FNS – Abu Dubai – Burqa-Aided Murder at the Mall – Case Solved

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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The woman was wearing a burka when she allegedly stabbed 47-year-old mother-of-two Ibolya Ryan, who once lived in Colorado, in a mall restroom on Reem Island on Monday.

An hour after the stabbing, the suspect then planted a home-made bomb outside the house of a Muslim Egyptian-American doctor, Sheikh Saif said. But the device, which was made of small gas cylinders, a lighter, glue and nails, was successfully dismantled after one of the man’s sons found it.
Sheikh Saif added that the woman targeted her victims based solely on their nationality and did not know either of them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2860702/Police-arrest-killer-burqaPICTURED-American-woman-stabbed-death-burqa-attacker-Abu-Dhabi-named-47-year-old-mom-Colorado-emerges-teachers-warned-Jihadi-targets.html – 12/4/2014

I’m finishing the Pacepa and Rychlak book Disinformation (which mighty tome I highly recommend to all interested in the Islamic Small Wars, foreign affairs, and political psychology), and the above tipped by Shoebat came together too quickly and neatly to leave laying around on the desktop screen.

Happy Helliday shopping, says I.

The incident will probably spark renewed talk about public dress and security as well as about manipulated vacuous zombie terrorists, including those of the “black widow” strain, which historic metaphor I now apply in more generic visual terms.

Update: December 5, 2014

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/woman-held-abu-dhabi-killing-american-teacher-ibolya-ryan-n261356:

Born in Romania to Hungarian parents, Ryan was living with twin 11-year-old sons in Abu Dhabi, the fourth country where she had taught in 15 years.

“She was a great person,” said Karen Ryan, whose husband is the victim’s brother-in-law. “She was so committed to her teaching.”

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FTAC – Theater of War – Iran Bombs ISIS

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Iraq, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

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There may be a lot of theater in the theater.

Doha-Washington may be competing with Tehran-Moscow (with Damascus between them), and the point of both would seem to be to have a scourge, accidentally or deliberately, worth elimination and the claim of rescue.

Assad managed to turn an “Arab Spring” revolution toward democracy and modernity into a deeply medieval and polarized civil war pitting his “secular” regime against Islamic extremists. It didn’t start out that way — and missing from the fields of battle: about nine million displaced Syrians.

On the Sunni side of this geopolitical knot (a knot because the Soviet Union was not finished off but merely transferred to the KGB, which has pursued a deeply feudal and equally thieving — internally and externally — course) stands an apparently duplicitous alliance that started out intending to knock Iran out of Syria (taking care of Hezbollah on the way) and produce an updated Islamic.

Things are just not working out the way they seem to have been planned — and much of that planning may have been to promote one appearance or another of a version of political reality. Again: there’s too much of theater in the combat.

The tail isn’t wagging the dog.

The whole dog is wagging the dog, from the tip o’ the nose to the end o’ the tail, U.S.-NATO and perhaps a Sunni-aligned alliance on one side while on the other: Neo-Feudal Russia, today a KGB/FSB Dictatorship, and its familiar “Axis of Evil” partners, Khamenei-Setad, Bashar the Butcher, and assorted anti-American and national socialist whatnot worldwide.

And hanging over every inch of the latest lightning in this storm: the immense and darker cloud of a nuclear umbrella.

Reference

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/iran-bombs-isis-in-iraq-says-us – 12/3/2014 (published about an hour ago):

In Tehran, the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brigadier-General Massoud Jazayeri also denied any collaboration. Iran considered the US responsible for Iraq’s “unrest and problems”, he said, adding that the US would “definitely not have a place in the future of that country”.

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-believes-iran-is-carrying-out-airstrikes-against-isis-in-iraq–tehran-denies-2014-12 – 12/3/2014 (earlier today)

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FTAC – Safiyah – A Comment

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Religion

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Safiyah. Muhammad had murdered her husband, a part of a mass slaughter, and taken her as a wife for her beauty. How she felt about all of that, we will never know.

