Talk:Stratfor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Broken Link

The (current) second reference link, http://www.stratfor.com/corp/Corporate.neo?s=CIA, doesn't work. It was a reference for the fact that the CIA is one of Stratfor's customers. If anyone could find evidence for that, it would be helpful. Worldthoughts 20:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

I'm not disputing that this article could do with a criticism section, but the material that was there just isn't it. It is a company that specialises in making predictions - but this by no means suggests that they're always going to turn out correct. They're an intelligence company, not a group of psychics. Any company in their field is inevitably going to be wrong sometimes, so this is hardly a helpful criticism.

The second paragraph is equally suspect. It tries to pin some sort of vague blame on them for being a commercial operation, and then makes the allegation that they have been unwilling to revise predictions without any evidence whatsoever. Only the last point may have some validity, and even that needs a source before going in the article. Rebecca 05:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

We should include something on the early stratfor position on Israel, as I put earlier: "Stratfor have also predicted an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon on 17/18 July 2006, which did not happen." - we should now add a statement that this invasion did in fact happen, but several weeks after stratfor's prediction. Stratfor's briefings on this issue are available on the subscriber section of their site.

Anent a criticism section, is there any information available about how responsive Stratfor may be to ideology-driven manipulation? For example, the recent claim that an Iranian scientist was assassinated by Israeli intelligence could be used for political advantage even if its actuality remains in doubt or it is shown likely to be false. It seems unlikely the Stratfor or similar organizations are or consistently will be guided by principles of caution, veracity and completeness or that their sources and methods can consistently be identified, tested and verified. Judgment of Stratfor should not rest solely on its proportion of correct predictions, but also on bias, hidden agendas, secret influences, deliberate deception, vulnerability to agents provocateur, etc. Myron 08:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but given the fact that the article mentions some of Stratfor's predictions post-9/11, I believe that blown predictions of the past must be fair game. I was at one time subscribed to Stratfor's free newsletter, and I definitely recall them predicting (with something like 75% probability) that China was going to make a direct military move against Taiwan (either outright attack or seizure of islands such as Quemoy & Matsu) in the 2000-2005 years. Unfortunately, that was several email accounts ago and the message is long since gone. Can anyone provide some verification for that? 24.131.195.247 12:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Well-Received by Its Audience

I removed the statement that Stratfor's reports are generally well-received by its audience.

This statement is somewhat unverifiable. Presumably, Stratfor would keep its client list confidential, so it is not really possible to have a completely independent analysis of customer opinions. Such a survey would need to be conducted by Stratfor itself, and then Stratfor would need to place those results here, which wouldn't be allowed because it would amount to original research. Therefore, the statement is essentially unverifiable and should probably be left out of the article until a reliable source for such a statement exists.

A second reason for removing the statement is that it's somewhat unnecessary to begin with. Most of Stratfor's products are sold to clients. If the reports were not well-received by the audience, they would likely stop paying for them. The fact that Stratfor continues to function as a business implies that their products are well-received by their clients. However, I think that this sort of deduction does not, in and of itself, justify such a statement in the article, because it amounts to speculation.

Therefore, because the statement is somewhat unverifiable, somewhat unnecessary, and amounts to speculation, I have removed it from the article. Cheers --DavidGC 00:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)