The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power
by Jonathan Mahler
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: There have by now been many insider accounts of the Bush Administration and its War on Terror. Jonathan Mahler's The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power, on the other hand, is very much an outsider's account: the story of two lawyers and their attempt to scale the walls of the American government and overturn the system of military commissions set up to try the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. One observer called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld "the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law, ever," and Mahler's focus on the odd-couple lawyers--the blustery, impulsive Navy JAG who made defending Hamdan his mission and the brilliant and tireless Indian immigrant's son who risked a meteoric career with his obsession with the case--and his ability to communicate the grave constitutional consequences of the case and the often bizarrely circuitous path they must take to reach the Supreme Court make for a thrilling and moving drama of justice, democracy, and the patriotism of challenging your own government. --Tom Nissley
An inspiring legal thriller set against the backdrop of the war on terror, The Challenge tells the inside story of a historic Supreme Court showdown. At its center are a Navy JAG and a young constitutional law professor who, in the aftermath of 9/11, find themselves defending their nation in the unlikeliest of ways: by suing the president of the United States on behalf of an accused terrorist in order to prevent the American government from breaking the law and violating the Constitution.
Jonathan Mahler traces the journey of their client, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from the Yemeni mosque where he was first recruited for jihad in 1998, through his years working as a driver for Osama bin Laden, to his capture in Afghanistan in November 2001 and his subsequent transfer to Guantanamo Bay. It was there that Hamdan was designated by President Bush to be tried before a special military tribunal and assigned a military lawyer to represent him, a thirty-five-year-old graduate student of the Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift.
No one expected Swift to mount much of a defense. Not only were the rules of the tribunals, America’s first in more than fifty years, stacked against him, his superiors at the Pentagon were pressuring him to persuade Hamdan to plead guilty. But Swift didn’t believe that the tribunals were either legal or fair, so he enlisted a young Georgetown law professor named Neal Katyal to help him sue the Bush administration over their legality. In the spring of 2006, Katyal, who had almost no trial experience, took the case to the Supreme Court and won. The landmark ruling has been called the Court’s most important decision ever on presidential power and the rule of law.
Written with the cooperation of Swift and Katyal, The Challenge follows the braided stories of Swift’s intense, precarious relationship with Hamdan and the unprecedented legal case itself. Combining rich character portraits and courtroom drama reminiscent of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action with sophisticated yet accessible legal analysis, The Challenge is a riveting narrative that illuminates some of the most pressing constitutional questions of the post-9/11 era.
Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World
by Ashraf Ghani
from Oxford University Press, USA
Today between forty and sixty nations, home to over a billion people, have either collapsed or are teetering on the brink of failure. The world's worst problems--terrorism, drugs and human trafficking, absolute poverty, ethnic conflict, disease, genocide--originate in such states, and the international community has devoted billions of dollars to solving the problem. Yet by and large the effort has not succeeded.
Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart have taken an active part in the effort to save failed states for many years, serving as World Bank officials, as advisers to the UN, and as high-level participants in the new government of Afghanistan. Now, in Fixing Failed States, they describe the issue--vividly and convincingly--offering an on-the-ground picture of why past efforts have not worked and advancing a groundbreaking new solution to this most pressing of global crises. Military force, while certainly necessary on occasion, cannot solve the fundamental problems, and humanitarian interventions cost billions yet do not leave capable states in their wake. Ghani and Lockhart argue that only an integrated state-building approach can heal these failing countries. As they explain, many of these countries already have the resources they need, if only we knew how to connect them to global knowledge and put them to work in the right way. Their state-building strategy, which assigns responsibility equally among the international community, national leaders, and citizens, maps out a clear path to political and economic stability. The authors provide a clear, practical framework for achieving these ends, supporting their case with first-hand examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world's success stories--Singapore, Ireland, and even the American South.
The battle against terror, poverty, climate change, and much more cannot be won unless we can save these nations. In Fixing Fixed States, two of the world's foremost authorities offer a way out of the current crisis--a framework for re-imagining the international system. It is a book that is unique in its essential optimism--an optimism that the authors have earned through their own substantial real-world efforts in failed states.
Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values
by Philippe Sands
from Palgrave Macmillan
On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law.
On December 2, 2002 the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed his name at the bottom of a document that listed eighteen techniques of interrogation--techniques that defied international definitions of torture. The Rumsfeld Memo authorized the controversial interrogation practices that later migrated to Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, as part of the policy of extraordinary rendition. From a behind-the-scenes vantage point, Phillipe Sands investigates how the Rumsfeld Memo set the stage for a divergence from the Geneva Convention and the Torture Convention and holds the individual gatekeepers in the Bush administration accountable for their failure to safeguard international law.
Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy
by Moises Naim
from Anchor
Illicit activities are exploding worldwide. The onslaught of globalization has unleashed a tidal wave of bad stuff--everything from arms trafficking, human smuggling, and money laundering to music bootlegging. Here is the dark side of globalization: the mushrooming underground economy. Moisés NaÃm explores this murky world in his book Illicit. NaÃm is the editor of the relaunched magazine Foreign Policy and a former executive director of the World Bank and Minister of Trade and Industry of Venezuela. In Illicit, he unties the connections between the Colombian cocaine dealer, the New York banker steering money to offshore tax havens, the Albanian forcing women into prostitution, and the Chinese market stall-holder selling counterfeit DVDs.
