How do "good intentions" pave the road for empire? Whether it is iatrogenic violence, voluntourism, the misappropriation of gay rights, or NGOs serving as the Trojan Horses of US dominance and neoliberal social reengineering, contributors to this volume expose and analyze the many ways in which the new imperialism involves partitioning the world into tutors and wards, saviours and victims. Underlying the seduction of imperial elite-lore are established modes of socialization and enculturation, ranging from the elaborate and persistent demonization of chief opponents of US empire to the lionization of military actors commonly rendered as heroes. Also scrutinized in this volume are the domestic social and political costs, reaching as far as the displacement of urban populations to make way for the expansion of the informatic industries of empire, paving the way for the unprecedented dominance of corporations in our daily lives.
Not All Alarm Bells Are In Your Head At the end of You Can’t Kill the Multiverse (But You Can Mess With its Head), Doctor Alhambra, the chief scientist of the Transdimensional Authority, set up an alarm to warn him if a universe is succumbing to the universe-killing machine that is at the heart of the story. But how would the Transdimensional Authority respond if that alarm went off? In Good Intentions, the first book in the Multiverse Refugees Trilogy, but also the sixth Transdimensional Authority novel, we find out. In the process we not only meet the most unusual refugees in fiction (probably), learn what Noomi Rapier’s brother does (and with whom), revisit Dingle Dell, and finally discover what happened to chapter seventeen of The Multiverse is a Nice Place to Visit But I Wouldn’t Want to Live There. Visit bit.ly/GoodIntentions-IraNayman Cover artwork by Hugh Spencer
A leading economist and researcher report from the front lines of a revolution in solving the world's most persistent problem. When it comes to global poverty, people are passionate and polarized. At one extreme: We just need to invest more resources. At the other: We've thrown billions down a sinkhole over the last fifty years and accomplished almost nothing. Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel present an entirely new approach that blazes an optimistic and realistic trail between these two extremes. In this pioneering book Karlan and Appel combine behavioral economics with worldwide field research. They take readers with them into villages across Africa, India, South America, and the Philippines, where economic theory collides with real life. They show how small changes in banking, insurance, health care, and other development initiatives that take into account human irrationality can drastically improve the well-being of poor people everywhere. We in the developed world have found ways to make our own lives profoundly better. We use new tools to spend smarter, save more, eat better, and lead lives more like the ones we imagine. These tools can do the same for the impoverished. Karlan and Appel's research, and those of some close colleagues, show exactly how. In America alone, individual donors contribute over two hundred billion to charity annually, three times as much as corporations, foundations, and bequests combined. This book provides a new way to understand what really works to reduce poverty; in so doing, it reveals how to better invest those billions and begin transforming the well-being of the world.
Emma Crosby's letters to family and friends in Ontario shed light on a critical era and bear witness to the contribution of missionary wives. They mirror the hardships and isolation she faced as well as her assumptions about the supremacy of Euro-Canadian society and of Christianity. They speak to her "good intentions" and to the factors that caused them to "go awry." The authors critically represent Emma's sincere convictions towards mission work and the running of the Crosby Girls' Home (later to become a residential school), while at the same time exposing them as a product of the times in which she lived. They also examine the roles of Native and mixed-race intermediaries who made possible the feats attributed to Thomas Crosby as a heroic male missionary persevering on his own against tremendous odds.
Susan M. Ryan explores antebellum Americans' preoccupation with the language and practice of benevolence. Drawing on a variety of cultural and literary texts, she traces how people working and writing within social reform movements--and their outspoken opponents--helped solidify racial and class ideologies that ultimately marginalized even the most "deserving" poor. "The links between race and the relations of benevolence occasioned much soul-searching among antebellum Americans," Ryan explains. "In a period of heated public debate over issues such as slavery, Indian removal, and non-Protestant immigration, the categories of blackness, Indianness, and a generic 'foreignness' came to signify, for many whites, need itself." Ryan puts familiar literary works such as Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin back into dialogue with a broad range of print materials: the reports of charity societies, African American and Native American newspapers, juvenile fiction, travel writing, cartoons, sermons, and tract literature. In the process, she dispels the myth that authors usually classified as literary were responding to a simple and unquestioned cult of benevolence. Rather, she contends, they were participating in the complex and often rancorous debates occurring within the broader culture over how good intentions should be expressed and enacted.Ryan's inquiry into the antebellum culture of benevolence has implications for contemporary U.S. society, resonating especially with recent debates over welfare reform, the politics of compassionate conservatism, and representations of "welfare queens" and violent urban youth. As Ryan writes, "The conversations that this book reconstructs remind us of our ongoing participation in the national ritual of laying claim to good intentions."
