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The Fighting Soul: On the Road with Bernie Sanders
by Ari Rabin-HavtAn unparalleled and intimate account of Bernie Sanders from one of his most trusted confidants. Bernie Sanders inspires fervent love and, even among his enemies, a measure of grudging respect—yet, curiously, we know little about who the man really is, with Sanders deliberately keeping the focus on his policies. Now, with The Fighting Soul, Ari Rabin-Havt takes us where no profiles or televised interviews have been able to go. As a close advisor and deputy campaign manager on Sanders’s most recent—and likely last—presidential campaign, the tireless Rabin-Havt spent more hours between 2017 and 2020 with the Vermont senator than anyone else. Traveling the country for rallies and to support striking workers, the two visited thirty-six states, drove tens of thousands of miles, and ate in countless chain restaurants. One result was a meteoric and galvanizing presidential campaign. Another is The Fighting Soul, an unforgettable chronicle of life on the road with Sanders and the first in-depth portrait of this fiercely independent, and famously private, left-wing firebrand. Sanders’s second bid for the presidency began in Rabin-Havt’s apartment in Washington DC in January 2018. From there, Rabin-Havt offers a behind-the-scenes account of Sanders’s run, including his heart attack in Las Vegas, his notorious debate encounter with fellow-progressive Elizabeth Warren, and a momentous conversation between Sanders and Barack Obama that has never been reported before. At every step, Rabin-Havt shows us Bernie Sanders when the cameras turn off: his dry sense of humor; his views of his young supporters; the pivotal role his wife, Jane, plays in every decision he makes; and more. Delving into Sanders’s life and career, with moving glimpses of his childhood in Brooklyn and first forays into politics in Burlington, Rabin-Havt discloses that Sanders is shocked by his ascent: “Ari, my parents would tell me I was crazy if I told them I would become a senator, much less could become president of the United States.” Though his campaign ended in abrupt and unexpected defeat, Sanders has pushed the Democratic Party to the left and helped remake American politics—as Rabin-Havt suggests, he has done more to shape our history than anyone else who has not reached the White House. Revelatory and heartfelt, The Fighting Soul depicts the rare politician motivated by principle, not power.
Fighting Techniques of the Elite Forces: How to Train and Fight Like the Special Operations Forces of the World
by Leroy ThompsonLearn the trade secrets of special operatives. It is easy to visualize special operations troops as men in camouflage with painted faces, lurking in the shadows of modern warfare. But the truth is far more complex—and enthralling. A wide array of skills, both physical and cerebral, combines to make up the modern elite soldier. Fighting Techniques of the Elite Forces not only shows the road down which the specialist must travel to reach his place as one of the world's fighting elite, it details the equipment he uses to carry out his missions and the actual techniques he employs. Themed chapters and a wealth of illustrations explain everything you need to know about the formidably trained warriors of the British and Australian SAS, US Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, the French GIGN, and more. Learn how to select a drop zone for parachute insertions or how to execute a High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) insertion when you are twenty miles' distance from your objective. Find out how combat swimmers launch from submarines to carry out beach reconnaissance prior to an invasion. Understand the special considerations and knowledge required to fight and, more importantly, survive in such hostile environments as jungle, desert, or mountain. Discover how today's special operative must master skills as diverse as horsemanship and the compact computer, or how to kill silently with a knife or laser designator.Fighting Techniques of the Elite Forces is a must-have for anyone interested in the covert world of elite forces; it will provide the key to understanding what makes the specialist soldier so very "special."
Fighting Terrorism and Drugs: Europe and International Police Cooperation (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics)
by Jörg FriedrichsFighting Terrorism and Drugs is an examination of European states in their fight against terrorism and drugs, from the 1960s up to the present day. Jörg Friedrichs explores what makes large European states willing or unwilling to participate in international police cooperation against terrorism and drugs. The book examines forty-eight case studies, with particular regard to the policy preferences of the four largest and most politically important EU Member States: Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. The author argues that if a real understanding of international cooperation is to develop, it is important to understand what individual states want and why they want it. To explain state preferences, Friedrichs considers interests, institutions and ideas from domestic, national and international levels that can affect state preferences either positively or negatively. This theoretically coherent book looks at international police cooperation from a truly international perspective and will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, terrorism, criminology, international law and European integration.
