Out InThe Cold: Just For Laughs

 
Both of these gems are from Al Kamen's Post column.

Frosty exit for Wolfowitz
On Saturday, counterinsurgency guru and Center for a New American Security President John Nagl held his annual post-Christmas party at his home in Alexandria, attended by dozens of Iraq war veterans, Obama administration officials and journalists.

Also in attendance was Iraq war architect and former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose jacket somehow vanished from the coat room.

In all likelihood, it was a simple case of mistaken identity.

But as Wolfowitz, now at the American Enterprise Institute, headed home without his coat on a frigid Washington night - temps around 26 degrees with gusting winds up to nearly 30 mph - conspiracy theorists couldn't help but wonder whether foul play was involved. The big question as the party was winding down: Did a disgruntled Iraq veteran walk off with the jacket as a last measure of revenge, or was it the work of a left-leaning Obama-ite?

For once, no one seemed to blame the journalists.


That's why it's a secret 

One of the favorite ploys used by government bureaucrats to thwart freedom-of-information requests (aside from just stalling) is the old B5 dodge. That refers to a section of the Freedom of Information Act that exempts from disclosure any information that the agency deems might be a sensitive part of the internal "deliberative processes" of government, such as inter- or intra-agency communications and such.

The National Security Archive recently won an appeal from the State Department over a B5 classification of something written by a department official on a proposed House resolution. The January 2000 resolution, sponsored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that Pakistan should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism."

A State Department official had written something on the proposed resolution that the department decided was exempt from disclosure. The Archive went through the department's appeals process and two years later won the right to see the hidden writing on the resolution.

It said: "What a bunch of crap!!"

Ah, the old deliberative process ain't what it used to be.

Rabbit Hole -- This Shit Is Definitely Not True

Long-suffering friends of this dubious blog will know that we are consistently sloppy on innumerate counts as pertains to style (Yes, and as pertains to most everything else.) Yet when we let loose the occasional canonating certitude --well, we are invariably smackaroo in the money.

Friendz know that much.

 
Tidy tensions 'tween WikiLeaks and the Papers.

[Assange] had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange—that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission.

Lots of good stuff for the careful reader, until this stinker:

“He is short of money and short of secrets,” someone who has worked extensively with Assange told me. “The whole thing has collapsed.”

This is not true, and then the writer tries to argue that the stateless nature of WL is a disadvantage.

Writer went down the rabbit hole.

And...

Government officials are also worried that foreign intelligence services may be trying to acquire the cable collection, a development that would heighten concerns about the safety of those named in the documents.

Do ya'think? 


That fucking cat is out of the bag already.  They need not wonder any longer.

Ding-a-ling? You be the judge

During the morning portion of the trial, Lakin said he had gone to a chapel and done some soul-searching about whether to disobey orders.

I think the preponderance of the evidence would strongly lead in only one direction.

Sense & Svensk Ability: Metaphors Abound

This Friday's edition of Whiskey Break!™ was brought to this fair clan by an intrepid though mysterious fellow who shall remain unnamed yet much appreciated.

OPERATION: BIG MACK ATTACK
DATE: 2009:09:23T00:00:00.000 UTC-01:00:00H
DURATION: 48:00:00H
ASSET: XXXXXXXXX
DEPARTURE: STOCKHOLM
ARRIVAL: AMSTERDAM
CARGO: CLASSIFIED, "EYES ONLY"
TARGET: XXXXXXXXX
OP-OUT: T

Mackmyra is Sweden's first and fine entry into the single malt brewing regime. A golden nectar that oil-slips 'cross tongue; the liquid, languid and wan, verily wafts through thorax. A trail of chest warmth lingers as if to reassure.

So, yeah. Pretty good stuff. We here at Whiskey Break!™ were in firm agreement. Perhaps lacking the depth of flavor of a healthy Scotch, the finish of this single malt is superb.

And then one day, the depth will come. After all, the Swedes only started distilling whiskey in 1999. One wonders what wonders are too follow. Naturally, the Whiskey Break!™ had to make the trek back to Sweden, and take up arms to those Swedes! Damn you! How do you get this good, this fast?!

The $5 Million Bar Bill

[Note perhaps how they waited until December 2001 to buy the Russian helicopters. (About a month after the fall of the Taliban)]

On Dec. 4, 2001, five members of a Las Vegas-based charter crew were detained by Russian authorities after they landed without visas in Petropavlovsk. The remote Russian city, located on the Kamchatka peninsula and surrounded by active volcanoes, is nine time zones east of Moscow and cannot be reached by road.

Three days earlier, the privately owned Boeing 737 had left Biggs Army Airfield in Texas, carrying the crew and 16 Americans traveling on tourist visas. The plane, a luxury aircraft outfitted with wood paneling and a three-hole putting green, had been chartered by a small company from Enterprise, Alabama, called Maverick Aviation.

What the plane and its passengers were really doing in Russia in the middle of winter is only hinted at in an appeal filed by two federal prisoners this year. But interviews with those involved in the case reveal a secretive, and sometimes comical, mission to strike back at the Taliban after 9/11 -- a rare glimpse into the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan.

According to unclassified court documents, the group was traveling to a helicopter plant in Siberia, where Maverick Aviation, which was experienced in acquiring Russian aircraft for the US military, was planning to buy two helicopters for a "customer."

