The Jakarta Method

Author: Vincent Bevins
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541724011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Book Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States. In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth 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. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.

Washington Bullets

Author: Vijay Prashad
Publisher: Digital on Demand
ISBN: 1776378784
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent and readable stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. The book contains essays on acts of US imperialism, from the 1953 Iran coup to the 2019 ousting of Evo Morales in Bolivia. Despite all this, Washington Bullets is a book about possibilities, about hope, about genuine heroes. Washington Bullets is a book infused with this madness, the madness that dares to invent the future.

In the Time of Madness

Author: Richard Lloyd Parry
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802142931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
Reprint. Originally published: London: Jonathan Cape, 2005.

Hell's Half-Acre

Author: Susan Jonusas
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879847
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
One of NPR's "Books We Love" New York Times Book Review's "The Best True Crime of 2022" "Rich in historical perspective and graced by novelistic touches, grips the reader from first to last.”—Wall Street Journal A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war. In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders—one among the thousands relocating farther west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War—were capable of operating "a human slaughter pen" appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree and whether justice ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of postbellum America, Hell’s Half-Acre explores the environment capable of allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original archival material, Susan Jonusas introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing from the story. Among them are the families of the victims, the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives that helped the murderers escape. Hell’s Half-Acre is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of criminals can slip through a community’s fingers, only to reappear in the most unexpected of places.

Kopassus

Author: Kenneth J. Conboy
Publisher: Equinox Publishing
ISBN: 9799589886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
In a nation where the military has played an influential social and political role since its founding, perhaps no unit has wielded more power-and seen more action-than Kopassus, Indonesia's Special Forces. From the jungles of Irian Jaya to the backrooms of Jakarta's most powerful political figures, this elite group of commandos has influenced nearly every major policy decision taken since its inception in 1952. Here, for the first time, this secretive and controversial unit is exposed in KOPASSUS: Inside Indonesia's Special Forces by acclaimed author Ken Conboy. In this new age of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and especially in the wake of the October 2002 Bali bombing, understanding Kopassus is an integral part of understanding the politics of modern Indonesia. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in unconventional warfare, contemporary Indonesian history, and the brushfire wars that have swept the Indonesian archipelago over the past fifty years. KEN CONBOY is country manager for Risk Management Advisory, a private security consultancy in Jakarta. Prior to that, he served as deputy director at the Asian Studies Center, an influential Washington-based think tank, where his duties including writing policy papers for the U.S. Congress and Executive on economic and strategic relations with the nations of South and Southeast Asia. The author of a dozen books about Asian military history and intelligence operations, Conboy's most recent title, Spies in the Himalayas, has earned praise as an intriguing account of high-altitude mountaineering and covert missions. A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and of Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, Conboy was also a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and has lived in Indonesia since 1992.

The Quiet Americans

Author: Scott Anderson
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385540469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 722

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia—the gripping story of four CIA agents during the early days of the Cold War—and how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world. “Enthralling … captivating reading.” —The New York Times Book Review At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear—to some—that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA. Chronicling the fascinating lives of four agents, Scott Anderson follows the exploits of four spies: Michael Burke, who organized parachute commandos from an Italian villa; Frank Wisner, an ingenious spymaster who directed actions around the world; Peter Sichel, a German Jew who outwitted the ruthless KGB in Berlin; and Edward Lansdale, a mastermind of psychological warfare in the Far East. But despite their lofty ambitions, time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of ham-fisted politicking and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government.

The Killing Season

Author: Geoffrey B. Robinson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Book Description
The definitive account of one of the twentieth century’s most brutal, yet least examined, episodes of genocide and detention The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965–66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a million others in detention. An expert in modern Indonesian history, genocide, and human rights, Geoffrey Robinson sets out to account for this violence and to end the troubling silence surrounding it. In doing so, he sheds new light on broad, enduring historical questions. How do we account for instances of systematic mass killing and detention? Why are some of these crimes remembered and punished, while others are forgotten? Based on a rich body of primary and secondary sources, The Killing Season is the definitive account of a pivotal period in Indonesian history.

Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation

Author: Elizabeth Pisani
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244288
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
"A spectacular achievement and one of the very best travel books I have read." —Simon Winchester, Wall Street Journal Declaring independence in 1945, Indonesia said it would "work out the details of the transfer of power etc. as soon as possible." With over 300 ethnic groups spread across over 13,500 islands, the world’s fourth most populous nation has been working on that "etc." ever since. Author Elizabeth Pisani traveled 26,000 miles in search of the links that bind this disparate nation.

Planet Palm

Author: Jocelyn C. Zuckerman
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975246
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Finalist, Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism In the tradition of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, a groundbreaking global investigation into the industry ravaging the environment and global health—from the James Beard Award–winning journalist Over the past few decades, palm oil has seeped into every corner of our lives. Worldwide, palm oil production has nearly doubled in just the last decade: oil-palm plantations now cover an area nearly the size of New Zealand, and some form of the commodity lurks in half the products on U.S. grocery shelves. But the palm oil revolution has been built on stolen land and slave labor; it’s swept away cultures and so devastated the landscapes of Southeast Asia that iconic animals now teeter on the brink of extinction. Fires lit to clear the way for plantations spew carbon emissions to rival those of industrialized nations. James Beard Award–winning journalist Jocelyn C. Zuckerman spent years traveling the globe, from Liberia to Indonesia, India to Brazil, reporting on the human and environmental impacts of this poorly understood plant. The result is Planet Palm, a riveting account blending history, science, politics, and food as seen through the people whose lives have been upended by this hidden ingredient. This groundbreaking work of first-rate journalism compels us to examine the connections between the choices we make at the grocery store and a planet under siege.

The Way of the Knife

Author: Mark Mazzetti
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101617942
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
“The new American way of war is here, but the debate about it has only just begun. In The Way of the Knife, Mr Mazzetti has made a valuable contribution to it.” —The Economist A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s riveting account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies. This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime. Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the shadow war, from a CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played to the chain-smoking Pentagon official running an off-the-books spy operation, from a Virginia socialite whom the Pentagon hired to gather intelligence about militants in Somalia to a CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash. At the heart of the book is the story of two proud and rival entities, the CIA and the American military, elbowing each other for supremacy. Sometimes, as with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, their efforts have been perfectly coordinated. Other times, including the failed operations disclosed here for the first time, they have not. For better or worse, their struggles will define American national security in the years to come.