Fighting the First Wave: Why the Coronavirus Was Tackled So Differently Across the Globe
by Peter BaldwinCOVID-19 is the biggest public health and economic disaster of our time. It has posed the same threat across the globe, yet countries have responded very differently and some have clearly fared much better than others. Peter Baldwin uncovers the reasons why in this definitive account of the global politics of pandemic. He shows that how nations responded depended above all on the political tools available - how firmly could the authorities order citizens' lives and how willingly would they be obeyed? In Asia, nations quarantined the infected and their contacts. In the Americas and Europe they shut down their economies, hoping to squelch the virus's spread. Others, above all Sweden, responded with a light touch, putting their faith in social consensus over coercion. Whether citizens would follow their leaders' requests and how soon they would tire of their demands were crucial to hopes of taming the pandemic.
Fighting the Mafia & Renewing Sicilian Culture
by Leoluca OrlandoGrowing up in an aristocratic family that seems almost to have stepped out of the pages of The Leopard, Leoluca Orlando entered law and politics in the late 1970s as one of the young idealists identified with the Catholic Church who were challenging the Mafia's control of Sicilian life. At about the same moment, life in Sicily was becoming more perilous. As if the "old" Mafia had not been bad enough, a new and particularly vicious Mafia sect based in the town of Corleone was murdering its way to power. Fueled by profits from the international heroin trade, this mafia gansteristica made Sicily into an Italian Lebanon and filled the international press with pictures of bloody bodies-those of Mafia rivals as well as police and government law enforcement officials.One of the figures most prominently identified with Italy's offensive against the Mafia, Orlando has endured repeated assassination attempts and even today travels with a bodyguard. Fighting the Mafia is his dramatic tale of witness and survival, of his effort to expose Mafia infiltration into the highest levels of Italian life and politics, and of the movements he helped to build-in schools and churches and at the ballot box-to recapture Sicilian culture and inspire a renaissance of democracy.
Fighting the War on Terror: Global Counter-Terrorist Units and their Actions
by Judith GrohmannSWAT teams, GSG9, EKO Cobra, SCO 19 these elite police units are used to dealing with dangerous situations, particularly in the fight against global terrorism. European political-economic journalist and author, Judith Grohmann, is the first outsider to be given access into the world of specialist counter-terrorism units in 16 countries around the globe, including the USA, Russia, Israel, the UK, and many more. Whether performing hostage rescues, subduing barricaded suspects, engaging with heavily-armed criminals or taking part in counter-terrorism operations, her interviews with the men and women concerned explain what their work really involves, their most dangerous missions, and the physical and mental training required for them to perform these high-risk operations, which fall outside the abilities of regular police officers.A truly intimate insight into a closed world.
Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore (California Series in Public Anthropology #54)
by Nicole FabricantIndustrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other chemical industries in their neighborhoods, residents face elevated rates of lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses in addition to heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular disease, all of which can lead to premature death. Fighting to Breathe follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality in their city. For more than a decade, student organizers stood up to unequal land use practices and the proposed construction of an incinerator and instead initiated new waste management strategies. As a Baltimore resident and activist-scholar, Nicole Fabricant documents how these young organizers came to envision, design, and create a more just and sustainable Baltimore.
Fighting to Serve: Behind the Scenes in the War to Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
by Alexander NicholsonRevealing the backstage dealings that led to the 2010 repeal of the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, Fighting to Serve offers a detailed, no-holds-barred account of the negotiations from an insider's perspective. In early 2006, Alexander Nicholson, the founder of the largest organization for gay and lesbian servicemembers--Servicemembers United--along with fellow former military members who had also been discharged under DADT, toured the United States, speaking about the destructive policy at American Legion posts, on radio talk shows, and at press conferences across the South and both coasts. Surprised at the mostly positive reception and momentum for the repeal that the tour provoked, Servicemembers United was suddenly propelled to the forefront of the fight to overturn DADT. From the unique perspective of the only person with a central role on every front in the war against DADT, Nicholson exposes how various LGBT organizations, Congress, the Pentagon, and the White House often worked at cross purposes, telling the public they were doing one thing while advocating other strategies behind closed doors.
Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City
by William W. BuzbeeFrom 1971 to 1985, battles raged over Westway, a multibillion-dollar highway, development, and park project slated for placement in New York City. It would have projected far into the Hudson River, including massive new landfill extending several miles along Manhattan's Lower West Side. The most expensive highway project ever proposed, Westway also provoked one of the highest stakes legal battles of its day. In Fighting Westway, William W. Buzbee reveals how environmentalists, citizens, their lawyers, and a growing opposition coalition, despite enormous resource disparities, were able to defeat this project supported by presidents, senators, governors, and mayors, much of the business community, and most unions. Although Westway's defeat has been derided as lacking justification, Westway's critics raised substantial and ultimately decisive objections. They questioned claimed project benefits and advocated trading federal Westway dollars for mass transit improvements. They also exposed illegally disregarded environmental risks, especially to increasingly scarce East Coast young striped bass often found in extraordinarily high numbers right where Westway was to be built.Drawing on archival records and interviews, Buzbee goes beyond the veneer of government actions and court rulings to illuminate the stakes, political pressures, and strategic moves and countermoves that shaped the Westway war, a fight involving all levels and branches of government, scientific conflict, strategic citizen action, and hearings, trials, and appeals in federal court. This Westway history illuminates how high-stakes regulatory battles are fought, the strategies and power of America's environmental laws, ways urban priorities are contested, the clout of savvy citizen activists and effective lawyers, and how separation of powers and federalism frameworks structure legal and political conflict. Whether readers seek an exciting tale of environmental, political, and legal conflict, to learn what really happened during these battles that transformed New York City, or to understand how modern legal frameworks shape high stakes regulatory wars, Fighting Westway will provide a good read.
Fighting With FEMA: A Practical Regulations Handbook
by Michael MartinetIn this book, disaster finance and cost recovery expert Michael Martinet provides unparalleled coverage of the practical, real-world key principles necessary to successfully navigate the nuances of federal regulations surrounding FEMA’s Public Assistance program. Accessibly written, Martinet demystifies the many policies, procedures, and administrative processes a local government agency should adopt before a disaster to prepare themselves for a greater financial recovery after a disaster. The intent is to awaken local authorities to the realities of the process and assist them in preparing for a day which all hope they will never see.Designed for financial officers, purchasing officials, Public Works officials, Building & Safety officials, public construction project managers, and emergency management professionals at all levels of government, Fighting With FEMA will also earn a place in the libraries of consulting disaster recovery specialists and students interested in the financial aspects of disasters.
Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home Between the Wars
by Nancy F. CottFrom a Harvard historian, this riveting portrait of four trailblazing American journalists highlights the power of the press in the interwar period. In the fragile peace following the Great War, a surprising number of restless young Americans abandoned their homes and set out impulsively to see the changing world. In Fighting Words, Nancy F. Cott follows four who pursued global news -- from contested Palestine to revolutionary China, from Stalin's Moscow to Hitler's Berlin. As foreign correspondents, they became players in international politics and shaped Americans' awareness of critical interwar crises, the spreading menace of European fascism, and the likelihood of a new war -- while living romantic and sexual lives as modern and as hazardous as their journalism. An indelible portrayal of a tumultuous era with resonance for our own, Fighting Words is essential reading on the power of the press and the growth of an American sense of international responsibility.
Fighting Words: Individuals, Communities, and Liberties of Speech
by Kent GreenawaltShould "hate speech" be made a criminal offense, or does the First Amendment oblige Americans to permit the use of epithets directed against a person's race, religion, ethnic origin, gender, or sexual preference? Does a campus speech code enhance or degrade democratic values? When the American flag is burned in protest, what rights of free speech are involved? In a lucid and balanced analysis of contemporary court cases dealing with these problems, as well as those of obscenity and workplace harassment, acclaimed First Amendment scholar Kent Greenawalt now addresses a broad general audience of readers interested in the most current free speech issues.
Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804–1906
by Charles A RuudCensorship took many forms in Imperial Russia. First published in 1982, Fighting Words focuses on the most common form: the governmental system that screened written works before or after publication to determine their acceptability. Charles A. Ruud shows that, despite this system, the nineteenth-century Russian Imperial government came to grant far more extensive legal publishing freedoms than most Westerners realize, adopting a more liberal attitude towards the press by permitting it a position recognized by law. Fighting Words also reveals, however, that the government fell far short of implementing these reforms, thus contributing to the growth of opposition to the Tsarist regime in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. Now back in print with a new introduction by the author, Fighting Words is a classic work offering insight into the press, censorship, and the limits of printed expression in Imperial Russia.
Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945-1954
by Michael J. CohenThis description of Allied contingency plans for military operations in the Middle East - in the event of conflict with the Soviet Union - argues that diplomatic events and crises in the Middle East in 1945-55 are understandable only in the context of assets sought by the Allies in that region.
The Figure of the Migrant
by Thomas NailThis book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes--from global tourism to undocumented labor--have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.
The Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals: Memory, Atrocities and Transitional Justice
by Benjamin ThorneThis book analyses how international criminal institutions, and their actors – legal counsels, judges, investigators, registrars – construct witness identity and memory. Filling an important gap within transitional justice scholarship, this conceptually led and empirically grounded interdisciplinary study takes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as a case study. It asks: How do legal witnesses of human rights violations contribute to memory production in transitional post-conflict societies? Witnessing at tribunals entails individuals externalising memories of violations. This is commonly construed within the transitional justice legal scholarship as an opportunity for individuals to ensure their memories are entered into an historical record. Yet this predominant understanding of witness testimony fails to comprehend the nature of memory. Memory construction entails fragments of individual and collective memories within a contestable and contingent framing of the past. Accordingly, the book challenges the claim that international criminal courts and tribunals are able to produce a collective memory of atrocities; as it maintains that witnessing must be understood as a contingent and multi-layered discursive process. Contributing to the specific analysis of witnessing and memory, but also to the broader field of transitional justice, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in these areas, as well as others in legal theory, global criminology, memory studies, international relations, and international human rights.
Figures of Catastrophe
by Francis MulhernA bold new vision of the modern English novelThe leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the fiction of the past century, identifying a central new genre: the condition of culture novel. Reading across and against the grain of received patterns of literary association, tracing a line from Hardy and Forster, through Woolf, Waugh and Bowen, to Barstow, Fowles, Rendell, Naipaul, Amis, Kureishi and Smith, he elucidates the recurring topics and narrative logics of the genre, showing how culture emerges as a special ground of social conflict, above all between classes. The narrative evaluations of culture's ends--the aspirations and the destinies of those whose lives are the subject of these novels--grow steadily darker over time, and the writing itself grows more introverted.A concluding discussion elicits the characteristics of the English condition of culture novel, in an international setting, and closes in, finally, on the central conundrum of the genre: its uncanny reprise, in its own plane, of the historical arc of the modern labour movement in Britain, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through its post-war heyday to the seemingly inexorable decline of recent decades.From the Hardcover edition.
Figures of Speech: First Amendment Heroes and Villains
by William TurnerRecounting controversial First Amendment cases from the Red Scare era to Citizens United, William Bennett Turner--a Berkeley law professor who has argued three cases before the Supreme Court--shows how we've arrived at our contemporary understanding of free speech. His strange cast of heroes and villains, some drawn from cases he has litigated, includes Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Ku Klux Klansmen, the world's leading pornographer, prison wardens, dogged reporters, federal judges, a computer whiz, and a countercultural comedian. This is a fascinating look at how the scope of our First Amendment freedoms has evolved and the colorful characters behind some of the most important legal decisions of modern times. "Turner tells fascinating stories of unlikely heroes and explains difficult legal issues clearly and concisely, educating and entertaining at the same time."--Elizabeth Farnsworth, The PBS News Hour
Figures of the Future: Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change
by Michael Rodríguez-MuñizAn in-depth look at how U.S. Latino advocacy groups are using ethnoracial demographic projections to bring about political change in the presentFor years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation—one that will purportedly change the “face” of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced. Offering an original and timely window into these struggles, Figures of the Future explores the population politics of national Latino civil rights groups.Based on eight years of ethnographic and qualitative research, spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, this book investigates how several of the most prominent of these organizations—including UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Voto Latino—have mobilized demographic data about the Latino population in dogged pursuit of political recognition and influence. In census promotions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and policy advocacy, this knowledge has been infused with meaning, variously serving as future-oriented sources of inspiration, emblems for identification, and weapons for contestation. At the same time, Rodríguez-Muñiz considers why these political actors have struggled to translate this demographic growth into tangible political gain and how concerns about white backlash have affected how they forecast demographic futures.Figures of the Future looks closely at the politics surrounding ethnoracial demographic changes and their rising influence in U.S. public debate and discourse.
