Tag Archives: spies

Al-Qaeda and Global Terrorism: What is the Current Threat?

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 February 2023

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Afghanistan, China, and the Memory of Fallujah: The Propaganda Focus of the Islamic State

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 28 December 2022

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The Popish Plot and its Legacy

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 November 2022

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Saddam Relative Arrested in Lebanon, Accused of Islamic State Crimes

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 August 2022

Area on the banks of the Tigris where the cadets of Camp Speicher were massacred by the Islamic State || Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor

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Reviewing the Mystery of Jihadi Ideologue Abdullah Azzam’s Assassination Three Decades Later

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 11 August 2022

Abdullah Azzam [image source]

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United Nations Report Finds Al-Qaeda and Islamic State Reduced, But Reviving

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 July 2022

Islamic State in Palmyra, December 2016

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Britain Won the Spy War with the Irish Republican Army

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 July 2022

An IRA parade in Belfast || Image source

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Intelligence and the English Civil Wars

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 January 2022

Review of ‘The King’s Spy’ (2021), by Mark Turnbull

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The February Revolution: The End of the Russian Monarchy

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 19 December 2021

Skobelev Square during the February Revolution, painting by Aleksandr Gerasimov, 1917

The “February Revolution” is so-called because Russia at the time was on the Julian (Old Style (O.S.)) calendar. By the Gregorian (New Style (N.S.)) calendar, which Russia adopted in February 1918, these events take place in March 1917. And momentous events they were, leading to the abdication of the last Tsar, the end of a monarchy and an entire system of power and authority that dated back more than 350 years. For eight months in 1917, Russia struggled to extend the constitutionalist reforms that had begun under the Tsardom within a more liberal framework. The liberals never did gain the upper hand over the radicals, not even after the September 1917 de facto return to autocracy. In November 1917, a coup by the most extreme Leftist faction, the Bolsheviks, terminated the experiment, burying for seven decades even the aspirations in Russia for liberalism and democracy. Continue reading

Russia and the Outbreak of the Great War

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 December 2021

Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard a ship in the Gulf of Finland, 1905

In the early historiography of the Great War, it was accepted that Germany was chiefly responsible, with debates on the margins about the degree of intentionality and premeditation. Of late, however, “It has become fashionable to spread the guilt of the First World War liberally around Europe”, as one prominent historian noted.[1] Some revisionists go even further and try to find another state that is not only equally as culpable as Germany but more so. In this post, I want to, without in any way pretending to be comprehensive, deal with the argument that blames Russia for the 1914-18 War. Continue reading