Author aSense
Here is an extract from David Kilcullen’s Blood Year: The Failures of the War on Terror: As I write, Western countries (several, particularly the US, now with severely reduced international credibility) face a larger, more unified, capable, experienced and savage enemy, in a less stable, more fragmented region, with a far higher level of geopolitical competition, and a much more severe risk of great-power conflict, than at any time since 9/11. It isn’t just Islamic State; al-Qa’ida has emerged from its eclipse and is back in the game in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Syria, Somalia and Yemen. We’re dealing with not one but two global terrorist organisations, each with regional branches, plus a vastly larger radicalised population at home, and a flow of foreign terrorist fighters 10 to 12 times the size of anything seen before. Likewise, last year’s Taliban resurgence shows that as bad as things seem now, they can get much worse if the Afghan drawdown creates the same opportunity for Islamic State next year as the Iraqi drawdown did in 2012.
Since 9/11, some 300 Americans–born and raised in Minnesota, Alabama, New Jersey, and elsewhere–have been indicted or convicted of terrorism charges. Some have taken the fight abroad: Americans were among those who planned the attacks in Mumbai, and more recently a dozen US citizens have sought to join ISIS. Others have acted entirely on American soil. What motivates them, how are they trained, and what do we sacrifice in our aggressive efforts to track them? Paced like a detective story, United States of Jihad tells the entwined stories of the key actors on the American front. Among the perpetrators are Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born radical cleric who became the first American citizen killed by a CIA drone and who mentored the Charlie Hebdo shooters; Samir Khan, whose Inspire webzine has rallied terrorists around the world, including the Tsarnaev brothers; and Omar Hammami, an Alabama native and hip hop fan who became a fixture in al Shabaab’s propaganda videos until fatally displeasing his superiors. Drawing on his extensive network of intelligence contacts, from the National Counterterrorism Center and the FBI to the NYPD, journalist and security expert Peter Bergen also offers an inside look at the sometimes controversial tactics of the agencies tracking potential terrorists–from infiltrating mosques to massive surveillance; as well as at the bias experienced by innocent observant Muslims at the hands of law enforcement and at the critics and defenders of US policies on terrorism.
“The man who many considered the peace candidate in the last election was transformed into a war president,” writes bestselling author and Yale Professor of Law Stephen Carter. The Violence of Peace is a snapshot of the early unfolding moral dilemmas of a President who, through his use of drones and other controversial tools of warfare, is leaving America with a blood stained legacy which will impact on the security of the nation for decades to come. The world is now a far less safe place in 2016 than it was in 2008. First released in 2011, The Violence of Peace is a book about “just war” theory, a concept first advanced in the earliest years of Christianity and now playing out as a 21st Century nightmare.
Terror in Australia: Workers’ Paradise Lost, by veteran journalist John Stapleton, is a sidewinding missile into the heart of Australian hypocrisy. It becomes available this week.The book is a beautifully written snapshot of a pivotal turning point in the history of the so-called Lucky Country. In 2015 there were well attended Reclaim
Australia demonstrations in every major capital city, all protesting what the demonstrators saw as the growing Islamisation of Australia, along with countering anti-racism demonstrations. There were frequent violent clashes, hundreds of police were forced to form lines separating the demonstrators in Sydney and Melbourne, there were a significant number of arrests and injuries, and dozens of people were treated for the effects of capsicum spray. The terror alert was at its highest level in history, the country was engaged in an unpopular and discredited war in Iraq and Syria, and relations between the government and an increasingly radicalised Muslim minority had broken down.
America’s Destruction of Iraq fills in the gaps of how America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq created the ultimate breeding ground for the Islamic State. Here is the link to a television interview on the program Washington Journal the with the author of America’s Destruction of Iraq.
Barack Obama promised change from George W. Bush’s global war on terrorism. But the Obama administration used drones to kill suspected militants and vacuumed data on Americans’ phone calls. Obama criticized Bush’s unilateralism and secrecy, but launched wars without going to Congress and presided over an unprecedented crackdown on leaks. As the New York Times New York Times book reviewer Gideon Rose wrote of Power Wars: Inside the Post 9/11 Obama Presidency by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charlie Savage explores how and why Obama and his legal team, an elite, liberal group who vowed to restore the rule of law, end up accused of entrenching the sweeping powers of the post-9/11 security state. If legitimate, the accusation stands to change the legacy of Obama’s entire presidency.
