Friday, May 31, 2013

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (Editor)
4.5 out of 5 stars(6)

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Human Rights


A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world’s seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.
 
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt politi-cal movements? Activists or -careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden exposé of the “nonprofit industrial complex” and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

  • Rank: #67081 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-03-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .58" h x 6.32" w x 8.92" l, .79 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 256 pages

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Interfaith Advocacy: The Role of Religious Coalitions in the Political Process (Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance)

Interfaith Advocacy
Interfaith Advocacy: The Role of Religious Coalitions in the Political Process (Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance)
Katherine E. Knutson (Author)

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Human Rights

Using the historic Minnesota state government shutdown of 2011 as a backdrop, Interfaith Advocacy describes the work of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, an interfaith advocacy group that brings together leaders from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim traditions to advocate on behalf of a range of policies. As the nation’s first statewide interfaith lobbying group, the story of the JRLC facilitates an examination of the role of political advocacy groups in state level American politics: what they are, how and why they form, how they mobilize citizens to participate in the political process, how they work to influence government, and what their impact is on American democracy.

With research based on two years of in-depth interviews, participant observation, and analysis of archival records, this volume offers proof that it is possible to build successful long term political coalitions among improbable allies. The book investigates both the strengths and weaknesses of this model of advocacy and concludes that the presence of religious advocacy groups in the political process offers substantial benefits of representation, concern for underrepresented issues and groups, and the development of networks of social capital.

Interfaith Advocacy is grounded in the theoretical literature of political science but also accessible to all readers who have an interest in political advocacy, state politics, or religion and politics.

  • Rank: #121967 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-05-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 188 pages

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage

The New York Review Abroad
The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage
Robert B. Silvers (Editor), Ian Buruma (Introduction)

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Human Rights

For the past fifty years, The New York Review of Books has covered virtually every international revolution and movement of consequence by dispatching the world’s most brilliant writers to write eyewitness accounts. The New York Review Abroad not only brings together twenty-eight of the most riveting of these pieces but includes epilogues that update and reassess the political situation (by either the original authors or by Ian Buruma). Among the pieces included are:
 
• Susan Sontag’s personal narrative of staging Waiting for Godot in war-torn Sarajevo
• Alma Guillermoprieto’s report from inside Colombia’s guerrilla headquarters and her disturbing encounter with young female fighters
• Ryszard Kapuscinski’s terrifying description of being set on fire while running roadblocks in Nigeria
• Caroline Blackwood’s coverage of the 1979 gravediggers’ strike in Liverpool—a noir mini-masterpiece
• Timothy Garton Ash’s minute-by-minute account from the Magic Lantern theater in Prague in 1989, where the subterranean stage, auditorium, foyers, and dressing rooms had become the headquarters of the revolution

Among other writers whose New York Review pieces will be included are Tim Judah, Amos Elon, Joan Didion, William Shawcross, Christopher de Bellaigue, and Mark Danner.
 
A tour de force of vivid and enlightening writing from the front lines, this volume is indeed the first rough draft of the history of the past fifty years.

  • Rank: #4772 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-06-04
  • Released on: 2013-06-04
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.53 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 544 pages

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization, and America

Global Crossings
Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization, and America
Alvaro Vargas Llosa (Author)

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Human Rights

Migration has been happening, in varying forms, for millennia but it still elicits fear and mistrust, and not just on the part of the Areceiving” society. Communities from where people migrate often disapprove of the migrants’ decision and consider it treacherous. The recent reawakening of the debate about migration in the new millennium has evoked intense emotion particularly in the United States and Europe. Global Crossings cuts through the jungle of myth, falsehood and misrepresentation that dominates the debate, clarifying the causes and consequences of human migration. Why do millions of people continue to risk their lives, and oftentimes lose it, in the pursuit of a chance to establish themselves in a foreign land? The book first looks at the immigrant experience, which connects the present to the past, and America to the rest of the world, and explores who immigrants are and why they move. The conduct of today is no different than that in the past. And contrary to the claims by immigration critics, the patterns of contemporary migration do not differ fundamentally from those of other epochs. Global Crossings then discusses immigration and culture. To what degree are foreigners culturally different? Can natives adapt? Can immigrants assimilate into the new society? In assessing whether critics are justified in pointing to a major cultural shift Alvaro Vargas Llosa reviews such topics as religion, education, entrepreneurial spirit, and attitudes toward the receiving society. The book analyzes such economic factors as jobs, wages, education, and the welfare state. How can an economy continue to operate even in the face of major legal obstacles, and how have recessions and times of prosperity influencedAmore significantly than government effortsAthe number of immigrants coming into the United States and other countries? Vargas Llosa finds that immigration’s contributions to an economy far outweigh the costs. Finally Global Crossings makes a call for

