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[ by Charles Cameron — conspiracy is stranger than scripture, partly bcoz supercomputers! ]
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Hey, we can pick a face out of a crowd:

track the numberplates of individual cars around a city:

follow individuals by tracking their cell phones:

and see who’s in a room by their reflection in the cornea of an eye:

We’re asymptotic to omnipresent, eh?

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Now consider this:

Nir Rosen, in his book In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, p 129, tells us:

Seyid Hasan Naji al-Musawi, the thirty-eight-year-old leader of Sadr City’s Muhsin mosque and commander of [Moqtada] Sadr’s Army of the Mahdi in Baghdad, said that the final days were approaching in which the Mahdi would return. … Musawi declared that America’s real purpose in coming to Iraq was to kill the Mahdi.

You got that? America’s real purpose in coming to Iraq was to kill the Mahdi. No wonder some Iranians think of us, and specificallay of US, as The Great Satan.

I must confess I’ve been under the impression that Mahdism, being not merely a religious concept, not merely a religious concept from an “other” religion, but an “end times” religious concept from an “other” religion, was ideally suited for those of us in the post-Enlightenment west to ignore, even though it may be a concern of immense significance to, say, Moqtada al-Sadr and his followers, or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his.

But what an opportunity for conspiracy theorists the idea that the US wants to disrupt the coming of Islam’s Mahdi must be!

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Now, putting one and one together, we see what a dastardly plot the US must be up to!

Peace be upon Mohammad and the family of Mohammad.

If I was the CIA/FBI/MI6/MOSSAD or in fact the Dajjal, here is how I would make a fake Imam.

1 Get some the world’s most advanced supercomputers. Current supercomputers have speeds of up to 2.507 petaFLOPs per second (In layman’s terms the best way I can describe the speed of a petaflop to you is: 1 petaflop is equal to 10 times the speed of all the networked computers in the USA combined!!!). This supercomputer will be dedicated to the purpose of Imam Mahdi. It will be fed everything that is possible to find on the subject of Imam Mahdi. It will be used for planning our strategies and tactics, and it will be able to answer any questions instantly. It will be our “backbone” for our operations.

2 Get some of the world’s most clever young children. You know how they choose children who are cleaver and give them scholarships to the best schools and universities? Well, what we would do is to get about 100 or more of the most clever geniuses that we can find around the world. They will be our “candidates”.

3 Each candidate will be raised up by us – with a very special and specific top secret training program which will be devised with the help of our supercomputer. We will assign a role for each one, and we will brainwash them and have them truly believe that they are who we want them to be. For example, we could have 20 of them who will take the role of the Shia Imam Mahdi, and another 20 who will take the role of the Sunni Imam Mahdi. We will also have them impersonate other end time characters, such as Jesus, Khithr, Yemani, Khorasani, Sufyani etc etc etc. Each candidate will have a slightly different approach, so that we can target all the different people – with all their different beliefs about the Imam. With many years of training, they will become extremely good at impersonating an Imam at least they will NOT be making any recitation mistakes!

4 Once they are fully trained and thoroughly tested, we will put them into the real world. They will be secretly connected with our dedicated supercomputer. With sophisticated technology, they will be able to send and receive information instantly and automatically without anyone knowing. For example, if someone asks our fake Imam a question, the supercomputer will “hear” it and it will give the answer instantly to the candidate without anyone hearing anything. It will give answers complete with Qur’an references and ahadith references etc… so much so that the candidate will be able to answer every single question with so much knowledge and wisdom and so many references that he could not have possibly known it will appear simply miraculous. You can even ask him to read page 205 from your CLOSED book, and he will read every word of it. It will look like he has knowledge of every single page of every single book ever written on this matter. He can look at your face (have the supercomputer link it with the intelligence
databases and get a match) and he can tell you everything about your life (which is stored in their database).

5 We will stage fake events such as the 313 giving allegiance in the Ka’bah to our candidate to make the deception more effective.

6 We will stage “miracles” to make the deception more effective. For example, we will use neverbeforeseen technology, and we will stage several optical illusions (magic tricks) which are very difficult to tell from a miracle. We can also make use of the spiritual skills which have been demonstrated for years in India. There are those who do not eat or drink anything for 70 years, there are those who can stop a moving train without touching it, there are those who can make you have specific dreams, there are those who can read your thoughts, there are those who can KILL an animal just by looking at it! And these are not miracles. These are spiritual powers which mainly employ Jinn, and anyone can gain these abilities through special spiritual exercises. We will also stage “punishments” on those who do not believe in our candidate. For example, get someone to approach a scholar and say: “There is a fake Imam who is deceiving people! And I want you to talk about him in your next lecture!” And when he does, we kill him and make it look like an accident or a heart attack. This will be seen as a miracle for our fake Imam because those who speak against him are “punished by Allah!”

