Truth in the Cage


Book Description

A collection of poetry written by a detainee on Manus Island




Escape from the American Cage


Book Description

Never doubted, We the People love our country, but are we ready to love its people too? Are we ready to write a New Declaration based on Truth, Dignity, and Love? Are we ready to escape from the American Cage and fly away to our new home - new America? This book is about how to escape from our American Cage and regain our lost independence by living in accordance with "The New Declaration." It is about how to regain not only our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but also find purpose, attain dignity, build meaningful relationships and find love. It is a dream about human-centered capitalism and democracy in a united, prosperous, and flourishing society. On the surface, indeed, the United States of America looks like a great nation and country, the biggest world power, the most prosperous economy ever created, the best democracy, the land of unlimited possibilities for everyone who wants to make their American dreams come true, and an oasis of freedom and respect for life and happiness. In Escape from the American Cage, author Konrad Milewski argues that this vision belies the fact that America is only a dreamland for a small percentage of its population. The majority of Americans feel tired, used, betrayed, abandoned, unsafe, and hopeless. They hide frustrations that can easily turn into anger and aggression. The U.S. is performing poorly and substantially below most comparably wealthy nations when it comes to happiness. America is a violent country. The rate of murder by firearm is the highest in the developed world. America experiences huge socioeconomic inequality and injustice. Millions of Americans live in poverty, without healthcare, and without education. America has the world's highest rates of substance abuse. About 35% of adult Americans are chronically lonely. Americans are divided. The system that has been created is clearly preventing people from flourishing. And paradoxically, the point is not that the economic system or the justice system are seriously broken. It works exactly the way it was designed to work. This book is an invitation to build a safe, prosperous, united and happy society, the United Societies of America - the best human-centered economy and superpower on earth. "An incredible book about an incredible nation. It seeks out the deepest truths, challenges the most difficult problems, offers long-awaited solutions as well as faith, hope and love. It is about the greatest escape in human history from the most precious, most guarded, and strongest golden cage ever made - The American Cage." The prize is great and monumental. Your independence and our independence. Your happiness and our happiness! Support the movement: The United Societies of America, U*S*A www.unitedsocietiesofamerica.org www.americancage.org




The Truth is


Book Description

Closed off and grieving her best friend, fifteen-year-old overachiever Verdad faces prejudices at school and from her traditional mother, her father's distance since his remarriage, and her attraction to a transgender classmate.




Rattling the Cage


Book Description

Most South Africans have strong views on our past and present, often based on how we have been personally affected by history, and an understanding of the challenges that face us as a country. But how well-examined and solid are these positions? Have your views been properly thought through? Are you correctly informed? Do you even have the facts straight? Rattling the Cage takes the reader on an informed tour of the South African reality: from the highs and lows, the successes and failures, FW de Klerk’s gaffes to Fees Must Fall, the Oscar Pistorius trial, the 2010 FIFA World Cup, triple BEE, global warming, the Covid-19 pandemic, gay rights in Africa, and veganism. Among the questions Meersman asks are: Do South Africans still believe in their Constitution and democracy? Why do so many young South Africans say Nelson Mandela was a sell-out and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a dismal failure? Is outlawing hate speech and criminalising racist behaviour really a good idea? Why do communities still burn down their schools? How did the Marikana massacre happen in the democratic era? Why are African immigrants increasingly unwelcome in South Africa? Can our media be trusted to tell us the truth? And how do we embrace climate change? History, big-picture philosophy, grassroots journalism and a novelist’s eye – animated by a genuine sense of moral indignation at the current state of the nation – come together in these essays to provide critical perspectives on and insights into South Africa’s recent past and current political, economic and social undercurrents. No matter what your views are, you are sure to find your understanding of the country deepened, challenged and sometimes changed.




Silence


Book Description

John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: "Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant." "He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It's what's happening now." –The American Record Guide "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away."




Sometimes We Tell the Truth


Book Description

In this contemporary retelling of The Canterbury Tales, a group of teens on a bus ride to Washington, DC, each tell a story—some fantastical, some realistic, some downright scandalous—in pursuit of the ultimate prize: a perfect score. Jeff boards the bus for the Civics class trip to Washington, DC, with a few things on his mind: -Six hours trapped with his classmates sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. -He somehow ended up sitting next to his ex-best friend, who he hasn’t spoken to in years. -He still feels guilty for the major part he played in pranking his teacher, and the trip’s chaperone, Mr. Bailey. -And his best friend Cannon, never one to be trusted and banned from the trip, has something “big” planned for DC. But Mr. Bailey has an idea to keep everyone in line: each person on the bus is going to have the chance to tell a story. It can be fact or fiction, realistic or fantastical, dark or funny or sad. It doesn’t matter. Each person gets a story, and whoever tells the best one will get an automatic A in the class. But in the middle of all the storytelling, with secrets and confessions coming out, Jeff only has one thing on his mind—can he live up to the super successful story published in the school newspaper weeks ago that convinced everyone that he was someone smart, someone special, and someone with something to say. In her debut novel, Kim Zarins breathes new life into Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in a fresh and contemporary retelling that explores the dark realities of high school, and the ordinary moments that bring us all together.




