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Immigration is seen as a serious problem by the vast majority of people. A Professor of Development Studies at London University, Nigel Harris argues that if the West is to advance as its people age, and if the poor of the world are ever to gain, governments will have to ensure the freedom of people to come and go as they choose. Harris concludes that migration is a necessary response to changes in the world economy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The New Untouchables
I live just an easy two hours' drive north of the US-Mexico border, so the subject of immigration is a cogent topic.I enjoyed applying what Nigel Harris says about immigration to events in my daily life and to debates appearing in San Antonio's media.

You cannot deny that there are recent immigrants from Mexico when you see the Mexican license plates on cars on San Antonio's highways.Some Mexicans, like my next-door neighbor, own property.Strange to me, my neighbor visits his San Antonio home about once a year for only a few days.While I struggle to pay a mortgage, he paid cash for his home.A Realtor explained to me that many wealthy Mexicans purchase real estate because of the peso's instability when weighed against the relative stability of the US real estate market.

Was the fellow who installed marble on my kitchen floor an illegal Mexican immigrant?I don't know, but he did a crackerjack job and his price was competitive.Where do I go to get my family's prescription drugs?To Mexico, because in Mexico I can buy for five dollars what will cost me $50 at the drug store two miles away from my home.My actions are echoed as the basic premise of Nigel Harris's book.The immigration question is basically one of supply and demand.As soon as Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World, there was a call for immigrants to come from the Old World.They came first to conquer, then to settle.Settlement was, and is, power.

The trepidation about the closing of Kelly Air Force Base and the reopening of its facilities to private industry is tied to the existence of polluting maquiladoras operating in Mexico.In Mexico, the industries are free from scrutiny of the US Environmental Protection Agency.Why would a manufacturer want to move to Kelly, when cheaper labor and less regulation exist only two hours further south?A recent article in the San Antonio Express News talked about the amount of pollution in the air at Big Bend National Park; sulfur dioxide and other pollutants from Mexican factories are affecting the people who live in Alpine, Texas.A Mexican worker who makes car parts spoke at a stockholders' meeting about the 90 cents per hour Mexican wage versus Detroit's union scale.When visiting Aguascalientes in Mexico a few years ago, I saw many Japanese people in the mercado.Curious, I asked about their presence and was told they produced automobile parts there.

Harris addresses all aspects of immigration in a tidy, organized fashion.He contrasts voluntary immigration with the status of involuntary refugee.Harris's only weakness is his view of national sovereignty.He thinks that government regulation of immigration is a major inconvenience to free labor force movement.Economic growth occurs, as Harris states, because of legal and illegal immigration.If governments stand in the way of immigration, they are obstructing economic growth.Harris would like to see nations behave more like large corporations, rather than as restrictive governments.

The current US debate about immigration has to do with two aspects of the USA.First, US citizenry expects inhabitants to integrate into US society - to naturalize.This fosters individual cooperation rather than separatism.Citizens are supposed to celebrate their ethnicity, not to segregate themselves because of it.Second, citizens view individual income tax collection like membership dues, as if the US government were a vast mutual benefit cooperative.The US government and its citizenry are certainly concerned about immigration, especially if immigrants do not pay taxes, their dues, yet are provided with government services.The US is a participatory democracy; whether or not a US citizen chooses to vote does not make it less so.Government provides infrastructure, such as subsidies for roads, to increase the economic benefit to its people.Citizens have a right to expect that all those who use the infrastructure pay their dues.

We truly live in a global economy.Business, family, communications and transportation networks are making our world smaller.Immigration may eventually level the playing field, or it may cause greater international tensions, or both.Reading this book will give you greater insight into the effect of immigration on the global economy. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Book Description
A nuclear attack on a large U.S. city by terrorists--even with a low-yield improvised nuclear device (IND) of 10 kilotons or less--would cause a large number of deaths and severe injuries. The large number of injured from the detonation and radioactive fallout that would follow would be overwhelming for local emergency response and health care systems to rescue and treat, even assuming that these systems and their personnel were not themselves incapacitated by the event.

The United States has been struggling for some time to address and plan for the threat of nuclear terrorism and other weapons of mass destruction that terrorists might obtain and use. The Department of Homeland Security recently contracted with the Institute of Medicine to hold a workshop, summarized in this volume, to assess medical preparedness for a nuclear detonation of up to 10 kilotons.