The daily robbing, bashing, drugging, extortion and murder of foreign tourists on Thai soil, along with numerous scandals involving unsafe facilities and well established scams, has led to frequent predictions that Thailand’s multi-billion dollar tourist industry will self-destruct. Instead tourist numbers more than doubled in the decade to 2014. The world might not have come to the hometowns of the many visitors fascinated by Thailand, but it certainly came to the Land of Smiles.
Signs and portents are everywhere, disturbance everywhere. With post-apocalyptic imagery now entrenched in popular culture, and all the major faiths prophesying that mankind has reached “The End of Days”, fantastical theories abound on the origins of the internet; that it was an advanced technology gifted across time and space in order to save an emerging race known as humans from an impending apocalypse by allowing the cleverest minds on the planet to aggregate. Whatever the pure truth, perhaps only the Gods will ever know. But there is no doubt the Rise of Islamic State has been paralleled by the Rise of the Network Society. The single most brilliant philosopher and anthropologist in the field has been Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells. His book The Rise of the Network Society was the first in a string of books documenting the economic and social dynamics of the information age.
Perhaps the single most successful book of 2015, “a soaring triumph” as the critics have described it, H is for Hawke is an absolute must read. Every now and then something breaks through the zeitgeist. Author Helen MacDonald wrote in one of the opening riffs: “Forty-five minutes north-east of Cambridge is a landscape I’ve come to love very much indeed. It’s where wet fen gives way to parched sand. It’s a land of twisted pine trees, burnt-out cars, shotgun-peppered road signs and US Air Force bases. There are ghosts here: houses crumble inside numbered blocks of pine forestry. There are spaces built for air-delivered nukes inside grassy tumuli behind 12ft fences, tattoo parlours and US Air Force golf courses. In spring it’s a riot of noise: constant plane traffic, gas-guns over pea fields, woodlarks and jet engines. It’s called the Brecklands – the broken lands – and it’s where I ended up that morning, seven years ago, in early spring, on a trip I hadn’t planned at all. At five in the morning I’d been staring, sleepless, at a square of streetlight on the ceiling. Nnngh. Must get out, I thought, throwing back the covers. Out! I pulled on jeans, boots and a jumper, scalded my mouth with burnt coffee, and it was only when my frozen, ancient Volkswagen and I were halfway down the A14 that I worked out where I was going, and why. Out there, beyond the foggy windscreen and white lines, was the forest. The broken forest. That’s where I was headed. To see goshawks.”
Garry Kasparov spent twenty years as one of the world’s most luminously intelligent chess players. In 2005, he retired from professional chess to lead the pro-democracy opposition against Vladimir Putin, and ran for the presidency of Russia in 2008. In 2012, he was named Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Vaclav Havel. He has been a contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal since 1991, and his 2007 book, How Life Imitates Chess has been published in twenty-six languages. He lives in self- imposed exile in New York with his wife, Dasha. In this bold and important book, Garry Kasparov argues that Vladimir Putin’s dangerous global ambitions have been ignored for too long – and he won’t be stopped unless the West stands up to him. Garry Kasparov has been a vocal critic of Putin for over a decade, even leading the pro-democracy opposition in the 2008 Presidential election. Yet years of seeing his Cassandra-like prophecies about Putin’s intentions fulfilled have left Kasparov with the realization of a darker truth: Putin’s Russia, like ISIS or Al Qaeda, defines itself in opposition to the free countries of the world.
When it was first published 15 years ago, Buried Country: The story of Aboriginal country music represented a major addition to the chronicles of Australian music. Now it has been revised and updated. Its author Clinton Walker is one of Australia’s most admired chroniclers of its popular culture, with groundbreaking books on the country’s musical and social history. They include Highway to Hell: The Life and Death of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott; Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music, 1977-1992; and Golden Miles: Sex, Speed and the Australian Muscle Car. Though Buried Country is a warm tribute to unheralded voices, as with any study that addresses Aboriginal culture in the twentieth century, there is a thread of deep sadness running through this tome. Walker tells some confronting, disturbing tales, including that of Herb Laughton, who was stolen when he was two years old and spent much of his early life trying to find his mother, leaving him with emotional scars that led to him to attempting suicide in the eighties. His music endured. Alcoholism, violence, mental illness and incarceration are all themes in the lives of Dougie Young, Vic Simms, Bobby McLeod and Roger Knox. The best of the genre’s songs, too, are infected with tragedy, none more moving than Bob Randall’s ‘Brown Skin Baby’ with its haunting wail and elegiac lyrics for the stolen generation.
