02-18-20
By: Kim Ghattas
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Assad or We Burn the Country
- How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria
- By: Sam Dagher
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 264
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 220
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 215
In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising - an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis. Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged....
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good until final chapter
- By Amazon Customer on 02-24-21
By: Sam Dagher
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Maoism
- A Global History
- By: Julia Lovell
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 81
For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favor of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing. And the power and appeal of Maoism have extended far beyond China.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Occasional Bias Revealed
- By Matthew Miller on 09-03-19
By: Julia Lovell
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In Putin's Footsteps
- Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia's Eleven Time Zones
- By: Nina Khrushcheva, Jeffrey Tayler
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
With exclusive insider status as Nikita Khrushchev’s great grand-daughter, and an ex-pat living and reporting on Russia and the Soviet Union since 1993, Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler offer a poignant exploration of the largest country on Earth through their recreation of Vladimir Putin’s fabled New Year’s Eve speech planned across all 11 time zones.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Up to date assessment of Russia in 2019
- By Joseph C. Wilson on 04-10-19
By: Nina Khrushcheva, and others
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The Berlin Wall
- By: Frederick Taylor
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 155
The appearance of a hastily constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse.
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2 out of 5 stars
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TEAR. DOWN. THIS. WALL
- By Simone on 05-23-13
By: Frederick Taylor
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MBS
- The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman
- By: Ben Hubbard
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 556
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 475
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 476
MBS is the untold story of how a mysterious young prince emerged from Saudi Arabia’s sprawling royal family to overhaul the economy and society of the richest country in the Middle East - and gather as much power as possible into his own hands. Since his father, King Salman, ascended to the throne in 2015, Mohammed bin Salman has leveraged his influence to restructure the kingdom’s economy, loosen its strict Islamic social codes, and confront its enemies around the region, especially Iran.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Suffers from 'Objective Journalism' Syndrome
- By Anonymous User on 05-09-20
By: Ben Hubbard
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The Buried
- An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Hessler
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 293
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 253
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Story5 out of 5 stars 252
Drawn by a fascination with Egypt's rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo's neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Fascinating, Funny, and Moving Account of Egypt
- By Jefferson on 07-23-19
By: Peter Hessler
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Why the Dutch Are Different
- A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands
- By: Ben Coates
- Narrated by: Ciaran Saward
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history, and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch Are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good Start, Then He Goes Dark
- By amazonnance on 12-17-21
By: Ben Coates
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The Shadow Commander
- Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions
- By: Arash Azizi
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
Until his assassination by US drone strike in January 2020, commander Qassem Soleimani was one of the most powerful men in Iran and the military spearhead for Iranian foreign policy, enacting the wishes of the country's Supreme Leader in the region. A widely popular but also feared maverick operator, he helped to establish the Islamic Republic as a major force in the Middle East, with interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. This was a long way from where he began as a youth, living on the margins in a country ruled by a monarch supported by the United States.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Rather disappointing
- By Aliz on 01-19-21
By: Arash Azizi
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Games Without Rules
- The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan
- By: Tamim Ansary
- Narrated by: Tamim Ansary
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 357
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 311
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Story5 out of 5 stars 312
Today, most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real, but it sits atop an older struggle between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan - a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam. Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very enlightening read
- By Massoud on 05-31-17
By: Tamim Ansary
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The Jakarta Method
- Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World
- By: Vincent Bevins
- Narrated by: Tim Paige
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,236
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,017
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,015
In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the 20th century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, but the narration has serious flaws
- By Prof. Neil Larsen on 08-03-20
By: Vincent Bevins
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Do Not Disturb
- The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad
- By: Michela Wrong
- Narrated by: Michela Wrong
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Story5 out of 5 stars 123
We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister.
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4 out of 5 stars
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What is true and what isn't?
- By Buretto on 11-30-21
By: Michela Wrong
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The Rebel and the Kingdom
- The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime
- By: Bradley Hope
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
In the early 2000s, Adrian Hong was a soft-spoken Yale undergraduate looking for his place in the world. After reading a harrowing account of life inside North Korea, he realized he had found a cause so pressing that he was ready to devote his life to it. Hong journeyed to China, outwitting Chinese security services as he helped ferry asylum-seeking North Korean escapees to safety. The Rebel and the Kingdom is an exhilarating account of a man who turns his back on the status quo—to instead live boldly by his principles.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal true story
- By NYCdogmomma on 11-13-22
By: Bradley Hope
What listeners say about In a Time of Monsters
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Coren Allen
- 08-20-19
A beautiful kaleidoscope of travel and experience
A must read in 2019...especially for those thirsty for solutions that surpass the empty political promises functioning only as highly decorative, empty boxes--void of any substance.
We live in a complex world filled with cronyism and corruption which only leads to unnecessary violence that displaces millions and destroys the lives of hundreds of thousands. Emma's personal journeys provide indisputable credibility and her experiences of hope and genuine goodness in humanity are a stark counter-truth to narratives that many in positions of power wish the public to believe as they spin hatreds and half-truths only intended to divide and polarize.
A truly enjoyable, highly recommended listen.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous
- 03-15-20
What every American needs to understand the Middle Rast
This book is an essential read for every American. Especially as we shrink with fear of globalization and fail to recognize the common humanity we share with all of our brothers and sisters on our planet. Beautifully written and spoken. Thank you Emma Sky for your bravery in daring to open our closed hearts!
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