Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated

Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated PDF Author: Rory McCarthy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446448010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In May 2003 journalist Rory McCarthy went to Iraq to cover what was claimed to be the triumphant rebuilding of the country after the American invasion. Two years later he left a place teetering on the brink of civil war, whose inhabitants longed for the Americans to leave but feared what would happen if they did. Throughout his stay, McCarthy was struck by how little the Iraqi point of view was represented in the media, drowned out by the message of the British and American occupying powers. This book is an attempt to recify that. By telling the stories of some of the Iraqis that McCarthy came to know, it reveals, more subtly and interestingly than any political rhetoric, the fatal extent to which they were misunderstood. From the survivor of one of Sadaam's mass graves to the insurgents of Najaf, McCarthy shows us men and women living the dilemmas of Iraq from day to day, and making crucial decisions about where they stand. The result is a moving and important book that gives a remarkable overview of a nation in turmoil.

Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated

Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated PDF Author: Rory McCarthy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446448010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
In May 2003 journalist Rory McCarthy went to Iraq to cover what was claimed to be the triumphant rebuilding of the country after the American invasion. Two years later he left a place teetering on the brink of civil war, whose inhabitants longed for the Americans to leave but feared what would happen if they did. Throughout his stay, McCarthy was struck by how little the Iraqi point of view was represented in the media, drowned out by the message of the British and American occupying powers. This book is an attempt to recify that. By telling the stories of some of the Iraqis that McCarthy came to know, it reveals, more subtly and interestingly than any political rhetoric, the fatal extent to which they were misunderstood. From the survivor of one of Sadaam's mass graves to the insurgents of Najaf, McCarthy shows us men and women living the dilemmas of Iraq from day to day, and making crucial decisions about where they stand. The result is a moving and important book that gives a remarkable overview of a nation in turmoil.

Nobody Told Us We are Defeated

Nobody Told Us We are Defeated PDF Author: Rory McCarthy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
There are many books on Iraq, but few that explore the thoughts and feelings of the Iraqi people as they deal with occupation. "Guardian" Foreign Correspondent Rory McCarthy spent more than two years there; his stunning account brings to light the stories of the people caught up in the conflict. In May 2003, journalist Rory McCarthy went to Iraq to cover what was announced to be the triumphant rebuilding of the country after the American invasion. Two years later, he left a place teetering on the brink of civil war, whose inhabitants longed for the Americans to leave, but feared what would happen if they did. Throughout his stay, McCarthy was struck by how little the Iraqi viewpoint was represented in the media, drowned out by the American and British occupying powers. This book is an attempt to rectify that. By telling the stories of the Iraqis he came to know, McCarthy gives us a moving, powerfully insightful.

