Category Archives: Espionage

Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Espionage, تخابر

Takhabur: a New Orwellian Post-Uprising Arab Weapon of Terror………

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An old new term has been adopted by Arab regimes to terrify, silence, and punish dissidents and opponents. It is one more weapons in their arsenal, to be added to prison, execution, and internal exile (banning from leaving the country) and others. A simple Arabic word now being used inside the Middle East’s kingdoms and republics of fear.

I posted about this in 2014. It has gotten worse since. The term Takhabur and its multiple threats has been exported from Egypt to the Persian Gulf region, where the oligarchs have adopted it eagerly and don’t hesitate to use it. My old post:

“One headline I saw yesterday: “Muslim brothers caught with ‘certificates’ of Takhabur (تخابُر) with Hamas”. (تخابُر is a broad Arabic word that can have any of several connotations: communicating with; contacting; or exchanging information).
‘Certificates of Takahbur‘: imagine how far you can go in telling your people how stupid you believe they are, maybe not in so many words. This “Takhabur” in Arabic is a recent twist of the term that Arab regimes (and their controlled media) have been using against their foes and against those they don’t like or suspect.
Takhabur: “communicating, exchanging news or information but also perhaps ideas” or “talking to”. You can get arrested for takhabur with The Onion magazine or with Mad Magazine or with the CIA or the Mossad or Dhahi Khalfan, even with your next door neighbor, if they want to get you.
Anyway, they twist things to make the word sound so sinister in a way that some regimes can do with impunity. The Egyptian military regime has even brought the charge of “takhabur” against president Morsi, and he was the president of the country! He was supposed to do “takhabur” with leaders and countries, just like any other head of state! Imagine how much ‘takhabur‘ Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi is doing now with oily princes and potentates? How else could he do his job?

Now they are piling on Caliph Erdogan of Turkey, but that is okay: the Turkish Caliph ensconced in his billion-dollar palace deserves it. Suddenly the Egyptians are strongly pro-Greek on the Cyprus issue and on any other issues that come to their mind. They might even award ancient Troy to the Greeks, again. The Greeks must be amused.
Takhabur. A simple Arabic word has acquired terrifying connotations and meanings in the hands of Arab depots and potentates and their security agents and kangaroo courts. Journalists, former officials, dissidents, and doubters can spend many years in prison because of that word. From the Persian Gulf to the stagnant Nile, from Manama to Cairo, the regimes are using it to get you.
Remember the word: takhabur. Other non-Arab regimes in the Middle East (Iran, Turkey, Kurds, maybe Israel?) also use their own version of it to intimidate, but it sounds so pregnant with meanings and connotations in the Arabic language. So threatening on multiple levels. “

Takahbur: it is the greatest  invention by Arab regimes and their controlled media minions since the failed uprisings of 2011. It is a simple word that has been twisted and now used to strike fear and to send people to prison and torture and even death.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Espionage, GCC, Gulf states, Oman, Terrorism

Mystery of Oman and the Never-Ending Arab and GCC Wars……

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Every Arab country is engaged in some kind of war these days.
In fact every Middle East country, including Iran, Turkey, and Israel are involved in some kind of warfare. Look at the map, and name one country that is not fighting either its neighbors or its own people (civil war)  or somebody else. We can’t blame it all on Iran or Israel or the West, can we?

For example ISIS/DAESH is a purely Arab creation, although now it has Chechens, Uzbeks, Bosnians, etc, etc. There are no Iranians or Israelis in North Africa, none that have been caught and blamed.
Saudi Arabia and its allies are fighting directly in Yemen (there are no Israeli or Iranian or Lebanese forces in Yemen). They are fighting indirectly in Syria. There are wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sinai, Libya, Tunisia, North Africa, East Africa. You name it, it is involved in some war. Even Jordan is involved in Yemen, Syria, and possibly other places.

I can think of one Arab state that is NOT involved in any war, I think. At least not yet. It is Oman, right at the southern tip of the Persian Gulf. For some odd reason Oman is not involved in any regional war. And it never claims to be threatened by anyone, at least by anyone that is not Arab. Unlike Bahrain, Oman does not claim to discover weekly plots by Iranian agents nor by Hezbollah, nor does it ever feel that its national security is threatened by anyone. At least not by anyone outside the GCC.

