Download or read book Cowboy Republic written by Marjorie Cohn and published by Polipoint Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Cowboy Republic," Marjorie Cohn offers a penetrating analysis of the six most important ways in which the Bush administration has weakened the rule of law. Cohn, a respected legal scholar, details the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq; the policy of torture; war crimes; Guantanamo's kangaroo courts; unconstitutional laws; and the unlawful surveillance of American citizens. She concludes with practical ways to strengthen the rule of law domestically and internationally, including both political and legal remedies.
Download or read book The State of the American Mind Stupor and Pathetic Docility written by Amechi Okolo PhD and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, The State of the American Mind: Stupor and Pathetic Docility Volume One begins to unravel some of the most obvious, perplexing, embarrassing and enduring problems and contradictions of American history and sociology, viz., how could the American revolution that started with the most ringing and most inspiring Declarations of human equality in world history end up establishing the most vicious, exploitative society the world ever knew Black chattel slavery and only ten percent white enfranchisement, etc. Further, how could men of such great wisdom and intellect like George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and others who were Enlightenment scholars and clearly knew that slavery was despicable and evil, because they had variously experienced white servitude and slavery themselves, collude to establish and institutionalize the horrible system of Negro chattel slavery in America; and also disenfranchised over 90 percent of people of their own race actions that racism could not explain. The structural/institutional slavery system they established, and the resultant consequent racism hobbles America today as it did in the past, and forced Eric Holder, the Attorney General to declare that, America is a nation of cowards, when it comes to race discussions. Thus, this book starts with serious critical discussions of race in America and reveals what no textbook has ever done, viz., that most early American whites and Blacks were slaves an uncomfortable fact that would shock most Americans because it contradicts the orthodoxy or the dominant narrative that only Blacks were brought here in chains. Further, the book also shows the year Black slavery started something almost, all textbooks got wrong. It also shows who, was the fi rst Black slave in America something no textbook ever mentions. It also shows when and how racism started in America and many other very sensitive and embarrassing but necessary issues that America avoids but must be frankly discussed for America to move forward. This book therefore shatters the two dominant themes of Americas history and sociology that Blacks were brought into America in chains as slaves while whites came to America in search of freedom, as Obama famously told us in his race speech. Thus, the crowning lesson of this book, in addition to discussing some critical policy issues like education, health care, etc., is that it discovers the centripetal force of the American society that eluded contemporary Americans because American bosses have laboriously concealed the facts from the public the scary but clearly healthy uniting fact that most Americans are united by their common ancestry, their universal history and experience of servitude, bond-indentures and slavery. Nothing is more universal, more common and more shared in American history and sociology than the fact that most of our ancestors, black and white, were servants, bond-indentures and slaves who were dominated and super-exploited by few overlords. Colonial America was the preferred dumping ground for British, outcasts, rejects, criminals, masterless class, vagabonds, bond-indentures, slaves, etc., until 1776 when Australia replaced America as the British dump for its rejects and surplus citizens. Thus, that America was a nation founded by British rejects and losers is inherently more rational than the prevailing orthodoxy or the Obama theory of Americas founders that they were great honorable men who journeyed across the ocean for freedom because of the obvious reason that good, powerful achieving citizens do not normally emigrate to new uncharted lands.
Download or read book The Untold History of the United States written by Oliver Stone and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Companion to the documentary series of the same name.
Download or read book The Dark Side written by Jane Mayer and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-05-08 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made self-destructive decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In spellbinding detail, Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions by which key players, namely Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, exploited September 11 to further a long held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment. With a new afterward. One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year National Bestseller National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A Best Book of the Year: Salon, Slate, The Economist, The Washington Post, Cleveland Plain-Dealer
Download or read book Uprooted Minds written by Nancy Caro Hollander and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second edition of Uprooted Minds, Hollander offers a unique social psychoanalytic exploration of our increasingly destabilized political environment, augmented by her research into the previously untold history of psychoanalytic engagement in the challenging social issues of our times. Often akin to a political thriller, Hollander’s social psychoanalytic analysis of the devastating effects of group trauma is illuminated through testimonials by U.S. and South American psychoanalysts who have survived the vicissitudes of their countries’ authoritarian political regimes and destabilizing economic crises. Hollander encourages reflections about our experience as social/psychological subjects through her elaboration of the reciprocal impact of social power, hegemonic ideology, large group dynamics and unconscious processes. Her epilogue, written a decade after the first edition of Uprooted Minds, extends its themes to the present period, arguing for a decolonial psychoanalysis that addresses coloniality and white supremacy as the latent forces responsible for our deepening political crises and environmental catastrophe. She shows how the progressive psychoanalytic activism she depicts in the book that was on the margins of the profession has in the last decade moved increasingly to the centre of psychoanalytic theory and praxis. This book will prove essential for those at work or interested in the fields of psychoanalysis, politics, economics, globalization and history.
