zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — the unrealities and realities of dream and vision, sensitive compartmented information, zahir and batin, bin Laden and the Mahdi, more ]
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I did not lead a busload of others down a path to a hotel.
I did not arrive near my childhood home by bus.
I was not a member of a CIA team meeting for a conference.
I did not attend breakfast in the hotel.
I did not have a pen clipped inside my trousers.
My attention was not called to my pen having leaked by a female friend.
I did not have a female friend.
I did not manage to remove both pen and leaked ink from my trousers.
I did not wonder how I would climb hills or trees if ncecessary during the conference exercises.
I am in no condition to climb hills or trees, nor to lead others down a path.
There is, however, a conference center very close to the house I used to live in during my childhood.
I dreamed these things.

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The De Vere Horsley Estate, just a couple of fields away from my childhood home, now a conference center:

Google images thinks of it more as a marriage location. This particular photo is from the Hetty Hikes album.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace, who intuited the operational utility of punched cards of the type used in Jacquard looms for retaining information generated by her friend Charles Babbage‘s Difference Engine, prototype of today’s computers, lived at Horsley Towers, built by the same architect, Sir Charles Barry, who designed the Houses of Parliament..

My own more modest childhood dwelling was within the grounds, just a few hundred feet inside the Horsley Towers Gates.

**

Dreams are, in a sense, occulted from waking life: there is a secrecy to them.

When the time comes that we can reliably scan and record the visual and verbal imagery of dreams, perhaps even at a distance from and without the consent of their dreamers, questions will arise as to whether their contents should be classified, indeed perhaps deemed Sensitive Compartmented Information, and dreaming permitted only in SCIFs?

Various occult, psychological and imaginal theories suppose that dreams can touch upon a subjective yet absolute realm, Jung‘s collective unconscious with its archetypes, Shia Islam’s ‘alam al-mithal, termed by Henry Corbin the mundus imaginalis…

there exists an inner world, which lies ‘outside’ our personal minds, and in which they are contained in exactly the same way as our bodies are contained in the outer world revealed by the senses

writes D Streatfeild in Persephone.

And Corbin, writing of the Suhrawardian mundus imaginalis:

Essentially the relationship involved is that of the outer, the visible, the exoteric (in Greek ta exo, in Arabic zahir) to the inner, the invisible, the esoteric (in Greek ta eso, in Arabic batin), or the relationship of the natural to the spiritual world. Leaving the where, the ubi category, is equivalent to leaving the outer or natural appearances that cloak the hidden inner realities, just as the almond is concealed in its shell.

Zahir and Batin are, respectively, the literal or apparent meanings of Quranic verses, and their hidden or spiritual meanings, known only to those who have eyes to see, ears to hear…

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For a dream in which the young bin Laden is instructed to carry a black flag (“similar to the flag of Saudi Arabia” and with “something written on it in white color”) to the Mahdi at the gates of Al-Quds, Jerusalem, see A “Big Dream” attributed to Osama bin Laden.

I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours — Bob Dylan said that.

[ by Charles Cameron — category title would be along the lines of “the unobvious which ought to be blindingly obvious” — maybe that explains why these things are so hard to see ]
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It’s a pattern.

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You can stumble on an unintended blowback example any day of the week — and thrice on some days:

Probably most important thread you can read today from @rcallimachi. On why ISIS calls Trump's travel ban "The Blessed Ban" pic.twitter.com/qPwSuZrQaS

— Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid) February 8, 2017

let me quickly add the next two in Callimachi’s series:

12. The term they're using – "a blessed ban" – reminds me of what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, spiritual founder of ISIS said about the 03 invasion

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) February 8, 2017

13. Zarqawi, founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS, called the 2003 invasion of Iraq "the Blessed Invasion" https://t.co/VNT2h9YJ2v

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) February 8, 2017

**

Sources:

TBIJ, Nine young children killed: The full details of botched US raid in Yemen

Politico, CIA Memo: Designating Muslim Brotherhood Could ‘Fuel Extremism’

Twitter, Rukmini Callimachi

[ by Charles Cameron — with a side dish of Tzipi Livni ]
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photo credit: Greg Nash via The Hill

I’ll be socratic here, asking questions to illuminate my hunches.

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I’m seldom fully convinced by anything that comes from the left and reads the way I’d expect the left to read, and seldom convinced by anything that comes from the right and reads the way I’d expect the right to read, so I don’t take the left’s assertions downplaying H Clinton’s security behavior with reflex belief, and on the whole I’m inclined to follow John Schindler, who — both as an ex-NSA analyst and as a regular at The Observer — takes a very hard line on Clinton’s security behavior, writing just a couple of weeks ago under the title, The Coming Constitutional Crisis Over Hillary Clinton’s EmailGate.

I also follow War on the Rocks, though, and was struck a while back by a post there from Mark Stout, drawing some interesting distinctions in line with its subtitle, “A former intelligence analyst who worked at both the CIA and the State Department explains how different approaches to classifying information sits at the heart of the scandal that threatens to undo Hillary Clinton.”

Which does somewhat complicate matters, while somewhat helping us understand them.

