Southeast Asia and the Golden Triangle's Heroin Trade: Threat and Response

The Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia lies at the heart of the global heroin trade, accounting for roughly 60 percent of all illicit opium production. Narcotics from this part of the world have had an insidious, corrosive, far reaching and, at times, highly destabilizing impact. In particular, they have been linked to an explosion of AIDS, social instability, a lack of economic performance, official corruption and the growing force of organized crime. These effects have been felt, in one form or another throughout Southeast Asia, North America, Australasia, and Northeast Asia. Dealing with the threat posed by the Golden Triangles heroin trade will require a fully inclusive strategy that emphasizes both supply disruption and demand reduction. While certain Southeast Asian states have pledged to intensify the scope and effectiveness of their drug policies, official apathy is widespread and continues to mitigate against effective counter-measures.     

Terrorists,Insurgents, and Criminals—Growing Nexus?

Using Iraq and Afghanistan as case studies, this article explores several critical questions. First, what is the scope of the relationship among criminal organizations, terrorists, and insurgents? The analysis is drawn from theoretical approaches but also relies on government studies and open source reports. Second, how has the transitional period between post-conflict and reconstruction/nation-building created fertile ground for strengthening the criminal–terrorist–insurgent continuum? This is a particularly important issue as the Bush administration engages international organizations. Lastly, what can the United States and its Coalition allies do to mitigate the security challenges presented by the criminal–terrorist–insurgent problem in the these two countries?     

PLANNING: LESSONS FROM THE PORTS

The National Ports Council, created in 1964 and abolished in 1982, was engaged in one of the rare sustained attempts at planning in Britain. This article explains the Council's decision not to carry out full-scale planning because of the difficulties of collecting information, assessing technological and economic changes, and reconciling rational economic planning with short term political pressures.     

Forecasting the 2013 German Bundestag Election Using Many Polls and Historical Election Results

This article reports on an attempt to forecast the outcome of the 2013 election to the German Bundestag. In contrast to the predominant academic approach to forecast incumbent vote shares from measures of government popularity, economic conditions and other fundamental variables, we entirely relied on data from published trial heat polls. Opposite to common practice in the news media, we did not take isolated polls as election forecasts in their own right. Instead, we used historical data to assess empirically the relationship between polls and election outcomes, and combined extrapolations from current polls in a Bayesian manner. The forecast was published one month ahead of the election. The retrospective evaluation of our method was added after the election. While our method is parsimonious and provides a large lead time, the performance at the 2013 election was underwhelming. We offer additional suggestions how the approach can be improved in future scenarios.     

Beyond Countering Iran: A Political Economy of Azerbaijan-Israel Relations

In recent years, Azerbaijan–Israel relations have come to the foreground of politics in the Middle East and Caucasus region. Ties between Baku and Tel Aviv have been directly interlinked with their relations with Iran. The nature of the Azerbaijan–Israel partnership must be analysed in order to comprehend the balance of powers and energy security in the region. Even though there have been a number of works analysing the relationship by focusing on its role in regional military security, there is a gap in the discourse in terms of understanding the economic drivers of relations and the implications of the ties for regional energy security. Particular attention will be given to discussing Azerbaijan’s emerging role as a major energy producer that has already made a profound impact on the region as an ‘alternative’ to Iran in the aftermath of the recently imposed sanctions on Tehran's energy exports. It will be argued that the Azerbaijan–Israel relationship is built on solid economic grounds and it would be reasonable to expect the strength of the ties to be further intensified in the future. The article will also demonstrate that new developments in the energy security of the wider Middle Eastern region will affect the evolution of Azerbaijan–Israel ties and their rivalry with Iran in the next decade.     

The German Courtroom Film During the Nazi Period: Ideology, Aesthetics, Historical Context

This essay examines the films of the Nazi period concerned with questions of justice and the administration of the law. It traces the ways in which law films developed prior to the Nazi era. It notes the apparent paradox of the Nazi obsession with questions of justice, law, and legality which are found in their strictly controlled film output. The use of film as a mass propaganda weapon affected legal subjects and this can be seen as a means of creating consensus. This centred on the role of the state in creating a system which allowed the individual to be integrated into the mythical folk community. Those who threatened this social cohesion were depicted as threats to the common sense of ordinary people and this stretched from propaganda films into comedies.     

The natural sampling of airborne trace signals from explosives concealed upon the human body.

An experimental study of the natural sampling of trace signals from explosives concealed upon the human body was performed by taking proper account of the thermal behavior of the air surrounding the human body and the particles therein. Experiments were conducted in a dispersal chamber to identify variables affecting the detectibility of concealed RDX and TNT patches. Movement by human volunteers was found to enhance the available explosive trace signal above a baseline level. Clothing blocked some of this movement-generated trace signal. The detected signal levels were also found to vary significantly from volunteer to volunteer, indicating that human variability is an issue in explosive trace detection. Further, under the conditions studied here, the detectibility of RDX and TNT was dependent upon the efficient sampling of contaminated particulate matter, not the vapor phase. The present results are now being applied to the design of a practical, nonintrusive trace detection portal for aviation security screening and related applications.     

Knowledge management and communities of practice in the private sector: lessons for modernizing the National Health Service in England and Wales

The National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales has embarked upon a radical and far–reaching programme of change and reform. However, to date the results of organizational quality and service improvement initiatives in the public sector have been mixed, if not to say disappointing, with anticipated gains often failing to materialize or to be sustained in the longer term. This paper draws on the authors' recent extensive research into one of the principal methodologies for bringing about the sought after step change in the quality of health care in England and Wales. It explores how private sector knowledge management (KM) concepts and practices might contribute to the further development of public sector quality improvement initiatives in general and to the reform of the NHS in particular. Our analysis suggests there have been a number of problems and challenges in practice, not least a considerable naïvety around the issue of knowledge transfer and 'knowledge into practice' within health care organizations. We suggest four broad areas for possible development which also have important implications for other public sector organizations.     

Periventricular fatty metamorphosis in neuroglia--a morphologic substrate in SIDS

In 7 of 15 cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), distinct periventricular fatty metamorphosis of the neuroglia could be demonstrated by a histological staining technique. None of the six children (under 1 year of age) used as a control group whose cause of death was not SIDS showed this morphological change. Thin-layer chromatographic analysis of the lipids accumulated in the glial cells in SIDS established a high amount of esterified cholesterol whereas the content of esterified cholesterol in the control group was low. We presume that fatty metamorphosis of the neuroglia represents the morphological substrate of a metabolic disorder of the sensitive, immature glia of the periventricular white cerebral matter caused by various kinds of damage.