Saturday, 5 November 2016
Hillary Clinton Story
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Wednesday, 24 August 2016
Hillary Clinton’s Mental Problems Might Lead to Serious Meltdown in Front of TV Cameras
Thursday, 18 August 2016
Hillary Clinton is Dying Too
Sunday, 14 August 2016
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Thursday, 11 August 2016
Obama is the Founder of ISIS
Camp Bucca, which had detained some of the Iraq War’s most radical jihadists along the Kuwait border, was the US prison that became the birthplace of ISIS.
In 2009, the U.S. military closed down Camp Bucca, its largest detention center in Iraq, as the Obama administration continued to release or hand to Iraqi authorities the thousands of people it had held since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The closure of Camp Bucca, a sprawling complex in Iraq's southern desert near Kuwait, was a major step toward the unwinding of the $300 million-a-year U.S. detention program, as agreed under a bilateral security pact signed the previous year.
Bucca once housed as many as 14,000 detainees, the majority held for months or years without any charges made against them and with no way to defend themselves in court. Some were kept in steel shipping containers with a toilet and air conditioning. In total, around 100,000 people have been detained there by U.S. forces since 2003.
In March 2009, Camp Bucca freed hundreds of inhabitants. Families rejoiced, anxiously awaiting their sons, brothers and fathers who had been lost to Bucca for years. But a local official fretted. “These men weren’t planting flowers in a garden,” police chief Saad Abbas Mahmoud told The Washington Post’s Anthony Shadid, estimating 90 percent of the freed prisoners would soon resume fighting. “They weren’t strolling down the street. This problem is both big and dangerous. And regrettably, the Iraqi government and the authorities don’t know how big the problem has become.”
Camp Bucca now represents an opening chapter in the history of Islamic State. Many of its leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were incarcerated and most likely met there for the first time. According to former prison commanders, analysts and soldiers, Camp Bucca provided a unique setting for both prisoner radicalization and inmate collaboration.
Camp Bucca is said to have been formative in the development of today’s most potent jihadist forces. At least nine members of the Islamic State’s top commanders did time at Bucca, according to the terrorist analyst organization Soufan Group. Apart from the ISIS leader Baghdadi himself, who had spent five years there, the leader number two, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, as well as senior military leader Haji Bakr, (now deceased), and leader of foreign fighters Abu Qasim were also incarcerated there, Soufan said.
“Before their detention, Mr. al-Baghdadi and others were violent radicals, intent on attacking America,” wrote military veteran Andrew Thompson and academic Jeremi Suri in the New York Times. “Their time in prison deepened their extremism and gave them opportunities to broaden their following. The prisons became virtual terrorist universities: the hardened radicals were the professors, the other detainees were the students, and the prison authorities played the role of absent custodian.”
Bucca opened in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, when pictures of U.S. soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating detainees at the west Baghdad prison shocked the world and helped fuel a vicious insurgency. Most detainees, separated according to their Sunni or Shi'ite faith, were free to move around the open-air compounds they lived in, surrounded by steel fences, razor wire and catwalks patrolled by soldiers. Sometimes, they had access to computer and sewing classes, and each one was given a copy of the Koran. Prisoners viewed as particularly dangerous were kept in isolation.
A former prison commander James Skylar Gerrond remembered many of them. He wrote on Twitter in July, “Many of us at Camp Bucca were concerned that instead of just holding detainees, we had created a pressure cooker for extremism.” He worked at the prison between 2006 and 2007, when it was glutted with tens of thousands of radicals, including Baghdadi. Many were guilty of attacking American soldiers. But many more were not; “simply being a ‘suspicious looking’ military-aged male in the vicinity of an attack was enough to land one behind bars,” according to the Times opinion piece.
As early as in 2009, many experts viewed the happening situation “as an appalling miscarriage of justice where prisoners were not charged or permitted to see evidence against them and freed detainees may end up swelling the ranks of a subdued insurgency.”