Now in its ninth year, the Landscape Photographer of the Year Award was devised by Charlie Waite, one of Britain’s foremost landscape photographers and created in association with AA Publishing. Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 9, to be released in October of 2015, features all of the winning and commended images from each of the competition categories. Pre-orders are available now. Artists have always strived to capture the unique beauty and diversity of the British landscape, in the 21st century, this small island continues to provide photographers with an astonishing source of inspiration. From classic shots of the verdant countryside of England, Wales and the rugged Scottish Highlands to the iconic structures of Britain’s industrial and urban landscapes, this magnificent collection, showcasing both the very best of Britain and the very best photographic talent, cannot fail to please.
According to some analysts only one percent of all terrorist attacks occur in the West. But the November, 2015 attacks in Paris have galvanised the world. Paris is known as The City of Light, as the most beautiful city in the world, the epitome of all that the Western civlisation has been able to produce. Author Edward Rutherfurd, the grand master of the historical novel, has produced a dazzling epic about this magnificent city. Described as “grand and engrossing”, Paris: The Novel moves back and forth in time, the story unfolding through intimate tales of self-discovery, divided loyalty, and long-kept secrets. As various characters come of age, seek their fortunes, and fall in and out of love, the novel follows nobles who claim descent from the hero of the celebrated poem The Song of Roland; a humble family that embodies the ideals of the French Revolution; a pair of brothers from the slums behind Montmartre, one of whom works on the Eiffel Tower as the other joins the underworld near the Moulin Rouge; and merchants who lose everything during the reign of Louis XV, rise again in the age of Napoleon, and help establish Paris as the great center of art and culture that it is today. The sights, scents, and tastes of the City of Light are brought to brilliant life.
Thailand: Deadly Destination, by veteran journalist John Stapleton, exposes one of the worst scandals in the annals of modern tourism, the high number of deaths, assaults and mishaps befalling tourists in the so-called Land of Smiles.
Reynolds’ Cottages were built in 1829 by convicts. They are the earliest remaining dwellings in Sydney’s historic precinct of The Rocks.
Unremarkable in their time, Reynolds’ Cottages are remarkable today for having withstood the rampaging progress which has transformed The Rocks from a penal colony to a working class neighbourhood to a heritage theme park; and over the last 12 months to being, in a real estate obsessed city, at the heart of one of Austalia’s most expensive and sought after neighbourhoods.
Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins explores a subject of deep and enduring fascination, assassination by drones. It is a page-turning narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld, exploring how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing
In his new book A Theory of the Drone moral philosopher Gregoire Chamayou describes the killer drone as “a dream of a weapon” resulting in confrontation without combat, no prisoners and no sure expectation of victory. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the rise of Islamic State aka ISIS and the West’s disastrous, counterproductive responses to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism sweeping the world. Drone warfare has raised profound moral, ethical and legal questions. Not since debates over nuclear warfare has an American military strategy been the subject of such worldwide concern over the development of increasingly inhumane forms of warfare.
If you were a boy named Henri Matisse who lived in a dreary town in northern France, what would your life be like? Would it be full of color and art? Full of lines and dancing figures? Find out in the beautiful, unusual picture book Iridescence of Birds. This work, designed to be appreciated by children and adults alike, is about how Henri Matisse became one of the world’s most famous and influential artists. It is written by acclaimed author and Newbery Medal-winning Patricia MacLachlan and innovative illustrator Hadley Hooper.
How did the Islamic State attract so many followers and conquer so much land? By being more ruthless, more apocalyptic, and more devoted to state-building than its competitors. In The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of Islamic State, author William McCant argues that the shrewd leaders of the Islamic State combined two of the most powerful yet contradictory ideas in Islam-the return of the Islamic Empire and the end of the world-into a mission and a message that shapes its strategy and inspires its army of zealous fighters. They have defied conventional thinking about how to wage wars and win recruits. Even if the Islamic State is defeated, jihadist terrorism will never be the same. Based almost entirely on primary sources in Arabic-including ancient religious texts and secret al-Qaeda and Islamic State letters that few have seen –The ISIS Apocalypse explores how religious fervor, strategic calculation, and doomsday prophecy shaped the Islamic State’s past and foreshadow its dark future.