What will be the obstacles:

The scholars. The scholars know all the signs and with the help of Allah (swt), they will be able to tell that our candidates may be fake. So we will target them one by one, and make them look evil.

The expectations of the people. The people will have very high expectations from the Imam. The biggest is the Shia belief of infallibility. Since it is difficult even with years of training to guarantee “infalliblelike conduct” from our candidates, we will have to reshape the people’s definition of infallibility using ahadith which have a broader and less strict definition of infallibility.

And more obstacles… each with a clever remedy.

What is the purpose of all of creating a fake Imam? Well, there are MANY purposes. But
the most obvious is that if we succeed in getting many of the Muslims to believe in OUR fake Imam, then when the REAL Imam comes, the Muslims will automatically call him a liar and a fraud because they believe OUR candidate is the real Imam, and no one else!!!

Also, since the Muslims believe in our fake candidate, we can slowly push our agenda in a very clever and subtle way.

This is just a quick outline of how I would create fake Imams. There’s so much more that can be done, and I’m sure there are even better ideas which I missed. But that was just to give you an idea.

Do not be surprised if we start seeing some very convincing imposers very soon. I’m pretty sure that the CIA and the Masons and Illuminati will do EVEN MORE than what I’ve outlined above.

Narrated from Mufathal Ibn Umar:

I heard Aba Abdillah (pbuhaf) saying: Beware of being weak (loose translation). By Allah, your Mahdi will be hidden for years of your era and it will be very long for you, and you will say: “what”, and “I wish”, and “maybe”, and “how”, and you will be tested, and doubts will rise within you, and it will even be said “he is dead”, or “he perished”, or “in what pit did he go?”, and the eyes of the believers will weep for him, and you will be shaken (loose translation) just as the ships are shaken by the waves of the ocean, until none will survive except those from whom Allah (swt) has taken an oath and has written faith in their hearts and has supported them with a spirit from Him, and there will rise 12 similar banners, and they do not know of their matter what they do.

Mufathal said: I cried and said: Oh my Master, and what will your awliya (close companions) do?

The Imam looked at the sun and it had become clearly visible (loose translation), and he said: Do you see this sun oh Mufathal?

I said: Yes my Master.

He said: By Allah our matter is clearer and more visible than it.

Ref: AlHidayah AlKubra by Hussain Ibn Hamdan AlKhosaiby Chapter 4, the Chapter on the Awaited Imam Mahdi (pbuhaf) page 361.

Welcome to the age of awesome deception.

Allah (swt) alone can save us from what is to come. May He (swt) assist us and make us firm in faith and keep us on His straight path always.

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That’s one Islamic eschatological vision of false messiahs — no more official than Alex Jones‘ rantings are official US policy — but it’s interesting to set it besides a somwhat similar scenario from our own western conspiracists — The Blue Beam Project:

The infamous NASA Blue Beam Project has four different steps in order to implement the new age religion with the antichrist at its head. We must remember that the new age religion is the very foundation for the new world government, without which religion the dictatorship of the new world order is completely impossible. I’ll repeat that: Without a universal belief in the new age religion, the success of the new world order will be impossible! That is why the Blue Beam Project is so important to them, but has been so well hidden until now.

[ .. ]

The second step involves a gigantic “space show” with three-dimensional optical holograms and sounds, laser projection of multiple holographic images to different parts of the world, each receiving a different image according to predominating regional national religious faith. This new “god’s” voice will be speaking in all languages. In order to understand that, we must study various secret services’ research done in the last 25 years.

The Soviet’s have perfected an advanced computer, even exported them, and fed them with the minute physio-psycological particulars based on their studies of the anatomy and electro-mechanical composition of the human body, and the studies of the electrical, chemical and biological properties of the human brain.

These computers were fed, as well, with the languages of all human cultures and their meanings. The dialects of all cultures have been fed into the computers from satellite transmissions. The Soviets began to feed the computers with objective programs like the ones of the new messiah. It also seems that the Soviets – the new world order people – have resorted to suicidal methods with the human society by allocating electronic wavelengths for every person and every society and culture to induce suicidal thoughts if the person doesn’t comply with the dictates of the new world order.

