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The Logic of Consent: The Diversity and Deceptiveness of Consent as a Defense to Criminal Conduct (Law, Justice and Power)
by Peter WestenThe Logic of Consent analyzes the varied nature of consent arguments in criminal law and examines the confusions that commonly arise from the failure of legislatures, courts and commentators to understand them. Peter Westen skillfully argues that the conceptual aspect accounts for a significant number of the difficulties that legislatures, courts and scholars have with consent in criminal cases; he observes that consent masquerades as a single kind of event when, in reality, it refers to diverse and sometimes mutually exclusive kinds of events. Specifically, consent is used in law to refer to three pairs of contrasting kinds of events: factual versus legal, attitudinal versus expressive, and prescriptive versus imputed. While Westen takes no position on whether the substance of existing defenses of consent in criminal law ought to be enlarged or reduced in scope, he examines each of these contrasting events and analyzes the normative confusions they produce.
The Logic of Constitutional Rights (Applied Legal Philosophy)
by Eric HeinzeIndividual rights raise endless conflicts and spawn intricate standards and policies. Increasing involvement by courts has added still greater complexity. It would seem that few meaningful principles can unite an area of law plagued by such uncertainty. In this book the author argues that a fixed structure underlies that complexity, determining the kinds of arguments that can be made about individual rights. Examples are drawn from the world's oldest and most intricate body of law on civil rights and liberties: the case law of the United States Supreme Court. Yet the model is designed to account for any legal system that recognizes civil rights and liberties. The author applies techniques of logical analysis (although no prior knowledge of logic is required) to identify a deeper discursive structure. He shows how simple concepts of harm and consent, which do not ordinarily appear to be relevant in all cases, provide unity within and across regimes of individual rights.
The Logic of Equality: A Formal Analysis of Non-Discrimination Law (Routledge Revivals Ser.)
by Eric HeinzeThis title was first published in 2003. The Logic of Equality proposes a formal-logical method for examining the indeterminacy of legal discourse, using the example of the non-discrimination norm. It shows that the indeterminacy of a legal concept does not mean that it is completely chaotic - the indeterminacy of the non-discrimination norm arises out of, and presupposes, a determinate formal structure, which remains fixed and constant both within and across jurisdictions, regardless of institutional or doctrinal differences. To illustrate the argument, cases are presented from a variety of jurisdictions including the United States Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Justice, and the German Constitutional Court. The book is aimed at theorists who are interested in the analysis of legal discourse, including comparative legal scholars and those who specialise in human rights and/or discrimination law.
The Logic of Financial Nationalism: The Challenges of Cooperation and the Role of International Law
by Federico Lupo-PasiniUsing case studies ranging from cross-border bank resolution to sovereign debt, the author analyzes the role of international law in protecting financial sovereignty, and the risks for the global financial system posed by the lack of international cooperation. Despite the post-crisis reforms, the global financial system is still mainly based on a logic of financial nationalism. International financial law plays a major role in this regard as it still focuses more on the protection of national interests rather than the promotion of global objectives. This is an inefficient approach because it encourages bad domestic governance and reduces capital mobility. In this analysis, Lupo-Pasini discusses some of the alternatives (such as the European Banking Union, Regulatory Passports, and international financial courts), and offers a new vision for the role of international law in maintaining and fostering global financial stability. In doing so, he fills a void in the law and economics literature, and puts forward a solution to tackle the problems of international cooperation in finance based on the use of international law.
The Logic of Innovation: Intellectual Property, and What the User Found There (Intellectual Property, Theory, Culture)
by Johanna GibsonThe Logic of Innovation examines not merely the supposed problem of the efficacy and relevance of intellectual property, and the nature of innovation and creativity in a digital environment, but also the very circumstances of that inquiry itself. Social life has itself become a sphere of production, but how might that be understood within the cultural and structural transformation of creativity, innovation and property? Through a highly original interlocutory and therapeutic approach to the issues in play, the author addresses the concepts of innovation and the digital by means of an investigation through literature and the imagination of new scenarios for language, business and legal reform. The book undertakes a complex inquiry into innovation and property through the wonder of Alice’s journeys in Wonderland and through the Looking-glass. The author presents a new theory of familiar production to account for the kinship that has emerged in both informal and commercial modes of innovation, and foregrounds the value of use as crucial to the articulation of intellectual property within contemporary models of production and commercialization in the digital.
