the only certain casualty will be the sykes-picot national borders...,

stratfor | Events in Iraq over the past week were perhaps best crystallized in a series of photos produced by the jihadist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Sensationally called The Destruction of Sykes-Picot, the pictures confirmed the group's intent to upend nearly a century of history in the Middle East.

In a series of pictures set to a purring jihadist chant, the mouth of a bulldozer is shown bursting through an earthen berm forming Iraq's northern border with Syria. Keffiyeh-wrapped rebels, drained by the hot sun, peer around the edges of the barrier to observe the results of their work. The breach they carved was just wide enough for the U.S.-made, Iraqi army-owned and now jihadist-purloined Humvees to pass through in single file. While a charter outlining an antiquated interpretation of Sharia was being disseminated in Mosul, #SykesPicotOver trended on jihadist Twitter feeds. From the point of view of Iraq's jihadist celebrities, the 1916 borders drawn in secret by British and French imperialists represented by Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot to divide up Mesopotamia are not only irrelevant, they are destructible.

Today, the most ardent defenders of those colonial borders sit in Baghdad, Damascus, Ankara, Tehran and Riyadh while the Europeans and Americans, already fatigued by a decade of war in this part of the world, are desperately trying to sit this crisis out. The burden is on the regional players to prevent a jihadist mini-emirate from forming, and beneath that common purpose lies ample room for intrigue.

the message of the islamic state in iraq and the levant

guardian |  Isis is the (slightly confusing) English acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, a Sunni jihadist group whose sudden capture of Mosul, Tikrit and extensive swaths of Iraqi territory last week has triggered a new crisis, complete with atrocities targeting Iraqi army soldiers and volunteers. Known in Arabic as Da'ash, it grew out of the Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida affiliate which, in turn, came into existence after the 2003 US-led invasion.

The leader or emir (prince) of Isis is a 43-year-old Sunni, known by his nom de guerre as Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, or Abu Dua. His real name is Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai. He was held prisoner by US forces from 2005 to 2009. US military sources have quoted him as saying when he was released from Camp Bucca in Iraq: "I'll see you guys in New York." According to some accounts he was radicalised by his experience of captivity. But others describe him as having been a firebrand preacher under Saddam Hussein's rule. He studied at the University of Baghdad, and was listed as a terrorist by the UN in 2011.

It is a measure of Baghdadi's success and charisma that Isis has become the group of choice for thousands of foreign would-be fighters who have flocked to his banner. Late last year, he announced the creation of a new group that would be merged with a rival al-Qaida affiliate active in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. That was disputed both by Nusra and Osama bin Laden's successor as the leader of al-Qaida "central", the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri. Baghdadi, who has been described as more extreme than Bin Laden, refused an order from Zawahiri to focus the group's efforts in Iraq and leave Syria alone.

In the areas of Syria it controls, Isis has set up courts, schools and other services, flying its black jihadi flag everywhere. In Raqqa, it even started a consumer protection authority for food standards. It has established a reputation for extreme brutality, carrying out crucifixions, beheadings and amputations.

Estimates of Isis numbers range from 7,000 to 10,000. Its rank and file members are drawn from fighters who were previously with al-Qaida, some former Ba'athists and soldiers of the Saddam-era army. What is far harder to quantify – and a highly significant question – is how much support the group has from Iraq's wider Sunni community, the people who lost their power and influence when Saddam was overthrown.

"Isis now presents itself as an ideologically superior alternative to al-Qaida within the jihadi community," says Charles Lister, of the Brookings Doha Center. "As such, it has increasingly become a transnational movement with immediate objectives far beyond Iraq and Syria."

the message of a $549,000 watch...,

bloomberg |  Don’t worry, this isn't going to be a class-warfare rant or a treatise on living the simpler, less materialistic life. Rather, it is a suggestion to some folks that perhaps they might want to make some of their conspicuous consumption a little less conspicuous. 

For example, I learned last week that Tiffany & Co. had a secret room for the big spenders. That's because when you're dropping $20 million on a necklace that, according to Tiffany's vice president, is being bought with literally a wheelbarrow full of cash, you want some, you know, privacy.

Or how about those folks who want to learn how to drive a $500,000 car very, very fast and they need to take a specific class? It's tough luck if you don’t have a Lamborghini Aventador Roadster yet, because they are sold out. So is the new $1.4 million Ferrari LaFerrari. You can still buy a Bentley GT or a Ferrari California T -- assuming you don’t mind hearing the derisive snickers of the parking valets behind your back.

The condo in the peak of the Woolworth building is going for $110 million. That isn't the building, just one apartment. That’s a relative bargain, compared with the Hamptons estate that just was purchased for $147 million dollars.

But it wasn’t a car or a diamond necklace or a house that made me realize that perhaps the ultra rich have become a bit tone deaf; it was a watch -- or a “timepiece,” as the brochure describes them. In an advertisement in last week’s New York Times, I saw a picture of the Greubel Forsey GF05. As the picture showed, it’s a busy little number in platinum and black. A quick Google search revealed a selling price of $549,000. 

I half expected to see a tagline that read “For when you need to tell the time, but you just can't do it without spending the equivalent of 36 years of minimum wage salary.” A timepiece that costs almost triple the U.S.'s median existing-home price ($201,700) does seem a tad pricey to us peasants.

eight years ago I told Cobb exactly what would happen in iraq after the u.s. pullout...,

How destabilized could Iraq become after an American pullout?

When you peel the rhetorical/propaganda onion and get to the essence of what the PNAC crew has unleashed - I'd say GAME OVER..., cept for the Ayatollahs counting and consolidating their winnings.

