Gates of Erebus: Dark Paranormal Short Stories is a collaboration of some of the best indie authors from around the world. Herein are the tales of a mother condemned for witchcraft; a demon who shows up in the oddest of places; a soldier who leaves you wondering who really is the monster; a crumbling mutant and a would-be assassin; a murderous imp and a story darker than a killer's heart; one man's escape from Hell and the hell hounds that pursue him; a house haunted by more than just ghosts; a supernatural race born to keep the world of good and evil in balance; the devolution of the human race; and Death takes a wife. Dream Weaver Novels has gathered some of the world's best indie authors to bring you this dark anthology. So, grab your hot chocolate (or coffee) and your fuzzy warm blanket, and sit back and relax with these tales of horror...oh, you might want to check your doors and windows first!
The outspoken White House correspondent for ABC News offers insights into the high-pressure complexities of national news reporting, discusses his colleagues and friends, and explains what it's like to provoke presidents
This analysis of the United States and energy security examines the close relationship between US military supremacy in oil-rich regions and America's maintenance of global power. Energy security generally evokes thoughts of American intervention in the Middle East to protect US interests in that region's oil-rich fields. Doug Stokes and Sam Raphael move beyond that framework to consider US actions in Latin America, Central Asia, and Africa. Drawing on State and Defense Department records and other primary sources and previous scholarship, they show how US foreign policy since World War II has sought to maintain a global energy security regime that supports the nation's allies while maintaining American hegemony. Stokes and Raphael explain how US intervention in energy-rich states insulates and stabilizes those nations' transnationally oriented actors and political economies and why American oil diversification strategy strengthens the country's position against rivals in the global capitalist system. They argue that counterinsurgency aid and other types of coercive US statecraft protect the recipient states from an array of potentially revolutionary armed and unarmed internal social forces, thereby securing the energy supplies of nations deemed strategically important to the United States or its allies. Clear and accessible, this cutting-edge contemporary policy analysis will engage scholars of US foreign policy and international relations as well as policymakers grappling with the importance of energy security in today's world.
Almost every major American city is experimenting with school choice—a deeply controversial idea that is dramatically reshaping public education. Will the wider array of school options help parents and educators identify better strategies for helping all children learn? Or will the high stakes of the marketplace end up privatizing this most public of institutions? Education activist Sam Chaltain believes that before we can answer these questions, we must put a human face on the modern landscape of teaching and learning. Our School documents a year in the life of two schools in the nation’s capital—one a new charter school just opening its doors, the other a neighborhood school that first opened in 1924. Chaltain weaves together the observations and emotions of the people whose lives intersect there, and the triumphs and the challenges they experience. The result is an unsettling, complex portrayal of American public education. Our School is important reading for educational policymakers, administrators, parents, the media, and anyone who aspires to be a teacher. Book Features: Specific recommendations for creating a healthy, high-functioning school. A detailed account of what school choice actually looks and feels like to the people who experience it. A vivid description of the modern classroom and what it’s really like to teach in public school. An important focus on the humanity of teachers (their personal histories, their reasons for entering the profession, their day-to-day challenges). An intimate look at the inner lives of children (their biggest fears and needs, their moments of triumph and understanding). Sam Chaltain is a national educator and organizational change consultant based in Washington, DC. He was the National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project. Visit his blog at samchaltain.com. “What Our School shows with passion and precision is that education is about real people leading real lives in real places. If school doesn’t engage them, it doesn’t work, no matter what the accountants and policymakers may say. That’s what this book is really about and why it’s so important for anyone who genuinely cares about schools, communities, and their children.” —From the Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned author and educator “This is an important book. Our School is vibrant and alive. Sam Chaltain’s keen insights and warm, readable prose invite readers to experience the complex, challenging, often frustrating, and occasionally triumphant lives of four caring teachers and their students. I urge you to accept the invitation.” —John Merrow, education correspondent, PBS NewsHour, and president and executive producer, Learning Matters , Inc. “Sam Chaltain is one of the most important voices in public education today, and he writes wonderfully well. In Our School, Sam puts a human face on urban education, showing us what it’s like to be a teacher, student, or parent in the Brave New World of school choice. Parents, educators, and policymakers should read this book. The result will be a more informed and creative conversation about what public education ought to be, and how to make it that way.” —Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, The Courage to Teach, and Let Your Life Speak
