AQ and Algeria
UPI – AQ now has another gateway to Africa and the rest of the world as well as someone to outsource training to:
Deputy al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a video that the terrorist organization has joined forces with an Algerian underground network.
The Algerian network has grown since 2003 from a small local threat to a far-reaching organization with cells around the world. Authorities have discovered cells in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Counter-terrorism officials in Europe and North Africa have said the group has been training and providing fighters for the conflicts in Iraq and Chechnya.
Iraq and Afghanistan are likely too volatile to train those that Zawahiri wants for AQ “proper” – that is the organization he wants to be able to actually direct. Algeria will also likely serve as another door to the TAZ‘s (updated to include link) of Africa.
Also Algeria has the seventh-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the second-largest gas exporter; it ranks 14th in oil reserves.
Counterinsurgency Manual
NYT – A good article on the new counterinsurgency manual being put together. It looks to be littered with 4GW bullet points:
“The more force used, the less effective it is,” it notes.
“The more you protect your force, the less secure you are,” it asserts.
Stressing the need to build up local institutions and encourage economic development, the manual cautions against putting too much weight on purely military solutions. “Tactical success guarantees nothing,” it says.
There is no guarantee the manual will have any concrete ramifications but its nice to see someone get it and write it down. Also cool to see a quote from Conrad Crane in the article – from what’s out in the open he seems to have a grasp on open source warfare.
Another Attempt On Musharraf
Reuters (NYT) – Apparently Musharraf’s retreat isn’t going fast enough for the forces arrayed against him –
Pakistani police defused two rockets attached to mobile phones near Parliament in the capital Islamabad on Thursday, the morning after a blast in a park close to President Pervez Musharraf’s residence in nearby Rawalpindi.
On Wednesday night a small explosive device exploded in a park near Musharraf’s army residence in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, adjoining Islamabad.
More On CEO Compensation
INFORMS – A new study says that if a CEO’s pay is bloated, the rest of the upper division managers will be bloated as well.
However, the researchers found that CEO pay has direct consequences for compensation at lower employee levels. That’s because the effects of CEO overpayment cascade – at diminishing degrees – down to subordinates. For example, based on their models, where one CEO was overpaid by 64 percent, individuals in his/her company at Level 2 (COO, CFO, etc.) were overpaid by 26 percent, while individuals at Level 5 (division general managers) were overpaid by 12 percent. The cumulative effect of this systemic overpayment impacts overall organizational performance and shareholder value.
The full paper isn’t out yet, but I’m hoping they’ll put a dollar amount on how much that bloat is costing the economy.
CEO’s And The Ivy League
WSJ –
Some 10% of CEOs currently heading the top 500 companies received undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges, according to a survey by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart. But more received their undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin than from Harvard, the most represented Ivy school.
The Army realized the same thing a decade or so ago when it came to light that a majority of Generals didn’t come from West Point. Last I checked about 70% of new 2LT’s were went through the ROTC program. This doesn’t mean that public schools are putting out higher quality individuals (as the article bizzarely insinuates); just that the playing field is changing.
Graduates of the elite institutions will always have a leg up at the bottom of the pyramid but with each step up innovative ideas and impact made are slowly taking precedence over alma mater or time in grade (and rightly so).