Here is an extract condensed from the book:
Acclaimed as a major contribution to the world’s understanding of Islamic State, ISIS: The State of Terror by jihad experts Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, delves into the ghoulish pornography of pro-jihadi videos and the seductive appeal of jihadi chic.
The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism from AL’QAIDA to ISIS offers an unprecedented assessment of the CIA while at the forefront of our nation’s war against al-Qa’ida and during the most remarkable period in the history of the Agency. Called the “Bob Gates of his generation,” Michael Morell, former Deputy Director of the CIA, saw it all–the only person with President Bush on 9/11/01 and with President Obama on 5/1/11 when Usama Bin Laden was brought to justice. Like Ghost Wars, See No Evil, and At the Center of the Storm, The Great War of Our Time is a vivid, news making account of the CIA, a life of secrets, a war conducted under the cloaks of darkness and disinformation; a war the public does not understand.
In Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now. Bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad: From Islam to America, A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, asks why the borders of Islam are so bloody. Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of global toleration. With jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this book offers an answer to what has already become the world’s number one security issue. Ayaan Ali has received death threats as a result of writing this book. At least the threats are testament to the fact that words and ideas have power; and rather than the coercion and intimidation of fundamentalists or the tragic group think of the West, ideas need to be debated on open plains, people need to learn to think for themselves. Fundamentalists claim this controversial book is anti-Muslim; rather the author urges Muslims to return to the original beauties of their faith, to the first preachings of Mohammed, to a religion of peace, love, tolerance and compassion. But in these times of peril, in The Age of Terror, it is also vital that the terrible societies created by secular Western democracies, all of them in decay, take a good look at themselves and learn to value their own citizens, rather than discard them in the brutal cruelties of modern capitalism, globalisation, misguided laws and failed social policies. The Sharia is taking hold in the West precisely because it is vulnerable.
One woman. Two husbands. Four trials. One bloody execution. Last Woman Hanged is the latest book from award winning journalist Caroline Overington. In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa’s husbands died suddenly. The Crown was convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic and, to the horror of many in the legal community, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction.
Jamaican author Marlon James has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize with his book A Brief History Of Seven Killings. The 44-year-old author is the first Jamaican to win the prize in its 47-year history, with his tale about an assassination attempt on Bob Marley which offers a window into 1970s and 1980s Jamaica. “Oh my god, oh wow,” James said as he took to the podium after being announced the winner at the ceremony in London. “This is so sort of ridiculous I think I’m going to wake up tomorrow and it didn’t happen,” he added, as he dedicated the award to his late father. Chair of the judges Michael Wood said the book was “startling in its range of voices and registers … a representation of political times and places”. “It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about,” he said. “It moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times.”
Objective Troy tells the gripping and unsettling story of Anwar al-Awlaki, the once-celebrated American imam who called for moderation after 9/11, a man who ultimately directed his outsized talents to the mass murder of his fellow citizens. It follows Barack Obama’s campaign against the excesses of the Bush counterterrorism programs and his eventual embrace of the targeted killing of suspected militants. And it recounts how the president directed the mammoth machinery of spy agencies to hunt Awlaki down in a frantic, multi-million-dollar pursuit that would end with the death of Awlaki by a bizarre, robotic technology that is changing warfare—the drone. Scott Shane, who has covered terrorism for The New York Times over the last decade, weaves the clash between president and terrorist into both a riveting narrative and a deeply human account of the defining conflict of our era. Awlaki, who directed a plot that almost derailed Obama’s presidency, and then taunted him from his desert hideouts, will go down in history as the first United States citizen deliberately hunted and assassinated by his own government without trial. But his eloquent calls to jihad, amplified by YouTube, continue to lure young Westerners into terrorism—resulting in tragedies from the Boston marathon bombing to the murder of cartoonists at a Paris weekly. Awlaki’s life and death show how profoundly America has been changed by the threat of terrorism and by its own fears.
