Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday 11 May 2015

“The Tao Of Target Setting” plus 17 more : Eurasia Review

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Posted: 10 May 2015 03:15 PM PDT
If your top salespeople exceed their sales targets, do you raise those targets for the next year? What happens if a positive bump was only temporary and your best talent is left discouraged by performance goals that are ever harder to reach? In other words, what is the best way to set targets that motivate, help with planning, but don’t fall prey to the “ratchet effect”? Carmen Aranda and Javier Arellano of the University of Navarra and Tony Dávila of IESE study ratcheting and...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 03:12 PM PDT
Over the course of Greece’s painful and protracted negotiations with European creditors, Athens has sought, at various times when a deal seems to be slipping away, to play the Russian pivot card. What began as a series of diplomatic overtures between the Tsipras government and Moscow quickly turned more serious once rumors began to swirl around Greece’s potential participation in Russia’s Turkish Stream pipeline which, as a reminder, will allow Russia to bypass Bulgaria by piping gas through...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 03:09 PM PDT
By Joanna Paraszczuk (RFE/RL) — For the Islamic State (IS) group, appearances are everything. That’s why, in recent days, the militant group has focused its propaganda efforts on positive developments in the Iraqi city of Mosul. IS overran Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city with a population of around 2 million people — in June 2014. But if the assumption is that the city was left in ruins, IS’s propaganda machine begs to differ. It is sharing pictures of the...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 03:04 PM PDT
Houthi fighters in Yemen have announced that they are prepared to engage in negotiations with the Saudi-led coalition forces bombing their country to end the plight of their people. In a statement issued on Sunday May 10, they also called for more humanitarian aid for the people of Yemen. Reuters reports that in their statement, the Houthis agree to hold talks with the coalition forces under the umbrella of the UN. Saudi Arabia had announced that if the Houthis accept a ceasefire, they will...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 02:55 PM PDT
By Mert Ussakli* “April is the cruelest month.” For many, T.S. Eliot’s famous line may conjure images of the post-World War I wasteland, but for the Turkish, it brings back many other painful memories. The anniversary of the Armenian genocide on April 24, the anniversary of the May 1, Taksim Square massacre of 1977, the approaching second-year anniversary of the Gezi Park protests in 2013… All of these polarizing historical events line up one by one on each cruel Turkish spring. What do these...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 02:46 PM PDT
By Hilary Wise* Mona Samouni was 10-years-old when she lost her home, her parents and 19 other relatives, after they were crushed before her eyes in one of the bombing raids of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2009. In an award-winning film, she speaks of her past experiences with an almost eerie detachment, as if she is telling someone else’s story. One can only guess at what is going on behind that calm facade, as she sends a heartbreaking message to other, luckier children: “I ask the...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 02:39 PM PDT
We continue with the third part of analyzing Media (il)literacy within South-East Europe, having in mind that having an illiterate media-type people within the area is a blessing for the politicians. People usually say, “Trust them, without doubt,” when referring to the  content of the news on any News channel in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo*, and Macedonia… 2. The gradual strategy (by Noam Chomsky) “Acceptance to an unacceptable degree,...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 01:00 PM PDT
Despite the White House’s boasting a few months ago that Yemen was an example of President Barack Obama’s successful leadership, Yemeni jihadists on Saturday gained control over a major city in the Southwestern Saudi Arabian province of Jizan. Senior Yemeni military sources said on Saturday that the country’s tribal fighters won control over the city of Ahad al-Masareha in Jizan after exchanging fire with the Saudi forces for only about 3 hours. The tribesmen have also...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 12:52 PM PDT
By Dalga Khatinoglu* During his visit to Germany Iran’s oil minister said that exporting gas through Turkey to the EU is not Iran’s priority. Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on May 7 that “gas prices were too low in Europe and transporting gas there from Iran faces legal obstacles and costly fees. For example, if Iran wanted to export gas to Europe, it would likely go through Turkey, where it could be subject to transit fees”. During last month, as hopes for elimination of...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:39 AM PDT
By Marika Sosnowski for Syria Comment* In 2015, the UN has requested a staggering US$8.4 billion to help 18 million people within Syria and the immediate region. This is a huge sum and the largest humanitarian appeal in UN history. Five years in to the brutal civil war, the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis has predominantly focused on providing immediate relief in the form of food, health and sanitation. However, the complex and extended nature of the Syrian conflict now means that...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:34 AM PDT
Some of the worst nights of my life have taken place in early May — Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory on May 3, 1979 (when I was too young to even vote), and the 2010 election, on May 6, 2010, which brought a Tory-led coalition government, led by David Cameron, to power. There were other dreadful nights, on or around May — the Tory victories on June 9, 1983, June 11, 1987 and April 9, 1992 — and after the anti-Tory euphoria of Tony Blair’s victory wore off, following New Labour’s...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:31 AM PDT
By Alvaro de Juana Following a private meeting at the Vatican with Pope Francis, who has helped to broker improved relations between Cuba and the United States, the president of the Caribbean nation suggested he could return to the Church in the future. “I will start praying again and return to the Church” if the Pope continues what he has been doing, Raul Castro said on Sunday. Castro is president of Cuba and the younger brother of Fidel, the leader of Cuba’s communist revolution. He...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:25 AM PDT
By Graham Land There are eight species of pangolin — four in Asia and four in Africa. All Asian pangolin species are either critically endangered or endangered, while their African counterparts are classified as vulnerable. While trade in all eight species is outlawed by international treaty, public consciousness is not in the fight against trafficking, which is quickly leading to the pangolin’s demise. The numbers are astounding. By the most conservative estimates, 10,000 pangolins are...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:17 AM PDT
Few are able to bridge Egypt’s deeply polarizing divide between supporters and opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood following the 2013 military coup that toppled President Mohammed Morsi. Mohammed Aboutreika, Egypt’s most celebrated and storied soccer player, is proving to be either the exception that proves the rule or an indication of shifting attitudes amid an uproar after authorities froze his company assets on suspicion of funding the Brotherhood. Breaking the mould was always...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:07 AM PDT
By Wilson John* It is not the first time that the Pakistan army has accused the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, of fomenting trouble in Pakistan. Propaganda against India and its security forces have a staple ingredient of the Pakistan army’s proxy war against India for over three decades now. What is, however, different this time is the timing and the possible reasons for such an outburst. The central premise of the allegations is that...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 10:04 AM PDT
The story of the run-up to the Global Crisis is, unfortunately, not an entirely new one. This column argues that regulators would do well to read up on the ‘Panic of 1907’. What quelled rumours and panicky behaviour back then still applies – maintaining market liquidity through measures that encourage transparency. By Caroline Fohlin, Thomas Gehrig and Marlene Haas* Opacity may be a major source of market freezes. This phenomenon arose in dramatic fashion in the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis,...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 09:50 AM PDT
Saudi authorities have conducted a concerted campaign since 2013 to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrant workers, resulting in abuses against many of them, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday. The 36-page report, “Detained, Beaten, Deported: Saudi Abuses against Migrants during Mass Expulsions,” draws on interviews with 60 workers deported to Yemen and Somalia who experienced serious abuses during the expulsion campaign. They described beatings and...

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Posted: 10 May 2015 09:47 AM PDT
Over 100,000 people from Yemen’s flashpoint Saada province fled to adjacent Amran over the past three days, a Yemeni official said Sunday. “For the third day in a row, Amran is still receiving large numbers of displaced residents whose homes in Saada have been destroyed in front of them,” Faisal Jamaan, Amran’s governor, was quoted as saying by the official Yemeni news agency. Since Thursday, a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition, which launched an operation in Yemen six...

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