Monthly Archives: March 2011

Security

Cuckoo’s Egg Arms Race

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The title is misleading, I admit, but it’s how the BBC describes research into which birds reject a cuckoo egg from their nest and why. Maybe, like me, you were expecting an update to Clifford Stoll’s famous book. Alas, it’s actually about real cuckoos and how they adapt to risk.

Cuckoos have target hosts. For example, a cuckoo that lays eggs in a redstart nest lays a blue egg. To the human eye, this is identical to the redstart egg.

However, the cuckoo that targets a dunnock nest lays a white egg with brown speckling, visibly different from the dunnock’s immaculately blue egg. Yet despite this obvious colour mismatch, dunnocks readily accept the foreign eggs, whereas redstarts are much more likely to eject the cuckoo’s egg.

The researchers give a couple theories for why a dunnock would put their own egg at risk (if a cuckoo egg hatches first the chick ejects the other eggs) instead of immediately rejecting the cuckoo’s egg.

Researchers think that naive hosts, like the dunnock, are still at early stages of the evolutionary arms race and; “they accept alien eggs, because they have not yet evolved defences against parasitism,” explains Ms Stoddard.

“Another’ hypothesis is that tolerating cuckoo eggs may be the most stable strategy for some hosts.”

So, for birds that do not often suffer cuckoo invasions, the overall “cost” of mistakenly ejecting their own eggs might be higher than the cost of tolerating the occasional parasite.

It sounds like they are either really dumb and unaware or…really smart and totally aware of the risks. That sure narrows it down.

I am now curious about the rate of a dunnock “mistakenly ejecting their own eggs”. If a dunnock is able to tell there is a difference and wants to eject the cuckoo egg (as the eggs are so different) then what causes a mistake? Clumsy footwork? I mean, if a cuckoo chick can tell the difference and eject the other eggs…

Security

US Soldier Guilty Plea for Murders in Afghanistan

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Al Jazeera has two stories that are unrelated but probably should be juxtaposed. First, the story of US soldiers who killed unarmed civilians in Afghanistan.

Morlock told the judge, Lieutenant Colonel Kwasi Hawks, that he and the other soldiers began plotting to murder unarmed Afghans in late 2009. To make the killings appear justified, the soldiers planned to plant weapons near the victims’ bodies, Morlock said.

Asked by the judge what his intent was, Morlock replied, “The plan was to kill people.”

“Did everybody know, `We’re killing people who are completely innocent’?” the judge asked.

“Generally, yes, sir, everyone knew,” Morlock replied.

Morlock is the first of five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade to be court-martialed — something his lawyer Geoffrey Nathan characterised as an advantage.

“The first up gets the best deal,” Nathan said by phone Tuesday, noting that even under the maximum sentence, Morlock would serve no more than eight years before becoming eligible for parole.

No solitary confinement requirement? And that brings me to the second story called “Cruel and Usual”; there has been a huge increase in solitary confinement for prisoners in America.

The spectre of Bradley Manning lying naked and alone in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Base, less than 50 miles from Washington, DC, conjures up images of an American Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, where isolation and deprivation have been raised to the level of torture.

In fact, the accused Wikileaker, now in his tenth month of solitary confinement, is far from alone in his plight. Every day in the US, tens of thousands of prisoners languish in “the hole”.

[…]

Over the past 30 years, their numbers have increased even faster than the US’ explosive incarceration rate; between 1995 and 2000, the growth rate for prisoners housed in isolation was 40 per cent, as compared to 28 per cent for the prison population in general, according to Human Rights Watch.

Likewise, no one can state with any consistency what these prisoners have done to warrant being placed in solitary confinement or what their isolation is supposed to accomplish.

As it stands, prisoners can be thrown into the hole for rule violations that range from attacking a guard or a fellow inmate to having banned reading materials or too many postage stamps.

In doling out months or even years in solitary, the warden and prison staff usually serve as prosecutor, judge and jury, and unsurprisingly they often abuse that power. The cases are shocking and they abound.

Compare and contrast. Manning is being given exceptionally harsh treatment, arguably tortured, which is said to be not terribly uncommon in the American prison system. Will Morlock thus end up in conditions as severe as Manning and, if so, how long will it take? Or could Morlock make an early parole and serve under eight years for his premeditated murder of unarmed civilians?

Security

Was Stuxnet an Inside Job?

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An article in Enterprise IT Watch by Michael Morisy references my BSidesSF presentation:

To be clear, Ottenheimer is not saying Stuxnet was or wasn’t an inside job, but outlining a fundamental point overlooked in the popular and even most of the trade press: In the 21st century, attribution to state actors has become an increasingly tricky job, even in the physical world.

“We always say it’s China, or Russia, or the Reds, and that compromises our ability to analyze threats,” he told me. ”What I tend to find in the data is that we’re finding attribution harder and harder, and so we should give pause before we make attribution, at least before we say it’s got to be this guy or that guy.”

