Download or read book Destroying the World to Save It written by Robert Jay Lifton and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award winner and renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton reveals a world at risk from millennial cults intent on ending it all. Since the earliest moments of recorded history, prophets and gurus have foretold the world's end, but only in the nuclear age has it been possible for a megalomaniac guru with a world-ending vision to bring his prophecy to pass. Now Robert Jay Lifton offers a vivid and disturbing case in point in this chilling exploration of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subways. With unprecedented access to former Aum members, Lifton has produced a pathbreaking study of the inner life of a modern millennial cult. He shows how Aum's guru Shoko Asahara (charismatic spiritual leader, con man, madman) created a religion from a global stew of New Age thinking, ancient rituals, and apocalyptic science fiction, then recruited scientists as disciples and set them to producing weapons of mass destruction. Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, Heaven's Gate, and the Oklahoma City bombers, Lifton confronts the frightening possibility of a twenty-first century in which cults and terrorists may be able to bring about their own holocausts. Bold and compelling, Destroying the World to Save It charts the emergence of a new global threat of urgent concern to us all.
Download or read book Destroying the World to Save It written by Robert Jay Lifton and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-09 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Taking stock as well of Charles Manson, the Heaven's Gate cult, and the Oklahoma City bombers, Lifton argues that Aum Shinrikyo was not just a "nightmare of Japanese religion," but a global nightmare that revealed a world unexpectedly at risk."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book How the Rich are Destroying the Earth written by Hervé Kempf and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A best seller in France, and already translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Korean, Hervé Kempf'sHow the Rich Are Destroying the Earth now appears in its first English edition. Bringing to bear more than twenty years of experience as an environmental journalist, Kempf describes the invincibility that many of the world's wealthy feel in the face of global warming, and how their unchecked privilege is thwarting action on the single most vexing problem facing our world.In this important primer on the link between global ecology and the global economy, Kempf makes the following observations: First, that the planet's ecological situation is growing ever worse, despite the efforts of millions of engaged citizens around the world. And second, despite environmentalists' emphasis that "we're all in the same boat," the world's economic elites--who continue to benefit by plundering the environment--have access to "lifeboats" that insulate them from the resulting catastrophes.Societies have not been able to effectively combat the expanding ecological crisis because it is intimately linked to the social crisis in which the ruling form of capitalism has been organized to impede democratic initiatives. This link explains the failure to make progress against the greatest emergency of our time, because in this relationship the oligarchy plays an essential and destructive role. For this reason, solving the ecological crisis depends on disrupting the power of the world's elite.We cannot understand the entwined ecological and social crises, Kempf argues, if we don't see them as the two sides of the same disaster--a disaster that comes from a system piloted by a dominant social strata that has no drive other than greed, no ideal other than conservatism, no dream other than technology. But Kempf also calls for measured optimism: "Despite the scale of the challenges that await us, solutions are emerging and--faced with the sinister prospects the oligarchs promote--the desire to remake the world is being reborn."
Download or read book Destroying the World to Save it written by Robert Jay Lifton and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Inheritors of the Earth written by Chris D. Thomas and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human activity has irreversibly changed the natural environment. But the news isn't all bad. It's accepted wisdom today that human beings have permanently damaged the natural world, causing extinction, deforestation, pollution, and of course climate change. But in Inheritors of the Earth, biologist Chris Thomas shows that this obscures a more hopeful truth -- we're also helping nature grow and change. Human cities and mass agriculture have created new places for enterprising animals and plants to live, and our activities have stimulated evolutionary change in virtually every population of living species. Most remarkably, Thomas shows, humans may well have raised the rate at which new species are formed to the highest level in the history of our planet. Drawing on the success stories of diverse species, from the ochre-colored comma butterfly to the New Zealand pukeko, Thomas overturns the accepted story of declining biodiversity on Earth. In so doing, he questions why we resist new forms of life, and why we see ourselves as unnatural. Ultimately, he suggests that if life on Earth can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, it can survive the onslaughts of the technological age. This eye-opening book is a profound reexamination of the relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Download or read book Can We Feed the World Without Destroying It written by Eric Holt-Gimenez and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly a third of the world’s population suffers from hunger or malnutrition. Feeding them – and the projected population of 10 billion people by 2050 – has become a high-profile challenge for states, philanthropists, and even the Fortune 500. This has unleashed a steady march of initiatives to double food production within a generation. But will doing so tax the resources of our planet beyond its capacity? In this sobering essay, scholar-practitioner Eric Holt-Giménez argues that the ecological impact of doubling food production would be socially and environmentally catastrophic and would not feed the poor. We have the technology, resources, and expertise to feed everyone. What is needed is a thorough transformation of the global food regime – one that increases equity while producing food and reversing agriculture’s environmental impacts.
Download or read book How Walmart Is Destroying America And the World written by Bill Quinn and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After carving up the once lovingly cared-for downtowns of Small Town America, Wal-Mart launched a frontal assault on mom-and-pop businesses all over the globe. With 1.5 million employees operating more than 3,500 stores, Wal-Mart is now the world's largest private employer. In this third edition of How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America (and the World), intrepid Texas newspaperman Bill Quinn continues the fight. Featuring detailed accounts of Wal-Mart's questionable business practices and the latest information on Wal-Mart lawsuits, vendor issues, and efforts to stop expansion, Quinn shows why Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is arguably the most feared and despised corporation in the world. Whether you're a customer fed up with Wal-Mart's false claims, a vendor squeezed by strong-arm tactics, a worker pushed to increase the Waltons' bottom line, or a concerned citizen trying to save your hometown, this book will show you how to get Wal-Mart off your back and out of your backyard. BILL QUINN is a World War II veteran, retired newspaperman, and certified anti-Wal-Mart crusader. He lives with his wife, Lennie, in Grand Saline,Texas.