There are two different aspects of step two. The first is the “space show.” Where does the space show come from? The space show, the holographic images will be used in a simulation of the ending during which all nations will be shown scenes which will be the fulfillment of that which they desire to verify the prophecies and adversary events. These will be projected from satellites onto the sodium layer about 60 miles above the earth. We see tests every once in a while, but they are called UFOs and “flying saucers.” The result of these deliberately staged events will be to show the world the new “christ,” the new messiah, Matreya, for the immediate implementation of the new world religion. Enough truth will be foisted upon an unsuspecting world to hook them into the lie. “Even the most learned will be deceived.” The project has perfected the ability for some device to lift up an enormous number of people, as in a rapture, and whisk the entire group into a never-never land. We see tests of this device in the abduction of humans by those mysterious little alien greys. who snatch people out of their beds and through windows into waiting “mother ships.”

The calculated resistance to the universal religion and the new messiah and the ensuing holy wars will result in the loss of human life on a scale never imagine before in all of human history. The Blue Beam Project will pretend to be the universal fulfillment of the prophecies of old, as major an event as that which occurred 2,000 years ago. In principle, it will make use of the skies as a movie screen (on the sodium layer at about 60 miles) as space-based laser-generating satellites project simultaneous images to the four corners of the planet in every language and dialect according to the region. It deals with the religious aspect of the new world order and is deception and seduction on a massive scale. Computers will coordinate the satellites and software already in place will run the sky show

Oy.

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I am posting thes two examples of end times religious conspiracism today because IMO we need a sense of how far out such speculations can go, as we consider the rumors of a connection between the death of King Abdullah and the coming of the Mahdi.

Take off your tin-foil hats, people. A little common sense is required.

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai says, according to the Avot D’Rebbe Natan:

If you are holding a sapling in your hand, and someone says to you, ‘here comes the Messiah!’ — come and plant the sapling, and afterwards go and welcome the Messiah.

And Anas b. Mâlik in Musnad Ahmad 12981 relates that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said:

If the Hour arrives and one of you is holding a date palm sapling, then he should go ahead and plant it before getting up from his place if he is able to.

Keep calm, in other words, and carry on.

[ by Charles Cameron — always amazed at the way “end times” considerations find their way into so many areas of geopolitics ]
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One can take the line De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.. which I rconfess I like..

Obituary: Saudi King Abdullah, seen as a reformer & vocal advocate of peace in Middle East http://t.co/UtA2v9wurO pic.twitter.com/lyrvoNGX16

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) January 22, 2015

One can take the line Veritas vos liberabit.. which I also favor, as does the CIA..

#Saudi King Abdullah dies. He leaves a dreadful human rights legacy. http://t.co/LO1cVkZB1N pic.twitter.com/kEHl8OUB7t

— Patrick Corrigan (@PatrickCorrigan) January 22, 2015

But as one might have guessed, my own final preference goes to omnium autem finis adpropinquavit..

my piece in @AlMonitor Some Shiites believe that the #Saudi king's death will signal the beginning of the end-times http://t.co/VJ7a9z6S6w

— Rohollah Faghihi (@FaghihiRohollah) January 22, 2015

Now there‘s a surprise!

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I hope to look into this third, specifically Mahdist interpretation of King Abdullah‘s death in a bit more detail in a subsequent post.

[ by Charles Cameron — a little something on torture and our knowledge of causality, also man the microcosm in diplo-politics ]
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With John Brennan talking about the “unknowable” causality between what I choose to call torture and what I am content to call the elicitation of actionable intelligence (upper panel, below) — not that I claim any originality to either of those phrasings — I was forced to remind myself of Jay Forrester‘s comments on causality (lower panel) — comments which amount to a warning against simplistic thinking and easy explanations:

The human psyche is indeed “complex”, and perhaps more inscrutable than the term “complexity” itself suggests.

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But that was not all: Director Brennan also entered into my own preferred realms of anthropology, psychology and theology, and spoke to the divided nature of our humanity:

But we are not a perfect institution. We’re made up of individuals. And as human beings, we are imperfect beings.

That in turn overlapped with another DoubleQuote I was formulating at the time, this one juxtaposing a comment about George Kennan with the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria‘s concepts of the Shattering of the Vessels and the Repair of the World.

Kennan’s chapter heading (as quoted by Joseph Epstein in the upper panel, below) refers to the microcosm:

It seems only appropriate to me to note that the Ari provides us with its macrocosmic equivalent — and also, under the name Tikkun Olam (repair of the world), a sense of what is now required of us.

[ by Charles Cameron — the game of Connect the Dots in play and practice ]
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CIA's (now ret'd) Nada Bakos examines the Al Qaida board in the HBO docu, Manhunt

Manhunt, the HBO documentary, does what (not having been there and seen that at the time) appears to be a decent job of recreating some of the cognitive stratregies employed by CIA officers in the OBL hunt. The one I’m interested in here is the building of a “link chart” or cognitive map — law enforcement “evidence board” — the idea being (a) to note known connections visibly, and (b) to encourage the mind to make intuitive leaps that reveal previously unknown connections between nodes… or “dots”.

