The group’s reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. As a former recipient of their “INTEL REPORTS” (I assume someone at Stratfor signed me up for a trial subscription, which appeared in my inbox unsolicited), what I found was typically some combination of publicly available information and bland “analysis” that had already appeared in the previous day’s New York Times. A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year.
However, it’s worth noting that Fisher’s thesis, which seems to be based on hearsay and conjecture alone rather than hard evidence, is getting debated heavily in the comments, with some suggesting he’s naïve. “The entire vibe of your piece is so snarky and so obviously full of anti-Wikileaks sentiment that it’s hard to know whether to take you seriously or not,” one commenter writes.
Wikileaks is dumping 5 million emails from Stratfor. This series is about Coke trying to get some info on PETA. Fascinating.
Interesting, thanks Fred.
Fred Burton wrote:
The FBI has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I’ll see what
I can uncover.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
———————————————————————————————————
From: “scott stewart”
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:01:30 -0400
To: ‘bart mongoven’
Subject: RE: Public Policy Question for Coca-Cola
Yeah, I’m not sure how that works now either. Bart, is this something
you guys can still help with?———————————————————————————————————
From: Anya Alfano [mailto:anya.alfano@stratfor.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 10:56 AM
To: Fred Burton; scott stewart
Subject: Public Policy Question for Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola just sent me a long list of questions regarding PETA/Animal
Activism and the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver—I’ve pasted the
questions below. I’m not entirely clear on how much we can task the
public policy group at this point—is there any guidance you can give me
on that front? Coke has asked for a short teleconference with one of
our analysts to discuss this issue—is that something I could ask Kathy,
Bart or Joe to do, or would that be off the table at this point? Stick,
are these questions something that you have a handle on, if we aren’t
able to get info from the policy folks?
Any thoughts or guidance would be helpful. Thanks, Anya
Questions—-
— How many PETA supporters are there in Canada?
— How many of these are inclined toward activism?
— To what extent will US-based PETA supporters travel to Canada to
support activism?
— What is PETA’s methodology for planning and executing activism?
(Understanding this better would certainly help us to recognize
indicators should they appear.)
— To what extent is PETA in Canada linked to PETA in the US or
elsewhere?
— To what extent are the actions of PETA in one country controlled by
an oversight board/governing body?
— To what extent could non-PETA hangers-on (such as anarchists or ALF
supporters) get involved in any protest activity?
A fascinating story that exposes a major private intelligence firm. It’s extremely interesting that Anonymous gave these files to Wikileaks — Anonymous hacked Stratfor late last year. Wikileaks has numerous media partners around the world for this story, with McClatchy and Rolling Stone representing the U.S., and activist group The Yes Men helping as well. We’ll check more of this stuff out later tonight.
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