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Large sections of democracy and its basic structures have recently been hijacked. By stealth, powerful elites have gradually gained control of the political sphere and transformed it to serve their own interests. The political systems of what appear to be established democracies in all corners of the world are showing signs of this takeover, which has led to widespread citizen disaffection and indignation. Kidnapped Democracy uses the metaphor of captivity to illustrate the differences and similarities between conventional kidnappings and the hijacking of a political system. The book’s nine chapters identify the kidnappers, the accomplices, the hostages, the victims and the negotiators before examining the effect of a peculiar Stockholm syndrome and, finally, reflecting on possible ways to secure the release of democracy.
The confinement of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, often called the Japanese American internment, has been described as the worst official civil rights violation of modern U. S. history. Greg Robinson not only offers a bold new understanding of these events but also studies them within a larger time frame and from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newly discovered material, Robinson provides a backstory of confinement that reveals for the first time the extent of the American government's surveillance of Japanese communities in the years leading up to war and the construction of what officials termed "concentration camps" for enemy aliens. He also considers the aftermath of confinement, including the place of Japanese Americans in postwar civil rights struggles, the long movement by former camp inmates for redress, and the continuing role of the camps as touchstones for nationwide commemoration and debate. Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes. The confinement of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, often called the Japanese American internment, has been described as the worst official civil rights violation of modern U. S. history. Greg Robinson not only offers a bold new understanding of these events but also studies them within a larger time frame and from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newly discovered material, Robinson provides a backstory of confinement that reveals for the first time the extent of the American government's surveillance of Japanese communities in the years leading up to war and the construction of what officials termed "concentration camps" for enemy aliens. He also considers the aftermath of confinement, including the place of Japanese Americans in postwar civil rights struggles, the long movement by former camp inmates for redress, and the continuing role of the camps as touchstones for nationwide commemoration and debate. Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes.
The compelling and insightful account of a New York Times reporter's abduction by the Taliban, and his wife's struggle to free him. In November 2008, David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, was kidnapped by the Taliban and held captive for seven months in the tribal areas of Pakistan. In the process, Rohde became the first American to witness how Pakistan's powerful military turns a blind eye toward a Taliban ministate thriving inside its borders. In New York, David's wife Kristen Mulvihill, together with his family, kept the kidnapping secret for David's safety and struggled to navigate a labyrinth of conflicting agendas, misinformation, and lies. Part memoir, part work of journalism, A Rope and a Prayer is a story of duplicity, faith, resilience, and love.
Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy. Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace.
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.
In this path-breaking book, Jeb Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power. Over the ensuing two decades, paramilitary violence was largely directed against the poor and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, taking the lives of thousands of Haitians. Sprague seeks to understand how this occurred, and traces connections between paramilitaries and their elite financial and political backers, in Haiti but also in the United States and the Dominican Republic. The product of years of original research, this book draws on over fifty interviews—some of which placed the author in severe danger—and more than 11,000 documents secured through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Haiti today, and is a vivid reminder of how democratic struggles in poor countries are often met with extreme violence organized at the behest of capital.
This book is a collection of scholarly essays from some of Nigeria’s most notable social science scholars on the character, contours, and peculiarities of democratic practices in Nigeria’s fourth attempt at constitutional rule after years of brutally absolutist military regimes. The Fourth Republic began in 1999 and continues to this day. It is coterminous with the restoration of constitutional rule after 16 years of sustained military rule, which represents the longest stretch of democratic self-rule since Nigeria won independence from British colonialism in 1960. The chapters in this book contain scholarly insights into the pitfalls of governance, institutional dysfunctions and foundational woes that continue to threaten the vitality of the Fourth Republic. Contributors to the book offer critical theoretical lenses to gaze at the decline in democratic citizenship, weakening of faith in the promises of democracy, loss of critical media engagement with the state, and deterioration of the socio-political fortunes of the state in Nigeria.
This is an American presidential textbook which reveals the process, law and ending of the strategic finals between China and the United States in the 21st century. The United States today is good at creating problems in the world and not at solving problems for the world. America has missiles, dollars, hegemony, but no great wisdom to lead and shape the world. The head of this global village should resign from this position. China has become the world's "chief designer" since Xi Jinping’s advocation of building a community of common destiny for mankind. Farewell to the world hegemony. The United States will be transformed from "tiger country" to "panda country", and the other countries will embrace and kiss the United States.
In its six-decade history, the German Federal Constitutional Court has become one of the most powerful and influential constitutional tribunals in the world. It has played a central role in the establishment of liberalism, democracy, and the rule of law in post-war West Germany, and it has been a model for constitutional tribunals in many other nations. The Court stands virtually unchallenged as the most trusted institution of the German state. Written as a complete history of the German Federal Constitutional Court from its founding in 1951 up into the twenty-first century, this book explores how the court became so powerful, and why so few can resist its strength. Founded in 1951, the Court took root in a pre-democratic political culture. The Court's earliest contributions were to help establish liberal values and fundamental rights protection in the young Federal Republic. The early Court also helped democratize West German politics by reinforcing rights of speech and information, affirming the legitimacy of parliamentary opposition, and checking executive power. In time, as democratic values took hold in the country at large, the Court's early role in nurturing liberalism and democracy led many West Germans to view the Court not as a constraint on democracy, but as a bulwark of democracy's preconditions. In later decades, the Court played a stabilizing role - mediating political conflicts and integrating societal forces. Citizens disenchanted with partisan politics looked to the Court as a guardian of enduring values and a source of moral legitimacy. Through a comprehensive narrative of the Court's remarkable rise and careful analysis of its periodic crises, the work carefully dissects the success of the Court, presenting not only a traditional work of legal history, but a public history - both political and societal - as well as a doctrinal and jurisprudential account. Structured around the Court's major decisions from 1951 to 2001, the book examines popular and political reactions to those decisions, drawing heavily on newspaper accounts of major judgments and material from the archives of individual politicians and judges. The result is an impressive case study of the global phenomenon of constitutional justice.