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Archive for October, 2003

Friday, October 31st, 2003

AN IMPORTANT POST BY JUAN COLE

Professor Cole has an analysis of the al Qaida doomsday document of the 9/11 highjackers on his blog that he presented recently at a genocide conference.

My own research into genocide leads me to speculate that Juan Cole has identified an important psychological aspect common to spectacular episodes of mass-murder, democide and genocide- that a lenghthy process of repetitive ideation precedes and may be required for action.

Take for example the case of Adolf Hitler. The earliest anti-semitic document historians can connect to Adolf Hitler was in 1919 in a letter he wrote while still employed as a Reichswehr spy in tumultuous Bavaria. Subsequent to that, Hitler’s enunciations of hatred and a desire for elimination of the Jews in public speeches run into the thousands, not including private monologues among Nazi party comrades or thoughts expressed within the confines of his own head. Twenty-two years of such internalized, repetitive hatred would be – to use Juan Cole’s term – “autohypnotic “.

It would be interesting to take a look at the training of the suicide bombers of the Tamil Tigers, of the pre-Khmer Rouge activities of Pol Pot and psychological profiles of apolitical serial killers to see if an obsessive idea or repetitive mental rehearsal is truly a constant in such atrocities and their perpetrators.

Friday, October 31st, 2003

NEW TO THE BLOGROLL

A big Zenpundit welcome to Jay Solo, Mithras, Daniel Drezner and Dr. Milt Rosenberg of WGN Extension720 fame ( and occasional H-Diplo poster). And much overdue for Earl, I finally corrected the Prometheus6’s link to reflect the move he made…oh…ages ago.

Thursday, October 30th, 2003

CHINA’S COMMUNIST RULERS MOURN CHIANG KAI-SHEK’S WIDOW

In a sign of how far China has moved since the Cultural Revolution, China’s government allows nostalgic praise for one of the supreme anti-Communist figures of the old ” China Lobby “.

Thursday, October 30th, 2003

MORE ON ASYMMETRIC WARFARE

Go here ( be warned, it’s long !)

Thursday, October 30th, 2003

THE RACE AND GENDER STALINISTS OF ACADEMIA

Academic star KC Johnson testifies before Congress on how a cabal of leftist zealots attempted ideologically cleanse him out of a job ( and how they trying to destroy subfields of history to boot ).


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