Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide

Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide PDF Author: Mike German
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620973804
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Impressively researched and eloquently argued, former special agent Mike German’s Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide tells the story of the transformation of the FBI after the 9/11 attacks from a law enforcement agency, made famous by prosecuting organized crime and corruption in business and government, into arguably the most secretive domestic intelligence agency America has ever seen. German shows how FBI leaders exploited the fear of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 to shed the legal constraints imposed on them in the 1970s in the wake of Hoover-era civil rights abuses. Empowered by the Patriot Act and new investigative guidelines, the bureau resurrected a discredited theory of terrorist “radicalization” and adopted a “disruption strategy” that targeted Muslims, foreigners, and communities of color, and tarred dissidents inside and outside the bureau as security threats, dividing American communities against one another. By prioritizing its national security missions over its law enforcement mission, the FBI undermined public confidence in justice and the rule of law. Its failure to include racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic violence committed by white nationalists within its counterterrorism mandate only increased the perception that the FBI was protecting the powerful at the expense of the powerless. Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide is an engaging and unsettling contemporary history of the FBI and a bold call for reform, told by a longtime counterterrorism undercover agent who has become a widely admired whistleblower and a critic for civil liberties and accountable government.

Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide

Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide PDF Author: Mike German
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620973804
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Impressively researched and eloquently argued, former special agent Mike German’s Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide tells the story of the transformation of the FBI after the 9/11 attacks from a law enforcement agency, made famous by prosecuting organized crime and corruption in business and government, into arguably the most secretive domestic intelligence agency America has ever seen. German shows how FBI leaders exploited the fear of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 to shed the legal constraints imposed on them in the 1970s in the wake of Hoover-era civil rights abuses. Empowered by the Patriot Act and new investigative guidelines, the bureau resurrected a discredited theory of terrorist “radicalization” and adopted a “disruption strategy” that targeted Muslims, foreigners, and communities of color, and tarred dissidents inside and outside the bureau as security threats, dividing American communities against one another. By prioritizing its national security missions over its law enforcement mission, the FBI undermined public confidence in justice and the rule of law. Its failure to include racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic violence committed by white nationalists within its counterterrorism mandate only increased the perception that the FBI was protecting the powerful at the expense of the powerless. Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide is an engaging and unsettling contemporary history of the FBI and a bold call for reform, told by a longtime counterterrorism undercover agent who has become a widely admired whistleblower and a critic for civil liberties and accountable government.

Thinking Like a Terrorist

Thinking Like a Terrorist PDF Author: Mike German
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597973270
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
As the fifth full year of America's global war on terrorism continues, statistics concerning terrorist attacks show a disturbing trend: from a twenty-one-year high in 2003, attacks tripled in 2004 and then doubled in 2005. And as the incidence of terrorist attacks increased, so has the number of terrorists. While the primary leaders of the Taliban, al Qaeda, and al Qaeda in Iraq remain at large, a 2006 Department of Defense study reportedly identified thirty new al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups that have been created since September 11, 2001. We may not have metrics that measure our success in the war on terrorism, but these realities certainly illuminate our failures. In Thinking Like a Terrorist, former FBI counterterrorism agent Mike German contends that the overarching problem is a fundamental failure to understand the terrorists--namely, what they want and how they intend to get it. When our counterterrorism policies are driven by misunderstanding and misperception, we shouldn't be surprised at the results. Today's terrorists have a real plan--a blueprint that has brought them victory in the past--that they are executing to perfection; moreover, their plan is published and available to anyone who bothers to read it. Once the terrorists' plan is understood, we can develop and implement more effective counterterrorism strategies. A former undercover agent who infiltrated neo-Nazi terrorist groups in the United States, German explains the terrorist's point of view and discusses ways to counter the terrorism threat. Based on his unusual experience in the field, Thinking Like a Terrorist provides unique insights into why terrorism is such a persistent and difficult problem and why the U.S. approach to counterterrorism isn't working.

