In the early morning hours of October 1, 1965, a group calling itself the September 30th Movement kidnapped and executed six generals of the Indonesian army, including its highest commander. The ...group claimed that it was attempting to preempt a coup, but it was quickly defeated as the senior surviving general, Haji Mohammad Suharto, drove the movement’s partisans out of Jakarta. Riding the crest of mass violence, Suharto blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia for masterminding the movement and used the emergency as a pretext for gradually eroding President Sukarno’s powers and installing himself as a ruler. Imprisoning and killing hundreds of thousands of alleged communists over the next year, Suharto remade the events of October 1, 1965 into the central event of modern Indonesian history and the cornerstone of his thirty-two-year dictatorship. Despite its importance as a trigger for one of the twentieth century’s worst cases of mass violence, the September 30th Movement has remained shrouded in uncertainty. Who actually masterminded it? What did they hope to achieve? Why did they fail so miserably? And what was the movement’s connection to international Cold War politics? In Pretext for Mass Murder , John Roosa draws on a wealth of new primary source material to suggest a solution to the mystery behind the movement and the enabling myth of Suharto’s repressive regime. His book is a remarkable feat of historical investigation.   Finalist, Social Sciences Book Award, the International Convention of Asian Scholars
Auto pact Anastakis, Dimitry
Auto pact,
c2005, 20051126, 2005, 2000, 2005-01-01, 20050101
eBook
The 1965 Canada-United States Automotive Trade agreement fundamentally reshaped relations between the automotive business and the state in both countries and represented a significant step toward the ...creation of an integrated North American economy. Breaking from previous conceptions of the agreement as solely a product of intergovernmental negotiation, Dimitry Anastakis'sAuto Pactargues that the 'big three' auto companies played a pivotal role - and benefited immensely - in the creation and implementation of this new automotive regime. With the border effectively erased by the agreement, the pact transformed these giant enterprises into truly global corporations.
Drawing from newly released archival sources, Anastakis demonstrates that, for Canada's automotive policy makers, continentalism was a form of economic nationalism. Although the deal represented the end of any notion of an indigenous Canadian automotive industry, significant economic gains were achieved for Canadians under the agreement. Anastakis provides a fresh and alternative view of the auto pact that places it firmly within contemporary debates about the nature of free trade as well as North American - and, indeed, global - integration. Far from being a mere artefact of history, the deal was a forebearer to what is now known as 'globalization.'
Lana and Lilly Wachowski have redefined the technically and topically possible while joyfully defying audience expectations. Visionary films like The Matrix trilogy and Cloud Atlas have made them the ...world's most influential transgender media producers, and their coming out retroactively put trans* aesthetics at the very center of popular American culture. Cáel M. Keegan views the Wachowskis films as an approach to trans* experience that maps a transgender journey and the promise we might learn "to sense beyond the limits of the given world." Keegan reveals how the filmmakers take up the relationship between identity and coding (be it computers or genes), inheritance and belonging, and how transgender becoming connects to a utopian vision of a post-racial order. Along the way, he theorizes a trans* aesthetic that explores the plasticity of cinema to create new social worlds, new temporalities, and new sensory inputs and outputs. Film comes to disrupt, rearrange, and evolve the cinematic exchange with the senses in the same manner that trans* disrupts, rearranges, and evolves discrete genders and sexes.
The book gives a detailed and final account of what happened on 1 October 1965 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Six anti-communist Army generals were kidnapped and then murdered. Mid-level officers were ...involved, as well as the leadership of the Indonesian Communist Party, PKI. Apparent aim was to move the country to the left. The plot failed due to swift action of major-general Suharto, the later President, until then completely unknown even to the CIA.The coup turned out to be a blunder of major proportions resulting in the annihilation of the PKI as organization. When the military found out that Sukarno himself had been behind the conspiracy, he was shunted aside without bringing him to court. Instead of left the country turned right.
Syria has long presented a difficult problem for American policymakers. Actively supportive of groups such as Hezbollah, it has occupied Lebanon for more than 20 years. Damascus remains intransigent ...on Israel's complete withdrawal from the disputed Golan Heights as the sine qua non for peace with that state. It is often mentioned in the same breath as members of the infamous "axis of evil." Syria occupies an important strategic position in the Middle East -one made even more significant as America considers long-term involvement in the reconstruction of Iraq. As the policy challenges posed by Syria's problematic behavior have grown more pressing in the recent security environment, the United States has had difficulty formulating a coherent and effective policy toward Damascus. The death of long-time dictator Hafiz al Assad has forced renewed debate on its place in the region. The transition from Assad to his son Bashar has thrown Western consensus on how to deal with the Syrian leadership further into doubt. Inheriting Syria fills this void with a detailed analytic portrait of the Syrian regime under Bashar's leadership. It draws implications for U.S. policy, offering a bold new strategy for achieving American objectives, largely via a strategy of "coordinated engagement" employing both sticks and carrots. This strategy would be independent of the Arab-Israeli peace process, thus a historical departure for the United States. The author's long service in the foreign policy establishment has uniquely positioned him to provide valuable insights into this mysterious yet important country. This book will be of high interest to those concerned about the Middle East, the war on terror, and the future of American foreign policy. Written for a general audience as well as the policymaking and academic communities,heriting Syria is isan important resource for all who seek deeper understanding of this enigmatic nation and its leadership.
Innovative Catholicism and the Human Condition gives an anthropological account of a progressive religious movement in the Roman Catholic Church that is attempting to reconcile religious conviction ...and reason, and, ergo, modify the human condition. Investigation is given to a representative group of this movement, "Innovative Catholics," who are endeavouring to maintain the momentum for change which began in the 1960s and 1970s. They now find themselves caught between traditional notions of religion and a secularised society, while trying to reconcile these polarising forces to find a pathway forward. While ethnographic fieldwork for this research was conducted in Australia, this movement is to be found across the Western world. The research is framed by the question posed by Jürgen Habermas, who asks whether the democratic constitutional state is able to renew itself, and recognises a benefit in learning from religion. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, subsequently Pope Benedict XVI, responds by asserting the need for a common ethical basis and limits on reason. This latter position, however, remains problematic for Innovative Catholics who are conscious of history and culture. The research explores how Innovative Catholics, who in taking the middle position, inform this dialectic on secularization through their ideas and practices about the human condition.
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