It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Amazon Review :
Understanding how our government functions and the political forces that influence it is vital for all Americans.
As a comprehensive overview and history of the subject, this book is designed to help anyone interested in learning about our government and the origins of its complex inner workings, our political system, and key elements that have affected our growth as a nation- all while serving as the best supplementary reading a student can get.
*Author is an experienced Advanced Placement teacher
*Students looking to take AP exams are a ready audience-along with citizenship applicants and CNN junkies
*Large renewable market
*Suitable as supplemental reading for coursework
Amazon Review :
Murray Weidenbaum has been a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a speaker at meetings at the Brookings Institution, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation and has also written for their publications, and served as a reviewer of ongoing studies.
In The Competition of Ideas, Weidenbaum examines the political economy of these vital institutions, drawing heavily on several decades of involvement in their activities.
He is uniquely able to see their accomplishments as well as their shortcomings.
Because of the importance of the activities of their organizations, and their tax-exempt status, think tanks are held to a high standard.
Weidenbaum shows that sometimes think tanks are more tank than think - major think tanks are often predictable in the positions they take on public issues and are far better at analyzing the shortcomings of other elements of society than of their own operations.
The overarching issue of quality control, Weidenbaum holds, deserves more attention than it has attained in the think tank world.
This book presents a careful, balanced account of where think tanks have been and where thay are now headed.
Given the high levels of professionalism in many think tanks, a fundamental change in the attitude of their management is important.
The compelling need is less for the wielder of policy than for the lucid synthesizer of relevant research and analysis.
Likewise, society needs sensitivity to the long-term concerns of the citizenry more urgently than rapid response to the opportunities of the moment.
Future competition, particularly among the major think tanks, could well be centered, not on achieving greater visibility, but on developing responses to economic, environmental, and national security problems that are likely to be adopted and carried out.
Murray Weidenbaum is Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis and Honorary Chairman of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy.
He was the first chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to Ronald Reagan and also served as a member of Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board. He is the author of numerous books including Business and Government in the Global Marketplace, One-Armed Economist (Transaction), and The Bamboo Network.
Amazon Review :
Tips and techniques to help your nonprofit thrive in any economy
Due to the recent downturn in the economy, a significant number of nonprofit organizations have experienced a major decrease in funding and contributions.
Nonprofit Kit for Dummies, 3rd Edition caters to these organizations and shows you how your nonprofit can thrive and survive even in the current economic climate.
With 25% new and revised material, Nonprofit Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition offers new tips and information on everything you need to navigate the process of setting up and effectively running a nonprofit organization.
Covers raising money, applying for grants, and developing the perfect mission statement
Details on how state laws vary; conducting program evaluations; and conforming to accounting standards CD includes forms, worksheets, templates, and more
Whether you're thinking about starting your own nonprofit or are already working in the sector, Nonprofit Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition is a valuable source for getting the latest information and practical advice on running a prosperous nonprofit organization.
Google Video Link |
Amazon Review :
Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society.
Amazon Review :
On June 10th, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the US had captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to explode a "dirty bomb" on American soil.
That alleged terrorist was José Padilla who was finally charged in 2005 with conspiracy to murder.
What Ashcroft didn't talk about was how information against him was obtained – by the relentless torture of one man-- Binyam Mohamed, in the name of the United States.
Arrested at Karachi Airport before Padilla’s arrest on April 10, 2002, Mohamed was put on a luxury executive jet and flown to an interrogation center in Morocco.
For over 18 months, he was subjected to one torture after another:
Beating followed beating and, then, his guards produced razor blades and began to split the skin all over his body, including on his genitals.
Since 1997, hundreds of people, many of whom have no ties to terrorist organizations, have been abducted from foreign airports or street corners on suspicions based at times on the flimsiest of evidence courtesy of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
In Ghost Plane, Stephen Grey tells the true story of the CIA's torture program known by the euphemism "extraordinary rendition" and the airplanes that make the program run.
Begun during the Clinton administration, but taking a decidedly more voracious turn after 9/11, the rendition system has seen the transfer of more than 1000 prisoners into jails stretching from Guantanamo to Syria, from Kabul to Bangkok and beyond.
Grey had access to the thousands of CIA flight records and has interviewed dozens of sources from the most senior levels of the National Security Council to the CIA.
In Ghost Plane, he paints a disturbing picture of the War on Terror that reaches to the highest levels of power in Washington, D.C. and exposes the extreme ethical corruption at the heart of this US government program, a program finally acknowledged by President George Bush in September 2006, undertaken in the name of the citizens of the United States.
The question which should be foremost of your mind is whether we will repeat this mistake or overthrow this nonsense.
Legally, without violence, and towards creating a better nation without elite, power-hungry, corporate agendas.
Originally posted by LadySkadi
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas
Great thread. I think you've summed up the ultimate question, here:
The question which should be foremost of your mind is whether we will repeat this mistake or overthrow this nonsense.
Legally, without violence, and towards creating a better nation without elite, power-hungry, corporate agendas.
The old saying "never say never" does come to mind - but I am pretty cynical about the answer to that question. I really don't think anything will change this election cycle, just as nothing has changed the one before it, or the one before that one... It is called a *cycle for a reason, I guess... we're all just a bunch of hamsters on the wheel or rather, we act like it (as a whole). I'll be happy to be proven wrong when the time comes, but I don't see any indication that I will be, yet...
Quote from : Wikisource : Executive Order 13228 : Establishment
I hereby establish within the Executive Office of the President an Office of Homeland Security (the ‘‘Office’’) to be headed by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Hawala
Hawala (also known as hundi) is an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and South Asia.