Sunday, August 23, 2009
An unusual mainstream article
Doomsday
Two major entrepreneurial tycoons, in the multibillion-dollar league, with worldwide interests, speaking not for attribution, agree that the worst is yet to come. Both global entrepreneurs mentioned at the beginning of this column believe Israel will resolve its existential crisis by bombing Iran's key nuclear facilities later this year. One thought Gulf Arabs would be secretly delighted and that Iran's much vaunted asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities would fizzle as the theocracy imploded. The other could see mayhem up and down the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and oil at $300 per barrel. Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
Posted by devo @ 10:36 PM (1420 views)
8 thoughts on “An unusual mainstream article”
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devo says:
IF I was in ‘the multibillion dollar league’, I’d think this an excellent way out of The West’s current malaise.
But I’m not, so I don’t.
Captain Tightwad says:
Not sure I’d describe the Washington Times (as opposed to Post) as mainstream. It’s run by the Moonies.
Montecristo72 says:
Sounds feasible.. and house prices… can’t blame the Bankers, BoE, the financial system for such a scenario.. or can we? Inflationary pressures, another leg down… as Building Societies & Banks have their “Smoking Gun”. We saw 9/11… horrific as it was… I wonder what the TV coverage will be like for this event? It doesn’t matter as it is so far away.. but it will matter when a tin of beans costs £1.
drewster says:
Actually it’s not a mainstream article. You’re confusing Washington Times (circulation 83,000) with the far more respectable Washington Post (circulation 673,000 daily). Easy mistake to make. (Similar mistakes are often made between aljazeera.com and aljazeera.net – only the latter is a respected news channel.)
According to Wikipedia*, “The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon and is subsidized by the Unification Church community.”. Further on, the paper has been described as “rabidly anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel”. That doesn’t inspire confidence already. If you were a wealthy tycoon, would you grant an anonymous interview to an allegedly very biased newspaper run by an alleged cult?
The two tycoons want to remain nameless which might be understandable if they had ever said such things. No other reporters can verify these facts though. How convenient.
Much of the article is standard (bearish) stuff – the crisis isn’t over yet, unemployment will rise, China is rising, it’s the end of the American empire. The Israel/Iran point (“later this year” – so within the next four months) is intriguing but no further explanation is given. The middle-east has been unstable for six decades and people are always predicting armageddon there. Unless these two tycoons have specific intelligence from the Israeli government, then their predictions are of no more value than anybody else’s. The fact that they have been successful in business doesn’t make them right in geopolitics. If they did have specific intelligence from the Israeli government then you can be sure they wouldn’t go telling this little newspaper. Given this newspaper’s alleged bias, the article seems unconvincing.
*(Wikipedia isn’t always reliable, but it’s quick and I don’t have all day.)
Shergar75 says:
And then we all woke up and had our frosties….i always look back to stalingrad, the somme and hiroshima, if the world moved on from those god awful events then todays events will not result in a doomsday…talk about scare mongering on a grand scale..besides Iran is the last place that needs bombing and Israel would be the dunce in the corner if it even considered this action given the mess it the uk and its twin the usa have already caused in the middle east. anybody think tottenham can win the league this year ??..
devo says:
Excellent work today defending the status quo, drewster.
The Masked Tulip says:
Anyone who reads sites like these would know of at least one rich doomsayer who has moved to Singapore!?
drewster says:
devo,
Years of reading conspiracy theories on the internet have left me with a very sensitive bullsh!t-o-meter.
Anyways I’ve dug deeper and you’ll be pleased (or frightened) to learn that there is more anecdotal unattributed
hearsayevidence to back up this story:I normally don’t mix with millionaires, but I recently found myself in an extensive and personal conversation with a wealthy and highly connected person. He knew that I was preparing for economic decline, including skills in household self-reliance.
[…]
Imagine the family of an investment banker being plucked from their rooftop helipad in upper Manhattan to a prepared enclave in the country, while watching burning tires and broken glass 40 stories below. They could end up in [rural] upstate New York, or in a more exotic place like their personal island in the South Pacific.
[…]
He then named about a dozen families on the Forbes list of billionaires who have already prepared for doomsday on a spectacular scale, including multiple geographic options. These were the early adopters, I was assured.
[…]
There would be guarded walls, prime farmland, renewable energy systems, stockpiles of essentials, fallout caverns, as well as necessary amenities like tennis courts and pools. Presumably, beyond the walls would be squalor, misery and violence.
The Forbes list of billionaires ranges from $40bn to $5bn. There’s a chance that the twelve mentioned here overlap with the two tycoons unnamed in the original article.