The Logic of Law Making in Islam
by Behnam SadeghiThis pioneering study examines the process of reasoning in Islamic law. Some of the key questions addressed here include whether sacred law operates differently from secular law, why laws change or stay the same and how different cultural and historical settings impact the development of legal rulings. In order to explore these questions, the author examines the decisions of thirty jurists from the largest legal tradition in Islam: the Hanafi school of law. He traces their rulings on the question of women and communal prayer across a very broad period of time – from the eighth to the eighteenth century – to demonstrate how jurists interpreted the law and reconciled their decisions with the scripture and the sayings of the Prophet. The result is a fascinating overview of how Islamic law has evolved and the thinking behind individual rulings.
The Logic of Legal Argumentation: Multi-Modal Perspectives (Law, Language and Communication)
by Marko NovakMulti-modal argumentation with its logical, emotional, visceral and kisceral arguments is an important addition to logical argumentation, especially when real-life situations are considered. It does not discard logic but adds other modes of argumentation to complement it, to emphasize the realistic environments of communication. In this sense, the multi-modal theory is important for the area of legal argumentation, where even in the reasoning of judicial decisions traces of a flesh-and-blood personality, who decided the case and wrote the reasons, can be found. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of this informal logic in legal argumentation and its practicality within the law. It argues that by building on the dialectical and rhetorical models of legal argument, the former being important for clear cases while the latter for unclear ones, the multi-modal theory of legal argumentation brings together logic and psychology in a holistic or integral perspective. The approach is not only descriptive, identifying the traces of alternate arguments in judicial decisions, but is also normative, presenting the criteria for evaluation that multi-modal arguments need to face to attain validity in the legal context. The work will be of interest to academics and researchers in the areas of Legal Theory, Legal Linguistics, Philosophy of Law, and Communication Studies.
The Logic of Liberal Rights: A Study in the Formal Analysis of Legal Discourse (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy #No.14)
by Eric HeinzeThe Logic of Liberal Rights uses basic logic to develop a model of argument presupposed in all disputes about civil rights and liberties. No prior training in logic is required, as each step is explained. This analysis does not merely apply general logic to legal arguments but is also specifically tailored to the issues of civil rights and liberties. It shows that all arguments about civil rights and liberties presuppose one fixed structure and that there can be no original argument in rights disputes, except within the confines of that structure. Concepts arising in disputes about rights, like 'liberal' or 'democratic', are not mere abstractions but have a fixed and precise character.This book integrates themes in legal theory, political science and moral philosophy, as well as the philosophy of logic and language. For the advanced scholar, the book provides a model presupposed by leading theoretical schools (liberal and critical, positivist and naturalist). For the student it provides a systematic theory of civil rights and liberties. Examples are drawn from the European Convention in Human Rights but no special knowledge of the Convention is assumed, as the issues analysed arise throughout the world. Such issues include problems of free speech, religious freedom, privacy, torture, unlawful detention and private property.
The Logic of Responsibility Voids (Synthese Library #456)
by Hein DuijfThis book focuses on the problem of responsibility voids: these are cases where responsibility for a morally undesirable outcome cannot be attributed to any of the involved agents. Responsibility voids are thought to occur in collective decision-making and in the context of artificial intelligent systems. In these cases, philosophers worry that there is a shortfall of moral responsibility. In particular, such voids are often assumed to justify a notion of collective responsibility that cannot be reduced to individual responsibility. One of the aims of the book is to study how collective responsibility and joint action relate to individual responsibility and individual actions. The book offers a unifying framework for modelling moral responsibility by drawing from modal logic and game theory.The book investigates the possibility and scope of the problem of responsibility voids. One of its characteristics is its pluralistic perspective on moral responsibility: in contrast to giving a unique and all-encompassing definition of it, the book makes progress by spelling out and modelling several conceptions of moral responsibility. One of the appealing features of the book is that a relatively small range of models is used to investigate a variety of conceptions of moral responsibility. The unifying framework can thus be used to characterize the conditions under which responsibility voids are ruled out.
