Financial resources and funding methods of the North African terrorist organizations have been largely influenced by their independence and the change from a centralized organization to a decentralized network of autonomous groups and cells. Although often associated with drug trafficking, this is an indirect source of funds for the groups, but kidnapping foreigners for ransom has been particularly lucrative for them. In the course of these operations, there is increased cooperation between organizations. One of the problems is that kidnapping for ransom is not specifically addressed in any of the terrorist conventions. In order to combat this phenomenon, the international community will need to work together collectively, as well as at the national level, to strengthen the prohibitions against such activity.
This special report on the theme of interculturality brings together a number of contributions by researchers from different specialisations (information and communications sciences, history, sociology, literature, cinema, etc) and different parts of the world (Germany, Spain, United States, France, Greece, Poland). In terms of research and university teaching in Europe and elsewhere in the western world, there has been considerable development in this field since 1980 within the multitude of disciplines of which it is, in part, a result. As Jacques Demorgon states, although interculturality has "always formed part of the human condition, it has only been placed in perspective [] [so] recently" that it offers a large number of definitions and consequently a large body of authors, work and publications, as the object being studied -culture -is still just as wideranging. Thus interculturality may be compared to a vast building site where work is constantly in progress, to which anyone -whether a scientist or not -may contribute. An illustration of this is provided by a recent issue of Communication et Organisation (2002) on this topic, in which a number of authors each broach, in turn, the complexity and diversity of the field. While Dominique Desjeux (2002: 88; 95) notes in it that "culture is both a structure and a dynamic [] which makes its analysis and observation [] difficult, [] and that it may be just as much a key to functioning better with other people as a means of avoiding them", we shall emphasis that culture is an integral part of the human being and of the affiliations to which he/she is linked, whether deliberately or not (family unit and history; educational, professional, militant, associational circles; places for living and geographical, historical, political places, etc). Further proof of what is as stake in this topic is provided by the publication of the quarterly review En Temps Rel (2003), which
The profitability of foreign affairs starts with setting priorities amidst diminishing financial resources. This policy goes hand in hand with investment in the means of communication, delegating services to the private sector, decentralization, usage of local personnel and the quest for self-financing of consular activities. This effort towards improving profitability has already produced results.
The rehabilitation of Manhattan's Lower East Side during the last few years has occasioned bitter fights between several ethnic groups. The article analyses the practical and symbolical means used by the Portorican population in order to appropriate a space they considered as being theirs. The cultural factor is a stake in itself as each ethnic group endeavors to mark out and defend a socio-historical « turf. » Symbolic conflicts may conceal other interests â they are nonetheless an end in itself. Political elements are present, too, but the way in which they come between the fighters is proof that the solutions arrived at are at best temporary.