Baghdad Fixer

Baghdad Fixer PDF Author: Ilene Prusher
Publisher: Halban Publishers
ISBN: 1905559550
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
A journalist and her fixer struggle for the truth where truth is now a victim. Nabil al-Amari is an English teacher in Baghdad, in Saddam's Iraq, when a chance encounter with Samara Katchens, an American journalist covering the war, changes his life forever. It is April 2003 and American and British forces have recently invaded Iraq. Samara, or Sam for short, is ambitious, cynical and determined. Nabil is both fascinated and bewildered by her, and he's keen to show her things she doesn't notice in her rush to cover the news. She is pushed by her editor to seek concrete proof for a story concerning payments for false documents - a practice which breaks all journalistic codes of ethics - 'as if truth were so hard in that way, like rocks and concrete'. In Iraq it is rarely so. As Sam single-mindedly pursues this story, she discovers a chasm between her editor's expectations and the reality she faces in a city torn apart by war and conflicting loyalties. And in her determination to uncover the truth, she takes one gamble too many, endangering herself, Nabil and his family. '... a vivid portrait of Baghdad in the traumatic aftermath of invasion.' - The Guardian. '... spot-on descriptions of both the craft of reporting and the Iraqi landscape during that volatile time make this novel memorable and informative ... for a glimpse of life under the American occupation of Iraq, few could come close to Prusher's portrait.' - Kirkus reviews. '... this compelling debut is easy to recommend to both male and female readers interested in the Middle East, journalistic ethics, and international affairs.' - Booklist. 'A fascinating story which gives the texture of life in Iraq as it was lived by foreign journalists and Iraqis at the time of the invasion. It conveys a fresher sense of those years than a thousand news reports'. -- Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent, The Independent. 'A fast-paced, evocative thriller that opens our eyes to the excitements and dangers of Iraq after the fall of Saddam. This gripping, beautifully-observed tale, written with a ring of true authenticity, captures the challenges of a journalist and her loyal fixer navigating their way through an Iraq rarely seen by outsiders.' -- Rory McCarthy, author of Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq. 'Ilene Prusher's novel is a compelling account of the first few weeks following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime told through the eyes of a fascinating and gracefully drawn Iraqi everyman... Ms Prusher draws us into his story as he is sometimes unwittingly lured deeper and deeper into the world of war journalism, watching with horror as his country descends into chaos.' -- Borzou Daragahi, Middle East and North African correspondent, Financial Times. 'A journalist's fixer is a go-between in so many senses: linguistic, cultural. The fixer straddles borders and boundaries, helping each try to communicate with the Other. Ilene Prusher conjures this so beautifully in her stunning, thrilling debut, as Nabil, an Iraqi English teacher with a poetic soul, is drawn into the unfamiliar, learning as much about his own country and people as about the world in which Samara, the American journalist who has hired him, moves so easily. A unique novel, Baghdad Fixer's compelling plot is combined with poignant and difficult insights into the life and tragedies of ordinary Iraqis during the war. This is not just a wonderful read, it is an important book for helping us, too, to begin to understand the Other.' -- Tania Hershman, author of My Mother Was An Upright Piano and The White Road and Other Stories.

Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring

Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring PDF Author: Adam Roberts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198749023
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This volume is a lively and scholarly illustrated account of the tumultuous events in key countries in the Middle East and North Africa during and since the period of the Arab Spring that began in December 2010.

Bad Days in Basra

Bad Days in Basra PDF Author: Hilary Synnott
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857710699
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The phonecall came from out of the blue, just when Sir Hilary Synnott was looking forward to retirement after helping steer India and Pakistan back from the verge of nuclear war. "It's about Iraq. We need a King of the South..."Bad Days in Basra" is the story of Synnott's time as Britain's most senior representative in Southern Iraq, trying to keep the region together as the rest of the country descended in to murderous violence. By turns wryly comic, revealing and heart-breaking, it offers a never seen before glimpse in to the high politics of the occupation. Shuttling between the gilded palaces of the Green Zone and the leaky outhouses which constituted Coalition HQ in Basra, Synnott had to negotiate his boss, Paul Bremer's brash indifference to what was going outside Baghdad, the indecisiveness of his London masters, and the brutal political realities of a country under occupation.Bearing witness for the first time to the chaotic fashion in which the coalition was run at the highest levels, Synnott's unique insider account is the most important primary source we yet have on how the South was lost. It offers new insights in to the style and motivations of key characters such as Bremer himself, US commander General David Petraeus and the then UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw. It provides an entertaining and witty portrait of the absurdities of life inside the occupying coalition, a devastating critique of CPA policies and controversial revelations about the real relationship between the two occupying powers, Britain and America.

Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East

Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East PDF Author: Shabnam J. Holliday
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1783484500
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Identity plays an important part in terms of how we imagine our relationship with the state and governing bodies. If we know who we are, then we can know and articulate what we want as political actors. This book examines the relationship between identity and political dissent in the context of the Arab and non-Arab Middle East by focusing on recent uprisings and protests in the region. The case studies here - Iran, Palestine, Israel, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan – highlight a number of dynamics and different forms of resistance. These examples show how political identities are multiple, not static and that they are too complex to be reduced to superficial dichotomies of Islamism vs. secularism or Sunnism vs. Shi’ism. Through examining the relationship between everyday grassroots politics and the question of identity, as well as elite identity discourses, this volume presents a textured analysis of the region’s dynamic political communities. This book explores how different identities must be navigated, negotiated and how they intersect at a time of dramatic change in the Middle East.