  • Rank: #86238 in eBooks
  • Published on: 2013-07-01
  • Released on: 2013-06-01
  • Format: Kindle eBook
  • Number of items: 1

Monday, May 27, 2013

Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler: With an introduction by Nikolaus Wachsmann

Under Two Dictators
Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler: With an introduction by Nikolaus Wachsmann
Margarete Buber-Neumann (Author), Nikolaus Wachsmann (Introduction)
5.0 out of 5 stars(3)

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Human Rights

This book is a unique account by a survivor of both the Soviet and Nazi concentration camps: its author, Margarete Buber-Neumann, was a loyal member of the German Communist party. From 1935 she and her second husband, Heinz Neumann, were political refugees in Moscow. In April 1937 Neumann was arrested by the secret police, and executed by the end of the year. She herself was arrested in 1938.



In Under Two Dictators Buber-Neumann describes the two years of suffering she endured in the Soviet prisons and in the huge Central-Asian concentration and slave labour camp of Karaganda; her extradition to the Gestapo in 1940 at the time of the Stalin-Hitler Friendship Pact; and her five years of suffering in the Nazi concentration and death camp for women, Ravensbrück. Her story displays extraordinary powers of observation and of memory as she describes her own fate, as well as those of hundreds of fellow prisoners. She explores the behaviour of the guards, supervisors, police and secret police and compares and contrasts Stalin and Hitler's methods of dictatorship and terror.



First published in Swedish, German and English and subsequently translated and published in a further nine languages, Under Two Dictators is harrowing in its depiction of life under the rule of two of the most brutal regimes the western world has ever seen but also an inspiring story of survival, of ideology and of strength and a clarion call for the protection of democracy.

  • Rank: #113857 in eBooks
  • Published on: 2013-07-31
  • Released on: 2013-07-31
  • Format: Kindle eBook
  • Number of items: 1

Trafficking and Human Rights: European and Asia-Pacific Perspectives

Trafficking and Human Rights
Trafficking and Human Rights: European and Asia-Pacific Perspectives
Leslie Holmes (Author, Editor)

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Human Rights

Human trafficking is widely considered to be the fastest growing branch of trafficking. As this important book reveals, it has moved rapidly up the agenda of states and international organisations since the early-1990s, not only because of this growth, but also as its implications for security and human rights have become clearer.This fascinating study by international experts provides original research findings on human trafficking, with particular reference to Europe, South-East Asia and Australia. A major focus is on why and how many states and organisations act in ways that undermine trafficked victims' rights, as part of 'quadruple victimization'. It compares and contrasts policies and suggests which seem to work best and why. The contributors also advocate radical new approaches that most states and other formal organizations appear loath to introduce, for reasons that are explored in this unique book.This must-read book will appeal to policymakers as well as advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of criminology, human rights law, gender studies, political science and international studies.Contributors: J. Debeljak, L. Holmes, S. Kneebone, Z. Lasocik, K. Leong, S. Milivojevic, S. Schwandner-Sievers, M. Segrave, O. Simi , S. Yea

  • Rank: #113321 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-04-28
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 264 pages

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh

Among the Bloodpeople
Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh
Thomas Glave (Author), Yusef Komunyakaa (Introduction)

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Human Rights

With an introduction by Pulitzer PrizeAwinning poet Yusef Komunyakaa

"A profound compassion for racial and sexual minorities, the oppressed, and the colonized, informs [Glave’s] searing, beautifully evocative collection of essays...He captures the languor and seductiveness of Jamaica...A graceful and original stylist, Glave highlights the marginalizedAcalling on the descendants of people who toiled for the Empire as slaves and colonial subjects to never forget their past, and, in effect, to those who profit from that past to acknowledge their complicity. Ultimately, his work is critical, yet filled with generosity and compassion."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

AGlave’s prose is a thing of poetry, passion, beauty, and clarity in its compelling appeal for the space of human love and tolerance. A joy to read.”
--Ngugi wa Thiong’o, author of Dreams in a Time of War

"Glave's voice resonates in the plucked string holding each sentence together, an echo of James Baldwin and Jean Genet; his language carries the full freight of witness . . . His language is seductive and regenerative, critical and humanizing, almost mathematically gauged and encompassing, and it never fails to hold us accountable. But alongside the terror we witness, moments of sheer beauty seethe out of the landscapeAnot as a balm, but as needful epistles of reflection . . . Glave has done a heroic deed.”
--Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer PrizeAwinning author of Neon Vernacular