Figuring Out the Tax Congress: Treasury, and the Design of the Early Modern Income Tax (Cambridge Tax Law Series)
by Lawrence ZelenakFiguring Out the Tax recounts the forgotten early development of the federal income tax in the US, resulting from the interplay between Congress and the Treasury Department in the decades following the enactment of the tax in 1913. It covers a wide range of topics including the income tax treatments of marriage, capital losses, charitable contributions and homeownership, as well as the rise, demise and resurrection of income tax withholding. Lawrence Zelenak deftly illustrates how the income tax achieved its current form through a range of stories which are new to tax history scholarship and involve some remarkable personalities and surprising plot twists. Although of particular interest to tax academics and professionals, this book will also serve as a useful introduction to the development of income tax for undergraduate students and law students. Recounts important developments in the early history of the income tax utilising new material which is not covered in existing tax history scholarship. Adopts a chronological narrative approach, making for an entertaining read. Does not assume any particular background in income tax law and will be accessible to a general readership with an interest in income tax.
Figuring Victims in International Criminal Justice: The case of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
by Maria ElanderMost discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for granted, as an identity and category existing exogenously to the judicial process. This book takes a different approach. Through a close reading of the institutional practices of one particular court, it demonstrates how court practices produce the subjectivity of the victim, a subjectivity that is profoundly of law and endogenous to the enterprise of international criminal justice. Furthermore, by situating these figurations within the larger aspirations of the court, the book shows how victims have come to constitute and represent the link between international criminal law and the enterprise of transitional justice. The book takes as its primary example the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as it is also called. Focusing on the representation of victims in crimes against humanity, victim participation and photographic images, the book engages with a range of debates and scholarship in law, feminist theory and cultural legal theory. Furthermore, by paying attention to a broader range of institutional practices, Figuring Victims makes an innovative scholarly contribution to the debates on the roles and purposes of international criminal justice.
Figuring Violence: Affective Investments in Perpetual War
by Rebecca A. AdelmanIn the United States, the early years of the war on terror were marked by the primacy of affects like fear and insecurity. These aligned neatly with the state’s drive toward intensive securitization and an aggressive foreign policy. But for the broader citizenry, such affects were tolerable at best and unbearable at worst; they were not sustainable. Figuring Violence catalogs the affects that define the latter stages of this war and the imaginative work that underpins them. These affects—apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, pity, and righteous anger—are far more subtle and durable than their predecessors, rendering them deeply compatible with the ambitions of a state embroiling itself in a perpetual and unwinnable war.Surveying the cultural landscape of this sprawling conflict, Figuring Violence reveals the varied mechanisms by which these affects have been militarized. Rebecca Adelman tracks their convergences around six types of beings: civilian children, military children, military spouses, veterans with PTSD and TBI, Guantánamo detainees, and military dogs. All of these groups have become preferred objects of sentiment in wartime public culture, but they also have in common their status as political subjects who are partially or fully unknowable. They become visible to outsiders through a range of mediated and imaginative practices that are ostensibly motivated by concern or compassion. However, these practices actually function to reduce these beings to abstracted figures, silencing their political subjectivities and obscuring their suffering. As a result, they are erased and rendered hypervisible at once. Figuring Violence demonstrates that this dynamic ultimately propagates the very militarism that begets their victimization.