Handbook of Green Building Design and Construction: LEED, BREEAM, and Green Globes, Second Edition directly addresses the needs of building professionals interested in the evolving principles, strategies, and concepts of green/sustainable design. Written in an easy to understand style, the book is updated to reflect new standards to LEED. In addition, readers will find sections that cover the new standards to BREEAM that involve new construction Infrastructure, data centers, warehouses, and existing buildings. Provides vital information and penetrating insights into three of the top Green Building Codes and Standards applied Internationally Includes the latest updates for complying with LEED v4 Practices and BREEAM Presents case studies that draws on over 35 years of personal experience from across the world
For challenge and encouragement in your Christian life, read the life stories of the Heroes of the Faith. The novelized biographies of this series are inspiring and easy-to-read, ideal for Christians of any age or background. In Billy Graham, you’ll get to know the tireless American evangelist who has seen millions of people worldwide accept Christ through his preaching crusades—and countless more through his writings, films, and radio and television broadcasts. Appropriate for readers from junior high through adult, helpful for believers of any background, these biographies encourage greater Christian commitment through the example of heroes like Billy Graham.
This book is about how new media, and in particular, digital and social media, has changed the world of sports forever. The way fans receive information, communicate and form communities now predominantly lives online. But perhaps even more significant is the evolution of the sports media industry, where digital media has impacted the broader media industry, stimulated new media organisations, changed old media organisations and altered old conventions of journalism in equal measure. Drawing on the expertise of academics, scholars, experts and professionals at the forefront of the sports, media, and journalism fields, the book suggests that new media has turned the sports industry on its head with profound implications – both exciting and disturbing.
From a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist specializing in the Middle East, this groundbreaking account of the Syrian Civil War reveals the never-before-published true story of a 21st-century humanitarian disaster. In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising -- an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis. Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar's bloody quest to preserve his father's inheritance. By drawing on his own reporting experience in Damascus and exclusive interviews with Tlass, Dagher takes readers within palace walls to reveal the family behind the destruction of a country and the chaos of an entire region. Dagher shows how one of the world's most vicious police states came to be and explains how a regional conflict extended globally, engulfing the Middle East and pitting the United States and Russia against one another. Timely, propulsive, and expertly reported, Assad or We Burn the Country is the definitive account of this global crisis, going far beyond the news story that has dominated headlines for years.
MacClinton, a modern tale of Bill Clinton’s political career told in the format of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This amusing drama is fleshed out with notes that detail Clinton’s scandals and cover-ups. After reading it, you’ll want to examine the character and actions of political candidates before voting for or against them.
Why President Trump has left us with no choice but to remove him from office, as explained by celebrated Supreme Court lawyer and former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal.
As a collection of politically engaged poetry for the 21st century, Nude Descending and Empire develops the lyrical voice of a citizen-poet speaking to the urgency of our contemporary moment, especially its ecological crisis. This is a book that brings all the supposed sensitivity of poetry into contact with the world we actually live in—with all its crises, madness, and modernity—and insists that we feel it all. A reader will recognize many of the urgent political issues of our time, yet will find them re-inhabited and transformed here by the imaginative power of poetry. Our great ecological crisis is cast as the fulfillment of a long history of violence, domination, lies, and alienation—in one word, empire—and the book suggests that a livable future requires that we wholly inhabit our body-heart-mind and discover a new paradigm.
Discover how the superwealthy made it to the top (and you can too!) From the richest Romans to the robber barons to today's bankers and tech billionaires, Sam Wilkin offers Freakonomics-esque insights into what it really takes to make a fortune. These stories of larger-than-life characters, strategies, and sacrifices reveal how the wealthiest did it, usually by a passion for finding loopholes, working around bureaucratic systems, and creating obstacles to competitors. Wealth Secrets of the One Percent gets at the heart of our feelings about the 1% of top income earners and the roughly 0.0001% who achieve billionaire status: we love to hate them, but we'd love to be them. Wilkin's insight into the sources of wealth is thought-provoking and rigorous, and he reveals that behind almost every great fortune is a "wealth secret" -- a moneymaking technique designed to defeat the forces of market competition.