"Glave is a gifted stylist . . . blessed with ambition, his own voice, and an impressive willingness to dissect how individuals actually think and behave."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Glave's literary temperament has been described as 'Faulknerian,' and the comparison speaks volumes. He achieves astonishing tonal effects . . . [and] has a poet's way with words."
--The Washington Post

Thomas Glave has been admired for his unique style and exploration of taboo, politically volatile topics. The award-winning author's new collection, Among the Bloodpeople, contains all the power and daring of his earlier writing but ventures even further into the political, the personal, and the secret.

Each essay in the volume reveals a passionate commitment to social justice and human truth. Whether confronting Jamaica's prime minister on antigay bigotry, contemplating the risks and seductions of "outlawed" sex, exploring a world of octopuses and men performing somersaults in the Caribbean Sea, or challenging repressive tactics employed at the University of Cambridge, Glave expresses the observations of a global citizen with the voice of a poet.

Thomas Glave is the multiple Lambda AwardAwinning author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent, and The Torturer's Wife, and is the editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. Glave has been the Martin Luther King Jr. visiting professor at MIT, and is a 2012 visiting fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

  • Rank: #103091 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-07-02
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .44 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 224 pages

Friday, May 24, 2013

The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy

The Twilight of Equality?The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy
Lisa Duggan (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars(4)

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Human Rights

By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics. The Twilight of Equality? searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel. After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. In a series of political case studies, Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail. Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.

  • Rank: #230721 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-10-11
  • Released on: 2004-10-11
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 8.45" h x .30" w x 5.45" l, .35 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 136 pages

To Repair the World

To Repair
To Repair the World
Paul Farmer (Author), Jonathan Weigel (Editor), Bill Clinton (Foreword, Contributor)

Download: $9.43 (as of 05/23/2013 23:12 PST)

Human Rights

Here, for the first time, is a collection of short speeches by the charismatic doctor and social activist Paul Farmer. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer’s vision in a single, accessible volume.
A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World:
• Challenges readers to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights;
• Champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today;
• Overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care;
• Discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer’s service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere;
• Leaves the reader with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.

  • Rank: #8261 in eBooks
  • Published on: 2013-03-02
  • Released on: 2013-03-02
  • Format: Kindle eBook
  • Number of items: 1

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation

To Repair the World
To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation
Paul Farmer (Author), Jonathan Weigel (Editor), Bill Clinton (Foreword)

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Human Rights

Here, for the first time, is a collection of short speeches by the charismatic doctor and social activist Paul Farmer. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer's vision in a single, accessible volume.
A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World:
• Challenges readers to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights;
• Champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today;
• Overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care;
• Discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer's service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere;
• Leaves the reader with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.

  • Rank: #1523 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-05-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.22" w x 5.87" l, 1.13 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 294 pages

Monday, May 20, 2013

From Mediation to Nation-Building: Third Parties and the Management of Communal Conflict

From Mediation to Nation-Building
From Mediation to Nation-Building: Third Parties and the Management of Communal Conflict
Joseph R., Jr. Rudolph (Editor), William J. Lahneman (Editor), Mohammad Ashraf (Contributor), Elham Atashi (Contributor), Linda Bishai (Contributor), Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski (Contributor), Steven L. Burg (Contributor), Stephen D. Collins (Contributor), Neil A. Cruickshank (Contributor), I.M. Lobo de Souza (Contributor), David Forsythe (Contributor), Matthew Hoddie (Contributor), Daniela Irrera (Contributor), Dijon Jones (Contributor), David D. Laitin (Contributor), Paul T. McCartney (Contributor), Cdr. Brigid Myers Pavilonis (Contributor), Victor Peskin (Contributor), Mateja Peter (Contributor), James DeShaw Rae (Contributor), Molly S. Wallace (Contributor), Sam Whitt (Contributor), Donald R. Zoufal (Contributor)

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Human Rights

The eruption in the early 1990s of highly visible humanitarian crises and exceedingly bloody civil wars in the Horn of Africa, imploding Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, set in motion a trend towards third party intervention in communal conflict in areas as far apart as the Balkans and East Timor. However haltingly and selectively, that trend towards extra-systemic means of managing ethnic and national conflict is still discernible, motivated as it was in the 1990s by the inability of in-house accommodation methods to resolve ethno-political conflicts peacefully and the tendency of such conflicts to spill into the international system in the form of massive refugee flows, regional instability, and failed states hosting criminal and terrorist elements. In its various forms, third party intervention has become a fixed part of the current international system

