From the bestselling author of Kleptopia comes a true story about Cuckooland – a world where the rich can buy everything – including the truth.

Everywhere, the powerful are making a renewed claim to the greatest prize of all: to own the truth. The power to choose what you want reality to be and impose that reality on the world.

For three years, Tom Burgis followed a lead that took him deeper and deeper into Cuckooland – the place where the rich own the truth. The trail snaked from the Kremlin to Kathmandu, Stockholm to the Steppe, from a blood-soaked town square in Uzbekistan to a royal retreat in Scotland. Burgis hunted down oligarchs, developed secret sources and traced vast sums of money flowing between multinational corporations, ex-Soviet dictators and the west’s ruling elites. And he found one man who wanted the power to bend reality to his will.

This book tells an astonishing story: a tale of secrets and lies that reveals how fragile that truth can be. Whether it’s in Kazakh torture chambers or the UK’s High Court, the lords of Cuckooland are seizing control of the truth. They decree what stories may be told about war and money and power, what we are permitted to know – and more importantly, what we are not.

From the bestselling author of Kleptopia, Cuckooland is a deeply reported work of non-fiction that reads like a thriller. It is a story of how globalisation and technological revolution have combined to imperil the foundation of free societies: that the truth belongs to the many, not the few.

Shelton confirms the power of talk in the specific case of the 1994 debate on comprehensive health care reform and beyond. He provides a context rich with detail concerning health care and health care reform in America and a social scientific examination of specific discourse factors that includes narratives, naming, and medical metaphors. Shelton's assessment of the debate reveals that opposition discourse was much more directly impacted and broader in scope. This is followed by a rhetorical analysis that extends the genre of crisis rhetoric. Shelton's rhetorical analysis reveals that the virtual crisis of big government both subsumed and overwhelmed the actual health care crisis. Such an assessment--including an ethical analysis of the 1994 floor debate and detailed consideration of the social existence of hatred for government--produces a host of research and scholarly implications. A thoughtful analysis that will be of value to scholars and researchers in political communication and public policy.

Shares wrenching accounts of the everyday violence experienced by emancipated African Americans Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans' bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the assaults, rapes, murders, nightrides, lynchings, and other bloody acts that followed, the suffering this violence engendered was at once too painful to put into words yet too horrible to suppress. In this evocative and deeply moving history Kidada Williams examines African Americans' testimonies about racial violence. By using both oral and print culture to testify about violence, victims and witnesses hoped they would be able to graphically disseminate enough knowledge about its occurrence and inspire Americans to take action to end it. In the process of testifying, these people created a vernacular history of the violence they endured and witnessed, as well as the identities that grew from the experience of violence. This history fostered an oppositional consciousness to racial violence that inspired African Americans to form and support campaigns to end violence. The resulting crusades against racial violence became one of the political training grounds for the civil rights movement.

In original essays written by both senior scholars as well as rising younger scholars in the field of international ethics, this volume addresses the ethics of war in an era when non-state actors are playing an increasingly prominent role in armed conflict. Central to this concern is the issue of whether, or under what conditions, non-state actors can be said to have the "authority" to participate in war. The contributors therefore explore and analyze the problems with, and possibilities for, incorporating non-state actors into the traditionally state-centric moral vocabulary about war--namely, the just war tradition.

The author explores the practice and effects of the European Union's democracy promotion efforts vis-a-vis its authoritarian neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa. She argues that the same set of factors facilitated both international cooperation of authoritarian regimes on democracy promotion and their persistence during the Arab Spring.

Minority languages in Europe, as part of a common cultural heritage, need protection. The contributions to this book reflect urgent, stimulating and productive debates among researchers in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, politics and sociology, and among language activists and policy makers. At the heart of the debate are the effectiveness of the existing political and legal frameworks aimed at protecting linguistic and cultural diversity, and prospects for the survival of minority languages in the process of European integration.