Download or read book Rules of Disengagement written by Marjorie Cohn and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rules of Disengagement examines the reasons men and women in the military have disobeyed orders and resisted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It takes readers into the courtroom where sailors, soldiers, and Marines have argued that these wars are illegal under international law and unconstitutional under U.S. law. Through the voices of active duty service members and veterans, it explores the growing conviction among our troops that the wars are wrong. While the Obama Administration's pledge to remove all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 is encouraging - and in no small way likely attributable to resistance by our armed forces - it continues to fight in Afghanistan, and the military may soon have a heightened presence elsewhere in the Middle East and in Africa. As such, Rules of Disengagement provides inspiration and lessons for anyone who opposes an interventionist U.S. military policy.
Download or read book Speaking about Torture written by Julie A. Carlson and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is the first book to take up the urgent issue of torture from the array of approaches offered by the arts and humanities. In the post-9/11 era, where we are once again compelled to entertain debates about the legality of torture, this volume speaks about the practice in an effort to challenge the surprisingly widespread acceptance of state-sanctioned torture among Americans, including academics and the media–entertainment complex. Speaking about Torture also claims that the concepts and techniques practiced in the humanities have a special contribution to make to this debate, going beyond what is usually deemed a matter of policy for experts in government and the social sciences. It contends that the way one speaks about torture—including that one speaks about it—is key to comprehending, legislating, and eradicating torture. That is, we cannot discuss torture without taking into account the assaults on truth, memory, subjectivity, and language that the humanities theorize and that the experience of torture perpetuates. Such accounts are crucial to framing the silencing and demonizing that accompany the practice and representation of torture. Written by scholars in literary analysis, philosophy, history, film and media studies, musicology, and art history working in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, the essays in this volume speak from a conviction that torture does not work to elicit truth, secure justice, or maintain security. They engage in various ways with the limits that torture imposes on language, on subjects and community, and on governmental officials, while also confronting the complicity of artists and humanists in torture through their silence, forms of silencing, and classic means of representation. Acknowledging this history is central to the volume’s advocacy of speaking about torture through the forms of witness offered and summoned by the humanities.
Download or read book Never in My Wildest Dreams written by Belva Davis and published by PoliPointPress. This book was released on 2010 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the first black female television journalist in the western United States, Belva Davis overcame the obstacles of racism and sexism, and helped change the face and focus of television news. Now she is sharing the story of her extraordinary life in her poignantly honest memoir, Never in My Wildest Dreams. A reporter for almost five decades, Davis is no stranger to adversity. Born to a 15-year-old Louisiana laundress during the Great Depression, and raised in the overcrowded projects of Oakland, California, Davis suffered abuse, battled rejection, and persevered to achieve a career beyond her imagination. Davis has seen the world change in ways she never could have envisioned, from being verbally and physically attacked while reporting on the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco to witnessing the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. Davis worked her way up to reporting on many of the most explosive stories of recent times, including the Vietnam War protests, the rise and fall of the Black Panthers, the Peoples Temple cult mass suicides at Jonestown, the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the onset of the AIDS epidemic, and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that first put Osama bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted List. She encountered a cavalcade of cultural icons: Malcolm X, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Ronald Reagan, Huey Newton, Muhammad Ali, Alex Haley, Fidel Castro, Dianne Feinstein, Condoleezza Rice, and others. Throughout her career, Davis soldiered in the trenches in the battle for racial equality and brought stories of black Americans out of the shadows and into the light of day. Still active in her 70s, Davis, the "Walter Cronkite of the Bay Area," now hosts a weekly news roundtable and special reports at KQED, one of the nation's leading PBS stations. In this way she has remained relevant and engaged in the stories of today, while offering her anecdote-rich perspective on the decades that have shaped us. "No people can say they understand the times in which they have lived unless they have read this book." -- Dr. Maya Angelou.