In fairness the UAE and Qatar also never seem to uncover any such plots either. Not since the Qataris uncovered a Saudi plot to overthrow their regime in 1998. The same is mostly true for Kuwait, where the most serious current security threat seems to come from Wahhabi Jihadists. Kuwait has recently convicted one network of Iranian espionage agents and plotters, a mix of Iranians and locals. But it has also uncovered several Wahhabi terrorist cells (the country had two lethal bombings of Shi’a mosques by ISIS sympathizers last year). Bahrain of course claims to uncover such plots on an almost weekly basis (grain of salt alert).

Odd, no, about Oman? Can it be that they are wiser than their neighbors? Is it their historic focus on the sea and beyond, away from the rest of the Arab world and its troubles? You figure it out…….
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
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Espionage, Iran, Israel, Mossad, nuclear Iran

Nuclear Talks: Bibi Bond, KGBibi, Lebanon or Yemen…….

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“Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks. The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said .The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others………………”

The famous tail spying on the famous dog the better to be able to wag it. So Netanyahu got some trusted Americans to spy for him. He also got some trusted ‘European officials’ (yes, there are some) to help, could be French, could be others. Interesting: a foreign leader gets American and possibly European bureaucrats and/or diplomats to spy for him on other U.S. diplomats in order to use the information with the Congress to derail American diplomatic talks. Might as well have the Mossad or that Las Vegas gambling tycoon as part of the US delegation. Or, maybe worse, have a former Republican congressional aide as part of the delegation. They used to shoot these people, didn’t they? Interesting to see how members of the Senate and Congress react (probably McCain advising Obama to get over his tantrum, please)

It is almost like being in a more peaceful version of a milder Yemen (or Lebanon): different political fighting factions, some of them allied with foreign powers. Except here is no real fighting. Just a push for war.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Cyber Security, cyber war, Espionage

NSA and GCHQ: Das Leben der Anderen……..

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“US and British intelligence agencies illegally hacked into a major manufacturer of Sim cards to steal codes and facilitate eavesdropping on mobiles, a US news website says. The Intercept website said that the information came from former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The company allegedly targeted – Gemalto – says it is taking the allegations “very seriously”. It operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. The Intercept says that “the great Sim heist“…………”

Das Leben der Anderen, the lives of others……….
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

CIA, Espionage, Torture, U.S. Congress, U.S. Foreign Policy

Hijacking America: from Liberators of Europe to Rectal Feeding by Hired Contractors………

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Have Yourself a Merry Little——-> Kenny G. Holiday ………..

“The CIA torture report lists ‘rectal feeding’ as a legitimate means of nourishing detainees. But the practice has no scientific backing, and is nothing but a torture method. There is enough contained in the newly-released Senate report on CIA torture practices to shock anyone’s conscience. News that CIA interrogators threatened violence against the children or parents of detainees, made them stand in stress positions on broken feet, and deprived them of sleep for up to a week at a time is appalling on its face. One needs no medical expertise to parse the horrors described. But what of “rectal feeding”? At first blush, this practice may have the appearance of legitimacy in cases where detainees refused to eat or drink. One man was put in a head-down position and Ensure was instilled into his rectum……………”

Does one hijacking deserves another? They say in the West that the Wahabbi Jihadis have hijacked Islam. So the solution is to have the torturers and their enablers hijack America and her traditions and values. To move her closer (and lower) to the level of the terrorists……….

How did it come down to this?
From the bright America of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy to this? To the recent American regimes of prevalent KGB-style domestic espionage and imaginative external torture? To the sorry lot of the past fourteen years of Bush, Cheney, and whoever calls the shots for Obama?

During the cold war, a favorite criticism of the Soviet Union was its all-powerful untouchable apparatus of internal espionage. The West allegedly won the Cold War, or did it? Can we say that after the disclosures of widespread spying on American citizens and their private correspondence and communications? The Allies won the war against the Nazis, but Western regimes are now using methods of torture for which they tried Nazis and others after the war. There is a difference in the extent of the torture. So it is a difference between “widespread torture” and “mass torture” as done by totalitarian regimes.

