Number of results to display per page
Search Results
1222. Financing Terror Bit by Bit
- Author:
- Aaron Brantly
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- Terrorism is highly dependent on cash flows for the purchase of everything from munitions and supplies to domains and pamphlets. Traditionally, one of the more challenging aspects of organizing international terrorist activities is rooted in financial transactions. The transfer of money around the world has, in the last decade, fundamentally changed the way terrorist organizations raise money to support their activities. Digital currencies like e-gold, Bitcoin, Peercoin, and Dodgecoin provide complex yet efficient mechanisms for the transfer of funds, as well as the decentralized collection of donations in a more anonymous manner than conventional banking transactions. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that terrorists are considering and, in limited instances, using digital currencies such as Bitcoin to finance activities. While these tools have gained in popularity, in recent years their expansion into various terrorist organizations has been slow and deliberate and has not matched pace with transnational criminal uses of these same technologies.
- Political Geography:
- United States
1223. Role of Urbanization, Land-Use Diversity, and Livestock Intensification in Zoonotic Emerging Infectious Diseases
- Author:
- Jefferson Fox, Duong Nong, Miguel Castrence, James Spencer, Sumeet Saksena, Nguyen Lam, Tran Duc Vien, Michael Epprecht, Chinh Tran, Melissa Finucane, and Bruce Wilco
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) continue to significantly threaten human and animal health. While there has been some progress in identifying underlying proximal driving forces and causal mechanisms of disease emergence, the role of distal factors is most poorly understood. This article focuses on analyzing the statistical association between highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 and urbanization, land-use diversity and poultry intensification. A special form of the urban transition—peri-urbanization—was hypothesized as being associated with 'hot-spots' of disease emergence. Novel metrics were used to characterize these distal risk factors. Our models, which combined these newly proposed risk factors with previously known natural and human risk factors, had a far higher predictive performance compared to published models for the first two epidemiological waves in Viet Nam. We found that when relevant risk factors are taken into account, urbanization is generally not a significant independent risk factor. However, urbanization spatially combines other risk factors leading to peri-urban places being the most likely 'hot-spots'. The work highlights that peri-urban areas have highest levels of chicken density, duck and geese flock size diversity, fraction of land under rice, fraction of land under aquaculture compared to rural and urban areas. Land-use diversity, which has previously never been studied in the context of HPAI H5N1, was found to be a significant risk factor. Places where intensive and extensive forms of poultry production are collocated were found to be at greater risk
- Topic:
- Health, Infectious Diseases, and Urbanization
- Political Geography:
- United States and Asia
1224. Marijuana Policy in Colorado
- Author:
- Jeffrey Miron
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In November 2012, voters in the states of Colorado and Washington approved ballot initiatives that legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia are scheduled to consider similar measures in the fall of 2014, and other states may follow suit in the fall of 2016.
- Topic:
- War on Drugs, Social Movement, and Law
- Political Geography:
- United States, Washington, and Colombia
1225. Review of Greenlight Pinellas
- Author:
- Randal O'Toole
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Under its “Greenlight Pinellas” proposal, the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), which serves Pinellas County, FL, wants to switch its major funding source from a property tax to a sales tax at a rate that will more than double its local tax revenues, and use the added money to build a 24-mile light-rail line and expand bus service. This proposal is extremely and unnecessarily expensive given that buses can provide a superior service to light rail, carrying more passengers more comfortably to more destinations at a far lower cost.
- Topic:
- Infrastructure
- Political Geography:
- United States
1226. Why Bail-In Securities Are Fool's Gold
- Author:
- Avinash D. Persaud
- Publication Date:
- 11-2014
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- Bailouts and bail-ins of failing financial institutions have been hotly disputed in the global financial crisis of the last five years. At the height of the crisis, several failing banks were bailed out with taxpayer money so they could service their debts, but as public outrage mounts, policymakers are increasingly looking at bailing in these institutions before using taxpayer funds. Bail-ins, also called haircuts, require the troubled institution's creditors to write off some of the debt or agree to a restructuring of the debt, which reduces their holdings. The public has demanded the imposition of these costs on creditors and bond - holders, arguing that if bad lending as well as bad borrowing went unpunished it would be encouraged. Additionally, the yawning fiscal deficits that have followed bailouts have led to unpopular fiscal retrenchment.
