Politics & Current Affairs - Politics

ASLEEP AT THE GEIGER COUNTER vigorously exposes the destructive sweep of nuclear scams and frauds. It documents why nuclear programmes mean cancer everywhere, birth defects forever, the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons, increased chance of nuclear war, the undermining of our national defence, the loss of civil liberties and unending billions in subsidies which have been bleeding us dry, while actually delaying genuine energy independence.

Responsible energy policies can give us a golden age of environmental and economic benefits, a more peaceful world and conditions which will help rich and poor alike. We are getting the opposite of all that, sanctimoniously shrouded with a cloak of big lies. Some of those lies are so brazen, they violate the most basic laws of physics and engineering.

The book is written by an engineer who has been on the front line of varied research design and development for 42 years and, also, on the front line of ardent environmental activism. 

Paul Hawken has spent more than a decade researching organisations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofit organisations to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader or location and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. BLESSED UNREST explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies and centuries of hidden history. A culmination of Hawken's many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire all who despair of the world's fate and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself.

At this critical moment in the world’s history, we are called sharply but lovingly to think in new ways about our moral and political behaviour by Harold Schulweis, one of America’s great spiritual leaders. Like the biblical prophets, he speaks to people of all faiths, all backgrounds in this call for renewal of conscience. “The urgent challenge for religion is to provide religious groups with the resources needed to resist immoral authority. Religion is morally obligated to instill the sanctity of conscience that may balance the culture of obedience with the culture of moral disobedience.… Organized religion appears unable to envision the interdependent coexistence of obedience and disobedience, a time to obey and a time to disobey.” A provocative book, it examines the idea of conscience and the role conscience plays in our relationships to law, ethics, religion, human nature and God - and to each other. From Abraham to Abu Ghraib, from the dissenting prophets to Darfur, he probes history, the Bible and the works of contemporary thinkers for ideas about both critical disobedience and uncritical obedience, illuminating the potential for evil and the potential for good that rests within us as individuals and as a society.

Many people need to realise how often they allow some ideology to do their thinking for them. Very gradually fundamentalist ideas and beliefs have invaded their minds and hearts. Now they rarely think for themselves anymore on key issues. So writes author Robert R. Leichtman in this breakthrough book describing the curse of fundamentalism and how it poisons society with its arrogance and elitism. Dr. Leichtman reveals how fundamentalism dominates every segment of society--and what thinking people need to do in order to defeat it with their own thinking and in society as a whole.

The United States has more people locked away in prison per capita than any other country. Prison building is a multi-billion-dollar industry and in some states more money is spent on prisons and prisoners than on education. Nearly one quarter of all prison inmates worldwide are housed in U.S. jails or penitentiaries even though the United States has only five percent of the world's population. Yet in spite of the vast amount of resources spent on locking people up and the number of people in prison the United States leads the developed world in the number of homicides and violent assaults. For the last eighteen years Jens Soering has experienced the inside of many different prison environments from a youth remand centre in London to America's notorious Supermax prisons to medium-security institutions. What he has seen and experienced has convinced him that not only do prisons not rehabilitate prisoners who may be useful for society once their sentence has ended but prisons turn petty criminals into hardened convicts - all at enormous expense to society. Meanwhile other nations control their crime rates at a fraction of the cost of the United States correctional system. Soering does not argue that prisons should not exist or dispute that there are people who need to be locked away. His book is not an indictment of the legal system that lands many people in prison. Instead AN EXPENSIVE WAY TO MAKE BAD PEOPLE WORSE offers a mainly monetary analysis of why it is absurd fiscal policy to lock people up so often and for so long.

Veteran international correspondent Paul Starobin masterfully mixes fresh reportage with rigorous historical analysis to envision a world in which the United States is no longer the dominant superpower. Following an insightful study of America's global ascendency, Starobin provides the reasons for America's waning influence and explores five possible paths for the future, each of which is already in the making: A global chaos that could be dark or happy; a multipolar order of nation-states; a global Chinese imperium; an age of global city-states; or a universal civilization leading to world government. Starobin's tone is somber but in the end hopeful—the world after America need not be a disaster for America, and may even be liberating.