In related news, I noticed yesterday that intelligence analysts and US government officials are now calling CIA/ISI (Pakistan) operations the most complex they have ever dealt with.

Energy, History, Security

US Losing African Support Over Libya

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It was supposed to be an internationally sanctioned operation to achieve a UN Resolution and protect civilians. Instead several states are openly criticizing the NATO forces for putting Libyan civilians at greater risk or even killing them.

The President of Uganda has published his opinion in the paper and points out many interesting facts about Libya as well as inconsistencies in American foreign policy.

In the nine-page statement, the President accused the West of hastily imposing a ‘no-fly zone’ on Libya yet it has dragged its feet on the Africa Union request for the same over Somalia.

“We have been appealing to the UN to impose a no-fly zone over Somalia so as to impede the free movement of terrorists, linked to Al-Qaeda that killed Americans on September 11, killed Ugandans last July and have caused so much damage to the Somalis, without success. Why?” the President asked.

The UN imposed a ‘no-fly zone’ on Libya last Thursday.

Museveni also accused the West of looking on as a Libya-like crisis evolves in the Great state of Bahrain.

The same could perhaps be asked of the Ivory Coast. Why has the UN not imposed the same conditions as in Libya?

A few things that stand out to me, which President Museveni does not mention.

One, Libya is nestled between the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia. I can’t say exactly how that factors into American logic for intervention but it should not be underestimated. It’s easy for Museveni to say one state has peaceful demonstrations while another has violent insurrectionists because he is ignoring the flow of arms and support going across state borders from demonstrators to insurrectionists. The true difference may be best judged in the dictatorship’s response relative to a whole region of revolution.

Two, enforcement of a no-fly zone (with minimum air casualties) means anti-aircraft defenses have to be neutralized. That is why so many missiles were fired in the initial phase. There is no surprise to this tactic. The civilian casualties are tragic but Museveni does not propose in his statement an alternative method to disabling the threats to civilians and the aircraft sent to impose a no-fly zone.

Three, while I can understand why China, Russia, India, Arab nations, African nations…all believe that America aims to remove Gaddafi from power, this is their moment to step up. They could now find a way to take the reigns of the operation to ensure it remains focused on minimizing civilian casualties. Their decision to pull back and criticize leaves the US in a position of greater authority. Has the US made it impossible for the other countries to work with the NATO forces? It seems that leaders of the other nations are unwilling to take responsibility for the consequences of a tough situation with few easy answers.

Museveni urged Gadaffi to sit at a round table with the opposition, adding that since there have never been elections in Libya, “dialogue is the correct way forward.”

That is not a bad suggestion. It could be that Museveni is using a public critique of the US as a “good cop” routine; perhaps he knows that the UN resolution and NATO attacks could inspire Gadaffi to sit at the table, but the Libyan dictator will not appear without a sense of balance (less overt support for America) in the AU.

I highly recommend reading the full statement. It has some parts that are just ridiculous:

Black people are always polite.

They, normally, do not want to offend other people. This is called obufura in Runyankore, mwolo in Luo – handling, especially strangers, with care and respect. It seems some of the non-African cultures do not have obufura. You can witness a person talking to a mature person as if he/she is talking to a kindergarten child. “You should do this; you should do that; etc.” We tried to politely point out to Col. Gaddafi that this was difficult in the short and medium term.

I almost quit after reading that nonsense, but it also has some interesting insights into the Ugandan perspective on international relations, such as this:

Idi Amin came to power with the support of Britain and Israel because they thought he was uneducated enough to be used by them.

Amin, however, turned against his sponsors when they refused to sell him guns to fight Tanzania. Unfortunately, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, without getting enough information about Uganda, jumped in to support Idi Amin. This was because Amin was a ‘Moslem’ and Uganda was a ‘Moslem country’ where Moslems were being ‘oppressed’ by Christians.

Amin killed a lot of people extra-judiciary and Gaddafi was identified with these mistakes. In 1972 and 1979, Gaddafi sent Libyan troops to defend Idi Amin when we attacked him. I remember a Libyan Tupolev 22 bomber trying to bomb us in Mbarara in 1979.

And this:

Before Gaddafi came to power in 1969, a barrel of oil was 40 American cents. He launched a campaign to withhold Arab oil unless the West paid more for it. I think the price went up to US$ 20 per barrel. When the Arab-Israel war of 1973 broke out, the barrel of oil went to US$ 40.

And last, but not least, this:

The AU mission could not get to Libya because the Western countries started bombing Libya the day before they were supposed to arrive. However, the mission will continue. My opinion is that, in addition, to what the AU mission is doing, it may be important to call an extra-ordinary Summit of the AU in Addis Ababa to discuss this grave situation.

I would blame that on the French, not the US, but that could just be me. I suspect France was one of the most eager to intervene and are likely to have had special forces there from Djibouti long before the bombs started to drop.