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Afghanistan has experienced capital flight, which has long perplexed policymakers and planners. There have been widespread concerns about capital's ‘paradoxical’ character, which jeopardises national welfare. In this regard, this study envisages examining the nature and prevalence of reverse capital flight in Afghanistan by employing two methods viz direct approach (Cuddington's Model) and indirect approach (World Bank approach and Morgan approach). The findings highlight four main reasons for reverse capital. These include facilitating the whitening of black money (money laundering) which has been previously illegally flown out of the country; second, it allows import tax evasion and the realisation of unnecessary export rebates and refunds; third, it facilitates the avoidance and incidence of Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) on imported goods; and finally, it allows for the concealment of investment in the underground economy. The study recommends maintaining a thorough record of illegal cash flows in Afghanistan since the nature of trade in Afghanistan is difficult owing to the simultaneous flow of illicit capital. Furthermore, the unrecorded private investments must be adjusted for illegal capital flows resulting from trade mis-invoicing, thus crucial for policy enunciation.

In the mid-2000s, the operator of New York City’s mass transit network committed more than a half-billion dollars to military contractor Lockheed Martin for a security technology capable, in part, of inferring threats based on analysis of data streams, of developing response strategies, and taking automated action toward alerts and calamities in light of evolving circumstances. The project was a failure. This chapter explores the conceptualization and development of this technology – rooted in cybernetics – and compares its conceptual underpinnings with some situated problems of awareness, communication, coordination, and action in emergencies as they unfold in one of the busiest transport systems in the world, the New York subway. The author shows how the technology, with all the theatrical trappings of a “legitimate” security solution, was apparently conceived without a grounded understanding of actual use-cases, and the degree to which the complex interactions which give rise to subway emergency can be anticipated in – and therefore managed through – a technological system. As a case-study, the chapter illustrates the pitfalls of deploying technology against problems which are not well-defined in the first place, to the neglect of investments against much more fundamental problems – such as inadequate communication systems, and unstable relationships with emergency response agencies – which might offer guaranteed benefits, and indeed lay a firm groundwork for future deployment of more ambitious technology.

This paper explores the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and their impact on the art world. By examining the esthetics and political economy of crypto art and its relationship to online pop culture, it questions the value of NFTs and whether they truly represent a source of income for artists or simply contribute to the speculative nature of crypto investments. This paper concludes by asserting that the world of crypto art is dominated by right-wing libertarians and black box algorithms, and that a radical redistribution of wealth is necessary to address the issues of power, race, and gender within the industry.

Battlefield tourism is a growing field in tourism research. However, it focuses primarily on an activity known as Dark Tourism, the visiting of places where tragedies or death took place. It includes the development of these sites as well. Cemeteries, internment sites, and memorials relating to death and depravity are the main features of battlefield tourism. Tourism development relies primarily on good infrastructure and an attractive (tourism) environment. As a niche tourism market, battlefield tourism can actively enhance the tourism product proposition of a destination. Identifying battlefield sites, incorporating them into battlefield tourism routes, and developing them as tourist attractions can act as an agent of tourism development. Battlefield tourists are mostly retired and have time to travel. They are also highly educated and fall into the high-income group. They are primarily interested in visiting existing battlefields, which indicates that battlefield tourism has the potential to act as an agent of tourism development and growth. For battlefield tourism developers, it would be essential to know their target market. Key factors in developing a successful tourism development plan for battlefield tourism are study preparation, determination of objectives, data gathering, analysis and synthesis, policy and plan formulation, recommendations, implementation, and monitoring. Battlefields need interpretation, development, marketing, and even commercializing to act as “storyteller(s)” of the past, add value to the more extensive tourism offering of a specific area, and act as an agent of tourism development.

This paper is an encounter between an artist creating characters for video games and an academic studying how people and things are being financialized. Exchanging about the appearance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies – technologies associated with Web3 in the video game industry, the academic, and the artist reflect on the place of playfulness, creation, and finance in our society. They observe that most North American and European players resisted NFTs and cryptocurrencies, while more Asian-Pacific ones embraced the latter. They conclude that those reactions were explained by the fact that gamers perceived cryptocurrencies and NFTs as institutional objects associated with a financial logic, whose presence threatened the gaming logic. As pragmatic friends, they nevertheless issued an NFT with this paper, a “Crow Queen.” Time will tell if the Web3 society will praise this new form of digital joint academic/art production.

In this paper, I discuss the personalities of several representative crypto YouTube celebrities and Bitcoin aficionados, such as George Tung from CryptosRUs, Mike Jenkins (Guy) from Coin Bureau, Lark Davis, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, and Richard Heart. I look closely at their online performances to reveal the character of a trickster, the ambivalent mythological figure that symbolizes chaos, creativity, and disruption. Based on the core literature on the subject, I trace how the figure of a trickster has transformed into the jester in medieval times, and then into the adventurer in the new modern times, and how this transformation is relevant for today. A variety of examples demonstrates that the jester, the trickster, and the adventurer all reveal themselves in different facets of crypto influencers’ performances. However, the most popular YouTubers are also comparatively tame: they produce educational content on cryptocurrencies and blockchain, as compared to “get rich quick” schemes, which are typically presented with a higher degree of tricksteriness. There are also crucial differences and omissions: crypto influencers do not demonstrate queerness, which is inherent to the trickster, and they do not balance praise with abuse, as jesters do. The modern type of an adventurer is more fitting, although it is mostly found in the virtual Wild West of blockchain entrepreneurship, rather than on the most popular YouTube channels.