Ishmael Jones (born 15 December 1961) is the pseudonym used by a former CIA officer. He resigned from the CIA and became a leading proponent of American intelligence reform, with special emphasis on the improvement of human source intelligence collection (Humint). He is a former deep cover case officer (or clandestine officer) for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He is the author of the book The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture and many articles on intelligence reform. He believes that improvement of American intelligence capabilities is necessary to protect Americans and American allies.

Jones was born in the United States and raised in the Middle East, East Asia, and East Africa. He attended universities in the US and served as an officer in the US Marine Corps.

In the late 1980’s he joined the Central Intelligence Agency where he served as a deep cover officer focusing on human sources with access to intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Except for his initial training and service in the United States, his career was spent entirely in the field, and his assignments included more than 15 years of continuous overseas service in numerous exotic countries and several rogue nations. He resigned from the CIA in good standing in order to work toward intelligence reform.

Ishmael (Hebrew: יִשְׁמָעֵאל, Modern Yishma'el Tiberian Yišmāʻēl ISO 259-3 Yišmaˁel; Greek: Ισμαήλ Ismaēl; Latin: Ismael; Arabic: إسماعيل‎ ʾIsmāʿīl) is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first son according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar (Genesis 16:3). According to the Genesis account, he died at the age of 137 (Genesis 25:17).

Cognates of Hebrew Yishma'el existed in various ancient Semitic cultures, including early Babylonian and Minæan. It is translated literally as "God has hearkened", suggesting that "a child so named was regarded as the fulfillment of a divine promise".

This is the account of Ishmael from Genesis Chapters 16, 17, 21, 25

In Genesis 16, the birth of Ishmael was planned by the Patriarch Abraham’s first wife, who at that time was known as Sarai. She and her husband Abram (Abraham), sought a way to have children in order to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant that was established in Genesis 15. Since Sarai had yet to bear Abram a child, her idea was to offer her Egyptian handmaiden Hagar to Abram, so that they could have a child by her. Abram consented to a marital arrangement taking Hagar as his second wife when he was in his late 85th year of age. Customs of that time dictated that, although Hagar was the birth mother, any child conceived would belong to Sarai and Abram (Sarah and Abraham).

Dennis Cooper (born 1953) is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist.

Cooper grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Arcadia, California. His first forays into literature came early, focusing on imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, de Sade, and Baudelaire. As he began his teenage years, he wrote poetry and stories on scandalous and often extreme subjects. At the age of fifteen, he began to plan an ambitious novel cycle. This project, which took Cooper nearly twenty years to realize, would later become known as The George Miles Cycle. Cooper was an outsider and the leader of a group of poets, punks, stoners, and writers. After high school he attended Pasadena City College and, later, Pitzer College, where he had a poetry teacher who was to inspire him to pursue his writing outside of institutions of higher learning.

In 1976 Cooper went to England to become involved in the nascent punk scene. In the same year he began Little Caesar Magazine which included among other things an issue on and dedicated to Rimbaud. In 1978 with the success of the magazine, Cooper was able to found Little Caesar Press which featured the work of, among others, Brad Gooch, Amy Gerstler, Elaine Equi, Tim Dlugos, Joe Brainard, and Eileen Myles.

Brandon Michael Crawford (born January 21, 1987) is an American professional baseball player for the San Francisco Giants in Major League Baseball (MLB). The shortstop was the sixth player in MLB history to hit a grand slam in his first Major League game. Crawford played college baseball for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was twice named the team's Most Valuable Player {MVP}.

Crawford is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, and grew up in Pleasanton. He was born in Mountain View, and his family lived in Menlo Park before they moved to Pleasanton when he was in elementary school. Crawford attended Foothill High School in Pleasanton.

Crawford attended UCLA, where he was a history major. He played baseball for the UCLA Bruins from 2006 to 2008, where he helped lead the team to the NCAA Regionals in three consecutive seasons, the first time in school history. Crawford was named the team's MVP in 2006 and 2007, and he was named to the All-Pac-10 conference team in 2007.

Abdullah Ibrahim (Arabic: عبدالله إبراهيم), born Adolph Johannes Brand, 9 October 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa, and formerly known as Dollar Brand, is a South African pianist and composer. His music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multicultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME Church and ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles. Ibrahim is considered the leading figure in the sub-genre, Cape Jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. With his wife, the jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, he is father to the New York underground rapper Jean Grae, as well as to a son, Tsakwe.

He first received piano lessons at the age of seven, was an avid consumer of jazz records brought by American sailors, and was playing jazz professionally by 1949. In 1959 and 1960, he played alongside Kippie Moeketsi and Hugh Masekela with The Jazz Epistles in Sophiatown; the group recorded the first jazz LP by Black South African musicians in 1960. Ibrahim then joined the European tour of the musical King Kong.