Could it be this new for-profit approach to national security of these past few years? The system that hires unaccountable “private contractors” and torturers and creates a chance of deniability? A deliberate alibi for officials at a cost of millions to the treasury paid to these private contractors? The modern legal equivalent of Mafia “hit men” pretending to be patriotic while inflicting unusual pain for a lot of money?
Would Messrs Bush, Cheney, their accommodating Counselors, and those in the Obama White House who condoned the practice accept to be “rectally fed”?
Can anyone imagine “rectal feeding” condoned under any American president that preceded Bush, Obama, and possibly one of the Clintons? Not even Reagan and Nixon, who were perceived as tough but had some honorable limits.
Normally you would consider the U.S. Senate as a sane place where grown-ups would impose some limits on such un-American behavior. But even that window will not be there anymore. It will be closed come January. The crazies look ready to control the asylum.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                   Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Egypt, Espionage, Human Right

Takhabur: a Potent New Orwellian Arab Weapon……….

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Egyptian media can be some of the wildest in the Middle East, bar none, when it comes to toeing the official line. Remember when the once-venerable Al-Ahram, the big banana of Egyptian newspapers, doctored photos of world leader to put Hosni Mubarak at the front? They are doing even more now.

One headline I saw yesterday: “Muslim brothers caught with ‘certificates’ of Takhabur (تخابُر) with Hamas”.  (تخابُر is a broad Arabic word that can have any of several connotations: communicating; contacting; exchanging information).
‘Certificates of Takahbur‘: imagine how far you can go in telling your people how stupid you believe they are, maybe not in so many words. This “Takhabur” in Arabic is a recent twist of the term that Arab regimes (and their controlled media) have been using against their foes and against those they don’t like or suspect.
Takhabur: “communicating, exchanging news or information but also perhaps ideas” or “talking to”. You can get arrested for takhabur with The Onion or with Mad Magazine or with the CIA or the Mossad or Dhahi Khalfan, even with your next door neighbor, if they want to get you.
Anyway, they twist things to make it sound so sinister in a way that some regimes can do with impunity. The Egyptian military regime has even brought the charge of “takhabur” against president Morsi, and he was the president of the country! He was supposed to do “takhabur” with leaders and countries, just like any other head of state! Imagine how much ‘takhabur‘ Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi is doing now with oily princes and potentates? How else could he do his job?

Now they are piling on Caliph Erdogan of Turkey, but that is okay: the Turkish Caliph ensconced in his billion-dollar palace deserves it. Suddenly the Egyptians are strongly pro-Greek on the Cyprus issue and on any other issues that come to their mind. They might even award ancient Troy to the Greeks, again. The Greeks must be amused.
Takhabur. A simple Arabic word has acquired terrifying connotations and meanings in the hands of Arab depots and potentates and their security agents and kangaroo courts. Journalists, former officials, dissidents, and doubters can spend many years in prison because of that word. From the Persian Gulf to the stagnant Nile, from Manama to Cairo, the regimes are using it to get you.
Remember the word: takhabur. Other non-Arab regimes in the Middle East (Iran, Turkey, Kurds, maybe Israel?) also use their own version of it to intimidate, but it sounds so pregnant with meanings and connotations in the Arabic language. So threatening on multiple levels.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

CIA, Cyber Security, Espionage, U.S. Politics

A Tale of Two Whistleblowers: From Snowden to Panetta, How to Do It Right……..

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Interesting the reactions of the political elites, classes, and opinion-ators in the United States to two different famous whistleblowers:

  • Edward Snowden was a young techie contracted by the NSA to handle secret data and information.
  • Leon Panetta is a former Democrat Congressman, former White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton, former head of the CIA, and former Secretary of Defense. Former jack of all trades in the Democratic Party.
  • Both men had access to top secret information. Panetta also had access to detailed ‘elite’ information and insight about the inner workings of the intelligence and national security apparatus.
  • Edward Snowden was  a mere grunt. He swore an oath to keep the information he handled secret. Being young and not glib with no access to high-powered legal counsel, he leaked the shocking information he had access to. Technically he broke the law, no doubt. Morally, many people believe he did his countrymen a great service and opened millions of eyes (he did open millions of eyes for sure). Either way, he did a version of “kiss and tell”, although unlike Panetta he did not do the kissing. So far all Snowden has gotten from his disclosure and flight is grief and exile.
  • Leon Panetta, the more mature more glib man, waited until he left office, then he struck: he published a book and hit the TV trail. No doubt some of his accommodating former colleagues have approved his book. He is pushing his book all over the media, hoping to make a small fortune from it. I have not read the book, but reportedly he talks critically of American policy in Iraq and Syria. He is divulging information and insight he had heard and read during National Security sessions to make his political points. He is also doing a “kiss and tell”.
  • Snowden was not involved in politics, as far as I know. Panetta is suspected by at least one person of being a Clinton partisan and of awaiting the restoration of Hillary to the White House. Someone wrote recently that he is trying to rewrite history.
  • Oh, I left out that other confidante of presidents, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his “kiss and tell” book.
  • So the moral is? If you want to blow the whistle on your employer, make sure you rise high enough within the hierarchy, then quit and do it.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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CIA, Cuba, Espionage