Solipsism (what a splendid term for ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity) done sealed the fate of this new american century...,

Islam declares in unequivocal terms that the real cause of our miseries is not economical. It holds that economic disorder is not the cause but a direct effect of moral degradation. Character building and development of moral health are the only remedies man is in need of. Without them social, political, economic or any other reform is simply unthinkable. Moral health is the master-key that opens all gates of progress and prosperity. It is the only power that can chase away all injustices, jealousies and the causes of conflicts and bad blood. To have a clear idea of the method we must know the real position of man.

The ultimate objective of Islam is to abolish the lordship of man over man and bring him under the rule of Allah (One God). To stake everything Muslims have - including their lives - to achieve this purpose is called Jihad. The Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving and Pilgrimage, all prepare the Believers for military Jihad. But as they have long since forgotten this objective as well as the mission entrusted to them, and because all acts of worship have been reduced to their spiritual contents – they have gone from ‘the top to the bottom’ of world’s leadership.

This brother was on a roll..., too bad he doesn't know about the prosperity pimps infesting the black church, then he'd really have an example of abject debasement and the extreme reaches of subhuman apostasy that reduce ones moral stature from the heights to the degenerate bowels of world leadership. Drug along like so much helpless and impotent intestinal flotsam and jetsam in the belly of this big blundering beast.

In the end, which will be in about 10 or 15 years, the Muslim world and the rest of the world will iinevitably face the fact that the islamic fascists are for the most part, illiterate and incapable of marshalling the military force required for their vision of dominance. Their ambition is, by definition, that of a political play against the center, which will hold. The Arab states won't stand for it, nor will any other. They will be mercilessly crushed for the good of Islam and the region.

I say that it is impossible for nationalism to be toppled by these groups. Your boy is trippin hard when he says:

    Once and for all we better face it. Arabs are far from being at their very best if they are operating in the format of a ‘national state’. The Arab soldier may lack the necessary will to die for an idiotic flag. Both in the case of Saddam’s Iraq or Nasser’s Egypt, once within a conflict, a growing gap reveals itself between the charismatic, assertive, far over the top demagogue leader and some serious malfunctioning performance in the battlefield. Unlike the American, British, French, and Israeli soldiers who have proved throughout history to have some real tendency towards collective suicide for some empty promises shaped as ‘ideology’, the Arab platoon is slightly behind in exhibiting this kind of idiotic national patriotic militant zeal. He may as well be just too clever for those kind of deadly games.

There is no precedent in Africa, Asia or the Americas for a non-national military force to ultimately perservere. The Arab platoon is a myth on the same level as the 'politics' of the 'Arab street'.

There is no precedent in Africa, Asia or the Americas for a non-national military force to ultimately perservere.

In the course of your theoretical examination of the unusual properties/characteristics of virtual social networks - haven't you ever stumbled into big chunks of military operations research on netwar?

I mean really, the first time I ever encountered William S. Lind was during the late 80's as I pored over military operations research on network security. The theoretical constructs undergirding assymetrical warfare and hacking have gone hand-in-glove ever since. 

Theoretical synergy aside, perhaps it is only the direct experience of two or three people rooting a global corporate computing infrastructure in a matter of hours - that is capable of fully preparing one for appreciating the emergent/cascading effects of masterful exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities in large, massively interdependant constructs?

There's that.  As well, the question of expense.  The fact that the military requires 8 times the U.S. per capita expenditure of petroleum to operate - ungodly debt runups to enrich the weaponeers - and lastly the political capital squandered in maintaining the just-so-stories to mask unjust imperial aggression.

It would be bad enough if the PNAC-ians were winning.., but their strategies and tactics are vintage WW-I, and they're getting their hats handed to them with no end in sight.

In a contemporary war of attrition, in the cheap petroleum fin d'siecle, I'll bet on the hackers with a centuries old modus operandi of social networking that has proven massively successful at standing the test of time.

I concede that. You are right with regard to the efficiencies of the cellular and networked. But those things work because the individual participants are modern - they must buy into the concept of interchangeability. Essentialists cannot make networks work, and it is the fundamental illiteracy of Jihadists and their audience that will cause them to fail to exploit such capabilities.

The educated, modern Arab and Muslim world is under no threat from neocons or 'zionists'. When islamic bombs start exploding in Dubai the way they do in Palestine, then we'll see the world do, once again, what they did for Kuwait. Jihadis will be routed like Chechens.

Essentialists cannot make networks work, and it is the fundamental illiteracy of Jihadists and their audience that will cause them to fail to exploit such capabilities.

Surely you jest? Either that, or you haven' been in an engineering classroom anytime over the last 20+ years!!!  Cause the very last thing in the world that the jihadists are is illiterate, innumerate, or technically backwards. The president of Iran gots a PhD in engineering, what's G-Dub got?  I mean seriously.., you know good and gotdamn well them Ivy League skins he picked up in beer drinking and hell raising aren't worth the vellum they're printed on. ROTFLMBAO!!!!

The educated, modern Arab and Muslim world is under no threat from neocons or 'zionists'.

Oh yes it is. Iraq was highly educated, relatively highly modern, and no more scandalously oppressive than let's saaaaay...., China!  The real and present danger posed by the PNAC crew is that their catastrophic mis-steps have already undermined the tenuous at best hold of middle-eastern elites.

This is precisely why those same elites have done a 180. 

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

Cobb said...

I am but I'm not paying attention to official statements two weeks into a war. That's not telling me anything but the opinions of third parties. If Iran is sending fighters, that's something I care to know about. If the Syrian army is on high mobilization, that's news I can use. But the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is not. Who is showing up with rifles and orders, that's what I'm talking about.

