A couple of months ago, there was a bombing in France and after grieving for a few days, France unleashed its fighter planes bombs against who they thought were the enemy. It was normal reaction by countries around the world and often thought as the best action. In reality, it feels good for the time but does not solve the problem. The US has engaged in combat missions in the Middle East for sometime and when they first went in – their reaction was similar to France. We will go in, use our superior weapons and eliminate the threat and hopefully go home. The hopefully go home is still on the to do list, but is not coming as soon as the US wanted to. In the book Counter Strike – The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda by Eric Schmitt and Tom Shanker published by St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2012, the authors tell a new story on how to fight the enemy. It used to be countries went to war and countries could be seen on a map, with a capital city and a government running the country. The war was typically fought within the country and one could target the enemy. During the fight against Al Qaeda, the leaders do not have a country, they have safe houses in many countries, this makes the fight more difficult. In the book, it took the US about 5 years to adjust because the Secretary of Defense was frustrated and want to hear different ideas. The idea was if it takes a village to raise a child, determine the networks and go after the weak leak link till you have located the leaders.

That statement sounds simple, but it is very complicated to do, because one has to learn about the networks. The networks stem from leadership, recruitment, financing, information and people. After learning the networks than one can use tap into to try to counterattack the opposition. Sometimes breaking up a threat is more important than killing someone. It also means a reliance on information – the gathering, the analysis to determine patterns and occasionally finding a treasure of information. One of the many new devices is the ability to tap into your phone, look at your calls to see if you had called or received calls from known “bad guys”. Most people in the world tend to behave in patterns – it works for them and why change it. If governments can recognize leaders patterns, it makes life a little easier to track and eliminate the leaders. The billions of dollars being spent are about trying to find patterns.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, most investors start with a theory and then branch off, while everyone would like the biggest payoff first, over the years you will have both dogs and stars, hopefully you will remember both. The reality is life is about a village and building networks and taking advantage of opportunities as they come to you. One method of taking advantage of opportunities is not to lose your money investing or using dividend paying stocks for both dividends and capital gains.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.