Freedom Democracy

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in a penal colony in the Urals for standing up for what she believed in. 'People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere.'

My Seditious Heart collects the work of a two-decade period when Arundhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights and freedoms in an increasingly hostile environment. Taken together, the essays speak in a uniquely spirited voice, marked by compassion, clarity and courage.

We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions. These are the words of Adolf Hitler. He and the National Socialist German Worker’s Party –the NAZI– were a SOCIALIST Party. Then who told us that Hitler and the NAZI were Fascist? Joseph Stalin, the mass murderer of the USSR, said so. And the rest of ...

Does America's policy toward China make sense? In this vigorous look at China's political evolution and its future, James Mann explores two popular scenarios: a gradual spread of democracy and human rights, or an eventual upheaval. Mann poses a third scenario: What will happen if Chinese capitalism continues to evolve and expand, but the government fails to liberalize? And why should this matter to Americans? Mann explores this possibility and offers a startling vision of our future with China.

America's fight for freedom began when it fought for independence in the 18th century. But it did not end there. America has had to continue to fight to maintain our freedom. Back then, it was the British Monarchy. After that, it was the spread of communism and socialism - from Leninist and Stalinist Soviet Russia, to the socialist Nazis in Hitler's Germany, to Mao's China, to Castro's Cuba, to Pol Pot's Cambodia, to the Kim dynasty's North Korea, to Vietnam. It spread to America too, brought and spread by The Conservaphobic Patriarchy throughout the 20th Century. Today, America continues ...

This book delves into the historical context and evolution of executive orders, examining how different presidents have used this power and the implications of their decisions on civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process rights, privacy rights, and equal protection under the law. The author analyzes specific executive orders that have been controversial or have had significant impacts on civil liberties, either positively or negatively. This book also discusses the legal and constitutional boundaries of executive orders, the checks and balances in place, ...

Trump, as extreme as he is, is less an aberration than a logical conclusion - a pastiche of pretty much all the worst and most dangerous trends of the past half century. A one-man megabrand, with wife and children as spin-off brands... Remember when it all seemed to be getting better? Before Trump happened? Naomi Klein, internationally acclaimed journalist, activist and best-selling author, shows us how we got to this surreal and dangerous place, how to stop it getting a lot worse, and how, if we keep our heads, we can make things better.

Hailed as the 'first freedom', free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat. In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech's many defenders, Mchangama demonstrates how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide.

Special-interest money is destroying our democratic process. But now that the Citizens United decision has thrown out campaign spending limits as abridgments of free speech, Americans want to know what they can do about it. Derek Cressman gives us the tools, both intellectual and tactical, to fight back. There's nothing inherently unconstitutional in limiting the amount of speech, Cressman insists.

Barely a year after the self-immolation of a young fruit seller in Tunisia, a vast wave of popular protest has convulsed the Middle East, overthrowing long-ruling dictators and transforming the region’s politics almost beyond recognition. But the biggest transformations of what has been labeled as the “Arab Spring” are yet to come. An insider to both American policy and the world of the Arab public, Marc Lynch shows that the fall of particular leaders is but the least of the changes that will emerge from months of unrest.

In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, the American government implemented a wave of overt policies to fight the nation's enemies. Unseen and undetected by the public, however, another set of tools were brought to bear on the domestic front. One of today's leading experts on the US security state shows how these "subtle tools" imperiled the very foundations of democracy, from the separation of powers and transparency in government to adherence to the Constitution. Karen Greenberg describes the subtle tools that were forged under George W. Bush in the name of security.

From award-winning journalist Jack Shenker, The Egyptians is the essential book about Egypt and radical politics. In early 2011 Cairo's Tahrir Square briefly commanded the attention of the world. Half a decade later, the international media has largely moved on from Egypt's explosive cycles of revolution and counter-revolution - but the Arab world's most populous nation remains as volatile as ever, its turmoil intimately bound up with forms of authoritarian power and grassroots resistance that stretch right across the globe.

At what point do you stand up to power? Age 14, Joshua Wong made history. While the adults stayed silent, Joshua staged the first ever student protest in Hong Kong to oppose National Education - and won. Since then Joshua founded Demosisto, led the Umbrella Revolution and spearheaded the Extradition Bill protests, which have seen an estimated 2 million people - more than a quarter of the population - take to Hong Kong’s streets. His actions have sparked worldwide attention, a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and over 100 days in jail.

The ideal of freedom is at the heart of our political and economic system. It is foundational to our sense of justice, our way of life, our conception of what it is to be human. But are we free in the way that we think we are? In Creating Freedom, Raoul Martinez brings together a torrent of mind-expanding ideas, facts and arguments to dismantle sacred myths central to our society - myths about free will, free markets, free media and free elections.

During the First World War the U.S. Department of Justice, using the newly passed Espionage Act and its later Sedition Act amendment, prosecuted and won the convictions of many who opposed America’s entry into the conflict. Historian William H. Thomas Jr. shows that the Justice Department did not stop at this official charge but went much further, paying cautionary visits to suspected dissenters, pressuring them to express support of the war effort, or intimidating them into silence.

In this follow-up to his best-selling expose about Saudi Arabia's support of global terrorism, Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the United Nations, reveals how the United States faces a dangerous world filled with terrorists and troubling regimes because the United Nations has created a global crisis with its moral relativism.

Lockdown is a terrifying story of not only the chaotic freefall of American freedoms during the opening stages of the COVID pandemic, but the dangerous growth of government power that continues today. Lockdown is a warning that the extraordinary powers invoked by left-wing Democrats and others, justified by claims of public health and safety, have begun the unravelling of America’s constitutional order and our most cherished freedoms. Using COVID-19 as a cover, Democrat leaders and their bureaucratic health advisers seized powers the Constitution never gave them.

In this presidential contest of diametric opposites, nothing is certain on the path to the polls - except that every word matters. Direct from the candidates, from point and counterpoint to wit and wisdom, an unvarnished conversation on the issues captivating the American electorate.

Advanced AI technology is now able to create video of people doing things they never did, in places they have never been, saying things they never said. In the hands of rogue states, terrorists, criminals or crazed individuals, they represent a disturbing new threat to democracy and personal liberty. Deep Fakes can be misused to shift public opinion, swing Presidential elections, or blackmail, coerce, and silence individuals.

Jesper Bengtsson presents a portrait of one of today’s most significant political activists. He chronicles her background as the daughter of Burma’s liberation hero Aung San, the years she spent in England and New York, and her return to Burma in the 1980s. First placed under house arrest by the military junta in 1989, she spent 15 of the subsequent 21 years in captivity, separated from her husband and two children. Throughout that period, she remained a unifying figure and activist for Burma’s democracy movement.