This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Mysterious Cold Spy

The first I heard of this dude was when he signed up to my other blog. I did my basic "socrates" background check through the googler. I checked out his blog. He only had two entries up at the time. I skimmed through them. They seemed quite interesting. They were centered around a story I was unaware of, the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Assassination Tango; Mahmoud al-Mabhouh


Assassination Tools; The Mystery Unravels


He goes by the name Hans Mundt. That was a character from an epic 1960's thriller titled The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Hans was played by actor Peter van Eyck.




That was no generic Hollywood production. It was an acclaimed movie that didn't glamourise spies. It showed them in their full, dirty colours and in a realistic way. The Cold Spy does the same thing with his blog.




Here's a short clip from the movie, where the lead played by Richard Burton tells it likes it is.

Spies Are Scum


Hans Mundt has explained to me that his website has been receiving a lot of visits. One can see he has been added to Karl Rove's Twitter feed. Over the last couple days, a well-known security blogger has plugged his website. Now we can know for sure that the interest in The Cold Spy has come from those first two entries he made.

Schneier on Security: Even More on the al-Mabhouh Assassination

Why all the interest in Han's take? It's not like this story hasn't been blogged by tons of folks, despite myself having missed it. I am no longer a news junkie, at least like I used to be. I admit that. If it weren't for Hans Mundt, I'd still have no idea about any Jihad Jane or Robert Young Pelton.

I think one can see from Schneier's comment thread, that certain individuals do not want others to take The Cold Spy's stories seriously. They refer to him as an armchair critic. Many don't think he came up with much insights. Or perhaps they truly do!

I think what Hans Mundt brought to the equation was his ability to step back and think clearly about all the possible explanations for what truly happened. The zeitgeist, on the other hand, wants the assassination to be seen as foremost a Mossad production. Hans Mundt has brought into the discussion the possiblity that the hit was done by independent contractors. However, the zeitgeist appears to wholeheartedly endorse that full blame should clearly go to The Mossad. In other words, the assassination may have been a psychological operation in and of itself.

Or maybe I'm wrong to put words in his mouth. I simply feel that Hans is saying things are not always as they appear, that we often need to have patience and let things come out in the wash. Maybe Hans can make some posts here and help us understand what exactly he was trying to say in his two part story. Or maybe I should get off my arse and do my own homework. He is currently dropping down posts on the Schneier piece.

I will give him this one bit of advice. I have seen his facebook page. I don't have the time to go cybersleuth crazy on all his "friends" and links. Nonetheless, a bunch of them do strike me as associations he should immediately drop.

Zionism Terminator


That's not cool. In the comment section there is even a Holocaust denier. It's one thing to criticise Israel's policies towards Palestine. It's quite another to demonise it. Kuwait used to be part of Iraq. Iraq's not getting it back. Northern Ireland is not ever going to become part and parcel of a united Ireland. America is not going to be given back to the Native-Americans. Palestine does deserve its own independence. I agree.

It's clearly not a pretty picture in the Middle East. The Israeli government does need to be taken to task for its asymetrical warfare. However, bringing in the Jew hate card is not going to help the Palestinians. In fact, it makes things harder for them to gain independence. When fascism and pure hate reigns, it's the progressives and intellectuals who are cornered into irrelevance. That's happening in America, as we can observe with a triangulating Democratic Party. Here are some other images I came across from checking out Hans Mundt's links from his Facebook page. Not cool.

How does the following image help the Palestinians?



How does painting Israel as a Nazi state help their cause? Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, and these creeps are going down the Swastika Road?





Such images do not help the Palestinians' fight for independence. Not one bit. Does anyone with half a brain think David Dees is helping promote peace and justice in the Middle East? Not a chance. It promotes the opposite. It gives the impression that Israel is only doing whatever it takes to secure her borders against millions of people set on wiping them off the map, like Hitler tried to do.

Being aware of the divide and conquer Middle East psyop helps one understand why Hans is being belittled at Schneier's blog as an armchair critic. I believe the psyop is centered around demonising Israel. Elsewhere in the manufactured zeitgeist, we see paid fakes claiming Israel brought down the World Trade Center. We see paid fakes claiming the Holocaust was a hoax.

There's a lot of money to be made with the continuation of war and destruction. The spy factories and the CIA in particular are all about maintaining a balance in the world; In other words, the status quo of a militarised, world culture. Hans' posts hit hard at the zeitgeist's hypocrisy with jumping to conclusions about who really did assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and why. Unfortunately for Hans, there is little room for nuance and sophisticated dialogue on the net.