Today there is no consensus about the sentiments of the Lebanese. When are we going to see a poll that breaks down Druze, Christian and Muslim opinion in Lebanon? Nasrallah is acting like Lebanon belongs to him and all his apologists say so too. I doubt it.

Furthermore, there are no reliable accounts of Hezbollah troop strength or casualties. As one person noted at Drezner, there hasn't been a rocket sent Haifa in two days. Does that mean they're out of rockets or shifting tactics. Israel is calling up 30k troops for training, does that mean they are escalating or losing too many on the front?

Bottom line - this war is far from over or decisive and all the opinion about it means nothing until some decisive battles are fought. That has yet to occur.

Hezbollah holds out for two weeks and that's a victory? Only for fluff journalists at CNN and Al Jazeera, but not in the real world.

Additionally, we both know this isn't about Amindinijad vs Bush. Even so, what's more crazy, snorting coke or taking hostages? This is about the willingness of an educated populace to support the direction of its government. And if you count Crazy A. as a jihadist, then we'll see how much tax and oil revenue he can collect from a repressed Iranian middle class.

As for the long term effects of hackers.. the black hats know little more than the white hats. When we're living in an age where people prefer the chaos of anarchy over the stupidity of conformity, all of the Jihadi dreams will come true. And then they'll enact Sharia and try to be the powers that be. I think it's un-bloody likely that smart people will stick with the Taliban template - they'd rather have Bush, Citibank and Walmart.

Aight, back to the high-level binnis at hand..., (bear with me, this does come back around to Islam and what happens when cruel, puerile PNAC-ians beat on the global hornets nest and morally indecent TFM's support it)

You've seen my orthodox interpretation of Blackness as interpersonal communion - as far I'm concerned - it is the quintessential disambiguation of the culture/concept. (when considered from a social networking theoretical perspective, it's not a simple statement of the obvious, though that's not the angle of attack that led me to the interpretation) You're also aware of my conviction that the zenith of old school Blackness instantiated a moral dimension and value that is unparallelled in the history of this country, possibly the history of the world. (the latter is a debatable contention - the former is not - because only within Blackness have American ideals been exemplified).

After political civil rights were obtained, brand "Black" was at its moral zenith.  MLK began aggressively wedding the moral qualities the core social capital of American Blackness to the cause of uplifting the poor and opposing American interventionism in Vietnam.  This was clearly an archetypal Christian imperative - and one which I've come to believe not only signed his death warrant, but also shaped the way in which subsequent political and media propaganda have been directed at and influenced both perceptions of Blackness and the behaviour of lots of Black folks.

A concerted political and  media effort has been underway for decades to undercut the superlative moral value with which Blackness was once imbued.  It's obvious in the code words used by the post Southern Strategy GOP. While the authors of the Southern Strategy - such as Pat Buchanan - claim that "morality" not "race" was the chief selling point of the GOP in the south, I am convinced that that question of morality had as much to do with wresting control of the moral high-ground away from Blackness and reasserting it in the authoritarian and moralizing terms that have been established within the Evangelical base.


It's not even debateable whether MLK's Christianity had any semblance or relationship to the kind of insane garbage preached and practiced by John Hagee and others of his ilk.

Now, the current state of Blackness has been profoundly degraded - in large measure - because our formerly great interpersonal communion has succumbed to the withering effects of Americaness.  We've lost the self-conscious moral compass articulated by MLK (post civil rights), and great efforts have been made to ensure that we never recover that degree of moral self-consciousness.  (I'm getting back to the social networks, moral value, and long-term potential theme here) You stated that;

There is no precedent in Africa, Asia or the Americas for a non-national military force to ultimately perservere. The Arab platoon is a myth on the same level as the 'politics' of the 'Arab street'.

From a social networks perspective - you've misjudged the long-term power/value of Al-Islam and wagered on the long-term power of the relative newcomer to the game, the nation-state.  My contention, very simply, is that in terms of its collective self-consciousness Al-Islam had been seriously degraded along its core competencies by the emergence of Trans-European Protectorate nation states as colonial powers and their installation of puppet elites to run their artificial and imposed national constructs. 

Blackness has been similarly degraded in the post-Civil Rights era by subordination to Americaness, i.e., the installation of puppet Black elites in nominal positions of authority but with no genuine constituent fueled authority.  However, the post-colonial era has seen the serial decline of nation states - cause as you know - the sun surely does set on the contemporary British Empire. 

The PNAC-ians have blundered on some very very fundamental levels.  On the trivially obvious level, by ignoring Santayana/Powell in Iraq.  They simply didn't learn from the British historical example and plumb phukked up. 

From a more sophisticated perspective, had they been technocrats rather than ideologues, they might have understood what kind of sleeping giant they threatened to activate/vivify by continuing unjustifiable and disproportionate aggression against increasing numbers of Muslims.  Do you genuinely care to try to measure the "enterprise-wide" assymetrical military potential of an angered, self-conscious, and militarized Islam?

Also, consider the fact that Sheiks and Imams have actual constituencies which empower them.  These are not like simple negro agitators with no actual constituents and no autonomous means of political and economic support.

IMOHO - the Muslim agents provacateur of these crises understand exactly what it is they're seeking to activate. Ultimately, I believe they'll prove successful because the folks in charge on the nationstate side have proven themselves completely soft-headed and utterly contemptful toward soft targets.

It's even possible that the domestic non-agenda of the PNAC-ians will have the same vivifying effect on latent collective Black self-consciousness. One would at least hope so...,

Cobb said...

That's a lot of dimensions to chew on at once so I'm only going to spit back a little bit.

