CAN'T SLEEP ! TRY THIS ONE How to Fall Asleep in Under a Minute

SOURCE  : 
http://www.ba-bamail.com/content.aspx?emailid=15602&memberid=962758













            CAN'T  SLEEP ! TRY THIS ONE

How to Fall Asleep in Under a Minute                                                   For years I used to have trouble falling asleep at night. I would lie awake in bed, tired, yet incapable of drifting off into slumber. This would wreak havoc on my mornings, I'd have a hard time getting out of bed and was consistently late for work.   I confided this to my friend, and she asked me if I ever tried the “4-7-8” method, which she claimed was helping her fall asleep in no time. I tried this method, and it has been consistently working ever since. I now get a full night’s sleep, I’m never late for my job, and best of all – I feel refreshed.

The 4-7-8 Breathing Technique   Harvard-educated Dr. Andrew Weil developed the 4-7-8 method, an easy way to calm both the mind and the body, thus helping you fall asleep in under 60 seconds. Other benefits of this technique include stress-reduction, slower heart rate, improved concentration, and more.   The technique is very straightforward and easy: You take a deep breath through your nose for four seconds. You hold your breath in for 7 seconds. You then forcefully exhale through your mouth for eight seconds. Repeat the process 4-6 times. I               u                     usually pass out by the third or fourth repetition. What happens is that the way you breathe forces your heart rate to slow, which immediately puts you in a calmer and more sleep-oriented mental state.

Watch Dr. Weil Explaining the Technique:     Published on May 23, 2014 The 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise is utterly simple, takes almost no time, requires no equipment and can be done anywhere. Although you can do the exercise in any position, sit with your back straight while learning the exercise. Place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth, and keep it there through the entire exercise. You will be exhaling through your mouth around your tongue; try pursing your lips slightly if this seems awkward. 1) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound. 2) Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four. 3) Hold your breath for a count of seven. 4) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight. 5) This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths. Note that you always inhale quietly through your nose and exhale audibly through your mouth. The tip of your tongue stays in position the whole time. Exhalation takes twice as long as inhalation. The absolute time you spend on each phase is not important; the ratio of 4:7:8 is important. If you have trouble holding your breath, speed the exercise up but keep to the ratio of 4:7:8 for the three phases. With practice you can slow it all down and get used to inhaling and exhaling more and more deeply. Learn more about breathing exercises that Dr. Weil recommends:http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00521/...

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Title photo: freedigitalphotos.net

Source: Leigh D.

 

 

Why Centre's 'One Rank, One Pension' SOP Fails to Woo the Armed Forces

SOURCE :
http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/why-centres-one-rank-one-pension-sop-fails-to-woo-the-armed-forces-551926


Why Centre's 'One Rank, One Pension' 
                                SOP 
              Fails to Woo the Armed Forces
                                  By
                        Nitin A Gokhale 

Story First Published: February 25, 2014 12:14 IST

 

A great deal of resentment still prevails among serving officers of the armed forces.

 

                     If the Congress-led UPA government had thought it would be able to woo the large fraternity of soldiers with the 'One Rank, One Pension' sop, announced in the interim budget by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, it is perhaps mistaken because a great deal of resentment still prevails among serving officers of the armed forces over a glaring disparity that the government has failed to remove since 2008.

The disparity concerns the status and pay scales of senior military officers in comparison to officers of other paramilitary and civilian organisations, clubbed under a category called 'Organised Group A Services'.

Till 2008, there was no problem in day-to-day functioning between the military and officers of these services. Now a dissonance has set in. In 2008, the sixth pay commission allowed Organised Group A Services Officers with 19 years of service to be treated equivalent to joint secretary-level IAS officers.

This ruling gave the Organised Group A Services Officers a head start over much senior military officers since the government determines seniority by grade pay. The new ruling allowed these officers to get a grade pay of Rs. 12,000 in 19 years. In the military, the grade pay of Rs. 12,000 is granted to major generals, who pick up the two-star rank after 29 years of service - a huge gap of a decade.

This has created huge functional problem of command and control in joint cadre or multi-cadre environment where military officers have to work with the officers of the Organised Group A Services. For instance, a Brigadier with 27-28 years of service working with civilian engineers in Kashmir, north-east or Rajasthan is considered junior to officers in the organisations who may have done just 20 years of service since their grade pay is higher than the Brigadier.

The civilians, now as much conscious of their rank and status as their military counterparts, have been refusing to obey orders from military officers senior to them in number of years of service but considered junior because of the lower grade pay.