The Logistics Audit: Methods, Organization, and Practice (Routledge Focus on Business and Management)
by Piotr Buła Bartosz NiedzielskiExtraordinary technological progress, but also the experience gained from the global COVID-19 pandemic, force the future vision of the world’s economic development to assume a close coexistence and intense interaction between production (manufacturing) and logistics and supply-chain management. This perspective requires that the current functioning of organizations will have to be radically remodeled so that they can face not only market competition but also the turbulent changes (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity - VUCA) that take place in their close environment. Therefore, in the next few years, one of the most important tools for improving organizations may become industry audits, especially the logistics audit. This book explores the development, methods, and impact of logistics audits on organizations. In a holistic way, the book refers to topics such as internal audit, control, logistics system of enterprises, principles of conducting logistics audit and its problem areas (risk), logistics audit of procurement, production, warehousing, distribution, and supply chains, impact of the digital economy on organizations, and the European market for logistics audit services. Undoubtedly, the greatest asset of this book is that, in international terms, it is the first compact book devoted to the issue of logistics audit. Unique and timely, the book will be an essential resource for academics and postgraduate students of logistics, supply-chain management, and global operations in particular.
The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, Equality, and Rights
by Richard MohrEngaging the whole spectrum of public-policy issues affecting gays and lesbians from a humanistic and philosophical approach, Richard Mohr uses the tools of his trade to assess the logic and ethics of gay rights. Focusing on ideas and values, Mohr's nuanced case for legal and social acceptance applies widely held ethical principles to various issues, including same-sex marriage, AIDS, and gays in the military. By drawing on cultural-, legal-, and ethical-based arguments, Mohr moves away from tired political rhetoric and reveals the important ways in which the struggle for gay rights and acceptance relates to mainstream American society, history, and political life.Mohr forcefully counters moralistic and religious arguments regularly invoked to keep gay men and women from achieving the same rights as heterosexuals. He examines the nature of prejudices and other cultural forces that work against lesbian and gay causes and considers the role that sexuality plays in the national rituals by which Americans define themselves. In his support of same-sex marriage, Mohr defines matrimony as the development and maintenance of intimacy through the means by which people meet their basic needs and carry out their everyday living. Mohr contends that this definition, in both its legal and moral sense, applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual couples. Mohr also considers gays and lesbians as community members as he explores the prospect for greater legal and social inclusion. He concludes by suggesting that recent progress in addressing civil rights for gays and lesbians and the nation's symbolic use of gay issues on both sides of the political spectrum calls for a culturally focused gay politics.
The Long Arc of Legality: Hobbes, Kelsen, Hart
by David DyzenhausThe Long Arc of Legality breaks the current deadlock in philosophy of law between legal positivism and natural law by showing that any understanding of law as a matter of authority must account for the interaction of enacted law with fundamental principles of legality. This interaction conditions law's content so that officials have the moral resources to answer the legal subject's question, 'But, how can that be law for me?' David Dyzenhaus brings Thomas Hobbes and Hans Kelsen into a dialogue with H. L. A. Hart, showing that philosophy of law must work with the idea of legitimate authority and its basis in the social contract. He argues that the legality of international law and constitutional law are integral to the main tasks of philosophy of law, and that legal theory must attend both to the politics of legal space and to the way in which law provides us with a 'public conscience'.