The Lonely Soldier

The Lonely Soldier PDF Author: Helen Benedict
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807061492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The Lonely Soldier--the inspiration for the documentary The Invisible War--vividly tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006--and of the challenges they faced while fighting a war painfully alone. More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine." In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L.A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D.C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers-including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful, The Lonely Soldier is a clarion call for change.

Out of the Inferno

Out of the Inferno PDF Author: Richard C. Lukas
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813143322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
“Moving testimonies recount the sadism, mass murders, deportations and imprisonment which Poles suffered at the hands of Hitler’s invading army.” —Publishers Weekly Richard Lukas’s book, encompassing the wartime recollections of sixty “ordinary” Poles under Nazi occupation, constitutes a valuable contribution to a new perspective on World War II. Lukas presents gripping first-person accounts of the years 1939–1945 by Polish Christians from diverse social and economic backgrounds. Their narratives, from both oral and written sources, contribute enormously to our understanding of the totality of the Holocaust. Many of those who speak in these pages attempted, often at extreme peril, to assist Jewish friends, neighbors, and even strangers who otherwise faced certain death at the hands of the German occupiers. Some took part in the underground resistance movement. Others, isolated from the Jews’ experience and ill-informed of that horror, were understandably preoccupied with their own survival in the face of brutal condition intended ultimately to exterminate or enslave the entire Polish population. These recollections of men and women are moving testimony to the human courage of a people struggling for survival against the rule of depravity. The power of their painful witness against the inhumanities of those times is undeniable. “Lukas presents a selection of oral and written memoirs of some 60 Polish men and women who lived through the German occupation of Poland in World War II.” —Library Journal

Bitter Legacy

Bitter Legacy PDF Author: Richard C. Lukas
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813114606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
A model of policy analysis, Arms Transfers under Nixon provides a lucid and lively demonstration of how the Nixon administration combined skillful diplomacy and the adroit use of arms transfers to bring about a remarkable series of American foreign policy achievements. The Middle East provides the most dramatic example. Here, the Arab-Israeli military balance was stabilized, Egypt was persuaded and enabled to forsake its heavy dependence upon the Soviet Union, conditions favorable to peace negotiations were arranged, and important interim agreements were brokered by the United States. In the Persian Gulf, the promotion of Iran and Saudi Arabia as effective guarantors of regional stability in the wake of British withdrawal, and maintaining the pro-Western orientation of these governments, are shown to have been essential to crucial United States and Western interests. The dramatic reversal with the collapse of the Shah's government is assessed, as are the causes of that post-Nixon debacle. The battles that accompanied the administration's initiatives -- battles with hostile nations, with allies, with the Congress, and even within the administration -- and the diplomatic and political moves by which opposition was overcome provide the stuff of an exciting and instructive narrative.

Dream Repairman

Dream Repairman PDF Author: Jim Clark
Publisher: eBookIt.com
ISBN: 0984512942
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Jim Clark shares his experiences as a highly successful film editor at a time when films were a true collaboration of talented individuals.The legendary "Doctor" Clark was the man who could make sick films healthy again. The role of editor in the collective, collaborative process that is the making of any film is massively important but not one that is generally recognized outside the small pond that is the filmmaking community. In this wonderfully enjoyable memoir, this point becomes steadily obvious, but it is made with subtlety, discretion, and modesty. The book is also a history of the post-war film industry in England and America as well as an autobiography. As William Boyd wrote in his Introduction, "The trouble with writing an autobiography is that you can't really say what a great guy you are, what fun you are to work with and hang out with, what insight and instinct you have about the art form of cinema, and how much and how many film directors are indebted to you."