|
 |
Friday, July 09, 2004 |
 Wow. My e-mail provider, Oddpost, was just acquired by Yahoo.
11:36:59 PM 
|
|
What is amazing to me is how many people are arriving on my GG site after searching for "homemade microwave weapons." At least 10 a day. Interesting.
5:35:44 PM
|
|
Also, thanks Rick and Doc (again)!
5:10:12 PM
|
|
NYT. The verbal presentation of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA was much more negative than this article. They said it was a systemic problem that couldn't be fixed merely by new people or superficial reorganization. The solution they will propose is extreme centralization. This won't solve the problem. Our intelligence services are hold-overs from the cold war. They are too insulated by layer upon layer of secrecy to be effective. Given this environment, groupthink will always be a problem. There is a decentralized solution, but we won't arrive at it until our backs are against the wall.
1:47:46 PM
|
|
Lind burns some cycles speculating on what the Iranians woud do if Israel knocks out their nuclear weapons program.
1:28:59 PM
|
|
Stephen Roach has the numbers on recent job growth in the US. It's disturbing.
According to the household survey of the US labor market, the growth in the number at work part time - both for economic and non-economic reasons - accounted for 97% of the cumulative increase in total employment over the past four months. Fully 81% of total job growth over the past year was concentrated in low-end occupations such as transportation and material moving, non-professional services, sales, and the installation, maintenance, and repair grouping.
12:21:09 PM
|
|
How can we improve how the market works? As we continue to shift from a nation-state to a market-state, we will see more of an emphasis on opportunity vs. outcomes (with the market as the mechanism). Efficient market operation is paramount if this shift is to work. This offers the Dems an chance at reinvention: a focus on opportunity. Let the Republicans continue to focus on the elimination of outcome based government and the elimination of opportunity (via the religious right) to their detriment. A major part of Dem's message of opportunity should be market transparency and the elimination of dual rule sets (one that applies to most people and one that applies to the rich or connected). In this model a combination of Edwards and Eliot Spitzer (as the US Attorney General) is unbeatable. George Will gets the analysis of the trend right, but his conclusion is wrong.
8:33:09 AM
|
|
LA Times. The insurgents' decentralized command structure, (Bruce) Hoffman (an advisor to coalition forces and RAND superstar) said in an interview, echoes the atomized nature of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Thus, the arrest of deposed President Saddam Hussein in December was not nearly the intelligence windfall that U.S. authorities had predicted. Nor did his capture dry up funding for the insurgents. Think in terms of markets of networks Bruce (or hire me, LOL).
"The nature of this culture is you can't win a war of attrition with them," said Col. Robert B. Abrams of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad, "because it's a circle of violence — there will always be someone in the family who will pick up arms. Unless you want to kill too many people. Which of course we never want to do."
8:16:18 AM
|
|
Targeted assaults by global guerrillas achieve results. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered a halt to further deployment of troops to Iraq after a Filipino worker was abducted, a spokesman said today. President Arroyo's move applies to workers hired out through Philippine government labor agencies. She also repeated a government offer to help repatriate any Filipino workers wishing to leave Iraq. The Philippines has deployed 51 soldiers, police officers and health workers to the multinational force in Iraq. In addition, about 4100 Filipinos are working in US military bases in Iraq as cooks and maintenance technicians.
7:50:46 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
|
|
|