Not mentioned: That "customer" was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA needed Russian helicopters because of its clandestine operations in Afghanistan. On Sept. 24, 2001, a Russian-made helicopter loaded with $10 million in cash carried a small CIA team into Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley. Code-named "Jawbreaker," the mission was to cement support among tribal leaders and pave the way for US military operations. It was the first entry of Americans into Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The aging helicopter, an Mi-17, was the team's only way of getting in or out of the country. Though hardly state-of-the-art, the Russian helicopter had a distinct advantage for the CIA: it allowed the agency to operate relatively unnoticed in an area where Russian equipment left over from the Soviet occupation was commonplace.

There was only one problem: The CIA owned only one Russian helicopter. It needed more, but a clandestine American agency couldn't exactly pick up the phone and call a Russian factory. So it turned to Jeffrey Stayton, then the chief of the Aviation Division at the US Army Test and Evaluation Command and an expert in Russian copters.

Stayton's plan was to find a private American company to buy the helicopters, send a team of people over to pick them up from a plant in Siberia, modify them to CIA standards, and then get them to Uzbekistan, a staging ground for CIA operations into Afghanistan. And they would do it all within a matter of weeks.

Eventually, the team included William "Curt" Childree, whose company, Maverick Aviation, won the contract to buy the helicopters and organize logistics; Army personnel and contractors from El Paso with experience modifying Russian aircraft for use by the US military; and then "six guys from the customer's office," as Stayton put it (a CIA team that included special operations personnel).

That's when things started to get complicated.

In an interview, the pilot, Fred Sorenson, said he thought visas they had ordered would arrive by FedEx by the time the plane landed. When he found out over satellite phone that the papers hadn't arrived, the plane was already descending, so he hid the fact from the crew for fear of a cockpit argument. The team was detained on arrival.

In the end, the visas came, and the crew was released the next day. But when the plane finally made it to Ulan Ude, in Siberia, the crew and passengers faced more challenges. To say merely that it was cold does not capture the Siberian winter, where temperatures that month approached 30 degrees below zero. Even worse, the team was in a Russian hotel with spotty electricity and limited heat.

The charter crew was shocked at the conditions (Siberia, after all, was off the beaten track of their typical VIP clients), but the Army personnel from El Paso also seemed woefully unprepared. None of them had ever been to Russia before -- some had never left Texas -- and the rough conditions shocked them. "I had the sense that I might end up in a Russian jail," Kimberly Boone, a Russian translator for the Army, later recounted in court testimony.

Several members of the team grew sick with flu-like symptoms. There was also a major hitch with the helicopters. According to the factory, there was the equivalent of a mechanic's lien on the helicopters, and they couldn't be released. While Stayton and Childree attempted to negotiate the release from the factory, the Army personnel were told to act like tourists on a winter getaway to Siberia: They visited a Buddhist monastery and shopped for fur coats.

Childree, by then suffering from pneumonia, flew to Moscow to meet with the broker, where he found that a competitor (no one knows for sure who) had apparently offered $30,000 to kill the deal.

After some heated discussions, the helicopters, which cost about $1.6 million each, were released.

Back in Siberia, meanwhile, Stayton was having problems with Brian Patterson, the Army warrant officer in charge of the El Paso team, who, according to multiple people on the trip, was drinking heavily.

Lisa Teuton, a flight attendant for the charter company, recalled several members of the El Paso team drinking and bragging about their work for the CIA. "It just blew me away," said Teuton. "I thought they would have been more professional and more secretive."

The charter crew, fed up with the delays and the conditions, threatened to leave, but the El Paso team was having none of it. According to Sorenson, chief warrant officer Patterson poked him in the shoulder and said: 'If you leave, we'll shoot you down.' "

Patterson laughed when asked about the incident. "I would like to know how I could accomplish that," he said.

That night, while the others were settled in their rooms, the crew surreptitiously checked out of the hotel. They used some of their remaining cash and alcohol to bribe airport personnel not to notify the Army of their departure. With no cash left for additional fuel, and no clearance to fly over China, the aircraft headed toward Japan, as the flight attendants kept watch out the windows to see if they really would be shot down.

The real question was: Did anyone not know it was a CIA trip? The CIA team had traveled under the amusingly obvious cover name of Donovan Aerial Surveys (William "Wild Bill" Donovan is regarded as the father of the CIA). The Russians in Ulan Ude were wondering what a group of private Americans were doing in Siberia in the middle of winter buying helicopters.

"They were very curious the whole time [about] why we were there; they would ask questions: 'What are you doing?' " Joe Perry, a master sergeant on the mission, recalled. "Our rooms were bugged . . . It was just unreal some of the things they were doing."

Relations with the Army team had been bad from the start. Stayton was unhappy with many of them, and the CIA considered them a nuisance. After one final argument, Stayton informed the Army's Patterson that his team was going home immediately on commercial flights. The CIA team would finish the work on the helicopters.

Less than a week later, the two helicopters were packed in an Antonov cargo plane. When Stayton and the CIA personnel left Russia on the evening of Dec. 31, 2001, they had just 30 minutes left on their visas.