NaÃm reports that legitimate global trade has doubled since 1990 from $5 to $10 trillion. Meanwhile, money laundering has gone up tenfold, exceeding $1 trillion a year. Smuggling and money laundering have always existed, but NaÃm shows how they have increased at a staggering pace in the wake of globalization, despite new government controls since 9/11. The main culprits are the collapse of the Iron Curtain and state deregulation. As the reach of organized crime has expanded, governments have failed to keep up. NaÃm illustrates the problems with stories about A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb who sold nuclear technology to North Korea and Libya; Walter C. Anderson, an American who was accused of hiding $450 million in offshore accounts to evade taxes; and Vladimir Montesinos, the Peruvian intelligence czar who is on trial for trafficking drugs and arms. The book, while a little dry, will be interesting to policy buffs and aspiring crooks alike. --Alex Roslin
A groundbreaking investigation of how illicit commerce is changing the world by transforming economies, reshaping politics, and capturing governments.
In this fascinating and comprehensive examination of the underside of globalization, Moises NaÃm illuminates the struggle between traffickers and the hamstrung bureaucracies trying to control them. From illegal migrants to drugs to weapons to laundered money to counterfeit goods, the black market produces enormous profits that are reinvested to create new businesses, enable terrorists, and even to take over governments. NaÃm reveals the inner workings of these amazingly efficient international organizations and shows why it is so hard — and so necessary to contain them. Riveting and deeply informed, Illicit will change how you see the world around you.
En Route to Global Occupation
by Gary H. Kah
from Huntington House Publishers
The publisher says this book "exposes the political forces around the world that are cooperating to unite the people of this planet under a New World Order. Some of the most recognizable names in America are on this list!"
Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice
by Jack Donnelly
from Cornell University Press
Praise for the first edition-
"Every once in a while a book appears that treats the leading issues of a subject in such a clear and challenging manner that it becomes central to understanding that subject. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice is just such a book. . . . Donnelly's interpretations are clear and argued with zest."-American Political Science Review
"This wide-ranging book looks at all aspects of human rights, drawing upon political theory, sociology, and international relations as well as international law. . . . [Jack Donnelly] deals successfully with two of the principal challenges to the notion of the universality of human rights: the argument that some non-Western societies are not subject to Western norms, and the claim that economic development may require the sacrifice of some human rights."-Foreign Affairs
In a thoroughly revised edition of Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (more than half of the material is new), Jack Donnelly elaborates a theory of human rights, addresses arguments of cultural relativism, and explores the efficacy of bilateral and multilateral international action. Entirely new chapters address prominent post-Cold War issues including humanitarian intervention, democracy and human rights, "Asian values," group rights, and discrimination against sexual minorities.
International Business Law and Its Environment
by Richard Schaffer
from South-Western College/West
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS LAW AND IT'S ENVIRONMENT, 4th Edition employs a comparative approach that emphasizes private law and facilitates effective managerial decision-making. The authors balance the legal challenges of doing business in developing and non-market-economy countries with the economic and political issues that commonly arise.
International Taxation in a Nutshell, (In a Nutshell (West Publishing))
by Richard L. Doernberg
from West Group
This Nutshell provides the fundamentals of U.S. international taxation. Addresses the U.S. activities of foreign taxpayers, as well as the foreign activities of U.S. citizens and residents, focusing on the U.S. foreign tax credit. Special U.S. international tax provisions creating incentives or disincentives for certain conduct or forms of business transactions are featured.
International Law
by Malcolm N. Shaw
from Cambridge University Press
Fully revised and updated to December 2002, Malcolm Shaw's bestselling textbook on international law is a clear, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the subject. The fifth edition includes new material on Inter-state Courts and Tribunals, arbitration tribunals and the role of international institutions such as the WTO. It will remain an invaluable resource for students and practitioners alike. While essential reading for students of international relations and the political sciences, the scope of the text also makes it of interest to lawyers and government and international employees. Previous Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-59384-0 Previous Edition Pb (1997): 0-521-57667-9
This fifth edition of Malcolm Shaw's bestselling textbook on international law provides a clear, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to the subject, fully revised and updated to December 2002. Includes new material on Inter-state Courts and Tribunals, arbitration tribunals and the role of international institutions such as the WTO. This will remain an invaluable resource for students and practitioners alike. The scope of the text makes this essential reading for students of international relations and the political sciences. The book is also valuable to practitioners and governmental and international civil servants.
Houseboy (African Writers)
by Ferdinand Oyono
from Heinemann
- It is a better guide to French Colonial Africa, and to racism, than any non-fiction account, whether by African or Frenchman.
- The Times Literary Supplement
Houseboy is written in the form of a diary kept by Toundi, an innocent Cameroonian houseboy who is fascinated and awed by the white world, the world of his masters. When the head of his mission is killed in an accident, Toundi becomes the "boy" of the local Commandant. In an effort to improve himself, Toundi studies his new world closely---too closely. Gradually his eyes are opened to its realities, and in the end it destroys him.
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