Politikk

There has never been a time when 'following the science' has been more important for humanity. At no other point in history have we had such advanced knowledge and technology at our fingertips, nor had such astonishing capacity to determine the future of our planet.But the decisions we must make on how science is applied belong outside the lab and should be the outcome of wide public debate. For that to happen, science needs to become part of our common culture. Science is not just for scientists: if it were, it could never save us from the multiple crises we face. For science can save us, if its innovations mesh carefully into society and its applications are channelled for the common good.As Martin Rees argues in this expert and personal analysis of the scientific endeavour on which we all depend, we need to think globally, we need to think rationally and we need to think long-term, empowered by twenty-first-century technology but guided by values that science alone cannot provide.

A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to serve their own ends

This collection of essays offers an analysis of the roots of the armed conflicts in the Donbas region of Ukraine, by exploring local society and traditions, interpreting recent events and assessing efforts to bring the war to and end. The book concludes with four key insights that could help to establish a durable peace in Donbas.

Management experts Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev sift through decades of data to show why workplace diversity training fails and what works. Arguing that it¿s time to focus on changing systems rather than individuals, the authors make data-driven recommendations for diversifying management and creating workplaces where everyone can thrive.

A history of modern Romania, a country whose fate it has been to experience some of the most disastrous dictatorships of the last century. This is also a personal discovery of an extraordinary country.

Anne Appelbaum, forfatter av internasjonale bestselgere som Gulag og Jernteppet, forteller i denne boken den rystende fortellingen om en av Stalins største forbrytelser, som gir ubehagelige resonanser i dagens Europa. I 1929 startet Stalin kollektiviseringen av landbruket - i praksis en ny revolusjon. Politikken tvang millioner av bønder fra gårdene over til store landbrukskollektiv. Resultatet ble den mest dødelige hungersnød i europeisk historie. Mellom 1931 og 1933 sultet minst fem millioner mennesker i hjel. Men i stedet for å sende hjelp, benyttet sovjetstaten katastrofen til å kvitte seg med et politisk problem. Anne Applebaum hevder at mer enn tre millioner av de døde var ukrainere som ikke var tilfeldige ofre for en dårlig politikk, men at staten hadde som bevisst politikk å drepe dem. Applebaum beviser hva man lenge har hatt mistanke om: Etter en rekke opprør i provinsen, satte Stalin seg fore å ødelegge ukrainsk landbruk. Kreml lukket republikkens grenser og tok kontroll over all tilgang på mat. Sulten satte raskt inn, og folk spiste hva som helst: gress, trebark, hunder, lik. I enkelte tilfeller drepte de hverandre for å få noe å spise. Rød sult skildrer, nådeløst og presist, vanlige menneskers kamp for å overleve ekstraordinær ondskap. I disse dager har Russland, Sovjetunionens arvtaker, nok en gang blikket rettet mot ukrainsk selvstendighet. Applebaums besettende fortelling gjenoppvekker en av de verste forbrytelsene i det tjuende århundre, og viser hvordan den peker frem mot nye trusler i det tjueførste.

A thrilling expose of the most powerful KGB spy in US history

In 2008, as the storms of the financial crash blew, Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan deserted the metropolis and their academic jobs, traveling across Europe in search of post-capitalist utopias. They wanted their art activism to no longer be uprooted.They arrived at a place French politicians had declared lost to the republic, otherwise know as the zad (the zone to defend): a messy but extraordinary canvas of commoning, illegally occupying 4,000 acres of wetlands where an international airport was planned. In 2018, the 40-year-long struggle snatched an incredible victory, defeating the airport expansion project through a powerful cocktail that merged creation and resistance.Fremeaux and Jordan blend rich eyewitness accounts with theory, inspired by a diverse array of approaches, from neo-animism to revolutionary biology, insurrectionary writings and radical art history.Published in collaboration with theJournal of Aesthetics & Protest.

This essay examines the power of language to shape political ideas. In it, Orwell argues that when political discourse trades clarity and precision for stock phrases, the debasement of politics follows. First published in 'Horizon' in 1946, Orwell's ideas continue to be relevant to our own age.

