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Re: Pentagon-sponsored 'South Sea Bubble'.. (Halliburton stocks are over $22 a share now. That's up from $12.62 last October) http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/columnstoryA5994A.htm Palm Bay's Hank Brandli generated a buzz last month when the retired Air Force colonel suggested the United States had run a pipeline the length of Kuwait to siphon off Iraqi oil to help finance the war. Unfortunately, amid Washington's hall of mirrors, we're no closer to solving this mystery than when the story ran in June. Rewind: In 1976, near the end of a career of handling classified projects, Brandli produced an analyst's bible for the Air Force Weather Service, a book called "Satellite Meteorology." Although he left the USAF shortly thereafter, Brandli took his passion into retirement with him by computer-rigging his home with receiving dishes that allowed him to download unclassified images from American and Russian weather satellites whenever they passed over. On May 25, Brandli was riveted by some Defense Meteorological Satellite Program nighttime photos of Iraq and Kuwait. A north-south corridor of light -- not visible in a similar DMSP photo taken on May 3 -- had apparently been carved out of the Kuwaiti desert in little more than three weeks, all the way up to, and slightly inside of, the Iraqi border. Brandli failed to detect that same luminescent feature in photos prior to May 3. And after reviewing images he's studied after May 25, Brandli reports, "It's still there." The State Department seemed to be the go-to choice for answers about this river of light, but a spokesperson was in the dark and said to call the Coalition of Provisional Authority, the office in charge of rebuilding Iraq. But the CPA never called back. The U.S. Agency for International Development doesn't have any answers, either, and advises you to call the Defense Department. But the Pentagon media desk doesn't know anything about it, and urges you to call the CPA or U.S. Central Command in Tampa. CPA doesn't call back again. At CentCom, Lt. Col. Martin Compton is stumped. "There are a number of possible explanations. All kinds of things are moving into Iraq right now, and it could be something as simple as water," he says. "But if it's something going on in Kuwait, I wouldn't know where to tell you to go for that. We might not even be in a position to tell you even if we knew." You call the U.S. Commerce Department's Iraq Reconstruction Task Force in Washington. They refer you to CPA. CPA doesn't call back again. Surely the American Petroleum Institute in Washington would know something about new Iraqi pipelines running through Kuwait. But after reviewing the e-mailed images, API spokesman Bill Bush says a key colleague is skeptical that they're oil-related. "Presumably, if you're drawing oil out of Iraq, it would make more sense to go east toward the Gulf, where it could be unloaded," Bush says. But in Monterey, Calif., Bob Fett says "Hank got it right." Fett and Brandli worked together in Vietnam. Fett was the head of the Tactical Applications Department for the National Reconnaissance Organization, the spy-satellite program whose very existence was a state secret for 30 years. Fett, now a consultant for Naval Research Lab, provided a map showing how the lights line up into the region of Iraq's Rumaila oilfields. "It's been an impressive operation," Fett says. "(Construction giants) Halliburton, or Bechtel, or Brown & Root, were contracted to get the oil flowing out of Iraq as quickly as possible, and hundreds of workers have been going at it 24 hours a day, around the clock. They needed lights to work at night." Fett adds that the project, which runs south into the metropolitan glow around Kuwait City, doesn't have to reach the Gulf for it to be oil-related. "Why not bring it south where the infrastructure is already in place?" Bechtel and Halliburton didn't respond to messages. What's important is, Halliburton stocks are over $22 a share now. That's up from $12.62 last October. [ Billy Cox's column runs every Wednesday. He can be reached at 242-3774, or at bcox@flatoday.net ] ----- Original Message ----- From: "ppg" <ppg@nyc.rr.com> To: <casi-discuss@lists.casi.org.uk> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 10:51 PM Subject: [casi] "Invest in Mideast futures" Look around this site- seems PAM is a sophisticated program for Mideast war profiteers.. http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/pam_concept.htm "Concept Overview Analysts often use prices from various markets as indicators of potential events. The use of petroleum futures contract prices by analysts of the Middle East is a classic example. The Policy Analysis Market (PAM) refines this approach by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East. Initially, PAM will focus on the economic, civil, and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each. [Click here for a summary of PAM futures contracts] The contracts traded on PAM will be based on objective data and observable events. These contracts will be valuable because traders who are registered with PAM will use their money to acquire contracts. A PAM trader who believes that the price of a specific futures contract under-predicts the future status of the issue on which it is based can attempt to profit from his belief by buying the contract. The converse holds for a trader who believes the price is an over-prediction – she can be a seller of the contract. This price discovery process, with the prospect of profit and at pain of loss, is at the core of a market’s predictive power. The issues represented by PAM contracts may be interrelated; for example, the economic health of a country may affect civil stability in the country and the disposition of one country’s military may affect the disposition of another country’s military. The trading process at the heart of PAM allows traders to structure combinations of futures contracts. Such combinations represent predictions about interrelated issues that the trader has knowledge of and thus may be able to make money on through PAM. Trading these trader-structured derivatives results in a substantial refinement in predictive power. ... ... Trader registration will open on August 1, 2003..." Surf the site. (Remember the 'South Sea Bubble'?) Read the MSNBC news story: http://www.msnbc.com/news/945269.asp?0sl=-22 Can a ‘terror futures market’ work? Defense Dept. project aims to let ‘investors’ bet on events _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk