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Waste Prevention Policy and Behaviour: New Approaches to Reducing Waste Generation and its Environmental Impacts (Routledge Studies in Waste Management and Policy)
by Ana Paula BortoletoAs prosperity levels rise, so too does the number of products and services being consumed. For policy makers in waste management facing a growing challenge, it is vital to understand the complex relationship between waste prevention policies and individual behaviour regarding waste generation. This book examines that interplay, taking a close look at the role of motivation, difficulties, values and constraints. The first part of the book explores the theoretical framework, policy, barriers and facilitators for waste prevention behaviour. The second part presents in-depth case studies from three cities (Sao Paulo, Sheffield and Tokyo) examining the contextual factors, behavioural variations among them and the role of motivation and constraints in their populations. The book provides a detailed picture of how waste prevention policies enter the private, domestic sphere, offering insights for generating behavioural change at the household level and thus moving larger communities towards sustainable waste management. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the areas of environmental policy, management, sociology, psychology, geography, technology and waste studies.
Waste Trading among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation
by Kate O'NeillIn Waste Trading among Rich Nations, Kate O'Neill asks why some industrialized nation voluntarily imports such wastes in the absence of pressing economic need. She focuses on Britain as an importer and Germany as an exporter and also looks at France, Australia, and Japan.
Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
by Alexander ClappA globe-trotting work of relentless investigative reporting, this is the first major book to expose the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade. Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening. Journalist Alexander Clapp spent two years roaming five continents to report deep inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, Tanzanian plastic pickers, whistle-blowing environmentalists throughout the jungles of Guatemala, and a community of Ghanaian boys who burn Western cellphones and televisions for cents an hour, to tell readers what he has figured out: While some trash gets tossed onto roadsides or buried underground, much of it actually lives a secret hot potato second life, getting shipped, sold, re-sold, or smuggled from one country to another, often with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world. Waste Wars is a jaw-dropping exposé of how and why, for the last forty years, our garbage — the stuff we deem so worthless we think nothing of throwing it away — has spawned a massive, globe-spanning, multi-billion-dollar economy, one that offloads our consumption footprints onto distant continents, pristine landscapes, and unsuspecting populations. If the handling of our trash reveals deeper truths about our Western society, what does the globalized business of garbage say about our world today? And what does it say about us?
Waste Wars: Dirty Deals, International Rivalries and the Scandalous Afterlife of Rubbish
by Alexander Clapp'A mind-altering and unforgettable read' Adam Tooze'If you wish to know how the world really works, read this book' Misha GlennyA globe-trotting investigation into the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade.Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. The millions of tonnes of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars, cons and cover ups across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. And few people have any idea they're happening.Roaming across five continents, Alexander Clapp delves deep inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, Tanzanian plastic pickers, whistle-blowing environmentalists in the jungles of Guatemala, and a community of Ghanaian boys who burn Western cellphones and televisions for cents an hour. He reveals how most of our trash actually lives a secret second life, getting shipped, smuggled or dumped from one country onto another, with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world.Waste Wars is a jaw-dropping exposé of how and why, for the last forty years, our garbage has spawned a massive global black market, one that offloads our consumption footprints onto distant continents, pristine landscapes, and unsuspecting populations.
Waste Wars: Dirty Deals, International Rivalries and the Scandalous Afterlife of Rubbish
by Alexander Clapp'A mind-altering and unforgettable read' Adam Tooze'If you wish to know how the world really works, read this book' Misha GlennyA globe-trotting investigation into the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade.Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. The millions of tonnes of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars, cons and cover ups across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. And few people have any idea they're happening.Roaming across five continents, Alexander Clapp delves deep inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, Tanzanian plastic pickers, whistle-blowing environmentalists in the jungles of Guatemala, and a community of Ghanaian boys who burn Western cellphones and televisions for cents an hour. He reveals how most of our trash actually lives a secret second life, getting shipped, smuggled or dumped from one country onto another, with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world.Waste Wars is a jaw-dropping exposé of how and why, for the last forty years, our garbage has spawned a massive global black market, one that offloads our consumption footprints onto distant continents, pristine landscapes, and unsuspecting populations.
Waste Worlds: Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability (Atelier: Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century #6)
by Jacob DohertyUganda's capital, Kampala, is undergoing dramatic urban transformations as its new technocratic government seeks to clean and green the city. Waste Worlds tracks the dynamics of development and disposability unfolding amid struggles over who and what belong in the new Kampala. Garbage materializes these struggles. In the densely inhabited social infrastructures in and around the city's waste streams, people, places, and things become disposable but conditions of disposability are also challenged and undone. Drawing on years of ethnographic research, Jacob Doherty illustrates how waste makes worlds, offering the key intervention that disposability is best understood not existentially, as a condition of social exclusion, but infrastructurally, as a form of injurious social inclusion.
Wasted: How Misunderstanding Young Britain Threatens Our Future
by Georgia GouldYoung people growing up in Britain today face a narrowing job market, high housing costs and the prospect of a lifetime of hard work with less reward. The ideas of social responsibility that arose after the Second World War are straining under the demands of a globalised world. Too often public debate divides Britain's youth into the 'feral rats' of the London riots and the 'posh boys' of Eton. Business leaders rail at the entitled and unemployable young people they are asked to give jobs to, politicians complain about apathetic teens and commentators devote endless column inches to the issue of a 'self-obsessed' generation. Georgia Gould's Wasted shows us that far from being the apathetic, materialistic, drunken problem they are often portrayed as, young people in Britain have the aspirations, the creativity and the will to answer the many challenges we face. Georgia travelled across the UK to uncover the values, aspirations and challenges of young Brits, from job seekers in Bradford and working-class families in Glasgow's Easterhouse estate, to student protesters at Sussex University and young entrepreneurs in London such as YouTube sensation Jamal Edwards. Gould makes a case for a stronger dialogue between generations. If we show young people that we trust them with the future of our country, we will find that they are ready to rise to the challenge. This timely work points the way towards a new social contract and gives a voice to young Britain.
Wasted: How Misunderstanding Young Britain Threatens Our Future
by Georgia GouldYoung people growing up in Britain today face a narrowing job market, high housing costs and the prospect of a lifetime of hard work with less reward. The ideas of social responsibility that arose after the Second World War are straining under the demands of a globalised world. Too often public debate divides Britain's youth into the 'feral rats' of the London riots and the 'posh boys' of Eton. Business leaders rail at the entitled and unemployable young people they are asked to give jobs to, politicians complain about apathetic teens and commentators devote endless column inches to the issue of a 'self-obsessed' generation.Georgia Gould travelled across the UK to uncover the values, aspirations and challenges of young Brits, from job seekers in Bradford and working-class families in Glasgow's Easterhouse estate, to student protesters at Sussex University and young entrepreneurs in London such as YouTube sensation Jamal Edwards. If we show young people that we trust them with the future of our country, we will find that they are ready to rise to the challenge. This timely work points the way towards a new social contract and gives a voice to young Britain.http://bit.ly/YoungBritain
Wasted Education: How We Fail Our Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
by John D. SkrentnyAn urgent reality check for America’s blinkered fixation on STEM education. We live in an era of STEM obsession. Not only do tech companies dominate American enterprise and economic growth while complaining of STEM shortages, but we also need scientific solutions to impending crises. As a society, we have poured enormous resources—including billions of dollars—into cultivating young minds for well-paid STEM careers. Yet despite it all, we are facing a worker exodus, with as many as 70% of STEM graduates opting out of STEM work. Sociologist John D. Skrentny investigates why, and the answer, he shows, is simple: the failure of STEM jobs. Wasted Education reveals how STEM work drives away bright graduates as a result of “burn and churn” management practices, lack of job security, constant training for a neverending stream of new—and often socially harmful—technologies, and the exclusion of women, people of color, and older workers. Wasted Education shows that if we have any hope of improving the return on our STEM education investments, we have to change the way we’re treating the workers on whom our future depends.