From the perspective of the CIA, the mission to Siberia, whatever its quirks, was a success. But the contract, which was administered by Army officials in New Mexico unaware of CIA involvement, quickly attracted scrutiny from the Army Criminal Investigative Division.

Agents found some unusual things. For instance, Army officials paid the most of the $5 million contract in a credit card transaction in an El Paso bar called the "Cockpit Lounge." More troubling, the file was missing signatures; included few of the required supporting documents; and no invoices. When asked by investigators to explain why he allowed so many irregularities to go unnoticed, Edwin Guthrie, the contracting officer, responded: "Sleep apnea."

There were other strange aspects, all related to the CIA's secret involvement. Money allotted to pay expenses associated with mystery "subcontractors" (CIA personnel traveling under fictitious names); helicopters bought by the military being given civilian registration numbers (another quirk of CIA aircraft); and large cash transactions (typical of Russia). "They, the government, really leaned on me," said Childree, noting that provisions, such as support for the CIA personnel, were added on to the contract at the last minute.

Investigators also focused on all the problems that took place on the trip, which the El Paso team blamed on Maverick Aviation and Stayton. "It was a nightmare," recounted Boone, the Russian translator (it was Boone's first trip to Russia).

But John Wilson, whose company also competed for the helicopter contract and was interviewed by law enforcement officials, was surprised that anyone thought the problems were a big deal. Buying helicopters in Russia isn't easy. "I sat there going: Is that all?" he said. "That's a good trip; I mean, really, honestly and truthfully, that was a pretty good trip as far as normal stuff goes."

Continue reading Sharon Weinberger´s article at the New York Post

G-8 agrees on something

O and Sarkozy lovin´ that ass.
(From today's WaPo)




(...perspective)

Straight to the Heart - Tête-à-Tête Cyberattacks

Today many hit the internet's WWW for its plethora of social networks, browsing from a distance through server-side catalogs aggregating and organizing the personal profiles of millions.

Tomorrow we will be able to surf and process the profiles of people as we encounter them irl and on the fly: adjacent soccer dads and fellow pedestrians work bound - the bounty will be plenty and immediate. This brown eyed Denny's cashier - I wonder if my dating profile and credit score matches his secret longings for a suave one night stand? (Heck, I even think some of the SMC crew have patents pending for such technology).

Already scenarios are in play that consider the hazards of tête-à-tête cyberhits. A nifty vector of opportunity for assassins and deformed love seekers?

Excerpts below from the report, Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses [14-page pdf]:

Wirelessly reprogrammable implantable medical devices(IMDs) such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), neurostimulators, and implantable drug pumps use embedded computers and radios to monitor chronic disorders and treat patients with automatic therapies.

For instance, an ICD that senses a rapid heartbeat can administer an electrical shock to restore a normal heart rhythm, then later report this event to a health care practitioner who uses a commercial device programmer1 with wireless capabilities to extract data from the ICD or modify its settings without surgery.

Between 1990 and 2002, over 2.6 million pacemakers and ICDs were implanted in patients in the United States; clinical trials have shown that these devices significantly improve survival rates in certain populations. Other research has discussed potential security and privacy risks of IMDs, but we are unaware of any rigorous public investigation into the observable characteristics of a real commercial device. Without such a study, it is impossible for the research community to assess or address the security and privacy properties of past, current, and future devices. We address that gap in this paper and, based on our findings, propose and implement several prototype attack-mitigation techniques.

We assess the security and privacy properties of a common ICD and present attacks on privacy, integrity, and availability. We show that the ICD discloses sensitive information in the clear (unencrypted); we demonstrate a reprogramming attack that changes the operation of (and the information contained in) the ICD; and we give evidence that a battery-powered ICD can be made to communicate indefinitely with an unauthenticated device, thereby posing a potential denial-of-service risk. All of our attacks can be mounted by an unauthorized party equipped with a specially configured radio communicator within range of the ICD.

Attack scenarios. Since health care is a very sensitive and personal subject for many people, we explicitly choose to deviate from standard practice in the academic security research community and do not describe specific scenarios in which an attacker might compromise the privacy or health of a victim. We also do not discuss the potential impact on patients if an adversary were to carry out an attack in vivo. Rather, when discussing attacks we focus solely on the technical properties of those attacks. In addition, in each case where we identify a vulnerability, we propose a solution or technical direction to mitigate it.

Further resources available through the Medical Device Security Center.

Pass It On - Love Grind Part One

Let us not be such cynics so as to titulate this post Cross-branding Selves. Instead...

Time has long prior to now drawn nigh to near to giving this long pre-meditated post hierurgical wings - only to find us so often as always procrastinating out of true blue fear of doing injustice to the worthy yet woefully bypassed (per way of banal martini-omissionism).

But to heck with such introspective Lutheran incontinence - it gets so fuzzy. Here instead goes a skanky SMC Sally loose with an achingly pregnant and amorous tirade. So batton down and buckle up, Lassie. We think you suspect by now that we're going for the big ugly. Some call it love.

Effwit (and its politically skullduggerous harlot) An outstanding counter-shaded slacker. But hey, hermaphrodite buddy - reign in your compulsive Writ large-isms and you could stumble far beyond yo' anti-oxidatin' green tea-quaffing Embassy Row townhouse commy-subsistence.)