1) Your global hornet's nest is a bunch of arrogant rock throwers who don't have the decency to fight as men but instead hide behind women and children. They haven't developed enough to form a nation and seek to hijack the one they're in without the least of consent of the people they would govern, were they capable of that. But even so have demonstrated they are determined to be more bringers of destruction to Israel than protectors of their 'own'.

killa-bee-el-zebub

sciencedaily |  When people get together in groups, unusual things can happen -- both good and bad. Groups create important social institutions that an individual could not achieve alone, but there can be a darker side to such alliances: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group.

"Although humans exhibit strong preferences for equity and moral prohibitions against harm in many contexts, people's priorities change when there is an 'us' and a 'them,'" says Rebecca Saxe, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT. "A group of people will often engage in actions that are contrary to the private moral standards of each individual in that group, sweeping otherwise decent individuals into 'mobs' that commit looting, vandalism, even physical brutality."

Several factors play into this transformation. When people are in a group, they feel more anonymous, and less likely to be caught doing something wrong. They may also feel a diminished sense of personal responsibility for collective actions.

Saxe and colleagues recently studied a third factor that cognitive scientists believe may be involved in this group dynamic: the hypothesis that when people are in groups, they "lose touch" with their own morals and beliefs, and become more likely to do things that they would normally believe are wrong.

In a study that recently went online in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers measured brain activity in a part of the brain involved in thinking about oneself. They found that in some people, this activity was reduced when the subjects participated in a competition as part of a group, compared with when they competed as individuals. Those people were more likely to harm their competitors than people who did not exhibit this decreased brain activity.

"This process alone does not account for intergroup conflict: Groups also promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility, and encourage reframing harmful actions as 'necessary for the greater good.' Still, these results suggest that at least in some cases, explicitly reflecting on one's own personal moral standards may help to attenuate the influence of 'mob mentality,'" says Mina Cikara, a former MIT postdoc and lead author of the NeuroImage paper.

 

careful with those waha-bees eugene!!!

rudaw |  Turkey has tolerated Islamic extremists crossing its border to join the fight in Syria, but with the same Islamists now raising havoc in Iraq Turkey may have to rethink its policy of aiding the militants, analysts and activists say.

Last week, Turkey felt the direct impact of the turmoil in Iraq, after its consulate in Mosul was taken over by insurgents and its diplomats captured, only to be freed a day later.

“Radical Islamic groups, with the knowledge of the Turkish intelligence service, recruit and send our young kids to the war in Syria from border bases in Turkey’s Kurdish provinces,” charged Atilla Yazar, head of the Urfa branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD).

“Now we hope that the Turks have realized how dangerous these groups are, and that they'll stop supporting the anti-Kurdish groups and engage in a dialogue with the Kurds in Syria.”

The insurgents – a dangerous league of Islamic militants and loyalists from Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime and military – have seized large portions of Sunni territories, including Tikrit, Anbar and parts of Dyala province, halting only 100 kilometers from  Baghdad.

Ankara has been accused of supporting the jihadists, which includes the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), because they are fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria.

Turkey, whose decade-long policy has been to keep a tight lid on its own large minority Kurds, has also seen its interests served in ISIS clashes with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has unilaterally declared autonomy in Syria’s northwestern Kurdish regions.

"So far, militants from ISIS have been able to get treatment in hospitals in Turkey and hold meetings there. Turkey tried using ISIS against Assad and PYD,” explained Joost Jongerden, assistant professor at Wageningen University in Netherlands.

According to Daniella Kuzmanovic, lecturer at Copenhagen University and an expert on Turkey, Ankara’s cozy relations with the jihadis may come to an end now.

wah-ha bees...,

dailymail |  WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

• Image of officer's decapitated head tweeted with sickening message: 'This is our ball. It's made of skin #WorldCup'
• Battle lines drawn as Iraqi forces gather at base just 20 miles outside Baghdad after militants seize two more towns
• President Obama rules out sending troops back to Iraq but promises to review military options including air strikes
• Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki claims security forces have now started to clear several cities of 'the terrorists'
• More than 20 UK nationals thought to be trapped in territories where Islamists are carrying out summary executions
• Al Qaeda-inspired militants stage jubilant parade of American Humvee patrol cars seized from collapsing Iraqi army
• Masked fighters wave the black flag of the Islamic State and flash the 'V' sign while shouting 'towards Baghdad!'
• Insurgents have also captured two helicopters, 15 tanks and armoured cars that used to belong to U.S. military
• Iraq's refugee population has increased by almost 800,000 this year as the government struggles against rebels
• President Barack Obama weighs up possible airstrikes - but rules out putting U.S. soldiers back on the ground
• ISIS leader dismissed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as woefully incompetent, calling him 'underwear merchant'

girls gone for good, killer-bees wahlin, politicians and ass-clowns gassin out they necks...,

BI | It's now been two months since terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian school girls in the country's unstable north.

Despite new aerial patrols from U.S. drones, no progress has been made in locating them. This past week, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo said some of the girls may never return home. And ordinary Nigerians are accusing the Nigerian government of trying to stifle their pleas to keep the situation top of mind. 

In an op-ed on Project Syndicate, former British PM Gordon Brown goes a step further, discussing the gruesome reason for why the campaign may have already been lost:

...it is likely that in the month since Boko Haram released a video of the girls flanked by gunmen, the girls have been split into groups of 40-50. If one group is rescued by force, the others will be murdered, creating a serious tactical dilemma for the Nigerian government’s special forces.