The Wasted Generation: Memoirs Of The Romanian Journey From Capitalism To Socialism And Back
by Silviu BrucanMy generation in Eastern Europe was caught in the middle of two revolutions (1944 and 1989), which instead of moving history ahead pushed it backward. We thus at first made a U-turn-a tortuous one, to be sure-from underdeveloped capitalism to underdeveloped socialism, but because socialism and underdevelopment are strange bedfellows,we have since discovered we were on the wrong path and are trying now to return to where we started. The drama of that generation is what this book is about.
Wasted Wombs: Navigating Reproductive Interruptions in Cameroon
by Erica van der SijptCentral to this book are Gbigbil women's experiences with different "reproductive interruptions": miscarriages, stillbirths, child deaths, induced abortions, and infertility. Rather than consider these events as inherently dissimilar as women do in Western countries, the Gbigbil women of eastern Cameroon see them all as instances of "wasted wombs" that leave their reproductive trajectories hanging in the balance. The women must navigate this uncertainty while negotiating their social positions, aspirations for the future, and the current workings of their bodies.Providing an intimate look into these processes, Wasted Wombs shows how Gbigbil women constantly shift their interpretations of when a pregnancy starts, what it contains, and what is lost in case of a reproductive interruption, in contrast to Western conceptions of fertility and loss. Depending on the context and on their life aspirations—be it marriage and motherhood, or an educational trajectory and employment, or profitable sexual affairs with so-called "big fish"—women negotiate and manipulate the meanings and effects of reproductive interruptions. Paradoxically, they often do so while portraying themselves as powerless. Wasted Wombs carefully analyzes such tactics in relation to the various social predicaments that emerge around reproductive interruptions, as well as the capricious workings of women's physical bodies.
Wasted Wombs: Navigating Reproductive Interruptions in Cameroon
by Erica van der SijptCentral to this book are Gbigbil women's experiences with different "reproductive interruptions": miscarriages, stillbirths, child deaths, induced abortions, and infertility. Rather than consider these events as inherently dissimilar as women do in Western countries, the Gbigbil women of eastern Cameroon see them all as instances of "wasted wombs" that leave their reproductive trajectories hanging in the balance. The women must navigate this uncertainty while negotiating their social positions, aspirations for the future, and the current workings of their bodies. Providing an intimate look into these processes, Wasted Wombs shows how Gbigbil women constantly shift their interpretations of when a pregnancy starts, what it contains, and what is lost in case of a reproductive interruption, in contrast to Western conceptions of fertility and loss. Depending on the context and on their life aspirations--be it marriage and motherhood, or an educational trajectory and employment, or profitable sexual affairs with so-called "big fish"--women negotiate and manipulate the meanings and effects of reproductive interruptions. Paradoxically, they often do so while portraying themselves as powerless. Wasted Wombs carefully analyzes such tactics in relation to the various social predicaments that emerge around reproductive interruptions, as well as the capricious workings of women's physical bodies.
Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet
by Rob HengeveldThis biologist&’s &“monumental cri de Coeur&” for our planet offers a holistic view of our species, the waste we produce, and a path toward sustainability (Nature). In Wasted World, Rob Hengeveld traces the entwined histories of population growth and resource consumption to reveal how our global waste crises came about. As Hengeveld explains, human life depends on energy, which we first obtained through food. Later, we supplemented this with energy from water, wind, animals, and finally fossil fuels, as one source after another fell short of our ever-growing needs. Greater energy consumption has created greater waste, including the atmospheric waste that is driving climate change. As we face a web of interconnected problems, addressing them individually will not work. Instead, Hengeveld argues, we need to tackle their common cause: our staggering population growth. A practical look at the sustainability of our planet from a biologist and expert in the abundances and distributions of species, Wasted World examines the whole process of using, wasting, and exhausting energy and material resources. And by elucidating the complexity of the causes of our current global state, Hengeveld offers us a way forward.