It did not come as much of a surprise when this subdued insurgency eventually caught fire. At the height of the Iraq surge in 2007, when the prison was glutted with 24,000 inmates, it seethed with extremism. Inhabitants were divided along sectarian lines to ameliorate tension, a military report said, and inmates settled their disputes with Islamic law. “Inside the wire at these compounds are Islamic extremists who will maim or kill fellow detainees for behavior they consider against Islam,” the military report said.
“Sharia courts enforce a lot of rules inside the compounds,” one soldier quoted in the report said. "Anyone who takes part in behavior which is seen as western is severely punished by the extremist elements of the compound. It’s quite appalling sometimes."
Prison commanders such as Gerrond observed the growing extremism: “There was a huge amount of collective pressure exerted on detainees to become more radical in their beliefs,” he told Mother Jones. “Detainees turned to each other for support. If there were radical elements within this support network, there was always the potential that detainees would become more radical.”
According to the terrorist analyst organization Soufan Group, the unique setting at Camp Bucca, which thrust together Saddam Hussein’s Baathist secularists and Islamic fundamentalists, set the stage for something perhaps worse: collaboration. At the prison, the two seemingly incongruous groups joined to form a union “more than a marriage of convenience”, Soufan reported.
Soufan found each group offered the other something it lacked. In the ex-Baathists, jihadists found organizational skills and military discipline. In the jihadists, ex-Baathists found purpose. “In Bucca, the math changed as ideologies adopted military and bureaucratic traits and as bureaucrats became violent extremists,” the Soufan report said.
From the ashes of what former inmates called an “al-Qaeda school,” rose the Islamic State. Indeed, when those inhabitants who were freed in 2009 returned to Baghdad, they spoke of two things only: their conversion to radicalism and revenge.
They US handed all those Camp Bucca detainees to the Iraqi side. Then they were all released on the orders from the US Government. Thus the US Government had created those ISIS leaders to begin with and then let them go do their murderous business after years of enforced cohabitation, administrative and military training, and radicalization.
Tuesday, 9 August 2016
Metrics & ROI - Data and Analytics: Three Key Steps to Successful Business Decisions : MarketingProfs Article
- Which customers are buying? Where can we expand our share of wallet? What offers should we make, and to which customers?
- Are any customers at risk? Which ones? What can we change to reduce customer risk? Can we improve customer preference?
- How are our marketing initiatives performing today? How about in the long run? What can we do to improve them?
- Where are our best market opportunities? Where are prospective customers spending their time and money?
- How does our marketing compare with our competitors'? Where are competitors spending their time and money? Are they using channels that we aren't?
- What should we do next? Are our marketing resources properly allocated? Are we devoting time and money to the right channels? How should we prioritize our investments for next year?
Monday, 8 August 2016
Student loan issue teed up for Trump | TheHill
Trump could turn the bankruptcy issue from a negative into a positive for his campaign by using student loans to show the voters why the founding fathers put a uniform bankruptcy system near the top of the list when they gave Congress its powers. He would attract tens of millions of voters who otherwise would be on the fence, and unlike every other issue where the battle lines are clearly drawn, these voters would come with zero defections going the other way.
Jeb Bush put the return of bankruptcy protections to student loans into his presidential platform. Even conservatives like David Brooks and the Cato Institute have publicly called for the return of bankruptcy protections to student loans. This issue practically screams out to Donald Trump. He should listen if he is serious about winning this election.
2016 Presidential Election Toss-Up States
2016 Election Battleground States Map
These are the states where a competitive 2016 election is most likely to be won or lost, based on review of various forecasts.
Saturday, 6 August 2016
Social Media Marketing Trends in 2016
The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends Dominating 2016
Jayson DeMers
Late last year, I made some predictions about social media in my post, The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2016. Now that we’re more than halfway through 2016, let’s take a look at what the dominating trends really are:
1. Less is more, better is better.
Social media is a crowded world already—there are billions of users with social profiles, and they all follow hundreds to thousands of different accounts. On top of that, most platforms’ newsfeed algorithms now sort posts based on a degree of perceived relevance, rather than based on the time of publication (in fact, Instagram just changed theirs over recently). Add in the fact that users are beginning to prefer hyper-relevant, in-the-moment content to regurgitated updates or retrospective posts, and you have a perfect formula for users to prefer fewer, but better posts. Quality has always been more important than quantity, but now social platforms and users are further cementing that fact.
