parapolitical

A bizarre Foreign Ministry report circulating in the Kremlin today states that this Friday past (11...

Mon, 21 May 2012 23:34:00 -0700

A bizarre Foreign Ministry report circulating in the Kremlin today states that this Friday past (11...

The chances that Portugal and Spain will dump the euro following...

Wed, 16 May 2012 06:15:00 -0700

The chances that Portugal and Spain will dump the euro following Greece are running 11/8 and 9/4 odds at popular Irish bookmaking site Paddy Power (an implied probability of 42% and 30%, respectively). Betters have little doubt Greece will be at the head of the exit line with the troubled country’s odds at being first to quit the single currency now at 10/1 (an implied probability of more than 90%).

Not only does the EU hate Greece but, apparently, so too, does...

Tue, 15 May 2012 21:40:00 -0700

Not only does the EU hate Greece but, apparently, so too, does NATO. A survey by the Atlantic Council of the alliance’s (recently) former luminaries, including ex-Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, outgoing U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, Canada’s former ambassador to Turkey Yves Brodeur, and 54 others, found significant support for ejecting the Greeks from NATO. (One unknown person wanted Luxembourg banished.)

The survey also found support for admitting Sweden, opposition to admitting Russia, and a belief European states should increase defense spending.

September’s mildly anticipated elections for the first chamber of the States-General in the...

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:34:00 -0700

September’s mildly anticipated elections for the first chamber of the States-General in the...

Since the start of NATO’s Operation Unified Protector in March 2011, four of the five NATO...

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:57:00 -0700

Since the start of NATO’s Operation Unified Protector in March 2011, four of the five NATO...

"A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken …"

Thu, 03 May 2012 23:17:00 -0700

“A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken …” - First Deputy...

Photo

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:07:00 -0700

"A key witness to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy has retracted her official statements..."

Tue, 01 May 2012 01:08:00 -0700

“A key witness to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy has retracted her official...

Russian duma member Andrey Lugovoy - a prime suspect in the...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:42:00 -0700

Russian duma member Andrey Lugovoy - a prime suspect in the dramatic radiation assassination of FSB turncoat Alexander Litvinenko - has passed a polygraph test administered by private technicians, possibly clearing him of involvement in the 2006 killing of Litvinenko in London, where he was living after alleging Russian involvement in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. Information on the qualifications or affiliation of the polygraph technicians wasn’t provided.

Court Rejects Release of OBL Death Photos

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:21:00 -0700

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg yesterday rejected a suit filed by Judicial Watch seeking...

On the same day Frenchmen queued to vote in the first-round of that nation’s presidential...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:31:00 -0700

On the same day Frenchmen queued to vote in the first-round of that nation’s presidential...

Was the detonation of a French nuclear weapon in the Sahara a...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:32:00 -0700

Was the detonation of a French nuclear weapon in the Sahara a desperate attempt to keep an atomic device out of the hands of rebel army officers?

On today’s date in 1961, Foreign Legion paratroopers captured government offices in Algiers, capital of the then French colony of Algeria, marking the opening of one of the most intriguing coup attempts in the 20th century. Three days later the nuclear weapon Gerboise Vert would be exploded in what was billed as a planned test. A draft of a new paper by Bruno Tetrais of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, however, claims the detonation was far from routine.

According to Tetrais’ research, the order to explode the French nuclear device was transmitted to the desert test site of Reggan from a desperate French leadership under siege in Paris and was followed by an ominous countermanding order from coup leader Maurice Challe: “refrain from detonating your little bomb - keep it for us, it will be … useful.” Tetrais goes on to claim that test site commander Gen. Jean Thiry debated a full day before deciding to support the De Gaulle government and explode Gerboise Vert. Even then, though, the safety of the powerful weapon was far from assured. Concerned that troops assigned to guard the laboratory in which Gerboise Vert was stored would join the rebellion, Thiry had the bomb transported the 50 kilometers to the test site in the trunk of an unguarded Citroen 2CV passenger car, while a decoy convoy of armored trucks left along an opposite route.

In assessing what lessons can be learned from the secret history of the 1961 coup, Tetrais notes that “nuclear weapons can become instrumental in the consolidation of the primacy of civilian power over the military and of the primacy of the executive over the legislative branch, and of the popular legitimacy of the head of the State.”

Identifying inconsistencies and contradictions in analysis of...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:55:00 -0700

Identifying inconsistencies and contradictions in analysis of the United States public when viewed through a traditional Left-Right paradigm, in 2010 Dr. Delia Baldassari and Emir Goldberg of Princeton University’s sociology department combed through twenty years worth of American National Election Studies (ANES) data to conceptualize a new method of understanding the American body politic.

Instead of “liberals” and “conservatives”, Baldassari and Goldberg’s research discovered three political worldviews in the U.S.: ideologues, alternatives and agnostics. The first worldview, that of the ideologues, maintained a consistent set of political values that could easily be placed on the Left-Right spectrum. Ideologues, however, accounted for only about one-third of the ANES respondents, demonstrating a possibly fatal flaw in popular understanding of mass politics.

The latter two groups - alternatives and agnostics - embraced a basket of positions that seemed schizophrenic in nature. Lacking an outlet or method to understand their feelings in a Left-Right oriented political-media framework, this super-majority internally reframed issues in a way that reconciled with their worldviews. However, if pressed to conform to movement politics - Baldassari and Goldberg noted - the non-Ideologues usually gravitated toward the Republican Party.