Wasted Years, Wasted Lives Volume 1: The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975–77 (Wasted Years, Wasted Lives Volume 1 Ser. #1)
by Ken WhartonOver the past several years, Ken Wharton, himself a former soldier, has been prolific in his coverage of the Troubles, which spread their tentacles far from the streets, and fields of Northern Ireland. Over 4,000 people died in or as a consequence of them and it cost the lives of over 1,300 British soldiers - a fact which is unacknowledged by the MOD - and the lives of over 300 policemen and women. This is Ken's sixth book about the period and he draws on meticulous and detailed research, first-hand testimony of the soldiers who trod the same streets as himself, and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the near 30-year period of murder, violence and civil war. The first-hand accounts help us to understand and examine the fears of the young soldiers who patrolled the dangerous streets of the Ardoyne and New Lodge, of Andersonstown, Turf Lodge and Ballymurphy and of the Creggan in Londonderry and the Derrybeg in Newry. He looks at the Loyalist paramilitaries and treats their sectarianism and mindless murder with the same contempt with which he treats the Republicans. He does not mince words about the Irish-Americans and their political stooges in the US Government, judicial system and the ordinary '7th generation Irishmen of the American East Coast.' This is a book not just for soldiers, but for anyone who wishes to look back and try to understand the madness inflicted upon several generations of innocent Irish and British people. In years to come, historians - both social and military - will reflect on this period of insanity with a greater knowledge than hitherto. If you wish to know how it felt to be an innocent sectarian victim, or an off-duty soldier or policeman or a young lad from Leeds, Liverpool or London hard targeting through the Lower Falls, then this book is a must read.
Wasted Years, Wasted Lives, Volume 2: The British Army in Northern Ireland 1978–79 (Wasted Years, Wasted Lives Volume 2 Ser. #2)
by Ken WhartonVolume 2 does what it says on the can - it continues from where the first volume left off. It looks at the bloody years of 1978 and 1979. It covers eyewitness accounts from soldiers on the ground and there is the occasional comment from civilians who were living in the troubled province at the time. There are accounts from the IRA atrocity at the la Mon Restaurant when the terrorists used a napalm-like device to incinerate 12 innocent civilians; it includes the murder of Lord Mountbatten, hero of Burma, and some of his family and staff on his yacht in Co Sligo. It also covers the worst tragedy for the Army in Ulster, the murder of 18 soldiers at Warrenpoint. Every single troubles-related death and every major incident is covered and includes those soldiers who died in 'non-battle' incidents, the ones who are not included in the 'official' figures. The book pulls no punches and the author is outspoken in his criticism of the Irish-American community and their incredibly naïve support of the Republican terrorists who almost destroyed an entire country. The author condemns in equal measure the paramilitaries of both sides and considers the evil activities of Lenny Murphy and the 'Shankill Butchers' as bad as anything which the Provisional IRA or INLA did. The book looks at individual incidents and tries to examine the terrorist mindset and their motives for the atrocities which they carried out in the name of their communities. It supports the security forces unequivocally but renders criticism where appropriate. The book examines the role of the young soldiers from Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, indeed from every part of the UK from which these young men came. It looks at foot patrols, riot control and the daily fear and threat under which they operated for their four month or two year tours. Read carefully the words of an Irish-American who clearly is contemptuous of the way her fellow Americans almost sleepwalked into supporting the IRA from afar with the dollars which they placed so willingly into the NORAID collection jars. The level of detail and research the author goes into is phenomenal and demonstrates his commitment to continue telling the story of one of Britain's forgotten wars.
