zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — all middle and no end ]

.

And while I’m at it, I might as well post one of the very first DoubleQuotes I put together when I was first experimenting with the format, sometime between October 2003 and June 2004

I thought then, and I think now, that a walkway lined with dozens of little plaques presenting odd snippets of fact like either one of those would be a marvelous device for triggering associations in ambulatory analysts…

And it is a recurring pattern, isn’t it?

Ominously, there have been cases of terrorist pirates hijacking tankers in order to practice steering them through straits and crowded sea-lanes-the maritime equivalent of the September 11 hijackers’ training in Florida flight schools. These apparent kamikazes-in-training have questioned crews on how to operate ships but have shown little interest in how to dock them. In March 2003, an Indonesian chemical tanker, the Dewi Madrim, was hijacked off Indonesia. The ten armed men who seized the vessel steered it for an hour through the busy Strait of Malacca and then left the ship with equipment and technical documents.
.
Gal Luft and Anne Korin, Terrorism Goes to Sea, Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2004

It helps to be alert to rhyming between ideas…

[ by Charles Cameron ]

.

I spend a fair amount of effort as you know, trying to monitor the various forms of end-times religion manifesting in the Abrahamic faiths, so it came as a shock to me to find a seam of material on Sunni Mahdism that I hadn’t previously run across, now a year old, from over on my old side of the pond of all places…

Look what happens to London:

And if that isn’t graphic enough for you — and it really isn’t very graphic — look at what happens to New York…

The End of Time… A New Beginning…

*

The first image comes from a poster for a tour of Ireland in October of last year — though why the good people of Ireland should be so worried if London is consumed in sulphurous fog and flame is a little hard for me to understand — while the second graphic advertises a conference in London — though why the good people of London should be so concerned if the city of New York… no, I won’t go there, there’s the Special Relationship, isn’t there?  Is there?

I missed both events, alas, living quietly here in the United States, or I might have heard, in Ireland:

a clear description about life in the grave, the trials of the last day, the major and minor signs leading to the last hour and the day of resurrection including Imam Mahdi, The Dajjal and many more.

I could have taken notes, and published them here on Zenpundit. After all, as the advertisements advertised:

On the Day of Judgment those who pass the test will be rewarded with Paradise.

Cliff’s Notes for Judgement Day — a sure best seller!

*

Not to worry, I can still study up on the January 2009 London conference, at which Anwar al-Awlaki reportedly hosted a live video question-and-answer session, presumably beaming in from Yemen — even though tickets are no longer available…

If I can just get hold of the DVDs…

\

Sadly, though, they’re out of stock…

*

Okay seriously now — three points:

This is associated with al-Awlaki.  This has slick PR, intercontinental video feeds, and DVDs.  And this is Sunni Mahdism.

Check?

[ by Charles Cameron ]

.

There’s been talk about “gamification of jihad” recently, the idea being that on the jihadist forums you get points and seniority for posting often, your posts getting thumbs up from others, etc — reputation, in a nutshell.

Well, the guys at Quilliam include Senior Analyst Noman Benotman, one time leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and bin Laden comrade-in-arms, who later disbanded the former and criticized the latter in an open letter — if he’s getting the sense that al-Awlaki didn’t impress bin Laden, hopefully some jihadi wannabes will get rapidly less impressed, too…

[ By Charles Cameron ]
.

I’m always on about the power of polyphonic thinking, right? Okay, IMO, these two pieces are well worth reading in stereo:

http://www.galacticempiretimes.com/2011/05/09/galaxy/outer-rim/obi-wan-kenobi-is-killed.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is-killed.html

h/t @abumuqawama

Adam reminds us that punitive raiding is not by itself a substitute for clear strategies or coherent policies in a well-written piece posted at The Atlantic Monthly :

From Romans to SEALs, a Troubled History of Raiding

The Osama bin Laden raid has been hailed as the centerpiece of a new style of “collaborative” warfare that leverages intelligence fusion and networked interagency teams to focus precision force on America’s enemies. Collaborative warfare, while impressive, is only the latest and greatest in a genre of military operation that dates back thousands of years: the punitive raid. From the days of the Roman Empire through Sunday’s raid in Abottabad, Pakistan, governments have relied on punitive raids and manhunts to eliminate challengers to state power without resorting to costly, large-scale occupations. 

But a look at the history and evolution of punitive raiding reveals that it is not a substitute for sound strategy — and can be far more costly than policymakers might suspect and may have political costs that outweigh the strategic benefits. Punitive raids — whether they consist of a large column of raiders advancing by horseback or an airmobile squad of commandos about to drop into an enemy cross-border haven — have always been deceptively appealing as low-cost alternatives…

Read the rest here.