The job of the American people is to say enough is enough with the Military-Industrial Complex. Think of how heaven on Earth could be established if instead of putting our resources into the death industry, we put them into schools, health care, food and jobs for all, peace on Earth, social and environmental justice, etc..

vietnam...Bob Dylan masters of war music video..vietnam posted by sharpie189



The Youngbloods - "Get Together"

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting post. On FB, most people add you, you get an email while busy, you click add friend and move on. Seldom have I found many who will talk to you when you email them or use FB email, seldom will any of them actually know you or even know what you are about, and lastly, most will forget they added you by the end of the day. Thus for FB, or any social network, one takes the view that it's application is extremely limited and basically just there for fun.

It is nice to say I have 3600 or 55000 friends, but truth be told, if I had that many, none would talk to me or respond to my posts or even claim to know me later on. Again, it's all an illusion to brighten an otherwise dull life. If I have 4 real friends in life, sometimes I find I want more, so I go seek them on a social network, thus after a number of weeks clicking add or submit, I can magically say I have 300 friends. It makes you feel empowered.

I don't pay too much attention it, because the reality is, it's a tool like any other, and one that I am sure will eventually fizzle out.

Thank you for the two posts. They were very good and I enjoyed reading them.

Unknown said...

On another note, I think it is strange that a breakdown of the Dubai assassination was taken so seriously by those who commented over on the other blog. I ended up defending the points I made to such a degree that others felt were somehow wrong.

I guess the other strange part is that most of them are apologists for the Mossad, in that they want to spin it as a great thing, being YouTube Cowboys on a jaunty assassination adventure, and somehow they expected pats on the back from the world for a job well done.

Bruce doesn't allow the political comments on his blog, so therefore one has to stay within certain security or technical parameters when posting. So technically those who felt the job required such a massive force to accomplish were out in force on that blog defending their talking points against points I made in an earlier post.

In a typical gang mentality or pack mentality, I was pretty much alone in my defense, saying the assassins were stupid operators. Those who are seen committing crimes or acts that should have otherwise been unseen are somewhat stupid if they come from professional outfits. If they were such professionals, why allow yourself to be seen?

The gist now or focus of it is that they were already disguised, they had injection molded faces that they somehow removed after the operation, thus success is now guaranteed.

You can't argue with it, because anytime you do they will come up with a counter proposal such as that to defend the assassins in such a way as to say, yes, it was a totally successful operation. And no one, and I mean no one can refute it or them.

So at the end of the day, they win.

Unknown said...

You need to set unlimited characters for comments as I tend to make long comments and hate to break them down in 4096 chunks. 4096 characters means I have to do too much work to comment :)

Tokyo Shemp said...

Thanks for the responses.

I think the 4096 character limit is set by blogger. I just looked around and see nowhere it can be turned off. Sorry for any inconvenience. What I do for long posts is simply copy the extra words and write continued.

You've explained the Facebook thing well. I think it is a fairly worthless project myself. Same with Twitter. I think it would be a good thing for a small club or group of friends. But then again, email works pretty well for that anyway. I look at Karl Rove following so many people, now that makes me wonder. Is he trying to win a popularity contest? Or maybe he has a shared account. It's beyond me what's up with that.

I do think you make a strong point about how our associations could lead to us getting in some trouble or put on lists. You may want to run through your contacts on Facebook and weed out any you feel could make you look bad. That's up to you.

I know there is always the possiblity of a slippery slope. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think it will ever happen, where we are forced to get implants or put into FEMA camps for political dissent. That is what I see as pure tinfoil. The FEMA camps are all about having a place if there is another Hurrican Katrina. The Superdome didn't cut the mustard. But that doesn't stop tinfoilers from harping about 2012 armageddon on the horizon or the onset of totalitarianism in Amerikkka. I'm not saying it's not possible for outright fascism to develop. I just think we're as likely as being wiped out by an asteroid.

Thanks for complimenting my entries. I just edited a bit of this one. A few words weren't spelled correct. A sentence or two had lousy grammar. I thank you for turning me onto these stories.

So it does appear I put words in your mouth. You seem to think it was clearly Mossad who was behind the assassination. I thought you wrote that it may have been independent contractors, or perhaps other nations' intelligence services could have been involved.

What I don't get is this. Do you think the mistakes were simply mistakes or could they have been part of a psyop? Can you see any reason why all those people were needed?

Wasn't there also Palestinians involvement? If so, what was up with that? Is there any chance Mossad had nothing to do with it? Maybe it was the CIA?

I definitely disagree with your equating Israeli transgressions with Nazi Germany. That seems to be a definite no-no. I also don't see how Israel can be said to be committing genocide against the Palestinians. I also think you are wrong to speak in absolute terms about Israelis. For then the same can be done against all Americans, all of any people living in a country whose government is doing bad things.