Western civilisation is threatened by the cannibalistic phase of what economists call free riding (or rent seeking), and which the author characterises as the culture of cheating. This culture was the source of the social pathologies that caused the collapse of the civilisations of antiquity, and the Fall of Rome. Fred Harrison explains that the global house price peak in 2026 will provoke the Great Convergence of four existential crises - social, economic, climatic and demographic. That convergence will overwhelm governments and result in the collapse of western civilisation, and may even threaten the viability of humanity itself. But there is just enough time to mobilise people''s understanding of the driving force behind this cataclysm, and to institute the financial reforms that would rebuild social resilience. The democracies, however, will have to overcome the continuing threat from Donald Trump - the arch rent seeker - and the policy paralysis that afflicts governance today. The Westminster model is interrogated to reveal how the aristocracy of old, who grabbed the commons and turned the peasants into hostages, produced a political system that is not fit to meet the needs of the 21st century. The author deconstructs the history of the Mother of Parliaments to lay bare the character of the power that inflicts poverty and premature death on millions of people in the rich nations. That politics, he claims, is guilty of the greatest crime against humanity.

This important new work updates the arguments of Christopher Hood's classic work The Tools of Government for the Twenty-First century. Comprehensively revised throughout, it includes increased coverage of how government gets information and an assessment of how the tools available to government have changed over time.

Following the imprisonment of her husband in 1922, Amy Jacques Garvey set forth to preserve the dream of Black Nationalism and African independence. Collecting the letters, speeches and essays of Marcus Garvey, she produced the complete philosophies of one of the most controversial yet influential figures in 20th century Black America.

A conservative take on the antifascist movementAntifascism argues that current self-described antifascists are not struggling against a reappearance of interwar fascism, and that the Left that claims to be opposing fascism has little in common with any earlier Left, except for some overlap with critical theorists of the Frankfurt School. Paul Gottfried looks at antifascism from its roots in early twentieth-century Europe to its American manifestation in the present. The pivotal development for defining the present political spectrum, he suggests, has been the replacement of a recognizably Marxist Left by an intersectional one. Political and ideological struggles have been configured around this new Left, which has become a dominant force throughout the Western world. Gottfried discusses the major changes undergone by antifascist ideology since the 1960s, fascist and antifascist models of the state and assumptions about human nature, nationalism versus globalism, the antifascism of the American conservative establishment, and Antifa in the United States. Also included is an excursus on the theory of knowledge presented by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. In Antifascism Gottfried concludes that promoting a fear of fascism today serves the interests of the powerful-in particular, those in positions of political, journalistic, and educational power who want to bully and isolate political opponents. He points out the generous support given to the intersectional Left by multinational capitalists and examines the movement of the white working class in Europe-including former members of Communist parties-toward the populist Right, suggesting this shows a political dynamic that is different from the older dialectic between Marxists and anti-Marxists.

A powerful and commanding account of the life of trailblazing political activist Angela DavisEdited by Toni Morrison and first published in 1974, An Autobiography is a classic of the Black Liberation era which resonates just as powerfully today. Long hard to find, it is reissued now with a new introduction by Davis, for a new audience inspired and galvanised by her ongoing activism and her extraordinary example.In the book, she describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humour, and conviction, it is an unforgettable account of a life committed to radical change.

In this landmark work, four of the world's leading scholar-activists issue an urgent call for a truly intersectional, internationalist, abolitionist feminism.As a politics and as a practice, abolitionism has increasingly shaped our political moment, amplified through the worldwide protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a uniformed police officer. It is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement, in its demands for police defunding and demilitarisation, and a halt to prison construction. And it is there in the outrage which greeted the brutal treatment of women by police at the 2021 Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard.As this book shows, abolitionism and feminism stand shoulder-to-shoulder in fighting a common cause: the end of the carceral state, with its key role in perpetuating violence, both public and private, in prisons, in police forces, and in people's homes. Abolitionist theories and practices are at their most compelling when they are feminist; and a feminism that is also abolitionist is the most inclusive and persuasive version of feminism for these times.Abolition. Feminism. Now!'This extraordinary book makes the most compelling case I've ever seen for the indivisibility of feminism and abolition' Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination'Attentive to histories of organising that are too quickly erased, and alive to new possibilities for working collectively in the present time, this book is as capacious and demanding as the abolitionist feminism it calls for' Sara Ahmed, author of Willful Subjects

Before the West presents the first comprehensive account of the international relations in 'the East', weaving together histories of the regions we today call East Asia, Central Asia, Eurasia (Russia), the Middle East and South Asia, and also rethinks the concepts of 'sovereignty', 'international order' and 'decline'.

