Download or read book GAS WARS written by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prime minister of India Manmohan Singh has been accused of changing ministerial portfolios at the behest of the Reliance group. There have been claims that the group deliberately ‘squatted’ on reserves of natural gas and curtailed production in anticipation of higher prices that are administered by the government, to the detriment of the interests of the country’s people. Spokespersons of the group deny these alligations and contend that gas output from the Krishna-Godavari basin came down on account of unforeseen adverse geological surprises. Sections within the Indian government do not buy these arguments. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has alleged, among other things, that the contract between the government and Reliance Industries Limited is deeply flawed, thereby encouraging excessive capital expenditure and lowering potential benefits to the exchequer. With painstaking research, a meticulous perusal of press reports, as well as a few surprising exclusives, Gas Wars highlights cases of crony capitalism that allowed the Reliance group to blatantly exploit loopholes which were consciously retained in the system to benefit it. The book points out how, even when laws and policies appeared fair, rational, and reasonable, the way in which these rules and procedures were framed and implemented by bureaucrats acting at the behest of their political masters exposed the deep nexus between business and politics in India. Even as Gas Wars tells the story of how a corporate conglomerate, in this case the country’s largest, has benefited from the way government policies are structured, it lays bare the alarming facts of a natural disaster waiting to happen due to the ruthless exploitation of the country’s natural resources in order to swell the fortunes of a few. The book also highlights the examples of those within the government establishment who have refused to be intimidated by the rich and the powerful, and who have against all odds valiantly attempted to uphold the interests of the people of India.
Download or read book Gas War written by Ted Rall and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2002 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At first glance, the United States invasion of Afghanistan seemed like an obvious response to the horrifying attacks of September 11th, 2001. Now, as America remains threatened by Al Qaeda and Afghanistan has disintegrated into the bloodshed of renewed civil war, the occupation looks like a disaster. But fighting terrorism wasn’t the real goal of the Afghan war. Picking up where his groundbreaking travelogue To Afghanistan and Back left off, Ted Rall’s extensive research reveals the truth behind the spin and the new dangers we face as a result.
Download or read book Tear Gas written by Anna Feigenbaum and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred years ago, French troops fired tear gas grenades into German trenches. Designed to force people out from behind barricades and trenches, tear gas causes burning of the eyes and skin, tearing, and gagging. Chemical weapons are now banned from war zones. But today, tear gas has become the most commonly used form of "less-lethal" police force. In 2011, the year that protests exploded from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, tear gas sales tripled. Most tear gas is produced in the United States, and many images of protestors in Tahrir Square showed tear gas canisters with "Made in USA" printed on them, while Britain continues to sell tear gas to countries on its own human-rights blacklist. An engrossing century-spanning narrative, Tear Gas is the first history of this weapon, and takes us from military labs and chemical weapons expos to union assemblies and protest camps, drawing on declassified reports and witness testimonies to show how policing with poison came to be.
Download or read book Behind the Gas Mask written by Thomas I Faith and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Behind the Gas Mask, Thomas Faith offers an institutional history of the Chemical Warfare Service, the department tasked with improving the Army's ability to use and defend against chemical weapons during and after World War One. Taking the CWS's story from the trenches to peacetime, he explores how the CWS's work on chemical warfare continued through the 1920s despite deep opposition to the weapons in both military and civilian circles. As Faith shows, the believers in chemical weapons staffing the CWS allied with supporters in the military, government, and private industry to lobby to add chemical warfare to the country's permanent arsenal. Their argument: poison gas represented an advanced and even humane tool in modern war, while its applications for pest control and crowd control made a chemical capacity relevant in peacetime. But conflict with those aligned against chemical warfare forced the CWS to fight for its institutional life--and ultimately led to the U.S. military's rejection of battlefield chemical weapons.
Download or read book No Place to Run written by Tim Cook and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians of the First World War have often dismissed the important role of poison gas in the battles of the Western Front. Tim Cook shows that the serious threat of gas did not disappear with the introduction of gas masks. By 1918, gas shells were used by all armies to deluge the battlefield, and those not instructed with a sound anti-gas doctrine left themselves exposed to this new chemical plague.This book provides a challenging re-examination of the function of gas warfare in the First World War, including its important role in delivering victory in the campaign of 1918 and its curious postwar legacy.