All representations by the armed forces to the government since 2008 have fallen on deaf ears. Despite a united stand taken by the three service chiefs and the Prime Minister setting up a high-powered committee of secretaries, this issue remains unresolved.

And what is the logic of not granting what is called, in technical terms, 'non-functional upgrade' or NFU? Because the Centre says Defence Officers are not part of Organised Group A Service.

So what are they? Just 'Commissioned Officers'?

Senior army officers point out that they lose out on two counts. One, they don't get higher grade pay until much later, and two, they are now deemed junior to much younger officers. On the contrary, granting NFU to defence services will remove the disparity and widespread resentment.

Why should Army officers get NFU? Because of the following reasons.

None of the Organised Groupp A Services face as much stagnation as Army officers because of its pyramidal structure. Almost 97 per cent of military officers retire at the levels below Joint Secretary.

Traditionally, since independence, there has been a broad parity between the Class 1 (or Group A) officers of Civil Services and the Defence Services officers which has been acknowledged by different pay commissions in their reports.

In such a case, the differential behaviour of the 6th Pay Commission not only disturbs the financial parity, it pushes down the military in status. In fact, now Sub Inspectors of CRPF or BSF or ITBP too have an edge over the military officers since they too will retire with the salary of Additional Secretary or Lieutenant General if they get promoted as Assistant Commandant or Deputy Superintendent of Police in eight years.

All this, say military officers, has added to the frustration, demoralization and increased disgruntlement among military officers.

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O.R.O.P. : Shashi Tharoor on OROP and Indian Soldiers

SOURCE 
http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/modi-ji-this-broken-promise-is-an-act-of-dishonour-720963




     O.R.O.P. : Shashi Tharoor on OROP
                                     and
                         Indian Soldiers



Story First Published: December 31, 2014 16:06 IST

Modi-Ji, This Broken Promise is An Act of Dishonour

(Dr. Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has written 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)

 

 

But still, it is something new to discover a government breaking a promise that it has repeatedly made not just in its campaign but on the floor of Parliament, expressed by the Finance Minister in his Budget speech and repeated by the Prime Minister himself. A failure to fulfil such promises is normally, in most parliamentary democracies, a resigning matter, but our government carries on, blithely unconcerned. Meanwhile, of this particular promise, there is no sign of any intention to actually fulfil it.

 

 

What am I going on about? Very simple: it is the pledge to ensure "One Rank One Pension" for our retired military personnel, who currently suffer gross injustice through the provision of pensions that have not been indexed to inflation, so that a Brigadier who retired twenty years ago gets a lower pension than a Captain who leaves the force this year. 

 

 

This entirely reasonable demand - made by people who have risked their lives to protect our borders, our nation, and us - was acceded to by the UPA government, echoed by the NDA, and announced again by the new regime after its ascension to power. Barely two months ago, Prime Minister Modi declared emotionally on his visit to the troops in Siachen that "One Rank One Pension has been fulfilled".

 

 

But Modi-ji, it has not been fulfilled. Not one soldier has received an enhanced pension; meanwhile leaks in the newspapers "reveal" that the Finance Ministry has had a change of heart, saying that justice to our men in uniform would "cost too much". 

 

 

 

It seems the Comptroller of Defence Accounts has estimated that the cost of One Rank One Pension could be as high as 9,300 crore. It may sound a lot, but the estimated budget for Mr Modi';s much-vaunted statue of Sardar Patel is 1,500 crore, which puts this sum in perspective.

At a recent media conclave, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar hedged his bets, suggesting that ex-servicemen would get 80% of the promised pension, and adding that "100% satisfaction to everyone is never given in real life."  This is an utter travesty. Is Mr Modi prepared to stand before the nation and say that we should not believe anything he promises, but that he will try to deliver 80% of it? If the Kargil war had happened on his watch, would we have to be content with getting 80% of the heights back?

 

 

Our soldiers never make 80% effort; they give 100%, indeed more. The nation owes them at least this much.

 

 

It is true I have a soft corner for our armed forces. I believe they embody the best of what India can be, but so rarely is: they are motivated, professional, meritocratic, competent, reliable, free of caste and religious prejudice, and they take risks the rest of us would not dare to. Yet we treat them in a disgracefully cavalier fashion. 

 

 

During my UN peace-keeping years, when I dealt with a large number of senior military officers and issues from around the world, I was appalled to see how poorly our professional officers were valued by our self-regarding bureaucracy. 