Our book examines the various forms in which that intervention occurs, from the least intrusive and costly forms of third party activity to the most intrusive and expensive endeavors. More specifically, organized in the form of overview essays followed by case studies that explore the utility and limitations, successes and failures of various forms of third party activity in managing conflict, the book begins by examining diplomatic intervention and then proceeds to cover, in turn, legal, economic, and military instruments of conflict management before concluding with a section on political tutelage arrangements and nation/capacity building operations.

The chapters themselves are authored by a mix of contributors drawn from relevant disciplines, both senior and younger scholars, academics and practitioners, and North Americans and Europeans. All treat a common theme but no attempt was made to solicit work from contributors with a common orientation towards the value of third party intervention. Nor were the authors straight-jacketed with heavy content guidelines from the editors. Their essays validate the value of this approach. Far from being chaotic in nature, they generally supplement one another, while offering opposing viewpoints on the overall topic; for example, our Italian contributor who specializes in non-government organizations offers a chapter illustrating their utility under certain conditions, whereas the chapter from an Afghan practitioner notes the downside of too much reliance on NGOs in nation-building operations. The essays also cover topics not often treated, and are written from the viewpoint of those on the ground. The chapter on creating a police force in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, reads much like a diary from the American colonel who was sent to Bosnia in early 1996 charged with that task.

  • Rank: #218236 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-05-17
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .0 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 534 pages

Waging Peace: Reflections on Peace and War from an Unconventional Woman

Waging Peace
Waging Peace: Reflections on Peace and War from an Unconventional Woman
Anne Deveson (Author)

New!: $27.95 $19.30 (as of 05/20/2013 00:06 PST)

Human Rights

Looking back on a long and active life, Anne Deveson draws on a rich vein of experiences in public and private life to reflect on what made her the bold social commentator she became. Central among her lifelong preoccupations have been the questioning of war, and the promotion of peace. Deveson tells of her childhood blown apart by World War II in bombed Britain, then invaded Malaya, to become a refugee in Australia. Of going back to Europe to see the heavy shadow of war there, and on her own family; to read de Beauvoir, hitchhike, love, and decide to be a journalist. Returning to Australia, she built a career (unusual in the 1960s for a young mother) as a provocative commentator on issues of social justice and equality, and as a member of the trailblazing and controversial Commission into Human Rights she argued passionately for the disadvantaged. We also share with her, through dramatic filming experiences in Africa, horror at the traumas of conflict and the need to understand its resolution. We share her insight into human yearning for peaceful space in which ordinary family life may be lived - often taken for granted, too often lost. Deveson's unique voice, her humor, and humility shine through this memoir of experiences and ideas. She argues persuasively, and hopefully, that, were we to wage peace with all the resources and vigour that we wage war, we could win peace, and keep it.

  • Rank: #106844 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-07-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 256 pages

Sunday, May 19, 2013

The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage (Nyrb Collections)

The New York Review Abroad
The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage (Nyrb Collections)
Robert B. Silvers (Author, Editor), Ian Buruma (Introduction)

Download: $14.99 (as of 05/19/2013 04:36 PST)

Human Rights

For the past fifty years, The New York Review of Books has covered virtually every international revolution and movement of consequence by dispatching the world’s most brilliant writers to write eyewitness accounts. The New York Review Abroad not only brings together twenty-eight of the most riveting of these pieces but includes epilogues that update and reassess the political situation (by either the original authors or by Ian Buruma). Among the pieces included are:
 
• Susan Sontag’s personal narrative of staging Waiting for Godot in war-torn Sarajevo
• Alma Guillermoprieto’s report from inside Colombia’s guerrilla headquarters and her disturbing encounter with young female fighters
• Ryszard Kapuscinski’s terrifying description of being set on fire while running roadblocks in Nigeria
• Caroline Blackwood’s coverage of the 1979 gravediggers’ strike in Liverpool—a noir mini-masterpiece
• Timothy Garton Ash’s minute-by-minute account from the Magic Lantern theater in Prague in 1989, where the subterranean stage, auditorium, foyers, and dressing rooms had become the headquarters of the revolution

Among other writers whose New York Review pieces will be included are Tim Judah, Amos Elon, Joan Didion, William Shawcross, Christopher de Bellaigue, and Mark Danner.
 
