Other books that might interest you

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  Vox Populi Vox D(e)irect - On...

  Nikola Babic

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  This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.   
  Democracy is in crisis — and most people can feel it. 
  Wages stagnate while billionaires multiply. Politicians promise change and deliver gridlock. Artificial intelligence threatens to reshape the economy while citizens have no voice in how it's deployed. The system built to represent the people has become a machine that serves the few. 
  But this is not a book about despair. It's a blueprint for something better. 
  Vox Populi, Vox D(e)irect argues that direct democracy — where citizens vote on policy, not just politicians — is no longer a utopian dream. The technology exists. Estonia votes online. Switzerland decides national policy by referendum. Blockchain can secure elections. Smartphones put a ballot in every pocket. 
  Drawing on history from ancient Athens to the Arab Spring, from game theory to constitutional philosophy, Nikola Babić traces humanity's long struggle for self-governance and makes the case that the next step is not revolution — but evolution. 
  This book will alert you to dangers most prefer to ignore. It will give you reasons for hope when the headlines offer none. And it will call you to action — because the battles we avoid, our children will fight. 
  The voice of the people must be direct.

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  Religious Freedom and Populism -...

  Bernd Hirschberger, Katja Voges

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  Populism is a growing threat to human rights. They are appropriated, distorted, turned into empty words or even their opposite. The contributors to this volume examine these practices using the example of freedom of religion or belief, a human right that has become a particular target of right-wing populists and extremists worldwide. The contributions not only show the rhetorical patterns of appropriation and distortion, but also demonstrate for various countries which social dynamics favor the appropriation in each case and propose how to strengthen human rights and the culture of debate in democratic societies.

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  How States Die - Membership and...

  Douglas Lemke

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  When states die, there are massive consequences. Somalia's death in 1991 created a safe haven for criminal non-state actors and has unsettled the Horn of Africa for decades. When the Iraqi state was dismantled in 2003, a similar set of consequences plagued the Middle East and the international system more broadly.In How States Die, Douglas Lemke provides an analysis of this phenomenon by reconceptualizing the definitions of the state and state death. A state exists, according to Lemke, whenever a set of state-like political entities exercise control over a populated territory. This includes both sovereign states and "territorial contenders," which lack formal diplomatic recognition. Conceiving statehood in this way vastly increases the population of states that have experienced state death, which casts new light on the phenomenon. This increased range not only expands the list of ways states can die; it also provides insights into whether diplomatic recognition is associated with longer life and shows that state strength is not related to state death. Similarly, in contrast to the conventional wisdom, victories in conflict do not coincide with longer state survival. State death is one of the central questions within international relations, and Lemke's reformulation of what a state is will transform our understanding of how and why these deaths happen.

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  How Trump Won - The Inside Story...

  Joel B. Pollak, Larry Schweikart

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  From the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the White House until very late on election night, media and pollsters kept insisting Trump wouldn’t—couldn’t—be president. But for Larry Schweikart—one of a ragtag group of amateur politicos called the “Deplorables,” who had been publishing shockingly accurate polls and predictions, and Joel Pollak, a senior editor at Breitbart News following Trump on the campaign trail—Trump’s 2016 win was a near certainty. Schweikart and Pollak watched the Trump campaign build a powerful coalition of working Americans from both parties; they saw the momentum that the mainstream media and pollsters completely missed; and now in How Trump Won they tell the whole incredible story, from the early poll predictions to the campaign trail and on to election night.

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  Wise Men not so Wise -...

  Yvan Stefanovitch

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  The Constitutional Council is the embodiment of wisdom and is responsible for defending the rule of law and the individual freedoms of the French people, by censuring a law if it considers it unconstitutional. Discretionarily appointed by the three highest authorities of the State for a non-renewable nine-year term, its members are nevertheless the subject of much controversy: - This Institution is in fact the watchdog of the Head of State, and not of the rule of law; - Since its creation by General De Gaulle, its 92 members, most of them in their seventies, have been appointed based solely on political criteria or reasons of simple cronyism, old friendship, in gratitude for services rendered or simply on a whim. The General, Georges Pompidou, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and Emmanuel Macron have appointed their close friends, often even their confidants (such as Richard Ferrand in 2025), to head the Constitutional Council. A pinnacle of insiders that does not bode well for the impartiality and independence of the nine judges. - To facilitate “the constitutional passage by force” or to validate campaign accounts that have been greatly exceeded, the head of state relies on the “Sages”. A reading of the archives of the minutes of the plenary sessions of the Constitutional Council now makes it possible to state that the nine “Sages” have regularly flouted the law for 67 years. France is the only country in the world where former heads of state sit on a Constitutional Court as ex officio and life members. Three parliamentary attempts have mysteriously failed to put an end to this incredible tradition. Nicolas Sarkozy, still “Wise” for life, is now wearing an electronic bracelet because of his multiple convictions. It has also come to light that the remuneration of the Wise Men, whether or not they sit on the court, has remained illegal for 24 years. The “Sages” perform a moderate job with a comfortable income (22,000 to 32,000 euros), which they can combine with several pensions, completely illegally. This serious journalistic investigation, written by one of the most renowned journalists in this field, reveals an impressive number of worrying and aberrant dysfunctions of this supreme and very “political” regulator of our democracy. Protected by a court spirit violently hostile to any transparency, the “Wise Men” dangerously fuel the ambient populism and the growing lack of confidence of the French in their elites.

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  Genocide

  Fintan Drury

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  Beginning with Donald Trump’s return to power and culminating in the White House’s bombastic claim of a historic ‘peace deal’, Drury exposes how Western governments, fully aware of Israel’s methods, deepened their political, military, and moral investment in a project of ethnic cleansing. 
   
  Opening amid the surreal theatre of Trump’s Knesset address and the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit, the audibobook dissects the spectacle, the personalities, and the power relations that excluded the oppressed while rewarding the oppressor. With his standard meticulous research, Drury traces how bombardment, starvation, prison brutality, and territorial expansion were not aberrations but strategy, enabled by Western arms, finance, and diplomatic cover. 
   
  He unpicks the Trump–Netanyahu alliance, the mythology of Iran, and the relentless colonisation of Gaza and the West Bank, showing how ‘peace’ was framed around Israel’s entitlements alone. Urgent, unsettling, and essential, Western Washed Genocide argues that without Western sponsorship, this catastrophe could neither have occurred nor continued – and that accountability can no longer be deferred.

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