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Where To Buy?
Ceasefire is published by both Amazon/Kindle and Xlibris Publishing. It is also available (softcopy) to be purchased directly from me - the author for $20 (Aus) plus postage. Simply contact me on [email protected] |
Ceasefire! The Ivan Molloy Story
Synopsis
This book is based on the true story of my own and my contemporary Australian family’s experiences through wars and other conflicts over three generations; and the psychological, social, and political consequences myself and my family endured as a result. In 2012 as a former Australian academic and one-time aspiring politician, I fled to France.
Battling with clinical depression, associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I sought to escape the nightmare of a destroyed academic and political career, and a shattered family life. I considered myself a victim not only of the ongoing negative psychological consequences from my active academic research into Islamic terrorism; but also the lasting psychological damage inflicted on me by an unjust media smear campaign waged by my political opponents, to discredit my candidacy in the much earlier 2004 Australian Federal Election campaign.
During my PhD field research in the 1980s, I had revealed the murderous realities of the covert Reagan-era US foreign policy in war zones such as in the Philippines and Central America. But much later my political opponents branded me as a ‘terrorist’ sympathiser and supporter of ‘Islamic terrorism’ in the southern Philippines. The result? My life was left in tatters.
Over time, I tried to come to terms with my constant battle against the ‘Black Dog’ of depression, and I decided suicide was an option for me. But first, I decided to write a book about my research and experiences with revolutionary guerrilla groups including the communist New People's Army in the Philippines. It was my way of at last combating the smear campaign that destroyed my professional and private life. But in order to do this I
knew I needed to find and retrace both my own, and members of my greater family’s earlier experiences with conflicts elsewhere, which collectively influenced me to pursue such dangerous research in many war zones around the world. In so doing I discovered new realities about my psychological condition and how it brutally haunted my own extended
family from generation to generation.
Such work saw me investigate my grandfather's experiences in Gallipoli, my great uncle's in the Somme, my own father's experiences in Word War Two and then his violent days as a boxer and a street brawler, and then a communist in Cold War Australia. It also touched on the union battles, the struggle in Vietnam and my family's stance against that conflict. And then the domestic psychological consequences of being political outcasts in our own community; of my brother joining the Hell's Angels, and of my oldest brother nearly being killed in the 1983 bushfires - and so much more; finally ending in the nightmares of my own activities from drug overdoses, Outlaw Biker brawls, me running with Moro Islamic Guerrillas, and then communist murder, or 'hit' squads in the Philippines and elsewhere.
Ultimately, I concluded that like so many countless thousands of others, I am merely a part of a brutal human ‘firing order’ phenomenon. A psychological condition of our society and political culture that continually infects and shapes the next generations to come. I found I was neither alone, nor my condition uninfluenced. I was just another link in a long chain of human events perpetrating both conflict among peoples and the resulting deadly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that affects such participants. With a greater understanding of my condition, I finally attempted to come to peace with the Black Dog and called for a 'Ceasefire'.
But what ultimately happened to me, this particular Australian psychological casualty of conflict? It all played out in Ouroux En Morvan, France. I survived but my brother didn't and later neither did my young daughter. And I am still to find any peace. The Black Dog takes no prisoners.
Dr Ivan Molloy
Synopsis
This book is based on the true story of my own and my contemporary Australian family’s experiences through wars and other conflicts over three generations; and the psychological, social, and political consequences myself and my family endured as a result. In 2012 as a former Australian academic and one-time aspiring politician, I fled to France.
Battling with clinical depression, associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I sought to escape the nightmare of a destroyed academic and political career, and a shattered family life. I considered myself a victim not only of the ongoing negative psychological consequences from my active academic research into Islamic terrorism; but also the lasting psychological damage inflicted on me by an unjust media smear campaign waged by my political opponents, to discredit my candidacy in the much earlier 2004 Australian Federal Election campaign.
During my PhD field research in the 1980s, I had revealed the murderous realities of the covert Reagan-era US foreign policy in war zones such as in the Philippines and Central America. But much later my political opponents branded me as a ‘terrorist’ sympathiser and supporter of ‘Islamic terrorism’ in the southern Philippines. The result? My life was left in tatters.
Over time, I tried to come to terms with my constant battle against the ‘Black Dog’ of depression, and I decided suicide was an option for me. But first, I decided to write a book about my research and experiences with revolutionary guerrilla groups including the communist New People's Army in the Philippines. It was my way of at last combating the smear campaign that destroyed my professional and private life. But in order to do this I
knew I needed to find and retrace both my own, and members of my greater family’s earlier experiences with conflicts elsewhere, which collectively influenced me to pursue such dangerous research in many war zones around the world. In so doing I discovered new realities about my psychological condition and how it brutally haunted my own extended
family from generation to generation.
Such work saw me investigate my grandfather's experiences in Gallipoli, my great uncle's in the Somme, my own father's experiences in Word War Two and then his violent days as a boxer and a street brawler, and then a communist in Cold War Australia. It also touched on the union battles, the struggle in Vietnam and my family's stance against that conflict. And then the domestic psychological consequences of being political outcasts in our own community; of my brother joining the Hell's Angels, and of my oldest brother nearly being killed in the 1983 bushfires - and so much more; finally ending in the nightmares of my own activities from drug overdoses, Outlaw Biker brawls, me running with Moro Islamic Guerrillas, and then communist murder, or 'hit' squads in the Philippines and elsewhere.
Ultimately, I concluded that like so many countless thousands of others, I am merely a part of a brutal human ‘firing order’ phenomenon. A psychological condition of our society and political culture that continually infects and shapes the next generations to come. I found I was neither alone, nor my condition uninfluenced. I was just another link in a long chain of human events perpetrating both conflict among peoples and the resulting deadly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that affects such participants. With a greater understanding of my condition, I finally attempted to come to peace with the Black Dog and called for a 'Ceasefire'.
But what ultimately happened to me, this particular Australian psychological casualty of conflict? It all played out in Ouroux En Morvan, France. I survived but my brother didn't and later neither did my young daughter. And I am still to find any peace. The Black Dog takes no prisoners.
Dr Ivan Molloy