Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

These oil price keep going up, eroding our purchasing power, and it has a detrimental effect on our economy. Russia has driven it up even further with the Yukos situation.

VOA News
30 Jul 2004, 19:32 UTC

Oil prices shattered record highs Friday, fueled by worries of a disruption in supply.

In New York, U.S. light crude topped $43.30 a barrel, the highest level in 21 years.

In London, Brent crude prices peaked at almost $40, the highest price since the Gulf War. Prices began to skyrocket Wednesday on news Russian oil giant Yukos may be forced to stop selling oil. Russia is the world's second-biggest oil exporter, after Saudi Arabia, and Yukos is its largest oil producer.

OPEC is already pumping at 95% capacity, prompting concern that it would not be able to fill any gap caused by an interruption of supply from Russia or Iraq where pipelines are frequently sabatoged.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=C4794B29-F7E9-40EF-9F028416DB5842FD

2,941 posted on 07/30/2004 2:41:18 PM PDT by Honestly (There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.)

I see that as war profiteering. Speculation on commodities is fine, except when you're betting against your country.

2,942 posted on 07/30/2004 2:43:23 PM PDT by HipShot (EOM couldn't cut the head off a beer with a chainsaw)

To: appalachian_dweller

2,943 posted on 07/30/2004 2:46:58 PM PDT by Cindy

To: Domestic Church

Guys - as a follow-up to my earlier post about possibly relocating from our
beloved home here on FR (due to the recent 'zotting' episode and a general
lack of ability to FIND ANYTHING in and among the piles of content)..

Seems like the consensus is that we wanna stay put - which is great, since FR is a tremendous wealth of info and a great news source. BUT..it ALSO seems that a lot of us want a way to "save off"/archive important info, and organize it in a way we can quickly find things if we need it. (Remember how many times we went looking for a certain article and never, ever could find where in the heck it was across more than 50,000 posts on TM?)

Since so many seem to want this, I started thinking about ways we might be
able to put it together. Here's what I came up with:

- It would be reasonably easy to setup a way to save off key articles from FR
WITHOUT having to copy and paste them. (I was playing around with this
earlier, and think I came up with a way to just feed in the article # and
have a "bot" goto FR and pull the content in automatically).

- Once we have a way to automatically save articles, we could put them
together by Subject (eg: WMD, Threats, Russia, Incidents, etc). We could
also indicate what geographic area (if any) is involved. So, if there was
an Incident at Philly Airport where a guy ran through security, we could
stash the article under "Incidents" and "Philadelphia".

- The only thing we'd need is someone to do what Flutters has already done
with the great summary that was put together for articles over the past days -
and that's read through the Thread and decide which articles we want to
keep track of. From there, we'd have a Web screen where you choose the
Thread from a pull-down menu (eg: TM Thread 15) and Post# and the program
would pull in the article automatically - or create a link back to FR if we
wanted to do that instead. Then, there'd be some check-boxes or menus to
pick the Subject and the Area. That's it. No copy and paste. No re-keying.
Just pick the Thread and Post #, categorize it by checking some boxes..and..
voila! It's saved.

If we had a collection of articles in the archive, we could have a "My Threat
Matrix" page (ala My Yahoo) that breaks things down into Topic Sections and
displays them..instead of "Entertainment News from E!", you'd have "Borders",
or "Incidents" or "WMD", etc Sections.

We could also sort by date, SEARCH (Alleluia!) by Subject and Area (eg:
Philly, NK, Saudi Arabia, London, etc).

What do you guys think? To do this, we'd need:

- A list of Subjects and Geographic Areas that we want to track..kind of a WOT
"card catalog!" I've started to come up with some ideas here, but plz feel free to
toss out some ideas!
- Me to write the code (hmmm..more work..let's rethink that! :) )
- Someone who's willing to read the thread regularly (we all do that anyway)
and pick out the post #s that we want to save - and then decide what the
Subject and Area is. (Note: no rekeying here..I can have a "bot" pull the
articles in automatically).
- A site (I already registered threatmatrix.info earlier, when I thought we
might want our own BB). .NET and .COM were taken already. (If I put this
together, I'd want to do it in Java, so we need a host that will support
this).

Anyway..sorry for the enormously long post, but I heard a bunch of people say
that we want to stay at FR, BUT..we have over 50,000 posts and no way to
easily find things, tie info together from earlier events, etc. So, when we
have a mouse problem..time to build a mousetrap!

Thanks for listening to me ramble. Plz let me know what you all think!

2,944 posted on 07/30/2004 2:48:31 PM PDT by jstolzen (All it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke)

Sorry for the formatting on that long post..I wrote it offline and pasted it into FR..preview looked OK, but I see it "gorked" a bit when posted.

2,945 posted on 07/30/2004 2:49:32 PM PDT by jstolzen (All it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke)

I think the DHS is trying to debunk the thought of dry runs and terrorists getting onto planes still so it doesnt make their security look like a joke.

2,946 posted on 07/30/2004 2:51:15 PM PDT by SwankyC

I agree. It's a function of supply and demand, with a threatened supply and Russian profiteering. No supply substitute coupled with heavy dependence makes us even more vulnerable. I don't like being dependent on an enemy, nor being vulnerable.

2,947 posted on 07/30/2004 2:53:59 PM PDT by Honestly (There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.)

Thanks for posting this update for us to read here on TM, HipShot. All I can say is that "IMAD MOUSTAPHA Ambassador of Syria" needs to be smacked to knock sense into him.