Jason Burke, veteran correspondent and author of the bestselling Al-Qaeda, identifies the population explosion in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia as a major factor in the rise of Islamic militancy in his new book The New Threat From Islamic Militancy. Described as important and impressive by The Guardian newspaper, the book describes how millions in their 20s, unable to find work or a partner, are drawn by the promise of a purpose, a thrill and, yes, sex. Fight well, make money, get yourself a girl. Isis is not the first to offer this, but it has taken it to a new level. “Terrorism,” the self-proclaimed caliph of Isis has said, “is to worship Allah as He ordered you.” From Syria to Somalia, from Libya to Indonesia, from Yemen to the capitals of Europe, Islamic militancy appears stronger, more widespread and more threatening than ever.
A Sense of Place Publishing is proud to have helped bring this wonderful book to a broader audience. Travels with My Hat: A Lifetime on the Road is the story of how an Australian nurse switched careers to become an award-winning international travel writer and photographer.
The Arrow of Time, or Time’s Arrow, is a concept developed in 1927 by the by the British astronomer Arthur Eddington involving the “one-way direction” or “asymmetry” of time. This direction, which can be determined, according to Eddington, by the studying of the organisation of atoms, molecules and bodies. The latest cosmological theories explain why humans, trapped within the decay or entropy of their own forms, possess an illusory sense of time as running in only one direction. Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception — a foray into the idea that our experience of time is actively created by our own minds and how these sensations of what neuroscientists and psychologists call mind time are created is written by acclaimed BBC broadcaster and psychology writer Claudia Hammond. In a world of increasing polarisation, where the push to fundamentalism of thought and creed, as exemplified by Islamic State, is contrasted with an accelerating push towards a coming enlightenment of the human condition by some of the world’s greatest intellects, these debates are increasingly vital.
Now a motion picture starring three of the world’s great actors, Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, A Walk in the Woods is coming to a screen near you. Based on the book by the best selling and astonishingly, enduringly popular author Bill Bryson, tells the story of how he set off to hike the Appalachian Trail after some years overseas, rediscovering America in the process.
Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Republican who spent 10 years on the committee with oversight of America’s clandestine operations, dubs Mr. Obama and his top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton, the “Architects of Disaster” — the title of a new book he’s written accusing them of bungling the run-up to war, wrongly ousting leader Moammar Gadhafi, then leaving the country a mess that has already come back to bite with the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. Pete Hoekstra, the former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tells the real story behind the tragic events in Benghazi and the Obama Administration’s disastrous foreign policy catastrophe in Libya. Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya documents the role played by an inexperienced president and a politicized US State Department under Hillary Clinton in turning a stable North African country into a failed jihadist state spreading terrorism throughout the Middle East and releasing a flood of fearful immigrants onto the Mediterranean and into Europe. Hoekstra, a Republican who spent 10 years on the committee with oversight of America’s clandestine operations, puts President Barack Obama and his top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, squarely in the frame, claiming they left Libya as little more than a terrorist training camp.
As Maria Popova observes in her masterful newsletter Brain Pickings, art is a Form of Active Prayer. Why do we humans create – why do artists make art, why do writers write? Pablo Neruda gave a beautiful answer in his metaphor of the hand through the fence. For Joan Didion, the impulse is a vital gateway to her own mind. David Foster Wallace saw it as a mode of fun-having and truth-telling. For Italo Calvino, it was a matter of belonging to “a collective enterprise.” William Faulkner simply believed it to be “the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet.” But even more important, perhaps, is the question of why – and how – artists continue to make art in the face of the rejection, ridicule, and indifference with which their society often meets them. That immutable inquiry is what novelist, short story writer, and journalist Melissa Pritchard explores with unparalleled luminosity in an essay titled “Spirit and Vision” from her altogether magnificent first nonfiction collection, A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write. The piece – a sort of open letter to writers and, by extension, all artists – bears that cynicism-disarming quality of a commencement address and enchants the psyche like an incantation.
He who controls cyber space controls the world. The Author of @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, Shane Harris, is an American journalist and author at Foreign Policy magazine. He specializes in coverage of America’s intelligence agencies, notably writing the book The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State. In the prologue to his new book he writes: “The leaders of the intelligence agencies, top military officers, and the president himself say that the consequences of another major terrorist attack on American soil pale in comparison with the havoc and panic a determined and malicious group of hackers could cause. Instead of stealing information from a computer, they could destroy the computer itself, crashing communications networks or disabling systems that run air traffic control networks. They could hijack the Internetconnected devices that regulate the flow of electrical power and plunge cities into darkness. Or they could attack information itself, erasing or corrupting the data in financial accounts and igniting a national panic.”