Politics

THE NATIONAL DEBT IS A SCAM because the government could easily pay off the $31.5 trillion national debt in 24 hours with funds stashed in 825 worldwide bank accounts. The author of this book provides TOP SECRET government documents, affidavits, confidential letters, photos, and FOIA admissions to back up his claim that tons of gold bullion and trillions of dollars are being hidden from the public in secret CIA-controlled bank accounts. In five extraordinary chapters, the author reveals:How he temporarily acquired power of attorney over hundreds of CIA bank accounts from a CIA operativeHow he used the Mafia to confirm the existence of these accountsHow he tricked the FBI into confirming themHow he used one judge to implicate five others in the cover-upHow he "paid" five friends $150 million each with CIA moneyHow a $957,000 tax bill was paid with CIA moneyHow he almost "stole" billions in CIA drug money in hopes of returning it to the American people. In this book, you will read shocking documentation revealing the extent of involvement by international banks, governments, and NGOs in laundering these vast sums of money. Also included is a confidential list of 180+ subpoenable witnesses with knowledge of these secret bank accounts: bankers, judges, lawyers, top government officials, and private citizens. Many of them were murdered to cover up these secret accounts. Dirty Laundry is the most important book on government corruption that has ever been published. The author's fiery expose of massive money laundering by the White House, CIA, NSA, and the U.S. Treasury make the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the Twitter files scandals mere historical footnotes! (Note: For security reasons, the name of the CIA operative and his family, as well as the name and account number of these worldwide bank accounts, have been changed and/or redacted throughout this book.) This print book version contains exhibits not included in the e-book version.

From the outside, logotherapy and Red Bull seem to have little in common. Yet both worlds are based on the same principles: freedom, self-responsibility, and an unwavering creative drive. Volker Viechtbauer, long-time confidant of Dietrich Mateschitz, shows us how Frankl's humanism aligns with the Red Bull founder's philosophy of life. With this, he not only provides insight into the culture of Red Bull, but also highlights how Frankl laid the foundation for purpose- and talent-oriented entrepreneurship and a modern working world defined by self-responsibility.

In a characteristically explosive barrage, Ljubljana's most famous philosopher takes a passionate stance on the war in Ukraine, surveys the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and delivers detonations into a range of contemporary issues, from sexual politics in India to the prospects for a new Cold War. Ever attentive to moments where the bizarre and the epic join forces, among the questions Žižek considers here are: Is the giant orgy, planned to take place in Ukraine in the event of a Russian nuclear attack, really all that morbid? And what should society do, whether on the big screen or the battlefield, in preparation for the end of the world?Agree with him or not, Žižek rarely fails to provoke in a productive fashion. By examining matters through a lens that is bold and original, and often joyfully outlandish, Žižek helps us to better grasp a world in which, increasingly, the dominant motif is one of madness.

Aiden Aslin joined the Ukrainian marines in 2018, compelled to defend his adopted homeland from the growing threat of Russian invasion. In February 2022, as Russia mounted a full-scale offensive, Aiden and his unit were stationed at the frontline at Mariupol. Pinned down at a Mariupol steelworks, after a month-long siege and running out of supplies, Aiden was part of the mass surrender of over a thousand Ukrainian troops, in April 2022. Then his real ordeal began. Singled out for his British passport, Aiden was interrogated, tortured, stabbed, turned into a propaganda zombie, tried by a kangaroo court and then sentenced to death. A victim of a catalogue of abuses of international law, Aiden struggled to cling on to any hope of survival. Certain that he was going to be executed, he was eventually freed in a prisoner exchange and permitted to return home. In Putin's Prisoner, Aiden will tell the full, harrowing story of his time fighting in Putin's war, of his six months in Russian captivity, and of his hardened resolve to defend the freedoms of the people of Ukraine.

POLITICIANS AND SCIENTISTS HAVE DEBATED CLIMATE CHANGE FOR CENTURIES IN TIMES OF RAPID CHANGE

In The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung provide an authoritative overview of what "Xi Jinping Thought" is and is not and what it means for both China and the world. Xi Jinping intends to stay the leader of China for life and is working to make "Xi Jinping Thought" China's new state ideology, something that will define what he calls the China Dream of national rejuvenation and the pathway to its fulfilment by 2050. Drawing fromoriginal research of Xi's speeches, writings, and policies, the authors conceptualize Xi's vision independently from interpretations provided by the Chinese Communist Party or other sources. They further show how Xi seeks to transform this vision into reality.

As US-Russian relations scrape the depths of cold-war antagonism, the promise of partnership that beguiled American administrations during the first post-Soviet decades increasingly appears to have been false from the start. Why did American leaders persist in pursuing it? Was there another path that would have produced more constructive relations or better prepared Washington to face the challenge Russia poses today?With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Thomas Graham deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response. Distilling the Putin factor to reveal the contours of the Russia challenge facing the United States whenever he departs the scene, Graham lays out a compelling way to deal with it so that the United States can continue to advance its interests in a rapidly changing world.

