Hot Stratfor Babe of the Year

Stratfor has been busy recovering from the hacking of their servers, so there haven't been new articles recently. Since this is the time of the year for assessing and recapping the events of the past year, I thought I would dig through Flares' traffic statistics to see who the most popular Hot Stratfor Babes were.

Of course some percentage of the searches are for the contents of the articles, but a bulk of them are for the women that I, in a demonstration that I'll chuck decorum over the side in a heartbeat to attempt to lure traffic to Flares, have selected for the singular honor of being an article's Hot Stratfor Babe. 

As an aside, I often wonder what somebody thinks when, after searching for a celebrities picture, they land on a page with a serious Strafor article. I imagine there is a fair amount of head-scratching that takes place in those scenarios. 

Any way, enough idle jibber-jabber. Without further ado I present the 2011 Hot Stratfor Babes of the Year (clicked on any image to enlarge):

Marilyn Monroe: Marilyn started slowly, but picked up steam in the second half of the year and bolted to the number one spot on the list.

A significant amount of her traffic came from people interested in her luncheon with President Kennedy in Mexico shortly before her death, which I mentioned in my comments that accompanied her selection. 

Twiggy: I was surprised when traffic for her started climbing. I had no idea that many people still knew who she was, much less were still interested in her.

Her Stratfor article concerned the possible future borders for Israel and I think it drew a larger proportion of the traffic than usual. 

M.I.A. (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam): the British/Tamil rapper was the first Hot Stratfor Babe to really take off. At one time she provided an embarrassingly large percentage of Flares' traffic.

Then she tailed off rapidly. I wonder if her young fans just moved on to another flavor of the day? 

Nurgül Yeşilçay: this Turkish actress has drawn considerable traffic ranging from India through the Balkans and North Africa.

Although largely unknown to Americans, she is obviously enormously popular over a good-sized chunk of the globe. She's a simple reminder of how little we really know when viewing from afar.

Joan Collins: like Twiggy, I had no idea how popular she still is. Her traffic dribbles in slowly, but steadily.

Many of her searches are for "Joan Collins" and "cat fight", so I guess she made a real impression with the characters she's played.

Bomber Nose Art: I'll end my list with an Honorable Mention. Although not actually appearing on the top five of the Hot Stratfor Babe list, Bomber Nose Art still draws traffic on a regular basis. 

It's been a fun year and hopefully you've enjoyed my foolishness with the Hot Stratfor Babe schtick. So far it looks like Lucy Lawless (thanks Knuck) will be a solid contender for next year's award, but we shall see.

Stratfor and bomber nose art

This Stratfor article concerns the seemingly never ending Moslem outrage over the Mohamed cartoons. They were published 5 years ago and plots against the cartoonists still surface like clockwork.

This intimidation is an attempt to enforce their religious sensibilities over our notion of free speech. I'll take free speech, but unfortunately our betters in the media didn't have the sense to tell the lot of them to bugger off and plaster the cartoons all over the place.

At any rate the babe that came to mind when I read the article were the pinup girls of WWII bomber nose art. The article Military Aircraft Nose Art: An American Tradition has this to say about nose art on planes deployed for the First Gulf War:

During the Gulf War, sexually provocative art was removed before an aircraft was deployed to Saudi Arabia to avoid offending inhabitants of the area. Bikinis were painted over to became long black dresses. After the war, artists restored the images to their original state upon the request of the crews and pilots (Walker, More, p. 34).

After the Gulf War and after the wave of negative public opinion, the military ruled against portraying women on aircraft. Nose art was removed from all 319th Wing and 384th aircraft in 1992. On the "Queen of Hearts," the name remains without an image.

Bah Humbug.  I guess cartoons just can't catch a break in this day and age.

THE MOHAMMED CARTOON DUST HAS NOT SETTLED

By Scott Stewart, January 6, 2011

When one considers all of the people and places in the West targeted by transnational jihadists over the past few years, iconic targets such as New York's Times Square, the London Metro and the Eiffel Tower come to mind. There are also certain target sets such as airlines and subways that jihadists focus on more than others. Upon careful reflection, however, it is hard to find any target set that has been more of a magnet for transnational jihadist ire over the past year than the small group of cartoonists and newspapers involved in the Mohammed cartoon controversy.

Every year STRATFOR publishes a forecast of the jihadist movement for the coming year. As we were working on that project for this year, we were struck by the number of plots in 2010 that involved the cartoon controversy -- and by the number of those plots that had transnational dimensions, rather than plots that involved only local grassroots operatives. (The 2011 jihadist forecast will be available to STRATFOR members in the coming weeks.)

Groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have gone to great lengths to keep the topic of the Mohammed cartoons burning in the consciousness of radical Islamists, whether they are lone wolves or part of an organized jihadist group, and those efforts are obviously bearing fruit. Because of this, we anticipate that plots against cartoon-related targets will continue into the foreseeable future.