china confidential
Monday, December 01, 2008
US Should Expect WMD Attack Within Five Years
Dateline USA....
Even as we appreciate that President George W. Bush kept America safe since 9/11 (see comment below), the need for improved homeland security--and a truly crushing offense against Islamist terrorism--becomes more apparent every day.
A report obtained by the Associated Press says the U.S. can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or biological weapons in the next five years.
Vice President-elect Joe Biden will be briefed tomorrow on the report from the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, AP says.
The wire service reports that the panel says the incoming administration should focus on the threat and recommends that one official on the National Security Council should exclusively coordinate U.S. intelligence and foreign policy on combating the spread of nuclear and biological weapons.
The report finds terrorist groups still lack the ability to make weapons out of pathogens or nuclear bombs. But it warns that gap can be easily overcome, if terrorists find scientists willing to share or sell their know-how.
One of the leaders of the commission, former Florida Senator Bob Graham, says "time is not our ally."
Give Credit Where Credit is Due
Dateline USA....
In the wake of the Mumbai massacre and warnings that terrorists could attack the New York City subways and other soft targets, this much is clear: President George W. Bush deserves enormous credit for keeping the U.S. homeland safe since 9/11.
In other words, thanks to America's much maligned commander-in-chief, the war against radical Islam, or Islamism, was fought overseas (albeit with mixed results).
This is no mean achievement. Analysts agree that it must have taken a potent combination of aggressive--and still secret--counter-terrorism methods and electronic intelligence to prevent the Islamist maniacs from again slaughtering civilians on U.S. soil.
It could be decades before we know how many plots have been foiled. Clearly, our intelligence services and police agencies are better than commonly believed.
Clearly, too, the U.S. Patriot Act was instrumental to national security. One cannot overstate the importance of disrupting the terrorists' money transfers and underground, Islamic banking system.
Meanwhile, every American should be grateful that, apart from a handful of isolated incidents, the enemy was kept at bay.So-Called Ally Persecutes and Oppresses Women
Foreign Confidential....
In a just world, the so-called president of Afghanistan--the criminal called Karzai--would have long ago been hanged from a lamppost, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda would have been annihilated after 9/11.
Consider the dispatch set forth below. For this nightmare Americans are sacrificing their lives?
Where is the outrage?
More than seven years after 9/11, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.In 2001, Afghanistan's prisons held about 600 prisoners. Today, there are around 12,500, of which 350 are women.
"We found half of the women are in prison for so called 'moral crime,' for example running away from home," she said.
"In another country, a lot of these women would have been considered as victims, not perpetrators," Christine Oguz, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul. The women held in Afghanistan's prisons are more likely to have been victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence than the general female population of the country, Ms Oguz said.
But it is difficult to paint a full picture of the situation, as around half the country's prisoners are awaiting trial and many have not had access to a lawyer, she said.
"You must have a right to defence, which by the way is also a constitutional right in this country: every person... can seek an advocate to defend his or her right, but there are less than 600 advocates in this country," she said.
The Afghan judiciary has been the target of widespread criticism for the poor quality of its judges, corruption and the treatment of defendants.Contango Fandango Fuels Oil Speculation
With oil now at $50 a barrel, you no longer hear Congress complaining about oil speculators. The irony is there's probably more real speculation going on today than there ever was back in June and July.
I'm talking about the type of speculation that involves hoarding oil today so it can be sold for more down the road. Today's speculators are actually buying oil. They're not merely flipping futures contracts without taking delivery - which is what hedge funds and commodities index funds were doing when they were in the crosshairs of Congress this summer. As I've argued before, investors who trade futures but never take delivery of actual oil can't have a material impact on oil prices because their trading affects neither supply nor demand.
What's different now is the structure of the futures market, which is giving big investors an incentive to buy and hold huge sums of crude. Specifically, the November 2009 price of oil is considerably higher ($12 a barrel higher, to be precise) than the spot price - a scenario futures traders call a "contango" market. (The opposite scenario - spot prices higher than futures prices - is known as "backwardation.")
"The steepening of the contango has opened up carry-trade arbitrage opportunities that are slow to be closed due to constrained credit conditions," Goldman Sachs wrote in a recent research report. Translation: this is a great time for investors to be hoarding oil.
Click here to continue.Gold Hit Hard By Falling Oil Price and a Firmer Dollar
Foreign Confidential....
In international markets Monday, a lower crude oil price and a firm dollar eroded gold’s appeal as an alternative investment.
In London, spot gold hit a session low of $776.80 and was later traded at $782.30 an ounce, down from $813.00 in the US market on Friday.
Also in London, silver touched an intraday low of $9.15 as investors took profits on dollar’s rally. The metal was at $10.26 in New York on Friday.
On the equities side, the Amex Gold Bugs Index, which tracks the share prices of major gold companies, fell 14.4% to 211.82 points.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Jon Birger reports that oil speculation is rampant. Big investors, Birger says, are actually hoarding the physical commodity.
Posts
