Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack
Author: Clark Kent Ervin
Based on his first-hand experiences and observations of how the Department of Homeland Security is failing to make America safe, Ervin shows the real threats we face--from nuclear attack to homegrown terrorism. Pushed out by the White House for refusing to sugarcoat its failures, Ervin candidly discusses the circumstances of his departure. He takes the reader inside the decision-making councils of this newest department of the U.S. government, and shows how his team's prescriptions for urgent change were ignored--leaving the US vulnerable to another terrorist attack. For more information, visit Clark Kent Ervin's blog at http://opentarget.blogspot.com.
The Washington Post - Lee H. Hamilton
… [Ervin's] basic analysis is persuasive -- from his sensible policy prescriptions to his infuriating description of how his teams passed through aviation screening with deadly weapons. Even allowing for growing pains, this vitally important cabinet department has had a troubling start. "By any measure, the department has proved to be less than the sum of its parts," Ervin writes. But fixes for that should come from more than an agency's inspector general; oversight is supposed to come from Congress. But congressional oversight of DHS remains divided among several committees, and the department is still not getting clear direction from Congress.
Publishers Weekly
Appointed acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security in January 2003, Ervin left after 18 months when Congress refused to confirm him. The reason, he writes, is that he did his job too well, pointing out so much mismanagement and so many security lapses that the bureaucracy turned against him. Ervin sounds the alarm and attempts to settle scores in this book, a detailed warning that America remains frighteningly vulnerable to terrorism. Ervin explores the homeland's weaknesses, describes what the DHS should be doing and how it falls short. Ports, airlines, "soft targets" such as stadiums and critical infrastructure like the water supply must be further secured, as must mass transit (which receives a fraction the funding aviation does). Fragmented intelligence allowed the 9/11 plotters to succeed, but the DHS has not yet achieved coordination of intelligence. Finally, the massive DHS budget requires the establishment of strict accounting and antifraud policies. Though the author notes progress in some areas, he thinks the department has made woefully inadequate headway, is incompetently administered and starved for funds. Ervin's criticisms ring true, and they were well covered in the media, but readers may prefer an account less colored by personal feeling. 4-city author tour. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Air travelers still aren't safe, mass transit remains unprotected, border and port security is feeble, and the Department of Homeland Security doesn't know what's up, argues the DHS's first inspector general, whose true assignment turned out to be positive spin; with a four-city tour. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Book review: Questões Éticas em Negócio:uma Aproximação Filosófica
Heideggerian Marxism
Author: Herbert Marcus
The Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) studied with Martin Heidegger at Freiburg University from 1928 to 1932 and completed a dissertation on Hegel’s theory of historicity under Heidegger’s supervision. During these years, Marcuse wrote a number of provocative philosophical essays experimenting with the possibilities of Heideggerian Marxism. For a time he believed that Heidegger’s ideas could revitalize Marxism, providing a dimension of experiential concreteness that was sorely lacking in the German Idealist tradition. Ultimately, two events deterred Marcuse from completing this program: the 1932 publication of Marx’s early economic and philosophical manuscripts, and Heidegger’s conversion to Nazism a year later. Heideggerian Marxism offers rich and fascinating testimony concerning the first attempt to fuse Marxism and existentialism. These essays offer invaluable insight concerning Marcuse’s early philosophical evolution. They document one of the century’s most important Marxist philosophers attempting to respond to the “crisis of Marxism”: the failure of the European revolution coupled with the growing repression in the USSR. In response, Marcuse contrived an imaginative and original theoretical synthesis: “existential Marxism.”
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