Download or read book Toxic Exposures written by Susan L. Smith and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mustard gas is typically associated with the horrors of World War I battlefields and trenches, where chemical weapons were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Few realize, however, that mustard gas had a resurgence during the Second World War, when its uses and effects were widespread and insidious. Toxic Exposures tells the shocking story of how the United States and its allies intentionally subjected thousands of their own servicemen to poison gas as part of their preparation for chemical warfare. In addition, it reveals the racialized dimension of these mustard gas experiments, as scientists tested whether the effects of toxic exposure might vary between Asian, Hispanic, black, and white Americans. Drawing from once-classified American and Canadian government records, military reports, scientists’ papers, and veterans’ testimony, historian Susan L. Smith explores not only the human cost of this research, but also the environmental degradation caused by ocean dumping of unwanted mustard gas. As she assesses the poisonous legacy of these chemical warfare experiments, Smith also considers their surprising impact on the origins of chemotherapy as cancer treatment and the development of veterans’ rights movements. Toxic Exposures thus traces the scars left when the interests of national security and scientific curiosity battled with medical ethics and human rights.
Download or read book World War I Gas Warfare Tactics and Equipment written by Simon Jones and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osprey's study of gas warfare tactics that were employed during World War I (1914-1918). Battlefield Gas was first employed in April 1915 at the village of Langemarck near Ypres. At 1700 hours the Germans released a five mile-wide cloud of 168 tons of chlorine gas from 520 cylinders, causing panic and death in the French and Algerian trenches. Despite initial widespread condemnation and disgust, its use rapidly spread with all the armies entering into the race to produce gases, new ways to use them, and protective measures including masks and warning systems. For the first time in detail, this book charts the development of gas as a battlefield weapon and the steps taken to counter it. Delivery methods, including the use of artillery, the consequences of changing wind direction, and infantry advancing into an area just gassed, are all covered alongside key milestones in its introduction and usage. With an abundant array of artwork and photographs illustrating the gas masks, insignia, and protective clothing of the protagonists, this book conveys the horror of the gas attack and reveals the practical challenges for soldiers struggling to cope with this new form of warfare. Conveying the reality behind the iconic Sargent painting of a column of blindfolded gas casualties, it is a fascinating survey of one of the darkest facets of 20th century warfare.
Download or read book Gas Gas Quick Boys written by Michael Freemantle and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! reveals for the first time the true extent of how chemistry rather than military strategy determined the shape, duration and outcome of the First World War. Chemistry was not only a destructive instrument of war but also protected troops, and healed the sick and wounded. From bombs to bullets, poison gas to anaesthetics, khaki to cordite, chemistry was truly the alchemy of the First World War. Michael Freemantle explores its dangers and its healing potential, revealing how the arms race was also a race for chemistry to the extent that Germany's thirst for the chemicals needed to make explosives deprived the nation of fertilizers and nearly starved the nation. He answers question such as: What is guncotton? What is lyddite? What is mustard gas? What is phosgene? What is gunmetal? This is a true picture of the horrors of the 'Chemists' War'.
Download or read book The Pentagon Climate Change and War written by Neta C. Crawford and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption. The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense—military forces and DOD agencies—is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military’s growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels. The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War shows how the U.S. economy and military together have created a deep and long-term cycle of economic growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency. This cycle has shaped U.S. military doctrine and, over the past fifty years, has driven the mission to protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Crawford shows that even as the U.S. military acknowledged and adapted to human-caused climate change, it resisted reporting its own greenhouse gas emissions. Examining the idea of climate change as a “threat multiplier” in national security, she argues that the United States faces more risk from climate change than from lost access to Persian Gulf oil—or from most military conflicts. The most effective way to cut military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively, is to rethink U.S. grand strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce the size and operations of the military.
Download or read book The Residual Effects of Warfare Gases written by Harry Lorenzo Gilchrist and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Oil War written by Robert Goralski and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1987 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full story of the role that oil played in the origins and outcome of World War II.
Download or read book The New Climate War written by Michael E. Mann and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet. Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we've been told can slow climate change. But the inordinate emphasis on individual behavior is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals. Fossil fuel companies have followed the example of other industries deflecting blame (think "guns don't kill people, people kill people") or greenwashing (think of the beverage industry's "Crying Indian" commercials of the 1970s). Meanwhile, they've blocked efforts to regulate or price carbon emissions, run PR campaigns aimed at discrediting viable alternatives, and have abdicated their responsibility in fixing the problem they've created. The result has been disastrous for our planet. In The New Climate War, Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters-fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, including: A common-sense, attainable approach to carbon pricing- and a revision of the well-intentioned but flawed currently proposed version of the Green New Deal; Allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels Debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way into the climate debate and driven a wedge between even those who support climate change solutions Combatting climate doomism and despair-mongering With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defense of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won't happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective push forward. This book will reach, inform, and enable citizens everywhere to join this battle for our planet.
