Thursday, December 31, 2020

Ruminations 99(3) (The Year of Infection of the Body, of the Soul and of the Body Politic): Looking Back on 2020 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

 

Pix source HERE

 

 

For the last several years, and with no particular objective,  I have taken the period between Christmas and New Years Eve to produce a s summary of the slice of the year to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here), 2017 (for these see here), 2018 (for those see here), and 2019 (for those see here).  

At the end of 2019 I wrote as the introduction to 2019's closing epigrams and aphorisms the following:

The year 2019 is ending with the great rifts--opened in 2016, exposed in 2017, and acquiring a greater urgency and revealing the power of its consequences in 2018--now exposed. More than exposed, 2019 marked their explosion, the aftermath of which, in 2020, will be marked by the start of a variety of end games in law, society, politics, culture and economics. Global divisions, more acute in 2018, finally reached moved toward climax in virtually all states, and with respect to all systems--law, compliance, religious, societal, cultural, and economic. While 2020 will likely be the year in which the climax events of 2019 will play themselves out, the year 2019 was in many ways the year of the "big bang" for the third decade of the 21st century. (Ruminations 89(1) (Blasphemies): Looking Back on 2019 in Epigrams and Aphorisms).

The year 2020 has indeed proven to be the year of end games of all sorts, the aftermath of the big bang that was now the faded memory of 2019.  It was a year that was consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  But that was hardly all--many things happened under the cover of the virus. This was the year of the transformation of Hong Kong, of the realization that governance was becoming both data driven and managed by algorithms, and of the indulgence in state killings to suit the tastes of their leaders.  It was the year that saw the return of borders and the refinement of the techniques useful for managing the movements of populations from the most to the least developed states.  It was the year the Americans were continued their civil war and in which the rupture of the aristocratic elites produced successful campaigns to demonize virtually anyone.  Indeed, beyond the virus, 2020, appears to have been the year of the demon, it was the year of  oni (鬼, demons) and yurei (幽霊, ghosts); it was the year the demons (恶魔) left hell (地狱).

In this Part 3 we look back beyond the daemons 2020 has permitted us a certain delight in creating, or the gods we have attempted to make of ourselves, to that great natural disaster that we have made our own--the COVID-19 Pandemic. In this form the Pandemic provided the great mirror on human organization, and human organization stared back. The virus that is COVID-19 in its physical form is a tragedy claiming lives and livelihoods, but it is also a virus that attacked the bodies politics and the great institutions that were created in the expectation  that they would be virus proof.  COVID-19 then is both a physical and metaphysical infection from out of which there may be no exit. That is the last kiss of 2020. 

ASCE-CPE Interview Series: A Conversation with Carmen Reinhart, Vice President and World Bank Group Chief Economist

 


 

 The Association for the Study of the Cuba Economy (ASCE) with the support of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics (CPE), has undertaken an interview series. The object of this series is to draw attention to the work of leading scholars and actors involved in the examination of Cuban society, culture, politics, law, and economics from a national, regional or international perspective. 

It is with great pleasure that ASCE is able to share a profoundly fascinating conversation, recorded earlier this year, Carmen Reinhart, Vice President and World Bank Group Chief Economist. She assumed this role on June 15, 2020, and manages the Bank’s Development Economics Department. The conversation included the senior members of the ASCE's membership, each an accomplished economist or diplomat: Lorenzo Pérez, Joaquin Pujol, Ernesto Hernández Catá, Jorge Sanguinetty, Rafael Romeu,  and Gary Maybarduk. The conversation was wide ranging and touched on the most pressing topics of global trade, finance, and globalization affecting virtually all peoples. The conversation also touched on the challenges for women  in the profession.

Dr. Reinhart comes to this position on public service leave from Harvard Kennedy School where she is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. During her career, Reinhart has worked in numerous roles to address policy challenges including most recently, the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact. She serves in the Advisory Panels of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the International Monetary Fund. Earlier, she was the Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund and held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns.  Ranked among the top Economists worldwide based on publications and scholarly citations, Reinhart has been listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Thomson Reuters' The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds.  In 2018 she was awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and NABE’s Adam Smith Award, among others. Her book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff)  entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly  has been translated to over 20 languages and won the Paul A. Samuelson Award. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

We hope you find the discussion interesting and thought provoking We welcome your views. The video is posted to the CPE YouTube Channel (ASCE Interview Series Playlist) and the specific interview may be accessed HERE

 

 

 

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Ruminations 99(2) (Making Our Own Image into Gods): Looking Back on 2020 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

 

 

For the last several years, and with no particular objective,  I have taken the period between Christmas and New Years Eve to produce a s summary of the slice of the year to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here), 2017 (for these see here), 2018 (for those see here), and 2019 (for those see here).  