Imperatating Kent's- Possibly the best esoteric blog in the Die Wilde Jagd. If only the imperatators could rid themselves of their own occasional, albeit only sub-textual, writ large-isms.

MountainRunner's Matt - There's an eclectic and weird cluster of blogs about Matt that has cornered the market of clean & elegantly detached graphic design. Unfortunately Matt rather recently chose to cross brand his SoCal mug with his otherwise aesthetically pleasing journal - how unfortunate for all but most kind He.

We like to tell ourselves we found Matt before he learned to crawl - and now the clever cat trail-blazes. Pan for gold with us and be richer.

Follow Matt if you're serious 'bout tax-subsidized mindbending - he keeps tabs on the (r)evolving bureaucracy of IO and PD like certainly no other and gasping runner up. At such task, he's both reasonably brave and charitably looking to enhance the regular mediocrity with his absolutely other-enhancing employment. We refuse to punt our dear and massive pool of Eurodollars on the side of any U.S.-led adventurism lest brilliant and willing MountainRunner man is made decisive shotgunner within DoD or State. Wise up, GS'ers.

John Brown's PD Review Thanks - and thanks Tri-pawed.

Hafty - Finally a thinly veiled unromantic - and incomparably qualified iconoclast at that. If you don't get nobody's bitch's cryptics then nobody's bitch's cryptics ain't for you to feed off. Tough luck, Citizen Al-Dorito.

As with all of the above journals, Haft's shack of due irreverence is where a decisive slice of it be at. Don't take our word on that.

Secrecy News What can an inebriated stutterer mutter but: hated by some but always a tenaciously exploitable and delving other. Steve Aftergood can buy us yet another drink any ol' or comin' time. This time though, it's on us - not.

Pass It On - Love Grind Part Two next up.

Effwitty Friday

Agent Says Israelis Let a Nazi Escape

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli agents who kidnapped the Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 found the notorious death camp doctor Josef Mengele but let him get away, one of the operatives said Tuesday.


I remember being told years ago that the head of Mossad, Isser Harel, was running the Eichmann operation from the safe house in Buenos Aires. So the decision not to grab Mengele was clearly made from on high.

I kinda doubt that the head of OGA would be part of a U.S. action team.

Peloponnesian Blowback

To a meme.

Rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you'd like.


Rule 1: Selil Blog. Thanks, resurrecting & tenured One(s?). Honored We are.

Rule 2: 7 things 'bout pickled Selves. Caution to the wind...

1. Was once an eagle scout spanked by a Marxist-Leninist Mormon Melchizedek. Joseph Smith, Joseph Stalin - what the diff. A scout leader once bore down on me for eating hot dogs directly out of the package - 'twas an unchristian abomination as munching on uncooked hot dogs was an act of cannibalism.

2. Once stood within 4 unobstructed feet of Arafat, within 5 obstructed feet of George Clooney (he was surrounded by an obstructing firewall of 6 foot tall Russian prostitutes shuttled in to Les Caves des Roy in Saint Tropez from Cannes' La Chunga Bar so to better cover their heady Cote d'Azur overheads of gimpy Russian pimps and exorbitant room rates at the Hotel Martinez (where they co-dwelled with mothers, grandmothers and toddling children) )- and to boot, once stood in a suddenly de-constructing situation, caught weirdly aware of the fact that I was wearing Björn Borg boxer shorts while drinking with Börje Salming (who also hawks a line of trés chère metrosexual men's underwear).

3. Father of daughters. Not father to any sons as far as made aware. Never spanked anything but a chest poking drunk but that mighty butt-smack silenced a sticky-floored beer hall for a full 5 seconds and brought tears to a grown man's Tuborg'd eyes.

5. Eat plain oatmeal (uncooked) with cold milk every morning and have done so for over 20 years. During such time, have never eaten a hotel breakfast even though well over a thousand hotel nights have been notched up - once asleep sleep is jealously relished.

6. Enjoy lifting weights and swimming in oceans but am far from being as strong, fast, or enduring as invested efforts in such activities should have reasonably left one endowed.

7. Been told repeatedly I make the world's best dry martini. Sometimes it's true - as when I give them away for free.

Rule 3: Tagging: Been regularly following a slurry of blogs via RSS on our latest mobile gizmo during the SMC hiatus; all of the blogs listed on That Shortbus and many of those crowded under Rhizomatic Graffiti.

So who to tag? Howz'boutz:

• Self-professed neocon and pro-victory Donald Douglas over at American Power 'cause he deplorably deplores ad hominems.
• Ex-NASA wizkid Ken Andersson over at Shockfront (formerly of Anything They Say) 'cause he's a heck of a stargazer and such an effing bleeding heart of a savant at that.
• Exploring the Heart of Asia, formerly Afghanistanica, 'cause we declared him as having written our favorite post of the year (we were quaffing M1's world's best silver bullets at the time of coronation)
• An available staffer over at Alternate Brain.
• Antoine Fafard. He knows how to pace his posting.
• Roguely Stated for their occasional drive-bys .
• Kings of War. Something about 'em.
  

