Nick, Spengler,

“Marivan, Karkheh and CIA operatives”: I guess your source(s) on this particular topic are v. unreliable. This is one of the most unsophisticated goofy-hoaxes I have ever heard; The inventor of this hoax with such a clumsy mistake must be a playful journalist or a conspiracy theorist with minimum geographic knowledge about Iran: Karkheh river is not in Kurdistan, it is in Khuzestan province and because of the presence of the strategic dam over karkheh, military camps and guard-posts have been positioned along the river, it is nearly impenetrable.

Spengler,

Your remarks on West’s fake diaries / files / reports spread by Delta Force sound possible to me; have also heard similar news about the same issue. They make me more skeptical.

--------------------------------------------

However, the local Iranian radio station at Kurdistan has released some brief headlines about three disfigured heads (two male and one female appearing to be European or American -- lack of technical investigation!) discovered in a truck supposed to smuggle a couple of Iranian refugees to iraq. The driver has been threatened by armed men with covered faces to carry the heads and transport them to Iraq if he wishes to smuggle his ‘consignment’ without trouble. The driver has made clear that their accent was not Kurdish, some sort of south eastern accent (he hasn’t realized). Iran has contacted the Iraqi police for possible missing civilians or journalists but both coalition forces and Iraqi police have claimed no one has missed with such characteristics.

Friends discussed that this is v. unusual since Kurds are usually hospitable to western people.

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“If ‘those’* places are still erected it is the American soldiers failing not ours, we hid there and waited for so long but nothing happened. They bowed their heads, stepped backwards and left without saying a word.” (from an unsigned shabnameh** recently spread in Iraq near the Marivan border)

* emphasized in the original text

** shabnameh (literally means ‘night letter’, a kind of samizdat for propaganda and announcing secret meetings.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

reza -
last two items rather cryptic. what does west have to do with 3 dead heads and an unsigned shabnameh?

also confused by image "Jama'at-e-Takfir". how is west involved in sadat's assassination? -if i'm not mistaken about that photo-

"Karkheh river is not in Kurdistan, it is in Khuzestan province and because of the presence of the strategic dam over karkheh, military camps and guard-posts have been positioned along the river, it is nearly impenetrable" - thanks for this Reza, I've obviously been way to trusting of flaky sources. Do you think this is just a "goofy-hoax", or something more sinister?

Northanger,

>>> also confused by image "Jama'at-e-Takfir". how is west involved in sadat's assassination? -if i'm not mistaken about that photo

No, you didn’t mistaken about the photo; but Jama’at-e Takfir is also an underground military unit after West (seeking vengeance or information or ...; no information available)

last two items rather cryptic. what does west have to do with 3 dead heads and an unsigned shabnameh?

The information, I assume, does not suggest that West has something to do with these three heads (shouldn’t rush to get any firm conclusion, however). The Kurds rarely permit such activities happen by non-local groups (the driver has made clear that their accent was not Kurdish) under their nose ... Among the Kurds, it is a shame to use non-local people for such activities. Also, it is very odd to see the activities of such groups in the Kurds’ territories (they are very sensitive in this respect) ... two questions: have they been manipulated by non-kurds? Or they are cooperating with some underground units?

Also keep in mind that Kurds’ military units can’t tolerate someone doing dirty jobs in their territory, soon they begin to hunt them down; but there is no evidence of any armed clash in Kurdistan for months.

3 heads (European or American) and CIA operatives in the region, a weird coincidence.

The unsigned Shabnameh has been published in three languages, Farsi, English and Arabic. ‘those’ without a doubt insinuates ‘Holy Places’ and talks about Tahason in the holy places (tahason: gathering in a public place to protest or, tahason as a means of evading a punishment or offense by dwelling in holy places esp. holy shrines). The cryptic thing about this shabnameh: it looks as if it complains about the American soldiers’ failing to a third party: neither the coalition forces nor the writers of this shabnameh (the islamic units)

Nick,

You know, for one second (or perhaps more), yes, I hesitated to call it a goofy-hoax, maybe a distracting tool but I thought its mistake is so obvious and can’t really distract people for too long, also suspected that it has intentionally included such a hole. For now, let’s consider it as a goofy-hoax until receiving further information.

>>> For now, let’s consider it as a goofy-hoax until receiving further information

what kind of information is needed to confirm it ISN'T a goofy-hoax?

Imposter alert: The orthographically challenged "Spengler" who posted in the above thread is NOT the author of the Asia Times Online column. This should be obvious from his poor use of punctuation and restricted vocabulary.

"Dunno" is a bit concerning... why would Spengler comment on Hyperstition anyway? What are his/her intentions?

Bad weather here and our archeologic mission halted, so i'm staying at home:

Spengler,

>>> Imposter alert: The orthographically challenged "Spengler" who posted in the above thread is NOT the author of the Asia Times Online column. This should be obvious from his poor use of punctuation and restricted vocabulary.

hmmm...intresting! Are you Spengler? Or i assume you know Spengler don't you? If you don't fit these two categories then the problem becomes more intresting and sophisticated. The prose-style is not very definitive in identifying a writer, carriers (such as Spengler) can camouflage themselves easily. Nick, you are an expert, what do you think?

Spengler or not, i guess the guy -- in spite of trusting in unreliable sources (the Karkheh / Marivan mistake was so ridiculous and i imagine Spengler has more geographic knowledge about the whole region to be fooled so easily) -- could give us useful info about West. Besides Nick participated in his discussion with 'so much productivity'. If he is not Spengler and Nick has accepted some of his information (including Marivan sighting) then we must conclude that West is another hoax unleashed by Delta or other manipulating organizations. Nick, again what do you think?

woman=111=other,

>>> why would Spengler comment on Hyperstition anyway?

