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Al-Qaeda is conventionally portrayed as a monolithic, hierarchical organization whose activities – coordinated by the network's leader Osama bin Laden – are the source of international terrorism today. Al-Qaeda is considered a radical tendency within the broader Islamist Salafi movement, legitimizing its terrorist operations as a global Islamist jihad against Western civilization. Al-Qaeda's terrorist activity today is considered, “blowback” from long finished CIA and western covert operations in Afghanistan.

The conventional wisdom is demonstrably false. After the Cold War, Western connections with al-Qaeda proliferated around the world, challenging mainstream conceptions of al-Qaeda's identity. Western covert operations and military – intelligence connections in strategic regions show that “al-Qaeda” is a network whose raison d’etre and modus operandi are inextricably embedded in a disturbing conglomerate of international Western diplomatic, financial, military and intelligence policies today. US, British, and Western power routinely manipulates al-Qaeda through a complex network of state-regional and human nodes. Such manipulation extended directly to the 9-11 hijackers, and thus to the events of 9-11 itself.11This paper advances an original argument based partially on research in Ahmed (2005), supplemented here with significant new data and analysis. Also see Ahmed (2002).

Interest in narrative pedagogies is growing. However, few studies have been conducted outside Western contexts. There remains a paucity of narrative research published by Japanese scholars, despite a pervasive culture of “teacher to teacher conversations,” storytelling, reflection, and action research by teachers in Japan. Thus, this research fills an important gap in the literature. It provides exemplars from preservice teacher education, higher education, and high school, as these educational milieus reflect the notion of “traveling stories” (Olson & Craig, 2009). We describe how this narrative pedagogy is interpreted from an insider’s point of view, through the voices of teacher education students, teachers, and teacher educators. In this process, students and teachers become curriculum-makers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1988; Craig & Ross, 2008), co-constructing knowledge, and reshaping teacher knowledge and identity. Narrative teacher education pedagogies resonate with Japanese teachers and play an important role in curriculum, teaching, and learning in Japan within our increasingly interconnected world. Furthermore, narrative relates favorably to many Japanese cultural practices, including kankei (interrelationships), kizuna (bonds), and kizuki (with-it-ness). These are important, integral, and tacit elements of Japanese teachers’ practices because they embody the “mind and heart” of their personal practical sense of knowing. Furthermore, these practices involve placing other people’s needs ahead of our own – an essential skill for global citizens of the 21st century.

France, once a pioneer in psychiatry, is now sinking as its population faces major mental health challenges. This includes the 12 Million French individuals with psychiatric conditions, the lack of appropriate structures and the shortage of skilled mental health professionals, but it also leaves families in critical situations. The purpose of this study is to explore the carers’ caregiving experiences and to suggest ways to organise educational programmes to support mental health carers in France.

The research was conducted from January 2018 to November 2019. It included French carers of patients with mental conditions. Recorded semi-structured interviews were used and findings were analysed through an inductive thematic analysis and regrouped into key themes.

Participants had overwhelming negative representations of “mental illness”. The fact that they were excluded from participating in the patient’s health management further added to their misconceptions around mental disability, it limited their communication with their family and amplified their burdens.

There is an urgent need for carer empowerment; carers should be included in educational programmes, they should benefit from French Government subsidies and social-network assistance and receive quality assistance by trained mental health professionals. The critical situation of carers can only be addressed by combining these three steps and through the action of appropriate actors in the field of mental health, thus alleviating the current paradigm of psychiatric care in France.

Thousands of research papers regarding carers have been published in other countries. In addition yet, to the knowledge, only a few investigations on French mental health carers have been conducted to this day. The singularity of this research lies in the rare individual interviews, which provided us with first-hand testimonies of mental health carers in France. This data could be of vital aid for professionals and for policymakers when advocating for better support of carers in mental health.

By looking at a selection of iconic modern projects designed by or commissioned to the prominent but not well-examined architect Sami Abdul Baki both in Lebanon and Kuwait during his most productive years in the 50s, this paper attempts to identify first main trends, influences and ideologies that shaped these works at the peak of modern architectural development in the region. Through these examples, the paper then aims at retracing predominant trajectories of intellectual capital exchange and transfer of knowledge between Lebanon and Kuwait. These can go far beyond their territorial boundaries, without claiming a single grand-narrative that describes the modern architectural development in any of the two countries.

The data collected from discourse analysis, interviews and biographical notes were mapped into a schematic diagram illustrating a complex network of connections and multidisciplinary involvement in projects.

However, the outcome did not generate a dominant theme for the projects or expertise of the architect.

It is very likely that Sami Abdul Baki's strong political dimension and quality as a mediator or facilitator in addition to his strong network of contacts played a significant role in the project commissions that he has won as an architect/engineer in Kuwait, Lebanon, Germany and other countries.

Purpose – This chapter examines the international Clubhouse movement, which features a unique “partnership model” that enables individuals who have serious and persistent mental illness to take an active role in their recovery. Consumer–provider and consumer–consumer supportive relationships are deepened through engagement in a range of cooperative activities both in the Clubhouse and in the local community.

Methodology – Data for this study have been gathered via case materials, semi-structured interviews, review of official publications, direct experience, participant observation, primary and secondary sources.

Findings – This study is consistent with other research demonstrating the efficacy of the Clubhouse model in providing mental health consumer assistance and support to gain paid employment, an education, and adequate housing.

Research limitations – While data have been gathered from a variety of sources encompassing a large number of Clubhouses, this is a single case study that includes limited comparative analysis with other modalities.

Practical implications – The Clubhouse model is an option that shows great promise for assisting mental health consumers to obtain employment, education, housing, and supportive relationships including peer support. It also promotes leadership development and participation in collective action for policy reform.

Originality/value – The Clubhouse approach is grounded in an empowerment paradigm of helping that emphasizes a strengths-based perspective, resiliency, activated consumers, collaborative partnerships with professionals, high expectations, self-help, mutual assistance, self-advocacy, and collective action for social change.

That opportunities for gainfully employing persons with severe mental illness should be maximized is a position around which there is virtual unanimity. But identifying obstacles to this goal and ways to overcome them is another matter – one that, in different forms, has engaged members of a number of disciplines. In this volume we bring together diverse disciplinary perspectives from psychology, psychiatry, statistics, occupational therapy and psychiatric rehabilitation research, sociology and labor economics to discuss a range of topics related to employment and mental illness. The papers included here span a range of domains, from “person – level” questions of person-environment fit to the broad societal effects of labor markets. Evaluative perspectives on various approaches that the mental health community has taken in seeking to advance the employment of persons with serious mental illness are also examined. While we will not claim to have represented every perspective currently in play in research on employment for persons with mental illness, we feel this volume represents the multi-disciplinary flavor of the small but growing research establishment in this area.