Don’t Trade With Aliens

There is a group of human beings whom I find to be unintelligibly mysterious.  In fact, I believe them to be aliens who, while visiting earth occasionally, actually reside in a space ship floating in the interstellar ether.  I am referring, of course, to currency traders.

For the most part, other kinds of traders — guys who make it their profession to trade things like stocks or bonds or commodity futures — are normal people.  For the most part, currency traders are nuts.

There is simply no explanation for the euro rocketing up far above the dollar since the US (more…)

Dr. Jack’s Reading Recommendations for May, 2003

I could not suggest more strongly that you read Bernard Lewis’ latest book, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (Modern Library, 2003).  Its compact 164 pages contain an abundance of revelations. 

We are so often told, for example, that a basic cause of the hatred radical Moslems feel for the West is the Crusades.  Yet, Mr. Lewis explains, the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099 was largely ignored by the main Moslem powers in nearby Damascus and in Baghdad.  After Saladin retook the city in 1187, the Moslem world forgot about it for 700 years, until (more…)

Short China

The World Health Organization or WHO announced today that “the worst is over” regarding the SARS epidemic in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada.  WHO pronounced Vietnam for being the first country to eradicate the disease, and praised it for doing so transparently, quickly, and efficiently.

One reason Vietnam was able to do so is because it closed its border with China.  For notably absent in the WHO announcement was any praise for China.  The worst is not over for China.  The worst — far worse — is yet to come.

90% of SARS cases worldwide to this day are (more…)

Bulletin on SARS

It is important to understand that that the actual death rate for SARS is far higher than the currently reported rate. The death rate publicly given in press reports is a percentage of the reported cases, now running at a little over 2%. The figure to focus on however is the death rate as a percentage of the recovered cases. This figure is much higher, over 10%.

The reason for the discrepancy is that the disease is doubling now about every two weeks, so many people who have contracted it have not yet had time to die from it. The (more…)

Not Goodbye

Strategic Investment, April 2003
 
How long have you been a subscriber to Strategic Investment?  However long it has been, this column has been there for you every month.  The first Behind The Lines column appeared in early 1987.  I had just returned from a sojourn in the jungles of Surinam with the guerrillas of the Surinamese Liberation Army fighting the Marxist dictatorship of Desi Bouterse.  The column reported on what I saw and experienced.
 
In 1987, even though Ronald Reagan had been in the White House for over six years, the struggle for freedom against Soviet imperialism was (more…)

Dr. Jack’s Reading Recommendations for April, 2003

This month we’re going to focus upon books on Islam.  The first thing to do in this regard, however, is to go into the To The Point  Archives and read the Myth of Mecca article.  It explains how the religion of Islam was invented as a religious rationale to justify Arab imperialism.  At the end of that article, you’ll see a list of sources, all of which I strongly recommend as works of serious professional scholarship:

 • Al-Rawandi, I.M. Origins of Islam:  A Critical Look at the Sources.  Prometheus, 2000
 • Crone, P.M.  Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam.  Oxford, 1987.** (more…)

PROUDER THAN EVER

[Written ten days after the start of The War in Iraq, March 31, 2003]

Let me say it straight. I am almost sixty years old, and I have never in my life been prouder to be an American than I am today.

I was talking to my friend Tony Blankley, editorial editor of the Washington Times, the other day, and when I compared George Bush to Ronald Reagan, Tony replied, “It may turn out to be the other way around.”

I first met Ronald Reagan in 1965, and for all of us who were with him in his original campaign for California Governor or worked with him in the White House, the depth of (more…)

How to End Civilization as We Know It

Note: The original version of this article appeared in the March 2003 issue of Strategic Investment, an Agora Publication.

When the sand conditions are right, a Land Cruiser can get up enough speed to plane over the dunes of the Sahara at 60 miles an hour.

When the light is right, the white sand reflects the intense blue of the cloudless sky, and the dunes shimmer with an ethereal cerulean glow. You drive across an endless island of sand, surrounded on all sides by lakes of hallucinatory water.

As Ah-Klee, your Toureg nomad driver, skillfully weaves through the dunes, he (more…)

Something’s in the Air for 2003

STRATEGIC INVESTMENT, January 2003

One hundred and sixty years ago, in 1843, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office, Henry Ellsworth, reported to Congress:  “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.”  (This is the source of the spurious quote attributed in 1899 to Ellsworth’s successor, Charles Duell, who never said “Everything that can be invented has been invented”).

Human improvement did not come to an end in 1843, nor will it in 2003.  In fact, I think 2003 is going to (more…)

PLAYING POKER WITH KOREA

Poker Beats Chess

One of the meta-reasons America won the Cold War is that Russians play chess, while Americans play poker.

Chess demands great skill and intelligence, particularly at developing complex long-range strategies and anticipating your opponent’s moves.  But it bears little resemblance to life in the real world.  It is completely static and open.  Nothing is hidden.

Poker is very different.  You have to guess what your opponent has and the extent to which he is bluffing.  In business, in politics, in life in general, the folks who know how to play poker will almost always fare better than (more…)

THE SECRET RUSSIAN GAS IDENTIFIED

Across the world, today’s newspapers carried front-page headlines similar to that of the Washington Times:  "Russia Remains Silent on Deadly Knockout Gas."  The mystery of the Knockout Gas’s identity has been solved.

Last Wednesday, October 23, some 50 Moslem terrorists from the Russian province of Chechnya stormed a theatre in Moscow, and took as hostages about 800 people (mostly Russians) who were watching a play.  The terrorists demanded that Russian troops depart Chechnya, or else they would murder the hostages in cold blood.

His patience running out and afraid the Moslem terrorists would carry out their threat, Russian president Vladimir (more…)

GLACIERS IN THE GOBI

In the deepest heart of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, just south of the Flaming Cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews discovered dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, there is a naked spine of mountains called the Gurvan Saihan. In the Gurvan Saihan there is a valley called Yol Alyn, the Vulture’s Mouth. And in the Vulture’s Mouth, there is a glacier.

It is not a big glacier, the ice buildup of a stream that refuses to melt even in the heat of the Gobi summer. But it is a glacier nonetheless, thick enough for my son Jackson and I to walk (more…)

Still Not Eaten by the Leopard Seal

When penguins in Antarctica get hungry, they get nervous.  Grouped together on an iceberg, none of them wants to be the first to jump in the water and go fishing — because there just might be a leopard seal waiting for them.  There’s nothing in the sea a leopard seal finds more tasty to eat than fresh penguin.

So the waddle (on land or ice, a group of penguins is a waddle;  in the water, it’s a raft) bunches together, the ones in the back pushing forward, the ones in the front backing up away from the ice edge.  When (more…)