Back to Europe
After 3 weeks on the East Coast of the US, I'm back in Europe for a few weeks before going back to London. My US experience in the suburbs was quite interesting - it's so different from my previous experience in New York - yet I'm not sure I would be happy in this Desperate Housewife environment... I'm definitely more a city person.
Since Sunday, I'm in Switzerland to continue my internship and it's a complete change of environment as you can imagine. We are working from our hotel room and are trying to arrange face-to-face interviews with people who might be interested by the services and products proposed by the company who is employing us. The alumni network from the London Business School is actually quite useful for this and there is no doubt in my mind that the real added value of a business school is the strength of its alumni network. We've been able to organize meetings with very senior people in our target organizations and interviews with them are friendly and efficient.
On a different subject and of particular interest is this article from the Washington Post about Alliance Base. The article is 10 days old but it's particularly relevant in the light of London's bombing. It describes the operations of a top-secret center set up in Paris with the CIA and the DGSE (the French CIA) in cooperation with the intelligence services of Australia, Canada, Britain and Germany. The goal of this center is to identify, track and capture terrorists from Al-Quaeda outside Iraq and Afghanistan and it has been quite successful so far. I'm not surprised the cooperation in the intelligence domain is so deep between France and the US even though the politic relationships are bad; after all France has been actively fighting Islamic terrorism since the 90s at a time when it was relatively minor on the radar screen of US agencies. Let's hope this agency or any other for that matter, will be able to track and kill or bring to justice the terrorists behind London's bombing.
Since Sunday, I'm in Switzerland to continue my internship and it's a complete change of environment as you can imagine. We are working from our hotel room and are trying to arrange face-to-face interviews with people who might be interested by the services and products proposed by the company who is employing us. The alumni network from the London Business School is actually quite useful for this and there is no doubt in my mind that the real added value of a business school is the strength of its alumni network. We've been able to organize meetings with very senior people in our target organizations and interviews with them are friendly and efficient.
On a different subject and of particular interest is this article from the Washington Post about Alliance Base. The article is 10 days old but it's particularly relevant in the light of London's bombing. It describes the operations of a top-secret center set up in Paris with the CIA and the DGSE (the French CIA) in cooperation with the intelligence services of Australia, Canada, Britain and Germany. The goal of this center is to identify, track and capture terrorists from Al-Quaeda outside Iraq and Afghanistan and it has been quite successful so far. I'm not surprised the cooperation in the intelligence domain is so deep between France and the US even though the politic relationships are bad; after all France has been actively fighting Islamic terrorism since the 90s at a time when it was relatively minor on the radar screen of US agencies. Let's hope this agency or any other for that matter, will be able to track and kill or bring to justice the terrorists behind London's bombing.
posted by k at 12:29 PM
7 Comments:
In a twisted way, I kinda like the suburb. Enjoy your time in Switzerland.
Technically speaking and despite what British think, London is still in Europe (cf. 1st paragraph). ;)
Welcome back, I hope you didn't gain too much weight with all this horrible US food. (smiley again)
G.
I can understand why one can like the suburbs; really the life is pretty cool there but I have always lived in big cities so the different is too much to handle..
and Guillaume, no worries, I did not abuse from Hooter's chicken wings so no extra weight this tinme
quite a globe trotting job , i should say. the alliance base article is nice, but I believe this is something that is going on for a long long time now. the cia has secretively co-operated with all its friend countries to curtail terrorism, and sometimes what we can call fanatical nationalism....dont know if cia has a tie up with the british intelligence agency
Hi forrest,
I agree, the CIA is probably working since a long time with its allies (and also sometimes with more doubtfoul countries)and it always had a "special relationship" with the UK.
What was interesting I think was that this center was set up almost at the height of the French bashing frenzy in the US
K.
BTW Forrest, I still have your questions and sorry for not replying yet - I'll try to do it before the end of July
cheers
Hi Olivier,
I just checked your blog today and I'm happy to see it's still kicking. I know it comes a bit late but I hope you didn't have any relatives or friends concerned by the recent bombings. As I'm writing this, looks like another terrrorist attack just occured in London.
Take care, buddy
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