Rule 4: Inform tagged - doing & near done

Rule 5: Post image of martial discord - Lysistrate; Blowback (see pic above)

Meatball Meaning

Touched Becometh Toucher

Some heavy-breathing guy called Matt reached out from behind and below and touched us. He offered no candy from his van but did ramble on about a 1-2-3 Meme in motion. The meme and its rules:

• Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
• Open the book to page 123.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the next three sentences.
• Tag five people.

Overcoming certain challenges (We own few books. Those we do possess often have far fewer than 123 pages. Almost all of our books are rather picture heavy. What little text does exist is most often not in English.), I give you our snotty contribution:

Some years ago a dentist asked me to see a patient who had already consulted half a dozen of his colleagues in an attempt to rid herself of a mouth odor only she could perceive. Claiming with great intensity that her breath smelled like "dragon dung" she had avoided people for over a year rather than be summarily rejected by them. I knew that epileptic seizures involving the uncus, the tip of the temporal lobes of the brain (these are called "uncinate fits") typically involve the illusion of odor, but this seemed different in that the offending smell was constant rather than episodic and for some years she had been taking the antihypertensive drug reserpine, which will often give people a sense of being guilty about something or even produce full-fledged depression.

And now we touch untouched other:
Antoine
Minstrel Boy
Stephen Soldz
One of our Roguelies
Professor Douglas
...and Napa Valley Steve for a mold breaking six.

Seasoned Greetings

We the meatballs and effwits of Swedish Meatballs Confidential would like to extend joyous season's greetings to you and your next of kin. Thanks for a decent year, friends and fiends.

Afterthought:
What causes opponents to come of their own accord is the prospect of gain. What discourages opponents from coming is the prospect of harm.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Whoops-a-Daisy

In a post from last week at Haft of the Spear, CTA's M. Tanji wrote:

So, contrary to Don Kerr’s assessment, no one has to surrender their privacy in order for the government to help ensure their safety. And even if no ready solution were at hand, he should think twice before repeating “the government can be trusted with personal information” line, because the list of government-agency-linked data loss events (DHS, IRS, VA, etc., etc,) is a real inconvenient truth.

Now this just in from the UK via BBC:

Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing. The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25 million people.

Sinuous Sunday - The Sharp End of Altruism

People bitch a lot about violence featured in movies and TV, but ignore a worse problem – how the sort of real (not make-believe) violence known as war is often associated with religion.

Now there may be a better theoretical understanding of how and why this association between religion and war may exist. Two articles in the October 26, 2007 issue of Science discuss evolutionary simulations which show that war drives the joint evolution of altruism and hostility to outsiders. Based on (but going beyond) this work, we will see how religion may be associated with warfare.

The first "perspectives" article gives an overview:

The Sharp End of Altruism

Which would you prefer: a society of selfish but tolerant freetraders, or a warrior society in which people help one another but are hostile to outsiders? If you value both altruism and tolerance, neither seems ideal. Societies of tolerant altruists, however, are exceedingly rare in the simulation presented by Choi and Bowles on page 636 of this issue. Instead, altruism flourishes only in the company of outgroup hostility (parochialism), with war as both the engine of this coevolutionary process and its legacy. For a compatriot, the parochial altruist who risks his life is a shining knight, whereas the outsider encounters the sharp end of this altruism.

The second article is a technical presentation of the research itself, which was the work of Jung-Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles:

The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War

Altruism—benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself—and parochialism—hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group—are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two—which we term "parochial altruism"—is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

Unfortunately, both articles require a subscription for access.

[T]here appears to have been almost no reporting on this research in the usual places that report on scientific research for a general audience. [T]he Santa Fe Institute, with which one of the researchers (Bowles) is associated, did put out this press release:

The coevolution of parochial altruism and war

In "The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War" appearing in the October 26 issue of Science, SFI researcher Samuel Bowles and colleague Jung-Kyoo Choi of Kyungpook National University in South Korea suggest that the altruistic and warlike aspects of human nature may have a common origin.

Altruism – benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself – and parochialism – hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group – are common to human nature, but we don't immediately think of them as working together hand in hand. In fact the unexpected combination of these two behaviors may have enabled the survival of each trait according to Bowles and Choi.

They show that the two behaviors – which they term "parochial altruism" – may have in fact coevolved. On the face of it joining parochialism to altruism is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because both behaviors reduce one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by avoiding them. Aggression consumes resources and risks death; altruism, particularly toward those with whom we have no direct relationship, has the effect of helping other genes advance at our expense. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to the success of these conflicts.

Using game theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations Bowles and Choi show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans neither parochialsim nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

"But even if a parochial form of altruism may be our legacy," said Bowles, "it need not be our fate." He pointed to the many examples of contemporary altruism extending beyond group boundaries, and the fact that hostility toward outsiders is often redirected or eliminated entirely in a matter of years.

Now, none of this actually mentions religion. Choi and Bowles don't discuss it. So where does religion come into it? We'll get to that shortly. But first, let's review a bit about how altruism and cooperation in human cultures are thought to have evolved.

At first, it could seem that altruism and cooperation are unlikely to have evolved in humans at all, because they seem to be traits of an individual that are of more benefit to others than to the individual who happens to possess them.

However, there is a long history of evolutionary studies that have suggested how tendencies toward altruism and cooperation could have evolved in human groups. For example, starting in 1964 William D. Hamilton argued that altruism toward blood relatives helped to favor shared genes that fostered such altruism. This was termed "kin altruism".