Saddam Hussein and Usama Bin Laden... Saddam and the 9/11 attacks, There's no shortage of ties between the two. There was a relationship, but there's no concrete evidence of a collaborative relationship to 911. of confusion about Saddam and Bin Laden, and how close there were or were not. The smoke left by shadowy terrorists, Iraqi Intelligence Services agents, Western spies, and anonymous international media sources makes the haze even more impenetrable. Adding to this blindness is the curtain of political partisanship that was cast over the issue by both sides in the 2004 Presidential campaign. So what is the truth? reports, bi-partisan investigations, hundreds of media and literary sources, newly discovered documents found in post-war Iraq, interrogation reports of Saddam and captured senior Al Queda leaders. Coupled with the 20-20 hindsight vision of history and reports secured through the Freedom of Information Act, this book shows very clearly what is known, what the public is allowed to know, and not only allows readers to make their own assessments, but encourages just that.
Sam Ross’s novel is presented through the eyes of young Hershel Melov, the only child of an Eastern European immigrant family living in Chicago at the close of World War I. There are two legacies working at odds within the family; one is their old-world Ukranian heritage, and the other comes in the form of an insurance bequest which his father receives after Hershel’s uncle is killed while fighting in Europe. The money has a disastrous effect upon the family who prove inept players in the American “success” game.
These are the memoirs of a Wisconsin farm boy that grew up during the Great Depression accompanied by a great drought where many of the lakes dried up and much of the Midwests farmland simply blew away. The Depression ended abruptly the year I graduated from high school when WW II was declared and I was drafted into military service where I spent 3-1/2 years. I was critically wounded and spent the first 30 hours in a morgue followed by almost 1-1/2 years in military hospitals before I was discharged as a permanently disabled veteran. Because of my disabilities, I could never be a farmer and had to go somewhere else and develop new skills so I would be able to support my family. Jobs were hard to get because at the end of the war in Europe, 12 million healthy veterans had just been discharged and the economy was in limbo while industry was converting from wartime to peacetime economy. The story deals with how I started out as an apprentice electronic technician, became an engineer through home study, worked and lived on all continents and finally became Chief of the Navigation Engineering Branch at the Federal Aviation Administration Headquarters in Washington DC. It is a story of how I dealt with serious wartime disabilities and managed to develop a productive career at the same time
These volumes provide an essential comprehensive work of reference for the annual municipal elections that took place each November in the 83 County Boroughs of England and Wales between 1919 and 1938. They also provide an extensive and detailed analysis of municipal politics in the same period, both in terms of the individual boroughs and of aggregate patterns of political behaviour. Being annual, these local election results give the clearest and most authoritative record of how political opinion changed between general elections, especially useful for research into the longer gaps such as 1924-29 and 1935-45, or crisis periods such as 1929-31. They also illuminate the impact of fringe parties such as the Communist Party and the British Union of Fascists, and also such questions as the role of women in politics, the significance of religious and ethnic differentiation and the connection between occupational and class divisions and party allegiance. Analysis at the ward level is particularly useful for socio-spatial studies. A major work of reference, County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919-1938 is indispensable for university libraries and local and national record offices. Each volume has approximately 700 pages.
The Forgotten People takes place in present day and is about what could happen. It is based upon actual events of our history from Biblical times to present day, mostly regarding Bigfoot and aliens that would eventually be revealed to the world along with a major government conspiracy. Once unveiled to the world, our way of life may change unimaginably.