The Long Hedge: Preserving Organisational Value through Climate Change Adaptation (The Responsible Investment Series)
by Jason WestPart of the Greenleaf Publishing Responsible Investment Series.Mitigating and adapting to risks and changing circumstances is a natural part of doing business. But methods of mitigating and adapting can be quite different in terms of time, cost and observed impacts. The impacts of mitigation activities are more immediate while the benefits of adaptation activities may take many years to take effect. Nowhere is this difference more apparent than in the case of the corporate response to climate change.In the context of climate change, adaptation is the process of changing behaviour in response to actual or expected climate change impacts. Climate change adaptation is now emerging as a critical partner to mitigation, and indeed may even become the primary protection mechanism for future generations.In this unique book, Jason West provides a comprehensive assessment of the management of climate change adaptation in the corporate sector. The book provides a formal overview of the range of approaches available along with a series of practical case studies and examples that can be used by companies and other organizations to identify, assess and manage climate change adaptation.A major focus is on the financial and investment implications of climate change adaptation. West examines how firms can evaluate the investment decisions associated with long-term climate change adaptation measures, including how such investments can be valued and funded, the appropriate accounting treatment of such measures and appropriate risk management and governance practices in relation to such measures. The book also considers the needs and interests of investors and other stakeholders, and considers how they can assess the adequacy and appropriateness of corporate action on climate change.The Long Hedge will be essential reading and a key text for risk-practitioners, investors, financiers, scholars and policy makers in the field of climate change.
The Long Shadow
by Mark MillsFrom Mark Mills, author of the award-winning THE SAVAGE GARDEN comes THE LONG SHADOW, a first-class thriller in the vein of Robert Harris and William Boyd. Blood brothers or sworn enemies? You never forget what the fight was about... THE LONG SHADOW is a stunning depiction of resentment and revenge.Ben Makepeace has barely thought of Jacob since school. What he remembers is a competitive, manipulative boy, impinging on his life. Now Ben is the wrong side of forty with a young son to support and in need of a backer. A call to meet hedge-fund billionaire Victor Sheldon is promising, but there's a surprise in store - Victor is Jacob, now firmly entrenched in a gilded world of riches and glamour. History can cast a long shadow and while Ben believes his childhood is well over, he soon discovers the roots of the past dig deep.
The Long Shadow
by Mark MillsBen Makepeace has barely thought of Jacob since school. What he remembers is a competitive, manipulative boy, impinging on his life like a cuckoo planted in a nest. Now Ben is the wrong side of forty with a young son to support and in need of a backer to bankroll his latest film script. A call to meet hedge-fund billionaire Victor Sheldon is promising, but there's a surprise in store - Victor is Jacob, now firmly entrenched in a gilded world of riches and glamour.History can cast a long shadow and while Ben believes his childhood is well over, he soon discovers the roots of the past dig deep, and some can't let it go.(P)2013 Headline Digital
The Long Winter of 1945: Tivari
by Anna Di Lellio Dardan LutaIn March 1945, at the end of the Second World War, hundreds of unarmed Albanian recruits were massacred by Yugoslav partisans. For too long, the memory of this massacre in Tivari – a coastal town in Montenegro –was suppressed by the Yugoslav state and kept alive in Kosovo only in informal versions, nurtured and retold in a spirit of ethnic mistrust and hatred. Depicted in graphic format, The Long Winter of 1945 presents an oral history of this traumatic event based on interviews with surviving participants. Archival documents and historical research provide context, placing the massacre in the broader setting of forced mass mobilization to fight, as well as the last pocket of Italian resistance. The Long Winter of 1945 situates the eventsin Tivari into the broader context of Yugoslavia’s war for liberation and the civil war between Serbs and Albanians. Bringing this traumatic event to the fore, this beautifully illustrated graphic novel rescues the memory of the victims and survivors from political exploitation.