 

 

 

Whereas our officers, man to man, outshone their counterparts from Western militaries in their competence, intelligence and humanity, our system subjected them to various petty indignities. A full Colonel with over 25 years of service behind him is ranked by our babus below a Director in protocol terms. I have suffered through peacekeeping seminars in which a knowledgeable Indian military officer had to defer to a callow bureaucrat in discussions on military matters. At a time when post-Cold War peacekeeping called for serious levels of military expertise at the UN Headquarters in New York, India remained the only Permanent Mission to the UN (of any major peace-keeping contributor) not to post a military adviser. Our diplomats believed they knew it all themselves.

 

 

 

This attitude extends to conditions of service across the board. A Joint Secretary, with nineteen years of professional experience, is deemed the equivalent of a Major-General, who not only has thirty years but has commanded men and materiel, made life-and-death decisions and protected our nation. We pay pensions to a lot more Joint Secretaries than Major-Generals (only 0.8% of army officers ever attain Major General rank). Yet we are now quibbling about the cost.

 

 

 

Who are the people we are cheating here by pinching pennies? Some 20 lakh ex-servicemen and four lakh widows. It is time to ask the Government of Messrs Modi and Jaitley: gentlemen, have you no shame?

 

 

 

It is ironic that the BJP, which prides itself on a robust attitude to defence, should betray its own promises to the men who actually defend our country. Building a War Memorial is symbolism, which the Modi government seems much better at than substance. Actually making a difference in the lives of our retired service personnel is the kind of tangible benefit this government shrinks from too often.

 

 

 

As far back as 2003, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence recommended One Rank One Pension, calling it "a debt" the nation had to pay. It is a debt our Government must honour. Not to do so is an act of dishonor. It dishonours the nation and the flag these men have fought to defend. And it thoroughly discredits those who would treat the well-being of our jawans and officers as one more election promise to be lightly cast aside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game-Changing Canal in Thailand

SOURCE :
http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/no-china-isnt-building-a-game-changing-canal-in-thailand-yet/

China Power

 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

                No, China Isn't Building

a Game-Changing Canal in Thailand (Yet)

                                 By

                     Shannon Tiezzi

 

 

 for The Diplomat

 

 

Both Beijing and Bangkok have denied any government agreement on the Kra Canal

 

 

 

 

 

May 21, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rough location of the planned canal.

 

 

Earlier this week, Chinese media reported that China and Thailand had signed an agreement to build a canal through the Kra Isthmus, creating a way for ships to bypass the Malacca Strait. The reports have since been denied by both the Chinese and the Thai governments.


The initial report, published by the Hong Kong paper Oriental Daily (summarized in English here by WantChinaTimes) specifically said that “representatives” from China and Thailand (implying government participation) had signed a memorandum of cooperation on the project in Guangzhou. There were even details on the construction of the canal. Planned to be 102 kilometers long, 400 meters wide, and 25 meters deep, it would take ten years and cost $28 billion to build. Oriental Daily said the MoC marked the “formal beginning” of the long-discussed project.





The Kra Canal would shorten travel from the Indian Ocean and the Pacific by 1,200 kilometers, saving vessels up to five days in travel time. Given the potential benefits, the idea has been under discussion since the 17th century, as my colleague Ankit noted in a 2013 analysis, though no concrete progress has even been made.



But the Kra Canal has gained new life recently, as China continues to expand its vision for a Maritime Silk Road (MSR) connecting China’s coast line with the Indian Ocean and even the Mediterranean Sea. The Kra Canal would be a serious prestige project for the MSR – and would have the added strategic benefit of reducing China’s reliance on the Malacca Strait. Currently, around 80 percent of China’s oil imports must pass through the Malacca Strait, leaving China vulnerable to a blockade in the case of a contingency. Chinese analysts are upfront that the need to reduce reliance on the Malacca Strait is a driving force behind the MSR.
 By that logic, the Kra Canal is a very attractive project for Chinese leaders.


But let’s not assume that the long-dreamed-of canal is about to become a reality. An official from Thailand’s Transport Ministry told Channel   NewsAsia  that there were no such plans to begin work on the canal. Another government official, who requested anonymity, said that China will likely push hard for the project, but that Thailand isn’t as eager. “It is unlikely for Thailand to agree on the project because we are concerned about national security,” the official said, concluding that “it is unlikely for the Kra Canal project to be materialized anytime soon.”


Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Ministry denied any knowledge of discussions about the canal. In response to a question about the supposed China-Thailand agreement, spokesman Hong Lei told reporters, “It is also from the media reports that we learned about that. I have not heard of any plan of the Chinese government to take part in the project.” The Chinese embassy in Thailand issued a similar denial, saying that no Chinese government departments had had any cooperation with their Thai counterparts on the canal project – not even joint research.


Channel NewsAsia suggests that the initial reports may have been based on a misunderstanding that conflated private groups with official government figures. Thailand does have a “Kra Canal Committee,” but the groups is made up of businessmen and former officials and not directly connected to the current government. A similar collection of private citizens may have indeed met in Guangzhou to discuss the canal project.


The canal would be of obvious value to China, particularly if its businessmen take the lead in construction. A Chinese businessman is undertaking the massive task of building a canal through Nicaragua to rival the Panama Canal for transit between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In return, the Chinese company will get a 50-year concession granting them control over the canal, with the option of renewal when the 50 years are up.

China pursued a similar arrangement – construction in exchange for territorial control – in the controversial Colombo Port City deal in Sri Lanka.


Control over a canal on the Kra Isthmus would be a strategic godsend for China –but is also a major part of the “security concerns” referenced by the Thai official. Chinese analysts are already speculating that a Chinese-built Kra Canal would allow Beijing to refuse passage to ships at its discretion, potentially dragging Thailand into the middle of a nasty situation. Plus, there are the obvious concerns about ceding control over such a valuable strategic asset to another country.


Overall, China’s MSR faces an uphill battle among its nearest neighbors due to security concerns and general uncertainty regarding China’s intentions for the region. Aside from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India all have expressed varying degrees of reservation about whether the MSR will truly be “win-win” for both their countries and China. That’s in stark contrast to the other half of the “Belt and Road,” the Silk Road Economic Belt, which has been enthusiastically received by China’s neighbors to the west.




Despite media reports, the Kra Canal remains a dream – for now.
































 

SOURCE :
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/how-to-take-over-a-small-country-in-10-easy-steps/?singlepage=1

         How to Take Over a Small Country

                                    in

                         10 Easy Steps

                                  By

                         Sean McFate   

 

 

 

May 13, 2015

    

---

                      


                   Mercenaries  R    Back!


 

 

 After a three-century hiatus, sensible people are once again realizing that renting an army is cheaper than owning one: the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, Putin in Ukraine and Syria, even Nigeria against Boko Haram. It’s boom time, boys! But why work for someone when you could be king? Countries are ripe for the plucking these days, from the Crimea to the Gambia to large swaths of the Middle East. Just don’t be an amateur about it. Here are some tips to be a professional coup maker.

 

*****************************************************

 

 DONT FORGET PAKISTAN WHEREIN A RENTED ARMY                                        KNOWN AS

 

                    ""  NON STATE ACTORS ""

 

 

HAVE  LITERARARY STUCK A BAMBOO IN THE BOTTOM OF BOTH INDIA & AFGHANISTAN IN PARTICULAR

& EVEN USA IN AFGHANISTAN in general - 

 

                                                                                 Vasundhra

 

 

**********************************************************************************

1. Choose your country. Select a country that has been consigned to the trash heap of history, preferably one without strong regional allies. The discerning mercenary looks for the following qualities in a potential selection:
           (a)  Exploitable natural resources, 
           (b) corruptible and/or incompetent military, and 
           (c)  At least one functional airstrip.


To facilitate recreational activities, make certain your target country has a good brewery, beautiful beaches, and women sans veils. Although this rules out central Africa, most of the Middle East, and some of Asia, you’ll have a much more enjoyable war with beer, bathing, and babes.

 

2. Find a Warlord and Co-opt him. Taking over a small country can be exhausting work, so don’t do it alone. Local knowledge (and muscle) is best. Win a native strong man to your side. This is the easiest part. He will handle the recruitment of local talent and interrogation of sources, and will generally keep trains running on time.


To make him dependent on you as the access agent, exploit his vulnerabilities. Common leverage points include: hookers, cocaine mountains, tankards of favorite libations (Chivas Regal for the English speakers and Hennessy XO for the French ones), chromed AK-47s, a supercar fleet, statues of himself, and excessive flattery to foster images of megalomaniacal grandeur.



3. Secure funding. Unless you’ve got oodles of cash in unmarked bills lying around the chateau, you’re going to have to find someone else to pay for your king-making enterprise. The U.S. government might bankroll your private army, and USAID will throw money at anything.

