Japanese Movers ~ Brilliant Service Ethos!

UD spots Japanese Movers...

Private Military Companies ~ Security Services++

One additional element about the civil conflict in Sierra Leone caught my attention, namely the disproportionately effective role of Executive Outcomes -- a Private Military Company or PMC -- in defending civilians and pushing back the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)... There's much more to be said about such modern mercenaries. Shadow Company is a compelling documentary on the sector...

Operation Palliser ~ Enlightened Intervention...

I'm very interested in the current boom times in Sierra Leone, with dramatic growth rates and the problems of prosperity and entanglements over ownership and sharing the wealth. How different from just over a decade ago when SL was in the throes of civil war. Until, that is, Operation Palliser, which began as an evacuation by UK troops but escalated into the protection of the capital, Freetown, and fight against the RUF rebellion. The story deserves further review because it is a successful example of Enlightened Intervention by outside powers in ending strife and restoring a people to a more peaceful pathway forward. The BBC tells of The brigadier who saved Sierra Leone, the story of the British deployment and their leader...

"The force commander, a little-known brigadier called David Richards, had other ideas. He saw a chance, took a risk, and changed the fate of the country. [...] "I could see," he told me, "that with a little robustness, we could make a difference." [...] Richards promised the president that Britain would supply arms and ammunition to the government forces. [...] Richards was committing Britain to taking sides in Sierra Leone's civil war. However, there was one important difficulty. The general's political bosses in London had sent him to carry out a quick evacuation and then leave. "So," I asked him 10 years on, "you were promising the president all this before you had the political authority from London to do so?" "Er, yes," he said, "I'm afraid I was, yes."

Wow! See more from the BBC about this remarkable story... And here's a Master's thesis by Patrick Evoe on Operation Palliser: The British Military Intervention into Sierra Leone, A Case of a Successful Use of Western Military Interdiction in a Sub-Sahara African Civil War.

Waiting for Superman ~ Education "R" US...

Recommended by one of our Harvard teacher-students...

"...an exhaustive review of public education, surveying "drop-out factories" and "academic sinkholes," methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems."

Future of Smart Cities ~ Inforights and Inclusion...

Thanks to MIT alumnus entreprener Saeed Arida for spotting The Battle for Control of Smart Cities by Greg Lindsay in Fast Company...

"Who will own the brains of smart cities -- citizens or corporations? At stake is an impending massive trove of data, not to mention issues of privacy, services, and inclusion. [...] Achieving that balance falls to smarter cities’ mayors, who must keep the tech heavyweights in check and “frame an agenda of openness, transparency and inclusivness.” Those are some of the conclusions of “The Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion,” a 10-year forecast commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and published this morning by the Institute for the Future. [...] Befitting the Foundation’s focus on the world’s poorest and what it calls “smart globalization,” the report’s emphasis is on smartening up cities in the developing world -- cities that lack both data about their swelling populations and the tools needed to make sense of it." [...] Together, they highlight five “technologies that matter” for cities in 2020 [...] The report’s centerpiece is a map depicting how these technologies might be applied across 13 scenarios.."

Safe Bicycle Crossings ~ Competent Infrastructure

Thanks to David Hembrow's View From the Cycle Path for spotting Mark Wagenbuur's excellent video on Junction Design for Safer Cycling in the Netherlands...