When he was twenty-five, Sam Aldrich danced with Queen Elizabeth II in London. By the time he was thirty-seven, he was marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Recounting the journey between and beyond those two points, and musing over the irony of the contrast they represent, is the subject of this remarkable and entertaining memoir. After a cosseted childhood in New York's silk stocking district, including weekends on Long Island's Gold Coast and summers in Dark Harbor, Maine, Aldrich was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue a career in high finance. "Dancing with the queen of England was just a small function of the privileged life and family into which I was born," he writes, "and events such as this would be a regular part of my upper-class, well-traveled social life." Instead, and to his parents' chagrin, he chose decades of hard work in the public sector, serving as deputy police commissioner in New York City, director of the New York State Division for Youth, executive assistant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, president of the Brooklyn Center of Long Island University, and commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, before entering teaching full-time at midlife. Illustrated with photographs from Aldrich's personal collection, this lively memoir offers personal insights into New York State politics and history. Whether working to develop an effective system for rehabilitating juvenile offenders in New York City, trying to find an environmentally sound means for development in the Hudson River Valley, or teaching public policy at SUNY's Empire State College, Aldrich shows what it means to follow one's passions and interests, and to take the gifts one has been given and use them to try to make this world a better place.
In economic sectors crucial to human welfare – agriculture, education, and medicine – a small number of firms control global markets, primarily by enforcing intellectual property (IP) rights incorporated into trade agreements made in the 1980s onward. Such rights include patents on seeds and medicines, copyrights for educational texts, and trademarks in consumer products. According to conventional wisdom, these agreements likewise ended hopes for a 'New International Economic Order,' under which wealth would be redistributed from rich countries to poor. Sam F. Halabi turns this conventional wisdom on its head by demonstrating that the New International Economic Order never faded, but rather was redirected by other treaties, formed outside the nominally economic sphere, that protected poor countries' interests in education, health, and nutrition and resulted in redistribution and regulation. This illuminating work should be read by anyone seeking a nuanced view of how IP is shaping the global knowledge economy.
A new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources In the year 802, an elephant arrived at the court of the Emperor Charlemagne in Aachen, sent as a gift by the ʿAbbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. This extraordinary moment was part of a much wider set of diplomatic relations between the Carolingian dynasty and the Islamic world, including not only the Caliphate in the east but also Umayyad al-Andalus, North Africa, the Muslim lords of Italy and a varied cast of warlords, pirates and renegades. The Emperor and the Elephant offers a new account of these relations. By drawing on Arabic sources that help explain how and why Muslim rulers engaged with Charlemagne and his family, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby provides a fresh perspective on a subject that has until now been dominated by and seen through western sources. The Emperor and the Elephant demonstrates the fundamental importance of these diplomatic relations to everyone involved. Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid’s imperial ambitions at home were shaped by their dealings abroad. Populated by canny border lords who lived in multiple worlds, the long and shifting frontier between al-Andalus and the Franks presented both powers with opportunities and dangers, which their diplomats sought to manage. Tracking the movement of envoys and messengers across the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and beyond, and the complex ideas that lay behind them, this book examines the ways in which Christians and Muslims could make common cause in an age of faith.
This book provides a critical and contemporary evaluation of the laws and enforcement policies pertaining to tax evasion in the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US). Since the inception of taxes, revenue collection authorities around the world have attempted to address the seemingly perennial problem of individuals evading their tax liabilities. The financial crisis has shone a new light on the issue with an increased interest in using the criminal justice system as a means of addressing it in the UK. In sharp contrast to the UK, the US has a strong record of prosecuting crimes of tax evasion, whether committed by individuals or professional corporate facilitators. Providing an evaluation of the UK’s tax evasion laws and enforcement policy, through a comparative approach, this work highlights insights provided by the US experience. In so doing, the book explores the interconnections between tax evasion and money laundering, identifying best practices, omissions, and areas for reform. The work will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and policy-makers working in the areas of financial crime, financial law, accountancy and criminal justice.
The process of appointing Supreme Court Justices has undergone changes over two centuries, but its most basic feature -- the sharing of power between the President and Senate -- has remained unchanged. To receive a lifetime appointment to the Court, a candidate must first be nominated by the President and then confirmed by the Senate. An important role also has come to be played midway in the process (after the President selects, but before the Senate considers) by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The book provides information on the amount of time taken to act on all Supreme Court nominations occurring between 1900 and the present. It focuses on the actual amounts of time that Presidents and the Senate have taken to act (as opposed to the elapsed time between official points in the process). This book focuses on when the Senate became aware of the President's selection (e.g., via a public announcement by the President).