Additional scientific consideration of the evolution of morality, altruism, and cooperation took off in the 1970s, in the work of people like Robert Trivers and Robert Axelrod. Using game theoretic arguments and simulations they showed how another type of altruism – "reciprocal altruism" – could arise in populations where individuals interacted frequently and could learn which others had earned a reputation for dependability in their dealings with other group members.

Many, many others have written on the subject since then, such as Edward O. Wilson (e. g. Consilience, published in 1998), and Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works, published in 1997). A very good history of the subject up until 1996 can be found in Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue.

On the other hand, in spite of arguments advanced showing the benefits to individuals of practicing altruism within a single tribe or cultural group, the fact remains that separate, unrelated groups could easily come into conflict over access to resources (e. g. water, game, other food sources, etc.), especially in times of scarcity due to overpopulation, unfavorable climate, etc. The result would be warfare.

Many people have also studied how evolutionary tendencies have contributed to aggression and warlike behavior between competing human groups. It seems that separate groups that have relatively low genetic similarity to each other and must compete for scarce resources have a notable tendency to come into conflict with each other, and to solve their problems of overpopulation or resource scarcity by killing as many members of the other group as possible. A good exposition of such ideas can be found in this article by Keith Henson: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War.

It seems very reasonable to see such considerations as the source of the very human tendency to exhibit distrust and even hostility towards other humans who are noticeably "different", especially in physical characteristics, but also when there are simply cultural differences in taste, belief systems, etc.

Furthermore, when conflict between groups does occur and takes the form of open warfare, there is a distinct advantage for groups that have a high percentage of individuals who behave altruistically and cooperatively with each other. If you accept the (somewhat controversial) notion of evolutionary "group selection", this fact provides yet another evolutionary argument for the development of a third type of altruism – parochial altruism – within groups – because groups with the higher percentage of members who cooperate with each other will tend to prevail.

However, there is another side to this story. Individuals will not entirely lose a tendency to gain personal advantage through selfish behavior (such as hoarding food). Altruism can be disadvantageous for an individual if it goes too far, so there is some evolutionary pressure against it also. In an environment where scarcity of resources is not a large problem, individuals can serve their own interests by being open to interaction with members of other groups – especially for commerce and trading of "excess" goods. Individuals who are selfishly willing to trade their goods with members of other groups for the best exchange they can achieve will tend to do better for themselves since they are willing to "sell" to the highest bidder, regardless of group membership.

This, then, is the setting on which Choi and Bowles based their simulation. They considered two kinds of traits an individual could have. One related to altruism (A) vs. selfishness (N, for "not altruistic"). The other related to tolerance (T) vs. hostility (P, for "parochial") towards member of other groups. Any given individual could have one of four possible combinations (AT, AP, NT, NP). They started with groups having members with differing proportions of each possible combination.

Absent intergroup conflict, NT individuals (the most tolerant but selfish) tend to be most successful, and AP the least successful. But when intergroup conflicts occur, groups with the most AP types do better than groups with the most NT types. The simulations proceeded over thousands of generations, and a variety of parameters, all believed to be consistent with what is known about late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer human tribes, were tested.

The net result was that groups with many NT or AP individuals can both be successful, depending on how much warfare occurs (which depends on environmental conditions). But in most cases, groups with high proportions of NP or AT individuals lose out under any conditions. So one conclusion is that in order to have a lot of altruism within a group, you have to expect a lot of parochial intergroup hostility. Conversely, in order to have groups with a lot of tolerance towards other groups, you should expect less altruism and cooperation within the group. Choi and Bowles maintain that the same results tend to arise from a wide variety of different initial conditions.

True, this is "only" a simulation study. And it rests on the assumption that altruism and parochialism (or their opposites) are heritable traits (which alternatively might be transmitted culturally rather than genetically). But it seems to give results that accord well with what we know of human history. And that's where religion enters the picture. (Choi and Bowles do not discuss religion, so what follows is based on their findings, but also the contributions of others.)

In evolutionary terms, why is it that religion is so widespread in human societies? There are a variety of plausible explanations. One is that religion provides the rationale for moral and ethical principles that promote intergroup cooperation and altruism. The argument made by supporters of this idea – such as David Sloan Wilson in his book Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society – is that societies and cultures with strong religion-based ethical and moral principles have a competitive advantage over other groups.

However, what the Choi-Bowles simulation suggests is that this advantage is realized only when groups often engage in conflict and war. For otherwise, there is an advantage for groups with lots of tolerance towards other groups, and lots of free-traders working for their own self-interest.

So, ironically, religion may have developed as a result of intergroup warfare, as a social artifact that helps justify intragroup altruism that actually was selected for because of the warfare. And at the same time, religion would also incorporate a justification for the intergroup hostility and aggression that arose from the same evolutionary process.

In other words, evolutionary pressures tend to bring about an association of religion and warfare. Note that this is not saying religion "causes" war. Indeed, evolutionary theory suggests that overpopulation and resource limits usually tend to be what "causes" war. But when such conditions prevail, it isn't too surprising to find a close association between religion and war. Just recall the slogan some religious believers are so fond of: "There are no atheists in foxholes." (In other words, most of the cannon fodder found in foxholes and military cemeteries is (or was) religious believers.)