Wastelands: Recycled Commodities and the Perpetual Displacement of Ashkali and Romani Scavengers
by Eirik SaethreWastelands is an exploration of trash, the scavengers who collect it, and the precarious communities it sustains. After enduring war and persecution in Kosovo, many Ashkali refugees fled to Belgrade, Serbia, where they were stigmatized as Gypsies, consigned to slums, sidelined from the economy, and subjected to violence. To survive, Ashkali collect the only resource available to them: garbage. Vividly recounting everyday life in an illegal Romani settlement, Eirik Saethre follows Ashkali as they scavenge through dumpsters, build shacks, siphon electricity, negotiate the recycling trade, and migrate between Belgrade, Kosovo, and the European Union. He argues that trash is not just a means of survival: it reinforces the status of Ashkali and Roma as polluted Others, creates indissoluble bonds to transnational capitalism, enfeebles bodies, and establishes a localized sovereignty.
Wasters
by Nick Webb Shane RossDuring the years when all seemed well with the Irish economy, a scandal bloomed in front of our faces but went mostly unnoticed: the scandal of public waste. Vast overspending on infrastructure (including a number of white elephants), extravagant use of overpriced consultants, the creation of dozens of quangos whose primary purpose seemed to be jobs for the boys, the culture of junketry that took hold in the semi-state sector and the Oireachtas - these and other dubious practices flourished during the years when the state's coffers were overflowing. The insiders benefited; the rest of us got ripped off. Now, as the state scrambles to bail out the banks and to bring order to the shattered public finances by taking money out of the pockets of ordinary working people, Shane Ross and Nick Webb tell the story of the wasters: the people who perfected and benefited from the culture of cronyism and waste. Thanks in large part to Ross and Webb's journalism in the Sunday Independent exposing scandals in FAS and CIE, we already know part of this story. In Wasters, the authors show how wide and how deep the rot runs, and they show that every scandal has one thing in common: insiders profiting at the expense of ordinary people.
Wastewater Assessment, Treatment, Reuse and Development in India (Earth and Environmental Sciences Library)
by Shalini Yadav Abdelazim M. Negm Ram Narayan YadavaThis book contains up-to-date information and findings in research on the evaluation, treatment, reusability, and development of wastewater in India. The book covers the assessment for drinking water, including membrane filtration, supervision, and evaluation of wastewater, environmental pollution control, wastewater treatment and recycling, advanced bioremediation techniques and wastewater's impact on India. With this wide range of treatment and technologies of wastewater, this book is a source of invaluable information to guide Indian policy planners and makers to move forward to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 6.
The Wastrels of Defense
by Winslow T. WheelerIn this damning expose, a veteran senate defense advisor argues that since Sept 11, 2001, the conduct of the U.S. Congress has sunk to new depths and endangered the nation's security. Winslow Wheeler draws on three decades of work with four prominent senators to tell in lively detail how members of Congress divert money from essential war-fighting accounts to pay for pork in their home states, cook the budget books to pursue personal agendas, and run for cover when confronted with tough defense issues. With meticulous documentation to support his claims, he contends that this behavior is not confined to one party or one political philosophy. He further contends that senators who sell themselves as reformers and journalists covering Capitol Hill are simply not doing their jobs. Pork is far from a new phenomenon in Washington, yet most Americans fail to understand its serious consequences. Wheeler knows the harm it does and challenges citizens to take action against lawmakers pretending to serve the public trust while sending home the bacon. Dubbed a "Hill Deep Throat" who participated in the game he now criticizes, he fills his book with evidence of Congressional wrongdoing, naming names and citing specific examples. Pointing to the extremes that have become routine in the legislative process, he focuses on defense appropriations and Congress's willingness to load down defense bills with pork, in some cases with the Pentagon's help. On the question of deciding war, he accuses today's members of Congress of lacking the character of their predecessors, often positioning themselves on both sides of the question of war against Iraq without probing the administration's justifications. Wheeler concludes with a model for reform that he calls twelve not-so-easy steps to a sober Congress.
