Going Crazy in the Green Machine
Going Crazy in the Green Machine

Author: John J. Whelan

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2014-11-18

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1460254635

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Many Canadians are vaguely aware of the military's steady involvement in overseas operations over the past 20 years. For many soldiers, however, memories of these places torment them daily. They are haunted; they are changed from who they were as proud men and women. How do we support these soldiers to find their way back home? The story of Master Corporal Billy Reardon is an intimate portrayal of his journey from young man to mentally wounded military veteran. We see the world through his eyes as the toll of his deployments mount and as he struggles within the mental health system. We also see him find recovery and reconnection to the military brotherhood along with other veterans. Billy's story raises questions about the roles of front-line leadership and challenges health providers to develop an intimate understanding of military culture as a prerequisite to assisting traumatized veterans and their families.

Ghost in the Ranks
Ghost in the Ranks

Author: John J. Whelan

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2016-04-21

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1460285301

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Operational Stress Injuries and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are among the possible consequences facing members of the Canadian military. Unlike the potential physical consequences of dangerous deployments, psychological injuries are not always apparent. Military members are taught a mental skillset to help them manage their internal emotional worlds allowing them to do extraordinary things. Unfortunately, while ingrained military training prepares our men and women for action as capable soldiers, this same training may also require them to trade aspects of their humanness-sowing the seeds for lingering mental distress. As a result, those most affected are left in a limbo, disconnected from their military roles and yet unable to relate to their former civilian lives. They become ghosts of their former selves, haunting the ranks until, more often than not, they find themselves on the outside looking in, with unacknowledged scars, anger, and regret. We ask a great deal of our men and women in uniform; if a shift in culture can help members of our military with mental distress, we owe it to them to make that shift possible....

Treated Like a Liability
Treated Like a Liability

Author: David T. MacLeod

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2019-08-26

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1525555189

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War has evolved, and so have Canada’s security needs. A key asset in any military is high-quality personnel. However, the Canadian Armed Forces ability to attract quality personnel hinges on the success of Veteran Affairs Canada’s ability to care for service men and women, and their families. The essays in this book identify failures within the Government of Canada and Veterans Affairs Canada to address the needs of veterans, especially the wounded and their families. The Government of Canada advertises benefits and services that veterans are supposed to receive, but institutional bias and indifference prevent them from accessing these much-needed resources. In addition to outlining various problems within the current system, this book offers numerous solutions to help policymakers, veterans, and others work together to rectify this situation, enabling Canada to continue to meet its military needs and obligations both at home and abroad.

Private Security and Identity Politics
Private Security and Identity Politics

Author: Jutta Joachim

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-18

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1317268555

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This book examines the self-representation and identity politics of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). PMSCs have become increasingly important over the past few decades. While their boom is frequently explained in functional terms, such as their cost-efficiency and effectiveness, this book offers an alternative explanation based on an analysis of the online self-presentations of forty-two US- and UK-based companies. PMSCs are shaping how they are perceived and establishing themselves as acceptable and legitimate security actors by eclectically appropriating identities more commonly associated with the military, businesses and humanitarian actors. Depending on their audience and clients’ needs, they can be professional hero warriors, or promise turn-key security solutions based on their exceptional expertise, or, in a similar way to humanitarians, reassure those in need of relief and try to make the world a better place. Rather than being merely public relations, the self-referential assertions of PMSCs are political. Not only do they contribute to a normalization of private security and reinforce an already ongoing blurring of lines between the public and private sectors, they also change what we deem to be ‘security’ and a ‘security actor’. This book will be of much interest to students of private military companies, critical security studies, military studies, security studies and IR.