And, as the world’s attention shifts to other global trouble spots, such as Iraq, intense international scrutiny is giving way to what seems like silent acceptance of the girls’ fate. The fight to maintain global support has become an uphill one for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, despite his direct appeal to the whole world for help in securing the girls’ release.

A Times of India report says the Nigerian government has now turned to the Sri Lankan government for advice in counteracting the movement, given the latter's experience defeating the Tamil Tigers. That campaign resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties. So it seems like whatever , the price for doing so may be extreme.

homegrown killer-bees desperate to swarm but can't achieve critical mass..., yet

slate | Given how savagely anti-gay the mainstream Oklahoma Republican party is, it’s no surprise that the state’s Tea Partiers are so rabidly hateful that they come across more as dark satire than as serious bigots. To wit: This week, an Oklahoma magazine discovered that last summer, Tea Party state House candidate Scott Esk endorsed stoning gay people to death: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it,” he said in a Facebook post. Esk went on to add nuance to his position:

That [stoning gay people to death] goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.

When a Facebook user messaged Esk to clarify further, he responded:

I never said I would author legislation to put homosexuals to death, but I didn’t have a problem with it.

Understandably unnerved, the magazine called up Esk for clarification. Although Esk claimed he didn’t remember the comments, he fleshed out his views:

That was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God and in that time there it was totally just. It came directly from God. I have no plans to reinstitute that in Oklahoma law. I do have some very huge moral misgivings about those kinds of sins.

Pressed one final time about his position on stoning gay human beings to death, Esk dug in his heels:

I know what was done in the Old Testament and what was done back then was what’s just. … And I do stand for Biblical morality.

the effects of deception in social networks

arvix |  Honesty plays a crucial role in any situation where organisms exchange information or resources. Dishonesty can thus be expected to have damaging effects on social coherence if agents cannot trust the information or goods they receive. However, a distinction is often drawn between prosocial lies ('white' lies) and antisocial lying (i.e. deception for personal gain), with the former being considered much less destructive than the latter. We use an agent-based model to show that antisocial lying causes social networks to become increasingly fragmented. Antisocial dishonesty thus places strong constraints on the size and cohesion of social communities, providing a major hurdle that organisms have to overcome (e.g. by evolving counter-deception strategies) in order to evolve large, socially cohesive communities. In contrast, 'white' lies can prove to be beneficial in smoothing the flow of interactions and facilitating a larger, more integrated network. Our results demonstrate that these group-level effects can arise as emergent properties of interactions at the dyadic level. The balance between prosocial and antisocial lies may set constraints on the structure of social networks, and hence the shape of society as a whole.

isis could clean up the hood and the trailer park quick, fast, and in a hurry...,

theatlantic |  The best way to get a sense of ISIS’s blueprint for state-building is to look at how it has ruled al-Raqqa governorate and other territory in neighboring Syria. The group’s first move is often to set up billboards around town that emphasize the importance of jihad, sharia, women’s purity, and other pietistic themes. It reaches out to local notables and tribal leaders as well to blunt the kind of backlash that greeted AQI and its harsh interpretation of sharia during the sahwa movement last decade.

The group also has a surprisingly sophisticated bureaucracy, which typically includes an Islamic court system and a roving police force. In the Syrian town of Manbij, for example, ISIS officials cut off the hands of four robbers. In Raqqa, they forced shops to close for selling poor products in the suq (market) as well as regular supermarkets and kebab stands—a move that was likely the work of its Consumer Protection Authority office. ISIS has also whipped individuals for insulting their neighbors, confiscated and destroyed counterfeit medicine, and on multiple occasions summarily executed and crucified individuals for apostasy. Members have burned cartons of cigarettes and destroyed shrines and graves, including the famous Uways al-Qarani shrine in Raqqa.

Beyond these judicial measures, ISIS also invests in public works. In April, for instance, it completed a new suq in al-Raqqa for locals to exchange goods. Additionally, the group runs an electricity office that monitors electricity-use levels, installs new power lines, and hosts workshops on how to repair old ones. The militants fix potholes, bus people between the territories they control, rehabilitate blighted medians to make roads more aesthetically pleasing, and operate a post office and zakat (almsgiving) office (which the group claims has helped farmers with their harvests). Most importantly for Syrians and Iraqis downriver, ISIS has continued operating the Tishrin dam (renaming it al-Faruq) on the Euphrates River. Through all of these offices and departments, ISIS is able to offer a semblance of stability in unstable and marginalized areas, even if many locals do not like its ideological program.

That’s not to say this ideological project isn’t an integral part of ISIS’s social services. Its media outlet al-I’tisam sets up stalls to distribute DVDs of the videos it posts online. In a number of ISIS-held locales, a da’wa truck drives around broadcasting information about the group's belief system. Moreover, ISIS has established a number of religious schools for children, including ones for girls where they can memorize the Koran and receive certificates if successful, while also holding “fun days” for kids replete with ice cream and inflatable slides. For their older counterparts, ISIS has established training sessions for new imams and preachers. Schedules for prayers and Koran lessons are posted at mosques. In a more worrisome development, ISIS runs training camps for “cub scouts” and houses these recruits in the group’s facilities.

is inequality the root of social evil?

HuffPo | The global economic system is near collapse, according to Pope Francis.

An economy built on money-worship and war and scarred by yawning inequality and youth unemployment cannot survive, the 77-year-old Roman Catholic leader suggested in a newly published interview.

“We are excluding an entire generation to sustain a system that is not good,” he told La Vanguardia’s Vatican reporter, Henrique Cymerman. (Read an English translation here.) “Our global economic system can’t take any more.”

The pontiff said he was especially concerned about youth unemployment, which hit 13.1 percent last year, according to a report by the International Labor Organization.