As with the Banu Qurayza Legend, there are multiple sources, views, and spins, but from the Jewish perspective, the stories are ugly and about the glorification of capricious, criminal, and unbridled power. Words and teachings having to do with wisdom may differ, but the pictures painted by lore are not to be desired unless what is desired is cruelty.

Reference

Anyone can go around in circles sourcing and arguing certain and seminal stories, but the gargantuan image created is that of audacious theft, immense cruelty, and gross injustice.

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Safiyah

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Quote – Manipulation – About the PLO Leader – Pacepa and Rychlak (2013)

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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The KGB, when I was still connected with it, went to great lengths to transform an Egyptian born Marxist, Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar, into a Palestinian-born Yasser Arafat.  It took the KGB — and my DIE — many years to endow Arafat with a credible Palestinian birth certificate and other identity documents, to build him a new past, and to train him at the KGB Balashikha special-operations training school east of Moscow.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  P. 289.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

About a month ago, Russian President Putin’s “Special Representative for the Middle East and Deputy Foreign Minister” Mikhail Bogdanov met with representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and discussed, among other things, the stalled delivery of Russian S-300 missiles to Syria in 2012.  Two days ago, the issue resurfaced in the news with the message that the delivery would go through.

Loosely Related Reference

How much to you believe in or endorse “political theater” (or state-managed information space) for the aggrandizement of certain “producers”?

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/report-reveals-putin-allies-hands-in-major-media-company/511302.html – 11/17/2014.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russia-tightens-control-over-foreign-ownership-of-print-media/511170.html – 11/16/2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/books/review/putins-kleptocracy-by-karen-dawisha.html – 11/25/2014 (review by Rajan Menon):

In explaining the system’s workings, Dawisha enumerates the standard shenanigans of crooked regimes: bribetaking from domestic and foreign companies seeking business permits; kickbacks from inflated no-bid contracts for state projects; privatization deals rigged to enrich cronies who will later be cash cows for the Kremlin; illicit exports of raw materials purchased at state-subsidized prices and sold for a killing; “donations” from oligarchs eager to keep feeding at the government’s trough; real estate scams yielding mega-profits and palatial homes; money laundering; election-fixing; labyrinthine offshore accounts; lucrative partnerships with the mob; and the intimidation, even elimination, of would-be whistle-blowers.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/Karen+Dawisha

Update December 7, 2014

Reference: January 2014 Incident in Latakia

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4600690,00.html – 12/7/2014: “Syrian media: IAF struck targets near Damascus: According to Syrian television, Israel targeted two security positions near the international airport in the capital.” / http://www.debka.com/newsupdate/7052/ – 1/27/2014: “DEBKAfile: There was no Israeli air strike on Latakia, Syria.” / http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2014/01/iaf-took-out-s-300s-in-latakia.html

Update – October 31, 2015 – Pacepa – First Person Account – January 12, 2002

Last week Israel seized a boat carrying 50 tons of Iranian-made mortars, long-range missiles and antitank rockets destined for the Palestinian Authority. The vessel, Karim A., is owned by the Palestinian Authority, and its captain and several crewmen are members of the Palestinian naval police. I am not surprised to see that Yasser Arafat remains the same bloody terrorist I knew so well during my years at the top of Romania’s foreign intelligence service. I became directly involved with Arafat in the late 1960s, in the days when he was being financed and manipulated by the KGB. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel humiliated two of the Soviet Union’s Arab client states, Egypt and Syria. A couple of months later, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence, Gen. Alexander Sakharovsky, landed in Bucharest. According to him, the Kremlin had charged the KGB to “repair the prestige” of “our Arab friends” by helping them organize terrorist operations that would humiliate Israel. The main KGB asset in this joint venture was a “devoted Marxist-Leninist”–Yasser Arafat, co-founder of Fatah, the Palestinian military force.

http://webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/pacepa-wsj.html – 1/12/2002.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai.  “The KGB’s Man.”  The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003:

The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an “obstacle” to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.

Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world’s “kings, queens & despots,” with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

Related: Wikipedia.  “Ion Mihai Pacepa”.

Update – August 27, 2016 – Another Piece (Online) by Pacepa

Pacepa, Ion Mihai.  “What does Moscow have to do with the recent war in Lebanon?”  National Review, August 24, 2006.

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Link – Gaza and Ramallah – Alone

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel

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The Palestinians know very well that if and when they have a state of their own, they will never be able to rely on their Arab brethren.

The Arab countries have a long record of turning their backs on the Palestinians, not only with regard to financial aid promises, but even when it comes to basic needs such as medical treatment.

But what will happen after the creation of a Palestinian state? Palestinians say they do not have high expectations that the Arab countries will help them build their state.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4917/palestinian-state-instability – 12/1/2014.

Dicks and Spooks – Books

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology

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Quite slowly but with method, the library takes shape within the mansion within the cottage inside an apartment out in the countryside about one mountain beyond the Washington area.

Probably, the shelves should be alphabetized rather than categorized, but that would be a registry, not a library: a library has sections and themes, visual appeal and both mysterious and promising atmospheres — there are whole shelves here filled with Le Carre (all of his books) and Peter Mayle — but as regards this blog, certain aspects of the collection emerge in relation to “conflict, culture, language, and psychology”.

“Dicks and Spooks”?

Detectives and spies, intelligence organizations and operations, their marks: mafia and political criminals.

The section is small.  Even so, two of the list have not been read, one for boredom (“MI6” risks becoming a doorstop), the other — it’s not its time yet.

Titles as readable as they may be intriguing: The Good Spy, The Zhivago Affair, and Mafioso.

There’s relevant library on the Kindle as well — e.g., Tim Shorrock’s Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing — but I don’t even want to light up that screen or find out what Amazon has to say about me: The Book remains the Friend in the Library, spine out, ever present, ever ready to be read and to be read again on bed or sofa, or, God forbid it (which uttered objection is certain to bring about the same), at the table with coffee, note cards, and pens at the ready.

Inventory in “Dicks and Spooks” just noted:

Bird, Kai.  The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames.  New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.

Finn, Peter and Petra Couvee.  The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book.  New York: Pantheon Books, 2014.

Jeffery, Keith.  The Secret History of MI6.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2010.

Servadio, Gaia. Mafioso.  New York: Stein and Day, 1976.

Trento, Joseph J.  The Secret History of the CIA.  Roseville, California: Prima, 2001

All of the above solopsistic discussion for five books (of more than two thousand) . . . .  Still, one of five of two thousand just might appeal to the reader.

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Link – Anti-Semitism, Politically Malignant Narcissism, Fascist Manipulation

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Gaza Suzerain, Journalism

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In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry. I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills, particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/ – 11/30/2014.

When it comes to Israel (and the “Joooooos”), manipulation may lay on the other side of conformance.

Related:

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/12/01/israeli-watchdog-ngo-monitor-censored-by-ap-and-other-major-outlets/ – 12/1/2014.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2348191/EXCLUSIVE-KGB-operation-seeded-Muslim-countries-anti-American-anti-Jewish-propaganda-1970s-laying-groundwork-Islamist-terrorism-U-S-Israeli-targets.html – 6/25/2013.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J. Disinformation. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

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Link to Recommended Review of Karen Dawisha’s _Putin’s Kleptocracy_

30 Sunday Nov 2014

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Dawisha takes Freeland’s realization one step further. She is arguing, in effect, that even before those nefarious rules were written, the system had already been rigged to favor particular people and interest groups. No “even playing field” was ever created in Russia, and the power of competitive markets was never unleashed. Nobody became rich by building a better mousetrap or by pulling himself up by his bootstraps. Instead, those who succeeded did so thanks to favors granted by—or stolen from—the state. And when the dust settled, Vladimir Putin emerged as king of the thieves.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/dec/18/how-he-and-his-cronies-stole-russia/ – 12/18/2014.

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