A tour de force of vivid and enlightening writing from the front lines, this volume is indeed the first rough draft of the history of the past fifty years.

  • Rank: #127981 in eBooks
  • Published on: 2013-06-04
  • Released on: 2013-06-04
  • Number of items: 1

Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Morality of China in Africa

The Morality
The Morality of China in Africa
Stephen Chan (Editor)

Download: $9.99 (as of 05/16/2013 13:28 PST)

Human Rights

This unique volume, edited with authority by the influential and respected Stephen Chan, gathers together for the first time both African and Chinese perspectives on China’s place in Africa, analysing the moral aspects of China’s policies and ensuing migration. Chan introduces the book with an excellent essay, offering fresh insights in his typically elegant prose. The Morality of China in Africa undermines existing assumptions concerning Sino-African relations: that Africa is of critical importance for China, that China sees no risk in its largesse towards Africa, and that there is a single Chinese agenda. The resulting collection touches the issue of racism but also moments of pure idealism and ‘romance’ in Sino-African history.

  • Rank: #52988 in eBooks
  • Published on: 2013-05-09
  • Released on: 2013-05-09
  • Format: Kindle eBook
  • Number of items: 1

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Fleeing Homophobia: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Asylum

Fleeing Homophobia
Fleeing Homophobia: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Asylum
Thomas Spijkerboer (Editor)

New!: $135.00 $122.90 (as of 05/14/2013 20:38 PST)

Human Rights

Each year, thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) asylum seekers apply for asylum in EU Member States.This book considers the position of LGBTI asylum seekers in European asylum law. Developing an encompassing approach to the topic, the book identifies and analyzes the main legal issues arising in relation to LGBTI people seeking asylum including: the underestimation of the relevance of criminalization of sexual orientation as well as the large scale violence against trans people in countries of origin by some European states; the requirement to seek State protection against violence even when they originate from countries where sexual orientation or gender identity is criminalized, or where the authorities are homophobic; the particular hurdles faced during credibility assessment on account of persisting stereotypes; and queer families and refugee law.

The book gives a state of the art overview of law in Europe, both at the level of European legislation and at the level of Member State practice. While being largely focused on Europe, the book also takes into account asylum decisions from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States and is of relevance internationally, offering analysis of issues which are not specific to particular legal systems.

  • Rank: #164600 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-06-28
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .0 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 264 pages

The Broken Branch:How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

The Broken Branch
The Broken Branch:How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Thomas E. Mann (Author), Norman J. Ornstein (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars(23)

Download: $2.99 (as of 05/13/2013 23:04 PST)

Human Rights

Congress is the first branch of government in the American system, write Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, but now it is a broken branch, damaged by partisan bickering and internal rancor. The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional. Mann and Ornstein, two of the nations most renowned and judicious scholars of government and politics, bring to light the historical roots of Congress's current maladies, examining 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House and the stunning midterm election victory of 1994 that propelled Republicans into the majority in both House and Senate. The byproduct of that long and grueling but ultimately successful Republican campaign, the authors reveal, was a weakened institution bitterly divided between the parties. They highlight the dramatic shift in Congress from a highly decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the policy process--the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation, and the weakening of our system of checks and balances--have all compromised the role of Congress in the American Constitutional system. Indeed, Speaker Dennis Hastert has unabashedly stated that his primary responsibility is to pass the president's legislative program--identifying himself more as a lieutenant of the president than a steward of the house. From tax cuts to the war against Saddam Hussein to a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the legislative process has been bent to serve immediate presidential interests and have often resulted in poorly crafted and stealthily passed laws. Strong majority leadership in Congress, the authors conclude, led not to a vigorous exertion of congressional authority but to a general passivity in the face of executive power. A vivid portrait of an institution that has fallen far from the aspirations of our Founding Fathers, The Broken Branch highlights the costs of a malfunctioning Congress to national policymaking, and outlines what must be done to repair the damage.

  • Rank: #15595 in eBooks
  • Published on: 2006-08-01
  • Released on: 2006-08-01
  • Format: Kindle eBook
  • Number of items: 1

Monday, May 13, 2013

Do Muslim Women Need Saving

Do Muslim
Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
Lila Abu-Lughod (Author)

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Human Rights

Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights.

