Category: News

Jamestown (a great collection of regional specialists, but it lacks any expertise in the theory of guerrilla/terrorist warfare): The ouster of the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Afghanistan gave a new lease on life to various criminal, sectarian and religious groups in Pakistan that were finding it increasingly difficult to survive due to international pressure. The… Continue reading Jamestown

CSM. In addition to the record budget deficits, here's some more financial fall-out from the war in Iraq. Basically, the loss of 2m barrels of Iraqi production (including illicit shipments) transforms every disruption into a major pricing event. A major disruption (Saudi Arabia in late November) would put the price into orbit. Home heating this… Continue reading CSM

AT. The main theme of this (Afghan) election won't be reported: it's called voter intimidation. Both the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe even said they could not monitor the election for fear they would be constrained to denounce it as not being free and fair. In the end, they… Continue reading AT

Last Job Count Before Election: Always a Political Number. Despite the stimulus from three rounds of tax cuts, the nation has at least 585,000 fewer jobs now than when President Bush took office. By  EDMUND L. ANDREWS. [The New York Times > Home Page]

WSJ. Lessons from Florida Hurricanes. The telephone (and by extension the Internet) and power systems are more tightly coupled now. …because of fiber optics and other new technologies BellSouth has added to upgrade its networks over the past decade, the systems are, ironically, more vulnerable to disasters. The key problem: Many phone networks that used… Continue reading WSJ

Reuters. “Momentum can't be denied in this market and so we find ourselves now … atop $50 perhaps headed for $60 absent some unforeseen catalyst for a wave of speculative selling,” said Marshall Steeves of brokers Refco. Wait until the attacks in Saudi Arabia after the US elections (to me, and most of the top… Continue reading Reuters. “Momentum can't be denied in this market and so we find
ourselves now … atop $50 perhaps headed for $60 absent some
unforeseen catalyst for a wave of speculative selling,” said Marshall
Steeves of brokers Refco. Wait until the attacks in Saudi Arabia
after the US elections (to me, and most of the top terrorist analysts,
Bush is Osama's choice for president). [John Robb's Weblog

Youssef Ibrahim. $50 oil is due to the loss of Iraqi exports. I concur. As producers like Iraq are taken off-line (what you have to look at is average production rather than high points between shut downs), we move to production in higher cost countries. This has already driven up long term oil contracts (5… Continue reading Youssef Ibrahim

U.S. Report Finds Iraq Was Minimal Weapons Threat in '03. Iraq now appears to have destroyed its stockpiles of illicit weapons within months of the 1991 war, the top American inspector in Iraq said in a report. By DOUGLAS JEHL. [The New York Times > Home Page]

Do Terror Alerts Work?. As I read the litany of terror threat warnings that the government has issued in the past three years, the thing that jumps out at me is how vague they are. The careful wording implies everything without actually saying anything. We hear “terrorists might try to bomb buses and rail lines… Continue reading Do Terror Alerts Work?

Does Big Brother Want to Watch?. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Bush administration–specifically, the Department of Homeland Security–has wanted the world to agree on a standard for machine-readable passports. Countries whose citizens currently do not have visa requirements to enter the United States will have to issue passports that conform to the standard… Continue reading Does Big Brother Want to Watch?