mikeyhemlok

Let’s talk about your computer. The conventional wisdom is that you’ve got your mac people, people who are willing to spend on high end hardware that comes with the legendary Macintosh operating system. The story is you get a quality machine with a quality OS and all you have to be willing to do is [...]

Basic cause and effect. Reasonable, logical, predictable. But for some reason, politicians seem to believe they are exempt from fundamental laws. When you have a goal, a particular preferred outcome, it should not be hard to understand that you should take actions that actually contribute to that goal. To do otherwise is illogical at best, [...]

There are two important things to keep in mind when thinking about international economic sanctions. First, sanctions are a two-way street. That is, they not only reduce the economic activity of the sanctioned nation, but there is a corresponding reduction in economic activity by the sanctioning nations. If I sell widgets to country X, and [...]

If there’s one thing we Americans understand all too well, it’s that you don’t want to be a little guy, all alone in a rough neighborhood. Everybody wants your fealty and your support – the gangs, the outlaws, the cops, the clerics, the teachers and the mob. Because you’re small, and all alone, you have [...]

On August 1st, the Convention on Cluster Munitions went into force, with 108 nations as signatories and 38 that have completed ratification. Just as was the case with the Ottawa Treaty on Landmines, the US, out of excessive caution driven by military pragmatism, chose not to sign the treaty. A question well worth asking, however, [...]

The Iraqis held their national election in March. None of the parties participating in that election came close to winning it outright, so it fell to the winner, Allawi’s Iraqiya Party and the powerful sitting Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki, to come together to form some kind of coalition government, an outcome not at all [...]

Sixty five years ago, in a historical confluence of brilliant minds, global events and a kind of untempered colonial hubris, the United States took all of the collected knowledge of fundamental physical sciences known at the time and used it to create the most fearsome weapon man had ever known. Inured to large-scale horror by [...]

In the early dark of the night of March 26, under cloudy skies, a North Korean submarine launched a torpedo that detonated under the South Korean Pohang class Corvette Cheonan, creating a powerful jet that broke the 1200 ton warship in half. She sunk in minutes, with 46 sailors lost. The South Korean military response [...]

Entering it’s third year, the International Tribunal for Sierra Leone trial of Charles Taylor on charges of crimes against humanity took an odd twist. One of the unlikely contentions of Taylor’s defense, and one the prosecutors believed they could exploit, was that he had testified unequivocally that he had NEVER had uncut diamonds in his [...]

For years, terrorist attacks against the US and Europe have mostly followed the same rough outline. High symbolic value targets, mass casualty attacks against transportation infrastructure, and an obsessive focus on airports and airliners, and starting in the ‘90s the World Trade Center. I have found this narrow and repetitive approach to target selection and [...]