The pirates of Somalia: Coastguards of anarchy

This paper analyses the underlying factors driving piracy off the coast of Somalia and examines the effectiveness of the international naval anti-piracy mission with respect to its declared aims. We show that while the navies perform well with respect to their short-term aims, they failed to contain the escalation of the piracy problem through 2009: pirates have been diverted from the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Evidence from domestic conditions in Somalia suggests that economic development and greater stability might in fact aid pirates

Universal Basic Prosperity: Sustainable prosperity for the 21st century

Technical development of economies leads to a conflict between the rising cost of collective needs and motivation. Without increases in welfare efficiency, safety is reduced. Reduced safety causes participation decay, creates a tax trap, results in lost productivity, incentivises environmental destruction, and leads to financial instability. Developed societies will have to deliver effective safety efficiently, as a precursor to addressing other problems. Effective satisfaction of safety needs at a cost that does not erode motivation would revive participation, foster reciprocity, boost productivity, license environmental sustainability, and enable financial stability. Mal-adaptation to resource pressures in developed societies has caused macro instability across social, economic, and environmental dimensions. A conflict in developed societies, between social safety and motivated opportunity, has been unfolding for a century, and intractable for the last 40 years. Problems of insecure livelihoods, unstable finance, and environmental destruction are outcomes of failed attempts to resolve that conflict. To resolve those problems and prevent decline, developed societies will need to strengthen reciprocity in their tax systems, so that they can increase the efficacy and efficiency of their welfare systems. This paper sets out to first clarify the roles of safety, opportunity, and participation, and the binding function of reciprocity in their arrangement. It then reviews the path of taxation in developed societies as they progressed from industrial economies to technically advanced economies over the 20th century. It demonstrates how attempts to suppress taxation, while preserving development status, are connected to insecure livelihoods, unstable finance, climate destruction, and weakened reciprocity. The last section proposes options for establishing strong reciprocity by reforming tax, fiscal and welfare arrangements, to align with achieving universal basic prosperity in the 21st century. The National Contributions report, released as an adjunct report, details tax reform proposals for the UK that conform with the proposals in this paper

National Contributions: Reforming tax for the 21st century

To raise the revenues to meet the challenges of the 21st century, the UK’s tax system will have to be reformed to increase transparency, reciprocity, and solidarity. This report describes how those reforms can be made with a system of National Contributions that clearly links contributions to entitlements. There are three key features of National Contributions: a progressive rate structure linked to average incomes; a flat definition of incomes; and a commitment to the allocation of revenues from individuals to services for those individuals. It is a PRoFI tax system: Progressive Rates on Flat Incomes. We model a pathway to prosperity through modernising the tax system, simplifying and broadening the tax base, funding public services to build reciprocity, and then funding Net Zero investments. Distributional analyses of each stage on that pathway are included

Advocating for Neuro-informed Music Therapy for PTSD in Diverse Populations, A Literature Review

Research indicates that music positively affects the brain, health, and wellness and continues to be researched for its effectiveness in treating PTSD. Traumatic memories are stored in the brain structures of the limbic system. Music has been shown to affect these brain structures, giving prospect to its use through music psychotherapy interventions as an effective treatment for PTSD. This review of music therapy literature assesses the effects of music on the brain, identifies current models for treating PTSD with music therapy, and considers culturally informed approaches to treatment. A widely known gap in the research of evidenced-based studies of music therapy’s effectiveness in this treatment is identified along with a lack of standardized techniques for the use of music psychotherapy in treating PTSD. This thesis presents a neuro-informed approach to music therapy for treating PTSD in diverse urban communities. These approaches are informed by the PTSD symptom clusters and specific brain regions affected by music therapy interventions. Music therapy is discussed as a necessary element in the treatment of PTSD, giving voice to the voiceless experiences of trauma and serving as a creative means of processing traumatic events in therapy

Total syntheses of conformationally-locked difluorinated pentopyranose analogues and a pentopyranosyl phosphate mimetic

Trifluoroethanol has been elaborated, via a telescoped sequence involving a metalated difluoroenol, a difluoroallylic alcohol, [2,3]-Wittig rearrangement, and ultimately an RCM reaction and requiring minimal intermediate purification, to a number of cyclooctenone intermediates. Epoxidation of these intermediates followed by transannular ring opening or dihydroxylation, then transannular hemiacetalization delivers novel bicyclic analogues of pentopyranoses, which were elaborated (in one case) to an analogue of a glycosyl phosphate

A stereodivergent asymmetric approach to difluorinated aldonic acids

A (bromodifluoromethyl)alkyne has been deployed in a stereoselective route to difluorinated aldonic acid analogues, in which a Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation reaction and diastereoisomer separation set the stage for phenyl group oxidation