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Birds Aren't Real: The True Story of Mass Avian Murder and the Largest Surveillance Campaign in US History
by Peter McIndoe Connor GaydosThe true story of the greatest conspiracy in US history—and how to fight back.Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You haven’t, have you? No one has, not in many, many years. They used to be everywhere. You couldn’t walk out of your front door in New York City in the 1930s without seeing dozens of those little guys scurrying around. Today, there are millions of grown up pigeons in New York, but not a baby pigeon to be seen. That’s because they come out of the factory as adults.This is one of the many smoking guns of the bird drone surveillance crisis. Since 1959, the Deep State has mercilessly slaughtered over 12 billion birds and replaced them with identical drones that are designed to spy on private citizens and report their every action directly to the government. From pet canaries to Sesame Street, the shadowy figures that pull the strings have infiltrated every aspect of our society, making a mockery of civil liberties while the American people live in blissful ignorance. Until now.In Birds Aren’t Real, whistleblowers Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos trace the roots of a political conspiracy so vast and well-hidden that it almost seems like an elaborate hoax. These hero Bird Truthers have risked life and limb to compile and disseminate a treasure trove of information about the origins of the surveillance crisis, its spread, and the patriots who are on the front lines today, raising awareness and working to reclaim America as the land of the free. This urgent manifesto features a host of useful illustrations, activities, and leaked classified documents that will convince even the most outspoken skeptic that birds aren’t real. The truth is out there: will you stand and fight before it’s too late?
Bird versus Bulldozer: A Quarter-Century Conservation Battle in a Biodiversity Hotspot
by Audrey L. MayerAn examination of the struggle to conserve biodiversity in urban regions, told through the story of the threatened coastal California gnatcatcher The story of the rare coastal California gnatcatcher is a parable for understanding the larger ongoing struggle to conserve biodiversity in regions confronted with intensifying urban development. Because this gnatcatcher depends on vanishing coastal sage scrub in Southern California, it has been regarded as a flagship species for biodiversity protection since the early 1990s. But the uncertainty of the gnatcatcher&’s taxonomic classification—and whether it can be counted as a &“listable unit&” under the Endangered Species Act—has provoked contentious debate among activists, scientists, urban developers, and policy makers. Synthesizing insights from ecology, environmental history, public policy analysis, and urban planning as she tracks these debates over the course of the past twenty-five years, Audrey L. Mayer presents an ultimately optimistic take on the importance of much-neglected regional conservation planning strategies to create sustainable urban landscapes that benefit humans and wildlife alike.
Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
by Matthew DallekHow a notorious far right organization set the Republican Party on a long march toward extremism At the height of the John Birch Society&’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, &“Birchers&” believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society&’s extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. The far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump. Birchers is a deeply researched and indispensable new account of the rise of extremism in the United States.
Birch Bayh: Making a Difference
by Robert BlaemireA biography of the US senator from Indiana who was behind such monumental legislation as the 25th Amendment and Title IX. A remarkable history of one of the most legendary US senators of our time, Birch Bayh: Making a Difference reveals a life and career dedicated to the important issues facing Indiana and the nation, including civil rights and equal rights for women. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, right before the Great Depression, Birch Bayh served more than 25 years in the Indiana General Assembly (1954–1962) and the United States Senate (1963–1981). His influence was seen in landmark legislation over his tenure, including Title IX, the 25th Amendment, the 26th Amendment, Civil Rights of the Institutionalized, Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Act, and the Bayh-Dole Act. Bayh was also the author, chief Senate sponsor, and floor leader of the Equal Rights Amendment and successfully led the opposition to two Nixon nominees to the Supreme Court. Robert Blaemire profiles not only the prolific career of this remarkable senator but also an era when compromise and bipartisanship were common in Congress.&“Bayh has long needed a comprehensive biography, and Robert Blaemire has provided an insider&’s account of Bayh&’s life and career and places him among Indiana&’s leading political figures.&” —Ray E. Boomhower, author of Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary&“The story of Birch Bay&’s political career is completely inspiring, especially in an era that has lost touch with bipartisanship and civility. A must read for Hoosiers and for anyone interested in how democracy worked, when it really worked.&” —Ted Widmer, historian and former presidential speechwriter
Bipartisanship And The Making Of Foreign Policy: A Historical Survey
by Ellen C. CollierThis book examines the various meanings and reviews the history of bipartisan foreign policymaking since World War II, presenting documents relating to bipartisan foreign policy and discussing legislative-executive consultation on foreign policy.
