Some few months ago, I had dinner with a State official who tried to convince me that George Bush was a ‘thought leader’ on climate change – yes really. Time will tell what the Decider thinks we should do about the problem. But in the meantime, Steve Clemons has a useful briefing on what the US President hopes to get out of his climate change summit…
Freakanomics author Steven Levitt has been…
“…thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires fear. One thing that scares people is the thought that they could be a victim of an attack. With that in mind, I’d want to do something that everybody thinks might be directed at them, even if the individual probability of harm is very low. Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk.
Also, I’d want to create the feeling that an army of terrorists exists, which I’d accomplish by pulling off multiple attacks at once, and then following them up with more shortly thereafter.
Third, unless terrorists always insist on suicide missions (which I can’t imagine they would), it would be optimal to hatch a plan in which your terrorists aren’t killed or caught in the act, if possible.
Fourth, I think it makes sense to try to stop commerce, since a commerce breakdown gives people more free time to think about how scared they are.
Fifth, if you really want to impose pain on the U.S., the act has to be something that prompts the government to pass a bundle of very costly laws that stay in place long after they have served their purpose (assuming they had a purpose in the first place).”
It’s a good list – but surely you’d also want to mount one-two attacks – hitting survivors as they flee the scene of the first atrocity. The unfairness of it all would really freak people out…
Pro-Dem muckraker, Dan Moldea, warns that a group of ‘former intelligence officers’ is preparing a new anti-Clinton offensive. The strategy: kill Bill to cripple Hillary.
“I have it on very, very good authority that major opposition research has already been conducted on Bill Clinton, and it’s going to be a massive smear campaign against him.”
Read the whole thing, buy some popcorn, and enjoy the show…