Reiulf Steen. Historien, triumfen og tragediene er spennende og lærerik norgeshistorie, men mest av alt et gripende portrett av et sterkt sammensatt menneske.Knapt noen politiker fra norsk etterkrigstid har engasjert folk like sterkt som karismatikeren og idépolitikeren Reiulf Steen (1933-2014). Få kunne begeistre tilhørere og lesere som ham - og få har klart å bli så omstridt, både i og utenfor eget parti.Reiulf Steen kom fra svært enkle kår, som farløs arbeidersønn i et sterk klassedelt samfunn på Sætre i Hurum. Tross flere tragiske opplevelser i barneårene tok han alt som ungdom spranget inn i rikspolitikken som sekretær og senere formann for AUF. Steen var bare 31 år gammel da han i 1965 ble nestformann i Arbeiderpartiet. Han rykket opp til partiformann som del av det dramatiske landsmøtekompromisset i 1975 - hvor det samtidig ble fastslått at han ikke skulle bli statsminister. Steen ble en for Arbeiderpartiet svært viktig brobygger og reformator, men store personlige problemer og et stadig skarpere motsetningsforhold til Gro Harlem Brundtland utløste hans avgang som partiformann alt i 1981. Internasjonalisten Reiulf Steen forlot Stortinget i 1992 for å bli ambassadør i Chile, men forble en engasjert deltaker i norsk samfunnsdebatt helt frem til 2010-tallet.Reiulf Steen. Historien, triumfene og tragediene er en storslått historisk biografi som mange har gledet seg til - og som noen har gruet seg til. Den gir svar på tidligere ubesvarte spørsmål om Reiulf Steen og andre sentrale aktører fra hans periode som partiformann, og gir ny innsikt om Arbeiderpartiets moderne historie.

This book explains why emerging economies have come to dominate global environmental politics and examines the implications for international cooperation. Johannes Urpelainen argues that although they continue to prioritize economic growth, innovative bargaining and institutional design offer a way forward.

Den erfarne journalisten og kommunikasjonsrådgiveren Agnar Kaarbø har intervjuet tidligere toppolitikere om hvordan de løste lederoppgaven da de ble statsråder. I samtalene får vi både prinsipielle betraktninger og personlige historier om å være medlem av landets viktigste ledergruppe, regjeringen. Boken inneholder intervjuer med blant annet Kjell Magne Bondevik, Kåre Willoch, Anne Enger, Kristin Clemet, Åslaug Haga, Bård Vegar Solhjell, Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, Grete Faremo, Torbjørn Røe-Isaksen og Kristin Halvorsen.

Våren etter Talibans fall tilbrakte forfatteren hos familien Khan i Kabul. Dette er hennes skildring av en familie som strever med å finne sin plass i det nye Afghanistan. Det handler om forbudt kjærlighet, arrangerte ekteskap, forbrytelse og straff, ungt opprør og om samfunnets strenge krav til hvordan man skal leve sitt liv.

Boka tar for seg Romas nære historie fra etterkrigstida og fram til i dag. Den handler om militante bevegelser på ytterste venstre fløy og om fascismen som ikke forsvant.

En av Norges skarpeste og morsomste politiske kommentatorer blåser nytt og etterlengtet liv i debatten om monarki kontra republikk.I 2014 feirer Norge grunnloven, demokrati og folkestyre. Men 200 år etter at grunnloven ble skrevet på Eidsvoll, går Norges øverste politiske verv fortsatt i arv. Norges statsoverhode blir ikke valgt, men født.Demokratiseringen av landet har stanset foran slottet. Kong Harald bremser moderniseringen av grunnloven. Hvorfor får han det? Skulle Norge valgt statsform i dag, ville landet da hentet en prins eller prinsesse som var til overs i et annet land, som i 1905? Sannsynligvis ikke. Kongen ville blitt skrevet ut av grunnloven, og vi ville fått Republikken Norge. Hvordan kan den se ut?

This book provides an understanding of Russia's geopolitical strategic interests as well as a larger picture of its political realities.