Of course, most religions aren't pro-war full time. Many religious believers oppose war because of their faith. Nevertheless, most religions have their holy warriors, such as Mujahideen and Crusaders. (Military equipment of predominantly Christian nations is sometimes named a Crusader.) Most religions have their own versions of Onward Christian Soldiers. And most religions celebrate war in other ways.

But is there scientific evidence of a relation between religion and war? Yes. Consider this:

When God Sanctions Violence, Believers Act More Aggressively

Reading violent scriptures increases aggressive behavior, especially among believers, a new study finds. The study by University of Michigan social psychologist Brad Bushman and colleagues helps to illuminate one of the ways that violence and behavior are linked.

"To justify their actions, violent people often claim that God has sanctioned their behavior," said Bushman, faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research and lead author of the article published in the March 2007 issue of Psychological Science. "Christian extremists, Jewish reactionaries and Islamic fundamentalists all can cite scriptures that seem to encourage or at least support aggression against unbelievers."

To be sure, this is hardly a new observation. Mark Twain, as well as many others before him, had already nailed it.
-Hacked & Jacked Charles Daney at Science and Reason

A Fight Too Far - Mailer To Moscow

Norman Mailer flew out to Moscow from his home in Provincetown, MA last month to cover the Holyfield vs. Ibragimov fight exclusively for The Exile.

There's rain in Moscow and the press horde has gathered in a giant half-empty sterile cage of a fight palace, some late-Communist figure-skating beast of a dome. And the old writer is tired. The flight from Boston dragged cruel on his body and yes the old writer is tired. The look of this place has him more tired still, dying animal tired, anxious for onion soup and a long rest in the dull sunset shadows of the Kremlin and its soft-spoken new Czar, the same castle that once haunted thermonuclear fantasies had on whiskey stained New York sheets. He had run through the bush with Ali in '75. Now this. Norman Mailer is in Moscow for 12 rounds if Holyfield is lucky. And he is tired.

(...)

Fight night. Through most of the 12 rounds, we wait for the fight to begin. Holyfield and Igrabimov circle and jab, circle and jab. Only twice does one man wobble, Holyfield both times the staggering victim. The Russian's artillery to the solar plex in the 10th the closest thing to punishment from Allah. When it is done, mercifully done, the writer agrees with the judges in their unanimous decision by points. The fight writers, too, are correct. It is time for the ex-champ to hang up the gloves on a sturdy nail, to retreat to home and hearth and church in Atlanta, where the sacred canvas circle of past battles can loop in memory before finally coming to rest in the promise of sleep.

Saturday Mash d'Amour

Hard-assed and asentimental Love 'n Leave 'Em'ers like ourselves haven't done mashes, though we really should've - a flattered friend or two at our inevitable inhumations would make fine compensatory tribute to our most stoic of family and creditors.

So here's a first. (And while mashing, we'd also like to post some cut 'n pasted excerpts of e-mail exchanges with wiser minds and wet swords. Seeing however that this mash d'amour is a rather spur de moment-ish beast, appropriate releases have yet to be sought - much less extorted. NSFW artsy porno and Fubar'd grammar perhaps, but violations de trust remain an infraction we meatballians surprisingly still instinctively stagger clear of. Fidelity remains our last standing raison d'être - if only per deepest of recessive defects.)


Hyper-VO2'd Mountain Runner

Read Abu Muqawama's posts Counterinsurgency Reading List and COIN Book Club if you are a) interested in COIN, b) interested in public diplomacy or strategic communications, or c) interested at all in how wars will be fought in the near to long term.

Cool & Serene Michael Tanji apropo a previous SMC post

The honest, honorable thing to do, if you cannot muster the nerve to fulfill your obligation, is to resign.

Inside the moat at Pundit von Zen

Befuddling GWs & COIN.

Chambre de Danger

The Pentagon's desire to win over anthropologists is becoming more amusing by the day.

(Desperately seeking Effwit)

Slightly Off Message

During a State Department meeting yesterday in which Foreign Service Officers aired their grievances about a new policy which may involve forced assignments to Baghdad, one officer expressed his view about the "improved" security environment on the ground there:

Service in Iraq is "a potential death sentence," said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran (Jack Croddy). "Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now," he said to sustained applause.

Harry K. Thomas Jr., the director general of the Foreign Service, who called the meeting, responded curtly. "Okay, thanks for your comment," he said, declaring the town hall meeting over.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Although our emphasis here is Information Operations as a military and government enterprise, occasionally we like to direct readers' attention to particularly effective or noteworthy influence activities slightly further afield.

Public health propaganda has a long history of campaigns of varying effectiveness -- from often risible VD films and pamphlets to the decades of anti-smoking and anti-drug abuse crusades.

Private industry -- with the exception of occupational safety initiatives -- has generally played second fiddle to government efforts in the health information field. But when private companies see fit to get involved, the result can be quite innovative.

An Italian fashion chain has stoked controversy with an advertisement featuring a naked anorexic woman. The ad, which is intended to raise awareness about eating disorders, is timed to coincide with Milan fashion week.