The Lost Education of Horace Tate

The Lost Education of Horace Tate PDF Author: Vanessa Siddle Walker
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620971062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018 “An important contribution to our understanding of how ordinary people found the strength to fight for equality for schoolchildren and their teachers.” —Wall Street Journal In the epic tradition of Eyes on the Prize and with the cultural significance of John Lewis's March trilogy, an ambitious and harrowing account of the devoted black educators who battled southern school segregation and inequality For two years an aging Dr. Horace Tate—a former teacher, principal, and state senator—told Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about his clandestine travels on unpaved roads under the cover of night, meeting with other educators and with Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidents. Sometimes he and Walker spoke by phone, sometimes in his office, sometimes in his home; always Tate shared fascinating stories of the times leading up to and following Brown v. Board of Education. Dramatically, on his deathbed, he asked Walker to return to his office in Atlanta, in a building that was once the headquarters of another kind of southern strategy, one driven by integrity and equality. Just days after Dr. Tate's passing in 2002, Walker honored his wish. Up a dusty, rickety staircase, locked in a concealed attic, she found the collection: a massive archive documenting the underground actors and covert strategies behind the most significant era of the fight for educational justice. Thus began Walker's sixteen-year project to uncover the network of educators behind countless battles—in courtrooms, schools, and communities—for the education of black children. Until now, the courageous story of how black Americans in the South won so much and subsequently fell so far has been incomplete. The Lost Education of Horace Tate is a monumental work that offers fresh insight into the southern struggle for human rights, revealing little-known accounts of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, as well as hidden provocateurs like Horace Tate.

Disrupt and Deny

Disrupt and Deny PDF Author: Rory Cormac
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191087521
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Disrupt and Deny is the untold story behind Britain's secret scheming against both enemies and friends from 1945 to the present day. British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets from the Middle East to Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron Curtain, tried to foment revolution in Albania, blown up ships to prevent the passage of refugees to Israel, and secretly funnelled aid to insurgents in Afghanistan and dissidents in Poland. MI6 has launched cultural and economic warfare against Iceland and Czechoslovakia. It has tried to instigate coups in Congo, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere. Through bribery and blackmail, Britain has rigged elections as colonies moved to independence. Britain has fought secret wars in Yemen, Indonesia, and Oman - and discreetly used Special Forces to eliminate enemies from colonial Malaya to Libya during the Arab Spring. This is covert action: a vital, though controversial, tool of statecraft and perhaps the most sensitive of all government activity. If used wisely, it can play an important role in pursuing national interests in a dangerous world. If used poorly, it can cause political scandal - or worse. In Disrupt and Deny, Rory Cormac tells the remarkable true story of Britain's secret scheming against its enemies, as well as its friends; of intrigue and manoeuvring within the darkest corridors of Whitehall, where officials fought to maintain control of this most sensitive and seductive work; and, above all, of Britain's attempt to use smoke and mirrors to mask decline. He reveals hitherto secret operations, the slush funds that paid for them, and the battles in Whitehall that shaped them.

The Freedoms We Lost

The Freedoms We Lost PDF Author: Barbara Clark Smith
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595585974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A brilliant and original examination of American freedom as it existed before the Revolution, from the Smithsonian’s curator of social history. The American Revolution is widely understood—by schoolchildren and citizens alike—as having ushered in “freedom” as we know it, a freedom that places voting at the center of American democracy. In a sharp break from this view, historian Barbara Clark Smith charts the largely unknown territory of the unique freedoms enjoyed by colonial American subjects of the British king—that is, American freedom before the Revolution. The Freedoms We Lost recovers a world of common people regularly serving on juries, joining crowds that enforced (or opposed) the king’s edicts, and supplying community enforcement of laws in an era when there were no professional police. The Freedoms We Lost challenges the unquestioned assumption that the American patriots simply introduced freedom where the king had once reigned. Rather, Smith shows that they relied on colonial-era traditions of political participation to drive the Revolution forward—and eventually, betrayed these same traditions as leading patriots gravitated toward “monied men” and elites who would limit the role of common men in the new democracy. By the end of the 1780s, she shows, Americans discovered that forms of participation once proper to subjects of Britain were inappropriate—even impermissible—to citizens of the United States. In a narrative that counters nearly every textbook account of America’s founding era, The Freedoms We Lost challenges us to think about what it means to be free.