This essential introduction to abnormal and clinical psychology explores the key areas, controversies and debates in the field and encourages students to think critically. Key features of this textbook include: The latest updates from DSM-5 and ICD-10 and a balanced critique of the diagnostic approach, keeping students at the forefront of the developments and debates in the field "Essential Debate" and "Essential Experience" boxes that encourage critical thinking and provide case study examples to help students critique the findings and apply them in practice Concise chapters providing students with the essentials they need to get a good grade in their module in Abnormal and Clinical Psychology Additional student resources available on the companion website. Suitable for all students taking Abnormal and Clinical Psychology modules.
Good writers follow the rules. Great writers know the rules—and follow their instincts! Finding the right words, in the right order, matters—whether you’re a student embarking on an essay, a job applicant drafting your cover letter, an employee composing an email . . . even a (hopeful) lover writing a text. Do it wrong and you just might get an F, miss the interview, lose a client, or spoil your chance at a second date. Do it right, and the world is yours. In Write to the Point, accomplished author and literary critic Sam Leith kicks the age-old lists of dos and don’ts to the curb. Yes, he covers the nuts and bolts we need to be in complete command of the language: grammar, punctuation, parts of speech, and other subjects half-remembered from grade school. But more importantly, he charts a commonsense course between the “Armies of Correctness” and the “Descriptivist Irregulars.” For Leith, knowing not just the rules but also how and when to ignore them—developing an ear for what works best in context—is everything. In this master class, Leith teaches us a skill of paramount importance in this smartphone age, when we all carry a keyboard in our pockets: to write clearly and persuasively for any purpose—to write to the point.
This unique book traces the past 200 years of German history, using an iconic German folk hero as a bellwether of changing politics and culture. In 1809, at the height of Napoleon's power in Europe, the Prussian Major Ferdinand von Schill led a revolt against the French empire. Within a month his rebellion was crushed, and Schill became a martyr for German nationalists. As the years passed, Schill's legend grew and evolved until he had become one of Germany's most famous and celebrated Napoleonic figures: the subject of hundreds of novels, poems, plays, operas, films, biographies, and monuments. Sam A. Mustafa explores the radical changes in German society and politics in the two centuries since Schill's death. In the first English-language work on the subject, he shows how Schill remarkably endured as other heroes fell in and out of fashion. For imperial propagandists, Liberal Democrats, Nazis, and Communists alike, he was a favorite historical icon and cultural touchstone. The author traces how an obscure failed rebel became a revered national symbol of patriotism and heroism and the ways each successive German regime coopted his story for its own ideological mission. Drawing on a rich array of primary and secondary sources, Mustafa considers the nature of patriotism, the creation of heroes and heroic mythology, and the fragility of history itself in a masterful narrative that will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in the German experience during the Napoleonic Wars.
A top scholar reveals how the Espionage Act gave rise to a vast American security state that keeps citizens in the dark In State of Silence, political historian Sam Lebovic uncovers the troubling history of the Espionage Act. First passed in 1917, it was initially used to punish critics of World War I. Yet as Americans began to balk at the act’s restrictions on political dissidents and the press, the government turned its focus toward keeping its secrets under wraps. The resulting system for classifying information is absurdly cautious, staggeringly costly, and shrouded in secrecy, preventing ordinary Americans from learning what their country is doing in their name, both at home and abroad. Shedding new light on the bloated governmental security apparatus that’s weighing our democracy down, State of Silence offers the definitive history of America’s turn toward secrecy—and its staggering human costs.
Nietzsche's philosophy stands at the intersection of many currents in science that animated the 19th century. Dynamic change in the humanities, natural and social sciences generated new methods, perspectives, and hierarchies of the sciences. This context is essential for understanding his philosophy. The 18 essays each discuss one academic discipline and its effects on Nietzsche's thought. It is thus a valuable guide to the history of science and ideas in the 19th century.