Come on ... Hyperstition is globally famous ;)

>>> What are his/her intentions?

You should ask the real Spengler; what do you know about his/her intentions when he/she writes anonymously in Asia Times? (s)he has become quite a media monster within a short time influencing every political journal. isn't that mysterious?

A media saboteur or a secret agent? both categories rest upon some very 'intresting and sinister' conclusions.

>>> his poor use of punctuation

i guess editors do the punctuations ;)

>>> restricted vocabulary

He has posted a comment not an ‘Essay’ for Asia Times

Had my doubts about 'Spengler' but the quality of his remarks was so high i didn't make a fuss about it - suspect a highly competent relatively low level East Asian spook

Spengler and Asia Times Online would like it to be known that the poster on this blog who calls himself "Spengler, the columnist at Asia Times", is an imposter. Those interested may find out what our Spengler really thinks by going to the "Spengler" category on the Asia Times Online readers' forum at

http://forum.atimes.com/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=13

or by reading his columns at

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/spengler.html

Allen Quicke
Editor
Asia Times Online

Allen Quicke,

If you explore the hyperstition archive, you may find how amazingly some of Spengler’s remarks are similar to hyperstition articles on War on Terror. By the way, if Spengler is so enthusiastic about keeping his/her/their true identity intact why does ‘it’ use a mask belonging to a dead writer? In hyperstition polytics everyone can use a mask, dissolving into another carrier. So I wasn't convinced that the (im)poster is really not your Spengler or your Spengler is not a hyperstition engineer.

>>> Plus, are you really the editor at Asia Times? ;) ... just kidding if you really are.

Reza Negarestani
Hyperstition

>>> why would Spengler comment on Hyperstition anyway?

the same question about Mr. Quicke's (Im)poster Alert?!!!

Guess people must already have done the ASIA TIMES ONLINE = COLD RATIONALISM thing?

>>> Guess people must already have done the ASIA TIMES ONLINE = COLD RATIONALISM thing?

LOL ... It’s interesting that Mr. Quicke talks about ‘OUR SPENGLER’ (sounds very informative in some regards); just typed Spengler + Hyperstition in the Google search box, no external link to this article. How did they find this post? (intriguing answers lurk here)

Reza - Afraid I'm an unredeemable dupe when it comes to this sort of thing - highly appreciative of the fact you're able to bring a surgical intelligence to the question. Can't even begin to get my head around the issue you raise here - just shorts out into fogged confusion. Was perturbed by the 'ethics' of the impersonation problem because I really don't approve, but now I'm totally lost. Have you got any usable East Asian intelligence assets to lean on? My contacts are generally pretty flaky, and everything coming down the Ccru pipe from this part of the world is basically white noise (our 'most reliable' HK guy was recently busted trying to put together a complex arms-for-heroin deal even he couldn't explain) ...

ok, i'll open it later ... currently, the blog is too hot for surgical investigations or explorations of this kind. but in regard to impersonation issue raised here: Is Spengler a molar person who can be easily impersonated? was writing to a friend: the effectively of carriers is guaranteed through their anomalous participations with characteristics, personalities and identities and not dissociation from them since as epidemic vectors they must retain a minimum attaching organ-ization to latch onto flows and bodies which transmit them, contaminate and being contaminated. So carriers may leak into each other.

(contd.)

Therefore, the rush of paranoia into the space that carriers traverse is inevitable, a paranoia which should be taken as a schizotrategic insurgency rather than ‘merely’ fixated on (over)reactionary impulses or person/imperson diametric discourses.

"it looks as if it complains about the American soldiers’ failing to a third party: neither the coalition forces nor the writers of this shabnameh (the islamic units)"

It's always the 'third force', the 'hidden hand' -- the exception (the sovereign) - that has the potential to 'walk away' and spoil the party -- or find another one to crash. ;)

Forgot to say that my friends (one of them is a Basiji General -- he is 39 -- in Kurdistan) noticed me that some of the recent Shabnamehs spread near Marivan border and also in Kurdistan have been signed under a non-iranian name: Jay. They are not sure if this is a western name because they have all heard the stories about a woman wearing Borgha (a cover for women’s face using in South of iran) named Jay who helped them in Operation Mersad (Eternal Light) in Mordad 3, 1367 (1988) by uncovering a few key information about the tactical movements of Mujaheddin-e Khalghs (pseudo-islamic commies who assembled a group after the Revolution). My father’s friends who were in charge of army (Artesh) battalions at that time told me that despite these hypocrites were Iranians but they were torturing and slaughtering more civilians than islamic Sepahies or Basijies, so Artesh, too, willfully (because Artesh was once considered as a decadent leftover of the last regime) helped other military units in Iran to utterly eradicate these crypto-commies. Mujaheddin-e Khalghs were a large army fully armed by Iraqi light and heavy weapons; they expected to conquer Tehran in a few days by passing through Kermanshah and some cities of Kurdistan where rebellions had intense activities, so they had actually planned to reinforce their army by people and rebellions as the march towards Tehran through these cities. What happened was quite different, people escaped them, rebellions didn’t join them and even Artesh’s powerful army divisions joined the battle. The Operation started by the Code ‘Ya Ali’, the mistake of Mujaheddins was their lack of tacticity, they moved their units through in-depth formation to attract people so they were easily overwhelmed by the united army, and after a few days (esp. after a tactical diversion led by Artesh) they were fully trapped and defeated (Mordad 5, 1367)

Another subject attracted me here is the word Yatu (as I quoted one of these shabnamehs at the opening of the recent post), I guess I have heard a similar word before. Should consult my linguist teammates in the archeological project, they might have a clue. (btw, added this new piece of information to West post)

Jay's certainly proving elusive - makes West seem quite the party animal in comparison ...

All ears for 'Yatu' ...