Some random items of interest:
- The mass arrest of 'al Qaeda' personnel in Saudi Arabia shows that the group's main focus is still the disruption of energy infrastructure (to capitalize on a huge window of vulnerability in global oil consumption/production -- as in why attack the US or fight in Afghanistan if you can collapse the global economy through attacks at home?). Fortunately, despite al Qaeda's shift towards systems disruption (as anticipated in Brave New War), it still is missing a key insight: Saudi infrastructure is primarily industrial and therefore extremely power/water dependent. This means that electricity is its systempunkt. See this scenario:The Disruption of Saudi Arabia for more detail.
- Yves of Naked Capitalism eviscerates Michael Lewis' new book, "The Big Short." With excruciating precision she kneecaps the major argument of the book, showing it to be a fictional tale far, far from reality. I had the same reaction to the book, but couldn't have done nearly the job Yves did. Bravo.
- Hemet CA. The war being waged against the town hit another level today when four municipal trucks were set ablaze.
- SunRun solar. Finances the installation of solar panels on homes radically reducing upfront costs. The owner pays the company back by buying the electricity produced by the panels for a fixed rate that's typically 25-50% less than utility rates. Appears to be a low cost way to access resilient power and a method that could be co-opted by other sources of finance. Any feedback or experiences with this firm?
- Nice article on the shift to complete service packages for malware. "To check whether a piece of malware is on the security companies' blacklists, hackers can send their creations to websites such as virtest.com, which for just $1 will try the code out on more than 20 antivirus products. If the malware fails the test, would-be criminals can simply upload their malware to another site that will tweak it to render it unrecognisable." It's a cool example of how flexible open source warfare is. It can shift between market based strategies (with segmentation, specialization, and services) or sharing based strategies based on the needs/conditions very rapidly.
- Philadelphia, PA. Flash mobs getting more dangerous. LOL. Instant rage and flash disruption. Local police and FBI trying to get ahead of this (but the tools they are using suck). Given that protest and political action are so ineffective, this is yet another step towards something much bigger.
- US social security went negative this year and not 2016. Due to the system's dynamics (a fraudulent trust fund), this shortfall will be immediately reflected by an increase in the federal budget deficit. One interesting aspect of the onset of D2 (the second great depression), is that the entire US government ponzi scheme is facing an accelerated demise. A hollow state in thrall to global financiers awaits in the near future.
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