Current Events and the Psychology of Politics
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Summary: Psychological assessment of Russian president Vladimir Putin, leadership style implications of Putin’s personality profile, and Russian threat assessment with respect to U.S. national security.



Summary: Psychological assessment of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, leadership style implications of Kim’s personality profile, and North Korea threat assessment with respect to U.S. national security.


Jan 30th, 2011

Summary: Islamic leaders rallied at least 15,000 people against an American consular official arrested in the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis and warned the government not to cave in to U.S. pressure to release the man, who has been named as Raymond Allen Davis. … Kandahar deputy governor assassinated in Afghanistan. … Deadly Kabul grocery store bombing targeted Xe (Blackwater) employee. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 30, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in a new audiotape, called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming.


Oct 20th, 2010

Summary: An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency documents a litany of intelligence breakdowns leading to the Dec. 30, 2009 suicide attack in Afghanistan by Jordanian double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi that killed seven CIA employees. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 20, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Feb 17th, 2010

Summary: The Taliban’s top military commander has been captured in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces. The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 17, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that North Korea marked the 67th birthday of its leader, Kim Jong Il, by claiming it had the right to “space development” — a term it has used in the past to disguise a missile test as a satellite launch.


Jan 26th, 2010

Summary: A new report warns that al-Qaida has not abandoned its goal of attacking the United States with a chemical, biological, or even a nuclear weapon. … Al-Qaida’s high-value target list. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 26, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that counterterrorism officials and the FBI were investigating whether al-Shabab or other Somali Islamic groups were actively recruiting in the United States. Officials said as many as 20 Somali-Americans between the ages of 17 and 27 had left their Minneapolis homes since 2007, apparently bound for Somalia.


Jan 12th, 2010

Summary: Thousands of Somali boys and teenagers fleeing war and chaos at home are sailing to Yemen, where officials worry that the new arrivals could become the next generation of al-Qaida fighters. U.S. and Yemeni authorities also fear that Islamist fighters from Somalia could slip into the country among the throngs of refugees, deepening ties between al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and the particularly hard-line al-Shabab militants of Somalia. … Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June 2009 presidential election, was killed when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home in Tehran. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 12, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that security forces used tear gas and batons to repel anti-Israel protesters who tried to attack a U.S. consulate in Pakistan as tens of thousands of people demonstrated worldwide against Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. He also reported that seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan routed the Taliban regime, hard-line Islamic fighters who had scattered under massive bombardment to their villages and rear bases in Pakistan once again govern large swaths of Afghanistan and are dug in across regions that surround the capital Kabul, saying they welcome the U.S. military’s proposal to send as many as 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan by summer 2009 because it will give them more chances to kill “infidels.”


Jan 5th, 2010

Summary: Intelligence lapse: Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician who turned against his Jordanian intelligence recruiters and struck the CIA’s Camp Chapman forward base in Khost province near the Afghan-Pakistan frontier on December 30, 2009 killing seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and his Jordanian recruiter, matched the psychological profile of a suicide bomber. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Vice President Dick Cheney, in an exit interview on CBS “Face the Nation,” defended the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which he was a key proponent and architect.


Jul 9th, 2009

Summary: Declassified notes of FBI interviews with Saddam Hussein in 2004 show Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003, but that Saddam falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had WMD because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.



Summary: Baitullah Mehsud, commander of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the White House that would “amaze” the world.