Biowatch and Public Health Surveillance: Evaluating Systems for the Early Detection of Biological Threats - Abbreviated Version
by Institute of Medicine National Research Council of the National AcademiesFollowing the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the anthrax letters, the ability to detect biological threats as quickly as possible became a top priority. In 2003 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) introduced the BioWatch program--a federal monitoring system intended to speed detection of specific biological agents that could be released in aerosolized form during a biological attack. The present volume evaluates the costs and merits of both the current BioWatch program and the plans for a new generation of BioWatch devices. BioWatch and Public Health Surveillance also examines infectious disease surveillance through hospitals and public health agencies in the United States, and considers whether BioWatch and traditional infectious disease surveillance are redundant or complementary.
Biowaste and Biological Waste Treatment
by Gareth EvansWith growing public pressure and increasingly stringent environmental legislation, the waste industry is now being called upon to develop more sustainable methods of dealing with refuse. Coupled with moves to reduce reliance on landfill as a disposal route, biological treatment will increasingly become adopted as a standard requirement for the vast majority of putrescible wastes. Biowaste and Biological Waste Treatment examines the present, and likely future, state of biological waste treatment. The book falls naturally into three parts. The first covers the nature of biowaste, waste treatment in general and the regulatory framework which governs it. The second looks at the technologies and approaches available, while the final part examines the various policy questions and local, social and economic factors which affect the implementation of biowaste initiatives.
Biowar (Deep Black #2)
by Stephen Coonts Jim DefeliceDr. James Kegan, a world-renowned scientist specializing in germ warfare, has vanished from his upstate New York home. But this is no ordinary missing-persons case. Kegan has left behind an unidentified dead man with a .22 caliber hole in his skull-and a contact trail that leads to an alleged terrorist cell. Unraveling the mystery is a job for Kegan's best friend, NSA operative Charlie Dean. His mission is to infiltrate the scientist's circle of associates and decipher Kegan's confidential research. Dispatched to cover Charlie is Delta Force trooper Lia Francesca. The trail leads them to the core of a widespread killer fever that's been dormant for centuries-and its link to a virus that's quickly spreading victim by victim. With time running out Charlie and Lia must find Kegan, uncover his secrets, cut a terrorist threat to the quick, and stop the unimaginable outbreak of a new biological nightmare.
Bioviolence: How the Powers That Be Make Us Do What They Want
by William WatkinAylan, Isis, Begum, Grenfell, Trump. Harambe, Guantanamo, Syria, Brexit, Johnson. COVID, migrants, trolling, George Floyd, Trump! Gazing over the fractured, contested territories of the current global situation, Watkin finds that all these diverse happenings have one element in common. They occur when biopolitical states, in trying to manage and protect the life rights of their citizens, habitually end up committing acts of coercion or disregard against the very people they have promised to protect. When states tasked with making us live find themselves letting us die, then they are practitioners of a particular kind of force that Watkin calls bioviolence. This book explores and exposes the many aspects of contemporary biopower and bioviolence: neglect, exclusion, surveillance, regulation, encampment, trolling, fake news, terrorism and war. As it does so, it demonstrates that the very term ‘violence’ is a discursive construct, an effect of language, made real by our behaviours, embodied by our institutions and disseminated by our technologies. In short, bioviolence is how the contemporary powers that be make us do what they want. Resolutely interdisciplinary, this book is suitable for all scholars, students and general readers in the fields of IR, political theory, philosophy, the humanities, sociology and journalism.
