Joe Glenton0.0 "I looked around my cell and saw the sheet of paper taped to the door at chest height. It listed everything in the room, chair, bed, soldier box … For a moment I thought it meant the cell itself; a box to put soldiers in."
When the War on Terror began, Briton Joe Glenton felt compelled to serve his nation. He passed through basic training and deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. What he saw overseas left him disillusioned, and he returned home increasingly political and manifesting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
When he refused to return for a second tour, he was denied his right to object and called “a coward and a malingerer.” He went absent without leave and left the country, returning later to the UK voluntarily to campaign against the wars. The military accused him of desertion and threatened years in prison.
Soldier Box tells the story of Glenton’s extraordinary journey from a promising soldier to a rebel against what he came to see as unjustified military action.
Paul Lewis, Rob Evans0.0 'Undercover lays bare the deceit, betrayal and cold-blooded violation practised again and again by undercover police officers - troubling, timely and brilliantly executed.' Henry Porter
The gripping stories of a group of police spies - written by the award-winning investigative journalists who exposed the Mark Kennedy scandal - and the uncovering of forty years of state espionage.
This was an undercover operation so secret that some of our most senior police officers had no idea it existed. The job of the clandestine unit was to monitor British 'subversives' - environmental activists, anti-racist groups, animal rights campaigners.
Police stole the identities of dead people to create fake passports, driving licences and bank accounts. They then went deep undercover for years, inventing whole new lives so that they could live incognito among the people they were spying on.
They used sex, intimate relationships and drugs to build their credibility. They betrayed friends, deceived lovers, even fathered children. And their operations continue today.
Undercover reveals the truth about secret police operations - the emotional turmoil, the psychological challenges and the human cost of a lifetime of deception - and asks whether such tactics can ever be justified.
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera0.0 On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile was deposed in a violent coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The coup had been in the works for months, even years. Shortly after giving a farewell speech to his people, Allende died of gunshot wounds-whether inflicted by his own hand or an assassin's remains uncertain. Pinochet ruled Chile for a quarter century, but the short rise and bloody fall of Allende is still the subject of fierce historical debate.
In a world in the throes of the Cold War, the seeming backwater of Chile became the host of a very hot conflict-with Henry Kissinger and the Western establishment aligned with Pinochet's insurgents against a socialist coalition of students, workers, Pablo Neruda, and folk singers, led by the brilliant ideologue Allende. Revolution and counterrevolution played out in graphic detail, moving the small South American nation to the center of the world stage in the dramatic autumn of 1973. Now the rising young scholar Oscar Guardiola-Rivera gives us a tour de force account of a historical crossroads, tracing the destiny of democracy, and the paths of power, money, and violence that still shadow Latin America and its relations with the United States.
Barry Kushner0.0 Barry Kushner's damning examination of the current Coalition Government argues the UK is being spun a story about the need for drastic cuts, when there are other options.
Katharine Quarmby0.0 They are reviled. For centuries the Roma have wandered Europe; during the Holocaust half a million were killed. After World War II and during the Troubles, a wave of Irish Travellers moved to England to build a better, safer life. They found places to settle down—but then, as Occupy was taking over Wall Street and London, the vocal Dale Farm community was evicted from their land. Many did not leave their homes quietly; they put up a legal—and at times physical—fight.
Katharine Quarmby, an award-winning journalist who has reported on Gypsies and Travellers in The Economist for the past seven years, takes us into the heat of the battle, following the Sheridan, McCarthy, Burton and Townsley families before and after the eviction, from Dale Farm to Meriden, in the heart of England, and other trouble spots. Based on exclusive access and rich historical research, No Place to Call Home is a deeply moving and stunning narrative of long-sought justice.
Andrew Simms0.0 Ever get the feeling that things are falling apart? You're not alone. From bad banks to global warming it can all look hopeless, but what if everything could turn out, well, even better than before? What if the only thing holding us back is a lack of imagination and a surplus of old orthodoxies?
It's a topsy-turvy world in which a country can import the same amount of ice-cream, toilet paper and other goods to trading partners as it exports, and where top bankers are paid millions for destroying economic value, while hospital cleaners create value many times their pay.
In fascinating and iconoclastic detail - on everything from the cash in your pocket to the food on your plate and the shape of our working lives - Cancel the Apocalypse describes how the relentless race for economic growth is not always one worth winning, how excessive materialism has come at a terrible cost to our environment, and hasn't even made us any happier in the process.
Simms believes passionately in the human capacity for change, and shows how the good life remains in our grasp. While global warming and financial meltdown might feel like modern day horsemen of the apocalypse, Simms shows how such end of the world scenarios offer us the chance for a new beginning.
Imogen Tyler0.0 Revolting Subjects is a ground-breaking account of social abjection in contemporary Britain. Focusing on citizenship, social class and migrant illegality and utilizing a number of high-profile case studies, it details the abject forms of injustice which neoliberal social and economic policies effect. Throughout, Revolting Subjects reveals the pivotal role of media systems in procuring public consent for forms of government that corrode democracy. Tyler argues for a deeper psycho-social understanding of the impact of stereotyping and scapegoating whilst also revealing how counter-representational strategies can be a creative resource for resistance.
Imaginative and original, Revolting Subjects introduces a range of new insights into neoliberal societies, and will be essential reading for those concerned about widening inequalities and social justice in the wider global context.