THE LIFELONG ACTIVIST teaches activists how to avoid burnout by integrating activism consciously and joyfully into a well-balanced life. Its four sections - Managing Your Mission Managing Your Time Managing Your Fears and Managing Your Relationships - offer easy and effective techniques to help young activists make realistic choices that ensure their long-term happiness and productivity and older activists and those on the verge of burnout reclaim their enthusiasm passion and joy. Written by a coach who has helped more than a thousand activists and others realise their dreams THE LIFELONG ACTIVIST will help you take your activism to the next level while at the same time helping you live a balanced happy and healthy life. Hilary Rettig founder of EffectiveActivism.com honed her coaching philosophy and skills working as lead coach and curriculum developer at the Boston non-profit Neighbourhood Business Builders where her team of coaches and volunteers has helped more than a thousand entrepreneurs activists and artists build sustainable and rewarding careers. She and her husband are the foster parents of four refugee teenagers from Sudan and the adoptive parents of five dogs-and the techniques covered in THE LIFELONG ACTIVIST make it all possible!

From the first hominids who hunted wooly mammoths to today's factory farms and bio-engineering labs, LONGEST STRUGGLE tells the story of animal exploitation and the battle for animal justice. After describing the roots of animal rights in the ancient world, author Norm Phelps follows the development of animal protection through the Enlightenment, the anti-vivisection battles of the Victorian Era, and the birth of the modern animal rights movement with the publication of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. In a brisk, readable narrative, LONGEST STRUGGLE traces the campaigns of animal rights pioneers like Henry Spira, Alex Hershaft, and Ingrid Newkirk, as well as leaders who have come more recently on the scene like Heidi Prescott, Karen Davis, and Bruce Friedrich. Always grounding his story in its historical setting, Phelps describes the counterattack that the animal abuse industries launched in the 1990s and analyzes the controversies that have roiled the movement almost from the beginning, including "national groups vs. grass roots," "abolitionists vs. new welfareists," and activists who favor arson and intimidation vs. those who support only peaceful, legal forms of protest. LONGEST STRUGGLE concludes with an overview of current campaigns and tactics, and an assessment of the state of the movement as we enter a new century, including the threat represented by an overzealous "war on terror". Thoroughly researched and annotated, LONGEST STRUGGLE reflects its author's two decades as an animal rights activist and his access to movement leaders who have shared with him their personal stories of campaigns that made animal rights history. At once an accessible history of animal protection thought and a revealing narrative of campaigns for animal rights, LONGEST STRUGGLE is must read material for everyone who wants to understand the most radical social justice movement of our time.

On April 20 1999 Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado walked into their school and shot to death twelve students and one teacher and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history. Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in primary school and years later at Columbine Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebold's darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations. After the shootings Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre - simply because he had been friends with the killers. Now for the first time Brown with journalist Rob Merritt gets to tell his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men from supposedly stable families to harbour such violent and apocalyptic dreams. Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful NO EASY ANSWERS is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists authorities parents and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests the book offers no easy answers but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today.

Defining speciesism as a failure in attitude or practice to accord any nonhuman being equal consideration and respect this brilliant work critiques speciesism both outside and inside the animal rights movement. Much moral philosophy legal theory and animal advocacy aimed at advancing nonhuman emancipation actually perpetuate speciesism the book demonstrates. Speciesism examines philosophy law and activism in terms of three categories: old speciesism new speciesism and species equality. Old-speciesists limit rights to humans. SPECIESISM refutes their standard arguments against nonhuman rights. Current law is old-speciesist; legally nonhumans have no rights. Animal laws such as the Humane Slaughter Act afford nonhumans no meaningful protection Dunayer shows. She also explains why welfare campaigns are old-speciesist. Instead of opposing the abuse or killing of nonhuman beings such campaigns seek only to make abuse or killing less cruel; they propose alternative ways of violating nonhumans' moral rights. New-speciesists espouse rights for only some nonhumans those whose minds seem most like humans'. In addition to devaluing most animals new-speciesists give greater moral consideration and stronger basic rights to humans than to any nonhumans. They see animal kind as a hierarchy with humans at the top. Dunayer explains why she categorizes such theorists as Peter Singer Tom Regan and Steven Wise as new-speciesists. Non-speciesists advocate rights for every sentient being. SPECIESISM makes the case that every creature with a nervous system should be regarded as sentient. The book provides compelling evidence of consciousness in animals often dismissed as insentient. Dunayer argues that every sentient being should possess basic legal rights including rights to life and liberty. Radically egalitarian SPECIESISM envisions non-speciesist thought law and action.