Next war. Not a question of if, but where?

A cynical question. Do we have to increase work pace to get our documentary done in time before the next big war breaks out? The sarcasm was triggered by Terror Expert Bruce Riedel’s explanations on how he sees current affairs in the world and its hotbeds. Riedel is an advisor to President-Elect Barack Obama on South Asia and terrorism and recently gave this interview to German News Platform SPIEGEL.

Here are four interesting quotes from CIA veteran Bruce Riedel in case you don’t want to read the entire interview:

1 “These attacks (Mumbai Attacks) dominated global news for 72 hours non-stop. Achieving that amount of media coverage is exactly what the terrorists wanted. With the exception of Sept. 11, we have never really seen such global coverage.”

2 “We know the airline business is high on their (al-Qaida’s) target list. In addition, al-Qaida has decided that if and when it attacks in the US again, it has to outdo Sept. 11.”

3 “If there is any place in the world where al-Qaida might hope to steal nuclear material, Pakistan would be the most logical.”

4 “South Asia is the most likely place where in our lifetimes we might see a nuclear war.”

Not very thrilling all this. Here’s the link to the entire interviewagain. In case you got curious.

Tumultuos times.

Street Terror in Mumbai, West Bank and Peshawar. Joblessness rising in the US to a 34 year high. Recession Worldwide. Lots of not so good news raining in today. So I wasn’t sure if I needed my today’s share of “Dr. Doom” whose optimism is usually very limited. Dr. Doom is Nouriel Roubini, almost a regular in this blog by now and Professor of Economics at NY University’s Stern School of Business.  Not only did he foresee the entire recession but also in surprising detail. Of course now everybody listens when he talks.

And in these “dark hours” he sheds some light and promotes slight optimism. Even though he likes to pinpoint that what we see at the end of the tunnel is not the light but the trainwreck. In this video he even talks about economic recovery by the end of 2009. Hang in there, till then.

On a sidenote I’m very happy to let you know that Global Warning’s facebook plattform is doing very fine. If you haven’t checked out our facebook fan site feel free to do so and if you have any questions you can post them on the discussion board there. And last but not least: Global Warning’s Youtube Channel.