The Opinionated Bastard

I've leafed through this guy's book The Pentagon's New Map in an airport bookstore. I didn't buy it simply because I didn't want to carry it but he's a really good thinker. He has this funny rant about oil where he says that Middle Eastern countries are lucky they have oil. If they didn't, we wouldn't care about them the same way we don't really care about much of South America and Africa.

You can get a preview of his thoughts here. He also has a blog. The best part is this map:

Which shows that the troubled regions of the world are the ones whose countries are least integrated with the others. That is, people don't shit where they eat, and if you're doing business with a country, you don't want to threaten it.