NATO/US false-flag attacks in Europe

False flag operations are acts of deception carried out by government officials to blame other countries or political groups for an attack against the nation with the aim of stirring up a desire for retribution against the supposed perpetrator. Since the effectiveness of a false-flag operation depends on preventing the truth from becoming widely known, it is impossible to know how often such operations have been carried out. Nevertheless, some historical events have been revealed in time, so we can better understand how they operate. The focus here is on false-flag operations in Western Europe and Turkey, carried out as part of the Gladio program during the Cold War under the supervision of the CIA. In each case, the CIA persuaded NATO members to recruit right-wing operatives to engage in terrorist actions and then blame the resulting deaths on left-wing groups, mostly communists. In this way, the United States used deception and terror to prevent communists from gaining power in Europe after World War II.     

9/11, the power elite,and the U.S. think tanks that plan the future

Four think tanks with close ties to the highest levels of government have shaped American foreign policy for decades. They are the Council on Foreign Relations, the RAND Corporation, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission. With direct ties to government officials who have engaged in various covert operations, these organizations provide a space within which advocates of global control can share ideas and develop new policies. Among the groups that have bravely questioned the consensus-forming character of these think tanks are groups of people whose relatives died on 9/11. Because of their investigations into the government officials whose careers have blossomed as a result of 9/11, these ordinary citizens have become sharp critics of the expansionist ideology that was seemingly legitimized by 9/11.     

Land and small farmer resistance in authoritarian Egypt

This article examines small farmer resistance in Egypt. It situates contemporary struggles in the context of the uneven success of small farmers' historical resistance to land dispossession and neoliberal reform. Struggles over land are the prime driver of rural conflict and small farmers contest state strategies that reward local elites, land owners, and supporters of the military regime. There may not be a coherent social movement able to resist contemporary patterns of capital accumulation, but there are elements of resistance that edge forward an agenda for a “political conversation” about much-needed deep social reforms. The internationally-supported Sisi presidency has used violence to consolidate military power, making open revolt difficult. Nevertheless, small farmers link struggles over access to land with poor state provisioning of water and infrastructure as a means of building resistance.     

Meaning-oriented consumption: A systematic review and research agenda

The quest for finding meaning in life is central to human existence. Evidence supporting consumption as a source of meaning in life is scant and lies in discrete studies across multiple disciplines. We call consumption that engenders a sense of meaning in life ‘meaning-oriented consumption’. In this paper we conduct a systematic literature review of 102 papers, using the Scientific procedures and rationales for systematic literature reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) (Paul et al. (2021). International Journal of Consumer Studies, 45(4)). We draw on the theory of meaning in life to arrive at a theoretically grounded conceptualization of meaning-oriented consumption. We discuss the antecedents and consequences of meaning-oriented consumption, categories and processes that make consumption meaningful. We gather insights into the relationship between hedonic and meaning-oriented consumption. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps in theory, context, constructs and methodology. This review identifies several consumption contexts and situations that offer potential for marketers to design meaningful offerings.     

Global talent management by multinational enterprises post-COVID-19: The role of enterprise social networking and senior leadership

Multinational enterprises' (MNEs') workforce is made up of people from diverse backgrounds and different locations around the globe. The cross-border transfer of knowledge, skills, and best practices among MNE employees is important to maintain global standards and competitiveness. In the post-COVID-19 period, there is a greater need to exchange knowledge in the changing business environment. The purpose of this study is to examine the issues related to MNEs' global talent management, post-COVID-19. The study investigates the use of enterprise social networking applications for better knowledge exchange and tries to understand the moderating role of senior leadership team support in facilitating the usage of enterprise social networks for cross-border collaboration and talent management. After reviewing the literature and relevant theories, we developed a conceptual model, which is then validated using the SEM technique with 347 respondents from 12 MNEs. The study reveals the importance of using enterprise social networks for cross-border knowledge exchange in the post-COVID-19 period.     

Pension,possible phaseout,and endogenous fertility in general equilibrium

The rich literature on Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG)-type pensions provides a notion that when pension return is dominated by the market return, generally it is impossible to phase pension out without hurting any generation. We show that PAYG pensions can indeed be phased out in a much richer framework where fertility is endogenous and general equilibrium effects are present. Interestingly, the factor that helps us to phase the pension out in a Pareto way is hidden in the structure of PAYG pension itself. Individualistic agents fail to recognize the benefits of their fertility decision on these programs and, therefore, end up in an allocation that is strictly dominated by the allocations that internalize this externality. Exploiting this positive externality, competitive economy can improve its allocations and can reach the planner's steady-state in finite time where each generation secures as much utility as in the competitive equilibrium. Clearly, it is possible to transition in a Pareto way to an economy either with no pension or with pensions whose return is not dominated by market return.     

Nonparametric measurement of potential gains from mergers: an additive decomposition and application to Indian bank mergers

Journal of Productivity Analysis - In this paper, we derive conditions under which merger between a number of firms within the same industry would induce a more cost efficient production of the...