Loretta Napoleoni – författare

Vi har aldrig tidigare varit så tätt sammanknutna och så isolerade på en och samma gång. Vi är i ett desperat behov av både strategier och resurser för att åter få samhället i balans. Om vi blickar tillbaka på historien samtidigt som vi betraktar våra egna liv idag, blir det tydligt för oss att stickning alltid har fungerat som en spegel för vår sociala tillvaro, och att stickning har makten att hjälpa oss att foga samman våra liv, familjer, vänner och samhällen. För Loretta Napoleoni har stickningen varit en källa till lugn och reflektion ända sedan hennes mormor lärde henne konsten som liten. Men det var först efter en personlig tragedi som hon fullt ut upptäckte stickningens läkande kraft. I Att sticka för livet utforskar Loretta stickkonsten ett hantverk som genom århundraden har format samhällen och relationer människor emellan. Hon visar hur handarbete kan reducera smärta, minska stresskänslighet och motverka hjärnans åldrande men hon beskriver också hur stickning kan skapa gemenskap och förändring i dagens teknikvurmande samhälle. Boken innehåller flera unika historiska stickningsmönster. Sagt om Loretta Napoleoni: "Den som är intresserad av att förstå vår tid utan skygglappar bör läsa Loretta Napoleoni." Torbjörn Elensky, Svenska Dagbladet Både frigörande och belysande. Sverker Lenas, Dagens Nyheter "Loretta Napoleoni har alltid en omtumlande teori i grunden och hon besitter kunskaper som i alla fall jag inte vanligtvis bär omkring på. Det är absolut inte skönlitterärt, det är kontroversiellt och politiskt men det är absolut intressant." Klas Östergren

In a fractured world plagued by anxiety and loneliness, knitting is coming to the rescue of people from all walks of life. Economist and lifelong knitter, Loretta Napoleoni, unveils the hidden power of the purl and stitch mantra: an essential tool for the survival of our species, a means for women to influence history, a soothing activity to calm us and a powerful metaphor of life. This book is a voyage through our history following the yarn of social, economic and political changes - from ancient Egypt and Peru to modern Mongolia, from the spinning bees of the American Revolution to the knitting spies of World War II and from the hippies' rejection of consumerism to yarnbombing protests against climate change. For the author it is, also, a personal journey of discovery and salvation, drawing on the wisdom her grandmother passed along as they knit together. Revealing recent discoveries in neuroscience, THE POWER OF KNITTING offers proof of the healing powers of knitting on our bodies and minds. Breaking through societal barriers, even nursing broken hearts and helping to advance cutting-edge science, knitting is still a valuable instrument for navigating our daily lives. As a bonus, the book includes patterns for ten simple yet iconic projects that reflect the creative, empowering spirit of knitting, with complete instructions.

What do Eastern Europe''s booming sex trade, America''s subprime mortgage lending scandal, China’s fake goods industry, and celebrity philanthropy in Africa have in common? With biopirates trolling the blood industry, fish-farming bandits ravaging the high seas, pornography developing virtually in Second Life, and games like World of Warcraft spawning online sweatshops, how are rogue industries transmuting into global empires? And will the entire system be transformed by the advent of sharia economics? With the precision of an economist and the narrative deftness of a storyteller, syndicated journalist Loretta Napoleoni examines how the world is being reshaped by dark economic forces, creating victims out of millions of ordinary people whose lives have become trapped inside a fantasy world of consumerism. Napoleoni reveals the architecture of our world, and in doing so provides fresh insight into many of the most insoluble problems of our era.

Economist and best-selling author Loretta Napoleoni traces the link between the finances of the war on terror and the global economic crisis, finding connections from Dubai to London to Las Vegas that politicians and the media have at best ignored. In launching military and propaganda wars in the Middle East, America overlooked the war of economic independence waged by Al-Qaeda. The Patriot Act boosted the black market economy, and the war on terror prompted a rise in oil prices that led to food riots and distracted governments from the trillion-dollar machinations of Wall Street. Consumers and taxpayers, spurred by propaganda fears, were lured into crushing global debt. Napoleoni shows that if we do not face up to the many serious connections between our response to 9/11 and the financial crisis, we will never work our way out of the looming global recession that now threatens our way of life.While we feared that Al-Qaeda might destroy our world, Wall Street ripped it apart.