 Be sure to mention “capacity building” using “holistic modalities” that establishes the “rule of law” to “counter violent extremism” and deny “terrorist safe havens” in your proposal. List your strongman as an “implementing partner” with the highest respect for human rights. They won’t check, so it’s alright.


Another good bet are Big Oil companies, especially if you fabricate “third party” geological surveys indicating strategic-reserve levels of oil. If everything else fails, seek out the son of a former British Prime Minister who is politically connected, massively rich, galactically stupid, and fancies himself a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia. Or better yet, Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and now working for China.

 
4. Create a shell company. To get people to give you huge amounts of cash, you need the pretense of legitimacy. Have a look at the advertisements in the back of the Economist magazine. For $398 you can have your own offshore company in the Bahamas and go scuba diving too.

Make sure your offshore company is located in a country with no extradition treaties.

That will come in handy later.




Branding note: Don’t call your new company something obvious like Sharp End International. Choose something vague and dull using any combination of the following words: operations, options, strategy, group, global, international, solutions, or just use the name of your college alma mater or a famous statesman. Nifty combinations might include Harvard Operations Group (HOG) or Polk International Strategic Solutions (PISS).




5. Raise your Mercenary Army. More likely than not, there is a huge labor pool of raw talent in your country’s neighborhood. Don’t bother with a TV or radio recruitment campaign (they won’t have electricity), billboards (no roads), or posters in villages (they can’t read). Instead, lean on your local strongman to put the word out in the ungoverned countryside through the beer delivery trucks, who intrepidly venture where CIA agents don’t dare and are beloved by everyone.


Initially, you’re going to need some battle-hardened combatants, preferably from disenfranchised ethnic groups or tribes that used to be in power and are surly about it. Anyone identified by Human Rights Watch as a systematic violator of human rights is a sure bet for real talent. Offer $100 a rebel (in crisp U.S. greenbacks), an all-the-enemies-you-can-kill deal, and promise a massive keg party at the end of it. That should do the trick. A few hundred recruits will do in the beginning, and the rest will join at gunpoint later. If you have trouble making your numbers, children are easily pressed into service. Alternatively, you can always start your own cult.



You will soon learn that your new recruits have a great deal of shooting experience, but little ability to shoot accurately. You will have to break bad habits, such as: shooting with one hand over their eyes, shooting their legs off, shooting colleagues, and disco-shooting — a technique involving shooting AK-47s while dancing in the middle of a firefight. Expect to lose one quarter of your recruits during basic rifle marksmanship.

Whatever you do, don’t give out the grenades until game-day.

 Remember — your army doesn’t have to be well trained, just better trained or crazier than your adversary’s army. If you’re lucky, you’ll be squaring off against an American trained force.


If you are operating in Africa, you will find that most of what you require can be purchased cheaply and easily at the village market. For example, an AK-47 should cost no more than $20 or a small goat.

Other equipment to procure includes: ammo, RPGs, crew-served weapons, and the ubiquitous Toyota Hilux pickup truck with .50cal attachment (aka a “technical”). Avoid pistols, as they tend to be used against you by overly ambitious subordinates, typically once you have seized power.


If you have problems sourcing equipment, try the local United Nations mission, who spend months collecting weapons from former warring parties.

For a little baksheesh, UN peacekeepers (especially those from South Asia or Nigeria) are often willing to under-report a few tons of weapons.


 If all else fails, go on a shopping spree in Eastern Europe. Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania are best. Avoid Russia. Ukraine is busy. Also, don’t bother with the middleman: go directly to the weapons factory.
Expect to spend a lot of tush-time in dilapidated, four-prop AN-12 cargo planes flying with the aid of a Garmin suckered to the windshield. Bring earplugs. Pack a lunch, a few briefcases of cash, and some firepower in case the deal goes bad. While in flight, do not be alarmed by the drunken crew smoking on your live-ammo crates while drinking homemade slivovitz that tastes vaguely like distilled hydraulic fluid. This is normal, and you will be expected to participate.



6. Develop a propaganda campaign. You can count on the international press not caring about your country-to-be, unless white tourists are killed. However, noisome Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), such as Amnesty International, may raise a stink after your coup, so pre-empt them by offering a counter-narrative to the complacent press. Claim that you “nobly plan to restore hope to a beleaguered people, victimized by a serial human rights abusing, terrorist-loving tyrant.” Be sure to flash pictures of starving babies with flies on their faces to attract Hollywood celebrities to your cause. Include some combination of the following buzz-phrases in your press release:

 “local ownership,” “human security” and “good governance.”