The Terror Factory

The Terror Factory PDF Author: Trevor Aaronson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935439967
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory shows how the FBI has - under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11 - built a network of informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create phony terrorist plots so the bureau can claim victory in the War on Terror. Now Aaronson reveals in detail how the FBI transformed from a reactive law enforcement agency into a proactive counterterrorism unit, and how so-called terror consultants have made fortunes by exaggerating the threat of Islamic terror in the US.

Decarcerating America

Decarcerating America PDF Author: Ernest Drucker
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620972794
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
“A powerful call for reform.” —NPR An all-star team of criminal justice experts present timely, innovative, and humane ways to end mass incarceration Mass incarceration will end—there is an emerging consensus that we’ve been locking up too many people for too long. But with more than 2.2 million Americans behind bars right now, how do we go about bringing people home? Decarcerating America collects some of the leading thinkers in the criminal justice reform movement to strategize about how to cure America of its epidemic of mass punishment. With sections on front-end approaches, as well as improving prison conditions and re-entry, the book includes pieces by leaders across the criminal justice reform movement: Danielle Sered of Common Justice describes successful programs for youth with violent offenses; Robin Steinberg of the Bronx Defenders argues for more resources for defense attorneys to diminish plea bargains; Kathy Boudin suggests changes to the parole model; Jeannie Little offers an alternative for mental health and drug addiction issues; and Eric Lotke offers models of new industries to replace the prison economy. Editor Ernest Drucker applies the tools of epidemiology to help us cure what he calls "a plague of prisons." Decarcerating America will be an indispensable roadmap as the movement to challenge incarceration in America gains critical mass—it shows us how to get people out of prisons, and the more appropriate responses to crime. The ideas presented in this volume are what we are fighting for when we fight against the New Jim Crow.

The Unmaking of the American Working Class

The Unmaking of the American Working Class PDF Author: Reg Theriault
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565847620
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Portrays the American blue-collar culture as decreasing, citing administrations in the second half of the twentieth century that have eliminated large portions of the working class and how this has compromised the nation.

Inside U.S.A.

Inside U.S.A. PDF Author: John Gunther
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620977370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1160

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Book Description
The seventy-fifth anniversary edition of Gunther’s classic portrait of America John Gunther’s Inside series were among the most popular books of reportage of the 1930s and 1940s. For Inside U.S.A., his magnum opus, Gunther set out from California and visited every state in the country, offering frank, lucid, and humorous observations along the way in what legendary publisher Robert Gottlieb, writing in the New York Times, calls Gunther’s “fluent, personal, casual, snappy” voice. Gunther’s insights on race, labor, the impact of massive New Deal public works projects, rural life, urbanization, and much more yield fascinating insight into life in a postwar America that had vaulted into the status of the world’s preeminent superpower. This seventy-fifth-anniversary edition of Inside U.S.A. provides an invaluable picture of America as it was and is both a delight to read and filled with insights that remain deeply relevant today.

Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer

Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer PDF Author: Helen Caldicott
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595585818
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The renowned antinuclear activist delivers a “frighteningly convincing argument” against nuclear energy as a solution to climate change (Publishers Weekly). In a world torn apart by wars over oil, politicians have stepped up their search for alternative energy sources—and their leading choice is nuclear energy. But nuclear energy’s popularity as a green alternative is based on misinformation. People claim that nuclear-powered electricity does not cause global warming or pollution, that it is inexpensive, and that it is safe. These claims, as Helen Caldicott demonstrates, are untrue. In Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer, Caldicott digs beneath the nuclear industry’s propaganda to examine the actual costs and environmental consequences of nuclear energy. In fact, nuclear power does contribute to global warming; the cost is prohibitive, with taxpayers picking up most of the tab; there’s not enough uranium in the world to sustain it over the long term; and the potential for a catastrophic accident or a terrorist attack far outweighs any benefits. In concluding chapters, Caldicott details alternative sustainable energy sources that are the key to a clean, green future.