The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two
by Steve DrummondThe story of how a little-known junior senator fought wartime corruption and, in the process, set himself up to become vice president and ultimately President Harry Truman. Months before Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that the United States was on the verge of entering another world war for which it was dangerously ill-prepared. The urgent times demanded a transformation of the economy, with the government bankrolling the unfathomably expensive task of enlisting millions of citizens while also producing the equipment necessary to successfully fight—all of which opened up opportunities for graft, fraud and corruption. In The Watchdog, Steve Drummond draws the reader into the fast-paced story of how Harry Truman, still a newcomer to Washington politics, cobbled together a bipartisan team of men and women that took on powerful corporate entities and the Pentagon, placing Truman in the national spotlight and paving his path to the White House. Drawing on the largely unexamined records of the Truman Committee as well as oral histories, personal letters, newspaper archives and interviews, Steve Drummond—an award-winning senior editor and executive producer at NPR—brings the colorful characters and intrigue of the committee&’s work to life. The Watchdog provides readers with a window to a time that was far from perfect but where it was possible to root out corruption and hold those responsible to account. It shows us what can be possible if politicians are governed by the principles of their office rather than self-interest.
Watchdog: The Real Stories Behind the Headlines from the Congressman Who Exposed Washington's Biggest Scandals
by Darrell IssaYou might think you had a front-row seat to the shocking scandals of Benghazi, the IRS targeting of conservatives, Fast & Furious, illegal email servers, mishandling America's secrets and cover-ups at the EPA. The rest of the story, told here for the first time, is even more troubling.In Watchdog, Congressman Darrell Issa reveals some of the worst of Washington, pulls back the curtain on business as usual in the Capitol, and lets in the sunshine of accountability.As Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Issa led a years-long fight to uncover what was really happening in the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton's State Department, while taking on a mainstream media and establishment Beltway culture he quickly found out weren't always interested in the truth.But what the public doesn't know about Big Government and what the people may not realize is happening to their country requires someone in Washington willing to tell the truth no matter who gets the blame. Carrying out aggressive oversight brought Issa into conflict with not only political foes, but friends and allies as well. Through it all, he has sought to remind everyone in government they are still subject to the rule of law and accountable to the American people. Watchdog is the inside account of what it took to get the truth and what it will take for our democracy to endure.
The Watchdog Still Barks: How Accountability Reporting Evolved for the Digital Age (Donald McGannon Communication Research Center's Everett C. Parker Book Series)
by Beth KnobelPerhaps no other function of a free press is as important as the watchdog role—its ability to monitor the work of the government. It is easier for politicians to get away with abusing power—wasting public funds and making poor decisions—if the press is not shining its light with what is termed “accountability reporting.” This need has become especially clear in recent months, as the American press has come under virulent direct attack for carrying out its watchdog duties. Upending the traditional media narrative that watchdog accountability journalism is in a long, dismaying decline, The Watchdog Still Barks presents a study of how this most important form of journalism came of age in the digital era at American newspapers.Although the American newspaper industry contracted significantly during the 1990s and 2000s, Fordham professor and former CBS News producer Beth Knobel illustrates through empirical data how the amount of deep watchdog reporting on the newspapers’ studied front pages generally increased over time despite shrinking circulations, low advertising revenue, and pressure to produce the kind of soft news that plays well on social media. Based on the first content analysis to focus specifically on accountability journalism nationally, The Watchdog Still Barks examines the front pages of nine newspapers located across the United States to paint a broad portrait of how public service journalism has changed since 1991 as the advent of the Internet transformed journalism. This portrait of the modern newspaper industry shows how papers of varying sizes and ownership structures around the country marshaled resources for accountability reporting despite significant financial and technological challenges.The Watchdog Still Barks includes original interviews with editors who explain why they are staking their papers’ futures on the one thing that American newspapers still do better than any other segment of the media: watchdog and investigative reporting.
Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government (Miller Center Studies on the Presidency)
by Glenn A. FineThe last line of defense for our institutions, and our democracy Inspectors general may be the most important public servants you&’ve never heard of. In Watchdogs, Glenn Fine—who served as the inspector general of the Department of Justice from 2000 to 2011 and the acting inspector general of the Department of Defense from 2016 to 2020—explains why all Americans should be familiar with this critical pillar of our democracy. Drawing on his own experiences in numerous high-profile investigations over two decades, from 9/11 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Fine provides a fascinating insider&’s view of government at the highest levels, illuminating how federal officials spend our tax dollars and how inspector general oversight seeks to make government more honest and accountable. Full of revealing stories—from the FBI&’s handling of evidence in the Timothy McVeigh trial to the treatment of post-9/11 detainees to investigating the US Navy&’s most infamous corruption scandal—Watchdogs illustrates the mission of inspectors general in improving government operations, deterring wasteful spending, and curtailing corruption, and the ways they work every day in America&’s unique system of oversight.
The Watchdogs Didn't Bark: The CIA, NSA, and the Crimes of the War on Terror
by John Duffy Ray NowosielskiThe Shocking Reexamination of Unexplored Failures by Government Officials to Use Available Intelligence to Stop the Events of September 11th In 2009, documentarians John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski arrived at the offices of Richard Clarke, the former counterterror adviser to Presidents Clinton and Bush. In the meeting, Clarke boldly accused one-time Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet of “malfeasance and misfeasance” in the pre-war on terror. Thus began an incredible—never-before-told—investigative journey of intrigue about America’s intelligence community and two 9/11 hijackers. The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark details that story, unearthed over a ten-year investigation. Following the careers of a dozen counterterror employees working in different agencies of the US government from the late 1980s to the present, the book puts the government’s systems of oversight and accountability under a microscope. At the heart of this book is a mystery: Why did key 9/11 plotters Khalid Al Mihdhar and Nawaf Al Hazmi, operating inside the United States, fall onto the radars of so many US agencies without any of those agencies succeeding in stopping the attacks? The answers go beyond mere “conspiracy theory” and “deep state” actors, but instead find a complicated set of potential culprits and an easily manipulated system. Taking readers on a character-driven account of the causes of 9/11 and how the lessons of the attacks were cynically inverted to empower surveillance of citizens, kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, torture, government-sanctioned murder, and a war on whistleblowers and journalists, an alarm is raised which is more pertinent today than ever before.
Watchdogs of Democracy?
by Helen ThomasIn the course of more than sixty years spent covering Washington politics, Helen Thomas has witnessed a raft of fundamental changes in the way news is gathered and reported. Gone are the days of frequent firsthand contact with the president. Now, the press sees the president only at tightly controlled and orchestrated press conferences. In addition, Thomas sees a growing -- and alarming -- reluctance among reporters to question government spokesmen and probe for the truth. The result has been a wholesale failure by journalists to fulfill what is arguably their most vital role in contemporary American life -- to be the watchdogs of democracy. Today's journalists, according to Thomas, have become subdued, compromised lapdogs. Here, the legendary journalist and bestselling author delivers a hard-hitting manifesto on the precipitous decline in the quality and ethics of political reportage -- and issues a clarion call for change. Thomas confronts some of the most significant issues of the day, including the jailing of reporters, the conservative swing in television news coverage, and the administration's increased insistence on "managed" news. But she is most emphatic about reporters' failure to adequately question President George W. Bush and White House spokesmen about the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and on subjects ranging from homeland security to the economy. This, she insists, was a dire lapse. Drawing on her peerless knowledge of journalism, Washington politics, and nine presidential administrations, as well as frank interviews with leading journalists past and present, Thomas provides readers with a rich historical perspective on the roots of American journalism, the circumstances attending the rise and fall of its golden age, and the nature and consequences of its current shortcomings. The result is a powerful, eye-opening discourse on the state of political reportage -- as well as a welcome and inspiring demand for meaningful and lasting reform.