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Surveillance state : inside China's quest to launch a new era of social control / by Chin, Josh,author.; Lin, Liza,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Josh Chin and Liza Lin's Surveillance State is a groundbreaking work of investigative nonfiction on life in China's burgeoning surveillance state People living in democracies have for decades drawn comfort from the notion that their form of government, for all its flaws, is the best history has managed to produce. Surveillance State documents with startling detail how even as China's Communist Party pays lip service to democracy as a core value of "socialism with Chinese characteristics," it is striving for something new: a political model that shapes the will of the people not through the ballot box but through the sophisticated-and often brutal-harnessing of data. On the country's remote Central Asian frontier, where a separatist movement strains against Party control, China's leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. Across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where tech giants help optimize the friction out of daily life. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through both places, and several in between, as they document the Party's ambitious push-aided, in some cases, by American technology-to engineer a new society around the power of digital surveillance. China is hardly alone. As faith in democratic principles wavers, advances in surveillance have upended debate about the balance between security and liberty in countries around the globe, including the US. Succeed or fail, the Chinese experiment has implications for people everywhere"--
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Electronic surveillance; Internal security; Social control;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Injustice : how politics and fear vanquished America's Justice Department / by Leonnig, Carol,author.; Davis, Aaron C.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Throughout his first administration, Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation's top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, to target his enemies, and even to help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered. Injustice exposes not only the Trump administration's efforts to undermine the department at every turn but also how delays in investigating Trump's effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. With never-before-told accounts, Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors convulsed over Trump's disdain for the rule of law, and FBI agents, the department's storied investigators, at times retreated in fear. They take you to the rooms where Special Counsel Jack Smith's team set off on an all-but-impossible race to investigate Trump for absconding with classified documents and waging an assault on democracy ... and inside his prosecution's heroic and fateful choices that ultimately backfired. With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies, Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship, and how ... if the United States hopes to live on with its same form of government ... Trump's war with the Justice Department will mark a turning point from which it will be hard to recover. Injustice is the jaw-dropping account of partisans and enablers undoing democracy, heroes still battling to preserve a nation governed by laws, and a call to action for those who believe in liberty and justice for all.
Subjects: Trump, Donald, 1946-; United States. Department of Justice; Political corruption;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Sentinel / by Greaney, Mark,author.;
"An African coup may force Josh Duffy to choose between his mission and his family in this intense thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series. Josh Duffy lives by a simple code: Duty. Honor. Family. But sometimes it's hard to know what order the words go in. Josh Duffy and his wife, Nikki, are both working for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, providing protection for diplomats in the field. They and their two children have been posted to Ghana, the most stable democracy in western Africa. But that stability proves to be fleeting. A Chinese plan to overthrow the Ghanaian government brings Josh face-to-face with a particularly malignant ghost from his past. He knows his duty. His honor requires he fulfill it. But will his family pay the price?"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Political fiction.; Novels.; United States. Department of State. Bureau of Diplomatic Security; United States. Department of State. Diplomatic Security Service; Bodyguards; Coups d'état; Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes; Married people; Undercover operations;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Today Hong Kong, tomorrow the world : what China's crackdown reveals about its plans to end freedom everywhere / by Clifford, Mark,1957-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A gripping history of China's deteriorating relationship with Hong Kong, and its implications for the rest of the world. For 150 years as a British colony, Hong Kong was a beacon of prosperity where people, money, and technology flowed freely, and residents enjoyed many civil liberties. In preparation for handing the territory over to China in 1997, Deng Xiaoping promised that it would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. An international treaty established a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a far freer political system than that of Communist China-one with its own currency and government administration, a common-law legal system, and freedoms of press, speech, and religion. But as the halfway mark of the SAR's lifespan approaches in 2022, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted, harassment and brutality have become normalized, and activists are being jailed en masse. To make matters worse, a national security law that further crimps Hong Kong's freedoms has recently been decreed in Beijing. This tragic backslide has dire worldwide implications-as China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower's control. Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city's society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time"--