“A valuable history [and] a stark warning to Washington policy and strategy makers.” —James Stejskal, former US Army Special Forces and CIA officer In 2002, Sam Faddis was named to head a CIA team that would enter Iraq to facilitate the deployment of follow-on conventional military forces numbering over 40,000 American soldiers. This force, built around the 4th Infantry Division, would, in partnership with Kurdish forces and with the assistance of Turkey, engage Saddam’s army in the North as part of a coming invasion. Faddis expected to be on the ground in Iraq within weeks, the entire campaign likely to be over by summer. Over the course of the next year, virtually every aspect of that plan for the conduct of the war in northern Iraq fell apart. The 4th Infantry Division never arrived, nor did any other conventional forces in substantial number. The Turks not only refused to provide support, they worked overtime to prevent the United States from achieving success. And an Arab army that was to assist US forces fell apart before it ever made it to the field. Alone, hopelessly outnumbered, short on supplies, and threatened by Iraqi assassination teams and Islamic extremists, Faddis’s team, working with Kurdish peshmerga, miraculously paved the way for a brilliant and largely bloodless victory in the North and the fall of Saddam’s Iraq. That victory, handed over to Washington and the Department of Defense on a silver platter, was then squandered. The decisions that followed would lead to catastrophic consequences that continue to this day. This is the story of the brave and effective team of men and women who overcame massive odds to help end the nightmare of Saddam’s rule. It is also the story of how incompetence, bureaucracy, and ignorance threw that success away and condemned Iraq and the surrounding region to chaos
During the Civil War, 15 year old E. G. Koenig wrote a series of letters to his mother describing his experiences and feelings. Koenig was a German immigrant who enlisted as a volunteer substitute enlistee. The appendices contain original copies of his letters, an analysis of his acquiring an American identity through his signatures, and a listing of his family and descendants. The book is liberally filled with old photos and etchings. A classic Civil War narrative through the eyes of a young German immigrant.
Barack Hussein Obama.........Few Are Chosen....The Obamanating Spirit and Remembered Stories" is an inspired book written about Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America. The book consists of several topics that I hope the reader will find enlightening. It is a look backwards, in that I tell the audience about the segregated South and a look forward, the place where we must strive to be. Nevertheless, I hope that each individual will enjoy reading my book, which incorporates biography, humor, historical facts, scripture, and religious beliefs. It is not an attack on anyone or any group. It is intended to be an eye-opener in that it deals with several topics that relate to the President including birth, patriotism and religion. Each chapter discusses what I believe is an American peoples concern. Some people might see my book as a book on race relations and to some degree it is, but gently. There are thirteen chapters. In Chapter Five I discuss the forty year prophesy of the coming of Barack Obama; while in Chapter Seven I discuss the struggles of African Americans "then and now," the African American churches, including Rev. Wright, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King (among other things); Chapter Nine, "Forcing Scared Against The President" discusses how the politicians work overtime to portray President Obama illegitimately to the American Public, and Chapter Ten, disputes the assertion that Barack Obama is a radical (Really?); Chapter Eleven, "Will the Real Mr. Speaker Stand," questions the heart of John Boehner and Chapter Twelve, "Guess Who's Coming To The Tea Party" warns the Tea Party that they could very easily become the terror group of the past. Chapter One, "I Saw An Angel" is the foundation for the book and how it all got started.
Department of Startup: Why Every Fortune 500 Should Have One aims to help CEOs, presidents, and human resource practitioners on how they can transform their large corporation to thrive in a fast, social media conscious, and unforgiving market a la startup. The ascent of startups on the Fortune 500 ranking, displacing some of the more notable companies, raised not only attention but also questions. Fundamentally, startups are built on a very different organizational culture as compared to a traditional Fortune 500. Could these cultural differences be the reason startups are in the forefront of technology innovation, disrupting industries dominated by more established competitors and thriving in today’s volatile business environment? Department of Startup: Why Every Fortune 500 Should Have One aims to help CEOs, presidents, and human resource practitioners on how they can transform their large corporation to thrive in a fast, social media conscious, and unforgiving market a la startup.
