At 05:48 pm 04-03-05 -0500, Jed wrote: >I wrote: > >>(The CIA says that 95% of men under 40 in Saudi Arabia approve of Al Qaeda >>and consider Bin Laden a national hero, so I am sure they have unlimited >>funds at their disposal.) > >Correction: the government of Saudi Arabia says that, based on public >opinion polls. Source: "Imperial Hubris" (Brassey's, Inc., 2004). > >The point is, not only does Al Qaeda have money, they have a huge reservoir >of technical skill. There are probably hundreds of thousands of qualified >but unemployed engineers and other university trained people, such as the >9/11 hijackers. It is a myth that modern terrorists are disenfranchised >poor people, or that they are technically ignorant. The Japanese Aum sect >attracted some of the most talented biochemists and engineers in Japan. >They built a state-of-the-art sarin production facility. This was built >right out in the open in Japan -- a country where government surveillance >is intense, and the authorities have enormous leeway and detailed >information on everyone. (In Japan, you have to register all members of >your household and all domestic pets with the local police. If you forget >to vaccinate your pooch a friendly policeman will come around to remind >you. You also have to register all television sets and radios, and pay a >tax on them. Students used to be adept at hiding television antennas.) It >takes no great stretch of imagination to envision a 5-year secret project >involving thousands of highly qualified people in Saudi Arabia (or some >other state), in which experts make important advances in cold fusion and >then fabricate 50,000 crude small motors for handheld devices. It would be >*far* easier than hiding a conventional nuclear weapons program. > >Grimer, my man! Is that scary enough?
ABSOLUTELY! That's fantastic stuff Jed. Not only blood curdling but very interesting with it. If you can write like that and get it syndicated you can forget about the CoFu Bomb game. If I were from the bible belt and I read that in my morning paper under the headline, WAKE UP AMERICA I would be reaching for my M16 with one hand and with the other I'd be writing a letter to my congressman demanding that he did something about the COLD FUSION GAP if he wanted to get re-elected. And if I were from Montana (my son, Greg, once stayed there with a family. He said they were armed to the back teeth) I would send down a detachment of my militia to make sure you had sufficient protection from any Skull and Bones backlash. What you have to remember is, it doesn't really matter a damn what the atoms say. It's all about bits - all about perceptual bits. To quote from the book I was reading when I checked my mail just now. -------------------------------------------------------------- And they were not just cold. Hedgies struck me as incredibly detached as well. Apart from the real world. On another planet, almost. Actually, a lot of people on Wall Street are this way. They reside in a different layer from the rest of the world. I suppose it is how the financial system is set up; they can buy and sell companies all day without really caring what they actually do. -------------------------------------------------------------- Of course they can. They aren't buying companies qua atoms. The are buying companies qua bits, i.e. perceptions. It is not for nothing that often the most valuable asset of a company is not its physical assets such as buildings, machines, etc., but intangibles, like trade marks, good will, etc. That's what my intellectually challenged directors at Building Research failed to recognise. Their value was the reputation, the honesty, the competence of the work. That was what they should have been selling. Selling, that is until the last honest researcher had drifted away at last, and turned out the lights. That's why when CoCo Cola sold home counties "tap water" without having watched all episodes of *Only Fools and Horses*... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.trotters-independent-traders.co.uk/episodes/mother_natures_son.htm "Del Boy's latest scheme is to bottle tap water and sell it as 'Peckham Spring' water. It's a great success thanks to Rodney's mate Myles." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ....it was a complete public relations disaster. The US firm very sensibly strangled the whole thing at birth before it impacted on their other lucrative sales of sugar water. There's of lot of our countrymen who moan about the loss of manufacturing industry. With your extensive historical knowledge I'm sure you recognise that exactly the same moaning went on in England in relation to agriculture as the industrial revolution took hold. The west's future is in 'bits' and the sooner modern Luddites wake up to that reality the better. And if you're not a lawyer, and your skill is in atoms, not bits - TOUGH! ;-) Cheers Frank Grimer