For NGOs who fail to get the message, don’t order a “disappearance” of their staff, as they will only use this against you. Instead, arrange for a sex-scandal involving the NGO’s country director, small native boys, and YouTube.
 With luck, the entire NGO will be declared persona non grata, and kicked out of the country by dawn.



7. Stage your coup. Once you’ve passed out the hand grenades, fueled up the technicals, and verified that your army is high on dope (you can’t stop this so you might as well channel it for the cause), you are ready to stage your coup d’etat. Most fragile states are so accustomed to coups that all you really need to do is take over the radio station and the Presidential Palace to achieve local “buy-in.”


           First, attack at dawn, when government forces will be hung-over and thus incapacitated.

           Second, take out the cell-phone towers. You will find that this eliminates 99% of the government’s ability to communicate (the last 1% comprise of hand-signals and verbal abuse).


            Third, drive madly down the main streets shooting into the sky and cursing wildly. This is standard coup-protocol, and signals to the citizens:

“Armed coup in progress; please remain inside your homes.”


              Fourth, expect a final stand of semi-sober, loyal government forces at the palace front gate. This will be a paltry but fearless force of the president’s “elite” inner-circle bodyguard. Usually this means about a hundred deranged child soldiers who worship the president as father and king. The best way to defeat these mini-monsters is to take cover and taunt them via bullhorn, calling them names (e.g., teeny squirt, virgin-boy, lil’ pecker, mini-me-men, etc.).

 Inevitably, they will become enraged and shoot all their ammo at you. When it runs out, crash down the gates and crack heads.



                Fifth, go straight to the president’s bedroom and dig him out from under his pile of whores (caution: he may be dressed as one of them). He will appear much smaller in real life than on TV, so it might take a while to recognize him. Almost immediately (within the hour) conduct a “war crimes” trial followed by a good old-fashion hanging, Saddam Hussein-style. A minimal level of pageantry is important. For some reason, the international community respects this more than a bullet to the head.


Finish up with a national feast, involving free beer from the local brewery, indigenous dancing, and virginal sacrifice (if culturally appropriate).



8. Cement your position. To your surprise, you will find that the citizenry will continue on with “business as usual.” However, you will have to act immediately to establish your authority among pesky rivals by eliminating the opposition entirely and making a few examples of ambitious allies (e.g., your co-opted warlord). You must do this on the same day as the coup, which will send ripples through the countryside, contain most of the bloodshed to a single day, and make good press.


Avoid becoming a global pariah by joining a “coalition of the willing” and/or becoming a U.S. partner in the “War on Terror” or whatever they call that now. Instead, volunteer your country as a secret U.S. air base or CIA prison center in exchange for Washington’s political cover at the United Nations and lots of military aid

(it worked for Pakistan and Egypt for years).




9. Do some nation building. In order to avoid a coup yourself, you will need more than repressive secret police — you will need to generate some Gross Domestic Product for your country. If you can grow them, poppies or coca leaves yield more revenue than, say, rice or whatever the World Bank is pushing these days. And then people will pay you not to grow them, so it’s “win-win.”



However, becoming a narco-state is so yesterday. Instead, consider turning your country into an offshore tax haven for hedge funds and oligarchs. As the British Virgin Islands shows, laundering billions of dollars will not only pay handsomely, it will also put you in tight with the Fortune 500 cocktail circuit, who will pay to develop ultra-posh scuba resorts on your beaches, right next to your banks. Of course, this will land your new nation on the Financial Action Task Force blacklist, but think of this as free advertising.




Lastly, shore up customer confidence by not signing quaint extradition treaties. Let them know that they always have a “home away from home,” if they must suddenly flee their country. You may have missed out on the Arab Spring wave but you might get lucky with an African Spring, Latin Spring or Asian Spring. You will soon realize that once you have a vote in the United Nations, you can do whatever you want — enjoy!




10. Bask in your victory. You will find that ruling a small country is akin to being a rock star. Give yourself a new name in the local language, like “Rooster Who Gets All the Hens,” and even name your new nation after yourself like Cecil Rhodes did. You will have hoes-a-plenty, drugs, money, a private jet, an entourage, and no responsibility. People will expect you to misbehave, so don’t let them down.



Sean McFate is the author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order.

 

Tags: coups, political violence, Private military companies

 

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