For millions of people across the world, lighting up a joint is no more controversial than having a cup of tea. But in Hash Wensley Clarkson explores the dark and sinister side of this multi-billion pound business: one fuelled by a brutal underworld network of dealers, drug barons, bent cops and even terrorists. Sex, intimidation, bribery and murder are all employed in a quest for vast profits. Travelling from the lawless Rif mountains in Morocco to darkened warehouses in Spain, protected by heavily armed gangsters, this is a revelatory roller-coaster ride through the secret world of Hash.
Marriage -- For Baby's Sake When Laura Michaels tracked her wayward cat to millionaire Royce Burton's estate, she never dreamed her kitty would save her son. For Laura needed a powerful husband to keep custody of her baby -- and Royce needed a wife. So the elusive entrepreneur and the down-on-her-luck lady struck a marriage deal -- which would remain strictly business, of course. Except the newlyweds soon found their "hands-off" union did not account for the blossoming feelings developing between them. But Royce had no use for sugary sentiment and gooey emotions! Still, the lovely woman's haunting smile triggered an unfamiliar emotion in Royce -- a burgeoning love?
"Professors Enders and Sandler coauthored the first edition of this title. The Political Economy of Terrorism: Second Edition presents a widely accessible political economy approach to the study of terrorism. It applies economic methodology ,♯ ︡theoretical and empirical ,♯ ︡combined with political analysis and realities to the study of domestic and transnational terrorism. In so doing, the book provides both a qualitative and quantitative investigation of terrorism in a balanced up-to-date presentation that informs students, policy makers, researchers, and the general reader of the current state of knowledge. Included are historical aspects, a discussion of watershed events, the rise of modern-day terrorism, examination of current trends, the dilemma of liberal democracies, evaluation of counterterrorism, analysis of hostage incidents, and much more. The new edition expands coverage of every chapter, adds a new chapter on terrorist network structures and organization, accounts for changes in the Department of Homeland Security, and the USA Patriot Act, and insurance against terrorism. Rational-actor models of terrorist and government behavior and game-theoretic analysis are presented for readers with no prior theoretical training. Where relevant, the authors display graphs using data from International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE), the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), and other public-access data sets"--
The economic boom of the 1990s veiled a grim reality: in addition to the growing gap between good and bad quality jobs was also expanding. The postwar prosperity of the mid-twentieth century had enabled millions of American workers to join the middle class, but as author Arne L. Kalleberg shows, by the 1970s this upward movement had slowed, in part due to the steady disappearance of secure, well-paying industrial jobs. Ever since, precarious employment has been on the rise - paying low wages, offering few benefits, and with virtually no long-term security. Today, the polarization between workers with higher skill levels and those with low skills and low wages is more entrenched than ever. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs traces this trend to large-scale transformations in the American labor market and the changing demographics of low-wage workers. Kalleberg draws on nearly four decades of survey data, as wlel as his own research, to evaluate trends in U.S.^ job quality and suggest ways to improve American labor-market practices and social policies. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides an insightful analysis of how and why precarious employment is gaining ground in the labor market and the role these developments have played in the decline of the middle class. Kalleberg shows that by the 1970s government deregulation, global competition, and the rise of the service sector gained traction, while institutional protections for workers - such as unions and minimum-wage legislation - weakened. Together, these forces marked the end of postwar security for American workers. The composition of the labor force also changed significantly; the number of dual-earner families increased, as did the share of the workforce comprised of women, non-white, and immigrant workers.^ Of these groups, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants remain concentrated in the most precarious and low-quality jobs, with educational attainment being the leading indicator of who will earn the highest wages and experience the most job security and highest levels of autonomy and control over their jobs and schedules. Kalleberg demonstrates, however, that building a better safety net - increasing government responsibility for worker health care and retirement, as well as strengthening unions - can go a long way toward redressing the effects of today's volatile labor market. There is every reason to expect that the growth of precarious jobs - which already make up a significant share of the American job market - will continue. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs deftly shows that the decline in U.S. job quality is not the result of fluctuations in the business cycle, but rather is the result of economic restructuring and the disappearance of institutional protections for workers.^ Only government, employers, and labor working together on long-term strategies - including an expanded safety net, strengthened legal protections, and better training opportunities - can help reverse this trend. -- from dust jakcet.
Understanding Terrorist Finance provides powerful new insights in the financial and economic realities of terrorist groups.€Dispelling popular myths, the book presents the first unified coherent framework for the systematic analysis of terrorist finance and includes empirical studies of the financing of groups in Europe, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Wittig finds that the activities typically represented as 'terrorist finance', such as donations, criminal activities€and€weapons procurement, ought to be understood in terms of how terrorists ₆ as socio-political actors ₆ access and interact with€flows of economic value rather than as elements of an illicit financial edifice supposedly underpinning global terrorism.
