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  Asian Waters - The Struggle Over...

  Humphrey Hawksley

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  In the sphere of future global politics, no region will be as hotly contested as the Asia-Pacific, where great power interests collide amid the mistrust of unresolved conflicts and disputed territory. This is where authoritarian China is trying to rewrite international law and challenge the democratic values of the United States and its allies. The lightning rods of conflict are remote reefs and islands from which China has created military bases in the 1.5-million-square-mile expanse of the South China Sea, a crucial world trading route that this rising world power now claims as its own. No other Asian country can take on China alone. They look for protection from the United States, although it, too, may be ill-equipped for the job at hand. If China does get away with seizing and militarizing waters here, what will it do elsewhere in the world, and who will be able to stop it? 
  In Asian Waters, award-winning foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley breaks down the politics—and tensions—that he has followed through this region for years. Reporting on decades of political developments, he has witnessed China's rise to become one of the world's most wealthy and militarized countries, and delivers in Asian Waters the compelling narrative of this most volatile region.

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  Go Spy the Land - Being the...

  George Alexander Hill

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  Before espionage entered the era of modern technology, there was the age of George Alexander Hill: a time of swashbuckling secret agents, swordsticks and secret assignations with deadly female spies. The daring escapades of some of the first members of Britain's secret service are revealed in this account of perilous adventure and audacious missions in Imperial and revolutionary Russia. First published in 1932, Hill's rip-roaring narrative recounts tales of his fellow operatives Arthur Ransome - author of Swallows and Amazons and one of the most effective British spies in Russia - and Sidney Reilly - so-called 'Ace of Spies' and architect of a thwarted plot to assassinate the Bolshevik leadership. Unavailable for decades, this lost classic offers fascinating portraits of a world unfathomable to those growing up against a backdrop of WikiLeaks and cyber espionage, and of true-life characters whose exploits were so extraordinary that they have entered the realm of legend.

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  Breaking Through Gridlock - The...

  Jason Jay, Gabriel Grant, Peter...

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  Think about the last time you tried to talk with someone who didn't already agree with you about issues that matter most. How well did it go? These conversations are vital, but too often get stuck. They become contentious or we avoid them because we fear they might. What if, in these difficult conversations, we could stay true to ourselves while enriching relationships and creating powerful pathways forward? What if our divergent values provided healthy fuel for dialogue and innovation instead of gridlock and polarization? Jason Jay and Gabriel Grant invite us into a spirit of serious play, laughing at ourselves while moving from self-reflection to action. Using enlightening exercises and rich examples, Breaking through Gridlock helps us become aware of the role we unwittingly play in getting conversations stuck. It empowers us to share what really matters – with anyone, anywhere – so that together we can create positive change in our families, organizations, communities, and society.

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  Our Common Cause - Establishing...

  Étienne Chouard

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  I want to talk to you about democracy. The real one. The one that does not exist, and the one we really need today. My research method is that of Hippocrates, who said, look for the cause of causes. In other words, to cure a disease, to solve a problem, it is useless to attack the consequences, it is useless to attack the different causes. There is always a determining cause (the one that determines all the others)—and that is our common cause.
  The first decisive battle is to push the important words "right side up":
  First. I am not a "citizen" (a citizen is autonomous; he votes himself his laws). I am only a "voter;" that is to say, a political child—because I am subject to the law voted into existence by someone other than me.
  Second. My "parents" in politics, the elected officials, do not want me to emancipate myself from them—they do not allow me to vote for or against the laws to which I have to submit myself.
  We are "the incompetents." They treat us like children. But it is our fault, because children also believe in "Santa Claus," and so voters believe in "universal suffrage," which we accept to call "democracy" (demos kratos, power belongs to the people). The so-called modern "democracy".

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  A Duty to Resist - When...

  Candice Delmas

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  What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it?Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it.Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states.

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  Clever Blacks Jesus and Nkandla...

  Gareth Van Onselen

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  Jacob Zuma is a man who walks in two worlds. As president of South Africa, he is tasked with upholding the principles that define the Constitution and embodying the values they are designed to engender. But, as an individual, a set of private impulses - ranging from his religious beliefs, to his traditional African cultural convictions, to a populist and patriarchal attitude to power - defines his world view; and many of these impulses run counter to the Bill of Rights. The result is an often-violent clash between his formal duties and more informal demagogic instincts. South Africa's public debate is where that conflict plays itself out.Here, Gareth van Onselen has put together a comprehensive collection of Zuma's most controversial - and often contradictory - public statements. With some 350 quotes collected along ten themes that define Zuma's personal beliefs, Clever Blacks, Jesus and Nkandla documents some of Zuma's most notorious moments. It aims to serve as both an easy guide to Zuma's personal philosophy and a reference point for some of the debates that have defined his political career. The quotes represent one of the fundamental fault lines that run through South African discourse today - a society trapped between its Third World realities and its much-vaunted First World ambitions. In many ways, Zuma is the epicentre around which the subsequent debate has unfolded.

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