The end of the cold war was thought to signal the triumph of Western capitalism over Communism. In Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West’s ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn’t focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx’s writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth: the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.

September 11, 2001, is considered the main event, but the changes of the decade go far beyond the menace of terrorism and the war on terror. The technological revolution, the wide use of the Internet, and the advent of social media are just some of the innovations that grew to define the decade. The war on terror and its strong rhetoric hid these phenomena. The purpose of this book is to show the true patterns of change—those innovations that will influence coming decades.   This is more than a timeline, it is the tale of an extraordinary decade. Within each year, Napoleoni presents events not in a strict chronology but more as we might remember them, often with the most significant events recalled first. Thus the main topics—politics, economics, people, technology, and the environment—cross over constantly, showing how they are all interlinked and how globalization is speeding up the pace of change in our world.

An updated edition of The Islamist Phoenix is now available as ISIS: The Terror Nation (978-1-60980-725-2)From its birth in the late 1990s as the jihadist dream of terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Islamic State (known by a variety of names, including ISIS, ISIL, and al Qaeda in Iraq) has grown into a massive enterprise, redrawing national borders across the Middle East and subjecting an area larger than the United Kingdom to its own vicious brand of Sharia law.   In The Islamist Phoenix, world-renowned terrorism expert Loretta Napoleoni takes us beyond the headlines, demonstrating that while Western media portrays the Islamic State as little more than a gang of thugs on a winning streak, the organization is proposing a new model for nation building. Waging a traditional war of conquest to carve out the 21st-century version of the original Caliphate, IS uses modern technology to recruit and fundraise while engaging the local population in the day-to-day running of the new state. Rising from the ashes of failing jihadist enterprises, the Islamic State has shown a deep understanding of Middle Eastern politics, fully exploiting proxy war and shell-state tactics. This is not another terrorist network but a formidable enemy in tune with the new modernity of the current world disorder. As Napoleoni writes, “Ignoring these facts is more than misleading and superficial, it is dangerous. ‘Know your enemy’ remains the most important adage in the fight against terrorism.”

A powerful and sophisticated underground business delivers thousands of refugees a day all along the Mediterranean coasts of Europe. The new breed of criminals that controls it has risen out of the political chaos of post-9/11 Western foreign policy and the fiasco of the Arab Spring. These merchants of men are intertwined with jihadist armed organizations such as al Qaeda in the Maghreb. They have prospered smuggling cocaine from West Africa and kidnapping Westerners. More recently, the destabilization of Syria and Iraq coupled with the rise of ISIS offered them new business opportunities in the Middle East, from selling Western hostages to jihadist groups to trafficking in refugees numbering in the millions.Overall, the kidnapping industry today is bigger than the illegal drug trade and worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Merchants of Men is based on exclusive access to hostage negotiators actively involved in ransom negotiations and rescue missions, counter-terrorism experts, members of security services, and former hostages, among many others. The reader will discover that the protocols of prevention and rescue change according to the type of abduction and the designated targets, and will come to know first hand the range of experiences of kidnapping victims.Will the West once again reap the benefits of the political chaos it has sown in its own backyard? From colonization to the advent of "friendly" dictatorial regimes, today''s fast-aging European nations are buyers on the refugee market. New workers are needed, and the merchants of men are supplying them. But only skilled, highly educated refugees are wanted. As a tsunami of migrants and refugees floods Europe, new questions almost too numerous to count must be answered.From the Hardcover edition.

From its birth in the late 1990s as the jihadist dream of terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Islamic State (known by a variety of names, including ISIS, ISIL, and al Qaeda in Iraq) has grown into a massive enterprise, redrawing national borders across the Middle East and subjecting an area larger than the United Kingdom to its own vicious brand of Sharia law.In ISIS: The Terror Nation, world-renowned terrorism expert Loretta Napoleoni takes us beyond the headlines, demonstrating that while Western media portrays the Islamic State as little more than a gang of thugs on a winning streak, the organization is proposing a new model for nation building. Waging a traditional war of conquest to carve out the 21st-century version of the original Caliphate, IS uses modern technology to recruit and fundraise while engaging the local population in the day-to-day running of the new state. Rising from the ashes of failing jihadist enterprises, the Islamic State has shown a deep understanding of Middle Eastern politics, fully exploiting proxy war and shell-state tactics. This is not another terrorist network but a formidable enemy in tune with the new modernity of the current world disorder. As Napoleoni writes, "Ignoring these facts is more than misleading and superficial, it is dangerous. ''Know your enemy'' remains the most important adage in the fight against terrorism."From the Trade Paperback edition.