"The rate of unemployment is very worrisome to me, which in some countries is over 50 percent," he said. "Someone told me that 75 million young Europeans under 25 years of age are unemployed. That is an atrocity."

That 75 million is actually the total for the whole world, according to the ILO, but that is still too much youth unemployment.

Pope Francis denounced the influence of war and the military on the global economy in particular:

“We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done,” he said.

"But since we cannot wage the Third World War, we make regional wars," he added. "And what does that mean? That we make and sell arms. And with that the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies -- the big world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money -- are obviously cleaned up."

what happens if you have no welfare and no job?

theatlantic | A few weeks ago I wrote about how the welfare reform of the 1990s led to many poor mothers being kicked off welfare rolls. While some poor adults could still receive help from food stamps and disability insurance, the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" dramatically cut how much cash aid they could collect. The hope was that they would find work, but many didn’t.

Meanwhile, spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the only cash assistance program that non-disabled, non-elderly, poor single mothers are eligible for, has dropped precipitously: It was lower in 2007 than it had been in 1970.

That left me wondering—what happened to the moms who had neither jobs nor cash assistance through TANF, which comes with strict time limits?

The Urban Institute recently released a fascinating new qualitative study that aims to answer that very question. Relying on 90-minute interviews with 29 unmarried women in Los Angeles and 22 in southeast Michigan, the nonprofit examined the lives of these so-called “disconnected” women—meaning they get neither income from work nor TANF money. (About one in eight low-income single mothers was disconnected in 1996, when welfare reform was first implemented, but about one in five was disconnected in 2008.)

not just liminal perspectives, but a genuine science of consensus reality

Ed points directly toward the essence of the thing

The DoD does not care about the ideology; their efforts are all about communication patterns and cluster detection for - as they put it - "warfighter-relevant insights". They want to figure out the social media communication path to spread word of mouth to predict the creation of pop-up protesters and flash mobs. They also want to to quickly identify influencers, or, as they put it " individuals mobilised in a social contagion" - I really love the word contagion because the goal is to quickly marginalize/neutralize the contagion.

The problem - and what is scary - is not only the DoD wants to do this, everybody's commercial operation in the world wants to do this. This is being studied for political strategy, this is being studied for consumer product marketing and being studied for social media marketing. So there is a concerted effort worldwide to be the first to be able to master this science so governments and corporations can predict social contagions.

Now, this falls back to the Elliot Rodger mass shooter - if they are looking to detect social contagions, wouldn't it be feasible to manufacture a social contagion? This is what I referenced earlier through the behavior modification drugs - what if someone can find someone who has charisma to lead others and help them as an invisible hand?

It doesn't matter - according to some, I'm supposed to be worried about what happened in the 1960s with COINTEL, act like an emotional seperatist from Amerikkka instead of concerning myself with socio-bio data manipulation patterns and practices that are manifesting itself in real-time.

journal of social structure REDUX (original post date 1/19/11))

JoSS | This work was supported in part by Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research(ONR), United States Navy Grant No. 9620.1.1140071, NSF IRI9633 662 and the NSF IGERT 9972762 for research and training in CASOS. Additional support was provided by CASOS - the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, or the U.S. government.

Abstract: Given the increasing threat of terrorism and spread of terrorist organizations, it is of vital importance to understand the properties of such organizations and to devise successful strategies for destabilizing them or decreasing their efficiency. However, intelligence information on these organizations is often incomplete, inaccurate or simply not available. This makes the study of terrorist networks and the evaluation of destabilization strategies difficult. In this paper, we propose a computational methodology for realistically simulating terrorist networks and evaluating alternative destabilization strategies. We proceed to use this methodology to evaluate and conduct a sensitivity analysis of the impact of various destabilization strategies under varying information surveillance regimes. We find that destabilization strategies that focus on the isolation of individuals who are highly central are ineffective in the long run as the network will heal itself as individuals who are nearly structurally equivalent to the isolated individuals "move in" and fill the communication gaps.

Introduction
For reasons of national security it is important to understand the properties of terrorist organizations that make such organizations efficient and flexible, and based on this understanding devise successful strategies to destabilize such organizations or curtail their efficiency, adaptability, and ability to move knowledge and resources. The assessment of destabilization strategies poses a number of key challenges. What does the underlying organization look like? Does it evolve? What strategies inhibit or effect the evolutiuon so that the organization is destabilized? In this paper, we provide an approach to assessing destabilization strategies that draws on work in organization science, knowledge management and computer science.

Terrorist organizations are often characterized as cellular organizations composed of quasi-independent cells and distributed command. In a sense, this is a non-traditional organizational configuration; hence, much of the knowledge in traditional organizational theory, particularly that focused on hierarchies or markets, does not apply. To be sure, lessons can be learned from the work on distributed and decentralized organizations that provides some guidance. This work demonstrates that such structures are often adaptive, useful in a volatile environment, and capable of rapid response [1] [2]. In other words, we should expect terrorist organization to adapt, and adapt rapidly. This suggests, that in general, they should be difficult to destabilize; however, the traditional organizational literature provides little guidance on how to destabilize the organization.

In general, the organization's form or design profoundly influences its performance, adaptability, and ability to move information [3]. It follows that organizations can be destabilized by altering their design. The one caveat here, is that organizations, particularly more distributed and decentralized ones, are continually evolving [4]. Terrorist organizations are often characterized as dynamic networks in which the connections among personnel define the nature of that evolution. This suggests that social network analysis will be useful in characterizing the underlying structure and in locating vulnerabilities in terms of key actors.

