DEBKA

DEBKA claims the Saudi attack was aimed at the royal family. This was the first attempt by Osama bin Laden’s organization to assassinate a member of the Saudi royal family. It is a pivotal event in that it sharply escalates the terrorist offensive besetting the kingdom and raises the stakes on both sides. I concur… Continue reading DEBKA

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The Saudi Takedown Scenario

The Saudi Takedown Scenario. Reuters. 2 huge car bombs explode near Saudi security buildings. Earlier this year, my analysis indicated that the campaign against the Saudi state would begin in December, after the US elections. Over the past months, I have made major revisions to my Saudi takedown scenario based on my evolving model of… Continue reading The Saudi Takedown Scenario

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Belmont Club

Belmont Club. Some interesting analysis of the existing Tsunami alert system. Here's a great animation of the wavefront from the Tsunami (it provides a timeline of impact). [John Robb's Weblog]

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All Stick and NO Carrot

All Stick and NO Carrot. I agree with David Stephenson on this. The US is missing a major PR and goodwill opportunity. BTW, it looks like Pfizer is giving as much as the entire US to disaster relief. Spain nearly doubled the US contribution at $68 million… A little free thinking: A balanced security budget… Continue reading All Stick and NO Carrot

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The Economist

The Economist. The Death of the American Meritocracy…. This premise of this article is totally correct. My personal experience totally confirms this. The new US tax laws will only only accelerate this trend. Societal ossification in the face of extreme global competition (from both economic and system competitors) is bad, bad news… [John Robb's Weblog]

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continues

Goss continues to clean house in the CIA. It won't change anything. This is an understatement: Even before taking charge of the CIA, Goss and his close associates had been openly critical of the agency's directorate of intelligence, saying it suffered from poor leadership and was devoting too much effort to monitoring day-to-day developments rather… Continue reading continues

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Make Firefox faster

Make Firefox faster. This article explains how to turn on http pipelining to make Firefox slurp web pages faster. You might not want to do this if you regularly use your browser over a dialup connection. Otherwise, no-brainer. [Ceejbot]

One of the things that really bothers me about America's new security regime is that it ignores economic realities. The current world order isn't run by nation-states. It's run by Adam Smith (aka global markets).

The history of the last 20 years will focus on the radical expansion of these markets to encompass 3 billion people. It was the tipping point for capitalism.

However, markets are harsh rulers. They punish non-economic behavior with a sharp slap of the invisible hand. There isn't any special immunity for the US.

So, when we spend $150 in direct security costs for every barrel exported by Iraq, we invite the slap. The cost of Iraq's security isn't reflected in the price of oil, nor is the $5 per barrel of naval security we pay for every barrel of oil from the Persian Gulf. [John Robb's Weblog

One of the things that really bothers me about America's new security regime is that it ignores economic realities. The current world order isn't run by nation-states. It's run by Adam Smith (aka global markets). The history of the last 20 years will focus on the radical expansion of these markets to encompass 3 billion… Continue reading One of the things that really bothers me about America's new security
regime is that it ignores economic realities. The current world order
isn't run by nation-states. It's run by Adam Smith (aka global
markets).

The history of the last 20 years will focus on the radical
expansion of these markets to encompass 3 billion people. It was the
tipping point for capitalism.

However, markets are harsh rulers. They punish non-economic behavior
with a sharp slap of the invisible hand. There isn't any special
immunity for the US.

So, when we spend $150 in direct security costs for every barrel
exported by Iraq, we invite the slap. The cost of Iraq's security isn't
reflected in the price of oil, nor is the $5 per barrel of naval
security we pay for every barrel of oil from the Persian Gulf. [
John Robb's Weblog

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Categorized as News

Evangelism

Evangelism. This Fortune article proves that the thousands of hours I spent pioneering the business/blog space on K-Logs and on my weblog paid off. It's great to see that the thousands of people, in as many companies, that read my work (or I worked with one-on-one) were able to leverage it into a revolution. I… Continue reading Evangelism