In recent years Abu-Lughod has struggled to reconcile the popular image of women victimized by Islam with the complex women she has known through her research in various communities in the Muslim world. Here, she renders that divide vivid by presenting detailed vignettes of the lives of ordinary Muslim women, and showing that the problem of gender inequality cannot be laid at the feet of religion alone. Poverty and authoritarianism--conditions not unique to the Islamic world, and produced out of global interconnections that implicate the West--are often more decisive. The standard Western vocabulary of oppression, choice, and freedom is too blunt to describe these women's lives.

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam--as well as a moving portrait of women's actual experiences, and of the contingencies with which they live.

  • Rank: #113909 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-11-12
  • Released on: 2013-10-07
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 280 pages

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir

Kissing the Sword
Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir
Shahrnush Parsipur (Author), Sara Khalili (Translator)

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Human Rights


Shahrnush Parsipur was an important writer and television producer in her native Iran until 1979 when the Islamic Republic began imprisoning its citizens. Kissing the Sword captures the surreal experiences of serving time without being charged with a crime, and witnessing the systematic destruction of any and all opposition to fundamentalist power. It is a memoir filled with both horror and humor: nights blasted by the sounds of machine gun fire as hundreds of prisoners are summarily executed, and days spent debating prison officials on whether the Quran demands that women be covered. Parsipur, one of the great novelists of modern Iran, known for magic realism, tells a story here that is all too real. She mines her own painful memories to create an urgent call for one of the most basic of human rights: freedom of expression.


Born in Iran in 1946, Shahrnush Parsipur began her career as a fiction writer and producer at Iranian National Television and Radio. She was imprisoned for nearly five years by the religious government without being formally charged. Shortly after her release, she published Women Without Men and was arrested and jailed again, this time for her frank and defiant portrayal of women's sexuality. While still banned in Iran, the novel became an underground bestseller there, and has been translated into many languages around the world. Parsipur is also the author of Touba and the Meaning of Night, among many other books, and now lives in exile in northern California.


  • Rank: #104291 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-05-21
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .41 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 240 pages

The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History

The Last Utopia
The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
Samuel Moyn (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars(5)

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Human Rights

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future.

For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront.

It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.

  • Rank: #120452 in Books
  • Published on: 2012-03-05
  • Released on: 2012-02-06
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .88 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 352 pages

Friday, May 10, 2013

Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet

Viral Hate
Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet
Abraham H. Foxman (Author), Christopher Wolf (Author)

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Human Rights

  • Rank: #88929 in Books
  • Published on: 2013-06-04
  • Released on: 2013-06-04
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 9.45" h x 2.01" w x 6.26" l, .1 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 256 pages

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Indignate! Un alegato contra la indiferencia y a favor de la insurreccion pacifica (Spanish Edition)

Indignate Un
Indignate! Un alegato contra la indiferencia y a favor de la insurreccion pacifica (Spanish Edition)
Stephane Hessel (Author)

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Human Rights

Cuando alguien como Stephane Hessel llama a la insurreccion pacifica», a desperezarse, a rebelarse, hay que escucharlo. Porque Hessel, a sus 93 anos, sabe de lo que habla: miembro de la Resistencia francesa, superviviente de Buchenwald, militante a favor de la independencia argelina y defensor de la causa palestina, este eterno luchador es, ademas, el unico redactor aun vivo de la Declaracion Universal de los Derechos Humanos de 1948. Por eso, cuando reclama un motivo de indignacion» para todos, hay que hacerle caso. Porque las razones para indignarse pueden parecer hoy menos nitidas, o el mundo demasiado complejo», pero siguen ahi, en la dictadura de los mercados, en el trato a los inmigrantes, a las minorias etnicas. Busquen y encontraran», nos dice, tomen la estafeta, indignense!», porque la peor actitud es la indiferencia. Si se comportan asi, perderan uno de los componentes esenciales que forman al hombre: la facultad de indignacion y el compromiso que la sigue». Un mensaje que ya ha contagiado a mas de un millon y medio de lectores en Francia. Indignate! Hoy se trata de no sucumbir bajo el huracan destructor del consumismo voraz y de la distraccion mediatica mientras nos aplican los recortes. Indignate! Sin violencia». Jose Luis Sampedro

  • Rank: #342550 in Books
  • Published on: 2011-11-15
  • Original language: Spanish
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .20" h x 5.90" w x 8.00" l, .20 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 64 pages

Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (P.S.)

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (P.S.)
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars(86)

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Human Rights

Volume 3 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's moving account of resistance within the Soviet labor camps and his own release after eight years

  • Rank: #296155 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-08-07
  • Released on: 2007-08-07
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 8.00" h x .97" w x 5.31" l, 1.03 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 608 pages