Current Events and the Psychology of Politics
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Oct 3rd, 2011

Summary: Dateline October 3, 2011. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 3, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that militants attacked and set fire to at least 20 tanker trucks carrying oil for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan — the third such strike inside Pakistan in as many days.



Summary: Ayman al-Zawahiri has been named to succeed Osama bin Laden as leader of the al-Qaida terrorist organization. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on June 15, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.


Jan 5th, 2011

Summary: The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world. The creation of the center comes as part of the administration’s increasing reliance on clandestine and covert action to hunt terror suspects. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 5, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician who struck the CIA’s Camp Chapman forward operating base in Khost province near the Afghan-Pakistan border on December 30, 2009 killing seven Central Intelligence Agency employees, matched the psychological profile of a specific type of suicide bomber.



Summary: Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 Christmas message … “Urbi et Orbi” … “To the City and to the World” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 Christmas message and posted the Immelman family’s 2009 Christmas greeting. In a rare second post for the date, Immelman reported separately that the terror alert level was raised when a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to light an explosive powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed in Detroit.



Summary: Investigators believe the same al-Qaida-affiliated group responsible for the Christmas Day underwear bomb were behind the PETN-based devices hidden in packages sent from Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first official visit to Pakistan, faced sharp rebukes from Pakistani audiences brimming with resentment toward U.S. foreign policy, including one woman who accused the U.S. of conducting “executions without trial” in aerial drone strikes, equating it to terrorism.


Oct 7th, 2010

Summary: Analysis on the 9th anniversary of the beginning of the U.S. war in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided news and analysis on the 9th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, destroy al-Qaida, and kill or capture Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the terrorist organization.


Jun 2nd, 2010

Summary: Al-Qaida’s third in command, Mustafa al-Yazida (AKA Sheik Saeed al-Masri), has been killed in Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan in one of the most severe blows to the terror movement since the U.S. campaign against al-Qaida began in 2001. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on June 2, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that two roadside bombs killed four more American troops in Afghanistan as violence continued to mount and U.S. casualties climbed to record levels.


Dec 28th, 2009

Summary: The New York Times reports that in the midst of two unfinished major wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 28, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Taliban, which had long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, had begun spreading north, encroaching on the capital city of Kabul.


Dec 12th, 2009

Summary: A spike in terrorism cases involving U.S. citizens is challenging long-held assumptions that Muslims in Europe are more susceptible to radicalization than their better-assimilated counterparts in the United States. According to several U.S. and international terrorism analysts, immigration trends, the global spread of a militant Islamism, and controversial actions by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks increase the chances that U.S. Muslims could carry out a domestic attack. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 12, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee found that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also reported that a suicide bomber struck a crowded restaurant near the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk where Kurdish officials were meeting with Arab tribal leaders, killing at least 55 people and wounding about 120 in the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly six months.


Oct 10th, 2009

Summary: Calling for more international troops, Afghanistan’s defense minister says thousands of foreign fighters are pouring into Afghanistan to bolster the Taliban insurgency. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 31st day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that a pending National Intelligence Estimate will conclude that Afghanistan is in a downward spiral and that U.S. intelligence agencies doubt that the Kabul government has the ability to stem the rise of the Taliban, citing widespread corruption inside President Hamid Karzai’s government, an increase in attacks by militants operating out of Pakistan, and a general breakdown of central government authority in Afghanistan.