This book provides a candid and sobering look at our current state of preparedness for an IND, and identifies several key areas in which we might begin to focus our national efforts in a way that will improve the overall level of preparedness.
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Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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POWERLESS ? the story of our dependence on low cost energy and what its impending limit means. Written for the Owen grandchildren to read later, it?s for parents and grandparents to read NOW.? The world?s population is 6.5 billion. There are 300 thousand more of us every day. There will be over nine billion of us by 2050.? Two billion people make less than $3 per day, economically they don?t exist. By 2050 four billion of us won?t exist.? We are blissfully unaware of the approaching limit that will deprive us of our most critical resource.?Very well done -excellent conclusion. [Our] grandchildren will see a vastly different world than we are seeing.? Walter Youngquist, GeoDestinies Professor of Geology ret.?Truly excellent and nicely written about a difficult subject. Spot on.? Colin J. Campbell, The Coming Oil Crisis, Ph.D. Oxford.?Readable, convincing, and founded on solid documentation.? Massimo Livi Bacci, World Population,Professor of Demography, University of Florence ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"The environmental bottleneck challenges our grandchildren"
An intense and thought provoking read.This is an important book.Well written and researched, this other inconvenient truth emerges on the balancing side of Gore's climate change equation."An Inconvenient Truth" is focused on carbon output.Jim Owen's book, "Powerless", is focused on the input to our carbon-based economic engine, and our dependence on it.It explains a world hooked on cheap energy that will next face a diminishing of these economically addictive resources.Challenging times are predicted ahead.

Bottom line:between now and 2050-2080 mankind will pass through E.O. Wilson's "bottleneck" as the planet is maxed out from our demands on it.
Will we survive?He doesn't say.Should we develop alternative energy?Absolutely.But this bottleneck between whale oil to petroleum to the next smart energy choice will be the chasm we must cross to thrive.Conclusions?Those are yours to make, though I have changed my investment strategy to include energy stocks.I am now convinced this change is coming and is inevitable.

If you own books penned by Thomas Friedman, Jared Diamond, E.O. Wilson, Spencer Wells, Darwin, then this book is a must read.If you haven't read the above authors, then start with "Powerless", and pick through the 50+ books referenced in Owen's "favorites" in his bibliography included in this book.

It is said that mankind migrated out of Africa based on climate change - one can only wonder where and what's next for us now after reading this book.

Pat Cox
Phoenix, AZ

Mental fuel to attack the coming drop in worldwide fuel stocks.
James R. Owen's book Powerless was an interesting read for me on three different levels. I have also written a book, though I am still in rewrite mode on mine and wanted to see what a book "read" like from an author who was publishing his first book. I was impressed with his writing style as it was very clear and succinct. Don't misunderstand me, Owen's did not simply write a succinct book about oil resources. He adroitly wove in a family history to demonstrate his point in the changes which have occurred in the world since the Industrial Revolution took hold as the driving force of the world's economy. He made the family history demonstrate his points clearly and spoke to the reader as though we are his grandchildren. Those bonus features made a difficult story a very engaging read for me.

The second area that was interesting for me was how he handled telling a bad story. I knew going in that the book was not going to say we have enough oil for 1000 years so why worry. The book is titled "Powerless" after all. He managed to weave in some pluses such as global warming will be reduced in the coming decades do to the climbing prices for oil and therefore we will likely see a corresponding reduction in future carbon emissions as a result. He also provided some possibilities for alternative fuels to replace oil but he did not major in those themes. Instead he stuck to his guns and his extensive research and produced a no holds barred review of the history and future impact resulting from the coming depletions in the world's oil reserves. Therefore he gets high marks from me for not amplifying the potential silver linings for this very real problem. He laid it out and said we have to fix this and a few people protesting won't do it. He also reviewed potential changes to our culture and civilization in general as the cost of oil continues its steep climb into the future. Though the book was an interesting and educational read it did have some spots towards the end of the book, specifically in his chapter on human limits, where it was not as easy to navigate as the rest of the book. A minor complaint overall however.

The third area that was interest for me I discovered in the early pages of his book. I could tell from some of his references that he had read the books published in the last decade on subjects from archeology through religion and economics. When I finished his book I was surprised to see he had included a listing of some the books. I chuckled as read names like Armstrong, Mithen, Diamond and Friedman. I new after 20 pages he must have been reading some of the same books that I have over the last few years. Ironically he expressed similar opinions to those that I hold, though not identical, in the adjacent topics to his subject. That was just another bonus. I personally wish there was a place on Amazon where people who have read and written the latest on these types subjects (essentially cored in the advancement of cognitive understanding) would be listed together.I think it would be very interesting to read more books from these types of authors.