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I’m neither an American nor a lawyer, and as someone who is generally inclined more to bridge-building than to taking sides in any case, I don’t feel qualified to debate the Comey-Clinton affair – but was interested to see emptywheel’s Marcy Wheeler, whom I take to be leftish, coming out today describing Comey’s decision as an “improper public prosecutorial opinion”. She writes:

Understand, though: with Sterling and Drake, DOJ decided they were disloyal to the US, and then used their alleged mishandling of classified information as proof that they were disloyal to the US ..Ultimately, it involves arbitrary decisions about who is disloyal to the US, and from that a determination that the crime of mishandling classified information occurred.

Comey, in turn, seems to have made it pretty clear that “Secretary Clinton or her colleagues“ were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” – specifically:

.. seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received.  These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters.

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Is there, in your views, special treatment in this matter for persons of high rank present here?

And out of curiosity, if so, do you see a similar case of special treatment for persons of high rank over in the UK, known to be substantially less Israel-friendly than the US, where Scotland Yard wanted to question Tzipi Livni about alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza under her watch as Foreign Minister, and “after diplomatic talks” Livni was “granted special diplomatic immunity”?

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On the one hand, I don’t like show-trials, trials-by-press, banana courts or mob justice, and far prefer just laws justly applied – and on the other, I can understand that the scrutiny those in high office find themselves under can render them legally vulnerable in ways that may unduly influence their decision-making – and justice may be platonically blind, but is not always uniformly applied in practice. Such, it seems to me, is the human dilemma.

What say you?

[ by Charles Cameron — the Pakistani politician Imran Khan and Alec Station’s Mike Scheuer think (somewhat) alike ]
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I do so hate it when people speak foreign, and am happy when bilinguals tweet the relevant quotes in regular language:

Waseem Badami: Do you consider Osama Bin Laden a terrorist?@ImranKhanPTI: I do not want to comment on this. pic.twitter.com/Di7dCv4dY7

— Khushal Khan (@Khushal_Khattak) May 24, 2016

#OsamabinLaden was a terrorist?
IK:George Washington was a terrorist for the English & freedom fighter for Americans pic.twitter.com/PUImimIewJ

— Naila Inayat (@nailainayat) May 24, 2016

**

Imran Khan, who is being quoted from this interview as saying “George Washington was a terrorist for the English & freedom fighter for Americans” is a Pakistani cricketer (captain of the team that won the 1992 World Cup, and credited with 3807 runs batting and 362 wickets bowling in Test matches) turned politician (founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party which governs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly the North West Frontier Province) — and philanthropist (founder of a cancer hospital, and more).

Comparisons, they say, are odious — and you may well think it odious to compare Osama bin Laden with George Washington.

What, though, if the comparison is between Imran Khan and Michael Scheuer, who in the runup to 9/11 was the chief of Alec Station (ie the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station). In his first book, Through our Enemies’ Eyes, published anonymously in 2002, Scheuer wrote:

I think we in the United States can best come to grips with this phenomena by realizing that bin Laden’s philosophy and actions have embodied many of the same sentiments that permeate the underpinnings of concepts on which the United States itself is established. This can be illustrated, I think, with reference to the writings or actions of such seminal figures in our history as John Brown, John Bunyan, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Paine.

and:

Bin Laden’s character, religious certainty, moral absolutism, military ferocity, integrity, and all-or-nothing goals are not much different from those of individuals whom we in the United States have long identified and honored as religious, political, or military heroes, men such as John Brown, John Bunyan, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Paine. I do not argue that these are exact analogies, but only that they are analogies that seemed pertinent as I researched bin Laden.

and again, specifically:

A final analogy I found useful in thinking about Osama bin Laden in a context pertinent … Professor John L. Esposito drew me to this analogy in his fine book The Islamic Threat. Myth or Reality?, as did the editors of the respected Pakistani newspaper Nawa-i-Wakt. In his book, Esposito warned that when Americans automatically identify Islamist individuals and groups as terrorists, they forget the “heroes of the American Revolution were rebels and terrorists for the British Crown,” while the editors of Nawa-i-Waqt lamented that “it is unfortunate that the United States, which obtained its independence through a [revolutionary] movement is calling Muslim freedom fighters [a] terrorist organization.”

Like him or not as he currently presents himself and his opinions, Scheuer was plausibly the person best situated to explain bin Laden to an American audience back in 2002 — and today’s Imran Khan and yesterday’s Michael Scheuer seem to have a major analogy for assessing & explaining bin Laden in common…

[ by Charles Cameron — too quiet, too loud, two versions ]
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This isn’t the rooster and owl conjunction I refer to in this post, but it’s popping up in the DC area

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I’m sure I first heard of the problem of the little boy who cried “Wolf” back in the mists of childhood, but it wasn’t until today, when reading up on retires CIA counterterrorist analyst and current novelist Susan Hasler that I first saw it applied to the issue of analysts alerting decision-makers of terrorism risks..

Reading Hasler’s words, I was immediately reminded of Richard Landes‘ distinction between “end times” roosters and owls, which has been a salient analytic heuristic for me since the mid-nineties, when I was invited to join Landes in Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies.

Both quotes revolve around warning noises, and each features both “loud” and “soft” variants — but the differences between Hasler’s wolves and warnings and Landes’ owls and roosters are subtler than the similarities between them.

Setting them up as poles for paired contemplation energizes my thought processes — and even if I don’t arrive at any specific and immediate conclusions, let alone any actionable intelligence — it preps me with yet another pattern to watch for in my daily trawling of the highways and byways of the arts, sciences and OSINT on the [wild & wonderful] web.