In her characteristically direct approach, political analyst Loretta Napoleoni takes on the vexed story-and threat-of North Korea for those of us in the West who remain blinded by its myths and bigotry. Like China''s Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung - North Korea''s leader from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1994 - washed away the humiliation caused by Japanese colonisation and re-created an ancient nation. He consolidated and protected the country with strict principles of unity and isolation. His grandson Kim Jong-un is following in the footsteps of Chinese revolutionary politics by modernising the country using the economy as the main tool of transformation. This short, informative book is an account of a country central to world politics and yet little understood. Further, it presents insider narratives of its people, whose self-image is radically different to the image we have of them.

Every day, a powerful and sophisticated underground business delivers thousands of refugees along the Mediterranean coasts of Europe. A new breed of criminals, risen from the post-9/11 political chaos and the fi­asco of the Arab Spring, coupled with the destabilization of Syria and Iraq and the rise of ISIS, controls it. The ever-increasing political volatility has offered them new business opportunities, from trafficking millions of refugees to selling Western hostages to jihadist groups.The kidnapping industry in the Middle East is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Loretta Napoleoni's exclusive and meticulous research into the business of kidnap and ransom, and its link to terrorist activity, is based on first-hand accounts - from interviews with hostage negotiators to the experiences of former hostages themselves. Merchants of Men is a fascinating and eye-opening exploration of this most shocking of financial interdependencies.

Made in China står det på allt fler av de varor vi köper. Sedan kalla krigets slut har Kina utformat ett ekonomiskt system som överträffar västdemokratiernas kapitalism. Aldrig förr har världen sett en så snabb utveckling eller så många människor lyfts ur fattigdom på så kort tid. Loretta Napoleoni jämför hur Kina tillämpar kapitalismen med den politik i västvärlden som dikterades av Ronald Reagan och Margaret Thatcher i början av 1980-talet. Det brukar hävdas att demokrati är en förutsättning för ekonomiskt välstånd. Men tänk om auktoritära statsskick är mer framgångsrika. Hur ser i så fall vår framtid ut?

Den organiserade slavhandeln har återuppstått. Förlovningsringen av guld från den berömda designern är frukten av kongolesiska barns arbete i underjordiska gruvor. Maten från den världsomspännande livsmedelskoncernen vi trodde skulle göra oss slankare och friskare, hotar att ta livet av oss. Bedragare, hallickar och pirater har en storhetstid när globaliserings-processen drar fram över världen. Så brukar det vara när ekonomiska maktförhållanden förändras. Loretta Napoleoni ger en rad exempel på hur kriminell, underjordisk ekonomisk verksamhet påverkar och ingriper i allas liv: vinnare eller förlorare, fattiga eller rika, oavsett var vi bor, i den rika världen eller den fattiga. Och som konsumenter går vi ständigt i fällan när vi jagar de lägsta priserna och de billigaste tjänsterna och därmed medverkar till att det kriminella systemet består. Loretta Napoleoni har gjort en unik studie av skurkkapitalismens rötter och hur den kan bekämpas. Nu, precis som tidigare i historien, ställs frågan om världen ska styras av marknaden eller av demokratiskt fattade politiska beslut. Napoleoni har tidigare gett ut Oheligt krig och Uppror i Irak.

Oheligt krig är en unik genomgång av ekonomin bakom terrorismen. Vi får följa med in i de innersta rummen på Wall Street och besöka de stora bankerna i Mellanöstern som förser väpnade grupper världen över med en aldrig sinande ström av resurser. Men framför allt finansieras den nya terrorismen genom knarksmuggling och vapenhandel, verksamheter som omsätter 150 miljarder dollar varje år. Under det kalla kriget understödde USA underjordiska terrornätverk och byggde upp kanaler för smuggling av vapen och narkotika. Men samtidigt band man ris åt egen rygg. Resultatet ser vi idag i Madrid, Bagdad och Moskva. Napoleoni menar att religionen bara är ett medel för rekrytering. I själva verkat dikteras många terrorhandlingar av starka ekonomiska krafter i den muslimska världen.