Truth


Book Description

A controversial, declassified novel about African American men involuntarily subjected to the US War Dept.'s "Super soldier" project covering the time from the Pearl Harbor attack in the Second World War to the present. It reveals the tragic sacrifice made by a black infantry unit for its country.




The Lizard Cage


Book Description

Set during Burma's military dictatorship of the mid—1990s, Karen Connelly’s exquisitely written and harshly realistic debut novel is a hymn to human resilience and love. In the sealed-off world of a vast Burmese prison known as the cage, Teza languishes in solitary confinement seven years into a twenty-year sentence. Arrested in 1988 for his involvement in mass protests, he is the nation’s most celebrated songwriter whose resonant words and powerful voice pose an ongoing threat to the state. Forced to catch lizards to supplement his meager rations, Teza finds emotional and spiritual sustenance through memories and Buddhist meditation. The tiniest creatures and things–a burrowing ant, a copper-coloured spider, a fragment of newspaper within a cheroot filter–help to connect him to life beyond the prison walls. Even in isolation, Teza has a profound influence on the people around him. His integrity and humour inspire Chit Naing, the senior jailer, to find the courage to follow his conscience despite the serious risks involved, while Teza’s very existence challenges the brutal authority of the junior jailer, perversely nicknamed Handsome. Sein Yun, a gem smuggler and prison fixer, is his most steady human contact, who finds delight in taking advantage of Teza by cleverly tempting him into Handsome's web with the most dangerous contraband of all: pen and paper. Lastly, there's Little Brother, an orphan raised in the jail, imprisoned by his own deprivation. Making his home in a tiny, corrugated-metal shack, Little Brother stays alive by killing rats and selling them to the inmates. As the political prisoner and the young boy forge a cautious friendship, we learn that both are prisoners of different orders; only one of them dreams of escape and only one of them achieves it. Barely able to speak, losing the battle of the flesh but winning the battle of the spirit, Teza knows he has the power to transfigure one small life, and to send a message of hope and resistance out of the cage. Shortlisted for both the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, The Lizard Cage has received rave reviews nationally and internationally.




Caged


Book Description

Caged is an honest and introspective memoir detailing the never-before-told other side of an international, headline story. Lara M. Sabanosh takes readers through the prequel of the main story—the first twenty years of her tumultuous marriage to Christopher Tur—outlines events as she lived them on the night Christopher went missing in Guantanamo Bay’s Naval Base. Caged offers a call to action for reform as it relates to domestic violence. Readers from many walks of life—from military buffs to survivors of domestic abuse, from mothers to those caught in others' lies—will find Caged fascinating and emotional. It is an encompassing raw, honest, and inspiring memoir six years in the making.




Begin Again


Book Description

A man of extraordinary and seemingly limitless talents—musician, inventor, composer, poet, and even amateur mycologist—John Cage became a central figure of the avant-garde early in his life and remained at that pinnacle until his death in 1992 at the age of eighty. Award-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman gives us the first comprehensive life of this remarkable artist. Silverman begins with Cage’s childhood in interwar Los Angeles and his stay in Paris from 1930 to 1931, where immersion in the burgeoning new musical and artistic movements triggered an explosion of his creativity. Cage continued his studies in the United States with the seminal modern composer Arnold Schoenberg, and he soon began the experiments with sound and percussion instruments that would develop into his signature work with prepared piano, radio static, random noise, and silence. Cage’s unorthodox methods still influence artists in a wide range of genres and media. Silverman concurrently follows Cage’s rich personal life, from his early marriage to his lifelong personal and professional partnership with choreographer Merce Cunningham, as well as his friendships over the years with other composers, artists, philosophers, and writers. Drawing on interviews with Cage’s contemporaries and friends and on the enormous archive of his letters and writings, and including photographs, facsimiles of musical scores, and Web links to illustrative sections of his compositions, Silverman gives us a biography of major significance: a revelatory portrait of one of the most important cultural figures of the twentieth century. !--?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /--