WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is expanding its shadowy battle against militants in Yemen, including a planned new CIA base nearby in the Persian Gulf, in an attempt to stop a lethal branch of al-Qaida from capitalizing on the political turmoil in Yemen.
The White House has increased the numbers of CIA officers in Yemen, and has signed off on the new base from which to fly armed drones to hunt militants in Yemen, to be completed by next year.
I am just back from a phenomenal conference on UN Air Operations put together by Professor Walter Dorn and Major Bill March. The highlight of that event was Senator Romeo Dallaire, LtGen (Ret), author of Shake Hands with the Devil as well as the more recent They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children.
Here are my notes on points made by Senator Dallaire, followed by some additional personal views of my own with respect to the future of the UN, NATO, and regional organizations long overdue as stewards of their respective regions peace and prosperity.
+ Drawing on history we can project into the future (not in a linear fashion, but from an informed foundation). We need to do both, we cannot go on as we are with our short-term perspective.
+ We must achieve a communion of humanity in the larger context of the planet as a whole–this is a grand strategic vision in which nation-states are actually limiting elements.
+ National and regional planning must be integrated into a larger global planning and forecasting process; we must go global.
+ The will to intervene in important, and should be but is not, common sense. Refugees and displaced persons are vectors for disease and root sources of rage.
Our economy is almost entirely based on a Darwinian competition–many products and services fighting for shelf space and market share and profits. It's a wasteful process, because success is unpredictable and unevenly distributed.
The internet has largely mirrored (and amplified) this competition. eBay, for example, not only pits sellers against one another, it also pits buyers. Craigslist makes it easy for buyers to see the range of products and services on offer, making the marketplace more competitive. Google, most of all, encourages an ecosystem where producers can evolve, improve and compete.
I think the next frontier of the net is going to use the datastream to do precisely the opposite–to create value by making coordination easier.
Businesses are being sold incredibly expensive advertising campaigns that are disguised as “no risk” ways to acquire new customers. In reality, there’s a lot of risk. With a newspaper ad, the maximum you can lose is the amount you paid for the ad. With Groupon, your potential losses can increase with every Groupon customer who walks through the door and put the existence of your business at risk.
Groupon is not an Internet marketing business so much as it is the equivalent of a loan sharking business. The $21,000 that the business in this example gets for running a Groupon is essentially a very, very expensive loan. They get the cash up front, but pay for it with deep discounts over time. (This post applies to Groupon operations in the United States and Canada; it’s different in other parts of the world.)
In many cases, running a Groupon can be a terrible financial decision for merchants. Groupon’s financials also raise questions about its ongoing viability. Buying Groupon stock could be as bad a deal for investors as running a Groupon offer is for merchants.
I defer to NightWatch but it is the naivete of the IC that cannot
comprehend that the rest of the world does not look like the US……….This is territory that is NOT administered by the Government of Pakistan but rather by the Tribal Elders. The permission is required by Pakistani Law, something that the US continues to fail to understand. I guess, in the vain of old movies, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”……
Being binary is bad for business, so when will politics cure its bipolar disorder? Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch on the lessons Washington should learn from the real world.
Nothing in American life today seems as archaic, ubiquitous and immovable as the Republican and Democratic parties.
The two 19th-century political groupings divide up the spoils of a combined $6.4 trillion that is extracted each year from taxpayers at the federal, state, county and municipal levels. Though rhetorically and theoretically at odds with one another, the two parties have managed to create a mostly unbroken set of policies and governance structures that benefit well-connected groups at the expense of the individual.
Democrats and Republicans are at risk of becoming irrelevant, says Reason.com's Nick Gillespie, as more voters identify as Independents or with other groups like the Tea Party. He talks with WSJDN's Kelsey Hubbard about the shortcomings of the longstanding duopoly in American politics.
Americans have watched, with a growing sense of alarm and alienation, as first a Republican administration and then its Democratic successor have flouted public opinion by bailing out banks, nationalizing the auto industry, expanding war in Central Asia, throwing yet more good money after bad to keep housing prices artificially high, and prosecuting a drug war that no one outside the federal government pretends is comprehensible, let alone winnable. It is easy to look upon this well-worn rut of political affairs and despair.
Phi Beta Iota: A Wall Street Journal informal poll shows 83% of respondents now ready to vote for a third party, with some excluding the Tea Party as flaky. Ralph Nader led this fight, others are finishing it. We are honored to be in that number.
Why Groupon Is Poised For Collapse