Masculinities at the Margins
Masculinities at the Margins

Author: Amanda Chisholm

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-18

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1351009869

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Across a rich terrain of empirical and theoretical trajectories, the concept of military masculinity (now understood in its plural as military masculinities) has been a significant conceptual tool in both feminist international relations (IR) and in critical men and masculinities studies scholarship. The concept has helped us to unpack the relationships between gender, war, and militarism, including how military standards function in the production of wider normative, hegemonic manliness. As such, military masculinities has been a rewarding tool for many scholars who take a critical approach to the study of war and the military. This edited volume advances an emerging curiosity within accounts of military masculinities. This curiosity concerns the silences within, and disruptions to, our well-established and perhaps-too-comfortable understandings of, and empirical focal points for, military masculinities, gender, and war. The contributors to this volume trouble the ease with which we might be tempted to synonymize militaries, war, and a neat, ‘hegemonic’ masculinity. Taking the disruptions, the asides, and the silences seriously challenges the common wisdoms of military masculinities, gender, and war in productive and necessary ways. Doing so necessitates a reorientation of where, to whom, and for what we look to understand the operation of gendered military power. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of Critical Military Studies.

The Green Machine
The Green Machine

Author: Daisy M. Jenkins

Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 162787545X

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Gene Ramone Brook -- Chaplain Brookie -- ministers to black inmates in the Green Machine, the nickname for the privatized, for-profit prison that relies on a steady stream of black and brown inmates to fill the coffers of its big corporate contractors. It's a place where anguish quickly replaces hope. Chaplain Brookie's ministry aims to tackle the issues the inmates face and prepare them for life beyond the Green Machine. But it's not having the desired impact, so he decides to do something radically different. He pulls together an unlikely team of inmates to carry out his plan -- former businessman Mr. J who has spent twenty-nine years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, bright young rapper Chocolate who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Vanilla who was falsely framed as a drug kingpin by his wealthy classmates. Chaplain Brookie faces a major challenge when a fellow chaplain tries to sabotage his plan. The complicated, intriguing lives of these colorful characters come together in The Green Machine, a rare glimpse inside prison walls that illuminates the inmates' constant battle against degradation, humiliation, and dehumanization. Combining compassion and a compelling chronicle of prison life, author Daisy M. Jenkins shines a light on the problems and challenges of mass incarceration and the enormous need for rehabilitation. The Green Machine will make you laugh, cry, and think about life -- and those living it -- behind prison walls.

The Murder Artist
The Murder Artist

Author: John Case

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2004-10-12

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0345480554

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The bestselling author of The Genesis Code and The Eighth Day now strikes his most harrowing chord, with a chilling novel that pushes suspense to nearly inhuman limits. As a television news correspondent, Alex Callahan has traveled to some of the most dangerous corners of the globe, covering famine, plague, and war. He’s seen more than his share of blood and death, and knows what it means to be afraid. But what he’s never known is the terror that grabs him when, on a tranquil summer afternoon, he ceases to be an observer of the dark side and, to his shock, becomes enmeshed in it. Separated from his wife, and struggling not to become a stranger to his six-year-old twin sons, Alex is logging some all-too-rare quality time with the boys, when they vanish without a trace amid the hurly-burly of a countryside Renaissance Fair. Then the phone call comes. A chilling silence; slow, steady breathing; and the familiar, plaintive voice of a child–“Daddy?”–complete the nightmare . . . and set in motion a juggernaut of frenzy and agony. The longer the police search, exhausting leads without success, the deeper Alex’s certainty grows that time is running out. And when, at last, telltale signs reveal a hidden pattern of bizarre and ghoulish abductions, Alex vows to use his own relentless investigative skills to rescue his children from the shadowy figure dubbed The Piper. Whoever this elusive stranger is, the profile that slowly emerges–from previous crimes involving twins, from the zealously secret world of professional magicians, and from the eerie culture of voodoo–suggests that The Piper is a predator unlike any other. A twisted soul hell-bent on fulfilling an unspeakably dark dream. A fiend with a terrifying true calling. What Alex Callahan is closing in on is a monster with a mission.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

Author: Jason Fried

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-10-04

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 0008323453

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Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the authors of the New York Times bestseller Rework, are back with a manifesto to combat all your modern workplace worries and fears.