"By weaving his experiences with information on the rise of anti-science sentiment, how it was funneled into a movement, and how it has become a tool of far-right political figures around the world, the author opens readers' eyes to the dangerous world it creates. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, he demonstrates his innate optimism, offering suggestions for how science denial can be met by other active scientists"--

Why is Israel¿s relatively small and low-budget military also the world¿s most innovative, technologically and logistically? Edward Luttwak and Eitan Shamir look to the IDF¿s unique structure: integrating army, air force, and navy in one service, under an officer class constantly refreshed by short tenures, the IDF is built for agility and change.

In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs?

"This book tells the story, in both English and Arabic, of a land full of people--people with families, hopes, dreams, and a deep connection to their home--before Israel's establishment in 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Denying Palestinian existence has been a fundamental premise of Zionism, which has sought not only to hide this existence but also to erase its memory. But existence leaves traces, and the imprint of the Palestine that was remains, even in the absence of those expelled from their lands. It appears in the ruins of a village whose name no longer appears in the maps, in the drawing of a lost landscape, in the lyrics of a song, or in the photographs from a family album." --

International in scope, this volume brings together leading and emerging voices working at the intersection of contemporary art, visual culture, activism, and climate change.

We hear all the time that we're moments from doomsday. Around us, crises interlock and escalate, threatening our collective survival: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with its rising risk of nuclear warfare, is taking place against a backdrop of global warming, ecological breakdown, and widespread social and economic unrest. Protestors and politicians repeatedly call for action, but still we continue to drift towards disaster. We need to do something. But what if the only way for us to prevent catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened-to accept that we're already five minutes past zero hour?Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj Žižek forge a vital new space for a radical emancipatory politics that could avert our course to self-destruction. He illuminates why the liberal Left has so far failed to offer this alternative, and exposes the insidious propagandism of the fascist Right, which has appropriated and manipulated once-progressive ideas. Pithy, urgent, gutting and witty, Žižek's diagnosis reveals our current geopolitical nightmare in a startling new light, and shows how, in order to change our future, we must first focus on changing the past.

Reflections on Violence was an explosive and controversial book in 1906, and it remains so today. In it, Georges Sorel rejects the decadence of bourgeois democracy and calls for a heroic vitalism of the working class, to be brought about by any means necessary, including violence.Sorel chastises the republicanism and parliamentary socialism of his day, but his insights apply to any vanguardist movement, making him of interest beyond the left, and a precursor to fascism. Drawing on Bergson, Renan, Vico, and others, Sorel underlines myth as the driving force behind political action, and offers the myth of the general strike as the way forward for the syndicalist movement.Sorel's insistence on the myth of the general strike can easily be transposed on to any group's quest for self-determination, and so his critiques of politicians, of utopians, and of moderates are as relevant today as they were a century ago.In the Imperium Press edition, the original translator's preface, which defends Sorel's purging of democracy from socialism, has been restored, along with two of Sorel's essays not included in the original Hulme translation. This edition also includes a foreword by Thomas777 and an essay on the historical context in which Sorel was writing

The rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs, users, and workers.The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In Cloud Empires, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward.Digital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, Lehdonvirta explains, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can "e;vote with their feet"e; and find another platform because in most cases there isn't one. And yet using antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult. Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create-or resist-the new social order established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects-Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick of Uber, and Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto-as well as Kristy Milland, labor organizer of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand digital platforms for what they are-institutions as powerful as the state-can we begin the work of democratizing them.

RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK Economic thinking - about globalisation, climate change, immigration, austerity, automation and much more - in its most digestible formFor decades, a single free market philosophy has dominated global economics. But this is bland and unhealthy - like British food in the 1980s, when bestselling author and economist Ha-Joon Chang first arrived in the UK from South Korea. Just as eating a wide range of cuisines contributes to a more interesting and balanced diet, so too is it essential we listen to a variety of economic perspectives.In Edible Economics, Chang makes challenging economic ideas more palatable by plating them alongside stories about food from around the world. He uses histories behind familiar food items - where they come from, how they are cooked and consumed, what they mean to different cultures - to explore economic theory. For Chang, chocolate is a life-long addiction, but more exciting are the insights it offers into post-industrial knowledge economies; and while okra makes Southern gumbo heart-meltingly smooth, it also speaks of capitalism's entangled relationship with freedom and unfreedom. Explaining everything from the hidden cost of care work to the misleading language of the free market as he cooks dishes like anchovy and egg toast, Gambas al Ajillo and Korean dotori mook, Ha-Joon Chang serves up an easy-to-digest feast of bold ideas.Myth-busting, witty and thought-provoking, Edible Economics shows that getting to grips with the economy is like learning a recipe: if we understand it, we can change it - and, with it, the world.