Download or read book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child written by Anthony Esolen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Play dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, in a bitingly witty style reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. But Esolen doesn’t stop at pointing out the problem; he offers clear solutions as well. With charming stories from his own boyhood and an assist from the master authors and thinkers of the Western tradition, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child is a welcome respite from the overwhelming banality of contemporary culture. Interwoven throughout this indispensable guide to child rearing is a rich tapestry of the literature, music, art, and thought that once enriched the lives of American children. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become, and who wants to give a child something beyond the dull drone of today’s culture.
Download or read book Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan written by Ian Reader and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities? Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed. Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.
Download or read book The Darkening Age written by Catherine Nixey and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.
Download or read book Killing the Earth to Save it written by James Delingpole and published by Connor Court Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carbon taxes won't make the slightest difference to climate change, so why are we introducing them; polar bear populations are on the increase, so why are we worrying about them; global warming is better than global cooling, so why are we trying to stop it? Delingpole has all the answers - but not the ones Tim Flannery would like you to hear.
Download or read book Oh No written by Mac Barnett and published by Hyperion. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some kids are too smart for their own good...and maybe for everybody else's good. When an overly ambitious little girl builds a humongous robot for her science fair, she fully expects to win first place. What she doesn't expect is the chaos that follows. Mac Barnett, a new picture book author on the rise, and Dan Santat, illustrator of Rhea Perlman's Otto Undercover series, combine forces to create a hilarious kid's eye account of the kind of destruction that comes only from a child’s good intentions. This book is sure to appeal to kids and parents familiar with the ordeal of science fairs.
Download or read book Will Big Business Destroy Our Planet written by Peter Dauvergne and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walmart. Coca-Cola. BP. Toyota. The world economy runs on the profits of transnational corporations. Politicians need their backing. Non-profit organizations rely on their philanthropy. People look to their brands for meaning. And their power continues to rise. Can these companies, as so many are now hoping, provide the solutions to end the mounting global environmental crisis? Absolutely, the CEOs of big business are telling us: the commitment to corporate social responsibility will ensure it happens voluntarily. Peter Dauvergne challenges this claim, arguing instead that corporations are still doing far more to destroy than protect our planet. Trusting big business to lead sustainability is, he cautions, unwise — perhaps even catastrophic. Planetary sustainability will require reining in the power of big business, starting now.
Download or read book Jay Silent Bob s Blueprints for Destroying Everything written by Jason Mewes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just in time for the twentieth anniversary of Clerks! Destroy anything and everything with the help of this illustrated collection of blueprints concocted by the legendary characters Jay and Silent Bob. Need to destroy self-doubt? How about the glass ceiling? Or maybe your aims are less lofty, and your ex-girlfriend just really has to go. In all cases, the iconic Jay and Silent Bob offer practical and entertaining advice for wreaking havoc at every turn in the most hilarious ways possible. Written by the beloved duo from Clerks, and many other films and productions in the View Askewniverse, these blueprints will save your day...by destroying everyone else’s.
Download or read book Ruined by Design written by Mike Monteiro and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is working exactly as designed.The combustion engine which is destroying our planet's atmosphere and rapidly making it inhospitable is working exactly as we designed it. Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they're designed to work. And every time we "improve" their design, they get better at killing. Facebook's privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their "real names" initiative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter's toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it's designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it's not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all.Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network's interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that's on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name.This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we've excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we've made as a society.If you're a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions.
Download or read book Red Line written by Joby Warrick and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Red Line, Joby Warrick, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags, shares the thrilling unknown story of America’s mission in Syria: to find and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and keep them out of the hands of the Islamic State. In August 2012, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was clinging to power in a vicious civil war. When secret intelligence revealed that the dictator might resort to using chemical weapons, President Obama warned that doing so would cross “a red line.” Assad did it anyway, bombing the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with sarin gas, killing hundreds of civilians, and forcing Obama to decide if he would mire America in another unpopular war in the Middle East. When Russia offered to broker the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama leapt at the out. So began an electrifying race to find, remove, and destroy 1,300 tons of chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war. The extraordinary little-known effort is a triumph for the Americans, but soon Russia’s long game becomes clear: it will do anything to preserve Assad’s rule. As America’s ability to control events in Syria shrinks, the White House learns that ISIS, building its caliphate in Syria’s war-tossed territory, is seeking chemical weapons for itself, with an eye to attack the West. Drawing on astonishing original reporting, Warrick crafts a character-driven narrative that reveals how the United States embarked on a bold adventure to prevent one catastrophe but could not avoid a tragic chain of events that led to another.
Download or read book Killing Journalism written by Joe Strupp and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News coverage has given in to greed with demands for profits, and also laziness by allowing coverage to focus on the easy, "sexy" story. Political coverage focuses much more on the horse race of candidates rather than the issues and often allows spokespeople for both sides to battle on air instead of journalists and political experts with no dog in the fight to explain and review such issues.