Biotraffic: Medicines and Environmental Governance in the Afterlives of Apartheid
by Christopher MorrisBiotraffic explores the complex world of biological resource trade. It takes readers inside the contemporary Ciskei region of South Africa, a once-notorious apartheid "homeland" turned extractive hub for wild medicinal plants. Drawing from in-depth ethnographic and archival research, Christopher Morris examines the region’s trade in Pelargonium sidoides, a plant once contested as a tuberculosis treatment in early twentieth-century Europe and now an internationally marketed remedy for the common cold. The story of this trade links past and present, encapsulating a larger tale about colonial legacies and their intersection with global environmental governance ambitions. It also teems with a diverse cast of actors, from plant harvesters and pharmaceutical companies to activist NGOs and the chiefs who have become business partners with multinational drug firms. The book’s analysis extends beyond considering merely the extraction and commercialization of plant resources and offers a critical examination of how demand for therapeutics intertwines with broader struggles over land and political power in South Africa. Biotraffic illuminates how a distance-defying trade is reshaping the sociopolitical landscape of a region—a region grappling with apartheid's afterlives and the challenges of environmental and economic justice.
Biotheory: Life and Death under Capitalism (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Peter Hitchcock Jeffrey R. Di LeoForged at the intersection of intense interest in the pertinence and uses of biopolitics and biopower, this volume analyzes theoretical and practical paradigms for understanding and challenging the socioeconomic determinations of life and death in contemporary capitalism. Its contributors offer a series of trenchant interdisciplinary critiques, each one taking on both the specific dimensions of biopolitics and the deeper genealogies of cultural logic and structure that crucially inform its impress. New ways to think about biopolitics as an explanatory model are offered, and the subject of bios (life, ways of life) itself is taken into innovative theoretical possibilities. On the one hand, biopolitics is addressed in terms of its contributions to forms and divisions of knowledge; on the other, its capacity for reformulation is assessed before the most pressing concerns of contemporary living. It is a must read for anyone concerned with the study of bios in its theoretical profusions.
Bioterrorism & Biological Warfare: Disease as a Weapon of War
by Paul ChrystalA timely examination of the use of disease and germs as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and the threat bioterrorism poses in an increasingly unpredictable and volatile future. This important, disturbing and timely book focuses on on the use of disease and germs as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and the threat bioterrorism poses in an increasingly unpredictable and volatile future for the world. For context it traces developments from the earliest primitive but effective days of infectious rams, poison-tipped arrows and plague-infected corpses used as toxic, disease-spreading projectiles, to the twenty-first-century industrial scale weaponization of biomedicine. Paul Chrystal shows how biological weapons and acts of bioterrorism are especially effective at instilling terror, panic, death, famine and economic ruin on a large scale, shredding public confidence in governments and civilization itself. For the disaffected, lethal biological agents are comparatively easy to manufacture and obtain, and they have the benefit of being almost invisible and easy and quick to administer in lethal quantities through a variety of discreet delivery systems. Just what the terrorist wants. We explore the sinister connection between the industrial-scale proliferation of biological weaponry by state actors and the greater opportunities these growing bio-arsenals give to the increasingly scientific-minded and determined terrorist to manufacture his or her weapon of choice, taking advantage also of the state of the art sophisticated delivery systems. The epilogue analyzes the concerted but groundless 2022-2023 disinformation campaign conducted by Russia, with support from China, relating to the claim that public health facilities in Ukraine are 'secret U.S.-funded biolabs', purportedly developing biological weapons.
Bioterrorism in Medical and Healthcare Administration (Public Administration and Public Policy)
by Laure PaquetteBioterrorism in Medical and Healthcare Administration provides an efficient method to identify, manage, and control transformations in the provision of health services during elevated levels of bioterrorist threat - offering step-by-step procedures and templates to prepare and implement a coordinated response to high-alert situations. This reference proposes an efficient method to identify, manage, and control transformations in the provision of health services during elevated levels of bioterrorist threat - offering step-by-step procedures and templates to prepare and implement a coordinated response to high-alert situations.
