Posts Tagged ‘Russia’
“The enclosure of the commons inaugurates a new ecological order. Enclosure did not just physically transfer the control over grasslands from the peasants to the lord. It marked a radical change in the attitudes of society toward the environment.”*…
Several days ago, juries in New Mexico and California found Facebook/Meta (and in California, also YouTube/Google) guilty of knowingly employing algorithms to serve content to minors that caused depression, anxiety, and other mental health harms… behavior par for the course of the (massive, “mechanical”) extractive behavior that is their business model. As NPR reports (on the California verdict):
While the financial punishment is miniscule for companies each worth trillions of dollars, the decision is still consequential. It represents the first time a jury has found that social media apps should be treated as defective products for being engineered to exploit the developing brains of kids and teenagers… The outcome of this case could influence thousands of other consolidated cases against the social media companies. The litigation has drawn comparisons to the legal crusade in the 1990s against Big Tobacco, which forced the industry to to stop targeting minors with advertising…
L. M. Sacasas draws on a comparison to the English “enclosure movement” (and here) to put the stakes of this battle against algorithmic extraction into historical context…
If you were to ask me something like “What’s the most urgent task before us?” or “What counsel do you have to offer in this cultural moment?” I would say this:
Resist the enclosure of the human psyche.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m sure there are other necessary and urgent tasks. But this would be my contribution to the conversation. I would be offering not only an imperative to pursue, but also, and perhaps more importantly, an analogy to clarify and interpret the techno-economic forces at play in a digitized society. Such analogies or concepts can be useful. They can crystalize a certain understanding of the world and catalyze action and resolve. They can be a rallying cry.
In any case, I’ll say it again: resist the enclosure of the human psyche.
Some of you may immediately intuit the force of the analogy, but I suspect it needs a little unpacking.
Here’s the short version: I’m drawing an analogy between a historical development known as the enclosure of the commons and the condition of the human psyche in the context of a digitized society. The enclosure of the commons is the name given to the centuries-long process by which lands available to the many were turned into a resource to be managed and extracted by the few. My claim is that structurally similar processes are unfolding with the aim of enclosing the human psyche and transforming it into a resource to be managed and extracted…
The longer version, which follows, unpacks that analogy and explains what the impact of “enclosing the human psyche” could– would likely– be. Sacasas concludes…
… The individual human psyche does not seem like a thing held in common. But, in fact, that presumption may itself be a symptom of the enclosure of the psyche, although there are certainly many other forces leading toward that same conclusion. What if the psyche were a thing held in common? That is to say, what if our purchase on reality and the emergence of the self depended on human relationships and communities? From this perspective, the enclosure of the human psyche deprives us of a common world, which yields an experience of solidarity and belonging.
I’ve elsewhere developed this point at greater length, but here I’ll only note Hannah Arendt’s warning that we are deprived of a “truly human life” when we are “deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by others, to be deprived of an ‘objective’ relationship with them that comes from being related to and separated from them through the intermediary of a common world of things.”
That last bit about a common world of things, a material, not only virtual world, is key. The logic of enclosure seeks to lock us into a private virtual world of “bespoke realities,” thus excluding us from the common world of things that yields as well a public consciousness. As Arendt put it, “Only the experience of sharing a common human world with others who look at it from different perspectives can enable us to see reality in the round and to develop a shared common sense.”…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Enclosure of the Human Psyche“
* Ivan Illich, “Silence is a commons” in In the Mirror of the Past (to which Sacasas alludes in the essay linked above)
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As we cosset commons, we might recall that it was on this date in 1867 that a bilateral treaty was signed effecting the sale of Alaska by Russia to the United States. It was ratified on May15 and American sovereignty took effect on October 18 of that year. The price for the 586,412 square miles that changed hands was $7.2 million in 1867 (equivalent to about $132 million in 2024), or about $0.02 per acre ($0.37 per acre in 2024).
Relevantly to the piece above, the land was and is largely commonly held, by the federal government, by the state, and by Native American tribes. Only roughly 1% of Alaska is in private hands. But that sliver is growing as the Trump Administration moves to “liquidate” federal real estate holdings (sell them to private owners) and in the meantime, licenses huge swathes of Alaska for oil and gas development, mineral extraction, and the infrastrucutre (roads, pipelines) needed to service them. Alaskans are worried.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history”*…
… and of their present. Anne Applebaum explores the ways in which autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world…
… Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. The strength of these demonstrations, and the broader anger they reflected, was enough to spook the Chinese Communist Party into lifting the quarantine and allowing the virus to spread. The deaths that resulted were preferable to public anger and protest.