As the twenty-first century is ushered in, rebels, revolutionaries and political dissidents remain a major roadblock to the structuring of a new world order. Challenging their national or local institutions of authority--political or economic, social or religious--aggrieved individuals and disgruntled communities continue to wage their eternal struggles against those perceived as perverting the common good. "Rebels with a Cause" seeks to explain the minds, motives, means, and morality of those who espouse individual as well as communal dissent and resistance--violent or otherwise--in the name of some greater good. The ranks of political offenders vary widely: Civil Disobedients; Conscientious Objectors; Dissidents; Fanatics; Freedom Fighters; Fundamentalists; Militants; Political Prisoners; Pseudo-Politicals; Rebels; Resisters; Revolutionaries and Terrorists. The cast of characters is equally diverse and colorful: from Rome's Brutus to South Africa's Nelson Mandela. From America's John Brown and Susan B. Anthony to John Wilkes Booth and Timothy J. McVeigh. From Cuba's Che Guevara to the anonymous heroes of Beijing's Tienaman Square. From the Soviet Union's Aleksander Solzhenistzen to Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. "Rebels" portrays political offenders as products of three unorthodoxies. They constitute neither traditional political actors, nor common criminals or lawful belligerents. As players in the political arena, they refuse to abide by the rules and means of conventional politics--the ballot box and the rule of law. Offending against the prevailing law, they nevertheless disclaim the common criminal's venal goals to assert their own pursuit of altruistic communal and just objectives. Finally, as militant activists they act surreptiously, disclaim uniforms and insignias, proclaim allegiance to no sovereign and in their resort to indiscriminate violence they spurn the rules of lawful belligerency. This triple unorthodoxy has made the development of coherent public responses to political dissidents, resisters and rebels particularly difficult. "Rebels" does not only identify the actors and social forces that have caused nearly half of all countries throughout the globe to become infected with the ethnic, religious, tribal, clannish, and racial strife which now tear them apart. Acknowledging that domestic conflicts are replacing international warfare as the source of political disorder and violence in the emerging decades, "Rebels" also offers both readers and antagonists new insights and constructive approaches for the making of a less hostile and violent world. "Rebels with a Cause" will help readers address some of this era's most troublesome questions. What weight should one give to the demands of his conscience or the urgings of his or her faith? When should one reject the rules of those in power and stand up against evil laws and governments? Is one ever entitled to disobey the commands of an allegedly "democratic" regime? What means may one justly use in the struggle against tyrants, dictators, and other abusers of power? And when does a dissenter cease to be a freedom fighter and become a terrorist? "Rebels with a Cause" responds to these and other pressing contemporary questions with a "Bill of Rights on Just Authority and Just Resistance" as a guide for both the governed and those who govern.

John Rawls was the most influential political thinker of the twentieth century. This book applies his theory of justice to four perennial matters of concern that remain contested in the twenty-first century. Drawing surprising implications, this book deepens our understanding of these issues and points the way toward rational, just policy reform.

It is impossible to overstate the ways in which Claude Lefort has influenced democratic theorizing over the past three decades. With the impact he has had on some of the 20th and 21st Centuries most notable and important Political Theorists from Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe andSlavoj Zizek to Jacques Ranciere, Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen, Lefort's thought has become both radical and liberal democracy's obligatory reference and unparalleled knot of confluence. This volume brings together scholars from around the world and offers an engaging and comprehensive investigation of Lefort's intellectual dialogues and debates, his engagement with the most relevant global political events of the past decades, and his impact on current innovations in continental political and social theory. As a result this book a vital reference point for students and scholars of Claude Lefort as well as of radical and liberal democracy in general.

To understand properly the use of propaganda, it is necessary to move beyond the conventional, largely descriptive treatments that have been the scholarly norm, and to move deeply into a sustained theoretical analysis of the concept in terms of its primary cognitive and ethical deficits. Through a sequential consideration of the epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics of propaganda--that is, one that emerges from a historical review of theories and definitions of the subject--author Stanley B. Cunningham provides a radical new window on a much-discussed discipline. He aims to secure a concept of propaganda that reflects the complexity and sophistication of contemporary mass persuasion practices, while avoiding the trivializations and cliches that mark much of propaganda scholarship.

Utilizing an assortment of philosophical analyses and arguments, Cunningham contends that the culture of propaganda is primarily and originally rooted in a wide range of epistemological disservices--that, indeed, propaganda is neither ethically neutral nor indeterminate, and that its lack of ethics constitutes part of its very definition. Eschewing the methodology of social science, this radical study represents the first-ever systematic and philosophically structured approach in the 80-year history of propaganda analysis.

