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Thursday, April 08, 2004 |
 WND. An Arab language jihadi Web site posted a very rough six point plan for causing economic destruction in the US. The points are:
- attacks on the assets of large American companies all over the world;
- attacks on U.S. oil refineries;
- attacks on civilian airports with the goal of financially devastating U.S. airlines;
- deliberate pollution of food system;
- setting of fires in the forests – "especially those that provide the American market with the raw materials for the wood and paper and byproducts industries";
- attacks like those on the railway transportation lines in Spain.
3:41:04 PM 
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Here is a good outline of terrorist infrastructure.
3:35:13 PM
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VOA. Another sign of sophistication. Iraqi terrorists (learning quickly from Osama's terrorist incubator) are putting pressure on Japan to withdraw from the coalition by taking hostages (deplorable but potentially effective).
Task forces have been set up in Tokyo at the prime minister's office and the Foreign Ministry to deal with what is evolving into the biggest crisis the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has faced in its two-and-a-half years in office.
Update. Zeyad has more info on the propoganda effort attached to this. Pretty rough stuff, but well constructed psyops that will play havoc in Japan:
Al-Jazeera displayed a short tape showing three blindfolded and handcuffed Japanese journalists (a woman and two men) being held by a group calling itself Sarraya Al-Mujahideen which threatened to burn them alive unless Japan pulls out its troups from Iraq in a letter addressed to 'our friends the Japanese people'. The Japanese base in Sammawa was also targetted by mortars. I found it particularly interesting that while Al-Jazeera displayed most of the tape, it did not display the part where the masked men held knives to the neck of the wailing Japanese woman while screaming "Allahu Akbar!". What? too hard for Arab feelings?
I am still in the process of evaluating the impact of traditional terrorist techniques within the modern nation-state system. Very important topic for discussion on the next generation terrorism group.
2:43:27 PM
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WP. In response to the challenge of non-state networks intent on the destruction of the nation-state system, the US formulated its own non-state actors. These corporate mercenaries are now creating their own network in response to US inaction.
Under assault by insurgents and unable to rely on U.S. and coalition troops for intelligence or help under duress, private security firms in Iraq have begun to band together in the past 48 hours, organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and pooled, sensitive intelligence.
The CPA's program management office has sought bids for a project to coordinate security among the 10 largest prime contractors and their subcontractors working on U.S.-backed reconstruction projects worth $18.4 billion. But the bids are still under review. In the meantime, the office is "trying to get at least some level of intelligence sanitized from the military that could be given to contractors," said Capt. Bruce A. Cole, spokesman for the program management office in Baghdad. That has not happened yet. The firms, stunned by the casualties they suffered this week and by the lack of a military response, have begun banding together to share their own operations-center telephone numbers and tips on threats, as well as to organize ways to rescue one another in a crisis.
"Each private firm amounts to an individual battalion," said one U.S. government official familiar with the developments. "Now they are all coming together to build the largest security organization in the world."
Is this a return of the condotteiri?
9:23:22 AM
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NYT. Oman's oil production decline on its large fields couldn't be stopped by new technology. This is another indicator that Hubert's peak may be correct.
Oman's oil problems are relatively recent. Annual production rose from 1980 to 1997, when the 35-year-old Yibal field began to decline. Two engineering papers written last year by Petroleum Development Oman officials show that production in Yibal has fallen at an annual rate of about 12 percent for six years; that is more than twice the normal rate of 5 percent in the region.
Perhaps more ominously for the world's oil outlook, he added that the failure of Shell's horizontal drilling technology in Oman suggested that even advanced extraction techniques "won't bring back the good old days." In the case of the Yibal field, for example, Shell and Omani oil engineers and auditors have expressed concerns that a technique Sir Philip said would recover more oil not only did not do so, but also increased the amount of water in the extracted oil to as much as 90 percent of the total volume, increasing production costs.
9:09:53 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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