Tag Archives: open source intelligence

FTAC – 24 Years – A Long Time Not Gone

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journalism, Philology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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In response to reading only the headline, “Saudis refuse soccer match with Palestinians in Judea-Samaria” (November 4, 2015).

If true, I don’t think it’s nonsense. The Kingdom has to assert itself against the revised Moscow-Damascus-Tehran alignment. Everyone knows that the PLO was a KGB project from the git-go and that similar politics (as with a Moscow meeting with the PFLP at this time last year) have been sustained by Putin. The Kingdom — and Kingdom Holdings — Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal have become stakeholders in the west.

The Soviet dissolved in session almost 24 years ago.

For people who think with calendars, this next year could be a doozy.

Cute, But Slow Down That Trolley!

What was reading before reading that headline:

Saudi multibillionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal has said that he would stand with Israel against the Palestinians if a new uprising was ignited, Kuwaiti media reported on Tuesday.

According to the AWD news website, bin Talal told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas: “I will side with the Jewish nation and its democratic aspirations in case of outbreak of a Palestinian Intifada.”

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/21971-al-waleed-bin-talal-supports-israel-against-palestinians

There has been a correction — or disinformation.

You decide.

The alternative and later-breaking headline shouts, “Fabricated quotes attributed to Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal on Israel-Palestine go viral” (October 29, 2015), and here is what it says:

An article from an obscure website falsely claiming that Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal had said that he would side with the Israelis against the Palestinians, went viral on social media before the prince released a statement on Thursday roundly denying the story.

Uh oh.

And Now the Rest of the Message from “Behind the News” (Israel)

The Saudi Arabian Football Federation has announced its refusal to play a World Cup preliminary match against the Palestinian national soccer team in a stadium near Ramallah, Samaria.

In its official announcement Tuesday to FIFA, Saudi Arabia expressed concern for the safety of its players in the sensitive area of Judea-Samaria, but reports say the real reason behind the refusal is fear that playing in the area would be a recognition of the “Israeli occupation.”

“Saudis refuse soccer match with Palestinians in Judea-Samaria” (November 4, 2015).

Of course, BackChannels prefers the allegation of Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal’s gentle swing west to the strident reportage and commentary produced by east and west partisan press.

To test public attitude and sentiment on any given but not yet presented policy, one may “float a trial balloon” — put it Out There: “swings west” vs “refuses play on Israeli occupied territory!” — and ascertain the public response to each possibility.

Happens every day.

What is the distance between the private convictions of the powerful and the public perception of the same?

The Prince Online

One of the largest shareholders in Citigroup, the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after the Murdoch family, and with major stakes in dozens of other Western companies, he travels the globe often wearing bespoke suits instead of the traditional Saudi thawb. Based in a country where women can’t drive or vote, he champions women’s rights and discourages his female employees, who make up 65 percent of his workforce, from wearing the veil in his offices.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/03/myth-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-saudi – 3/21/2013.

Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Co. agreed to sell its almost 30 percent stake in Saudi Research and Marketing Group at nearly double the market value.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-01/kingdom-holding-sells-saudi-research-stake-at-91-percent-premium – 11/2/2015.

“Not in London, not in New York, not in Dubai, right here in Saudi Arabia,” he said eagerly. “Kingdom Hotels, that will go public in Dubai and London. But Kingdom Holdings, that must go public here, that’s for sure. Because half of my investments are in Saudi Arabia.” 

Farther down the column of the same piece:

Many of Prince Alwaleed’s most visible investments have been in the West, especially in hotel properties–most recently Fairmont Hotels & Resorts , which he purchased with Colony Capital for some $3.5 billion. Kingdom Hotel Investments, which Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley will take public, raising at least $300 million, holds stakes in 26 hotels including such landmarks as London’s Savoy, the George V in Paris and a number of Four Seasons properties.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/19/prince-alwaleed-kingdom-holdings-cx_daa_0220saudidiary.html – 2/20/2006.

The world online, probably much like the one represented virtually, appears to have arrived freighted with classes and masses.  The wealthy, the few breathtakingly so, appear to battle for share of control of the world’s productive businesses and resources, and two of the qualities of high honor, dignity and integrity, attend their achievements.  The much, much, and far less wealthy may both bask in that glory as well as swim in its patronage and its “sweet words”, at times, perhaps, pandering.

Where is the Prince going?

The reader’s guess may be as good as BackChannels’ — although a writer blessed with look-up time and cursed with imagination may have a small edge in the collection of tea leaves for floating above the dark waters of an abyss of possibilities.

Back rooms and boardrooms, closed curtains and curtains lifted on theaters, few in the world, much less meandering around the web, may ever ascertain a true state of affairs in the region of the practical interests and strategies of the world’s chief controlling agents of privately-held capital or privately-controlled state capital.  Whether watching Kingdom or Kremlin — how different those two! — the (public access) watching needs must take place from somewhere far on the sidelines — down the columns and between the lines of common publications — and however magnificent the parade, one may see only one’s own small and shades-of-gray portion of the passing show.

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FTAC – “Trusted Others” – Online

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Politics

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“Trusted others” has been an issue here, and I haven’t found a way to handle it except by being circumspect, diplomatic, and in line with the run of the western opposition. The beauty of “open source intelligence (OSI)”, a very fancy way of saying one reads the news and socializes online and draws on that for commentary (it’s a hobby), is that it is open: the world that can access the Internet in English is reading off the same pages. Those of us in the “social network” here and elsewhere are pioneering together in time.