Bioterror in the 21st Century
by Daniel M GersteinDaniel Gerstein draws on twenty-nine years of experience in the security and defense sectors to address the threat of bioterrorism. He argues that bioterrorism is a very real threat to humankind due to the 21st century's confluence of globalization, terrorism and biotechnology. Each of these three components of bioterrorism is experiencing unprecedented -- really exponential - growth and when examined collectively, these factors present a potentially serious challenge to both U.S. national security as well as to America's scientific, organizational and cultural systems. This change is arguably the most dramatic in the field of biotechnology. As new discoveries are made, the potential misuse of this knowledge for bioterror grows as well. Since 2001 and the anthrax attacks in the United States, the bioterror question has received great scrutiny. Many argue that an Armageddon-like attack is imminent while others argue that the threat has been exaggerated. In this debate, it has become increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. While billions of dollars have been spent attempting to deal with and manage the perceived threats and vulnerabilities, the argument about the severity of the threat of bioterror continues. In his analysis Gerstein examines the potential for a bioterror attack using a classical game theory approach because it provides an objective capability for assessing future threats, understanding emerging trends and developing mitigation strategies. The use of game theory to examine this issue is highly useful as this application can assist in understanding human interactions and ultimately the decisions we make. In this regard, Bioterror in the 21st Century is it is less about predicting future behavior with any certainty, and more about understanding the framework within which this critical nexus continues to allow for more and more dangerous capabilities to proliferate around the world.
Biotechnology Research In An Age Of Terrorism
by National Research Council of the National AcademiesIn recent years much has happened to justify an examination of biological research in light of national security concerns. The destructive application of biotechnology research includes activities such as spreading common pathogens or transforming them into even more lethal forms. Policymakers and the scientific community at large must put forth a vigorous and immediate response to this challenge. This new book by the National Research Council recommends that the government expand existing regulations and rely on self-governance by scientists rather than adopt intrusive new policies. One key recommendation of the report is that the government should not attempt to regulate scientific publishing but should trust scientists and journals to screen their papers for security risks, a task some journals have already taken up. With biological information and tools widely distributed, regulating only U.S. researchers would have little effect. A new International Forum on Biosecurity should encourage the adoption of similar measures around the world. Seven types of risky studies would require approval by the Institutional Biosafety Committees that already oversee recombinant DNA research at some 400 U.S. institutions. These “experiments of concern” include making an infectious agent more lethal and rendering vaccines powerless.
Biotech Challenges
by Catherine Regnault-RogerThe evolution of genome’s modification by genetic engineering was characterized by a major technological breakthrough with the discovery of CRISPR in 2012. A distinction is now made between first-generation biotechnologies developed in the 20th century and current second-generation biotechnologies, NGT or New Genomic Techniques, including genome editing. How do we consider these genomic modifications compared to those that occur spontaneously in nature? What are the applications of these techniques in the fields of plants, animals, and human health? What prospects in terms of development and independence for countries and at least what regulations are in force on the different continents?The book questions what GMOs are, genome editing products and the place of genomic transformations today and tomorrow in our societies. It tries to give some geostrategic and regulatory benchmarks on biotech products in order to better understand the current issues.
Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century
by Jeremy RifkinThe post-modern world of the 21st century, where our personal and public lives are transformed, reflecting a whole new way of thinking and acting in the world.