Download or read book Cold War Energy written by Jeronim Perović and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of Soviet energy during the Cold War. Based on hitherto little known documents from Western and Eastern European archives, it combines the story of Soviet oil and gas with general Cold War history. This volume breaks new ground by framing Soviet energy in a multi-national context, taking into account not only the view from Moscow, but also the perspectives of communist Eastern Europe, the US, NATO, as well as several Western European countries – namely Italy, France, and West Germany. This book challenges some of the long-standing assumptions of East-West bloc relations, as well as shedding new light on relations within the blocs regarding the issue of energy. By bringing together a range of junior and senior historians and specialists from Europe, Russia and the US, this book represents a pioneering endeavour to approach the role of Soviet energy during the Cold War in transnational perspective.
Download or read book Changing Climates in North American Politics written by Henrik Selin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analysis of climate change policy innovations across North America at transnational, federal, state, and local levels, involving public, private, and civic actors. North American policy responses to global climate change are complex and sometimes contradictory and reach across multiple levels of government. For example, the U.S. federal government rejected the Kyoto Protocol and mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) restrictions, but California developed some of the world's most comprehensive climate change law and regulation; Canada's federal government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but Canadian GHG emissions increased even faster than those of the United States; and Mexico's state-owned oil company addressed climate change issues in the 1990s, in stark contrast to leading U.S. and Canadian energy firms. This book is the first to examine and compare political action for climate change across North America, at levels ranging from continental to municipal, in locations ranging from Mexico to Toronto to Portland, Maine. Changing Climates in North American Politics investigates new or emerging institutions, policies, and practices in North American climate governance; the roles played by public, private, and civil society actors; the diffusion of policy across different jurisdictions; and the effectiveness of multilevel North American climate change governance. It finds that although national climate policies vary widely, the complexities and divergences are even greater at the subnational level. Policy initiatives are developed separately in states, provinces, cities, large corporations, NAFTA bodies, universities, NGOs, and private firms, and this lack of coordination limits the effectiveness of multilevel climate change governance. In North America, unlike much of Europe, climate change governance has been largely bottom-up rather than top-down. Contributors Michele Betsill, Alexander Farrell, Christopher Gore, Michael Hanemann, Virginia Haufler, Charles Jones, Dovev Levine, David Levy, Susanne Moser, Annika Nilsson, Simone Pulver, Barry Rabe, Pamela Robinson, Ian Rowlands, Henrik Selin, Peter Stoett, Stacy VanDeveer
Download or read book The Great Secret The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer written by Jennet Conant and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up, and how one American Army doctor’s discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy. On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor." Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. Alexander defied British port officials and heroically persevered in his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads—a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive—who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research led by the Sloan Kettering Institute. Meanwhile, the Bari incident remained cloaked in military secrecy, resulting in lost records, misinformation, and considerable confusion about how a deadly chemical weapon came to be tamed for medical use. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.
Download or read book The Last Gasp written by Scott Christianson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Gasp takes us to the dark side of human history in the first full chronicle of the gas chamber in the United States. In page-turning detail, award-winning writer Scott Christianson tells a dreadful story that is full of surprising and provocative new findings. First constructed in Nevada in 1924, the gas chamber, a method of killing sealed off and removed from the sight and hearing of witnesses, was originally touted as a "humane" method of execution. Delving into science, war, industry, medicine, law, and politics, Christianson overturns this mythology for good. He exposes the sinister links between corporations looking for profit, the military, and the first uses of the gas chamber after World War I. He explores little-known connections between the gas chamber and the eugenics movement. Perhaps most controversially, he has unearthed new evidence about American and German collaboration in the production and lethal use of hydrogen cyanide and about Hitler’s adoption of gas chamber technology developed in the United States. More than a book about the death penalty, this compelling history ultimately reveals much about America’s values and power structures in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Red Gas written by P. Högselius and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book applies a systems and risk perspective on international energy relations, author Per Högselius investigates how and why governments, businesses, engineers and other actors sought to promote – and oppose– the establishment of an extensive East-West natural gas regime that seemed to overthrow the fundamental logic of the Cold War.