The only thing available to adverse parties in these online news and social zones is their own reflection: they are left reading about their image from multiple perspectives and sources, not that they don’t try to inform that image creation themselves.  However, for political narrative, truth and its stability are easier to work with than the anarchy that comes of clumsy, doubtful, and self-serving fictions.

So pithy, I’ve assigned it to the “A Little Wisdom” section of this blog.

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FTAC – An Observation on Citizen Action and the Federal Domestic Security Disconnect

30 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Islamic Small Wars, Political Spychology, Politics

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You don’t know you don’t know.

http://youtu.be/YKXxCZG6SQs

Landmark Education Forum – YouTube – 6/30/2012

Landmark, to which I obtained an introduction, no more than that, many years ago provides encouragement and language for “breakthrough” thinking, part of which rightly involves thinking beyond what one knows one doesn’t know (for that, we have search engines) and getting on to things of which we are not aware (we don’t know what we don’t know).

Today, a web search of the statement “You don’t know what you don’t know” brings up a raft of similar applications by other entities and for many purposes.  The jargon has become a part of the pursuit of a spacious perspicacity.

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This day started with correspondence and with it the opportunity to recap some thoughts about the Obama Administration’s stance as regards al-Qaeda, domestic terrorism, and the Muslim Brotherhood, ever subjects of interest to Jihad and anti-Jihad elements alike.  The note touches on not only the relative invisibility of the American intelligence industry — what kind of industry would it be if it were all open on the table as Snowdenhood would have it? — and it’s thin but present barrier with those involved, inadvertently or deliberately, as friendly or unfriendly, in the “open source intelligence” community, i.e., the community looking things up on the Internet plus, perhaps, the community of journalists poking and prodding cultural and social reality from some stance (friendly or unfriendly) of their own.  Herewith:

X.,

The problem with speculation is that it has spectrum even, as with you, if the guesswork is as educated and informed as it may be.

When Obama took office, he was careful to minimize the scope of work as regards the Islamic Small Wars. He left the Brotherhood as a wandering cloud and pinpointed Osama and the southeast Asian Jihad as a target American and NATO troops plus our military and state security resources could manage. As you may recall, I call that stance the pursuit of the least war possible, not an imprudent position given the costs (in blood and treasure) involved in the way WE conduct war.

Blood and weapons seem cheaper by far on the other side by measure of the other side’s own behavior.

In our internal security, the flow down from the Presidential mind seems to have been to similarly restrict the scope of operations to arrest (first) and interdict (as we get better at machine sifting human signal); That’s where the system breaks down before human language-borne illusion and will. Relying on our principles, we will allow, even encourage, Muslims to do as everyone else does, including setting up mosques without restriction and proselytizing like the most ambitious bible thumpers, but we will not allow them to conspire, commit, or incite crime (not any more than we would anyone else).

That’s how we do things here.

Nonetheless, as domestic terrorism is a fact of life, and association with a large contribution from Islamic Jihad undeniable, and absurd when it is denied (Little Rock, Fort Hood, Boston, yadayada): So how to lay a trap for those who would smile to the country’s face while preparing to stab it in the back?

Watch what it does, what it says, and where it goes and try to reduce behaviors attending conspiracy, incitement, and the setting out to do violence to some package that can be policed without nulling the express rights, traditions, and privileges of other Americans, including Muslims not involved with such criminal dreaming, scheming, and planning.

What we do for one, we must do for all, for here all are equal under the law.

Missing at this level of “competition” on the domestic front: we have nothing in place — no laws — speaking to sedition or the detention of persons of interest, which might as well include you or I or any number of other Americans involved on any side of the Islamic Small Wars.

Your complaint is predicated on knowing what you know and not seeing what you know reflected elsewhere.

While you rightly ask what America is getting for its $52 billion annual combined agency and services intelligence bill, you and most others — perhaps with the exception of benighted Snowdens — cannot see the traffic moving behind the walls defined by the possession of secret clearance within a relevant agency or operation. I / you / we / and most don’t know what the secrets-keeping intelligence and security sectors of the Federal government knows.

When we guess, our personalities as much or more than empirical observation and reason, contribute to our theories.

To reduce this to “takeaway”: I think, best case, President Obama has pursued with the endorsements of Party and general election, the least war possible as regards engagement with Islamist ambition or programming and its various hidden as well as large (e.g., Russia-Syria-Iran) entities.

We know the Federal government wants to interdict Boston Marathon Bombings but seems to have some problem coordinating, investigating, or stopping that activity. The worst explanation: some idiot with a scientific mind wants the end point! A complete(d) story. The best, which is not so good: our domestic security apparatus is a gangly beast with many heads and hundreds of hands and it is incapable of rising to any occasion, like the threat of the Boston Marathon Bombing, “as one man”.

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The route of a high-ranking mosque official: awful.

For the years in service at and the relationships formed and cherished by his congregation, there’s no good explanation for the fast night flight (symbolically so) out and the lack of then immediate transitional communication with the organization’s membership.

However, the Federal government has every right and imperative to treat that event as an internal matter, privileged and private, also confined to the organization, and not a matter of public concern, at least where the Federal public presence may be concerned.

In the secret life of the Federal government, all permutations of two guesses are good: it’s helping the Muslim Brotherhood in America vs. it’s investigating the Muslim Brotherhood in America.

The talk around that makes for lively but unresolvable argument.

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