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Al-Qaeda is conventionally portrayed as a monolithic, hierarchical organization whose activities – coordinated by the network's leader Osama bin Laden – are the source of international terrorism today. Al-Qaeda is considered a radical tendency within the broader Islamist Salafi movement, legitimizing its terrorist operations as a global Islamist jihad against Western civilization. Al-Qaeda's terrorist activity today is considered, “blowback” from long finished CIA and western covert operations in Afghanistan.

The conventional wisdom is demonstrably false. After the Cold War, Western connections with al-Qaeda proliferated around the world, challenging mainstream conceptions of al-Qaeda's identity. Western covert operations and military – intelligence connections in strategic regions show that “al-Qaeda” is a network whose raison d’etre and modus operandi are inextricably embedded in a disturbing conglomerate of international Western diplomatic, financial, military and intelligence policies today. US, British, and Western power routinely manipulates al-Qaeda through a complex network of state-regional and human nodes. Such manipulation extended directly to the 9-11 hijackers, and thus to the events of 9-11 itself.11This paper advances an original argument based partially on research in Ahmed (2005), supplemented here with significant new data and analysis. Also see Ahmed (2002).

The purpose of this paper is to outline the intellectual pre‐conditions for meaningful debate about resource management of the sea and its contents.

The approach is historical and theoretical.

The argument contends that because of the social and historical status of the sea and those who earn their living from it, comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the sea and its depths is conspicuously lacking, as is a sympathetic understanding. Historically, this has led, where attempts to manage the sea's resources are concerned, to a misconceived application of terrestrial legal concepts and approaches to an indivisible whole upon which, as a whole, Life itself depends.

If the argument is correct, piecemeal local, national and regional attempts to manage marine resources may prove unable to achieve what is intended and may be counter‐productive. Such smaller‐scale regulation must depend on prior global agreement on marine resource management principles.

The paper attempts to lay out the broad framework within which alone constructive discussion of marine resource management is possible.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore the possible synergetic effects between food-restricted behaviour (fasting in Orthodox Christianity) and physical and mental health; and second, to ponder on the nature of fasting and to reveal the potentials monastery cuisine has, reaching outside the world of religion and entering the world of consumption.

A qualitative research approach has been applied in order to investigate the synergetic effects between fasting, well-being and anti-consumption. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews carried out in Orthodox monasteries, in particular, in three monasteries in the territory of Mount Athos and in three monasteries in Northern Greece. Additionally, ten Bulgarians who visited monasteries situated at Mount Athos have been interviewed. In a cultural materialistic perspective, this paper seeks to discuss and reveal food and eating habits patterns. It combines the social anthropology of food with the anthropology of Eastern Orthodox religion.

The discussed interrelations between fasting, well-being and anti-consumption confirm the synergetic effects, occurring at different points between them. Fasting practices definitely contribute to consumers’ health and well-being. The food-restricted behaviour and the monastery diet are presented as a means of purification not only of the soul but also of the body. Fasting is an intriguing issue that offers many perspectives for people not only within but also without the monastery walls. Food-restricted behaviour as practiced in Orthodox Christianity shall be considered as beneficial for people’s health and as such it can reveal a lot of additional spiritual values for non-believers.

Future applications of fasting practices as a non-consumptive behaviour and in view of social movements for healthy nutrition. A possibility for fasting menus as an alternative to fast food menus can be exploited.

The study provides some useful insights into the contemporary practice of Eastern Orthodox fasting and confirms that fasting is a successful means of achieving mental and physical well-being. New perspectives for monastery cuisine as a resource and brand strategy for restaurant business and tourism can be mentioned as well.

This paper aims to use the case of early medieval Irish monasticism to highlight the implicit a historicism of the knowledge management (KM) literature and to show how such a historical study can be used to increase the level of discourse and reflection within the contested and increasingly fragmented field of KM.

The author uses secondary source analysis from a diversity of academic fields to examine the relatively sophisticated processes through which the monks gathered, codified, created, interpreted, disseminated and used religious and secular knowledge. The author then draws out a number of insights from this literature to aid current thinking on and debates within the field of KM.

The paper presents a church metaphor of KM operating at two levels. Internally the metaphor highlights the deliberate but politically contentious nature of knowledge creation, a process of developing both explicit and tacit knowledge among the monks, revolving around ideologies and cults, and primarily concerned with the avoidance, constraining and settling of controversies and debates. Externally, the metaphor highlights the political use of and the mediation of access to knowledge for the purposes of social position and influence.

This paper is original in providing a detailed consideration of KM activities within a specific early medieval historical context and in drawing from the study to contribute to current thinking within the field of KM.

Managing the corporate reputation of hybrid firms (organizations that act commercially to pursue social agendas) involves particular challenges because of competing stakeholder interests. With reference to the Trappist beer market, the paper seeks to identify the value of message ambiguity in reducing stakeholder tension, while simultaneously achieving a clear market positioning.

In total, 25 in‐depth interviews were conducted with brand marketers, owners, channel buyers, industry representatives and consumers.

The findings demonstrate how ambiguous communications minimize tension between stakeholders. One form of ambiguous message strategy is identified – i.e. the deliberate use of “authenticity” as a positioning device. This positioning allows stakeholders to ascribe conflicting meanings to the Trappist brand, resulting in increased reputation and decreased stakeholder tension.

The use of authenticity and message ambiguity represents one means of balancing stakeholder interests, while achieving a clear market position. The paper believes the findings are particularly relevant for social marketers and managers of highly symbolic brands.

Marketers can reduce stakeholder conflict through the use of brand images that emphasize normative as opposed to performance‐based commitments. Such commitments need to be broad enough to allow different stakeholders to ascribe their own meaning to the brand without diminishing the strength of the firm's market position.

This chapter uses ideas from the ritual economy approach to discuss the political ecology of ritual feasting among Lisu highlanders and Shan lowlanders of northern Southeast Asia and medieval Icelanders. The audience for Lisu feasts is fellow villagers all of whom are engaged in limited competition for prestige to insure equality among households. These reciprocal feasts use a considerable portion of the annual value of each household's production. Among Shan the audience is non-reciprocating Buddhist monks and non-reciprocating fellow villagers to validate positions in the social-political hierarchy in terms of Buddhist merit. The feasts use a relatively small portion of any household's annual production. Among Icelandic chieftains, the audience was followers and potential followers to validate claims to chieftaincy and could initially use only a fraction of the annual production of a chiefly household, though as the source of revenue changed from household slaves to renters, and wage workers and competition for land developed, the ritual dimension of chieftaincy became exaggerated and used an increasing portion of revenues as there were fewer and fewer increasingly powerful and combative chieftains.

It is nearly seven hundred years since a college was founded at Ashridge—the College of Bonhommes (a rare order of monks brought over from the south of France by Edmund Plantagenet).