'The Ideology of Tyranny' ascribes the late state of paralysis affecting dissent in America to the adoption of a peculiar gospel of divisiveness, which was promoted in the 1980s by importing from France the 'theories' of philosopher Michel Foucault.

The Post-Dictatorship Generation in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay explores how young adults in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay make sense of the 1970s socialist projects and the ensuing years of repression in their activism, film, and literature.

This book is an anthology of work by critical media scholars, media makers, and activists who are committed to advancing social justice. Topics addressed include but are not limited to international media activist projects such as the Right to Communication movement and its corollaries; the importance of listening and enacting policies that advance democratic media; regional and local media justice projects; explorations of the challenges the era of participatory media pose to public media; youth and minority media projects and activism; ethical dilemmas posed by attempts to democratize access to media tools; the continued marginalization of feminist perspectives in international policy venues; software freedom and intellectual property rights; video activism in both historical and contemporary contexts; internet strategies for defending dissenting voices; and five accounts by prominent scholar/activists of their lifelong struggles for media justice.

Contains a study of the CIA's relationship with Congress. It encompasses the period from the creation of the Agency until 2004, the era of the DCIs, the Directors of Central Intelligence. Includes black and white photographs, an index, and a bibliography.

This book challenges some of the most basic assumptions underpinning the growing interest in religion, including: that religion is increasing and secularisation is decreasing and that religion is the main component of identity for all minority ethnic people.

In France in an Era of Global War, scholars re-examine experiences of French politics, occupation, empire and entanglements with the Anglophone world between 1914 and 1945. In doing so, they question the long-standing myths and assumptions which continue to surround this period, and offer new avenues of enquiry.

When a Turkish minister of culture declares that "the Turkish military is synonymous with Turkish national identity," the embedded assumptions cry out for investigation. Altinay examines how the myth that the military is central to Turkey's national identity was created, perpetuated, and acts to shape politics. This historical and anthropological investigation probes the genesis of the myth that the Turkish nation is a military nation, traces how the ideology of militarism has been actualized through education and conscription, and reveals the implications for ethnic and gender relations. Altinay sheds light both on the process of how national identities are constructed and on the deep roots of the challenges facing Turkey as it potentially moves from being a plural to a pluralistic society.

Entries in this dictionary focus on the people, organizations, events, and ideas that have been significant in the slightly more than two centuries of political communication in this country. The intent is to highlight those events and ideas that still have significance today--thus from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the threshold of the 21st century.

The history of political communication and how that history has repeated itself is examined in this volume. Entries arranged from A to Z, deal with freedom of the press and the major threats to freedom of the press; successful and unsuccessful political campaigns, and the changes that have occurred in political communication as well as the tradition that has emerged in the slightly more than two centuries we have been engaged in it. By offering the reader insight into the evolution of political communication as an academic field, this reference will be useful to students and scholars in the disciplines of political science, political communication, mass communication, U.S. history, and related fields, as well as academic and selected public libraries.

Considering the question of how levels of security allow state power to be increased to the point at which it infringes essential civil liberties, this book explores the creeping power of the executive and the unfeasibility of widespread use of the Human Rights Act as a bulwark against the oppressive use of state power.

This book offers an expert analysis of Russia's foreign and military defense policies since the Federation was established in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. To help readers understand the current state of this crucially important country, Global Security Watch-Russia: A Reference Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the main foreign and defense policies of the Russian Federation. Global Security Watch-Russia focuses on political-military developments in the nation that emerged in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse in December 1991. The book looks at a variety of factors that characterize Russia's position in world security matters, such as its leading position as an arms exporter and its still-overwhelming nuclear capability. Coverage includes critical recent events, such as the growing alienation between Russia and the West, the August 2008 Georgian War, and the effects of the global financial crisis on Russia's vulnerable economy. Contains excerpts from leaders' key speeches as well as Russia's seminal foreign policy and defense concepts Includes a comprehensive chronology, in essay format, of political-military developments in Russia since 1991