scholarly journals Conflict antiquities’ rescue or ransom: The cost of buying back stolen cultural property in contexts of political violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Samuel Andrew Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Revenue Streams ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Safe Zones

Abstract Rescue has long been a defense for the removal of cultural property. Since the explosion of iconoclasm in West Asia, North Africa, and West Africa, there has been a growing demand for cultural property in danger zones to be “rescued” by being purchased and given “asylum” in “safe zones” (typically, in the market countries of Western Europe and North America). This article reviews evidence from natural experiments with the “rescue” of looted antiquities and stolen artifacts from across Asia and Europe. Unsurprisingly, the evidence reaffirms that “rescue” incentivizes looting, smuggling, and corruption, as well as forgery, and the accompanying destruction of knowledge. More significantly, “rescue” facilitates the laundering of “ordinary” illicit assets and may contribute to revenue streams of criminal organizations and violent political organizations; it may even weaken international support for insecure democracies. Ultimately, “rescue” by purchase appears incoherent, counter-productive, and dangerous for the victimized communities that it purports to support.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Economic Viability of Agricultural Pellets to Supplement the Current Global Wood Pellets Supply for Bioenergy Production

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2263
Author(s):  
Mahmood Ebadian ◽  
Shahab Sokhansanj ◽  
David Lee ◽  
Alyssa Klein ◽  
Lawrence Townley-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Wood Pellets ◽  
Logistics System ◽  
Global Marketplace ◽  
Biomass Logistics ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The Cost

In this study, an inter-continental agricultural pellet supply chain is modeled, and the production cost and price of agricultural pellets are estimated and compared against the recent cost and price of wood pellets in the global marketplace. The inter-continental supply chain is verified and validated using an integration of an interactive mapping application and a simulation platform. The integrated model is applied to a case study in which agricultural pellets are produced in six locations in Canada and shipped and discharged at the three major ports in Western Europe. The cost of agricultural pellets in the six locations is estimated to be in the range of EUR 92–95/tonne (CAD 138–142/tonne), which is comparable with the recent cost of wood pellets produced in small-scale pellet plants (EUR 99–109/tonne). The average agricultural pellet price shipped from the six plants to the three ports in Western Europe is estimated to be in a range of EUR 183–204 (CAD 274–305/tonne), 29–42% more expensive that the average recent price of wood pellets (EUR 143/tonne) at the same ports. There are several potential areas in the agricultural pellet supply chains that can reduce the pellet production and distribution costs in the mid and long terms, making them affordable supplement to the existing wood pellet markets. Potential economic activities generated by the production of pellets in farm communities can be significant. The generated annual revenue in the biomass logistics system in all six locations is estimated to be about CAD 21.80 million. In addition, the logistics equipment fleet needs 176 local operators with a potential annual income of CAD 2.18 million.

Twelfth-Century Italian Prices: Food and Clothing in Pisa and Venice

1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-403
Author(s):  
Louise Buenger Robbert
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
American Philosophical Society ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
Good Opportunity ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Cost

Seventy-three years ago pioneer American medievalist Dana Carlton Munro (1911: 504) delivered a paper in Philadelphia to the American Philosophical Society entitled “The Cost of Living in the Twelfth Century.” He threw down the gauntlet by concluding that in this paper an attempt has been made to set forth only a few of the facts, merely to indicate the nature and importance of the problem. Every one of the subjects here discussed is susceptible of elaboration, and needs to be worked out in detail for each country of Western Europe and each period in the twelfth century. The material is voluminous…. This field, as a whole, offers a good opportunity for many monographs, and such work is essential before we can understand the economic history of the century which was most important in the advance of western Europe.This article takes up this challenge with new material on the cost of living in Italy in the twelfth century.

Regional Identities and Cultures of Medieval Jews

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
Regional Cultures ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Middle Ages

Though the existence of Jewish regional cultures is widely known, the origins of the most prominent groups, Ashkenaz and Sepharad, are poorly understood, and the rich variety of other regional Jewish identities is often overlooked. Yet all these subcultures emerged in the Middle Ages. Scholars contributing to the present study were invited to consider how such regional identities were fashioned, propagated, reinforced, contested, and reshaped — and to reflect on the developments, events, or encounters that made these identities manifest. They were asked to identify how subcultural identities proved to be useful, and the circumstances in which they were deployed. The resulting volume spans the ninth to sixteenth centuries, and explores Jewish cultural developments in western Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, and Asia Minor. In its own way, each chapter considers factors — demographic, geographical, historical, economic, political, institutional, legal, intellectual, theological, cultural, and even biological — that led medieval Jews to conceive of themselves, or to be perceived by others, as bearers of a discrete Jewish regional identity. Notwithstanding the singularity of each chapter, they collectively attest to the inherent dynamism of Jewish regional identities.

Bat Ye’or and Eurabia

2019 ◽  
pp. 170-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sindre Bangstad
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Us ◽  
Muslim Majority

This chapter discusses the life and work of Bat Ye’or (Gisèle Littman), who is widely seen as the doyenne of “Eurabia”-literature. This comes in different varieties and formulations, but in Bat Ye’or’s rendering refers to an ongoing secretive conspiracy which involves both the European Union and Muslim-majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East, aimed at establishing Muslim control over a future Europe or “Eurabia.” Though Bat Ye’or did not coin the term “Eurabia,” she can be credited with having popularized the concept through quasi-academic titles such as Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis and Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate. Through its dissemination on various “counter-jihadist” websites and in the work of the Norwegian counter-jihadist blogger Fjordman, her work inspired the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. She also has long-standing relations with Serbian ultranationalists, the Israeli Far Right, and various radical Right activists in Western Europe and the US.

Introduction

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
David H. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many ◽  
Jews In France

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how the Jews of post-war France, Belgium, and the Netherlands reconstructed their communities in the period between 1945 and the early 1960s. During these years, the Jews of the three countries attempted not only to recover from the devastation of their recent past but also to lay the foundations for their future. International and American Jewish relief and political organizations played a seminal role in these efforts. As relief organizations began to realize that the majority of the surviving Jews in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands intended to remain where they were, they took an interest in helping to reshape communal life. The goal, as it emerged in discussions beginning in 1947, was to implement a ‘Jewish Marshall Plan’ that would enable viable settlements, such as those in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, to achieve stability and growth. Of the many external Jewish agencies that played a role in the efforts to reconstruct Jewish life in western Europe after 1945, three stand out: the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (known popularly in America as the JDC and in Europe as the Joint), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the World Jewish Congress (WJC).

Electoral Systems, Integrated Institutions and Turnout in Local and National Elections: Canada in Comparative Perspective

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Milner
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Weak Links ◽  
Information Costs ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
High Turnout ◽  
The Cost

AbstractIn this article, it is argued that Canada's relatively low rate of political participation is related to its electoral system being nonproportional, but that a complementary factor is to be found in its political institutions being discontinuous. Discontinuous institutions are manifested in relatively weak links between political organizations active municipally, regionally (provincially) and nationally. While the relationship between proportional representation (PR) and high turnout has been well established in the literature, there is still a puzzle surrounding the theoretical explanation for it. The author argues that the key to the solution to this puzzle lies less in the additional potential benefits to the voter in a PR system than in the reduction of costs, specifically information costs under such a system. PR is seen to frame incentives and disincentives for political actors in such a manner as to result in a reduction of the cost of political information. This is especially the case when PR is embedded in integrated (non-discontinuous) political institutional arrangements. The most salient manifestation of this effect is seen in comparative turnout levels in municipal elections.

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