Back in 1992, photographer Oliviero Toscani caused controversy around the world with his pictures of a man dying of AIDS which formed part of a Benetton advertising campaign. Now he is back in the headlines with an equally shocking image of a naked anorexic woman, which a fashion chain is using to raise awareness about eating disorders.

The Nolita advertisement, timed to coincide with Milan fashion week, appeared Monday in Italian newspapers, including a two-page center spread in La Repubblica, and on billboards in Italy. A slogan above the naked photograph reads "No Anorexia."

Flash&Partners, the fashion group that owns the Nolita brand, said in a statement that Toscani's aim was "to use that naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion."

The woman in the photo is Isabelle Caro from France, who is 27 years old and has been anorexic for 15 years. She weighs a mere 31 kg (68 lb) and suffers from the skin disease psoriasis. "I hid myself and covered myself up for too long," she told the magazine Vanity Fair in an interview to be published Wednesday. "Now I want to show myself without fear, even though I know my body is repugnant."

Pectoral Deterrent: Always in Motion, Always in Perfect Position

Of all the menacing gestures associated with the newly assertive Russia, from annexing the Arctic to restarting nuclear bomber runs, none seems to have discomfited the rest of the world quite as much as President Putin being photographed bare-chested last month, with his perfect pecs on proud display. (Not as perfect as M1's- of course)

It was quite the most audacious demonstration of political self-confidence from any Russian leader since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Whatever else Vlad may have learnt in the KGB, he certainly absorbed everything one needs to know about psychological warfare. How many of the politicians charged with our safekeeping do you estimate would emerge enhanced if their torsos were laid out for all to see on a summer fishing trip? Did Gonzalez have the perfect six-pack? Would we all feel a little better about our place in the world if Dick Cheney’s treasure chest was on proud display?

What Vlad’s tactical strip has revealed, apart from the lifetime benefits of Spetsnaz training, is the continuing role that nudity plays in male power relations. We’re used to discussion of how little, or much, women should safely display in a variety of circumstances. Any number of fashion experts, for example, will advise that when tempted to dress revealingly it’s necessary to choose between showing off either legs or décolletage.

Attempting to do both at the same time is like smoking while eating foie gras – either might be thought sophisticated – do them together and you look like a Ukrainian actress holidaying for the first time in St-Tropez.

But while there are all sorts of rules, and seasonally updated tips, on how much women dare to bare, with the rival merits of halternecks and exposed midriffs regularly rehearsed, the question of how men should manage the exposure of their own flesh, and what can be read into these displays, is rarely given the close study it deserves.

As Putin’s careful release of the pictures of his own taut form demonstrate, the deployment of male nudity is, above all, a power play. On one level Vlad is showing us all that he’s a remarkably fit man for his age (54) and that, unlike in the decadent West, Russia’s leaders remain the physical embodiment of their nation’s vigor – classical champions in the manner of those Roman emperors who would renew their mandate to rule on the battlefield or even in the gladiatorial ring. His bare-chested peacockery is, in that respect, in line with the broader cult of Putin as his nation’s silverback – the leader of the band.

And while it’s becoming rarer, the assertion of prime physical vigor through summertime displays of shirtless masculinity has been a trick in several leaders’ repertoires. From Mussolini, to Jack and Bobby Kennedy, baring your torso for a publicity shot was just another way of demonstrating a break from the failed and flabby Old Gang and the arrival of New Hope.

But tactical exposure of holiday flesh is a way of asserting power which is certainly not restricted to the political sphere. For a particular class of man – think of pictures of Gianni Agnelli, say, or Aristotle Onassis, or even Michael Winner, letting it all hang out above deck has often been accompanied by the wearing of briefs so small that they look like sparrows that have crashed into the Matterhorn. These men present themselves to the world with an apparently unembarrassed delight in how much there is to see. And in so doing they appear to subvert one of the rules about what it is that the wealthy really cherish – discretion, privacy and protection.

What, of course, they are really doing is reminding the rest of us how little they need to care for our approval, how liberated they are from bourgeois notions of propriety, how unrelated to their physical appearance is their considerable power of attraction. For them, daring to bare so much is just another assertion of how much, in every sense, they’ve got. And the knowledge that male nudity is linked to power, the more you’ve got, the more you are liberated to show, is now, I think, inherent in how we conduct ourselves.

And it’s not just related to wealth. The insouciance of a particular type of millionaire has its analogue in the breezy, what’s-it-to-you, shirtlessness of any man who is, in effect, making a declaration of machismo when he should, ostensibly, be relaxing. Baring your torso on holiday, whether in Ayia Napa or on the deck of your yacht, means setting aside the expected norms of modesty and thus, in its way, involves you staking a claim to attention, and occupying more space than if you were clothed. It is an act of assertion, a waving of the coxcomb. And, whatever the socio-economic background of the bare-chested male, his shedding of a protective layer, whether it’s Sears or John Smedley, involves an implied challenge to other men – haven’t you got what I’ve got; what are you hiding behind?

Looking again at those chilling photos of Putin, his ice-cold eyes masked by shades but his torso on open display, I couldn’t help but feel my prejudices being reinforced. The region from a man’s waist to his neck should be like the nuclear deterrent – everyone knows it’s there, it’s often glimpsed slipping into the water, but its exact condition must always remain a mystery.