Corruption Perceptions Index
IHT –
Iraq has emerged at the bottom of a survey that measures corruption around the globe. The Corruption Perceptions Index, conducted by Transparency International in Berlin and released Monday, also showed that the United States, the occupying power in Iraq, slipped three notches to 20th place in the survey of 163 countries.
League Of Rogue States
Coming Anarchy’s Chirol is expounding on black state globalization –
Many people focus on the negative effects of globalization with regard to non-state actors forgetting that as much of the world moves happily into the future, an increasing number of states are opting for a kind of parallel globalization, or a kind of club for isolated rogue states.
The question is whether these states are sustainable in a globalizing world – what prevents internal uprisings from working in a world where black technology is a commodity and open source warfare is the name of the game?
Death Of A President
Just finished it. Well executed movie, and although I don’t agree with the agenda, it does present certain perspectives well (the Secret Service agent for one) and manages to shed some light on a variety of trajectories.
Next up I have to get my hands on a copy of The Man Who Broke Britain –
A devastating terrorist strike wipes out much of Saudi Arabia’s oil production; the same day a trader of Saudi origin disappears from UK investment bank Sun First Credit (SFCB). Managers soon discover the missing trader, Samir Badr, has built up crippling debts, multiplied a hundred fold by the attacks in Saudi. SFCB, once the toast of the city, is suddenly heading for bankruptcy, taking a whole raft of other banks down with it. The resulting market crash and banking crisis will push Britain and the US into a 21st Century recession: pension funds are slashed, unemployment soars and the housing market collapses. Following the discovery that Badr has committed suicide, a new Al-Qa’eda tape surfaces, in which Bin Laden appears to claim responsibility for the financial turmoil. Suspicion grows that Badr was an Islamic extremist who deliberately sabotaged the bank. As the authorities and the media launch a massive investigation into the apparent Al-Qaeda assault on the pillars of the Western Economy, an alternative explanation emerges. Could greed and incompetence be the real cause of the collapse of Britain’s economy?
And The Day Britain Stopped which deals with the scenario of England’s transport system failing as a result of a converging of a strike, an accident, and congestion.
No River For Me
Eric Rice has the same problem with “river of news” as I do –
I ended up wanting to categorize it into the organized form I used to read it in.
Has anyone besides me noticed a significant dearth of “news hound” friendly RSS readers on the Mac platform? I want to be able to split up into folders, flag, archive, create my own filter feeds etc but for whatever reason, I haven’t come across any reader that offers that kind of functionality (most specifically the archiving).
Short Runways
CNN –
More than half of U.S. commercial airports don’t have a 1,000-foot margin at the end of a runway, an overrun area the federal government says is needed as a safety zone, according to a new report.
The FAA says it is diligently upgrading the runways. The agency expects that all of them will meet the standard by 2015, when they are legally required to do so, according to FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.