And one last thing. The British used to consider the Irish to be dogs or sub-human. Irish slaves were taken to the Caribbean. To this day, some down there speak with a bit of an Irish brogue. African-Americans used to be treated like dirt by their fellow Americans, considered to be three-fifths of a person for representative counts. Women didn't get the vote until the 20th Century.

Do you think Israel has the right to exist? What do you see as the proper path to bringing peace and justice to the Palestinians?

I find your equating Israel with Hitler and your passing off of your own responsibilities to check out who you are linking to a bit unsettling.

Anonymous said...

I always wanted to get inside Claire's Bloomers. I liked that she was married to Rod Steiger. That meant any ugly f*cker had a chance with her.

You just had to be a witty dewd, or wtf. And viola! I was....

[:o)

Why are you so hard on Hans?

Afraid?

I mean, if that guy's a paid fake you gotta give him his props for coming right on out about it. He's calling himself a spy, for gosh darn.

Fairly ironic, if you think about it a certain way.

Pffunny as shit actually.

Of course, I saw the movie first-run because the book was so great. ANd I was far too young and stupid to even get the book, but I got the drab dank lonely perverted darkness at the edge of town vibe.

The movie was very very good, one of those 60s hypnotic downers, man people were depressed back then. I loved those movies!And they didn't know how good they had it!

RIOTOUS!

Le Carre was grad skkkool. Ian Fleming was juniour hi.

Hemingway was like 9th grade. Tragicly buffoonish dickhead.

[projection alert]

A Kerouackian sophomore year.

Seniour year was in the Band.

Juniour Reefer Madness.

I think it was while watching this movie first run at the local movie palace when I realized that Richard Burton sucked.

I can't stand him as an actor, quite frankly. I can't pay attention to what he's saying because he's so overdone about it.

I start laffing, nervously at first, then hysterically. I feel like Richard Burton's holding me down on theground and tickling me sadistically with his ridiculousness.

He's got a funny-sounding voice too. All that arch intensity and unremittantly despairing anger in a helium tank.

RIOTOUS!

Tokyo Shemp said...

It'll take some work to find that movie. It does look like a good one. Some of them are on youtube. Others one might have to go to a video store. I'm not looking for trouble by going to illegal websites pirating things.

I've seen some really good old flicks lately. The Heiress was splendid. De Haviland was very good as a geek and Clift played the womaniser very well. Last night I watched Gaslight. It was kind of strange to watch Charles Boyer play a villian after only seeing him as a good guy. And wow, just wow, with Angela Lansbury. I only knew her as Mrs. Murder She Wrote. Ingrid Bergman was good too.

The Young Lions was decent. That had Brando and Clift. I liked The Misfits with Gable, Clift, Monroe, and Elia Kazan.

As for Hans, there's not much I can say without breaching his confidence. Early on in our emails, I told him that even if I ended up thinking he was a fake, I wouldn't socratise® him.

Personal emails are a joke. They box you in. You can't remember what was said in private from public.

I don't think I did anything wrong. I'm just not going to let anyone make me look bad, even if it perhaps isn't being done intentionally. It's not like we can google for paystubs to find out who is a paid fake or just someone making us feel a bit queasy. Hello Stu Piddy, Otvos, supergump, and Karmafish.

I am fairly clear about my fighting for Palestinian rights without demonising Israel and Jewish people. Heck, it's at the center of the right woos left thesis.

If he cleans up his Facebook page, then the main problem is gone.

It's kind of funny how he has the handle of a cold spy. But since I swore to him I wouldn't socratise® or reveal our emails, I'll leave it at that. He's more than welcomed to post here, but there won't be any more private emails between us.

I guess I totally misread his schtick on that assassination. I thought he was saying things that he wasn't. And since I promised him I wouldn't "investigate" his schtick, there's not much more I can say. That's the evil of private emails. Ok, I'll say this. He gave me no indication that he was this anti-Israel. I was in a bit of shock when I saw his Facebook page. It wouldn't take much for him to clean it up.

I'll end back on movies. Speaking of funny voices, a lot of the greats had one. Bogart, who acquired a lisp during his army days. Brando sounds kind of like a girlie-man, not as bad as Tom Selleck, who definitely was no great. Boyer had that manly voice, but then it's funny to find out he used to stand on boxes to kiss his leading ladies or wear elevator shoes. Nothing against height, just saying it shows what a fraud Hollywood can be. I'll end by giving a link to Brando's Academy Award where he had the sweetie Native-American lady accept it and tell Hollywood to cut the shite. I've a lot of respect for Brando for doing that.

Marlon Brando's Oscar® win for " The Godfather"