Today global democracy is at a crossroads because of the rise in polarized politics, authoritarian regimes and the use of social media to manipulate and amplify lies, hate and misinformation. While electoral democracy continues to be the most prevalent form of government, a series of indicators measuring political and civic freedom reveal that the institution of democracy is in deep distress. With the liberal foundations of democracy shakier than ever before, confidence in institutions has plummeted. This book looks at this paradox of so-called democratic success coupled with its liberal decline. It provides a detailed analysis of the essence of democracy, its workings, the kind of values it needs to encapsulate, forces and safeguards which work in liberal democracy’s favour and how they can be preserved. This book is meant to stimulate conversation, particularly among the youth on what the idea of democracy means to them and the role that they can play in helping democracy survive—and thrive—in the coming era.
Free as in Freedom interweaves biographical snapshots of GNU project founder Richard Stallman with the political, social and economic history of the free software movement. It examines Stallman's unique personality and how that personality has been at turns a driving force and a drawback in terms of the movement's overall success.Free as in Freedom examines one man's 20-year attempt to codify and communicate the ethics of 1970s era "hacking" culture in such a way that later generations might easily share and build upon the knowledge of their computing forebears. The book documents Stallman's personal evolution from teenage misfit to prescient adult hacker to political leader and examines how that evolution has shaped the free software movement. Like Alan Greenspan in the financial sector, Richard Stallman has assumed the role of tribal elder within the hacking community, a community that bills itself as anarchic and averse to central leadership or authority. How did this paradox come about? Free as in Freedom provides an answer. It also looks at how the latest twists and turns in the software marketplace have diminished Stallman's leadership role in some areas while augmenting it in others.Finally, Free as in Freedom examines both Stallman and the free software movement from historical viewpoint. Will future generations see Stallman as a genius or crackpot? The answer to that question depends partly on which side of the free software debate the reader currently stands and partly upon the reader's own outlook for the future. 100 years from now, when terms such as "computer," "operating system" and perhaps even "software" itself seem hopelessly quaint, will Richard Stallman's particular vision of freedom still resonate, or will it have taken its place alongside other utopian concepts on the 'ash-heap of history?
This is the first book to examine the concept of anti-access and area denial warfare, providing a definitive introduction to both conceptual theories and historical examples of this strategy. Also referred to by the acronym "A2/AD," anti-access warfare has been identified in American strategic planning as the most likely strategy to be employed by the People's Republic of China or by the Islamic Republic of Iran in any future conflict with the United States. While previous studies of the subject have emphasized the effects on the joint force and, air forces in particular, this important new study advances the understanding of sea power by identifying the naval roots of the development of the anti-access concept. The study of anti-access or area denial strategies for use against American power projection capabilities has strong naval roots-which have been largely ignored by the most influential commentators. Sustained long-range power projection is both a unique strength of U.S. military forces and a requirement for an activist foreign policy and forward defense. In more recent years, the logic of the anti-access approach has been identified by the Department of Defense as a threat to this U.S. capability and the joint force. The conclusions in Anti-Access Warfare differ from most commentary on anti-access strategy. Rather than a technology-driven post-Cold War phenomenon, the anti-access approach has been a routine element of grand strategy used by strategically weaker powers to confront stronger powers throughout history. But they have been largely unsuccessful when confronting a stronger maritime power. Although high technology weapons capabilities enhance the threat, they also can be used to mitigate the threat. Rather than arguing against reliance on maritime forces-presumably because they are no longer survivable-the historical analysis argues that maritime capabilities are key in "breaking the great walls" of countries like Iran and China.
Iraq is a nation in crisis bordering on civil war. The country now faces growing violence, a steady rise in Sunni Islamist extremism, an increasingly authoritarian leader that favors Iraq’s Sunnis, and growing ethnic tension between Arabs and Kurds. The recent Iraqi election offers little promise that it can correct the corruption, the weaknesses in its security forces, and the critical failures in governance, economic development, and leadership. The problems Iraq faces in 2014 are a legacy of mistakes made during and after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but increasingly the nation is dealing with the self-inflicted wounds of its leaders who abuse human rights, repress opposing factions, and misuse the Iraqi police and security forces to their own end.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.