Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

R. Buettner, S. Craig - Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump’s finances, an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump’s wealth, revealing how one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House.Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life “has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.” Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.Drawing on over twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant the public image that will carry him to the White House. A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous examination spanning nearly a century, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. At a moment when Trump’s tether to success and power is more precarious than ever, here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money what he had, what he lost, and what he has left and the final word on the myth of Trump, the self-made billionaire.

Visions and Practices of Democracy in Socialist and Post-Colonial States

This book explores how socialist and post-colonial states envisioned and practised democracy for themselves after the Second World War. The chapters focus on the period following the Second World War, when beliefs about democracy included the notion that popular sovereignty should extend beyond the nation-state, that social justice should be enhanced, and that working people were the true bearers of sovereignty. The thirteen chapters in this volume, written by an international team of scholars, examine countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and adopt a wide array of methods, ranging from political and social history, social anthropology, and the history of political thought, in order to explore how various meanings and practices of democracy have shaped historical experiences and political order.

Chris Hurl, Leah B. Werner - The Consulting Trap: How Professional Service Firms Hook Governments and Undermine Democracy

The Consulting Trap does a deep dive into how governments have become hooked on private consultancy firms with dire consequences for democratic decision-making, public accountability and accessible public services. Hurl and Werner contend that firms like McKinsey, Accenture, KPMG and Deloitte increasingly take responsibility for core public services, trapping governments in cycles of dependency. Through orchestrating tax avoidance for the wealthy while engineering austerity for the rest, they show how these firms have created the foundations for the deepening privatization of the public services, further entrenching their power. Drawing on case studies from Canada and around the world, Hurl and Werner investigate how big consultancies leverage social networks, institutionalize relationships, mine and commodify data, and establish policy pipelines that facilitate the quick diffusion of ideas across jurisdictions. Drawing from real world examples, The Consulting Trap offers strategies for how these powerful firms can be resisted using peoples audits, public consultations, access to information requests, and social network analysis.

Как Париж пришел к революции?

Как Париж пришел к 1789 году? Что на самом деле думали и чувствовали парижане в десятилетия, предшествовавшие Великой французской революции? Как на ее приближение влияли городские слухи, городская пресса, интеллектуалы и секуляризация?

Говорим об этом, обсуждая книгу выдающегося историка Роберта Дарнтона «Революционный темперамент. Париж в 1748–1789 годах» с редактором ее русского перевода Николаем Проценко в новом выпуске подкаста «Умные книги».

00:20 — Гость и книга выпуска
01:35 — Кто читатель книги?
07:30 — Дарнтон и Бурдье
08:40 — Слухи как предмет анализа
16:50 — Как расшифровать метафору «темперамента»
22:30 — Секуляризация и революция
26:00 — Цитата из книги
30:45 — Какое место книга Дарнтона занимает в историографии революции
36:40 — Философы и революция

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YXMyIshNxcc