Download or read book Framing the Threat written by Imke Köhler and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is great power in the use of words: words create most of what we consider to be real and true. Framing our words and narratives is thus a tool of power – but a power that also comes with limitations. This intriguing issue is the topic of Framing the Threat, an investigation of the relationship between language and security and of how discourse creates the scope of possibility for political action. In particular, the book scrutinizes and compares the security narratives of the former US presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It shows how their framings of identity, i.e., of the American ‘self’ and the enemy ‘other’ facilitated a certain construction of threat that shaped the presidents’ detention and interrogation policies. By defining what was necessary in the name of national security, Bush’s narrative justified the operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and rendered the mistreatment of detainees possible – a situation that would have otherwise been illegal. Bush’s framings therefore enabled legal limits to be pushed and made the violation of rules appear legitimate. Obama, in contrast, constructed a threat scenario that required an end to rule violations, and the closure of Guantanamo for security reasons. According to this narrative, a return to the rule of law was imperative if the American people were to be kept safe. However, Obama’s framing was continually challenged, and it was never able to dominate public discourse. Consequently, Framing the Threat argues Obama was unable to implement the policy changes he had announced.
Download or read book Law s Wars written by Richard L. Abel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 939 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law's Wars is the first comprehensive account of efforts to resist and correct rule of law violations in the US 'war on terror'.
Download or read book The Concise Untold History of the United States written by Oliver Stone and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Text in this work is taken from the transcript from the author's documentary on Showtime, which was based on the Gallery Books publication titled The untold history of the United States"--Title page verso.
Download or read book American West written by Karen R. Jones and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West used to be a story of gunfights, glory, wagon trails, and linear progress. Historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Hollywood movies such as Stagecoach (1939) and Shane (1953) cast the trans-Mississippi region as a frontier of epic proportions where 'savagery' met 'civilization' and boys became men.During the late 1980s, this old way of seeing the West came under heavy fire. Scholars such as Patricia Nelson Limerick and Richard White forged a fresh story of the region, a new vision of the West, based around the conquest of peoples and landscapes.This book explores the bipolar world of Turner's Old West and Limerick's New West and reveals the values and ambiguities associated with both historical traditions. Sections on Lewis and Clark, the frontier and the cowboy sit alongside work on Indian genocide and women's trail diaries. Images of the region as seen through the arcade Western, Hollywood film and Disney theme parks confirm the West as a symbolic and contested landscape.Tapping into popular fascination with the Cowboy, Hollywood movies, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand, the authors show the reader how to deconstruct the imagery and reality surrounding Western history.Key Features*Uses popular subjects (the Cowboy, Hollywood westerns, the Indian Wars, and Custer's Last Stand) to enliven the text*Includes 13 b+w illustrations*Interdisciplinary approach covers film, literature, art and historical artefacts
Download or read book Self Defence in International and Criminal Law written by Onder Bakircioglu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-05-11 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from scholarship across law, history, politics and philosophy, Self-Defence in International and Criminal Law provides a broad and interdisciplinary approach to the doctrine of self-defence in both domestic criminal and international law. It focuses on the requirement of imminence, which deals with the question of when individuals or States may legitimately resort to defensive force against a serious danger or harm. In both national and international law the imminence requirement, if strictly applied, renders any defensive measure taken in anticipation of a would-be attack illegal. Recently, however, attempts have been made to relax the temporal requirement of the self-defence doctrine (imminence) with a view to allowing individuals or States to employ deadly force to arrest an anticipated threat when they ‘believe’ that using ‘pre-emptive’ lethal force would be the only way to thwart an expected harm. In domestic criminal law, it has been argued that it is necessary to relax the rule of imminence in domestic violence cases where women employ lethal force against their abusive partners when there is no imminent threat to justify defensive force. At the international level, while there has long been controversy as to the justifiability of pre-emptive force in non-confrontational settings, following the September 11 attacks, the Bush Administration’s ‘war on terror’ policy radically shifted the focus from the notion of anticipation to that of prevention, making it clear that, if necessary, it would invoke unilateral force against emerging threats before they are fully formed. The book surveys the roots, role, rationale, and objectives of self-defence and questions whether the requirement of imminence should be removed from the traditional contours of the self-defence doctrine in national and international law.
Download or read book State Power and Democracy written by A. Kolin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-01-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State Power and Democracy is the first book to show that the Bush police state didn't commence when Bush was inaugurated. It proves, instead, that the seeds of an American police state can be traced all the way back to the founding of the republic.
Download or read book The Spy who Tried to Stop a War written by Marcia Mitchell and published by Polipoint Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tells the story of a young British secret service officer, Katharine Gun, and her courageous decision to expose an illegal US-UK operation -- a covert plot to influence the UN vote that would have authorized the Iraq invasion"--P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book Hope is a Tattered Flag written by Markos Kounalakis and published by Polipoint Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In These Freewheeling Conversations with America's political and cultural leaders, veteran journalists and radio anchors Markos Kounalakis and Peter Laufer ask the critical question: where do we go from here?
Download or read book Revisiting the Vietnam War and International Law written by Richard A. Falk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on the legal aspects of the Vietnam War by one of its most respected commentators.