Sophisticated software does this sort of thing algorithmically with regard to (eg) network connections via phone-calls, but the human mind is still better than AI at some forms of pattern recognition, and that’s the aspect that interests me here.

Aside:

For more on the cognitive significance of the link chart in Manhunt, see my post Jeff Jonas, Nada Bakos, Cindy Storer and Puzzles.

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Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Sherlock lays out the way it works —

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Okay, so one way to visualize connections is to make a fairly random collage of relevant photos, names, dates and places, and tie it together with links of string or ribbon. That’s the equivalent of what in HipBone games terms we’d call a “free-form” game, and it works well for the “divergent”, initial brainstorming phase of thought. But it does little to bottle its own energy, to focus down, to force the mind — in the no less powerful “convergent” phase — into perceiving even more links than occur spontaneously in building the link chart in question.

HipBone‘s preformatted boards take the cognitive process to that second stage. They work on one of the most powerful ingredients in creativity: constraint. Business writer Dave Gray of Communication Nation puts it like this:

Creativity is driven by constraints. When we have limited resources — even when the limits are artificial — creative thinking is enhanced. That’s because the fewer resources you have, the more you are forced to rely on your ingenuity.

But that premise doesn’t just hold true for business problem-solving — it’s at the heart of creative thinking at the Nobel level, too, in both arts and sciences. Consider mathematician Stanley Ulam, writing in his Adventures of a Mathematician:

When I was a boy I felt that the role of rhyme in poetry was to compel one to find the unobvious because of the necessity of finding a word which rhymes. This forces novel associations and almost guarantees deviations from routine chains or trains of thought. It becomes paradoxically a sort of automatic mechanism of originality…

Here’s how the poet TS Eliot puts it:

When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas.

A Hipbone Gameboard such as the Waterbird, Dartboard, or Said Symphony board is chosen precisely to challenge the mind with third, fourth and fifth rounds of “creative leaps” — thus adding both divergent and convergent cognitive styles to this form of graphical analysis.

That’s my point here — and a plug for HipBone-Sembl style thinking.

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I can’t resist adding a couple of instances in which the meme of “connecting the dots” via a link chart or evidence board has crept from TV series that I enjoyed into the world of games — this first one based on the terrific French detective series, Engrenages, retitled Spirals for British consumption:

— and this one for fans of the US TV series, Breaking Bad:

[ by Charles Cameron — on an impressive video, featuring Matt Levitt and Reuel Gerecht on Hezbollah ]
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Matthew Levitt‘s contribution to a recent panel at the International Soy Museum was a tour de force. Levitt, whose work as a CT analyst has included stints with both the FBI and Treasury, was discussing his most recent book, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God — both the book and his talk are strongly recommended.

It is, however, his colleague Reuel Marc Gerecht‘s contribution to that session that I wish to highlight here, because [starting at 44.40] he made a point about Hezbollah from his own CT experience that he still finds it necessary to make in 2013, some two decades after his service with the CIA commenced in the 1990s:

One of the things I was struck by when I came into the Agency, and I was struck by it on the day that I left the Agency, which was: you almost never had officers either on the clandestine side or in the directorate of analysis, the Directorate of Intelligence, talk about God. You just didn’t have that many people sort of put it together and talk about what actually motivated people.

You know, there was almost an assumption out there, Oh, the Iranians were upset with us because of our dealing with the Shah etcetera, but the actual analysis of the Iranian complaint against the United States was distinctly secular. Even the analysis of the Hezbollah was distinctly secular. And it never made any sense, particularly if you started to have some exposure to these individuals, and you suddenly realized that no, their motivations aren’t secular usually, their motivations are actually deeply spiritual, they’re religious, they’re about God.

— and [starting 53.04]:

There is a profound reflex in the West to look at a group like Hezbollah, and to look at their Iranian sponsors, and to take God out of the equation. Don’t do that. We wouldn’t do it with al-Qaida. Don’t do it with these groups either. If you do that, if you neuter them of their religious belief, if you look at it as just an ethnic movement, if you look at it as just a sectarian movement, if you look at it as just the Shi’a getting even in Lebanon, then you’re making an atrocious analytical mistake, which will bushwhack you, I guarantee you, over and over again. You have to keep God in this equation…

The one bright spot in this dismal account of the secular mindset blinding itself to religious passion is Gerecht’s statement: “We wouldn’t do it with al-Qaida”.

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For more on the way our own worldviews can blind us to the worldviews of others, see my post on Gaidi Mtaani, together with the two follow ups to that post which I shall be posting here shortly.