Fiis Ao Redor Do Mundo
by Káren Guedes Albino Richard StookerTenha a sua parte nos lucros dos Fundos de Investimento Imobiliário - FII (Real Estate Investment Trust - REIT) em todo o mundo!A partir do momento em que várias empresas imobiliárias se converteram em Fundos de Investimento Imobiliário e seguraram os IPOs em meados da década de 1990 - e também com a publicação da primeira edição do Investing in REITs: Real Estate Investment Trusts de Ralph L. Block, U.S.; investidores dos EUA têm descoberto os altos lucros possíveis que eles podem ter por meio do investimento em imóveis comerciais através de empresas de capital aberto.Os FIIS (ou REITs) não têm que pagar impostos sobre os dividendos que são distribuídos aos seus titulares de unidades - e o governo obriga-os a repassar 90%!Diversos países do mundo têm seguido os EUA - líder mundial neste segmento - e também têm criado suas próprias versões dos Fundos de Investimento Imobiliário. Neste sentido, cerca de 40 países, da Austrália à Turquia, têm leis que permitem alguma forma de FII, usando os EUA como modelo, mas imprimindo as suas próprias particularidades.Ao investir em FIIs você pode:1 - Ter um fluxo de renda que não depende do dólar americano (ou do euro, ou do iene, ou de qualquer que seja a moeda de seu país).Ou seja, você pode obter renda em uma grande variedade de moedas, que podem se valorizar enquanto o dólar cai, por exemplo.Os dois maiores, mais antigos e maduros países em termos de FIIs do mundo são os EUA, o Canadá e a Austrália. Então, eu te pergunto: quais são os dois países cujas moedas têm se valorizado drasticamente: Canadá e Austrália. E é fato que tanto canadenses quanto australianos precisam de apartamentos, de edifícios de escritórios e de centros comerciais, tal como acontece em qualquer outro país. Assim, ao comprar ações de seus FIIs você pode obter alguns dólares australianos e canadenses.2 - Ter
Filibustered!: How To Fix The Broken Senate And Save America
by Jeff Merkley Mike ZamoreThe U.S. Senator from Oregon who is leading the fight to restore the talking filibuster explains how changing just one rule could save our democracy If we want to fix what ails America, we have to fix the Senate. And if we want to fix the Senate, we must fix the broken filibuster. In a compelling and powerfully argued book, Senator Jeff Merkley and his longtime chief of staff tell the insiders’ story of how the Senate used to work and how the filibuster came to cripple the self-styled “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” with paralyzing gridlock. And they make the surprising case that restoring a modified version of the old-style, talking filibuster may just be our democracy’s path back from the brink. For nearly two centuries, the Senate designed by the Founders served the purpose they envisioned: it was a deliberative legislative body where the nation’s thorniest challenges were hashed out. Senators had the ability to speak at length and offer any manner of amendments to influence bills, and then when all had had a say, the Senate voted. Senators who objected to passing a bill could wage a defiant filibuster—in the spirit of fictional Senator Smith who talked until he collapsed in order to block a corrupt railroad deal in the classic 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But at the end of the day, nearly all legislation, amendments, and nominations went to a vote, and the majority prevailed. Today, however, thanks to abuse of a fifty-year-old reform intended to make it easier for the Senate to pass legislation, the exceedingly difficult, rare filibuster has morphed, plunging the Senate into dysfunction and threatening the very foundations of our democracy. Now, the minority party can simply declare a “no-talk” filibuster, insisting on a supermajority of sixty votes to pass nearly any bill or a lengthy process to confirm any of the president’s nominees—giving themselves a veto over the majority’s agenda. Wildly popular bills languish, judgeships and administrative posts remain unfilled, but ordinary citizens can’t see why because the obstruction all takes place behind closed doors. Filibustered! combines a marvelous romp through key moments in filibuster history—from the first filibuster in 1841 through Southern Dixiecrat filibusters of civil rights legislation, up through Mitch McConnell’s transformation of the filibuster into a routine tool of perennial gridlock—with firsthand accounts of recent high-profile legislative fights, and a compelling argument that the key to the Senate’s future may be found in its past.
The Filipino Primitive: Accumulation and Resistance in the American Museum
by Sarita Echavez SeeHow museums’ visual culture contributes to knowledge accumulation Sarita See argues that collections of stolen artifacts form the foundation of American knowledge production. Nowhere can we appreciate more easily the triple forces of knowledge accumulation—capitalist, colonial, and racial—than in the imperial museum, where the objects of accumulation remain materially, visibly preserved. The Filipino Primitive takes Karl Marx’s concept of “primitive accumulation,” usually conceived of as an economic process for the acquisition of land and the extraction of labor, and argues that we also must understand it as a project of knowledge accumulation. Taking us through the Philippine collections at the University of Michigan Natural History Museum and the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum, also in Michigan, See reveals these exhibits as both allegory and real case of the primitive accumulation that subtends imperial American knowledge, just as the extraction of Filipino labor contributes to American capitalist colonialism. With this understanding of the Filipino foundations of the American drive toward power and knowledge, we can appreciate the value of Filipino American cultural producers like Carlos Bulosan, Stephanie Syjuco, and Ma-Yi Theater Company who have created incisive parodies of this accumulative epistemology, even as they articulate powerful alternative, anti-accumulative social ecologies.