Biosecurity: The Socio-Politics of Invasive Species and Infectious Diseases (Routledge Environment And Sustainability Handbooks Ser.)
by Andrew Dobson Kezia Barker Sarah L. TaylorBiosecurity is the assessment and management of potentially dangerous infectious diseases, quarantined pests, invasive (alien) species, living modified organisms, and biological weapons. It is a holistic concept of direct relevance to the sustainability of agriculture, food safety, and the protection of human populations (including bio-terrorism), the environment, and biodiversity. Biosecurity is a relatively new concept that has become increasingly prevalent in academic, policy and media circles, and needs a more comprehensive and inter-disciplinary approach to take into account mobility, globalisation and climate change. In this introductory volume, biosecurity is presented as a governance approach to a set of concerns that span the protection of indigenous biological organisms, agricultural systems and human health, from invasive pests and diseases. It describes the ways in which biosecurity is understood and theorized in different subject disciplines, including anthropology, political theory, ecology, geography and environmental management. It examines the different scientific and knowledge practices connected to biosecurity governance, including legal regimes, ecology, risk management and alternative knowledges. The geopolitics of biosecurity is considered in terms of health, biopolitics and trade governance at the global scale. Finally, biosecurity as an approach to actively secure the future is assessed in the context of future risk and uncertainties, such as globalization and climate change.
Biosecurity, Economic Collapse, the State to Come: Political Power in the Pandemic and Beyond
by Christos BoukalasThis book offers an in-depth critical account of the state’s responses to the biosecurity and the economic crises. It is thus the first study to address both crises ensuing from the pandemic, and to synthesise the responses to them in a comprehensive account of political power. What kind of state emerges from the pandemic? The pandemic caused two crises, in biosecurity and in the economy. The state was forced to tackle both; but subduing one inevitably exacerbated the other. Emerging from the impossible task of handling two conflicting crises is a new form of state, the state to come. Addressing biosecurity, the book deciphers its key modalities, epistemic premises, its law, the threat it aims to oppose, and the ways in which it relates to public health and society —especially its extraordinary power to suspend society. Addressing the economic crisis, the book deciphers the actuality and prospects of both the economy and the state’s economic policy. It claims that economic policy is now dual: it adopts countercyclical measures to serve and entrench a neoliberal economy. The responses to the twin crises inform the outline of the emerging state: its structure, logic, and legality; its power and its relation to society. This is a state of extraordinary power; but its only purpose is to preserve the social order intact. It is a despotic state: powerful, and set to impose social stasis. This book offers groundbreaking analysis based on our pandemic experience. It is indispensable for critical scholars and students in Politics, Security Studies, Sociology, Law, Political Economy and Public Health.
Biosecurity in the Global Age
by Lawrence O. Gostin David P. FidlerFidler (law, Indian U. School of Law) and Gostin (global health law, Georgetown U. ) believe the US needs to formulate effective "biosecurity" policy to confront the twin threats of biological weapons and naturally occurring infectious disease. Proper formulation of this policy would involve a melding of traditional security policy and public health policy and would involve supervision of scientific endeavors in support of policy goals. Furthermore, it must be grounded firmly in the rule of law, they argue, and involve global governance. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question (A Columbia / SSRC Book)
by Andrew Lakoff Stephen CollierIn recent years, new disease threats-such as SARS, avian flu, mad cow disease, and drug-resistant strains of malaria and tuberculosis-have garnered media attention and galvanized political response. Proposals for new approaches to "securing health" against these threats have come not only from public health and medicine but also from such fields as emergency management, national security, and global humanitarianism. This volume provides a map of this complex and rapidly transforming terrain. The editors focus on how experts, public officials, and health practitioners work to define what it means to "secure health" through concrete practices such as global humanitarian logistics, pandemic preparedness measures, vaccination campaigns, and attempts to regulate potentially dangerous new biotechnologies.As the contributions show, despite impressive activity in these areas, the field of "biosecurity interventions" remains unstable. Many basic questions are only beginning to be addressed: Who decides what counts as a biosecurity problem? Who is responsible for taking action, and how is the efficacy of a given intervention to be evaluated? It is crucial to address such questions today, when responses to new problems of health and security are still taking shape. In this context, this volume offers a form of critical and reflexive knowledge that examines how technical efforts to increase biosecurity relate to the political and ethical challenges of living with risk.