Bay of Piglets: a New Gentler Softer Attempt in Cuba………

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“An Obama administration program sent a dozen Latin American youths to Cuba with the secret purpose of sparking political change. Starting in October 2009, the U.S. Agency for International Development sent young Latin Americans from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Peru to Cuba under the guise of health-care programming. They entered the country with the “perfect excuse” of providing HIV prevention training, but sought political actors to lead a potential revolution. The U.S. reportedly paid them as little as $5.14 an hour, and they were offered as little as 30 minutes of training on how to avoid Cuban intelligence officials. The youths sent encrypted emails that could have set off alarms and put them in obvious danger. Creative Associates, the contractor employed for the job…………..Alan Gross, who worked for the U.S. government’s U.S. Agency for International Development, has been jailed in Cuba since 2009……………..”

Bay of Piglets. We can surely call this newest attempt that. if they would lift the stupid blockade and allow the “freedom” of travel, there might be no need for all this.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Cyber Security, cyber war, Espionage, Internet

A Losing Cyber Battle: Did Putin Declare War on the Internet?……

      

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“Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the Internet a project controlled by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), saying Russia needs to fight “for its interests” online. The Russian president made the remarks on Thursday, stressing that the Internet was a special project by the CIA and “is still developing as such.” Putin also warned the Russian people against making Google searches, emphasizing that every entry made into Google goes through servers in the United States. Putin’s remarks come on the backdrop of revelations made public by US surveillance whistleblower, Edward Snowden…………….”


According to this report from Iranian Press TV, Mr. Putin is beginning to sound like the Saudi Mufti or a conservative Iranian ayatollah. The Internet was largely developed by the U.S. Defense Department for official communications. When its access was expanded to civilian institutions and some universities we got the “Internet” as we know it now. The CIA no doubt uses it and keeps tab on some people, as notoriously does the NSA. As does General Motors and Toyota and Amazon and Walmart and Samsung and many others: how do you think they know exactly what kind of advertisements to send uninvited to your computer screen?


As no doubt does the Russian equivalent of the CIA or the NSA. As do almost all governments around the world and their intelligence agencies. True, their interest might not be as extensive (nor as prurient) as the NSA or the British GCHQ, but it probably has to do with how much man/hour, money, and technical know-how a government is able and willing to devote to spying…………… 
CIA, Espionage, Iran, US Foreign Policy

From Langley with Love and Mutual Contempt: the Strange Odyssey of Bob Levinson……….

      

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“An American man who went missing in Iran more six years ago had been working for the CIA in what U.S. intelligence officials describe as a rogue operation that led to a major shake-up in the spy agency and his family receiving a secret, multimillion-dollar settlement. Bob Levinson, an ex-FBI agent, traveled to the Iranian Island of Kish in March 2007 to investigate corruption at a time when he was discussing the renewal of a CIA contract he had held for several years. He also inquired about getting reimbursed for the Iran trip by the agency before he departed, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials. …………. But months after Levinson’s abduction, e-mails and other documents surfaced that suggested he had gone to Iran at the direction of certain CIA analysts who had no authority to run operations overseas…………….”

This has always seemed like a baffling case. I had thought there was something odd (rather fishy?) about Mr. Levinson’s case: it was never made clear who in Iran was holding him and why. For years both American and Iranian officials danced around the story of his disappearance gingerly, avoiding details. Odd that the Iranians, if they have him, did not announce it, given the series of assassinations of their scientists and academics in recent years. Given that they must have ‘interrogated’ him and got whatever he knows. And what about that odd picture in an ‘orange’ prison suit and chains and the brief message?
This story may explain part of the mystery, although it may be difficult convincing the Iranians that he was sent by “rogue” elements within the CIA. You see, Iranian officials are as ready to believe American officials as American officials are ready to believe Iranian officials. Hard to believe that the contempt is mutual, almost shocking, no?
Can there be more to this story, another angle not divulged? Some Iranians may think so. I suspect there is and I don’t even consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I just hope for his sake that it is not as bad as it can be.

Cheers
mhg

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