Like the demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin in Russia that began in 2011, the 2014 street protests in Venezuela, and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the 2022 protests in China help explain something else: why autocratic regimes have slowly turned their repressive mechanisms outward, into the democratic world. If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. That requires more than surveillance, more than close observation of the population, more than a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan: a narrative that damages both the idea of democracy everywhere in the world and the tools to deliver it…
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… the story of how Africans—as well as Latin Americans, Asians, and indeed many Europeans and Americans—have come to spout Russian propaganda about Ukraine is not primarily a story of European colonial history, Western policy, or the Cold War. Rather, it involves China’s systematic efforts to buy or influence both popular and elite audiences around the world; carefully curated Russian propaganda campaigns, some open, some clandestine, some amplified by the American and European far right; and other autocracies using their own networks to promote the same language…
…the convergence of what had been disparate authoritarian influence projects is still new. Russian information-laundering and Chinese propaganda have long had different goals. Chinese propagandists mostly stayed out of the democratic world’s politics, except to promote Chinese achievements, Chinese economic success, and Chinese narratives about Tibet or Hong Kong. Their efforts in Africa and Latin America tended to feature dull, unwatchable announcements of investments and state visits. Russian efforts were more aggressive—sometimes in conjunction with the far right or the far left in the democratic world—and aimed to distort debates and elections in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and elsewhere. Still, they often seemed unfocused, as if computer hackers were throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see which crazy story might stick. Venezuela and Iran were fringe players, not real sources of influence.
Slowly, though, these autocracies have come together, not around particular stories, but around a set of ideas, or rather in opposition to a set of ideas. Transparency, for example. And rule of law. And democracy. They have heard language about those ideas—which originate in the democratic world—coming from their own dissidents, and have concluded that they are dangerous to their regimes…
The origins and the operations of today’s all-too-successful authoritarian disinformation efforts: “The New Propaganda War” (gift article) from @anneapplebaum in @TheAtlantic. Eminently worth reading in full.
Apposite: “‘Everyone is absolutely terrified’: Inside a US ally’s secret war on its American critics,” @zackbeauchamp on India’s campaign to threaten and discredit critics of the Modi regime, in @voxdotcom. Plus: “India’s YouTubers take on Narendra Modi” (gift link to @TheEconomist).
* George Orwell
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As we analyze agitprop, we might recall that it was on this date in 1998 that Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the plot to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Carried out by right-wing (white supremacist- and militia-sympathizing) anti-government extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing (on April 19, 1995, at 9:02 AM) killed 168 people, injured 680, and destroyed more than one-third of the building, which had to be demolished. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings and caused an estimated $652 million worth of damage. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in U.S. history before the September 11 attacks in 2001, and still the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
McVeigh had shared his plans with Fortier (his Army roommate); Fortier had accompanied McVeigh on a scouting trip to the building in advance of the blast; and Fortier had failed to warn officials of the attack.
“I’m having a magenta day. Not just red, but magenta!”*…
Your correspondent is still on the road; regular service resumes on or around May 6. Meantime, a colorful update…
Forget about red hot. A new color-coded heat warning system relies on magenta to alert Americans to the most dangerous conditions they may see this summer.
The National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday — Earth Day — presented a new online heat risk system that combines meteorological and medical risk factors with a seven-day forecast that’s simplified and color-coded for a warming world of worsening heat waves.
“For the first time we’ll be able to know how hot is too hot for health and not just for today but for coming weeks,” Dr. Ari Bernstein, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, said at a joint news conference by government health and weather agencies.
Magenta is the worst and deadliest of five heat threat categories, hitting everybody with what the agencies are calling “rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little to no overnight relief.” It’s a step higher than red, considered a major risk, which hurts anyone without adequate cooling and hydration and has impacts reverberating through the health care system and some industries. Red is used when a day falls within the top 5% hottest in a particular location for a particular date; when other factors come into play, the alert level may bump even higher to magenta, weather service officials said.
On the other hand, pale green is little to no risk. Yellow is minor risk, mostly to the very young, old, sick and pregnant. Orange is moderate risk, mostly hurting people who are sensitive to heat, especially those without cooling, such as the homeless.
“When red-hot isn’t enough: New government heat risk tool sets magenta as most dangerous level,” from @AP.
* Stephen King, Needful Things
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As we reassess risk, we might recall that it was on this date in 1986 that Russia announced the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, two days after it happened.
“Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent”*…
Jurisdictional triage…
The website for the shipping registry of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), established in October 2023, appears much like those of more established seafaring nations. A picture of vast cruise ships sits alongside promises of the “highest quality ship maritime services and ship registrations”. Delve deeper though and Eswatini’s nautical credentials start to unravel. For one thing, the African country is landlocked, calling into doubt the assertion that the port of Mbabane, Eswatini’s capital, is situated on the coast of South Africa. It is a “dry port”, 150km from the sea and 30km from a rail link to Maputo on Mozambique’s Indian Ocean coast. Its stated ability to handle “containers, bulk carriers and tankers” seems questionable.