In general, organizations evolve as they face unanticipated changes in their environment, rapidly evolving technologies, and intelligent and adaptive opponents. Over the past decade, progress has been made in understanding the set of factors that enable adaptation and partially validated models of adaptive networks now exist [5]. A key result is that, in the short run, there appears to be a tradeoff between adaptivity and extremely high performance in organizations [6]. This suggests that forcing an organization to adapt should reduce its performance. Thus, even if an actor is no longer key, the mere isolation of that actor may be sufficient to be disruptive. However, to assess this a model of organizational change and network healing is needed.

Since the destabilization of terrorist networks could inhibit their ability to effect harm, there is a profound need for an approach that would allow researchers to reason about dynamic cellular networks and evaluate the potential effect of destabilization strategies. To be useful, such an approach must account for the natural evolution of cellular networks. This situation is further complicated by the fact that the information available on the terrorist network is liable to be incomplete and possibly erroneous. Hence, destabilization strategies need to be compared and contrasted in terms of their robustness under varying levels and types of information error. In other words, it would be misleading to judge destabilization strategies in terms of their impact on a static an unchanging network [7].

These problems suggest the need for a new methodological approach. In this paper, we provide an approach based on the use of a multi-agent network model of the co-evolution of the network of "observers" (the blue network) and the "terrorists" (the red network) in which the observers can capture only partial data on the underlying covert network and the covert network evolves both naturally and in response to attacks by the observers. This approach builds off of organization theory and social network theory, as well as machine learning and dynamic network analysis. Specifically, we have developed a computational model of dynamic cellular organizations and used it to evaluate a number of alternative strategies for destabilization of cellular networks.

It is important at the outset to note that this examination of destabilization strategies is highly exploratory. We make no claims that the examination of destabilization strategies is comprehensive, nor that the types of "error" in the data that intelligence agencies can collect is completely described. Further, our estimate of the structure of the covert network is based on publicly available data much of which is qualitative and requires interpretation. Thus, this work should be read as a study in the power of an empirically grounded simulation approach and a call for future research. Further, we restrict our analysis to a structural or network analysis and focus on what does the covert network look like, how does its structure influence its performance and ability to pass information, how does it evolve, how can its evolution be altered (its behavior destabilized) through interventions focused on the nodes, and what interventions should be taken given the level of fidelity in the information that we have. Admittedly, in this complex arena there are many other factors that are critical, but they are beyond the scope of this study. Thus, from a straight social network perspective, this study suggests the types of methodological issues that will emerge when working with dynamic large scale networks under uncertainty.

To ground this paper, a short case description is provided of Al Qaeda with the focus on the network structure. In these two descriptions we draw on both military and organizational theory. This is followed by a discussion of the intelligence agencies engaged in anti-terrorist activity and the possible data and errors in said data. Our intent is to demonstrate, at a fairly high level, the context and the resultant information and modelling problems, not to provide a full analysis for intelligence or military operations. As good science often emerges from attacking hard real world problems, we are trying to provide sufficient detail to understand the basis for the problems that research must address, rather than simply provide a high theoretical description of general data problems. This is followed by a brief discussion of the applicability of traditional social network analysis and the need to take a dynamic network perspective. We then describe a computational model of terrorist organizations as dynamic evolving networks, and anti-terrorist bodies with emphasis on their information collection and destabilization strategies. A virtual experiment is used to examine destabilization strategies and the results are then discussed.

is social science being militarized to target peaceful activists and protest movements?

guardian | A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands." 

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."

Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model "of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions." The project will determine "the critical mass (tipping point)" of social contagians by studying their "digital traces" in the cases of "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey." 

Twitter posts and conversations will be examined "to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised."

Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington "seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate," along with their "characteristics and consequences." The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on "large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity," and will cover 58 countries in total. 

Last year, the DoD's Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine 'Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?' which, however, conflates peaceful activists with "supporters of political violence" who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on "armed militancy" themselves. The project explicitly sets out to study non-violent activists:

"In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence."

The project's 14 case studies each "involve extensive interviews with ten or more activists and militants in parties and NGOs who, though sympathetic to radical causes, have chosen a path of non-violence." 

I contacted the project's principal investigator, Prof Maria Rasmussen of the US Naval Postgraduate School, asking why non-violent activists working for NGOs should be equated to supporters of political violence – and which "parties and NGOs" were being investigated – but received no response. 

Similarly, Minerva programme staff refused to answer a series of similar questions I put to them, including asking how "radical causes" promoted by peaceful NGOs constituted a potential national security threat of interest to the DoD.

how serious must dissent be before the political police take notice and action?

vice |  Hastings’ piece, which paints a deeply unflattering picture of Bergdahl’s unit and its leadership, hardly had the impact of some of his other investigations.

But someone did pay attention to it: the FBI.

That, at least, is what was revealed in a heavily redacted document released by the agency following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request — filed on the day of Hastings’ death — by investigative journalist Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro, an MIT doctoral student whom the Justice Department once called the “most prolific” requester of FOIA documents.

The document, partially un-redacted after Leopold and Shapiro engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the FBI for failing to fulfill its FOIA obligations, singles out Hastings’ Rolling Stone piece — “America’s Last Prisoner of War” — as “controversial reporting.” It names Hastings and Matthew Farwell, a former soldier in Afghanistan and a contributing reporter to Hastings’ piece.

The document also included an Associated Press report based on the Rolling Stone piece, and what it identifies as a “blog entry” penned by Gary Farwell, Matthew’s father — which actually appears to be a comment entry on the Idaho Statesman’s website.