The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
by Joe ConasonA sardonic chronicle of how conservatism turned into a racketeering enterprise – and why Donald Trump became the living emblem of the American right’s moral decay.The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump’s path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.From the “professional anti-communists” (whose tactics even J. Edgar Hoover despised) to the “populist” grifters of the Tea Party movement and the religious charlatans of the “prosperity gospel” (who provided a pious front for Trump), the right-wing ripoff has remained remarkably consistent, even as personalities change and new technologies emerge: Stir up anger and resentment, demonize political opponents, promise vengeance, and collect donations from the gullible. It’s a highly lucrative game that any unscrupulous charlatan can play, as many have – and they are named in these pages.In an unsparing and often comic narrative, Joe Conason explores the right’s long, steep descent into a movement whose principal aim is not to protect freedom or defend the Constitution, but merely to line the pockets of pretenders and blowhards whose malevolent tactics now endanger the nation.
The Longest Night: Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000
by Arthur J. Jacobson Michel Rosenfeld22 essays on the controversial 2000 presidential election, some from participants, some from contemporaneous observers, some from people who have analyzed the record afterward. About equal division between those who think the electoral and legal processes worked properly and gave satisfactory results, and those who are critical. Five are views from abroad.
The Longest Story: How humans have loved, hated and misunderstood other species
by Richard Girling&‘An extraordinary book&’ Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer &‘Essential reading&’ Philip Lymbery, CEO of Compassion in World Farming and author of Farmageddon The history of humanity&’s relationship with other species is baffling. Without animals there would be no us. We are all fellow travellers on the same evolutionary journey. By charting the love–hate story of people and animals, from their first acquaintance in deep prehistory to the present and beyond, Richard Girling reveals how and where our attitudes towards animals began – and how they have persisted, been warped and become magnified ever since. In dazzling prose, The Longest Story tells of the cumulative influence of theologians, writers, artists, warriors, philosophers, farmers, activists and scientists across the centuries, now locking us into debates on farming, extinction, animal rights, pets, experiments and religion.
The Lookback Window: A Novel
by Kyle Dillon HertzNew York Times Editors&’ Choice Debutiful Best Book of the Year One of Crimereads Best Crime Novels of 2023 &“Hertz has managed to tell a story of queer healing with all the narrative force of a thriller and the searing fury of an indictment.&” —The New York Times Book Review A fearless debut novel of resilience, transcendence, and the elusive promise of justice.Growing up in suburban New York, Dylan lived through the unfathomable: three years as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Vincent, a troubled young man who promised to marry Dylan when he turned eighteen. Years later—long after a police investigation that went nowhere, and after the statute of limitations for the crimes perpetrated against him have run out—the long shadow of Dylan&’s trauma still looms over the fragile life in the city he&’s managed to build with his fiancé, Moans, who knows little of Dylan&’s past. His continued existence depends upon an all-important mantra: To survive, you live through it, but never look back. Then a groundbreaking new law—the Child Victims Act—opens a new way foreword: a one-year window during which Dylan can sue his abusers. But for someone who was trafficked as a child, does money represent justice—does his pain have a price? As Dylan is forced to look back at what happened to him and try to make sense of his past, he begins to explore a drug and sex-fueled world of bathhouses, clubs, and strangers&’ apartments, only to emerge, barely alive, with a new clarity of purpose: a righteous determination to gaze, unflinching, upon the brutal men whose faces have haunted him for a decade, and to extract justice on his own terms. &“Hertz writes with a powerful blend of publicly experienced scene and deeply private interiority...[he] expertly presents both the rapturous façade of post-closet gay life and the cracks in its hastily constructed foundation,&” (Slant). Hertz&’s debut is &“cathartic and revelatory…[and] a gritty recovery story that packs a punch&” (The Bay Area Reporter). It offers a startling glimpse at the unraveling of trauma—and the light that peeks, faintly, and often in surprising ways, from the other side of the window.
The Looting Machine
by Tom BurgisThe trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa’s resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world’s reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world’s population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent. In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltran deposits just attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value . And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa’s new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline. This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa’s past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa’s resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, are being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different. In 2010, fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth $333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction. But who received the money? For every Frenchwoman who dies in childbirth, 100 die in Niger alone, the former French colony whose uranium fuels France’s nuclear reactors. In petro-states like Angola three-quarters of government revenue comes from oil. The government is not funded by the people, and as result it is not beholden to them. A score of African countries whose economies depend on resources are rentier states; their people are largely serfs. The resource curse is not merely some unfortunate economic phenomenon, the product of an intangible force. What is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting. Like its victims, its beneficiaries have names.