2,948 posted on 07/30/2004 2:55:03 PM PDT by Donna Lee Nardo

Looks like Conoco-Phillips is looking to invest in Russia as a source of oil........

Conoco-Phillips Looking to Invest in Russian Oil

2,949 posted on 07/30/2004 2:56:40 PM PDT by MamaDearest (People who disagree don't have to be disagreeable!)

To: British chick

Many thanks for the post and ping BC. Sounds like a good series, wish it would air over here.

2,950 posted on 07/30/2004 2:57:44 PM PDT by Oorang ( Those who trade liberty for security have neither)

This is an excellent idea. I have been saving articles I find that I think are worth saving in my bookmarks in categories and subcategories.

I've been hesitant to open links recently because my computer has been freezing up and I have to shut it off at the power strip several times a day. This occurs when I try to follow links. The reason I bring this up is because I'd like to help, but this handicaps my efforts.

2,951 posted on 07/30/2004 3:09:26 PM PDT by Honestly (There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.)

To: MamaDearest; Rushmore Rocks

Thanks for the link MamaD. There is no way you could get me to go to the Olympics. I'll stay right here in my little spot o' America.

There was a poster a few months back (Rushmore Rocks I believe) who mentioned that her husband was flying home from a business trip and the person sitting next to him stated the security in Greece was woefully lacking and would not be up to speed by the time the games begin. I don't remember the details.

2,952 posted on 07/30/2004 3:11:59 PM PDT by Oorang ( Those who trade liberty for security have neither)

I wonder if they don't want to panic the masses. If they were to admit publicly that these events are happening on airplanes, people would factor that into their travel plans for sure. Airlines would further suffer.

Yep. They might have performed a cost-benefit analysis...the risk is still cost-effective at this point.

2,953 posted on 07/30/2004 3:12:59 PM PDT by Donna Lee Nardo

That's interesting about Conoco. I've been trying to understand the Yukos situation and how Russia is manipulating the oil market. I found a couple of articles that are annoying:

American Misery; Russian Gain?

Russia consumes about half of its daily oil production, which recently surpassed the 9 million barrels-per-day (bpd) mark, and exports the other half. The United States consumes 20 million bpd, or almost one-third of total world consumption. Global crude-oil production in 2003 averaged 72 million bpd, of which 8.7 million bpd came from Saudi Arabia, 28 million bpd from the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) and 8.6 million bpd from Russia. The United States has long been the 800-pound gorilla of consumers, but newly developing nations such as India, Brazil and China are set to challenge the gorilla. (snipped)

http://www.therussiajournal.com/index.htm?obj=44457
________________________________________________________________

YUKOS increases oil exports to China
July 30, 2004 Posted: 15:38 Moscow time (11:38 GMT)

MOSCOW - YUKOS will increase oil exports to China from 6.4m tons to 7m tons in 2004, Gennady Fadeyev, President of Russian Railways, said at a news briefing.

He said this could allow for full-capacity use of the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railroad (BAM) in the shortest possible time. YUKOS oil exports to China may be further increased in the future. (snipped)

Source URL: http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=44867

2,954 posted on 07/30/2004 3:22:02 PM PDT by Honestly (There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.)

A cron wget could get it all. A decent perl script could toss the posts. A postgresql DB could handle the storage. Maybe a PHP front end for searching.

2,955 posted on 07/30/2004 3:22:22 PM PDT by HipShot (EOM couldn't cut the head off a beer with a chainsaw)

But what they DON'T get is that they look even more stupid when the shoot the messenger, and skip over the little things like how they missed expired visas.

2,956 posted on 07/30/2004 3:23:47 PM PDT by HipShot (EOM couldn't cut the head off a beer with a chainsaw)

Drill Alaska and off shore FL.

2,957 posted on 07/30/2004 3:24:28 PM PDT by HipShot (EOM couldn't cut the head off a beer with a chainsaw)

To: Donna Lee Nardo

I noticed that he was using our own "PC" against us.

That alone speaks volumes.

2,958 posted on 07/30/2004 3:25:29 PM PDT by HipShot (EOM couldn't cut the head off a beer with a chainsaw)

I guess they're not afraid of nationalization.

2,959 posted on 07/30/2004 3:27:03 PM PDT by HipShot (EOM couldn't cut the head off a beer with a chainsaw)

Was someone talking about the significance of the number of warnings al Qaeda gives? If so, does this qualify as significant since the previous ones were dismissed as fake?

Third Terror Threat in Week Seen on Web

CAIRO, Egypt - A third threat in a week against America's European allies appeared Friday on an Internet site known for extremist Muslim postings.

The statement claimed to have come from militants in Italy and, like a similar one Wednesday and another on Monday, was signed Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. Friday's statement, however, dismissed the previous threats as fakes, even though all sounded the same anti-U.S. themes.

U.S. officials and some terrorism experts believe Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the Madrid train bombings that killed about 191 people on March 11, lacks credibility and has only tenuous ties to al-Qaida. It has issued claims for events in which it almost certainly had no involvement, including blackouts in North America and Britain.

"From here in Italy, and from Britain and Bulgaria, and all European countries, we call on all our people to mobilize and prepare to engage in the battle, a new type and style of battle. Prepare to shed blood, let us make it an endless bloody war," Friday's statement said.

The statement said European governments were at risk "so long as you are in the shadow of the vile government of (President) Bush."

All this week's statements referred to an April 15 audiotape in which al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden said he was calling a truce for three months and urged European states to leave Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries within that period or risk a terror campaign. The statements noted the truce period has expired.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/9282185.

2,960 posted on 07/30/2004 3:28:25 PM PDT by Honestly (There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.)

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