Subjects: Civil rights;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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At a loss for words : conversation in the age of rage / by Off, Carol,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Award-winning author and broadcast journalist Carol Off digs deep into six words whose meanings have been distorted and weaponized in recent years -- including democracy, freedom and truth -- and asks whether we can reclaim their value. As co-host of CBC Radio's As It Happens, Carol Off spent a decade and a half talking to people in the news five nights a week. On top of her stellar writing and reporting career, those 25,000 interviews have given her a unique vantage point on the crucial subject at the heart of her new book -- how, in these polarizing years, words that used to define civil society and social justice are being put to work for a completely different political agenda. Or they are being bleached of their meaning as the values they represent are mocked and distorted. As Off writes, "If our language doesn't have a means to express an idea, then the idea itself is gone -- even the range of thought is diminished." And, as she argues, that's a dangerous loss. In six, wide-ranging chapters, Off explores the mutating meanings and the changing political impact of her six chosen words -- freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes -- unpacking the forces, from right and left, that have altered them beyond recognition. She also shows what happens when we lose our shared political vocabulary: we stop being able to hear each other, let alone speak with each other in meaningful ways. This means we stop being able to reckon with the complexity of the crises we face, leaving us prey to conspiracy theories, autocrats and the machinations of greed. At a Loss for Words is both an elegy and a call to arms."--
Subjects: Interpersonal communication.; Miscommunication.; Semantics.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sentinel [text (large print)] / by Greaney, Mark,author.;
"An African coup may force Josh Duffy to choose between his mission and his family in this intense thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series. Josh Duffy lives by a simple code: Duty. Honor. Family. But sometimes it's hard to know what order the words go in. Josh Duffy and his wife, Nikki, are both working for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, providing protection for diplomats in the field. They and their two children have been posted to Ghana, the most stable democracy in western Africa. But that stability proves to be fleeting. A Chinese plan to overthrow the Ghanaian government brings Josh face-to-face with a particularly malignant ghost from his past. He knows his duty. His honor requires he fulfill it. But will his family pay the price?"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Large print books.; Political fiction.; Novels.; United States. Department of State. Bureau of Diplomatic Security; United States. Department of State. Diplomatic Security Service; Bodyguards; Coups d'état; Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes; Married people; Undercover operations;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Deep state : a thriller / by Hauty, Chris,author.;
"Recently elected President Richard Monroe--populist, controversial, and divisive--is at the center of an increasingly polarized Washington, DC. Never has the partisan drama been so tense or the paranoia so rampant. In the midst of contentious political turf wars, the White House chief of staff is found dead in his house. A tenacious intern discovers a single clue that suggests he died from something other than natural causes, and there may be wide-ranging conspiracy running beneath the surface of everyday events: powerful government figures are schemingto undermine the rule of law--and democracy itself. Soon, allies are exposed as enemies, once-dependable authorities fall under suspicion, and it seems no one is who they say they are. The unthinkable is happening. The Deep State is real. Who will die to keep its secrets? Who will kill to uncover the truth?"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Political fiction.; Presidents; Assassination; Conspiracies; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Ukraine : what everyone needs to know / by Yekelchyk, Serhy,author.; Yekelchyk, Serhy,.Conflict in Ukraine.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Conventional wisdom dictates that Ukraine's political crises can be traced to the linguistic differences and divided political loyalties that have long fractured the country. However, this theory obscures the true significance of Ukraine's recent civic revolution and the conflict's crucial international dimension. The 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution presented authoritarian powers in Russia with both a democratic and a geopolitical challenge. In reality, political conflict in Ukraine is reflective of global discord, stemming from differing views on state power, civil society, and democracy. Ukraine's sudden prominence in American politics has compounded an already-widespread misunderstanding of what is actually happening in the nation. In the American media, Ukraine has come to signify an inherently corrupt place, rather than a real country struggling in the face of great challenges. Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know is an updated edition of Serhy Yekelchyk's 2015 publication, The Conflict in Ukraine. It addresses Ukraine's relations with the West, particularly the United States, from the perspective of Ukrainians. The book explains how independent Ukraine fell victim to crony capitalism, how its people rebelled twice in the last two decades in the name of democracy and against corruption, and why Russia reacted so aggressively to the strivings of Ukrainians. Additionally, it looks at what we know about alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, the factors behind the stunning electoral victory of the political novice Volodymyr Zelensky, and the ways in which the events leading to the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump have changed the Russia-Ukraine-US relationship. This volume is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the forces that have shaped contemporary politics in this increasingly important part of Europe, as well as the international background of the impeachment proceedings in the US."--
Subjects: Group identity; Regionalism; Ukraine Conflict, 2014-; Ukraine Conflict, 2014-;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The power worshippers : inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism / by Stewart, Katherine,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-326) and index.For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.
Subjects: Christianity and politics; Nationalism; Nationalism; Christianity and culture; Christianity;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The slave's cause : a history of abolition / by Sinha, Manisha,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave's cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.".
Subjects: Abolitionists; African Americans; Antislavery movements; Slavery;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 121 to 130 of 204 | « previous |