“The article reveals private email excerpts, from [redacted] to his parents. The excerpts include quotes about being ‘ashamed to even be American,’ and threats that, ‘If this deployment is lame, I’m just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan,’” the FBI file reads. “The Rolling Stone article ignited a media frenzy, speculating about the circumstances of [redacted] capture, and whether US resources and effort should continue to be expended for his recovery.”

The FBI file — as well as a Department of Justice document released in response to Leopold and Shapiro’s lawsuit — suggests that Hastings and Farwell’s reporting got swept up into an “international terrorist investigation” into Bergdahl’s disappearance.

A spokesperson for the FBI told VICE News that the agency does not normally comment on pending investigations and that it lets FOIA documents “speak for themselves.” The investigation was still pending as of last month, Leopold said.

According to the files — and a rare public statement by the FBI following Hastings’ death — Hastings was never directly under investigation by the agency, despite having pissed off a lot of people in very high places.

But it is not exactly clear why Hastings and Farwell’s “controversial” reporting made it into a criminal investigation that was already active before they even wrote the Rolling Stone story.

even valodya gotta give props for the conanesque audacity of adu bakr and his crew...,

channel4 |  A document issued by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), sets out their hardline rules for the residents of Nineveh - the ancient name for the province around the city of Mosul, which the group seized earlier this week.

Former members of the security services and Iraqi army are assured that if they repent, they will be accepted and says special places for repentance have already been established. However, it warns that those who do not repent will die.

Promising Muslims they will be treated well unless they are spies for the enemy or criminals, the document requires citizens to pray five times a day. It also outlaws drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, and warns that gatherings, flags and bearing arms is now forbidden.

Women are told they must dress in an Islamic way: modestly and fully covered. They must also remain at home except in emergencies.

The extremists justify their acquisition of money previously belonging to the government, saying their leaders will spend it as they see fit.

The document also celebrates the release of "our" prisoners from government prisons in the region.

hard men steady-rolling on a monumental heist...,

zerohedge |  Now that 25 year old math PhD HFT programmers have finally figured out what this thing called Iraq is, and why headlines around it should factor into algo trading signals - especially those of crude oil - here, for their benefit is a summary of the latest events in Iraq, and also for everyone else confused why crude is back to levels not seen since last summer.

In broader terms (via RanSquawk):

• The situation in Northern Iraq continues to deteriorate as the extremist ISIS/ISIL group took control of Mosul and then moved into Tirkit, which was later recaptured, in the north of Iraq which is near the Ceyhan-Kirkuk pipeline, which carries 1.6mln bbls per day. ISIS/ISIL forces then seized the Baiji refinery, the main refinery in Iraq, from Iraqi forces. (BBG/RTRS)
• Iraqi forces and militants have now clashed in Ramadi, 100km from Baghdad, as ISIL extremist forces push towards the Iraqi capital. (BBG)
• However Iraqi Oil Minister Luaibi said US planes may bomb North Iraq and denied ISIL took Baiji refinery in the North. The oil Minister also said Iraq average crude exports 2.6mln bbl/d, Iraq crude production 3.166mln bbl/d, Kirkuk production 167,000 bbl/d and Iraq has stored oil products and won't increase imports. (BBG/RTRS)
• Washington has vowed to boost aid to Iraq and is mulling done strikes amid fears that Iraqi forces are crumbling in the face of militant attacks. (RTRS)

And in detail:

As the WSJ reports, after hard core Al Qaeda spin off ISIS (no relation to Sterling Archer) took over Saddam's home town of Tikrit yesterday, Iraq edged closer to all-out sectarian conflict on Thursday as Kurdish forces took control of a provincial capital in the oil-rich north and Sunni militants vowed to march on two cities revered by Shiite Muslims.  Kurdish militia known as peshmerga said they had taken up positions in key government installations in Kirkuk, as forces of the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki abandoned their posts and fled in fear of advancing Sunni militants, an official in the office of the provincial governor said.

Reuters adds that "The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga," citing Jabbar Yawar. "No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk now."

This in turn has put the output of the key Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, with a 1.6MM bbls/day capacity, at risk. 

The militia were operating out of the headquarters of the Iraqi army's 2nd Division. The official said western parts of Kirkuk province were still under the control of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot.

Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, a spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, said the al Qaeda-inspired group would advance on Karbala and Najaf, as well as the capital Baghdad, the Associated Press reported, citing an audio statement.

However, as we showed yesterday, the final ISIS target is none other than the city of Baghdad, and the overthrow of the Iraq government entirely.

like it did any good...,

wsj |  The U.S. since last year has been secretly flying unmanned surveillance aircraft in small numbers over Iraq to collect intelligence on insurgents, according to U.S. officials.

The program was limited in size and proved little use to U.S. and Iraqi officials when Islamist fighters moved swiftly this week to seize two major Iraqi cities, the officials said.

Before the Islamist offensive, the program was expanded based on growing U.S. and Iraqi concerns about the expanded military activities of al Qaeda-linked fighters.

Officials wouldn't say what types of drones were being used but said the flights were conducted only for surveillance purposes. The program was launched with the consent of the Iraqi government. 

A senior U.S. official said the intelligence collected under the small program was shared with Iraqi forces, but added: "It's not like it did any good." The rapid territorial gains by the Islamist forces loyal to Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, caught the U.S. by surprise, the officials said.

Following the takeover of the two Iraqi cities, administration officials have asked the U.S. military and intelligence agencies to draw up options that include limited U.S. military action in Iraq, officials said.

One of the options being drawn up for the White House would expand the drone flights over Iraq, a step that could aid Iraqi forces or facilitate possible U.S. airstrikes. 

"They're looking at everything and anything and have been told explicitly by the White House to think outside the box of what is possible," a senior U.S. official said.