Which Obama Cabinet Secretary Did Russian SVR Agent Seduce? Did...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:06:00 -0700

Which Obama Cabinet Secretary Did Russian SVR Agent Seduce?

Did a Juliet agent in the Anna Chapman spy ring come close to seducing an Obama cabinet secretary in 2010? That possibility was among startling revelations made by a senior official of the U.S. FBI to the UK’s official state media, the BBC, ABC reports.

Frank Figliuzzi, Assistant Director of Counter-Intelligence for the FBI, said the decision to break-up the Russian espionage operation came when it did because, “we were becoming very concerned they were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”

"It’s quite astounding that documents as important as these went missing and the FBI says,..."

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:37:00 -0700

“It’s quite astounding that documents as important as these went missing and the FBI...

Was the elections monitoring report prepared by the Organization...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:20:00 -0700

Was the elections monitoring report prepared by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the wake of the recent Russian presidential elections actually prepared in advance?

The Swiss alt newsletter Zeit-Fragen reports that right-leaning Austrian MEP Ewald Stadler has accused the OSCE monitoring mission - of which he was a member - of bias and fabrication in questioning the fairness of the Russian presidential election.

“I do not agree with the statements of the OSCE. I suspect that it is the aim of the OSCE to purposefully denounce Russia. If so, then the OSCE has abdicated its objective role. I will certainly not get involved in this mean denunciation of an important country of the international community,” Stadler said in a press conference.

Stadler went on to itemize discrepancies between the OSCE report and what he observed. The MEP from Mäder is an attorney who formerly served as a federal ombudsman on police and judicial questions.

Could Mali’s coup be beneficial for economic development...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:24:33 -0700

Could Mali’s coup be beneficial for economic development in the north African state? It’s too soon to tell the political proclivities of the new junta, however, with the putsch executed with what was apparently minimal violence the government has one ideological direction in which it could move to shore-up investments in the nation. We revisit a post we made in 2011 -

As rumbling of an impending military coup in Greece continues to grow, we visit a 2004 paper by Dr. Catherine Duggan of Harvard Business School in which she asks the question “How do coups affect private investment?” While conventional wisdom indicates a military intervention into civil government tends to depress investments in the country in question, Dr. Duggan finds that - depending on the coup type - a net benefit can often be realized. Duggan’s research indicates a bloodless coup by a right-oriented junta tracks an average 7.7% increase in aggregate private investments as a percent of GDP.

As nations large and small are rocked by rumors of military...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:21:54 -0700

As nations large and small are rocked by rumors of military coups, or actual coups themselves, we revisit a post we made last year highlighting the release of the Uppsala Coup Event Dataset.

Uppsala Coup Event Dataset

Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have recently released the Uppsala Coup Event Dataset. Combining information from more than 400 coups d’etat and overthrow plots covering the time period 1950-2010, the dataset finds that foreign support for the coups and coup attempts experienced by many nations has, historically, been limited, noting that “the typical case … seems to be a coup-like attempt at overthrowing the government, using domestically recruited armed men led by a disenfranchised domestic elite person like a retired officer, an opposition leader, an ex-minister or ex-president. To be successful they may in the end need the tacit consent of parts of the state security apparatus …”

Other findings of the dataset include:

the three most likely regions to experience a coup d’etat were Africa, Asia and the Americas with Europe and the Middle East least likely to experience a coup

the overwhelming majority of incumbents targeted in coup plots either survive the coup to remain in power or remain free in the country, though rendered powerless; 15% are exiled, another 15% are imprisoned, and 5% killed

the most likely “inside” instigators of a coup were, in this order: the regular armed forces, cabinet members, “special” military units (e.g. presidential escort regiments, Republican Guards, etc.) while regular police, political police and gendarmerie/paramilitary forces were least likely to be involved in coup attempts

Russia Today reports on the falsification and dramatization of...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:16:00 -0700

Russia Today reports on the falsification and dramatization of war video from Syria, including raw footage of Anderson Cooper’s favorite “Danny the Activist” requesting background gunfire and sound effects before a live shot on CNN’s AC360.

Is the Nation of Australia Merely the South Pacific Branch of...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:45:00 -0700

Is the Nation of Australia Merely the South Pacific Branch of the CIA?

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has accused the ruling government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard of being agents of influence of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency which - he claimed - were working through the Rockefeller Foundation.

Australian officials denounced Palmer’s claims, however, the accusation comes one month after it was revealed the U.S. State Department had been briefed of Gillard’s plans to unseat incumbent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2010 during a leadership dispute, weeks before then chief-of-government Rudd found himself ignominiously displaced.

While media have dismissed Palmer’s accusation that the Rockefeller Foundation is a front group for U.S. covert action, the billionaire’s assertions are not without some basis in historical fact. In the early 1980s it was revealed that Harvard University Middle East expert Nadav Safran had accepted more than $100,000 from the CIA for the agency’s right-of-review of a book he had written about Saudi Arabia, and that these funds were supplemented by additional monies paid by the RAND Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, purportedly at the agency’s direction. Safran ultimately resigned from Harvard in disgrace.