Exiled on Earth, naive angel Gabriel and amoral demon Lucifer — in the human guise of “Gabe Horn” and “Lou Cypher” — form an unlikely partnership as private investigators in Las Vegas. Their adventures take them across the seven heavenly realms, into the nine levels of Hell, through the dream realm of the Dreamscape, and even through time to Camelot. Along the way, the pair encounter a wickedly funny assortment of angels, demons, witches, warlocks, vampires, and other supernatural creatures. Meet some of the most imaginative characters in contemporary fantasy, including an intriguing array of protagonists (Miss Twitch, a Salem witch; Emma, a British schoolgirl and witch-in-training, and Morgan Summers, a Dreamwalker) and antagonists (sadistic witch-hunter Nathaniel Thornhill, a golem, a Paiute Shaman, the corporate vampires of Nosferatu, Inc., trampires, gangsters, and nefarious demons). Some of the vampires include Sharon — she's Jewish, crosses don't bother her; Pandora — trouble follows her like a shadow; Claude — he's too claustrophobic to use a coffin; and Artemus — a 10-year-old boy who's been a vampire for nearly 457 years. But the real stars are the ultimate odd couple, Gabriel and Lucifer, whose comedic banter and improbable escapades will amuse and thrill readers and leave them asking for more.
Luke is a successful double glazing salesman from Swansea, South Wales. A fairly ruthless lyer, Luke tells customers what they want to hear and they buy. He treats them as enemies. A barrier between him and his commission. One day he goes too far and disgusts even himself with his ruthlessness. He wants to change. After dabbling with telepathy and visiting the Mind, Body, Spirit exhibition, he decides he wants to become a Healer. With absolutely no training and just an arrogant belief in his own abilities ( a prerequisite to being a successful salesman ), Luke sets about offering healing to anybody he comes into contact with. How can he be sure he is helping? How can he be sure he is not helping the wrong people? How can he be sure he is not about to do something he will regret more than anything he's done before? Despite his arrogance he does want to be a better person. He really does want to help. His intentions are good. But as they say...The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. He then embarks on a journey to his own personal Hell. He must change his beliefs in everything he's known before, and gain a glimpse at least of the true meaning of life, if he's ever to return. Can he learn life's lessons before it's too late and he loses everything...?
Despite its good intentions, mismanagement and corruption plagued the UN's Oil-for-Food Program: More than 2,200 companies paid 1.8 billion in illegal surcharges and kickbacks to the Iraqi regime The UN Security Council stood by as the Iraqi regime outright smuggled about 8.4 billion of oil during the Program years in violation of UN sanctions The Iraqi regime steered oil contracts for political advantage by giving rights to buy oil to dozens of global political figures sympathetic to Iraq's goal to loosen or overturn the UN sanctions The Iraqi regime provided Benon Sevan, the UN's chief administrator of the Program, with rights to buy more than 7 million barrels of oil UN-related humanitarian agencies collected tens of millions of dollars for costs they never incurred, and some built factories in Iraq that weren't needed or that never worked at all. Even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was tainted by it But the whole story has never been told in one place.
"Three sisters and their families come together for their annual summer vacation on Cape Cod, where beloved traditions and long-held assumptions are jeopardized by the secrets each brings from home"--
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted again the precarious situation aid agencies find themselves in, caught as they are between the firing lines of the hostile parties, as they are trying to alleviate the plight of the civilian populations. This book offers an illuminating case study from a previous conflict, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-36, and of the humanitarian operation of the Red Cross during this period. Based on fresh material from Red Cross and Italian military archives, the author examines highly controversial subjects such as the Italian bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, the treatment of Prisoners of War by the two belligerents; and the effects of Fascist Italy’s massive use of poison gas against the Ethiopians. He shows how Mussolini and his ruthless regime, throughout the seven-month war, manipulated the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – the lead organization of the Red Cross in times of war, helped by the surprising political naïveté of its board. During this war the ICRC redefined its role in a debate, which is fascinating not least because of its relevance to current events, about the nature of humanitarian action. The organization decided to concern itself exclusively with matters falling under the Geneva Conventions and to give priority to bringing relief over expressing protest. It was a decision that should have far-reaching consequences, particularly for the period of World War II and the fate of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.
From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.