Biosecurity Challenges of the Global Expansion of High-Containment Biological Laboratories
by National Research Council National Academy Of Sciences Policy and Global Affairs Division on Earth and Life Studies Fran Sharples Committee on Anticipating Biosecurity Challenges of the Global Expansion of High-Containment Biological Laboratories Committee on International Security and Arms Control Board on Life Sciences Alison K. Hottes Benjamin RusekDuring July 10-13, 2011, 68 participants from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, Turkey for a workshop organized by the United States National Research Council on Anticipating Biosecurity Challenges of the Global Expansion of High-containment Biological Laboratories. The United States Department of State's Biosecurity Engagement Program sponsored the workshop, which was held in partnership with the Turkish Academy of Sciences. The international workshop examined biosafety and biosecurity issues related to the design, construction, maintenance, and operation of high-containment biological laboratories- equivalent to United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention biological safety level 3 or 4 labs. Although these laboratories are needed to characterize highly dangerous human and animal pathogens, assist in disease surveillance, and produce vaccines, they are complex systems with inherent risks. Biosecurity Challenges of the Global Expansion of High-Containment Biological Laboratories summarizes the workshop discussion, which included the following topics: Technological options to meet diagnostic, research, and other goals; Laboratory construction and commissioning; Operational maintenance to provide sustainable capabilities, safety, and security; and Measures for encouraging a culture of responsible conduct. Workshop attendees described the history and current challenges they face in their individual laboratories. Speakers recounted steps they were taking to improve safety and security, from running training programs to implementing a variety of personnel reliability measures. Many also spoke about physical security, access controls, and monitoring pathogen inventories. Workshop participants also identified tensions in the field and suggested possible areas for action.
Bioregional Planning: Resource Management Beyond the New Millennium
by D J BrunckhorstPresenting a pragmatic mixture of science, landscape ecology, ecosystem management, sociology, policy development and methods for transforming social and institutional cultures. Bioregional Planning: Resource Management Beyond the New Millennium is a timely and practical guide for the analysis, planning and development of bioregional projects for a sustainable future. Significantly, this book presents the strategic actions necessary to plan for, manage and adapt to Ecologically Sustainable Development with a view beyond the new millennium and towards the next. Postgraduates, researchers and policy makers in natural resources management, land planning, sustainable agriculture, rural sciences, ecosystem management and conservation biology will find this book captures the essence of bioregional planning succinctly and makes a compelling argument for why it is a key mechanism in the development of effective governance institutions.
Bioregional Planning and Design: Perspectives on a Transitional Century
by David Fanfani Alberto Matarán RuizThis book provides a review of the bioregionalist theory in the field of spatial planning and design as a suitable approach to cope with the growing concerns about the negative effects of metropolization processes and the need for a sustainable transition. The book starts out with a section on rethinking places for community life, and discusses the reframing of regional governance and development as well as social justice in spatial planning. It introduces the concept of the urban bioregion, a pivotal concept that underpins balanced polycentric spatial patterns and supports self-reliant and fair local development. The second part of the book focuses on planning, and particularly on the issues that arise from the ‘circular’ recovery of the relation between city and agro-ecosystems for integrated planning and resilience of settlements and discusses topics such as foodshed planning, biophilic urbanism and the integration of rural development and spatial planning. This volume sets out the reference framework for Volume II which deals with more specific and operational issues related to spatial policies and settlement design.
Bioregional Planning and Design: Issues and Practices for a Bioregional Regeneration
by David Fanfani Alberto Matarán RuizThis book provides insights and discusses the practical application of the theoretical concept of urban bioregion complementing the general bio-regional planning cross-disciplinary issues provided in Volume I. It examines planning practices, such as relocalisation of energy flows, land protection for climate change, territorial heritage enhancement, the consideration of urban ecosystems and agro-ecology. It presents discussions on regional contexts, practices and projects for a bioregional recovery, and includes case studies from France, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Austria and Italy, discussing topics that range from the reframing of local energy production/delivery planning systems to soil protection and farmland sustainable exploitation schemes. This volume concludes with three cross-European case studies that make clear the worldwide relevance and potential of bioregional approach beyond the Global North or Western countries.