The Looting Machine
by Tom BurgisThe trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa’s resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world’s reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world’s population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent. In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltran deposits just attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value . And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa’s new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline. This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa’s past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa’s resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, are being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different. In 2010, fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth $333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction. But who received the money? For every Frenchwoman who dies in childbirth, 100 die in Niger alone, the former French colony whose uranium fuels France’s nuclear reactors. In petro-states like Angola three-quarters of government revenue comes from oil. The government is not funded by the people, and as result it is not beholden to them. A score of African countries whose economies depend on resources are rentier states; their people are largely serfs. The resource curse is not merely some unfortunate economic phenomenon, the product of an intangible force. What is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting. Like its victims, its beneficiaries have names.
The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth
by Tom BurgisThe trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa’s resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world’s reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world’s population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent. In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa’s new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline. This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa’s past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa’s resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different. In 2010, fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth $333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction. But who received the money? For every Frenchwoman who dies in childbirth, 100 die in Niger alone, the former French colony whose uranium fuels France’s nuclear reactors. In petro-states like Angola three-quarters of government revenue comes from oil. The government is not funded by the people, and as result it is not beholden to them. A score of African countries whose economies depend on resources are rentier states; their people are largely serfs. The resource curse is not merely some unfortunate economic phenomenon, the product of an intangible force. What is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting. Like its victims, its beneficiaries have names.
The Lost Art of Drawing the Line: How Fairness Went Too Far
by Philip K. HowardThe Lost Art of Drawing the Line will appall and irritate -- and entertain -- readers every bit as much as Philip Howard's first book. Why is it that no one can fix the schools? Why do ordinary judgements fill doctors with fear? Why are seesaws disappearing from playgrounds? Why has a wave of selfish people overtaken America? In our effort to protect the individual against unfair decisions, we have created a society where no one's in charge of anything. Silly lawsuits strike fear in our hearts because judges don't think they have the authority to dismiss them. Inner-city schools are filthy and mired in a cycle of incompetence because no one has the authority to decide who's doing the job and who's not. When no one's in charge, we all lose our link to the common good. When principals lack authority over schools, of what use are the parents' views? When no one can judge right and wrong, why not be as selfish as you can be? Philip Howard traces our well-meaning effort to protect individuals through the twentieth century, with the unintended result that we have lost much of our individual freedom. Buttressed with scores of stories that make you want to collar the next self-centered jerk or hapless bureaucrat, The Lost Art of Drawing the Line demonstrates once again that Philip Howard is "trying to drive us all sane."
The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts
by Karen ArmstrongIn this timely and important book, one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs examines the lost art of Scripture as a medium to lift humanity and change our perception of reality while evading logical explanation. Today the Quran is used by some to justify war and acts of terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The significance of Scripture--the holy texts at the centre of all religious traditions--may not be immediately obvious in our secular world but its misunderstanding is perhaps the root cause of most of today's controversies over religion. In this timely and important book, one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs examines the meaning of Scripture. Today holy texts are not only used selectively to underwrite sometimes arbitrary and subjective views: they are seen to prescribe ethical norms and codes of behaviour that are divinely ordained--they are believed to contain eternal truths. But as Karen Armstrong shows in this fascinating trawl through millennia of religious history, this peculiar reading of Scripture is a relatively recent, modern phenomenon--and in many ways, a reaction to a hostile secular world. For most of their history, the world's religious traditions have regarded these texts as tools for the individual to connect with the divine, to transcend their physical existence, and to experience a higher level of consciousness that helped them to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways. Scripture was not a "truth" that had to be "believed." Armstrong argues that only if the world's religious faiths rediscover such an open and spiritual engagement with their holy texts can they curtail the arrogance, intolerance and violence that flows from a narrow reading of Scripture as truth.