Terrorism is a misunderstood phenomenon in Western thought. It is often portrayed in America as a group of insane individuals, hell bent on getting their way, who kill innocent civilians out of hatred or for vengeance. Strategically speaking this could not be farther from the truth. The goal in a terror campaign is not a traditional Western military victory, but rather it is to provoke the other side into a desperate overreaction. 1 For instance, documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke America into an invasion and occupation that would drain the United States financially, estrange it from its allies diplomatically, and turn the Islamic world against it culturally and emotionally2. Bin Laden’s only mistake was that he predicted that the battlefield would be Afghanistan, rather than Iraq.
Taylor Davidson wrote a fantastic post entitled How to Fail: 25 Secrets Learned through Failure. In honor of the two year anniversary of the post,1 I am going to apply some of his “secrets “to the U.S. economy as a whole, and see what develops.
All seven after the break.
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Note – I added the site to Technoratti so here is the claim code P3E8WYN37T4J
I never understand why people bemoan the death of old media. If you believe in capitalism and you believe in individuals you should be cheering the demise like your team just kicked a game winning field goal. Author like Andrew Keen devote entire books waxing on the benefits of the world experiencing news and culture primarily from experts. According to Publisher’s Weekly, “Keen became somewhat notorious for a 2006 Weekly Standard essay equating Web 2.0 with Marxism; like Karl Marx, he offers a convincing overall critique but runs into trouble with the details.”
What Keen fails to notice is that in reality, the blogosphere, the new media or whatever you want to call it is the essence of capitalism, while traditional media was a mutant profit driven version of communism. Both systems rely on a central authority to disperse information, whether it be news or an order to make more socks. Both are draped in favoritism and shun innovation. This change should be rejoiced. Personally, I find more solace and comfort in individuals building their own destiny than a bunch of ‘experts’ who often times are there due to family connections or blind luck. In Jeremy Schapp’s case we have both.
Today I found a better criticism courtesy of an Amazon.com reviewer named O. Buxton, they explain:
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