In the end I am going to rate the book four stars and I am not sure if I am penalizing Owen's by withholding the fifth star, simply for writing on an extraordinarily difficult subject. But ratings are a gut feel and overall a very impressive first offering from any author. One can only hope that Owen's will continue writing and publishing in the future.

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2008 will be remembered as a pivotal year in American history.The events that unfolded during this most interesting of years have been captured in poetry in a truly unique and insightful blend of humor, observation and spirituality.From the fall from grace of Rod Blagojevich in "The Cookie Jar", to the witty "A White House Unmanned" for Hillary Clinton, the poet takes you on a journey that is sure to make you laugh, stir your anger a bit, but most importantly, will touch your soul.Additional Bonus:A collection of the most romantic, spiritual and intimate poems from the poet's private collection. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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Adoption as practiced in the United States raises profound personal questions for those involved as well as broader social issues. The needs and wants of biological parents, adoptive parents, and children can often clash. This anthology features both the views of social policy experts and people intimately involved in adoption. (20040901) ... Read more

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Some analysts believe that racism is no longer a serious problem, while others insist that discrimination continues to oppress minorities and impede their social and economic progress. Chapters in this anthology include: How Prevalent Is Racism? How Can Racism Be Combated? (20040901) ... Read more

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Authors in this anthology discuss whether animals should be accorded the same rights that humans are granted. Issues examined include laboratory experimentation and animals raised for human consumption. (20040901) ... Read more

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Poverty and homelessness are sadly evident in America's cities-and even in some of the nation's rural areas. Contributors examine the root causes of poverty and what should be done to help the poor and the homeless. (20040901) ... Read more

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Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has reevaluated its intelligence-gathering agencies and implemented new national security measures. Authors is this anthology examine the methods of intelligence gathering and their effectiveness, debate the threat to civil liberties, and explore the future of espionage and intelligence gathering. (20040901) ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from New York Times Upfront, published by Scholastic, Inc. on April 18, 2003. The length of the article is 319 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Upfront quiz show.(current events)
Publication: New York Times Upfront (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 18, 2003
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
Volume: 135Issue: 13Page: T7(1)

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This digital document is an article from New York Times Upfront, published by Scholastic, Inc. on January 21, 2002. The length of the article is 643 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Quiz 2.(current events)(Brief Article)
Publication: New York Times Upfront (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 21, 2002
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
Volume: 134Issue: 8Page: S7(2)

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This book is about Restoring God to His Rightful Place in America and the American way of life. It is addressed to the 180 million Americans who profess a belief in an Almighty God and desparately want to stand up for what they believe in but are not sure how we can restore God to our classrooms, courtrooms, government and culture.They know The American Way, founded upon the values of the Judeo-Christian faith is under attack and if something isn't done soon to reverse the trend away from God our very identity as "one nation under God" will be lost.A Time To Stand equips its reader with information and insights that effectively defend The American Way against those who would destroy it. A Time To Stand brings historic events to life and demonstrates the strength and faith of America's Founding Fathers and Presidents prior to 1960. It also simplifies the real story that must be told about the current social and economic situation in America and allows the reader, and not the media, to put them in their proper perspective.The message of A Time To Stand is directed to Americans that believe in God and feel, as a nation we are at risk of losing His blessing and protection at a time when our enemies are surrounding us. It is not about being "right" or "left", "red" or "blue", or even "Democrat" or "Republican." It is about doing what is right in the eyes of God as it has been understood and expressed in America since its inception as a nation. It is about Restoring God to His Rightful Place in America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

We've been warned!
There are several very good books written by conservatives that demand that America turn back to its core values and reject the liberal social agenda of "if it feels good - do it". But no one, not even O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, or Hannity come right and declare, "if we continue to mock God our nation will lose the Divine Blessings and Protection that have sustained us as the most prosperous and powerful nation on earth. And very, very soon." America needs to heed this somber prophetic warning from A. Citizen's - A Time To Stand, Restoring God To His Rightful Place in America.

Timely Message to America
I thought this was a well thought out, well written book.It wasn't preachy just thought invoking.Plenty of facts and down to earth common sense.No theatrics or sensationalism.A very good read with a message we all should heed.
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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Pre-election day events of Singapore general election, 2006 are the events concerning the 2006 Singapore general election which occurred before the polling day on 6 May 2006.This election was expected to have a large number of new candidates as the major political parties had undergone self-renewal in recent years, many of whom belong to the post-1965 generation. PAP had introduced 24 new candidates, including 7 women. The two opposition parties that held a seat, the Workers' Party and the Singapore Democratic Alliance had also introduced many first-timers for this election. The WP 15 new faces including 3 women and SDA 6 new faces. ... Read more