The country is following in the wake of other smaller nations that offer their flag to shipowners. Seagoing vessels are obliged by maritime law to fly a flag of a country of registration and stateless vessels are not protected by international law. Yet the days when the stern of a ship would fly a national flag connected to the ownership of the vessel are long past. Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands now account for nearly half of the global fleet, by tonnage. Countries with loose ties to seafaring have been dubbed “flags of convenience” for levying low or no taxes and offering an escape from burdensome labour laws and other regulatory requirements. Often administered by private companies based elsewhere, these registries are a handy source of additional revenue for small and poor countries.
Registering a merchant vessel with a jurisdiction that is a mere speck on the map is not necessarily a cause for concern. Many take seriously their responsibility to oversee adherence to the rules and regulations of the high seas. Liberia’s, based near Washington, dc, has a good record of maintaining global standards across its fleet. Other registries merely give a “façade of legal oversight” says Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a trade publication. A blacklist complied by Paris mou, an organisation that aims to “eliminate the operation of substandard ships”, puts the likes of Cameroon, Vanuatu and Comoros near the bottom…
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Less diligent registries are helping to fuel the growth of a “dark fleet”—some 1,400 vessels, according to the Atlantic Council, a think-tank—that operates with little regulatory oversight. They are mostly oil tankers that engage in subterfuge to hide where they are and the origin of their cargo in order to evade sanctions on Russian crude oil. Ownership is often opaque. Mr Meade estimates that 12% of the global tanker fleet is now dark. He notes that Gabon’s registry, now comprising 140 vessels, is the fastest-growing in the world thanks largely to the reflagging of Russian tankers.
An expanding dark fleet poses a danger to itself and other vessels. Dark ships tend to be old and less well maintained, and some may be uninsured. Practices such as turning off or “spoofing” location devices are a danger to other ships. Swapping oil cargoes at sea to obscure their origins poses the danger of a spillage. Mr Meade foresees a worse calamity of a large “dark fleet” tanker sinking in an environmentally sensitive area, with no accountability…
Sea-going chicanery: “Why does landlocked Eswatini have a ship registry?” (gift article) from @TheEconomist.
* Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
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As we deconstruct disguises, we might recall that it was on this date in 1617 that Sweden and the Tsardom of Russia signed the Treaty of Stolbovo, ending the Ingrian War and shutting Russia out of the Baltic Sea… until 1703, when Peter the Great won back access in battle with the Swedes– a victory he cemented by founding St. Petersburg.
“Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography”*…
There are lessons to be learned from history. Noah Smith cautions us to be sure that we’re learning the right ones…
… 2022 saw authoritarian powers suddenly on the back foot. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a military and geopolitical disaster, and Xi’s economic mismanagement brought China’s growth to a momentary halt. Meanwhile, the U.S. started looking a bit more politically stable and started to take action to preserve its remaining industrial advantages, Asian democracies like Japan and the fast-growing India continued to flex their muscle, and Europe seemed more united than it had in…well, ever. All of this naturally had some people in the West optimistic that Cold War 2 would ultimately end much like World War 2 and the first Cold War.
Unfortunately, early optimism can easily give way to complacency and cockiness. We’re still in the opening moves of Cold War 2, and the minor victories of 2022 are likely to revert to the mean. 2023 is already shaping up to be a year in which the authoritarian powers recalibrate their strategy and find their footing.
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Americans need to realize that Cold War 2 is fundamentally unlike Cold War 1 or World War 2. Those 20th century contests were ideological battles, where people fought and died for communism, fascism, and liberal democracy. But China is not an ideological, proselytizing power; its ideology, basically, is just “China.” Xi Jinping doesn’t care whether you have elections and protect civil rights or send minorities to the death camps, as long as you support Chinese hegemony abroad.
Cold War 2 is therefore a bit more like World War 1 — a naked contest of national power and interests. And if the U.S. tries to turn it into an ideological battle, it could backfire…
A provocative argument that we shouldn’t make too much of what are only the opening moves in “Cold War 2”: “2023 is when the empires strike back,” from @Noahpinion.
* Edward Said
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As we grapple with geopolitics, we might recall that it was on this date in 1975 that South Vietnamese forces withdrew from the town of Xuan Loc in the last major battle of the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese victory there occasioned the resignation of South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, who was replaced by Trần Văn Hương, who was ordered by the National Assembly to seek a negotiated peace with North Vietnam at any cost.
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