2. A shift is happening in platform dynamics.
Until recently, the three big players of the social media game were Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—almost indisputably—and all three platforms served similar functions for slightly different niches. Today, those positions have changed and diversified; Instagram and Snapchat are newer players in the game, but each serves a niche role despite having massive user bases.
3. Live streaming is getting bigger.
Video content has seen a huge spike in popularity over the past few years, in part because it has become a more accessible medium, and in part because users are growing tired of older mediums. Combined with the trend of users demanding more “live” and in-the-moment updates, live streaming video has seen a major increase in popularity; especially with the recent release of Facebook Live.
4. Buy buttons are becoming more common.
Advertising on social media has always been around—it’s how they make money, after all—but only recently has the advertising experience become something more akin to a shopping experience. Ads and products available to purchase are starting to work their way into users’ newsfeeds and profiles more smoothly and with fewer distinctions from organic content. These are typically associated with the simple addition of a “buy” button, which leads to an integrated cart to make it easier than ever to convert followers into real customers.
5. New applications are changing social interaction.
The entire motivation behind social media’s existence is the “social” element; these platforms were developed for people to engage with one another, directly and for the most part, in conversational form. Now, forms of interaction are starting to diversify. Platforms like Snapchat are allowing more one-sided conversations, in a more fleeting, temporary context. Platforms like Facebook are launching new communication channels like Messenger for Business, which serves as a kind of customer service wing. Brands and consumers are able to talk to each other in new, more diverse ways, and that range is only broadening.
6. We’re seeing a push for more personalization.
Users are tired of seeing the same types of content populate in their newsfeeds, and they’re tired of seeing posts they don’t care about. There’s a greater demand for personalization and customization, and platforms and publishers alike are doing what they can to cater to that demand. In fact, Facebook was recently accused of having a political bias because its personalization algorithm tended to display stories with a political leaning already similar to its targeted users’ preferences.
7. We’re getting broader app functionality.
Social media apps are developed and owned by companies, and those companies need to make money to survive. They can sell ad space and user data, but they lose attention and user potential every time a user clicks out of an app. To remedy this, social platforms are doing more to keep users involved in-app for the longest time possible, offering peripheral functionality to keep users contented on more fronts. Some of these functions include in-app search functions, embedded content, and in Facebook’s case, even a personal digital assistant.
Some of these trends have been around for a while, manifesting gradually as more consumers have turned to them. Others popped up recently as a response to other developments, or as pure innovations emerging from the ether. In any case, they’re here now; you don’t have to adopt all of them or develop new strategies for them, but you do have to recognize their existence even if you’re only playing defense. These are the shapers of the social media marketing world as it exists today, and they’re forerunners of tomorrow’s developments. If you’re looking for help getting started with your own social media marketing campaign, grab my eBook, The Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/08/01/the-top-7-social-media-marketing-trends-dominating-2016/#7f3dba335da7
Friday, 5 August 2016
Thursday, 4 August 2016
Live Stream:Donald Trump Rally from Portland, ME (8-4-16)
Monday, 1 August 2016
Sunday, 31 July 2016
Hillary is a Lie and Betrayal
Sunday, 24 July 2016
3 Things That Guarantee Engaged Employees - Forbes
3 Things That Guarantee Engaged Employees
- I write about leveraging neuroscience to create remarkable leadership.
- Why are we here as a company?
- Why do we exist?
- What are we going to source that will not have existed without us being here?
- What are we going to make happen because we exist?
- What will we be known for, or known as in the community then as a company?
- What will we be proud to say we are as an identity in the business community when we arrive?
- What are some visions of what you see the company looking like 3-5 years from now?
- Mission – Your purpose – what’s the big why? Is it worthy and emotional?
- Vision – a picture of what you want – clear picture? Is it compelling? Martin Luther King didn’t just have a simple idea. He had a dream so infused with passion and meaning that others wanted to be a part of it.
- Values - the standards of behavior – integrity, open communication, team work, etc. – that we are expected to honor as a member of the tribe.