- Topic:
- Debt, Economics, Markets, Financial Crisis, and Reform
- Political Geography:
- United States
1227. Estimates of Fundamental Equilibrium Exchange Rates, November 2014
- Author:
- William R. Cline
- Publication Date:
- 11-2014
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- This semiannual review finds that most of the major international currencies, including the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, UK pound sterling, and Chinese renminbi, remain close to their fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs). The new estimates find this result despite numerous significant exchange rate movements associated with increased volatility in international financial markets at the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2014, and despite a major reduction in the price of oil. The principal cases of exchange rate misalignment continue to be the undervalued currencies of Singapore, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Sweden and Switzerland, and the overvalued currencies of Turkey, New Zealand, South Africa, and to a lesser extent Australia and Brazil. Even so, the medium-term current account deficit for the United States is already at the outer limit in the FEERs methodology (3 percent of GDP), and if the combination of intensified quantitative easing in Japan and the euro area with the end to quantitative easing in the United States were to cause sizable further appreciation of the dollar, an excessive US imbalance could begin to emerge.
- Topic:
- Economics, Foreign Exchange, International Trade and Finance, and Monetary Policy
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, Japan, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, and New Zealand
1228. U.S. Policy to Counter Nigeria's Boko Haram
- Author:
- John Campbell
- Publication Date:
- 11-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- The April 2014 kidnapping of more than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram—and the lethargic response of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's government— provoked outrage. But the kidnapping is only one of many challenges Nigeria faces. The splintering of political elites, Boko Haram's revolt in the north, persistent ethnic and religious conflict in the country's Middle Belt, the deterioration of the Nigerian army, a weak federal government, unprecedented corruption, and likely divisive national elections in February 2015 with a potential resumption of an insurrection in the oil patch together test Nigeria in ways unprecedented since the 1966–70 civil war.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Islam, Terrorism, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- United States and Nigeria
1229. The Rising Terrorist Threat in Tanzania: Domestic Islamist Militancy and Regional Threats
- Author:
- Andre LeSage
- Publication Date:
- 10-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- Despite its reputation for peace and stability in a troubled region, the East African country of Tanzania is experiencing a rising number of militant Islamist attacks that have targeted local Christian leaders and foreign tourists, as well as popular bars and restaurants. These attacks, which began in 2012, rarely make the headlines of international media. However, they should serve as a wake-up call for U.S. policymakers to increase short-term engagement with Tanzanian officials and support for Tanzanian security agencies to preempt the emergence of a more significant threat to U.S. and international interests in East Africa.
- Topic:
- Security, Islam, Terrorism, and International Security
- Political Geography:
- Africa, United States, and Tanzania
1230. Strategy and Force Planning in a Time of Austerity
- Author:
- Michael J. Meese
- Publication Date:
- 05-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- On February 13, 1989, General Colin Powell, who was in a transition between National Security Advisor and Commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, addressed the reality of strategy: “All of the sophisticated talk about grand strategy is helpful, but show me your budgets and I will tell you what your strategy is.”1 What General Powell meant is that the definition of the U.S. role in the world and its strategic goals flow from budgets, not the other way around. This paper fleshes out General Powell's observation by focusing on the means part of the ends, ways, and means of strategy in order to explain how austerity affects force planning and strategy. By first examining budget reductions as a general matter, the paper describes today's austere U.S. budgetary environment. It concludes with the current strategic options that will likely characterize the contemporary discussion of strategy and force planning.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Financial Crisis, and Budget
- Political Geography:
- United States