At the end of 2019 I wrote as the introduction to 2019's closing epigrams and aphorisms the following:

The year 2019 is ending with the great rifts--opened in 2016, exposed in 2017, and acquiring a greater urgency and revealing the power of its consequences in 2018--now exposed. More than exposed, 2019 marked their explosion, the aftermath of which, in 2020, will be marked by the start of a variety of end games in law, society, politics, culture and economics. Global divisions, more acute in 2018, finally reached moved toward climax in virtually all states, and with respect to all systems--law, compliance, religious, societal, cultural, and economic. While 2020 will likely be the year in which the climax events of 2019 will play themselves out, the year 2019 was in many ways the year of the "big bang" for the third decade of the 21st century. (Ruminations 89(1) (Blasphemies): Looking Back on 2019 in Epigrams and Aphorisms).

The year 2020 has indeed proven to be the year of end games of all sorts, the aftermath of the big bang that was now the faded memory of 2019.  It was a year that was consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  But that was hardly all--many things happened under the cover of the virus. This was the year of the transformation of Hong Kong, of the realization that governance was becoming both data driven and managed by algorithms, and of the indulgence in state killings to suit the tastes of their leaders.  It was the year that saw the return of borders and the refinement of the techniques useful for managing the movements of populations from the most to the least developed states.  It was the year the Americans were continued their civil war and in which the rupture of the aristocratic elites produced successful campaigns to demonize virtually anyone.  Indeed, beyond the virus, 2020, appears to have been the year of the demon, it was the year of  oni (鬼, demons) and yurei (幽霊, ghosts); it was the year the demons (恶魔) left hell (地狱).

In this Part 2 we look back beyond the daemons 2020 has permitted us a certain delight in creating. We look to the new gods we now worship, and the means of that worship.  To worship something is to invest it with the attributes of divinity; this was the year we came face to face with the gods we have been seeking to make of ourselves.   
 

ASCE-CPE Interview Series: Financial and Monetary Policy in the Shadow of Reform in Cuba, A Conversation with Luis Luis

 



 

The Association for the Study of the Cuba Economy (ASCE) with the support of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics (CPE), has undertaken an interview series. The object of this series is to draw attention to the work of leading scholars and actors involved in the examination of Cuban society, culture, politics, law, and economics from a national, regional or international perspective.


For the ASCE Series' next interview, Larry Catá Backer had the great pleasure of speaking with Luis R. Luis who is an international economist in Massachusetts specializing in international finance and investments.  He is cofounder of International Research and Strategy, a firm centered on emerging markets finance.  Previously he was Managing Director at Scudder Investments in Boston directing international research and helping to manage international fixed income and equity portfolios. He was Director, Latin America Department, at the Institute of International Finance in Washington.  Luis also served as head of international economics at Midland Bank in London and Crocker Bank in San Francisco and was Chief Economist at the OAS in Washington.   He was in the economics faculty at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis and American University and held a Fulbright visiting professorship at University of Trujillo in Peru.  He has lectured on international economics at universities in several South American and European countries.    An author of articles on international finance and on the Cuban economy and a contributor to several books on emerging markets and portfolio management, Luis holds a PhD degree in economics from the University of Notre Dame.  He has been a member of ASCE since its foundation.
 
Our topic for this conversation centered on core issues of Cuban finance as it seeks to meet the challenges of monetary union, economic reform and global engagement.  Our conversation was centered on three thematic questions: (1)What are the new economic policy changes that will be implemented on January first?; (2) What is the main objective of these new policies?; and (3) Will there be inflation as a result of the higher cost of the dollar in Cuban peso terms?
 
The conversation was wide ranging.  We started with a more detailed discussion of the nature of the Ordemamiento Monetario and the very challenging process of eliminating Cuba's dual currency system.  What made the conversation particularly fascinating was the way Luis was able to weave monetary and fiscal policy into the ideological constraints of the current Cuban political-economic model, the challenges facing the non-state sector, the difficulties of fiscal corrections for a system that is especially suspicious of the market and private mechanisms, and the great risks of the timing of the change. We spoke as well to the issues of state subsidies, the difficulties for Cuba of accessing foreign capital in the face of a non-convertible currency, lending risks, and the effects on the growing non state sector. We spoke to the difficulties of monetary reform in the face of traditional practices respecting the valuation of Cuban currency for outbound transactions and the serendipity of export pricing, including the pricing of the sale of services, for example, medical services. Lastly, we speculated about the effects of the incoming Biden Administration on the process of fiscal reform and the relationship between fiscal policy and the US sanctions program.

We hope you find the discussion interesting and thought provoking We welcome your views. The video is posted to the CPE YouTube Channel (ASCE Interview Series Playlist) and the specific interview may be accessed HERE.

 

 

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Ruminations 99(1) (The year of Oni (鬼, demons) and Yurei (幽霊, ghosts): Looking Back on 2020 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

 

 

For the last several years, and with no particular objective,  I have taken the period between Christmas and New Years Eve to produce a s summary of the slice of the year to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here), 2017 (for these see here), 2018 (for those see here), and 2019 (for those see here).  

At the end of 2019 I wrote as the introduction to 2019's closing epigrams and aphorisms the following:

The year 2019 is ending with the great rifts--opened in 2016, exposed in 2017, and acquiring a greater urgency and revealing the power of its consequences in 2018--now exposed. More than exposed, 2019 marked their explosion, the aftermath of which, in 2020, will be marked by the start of a variety of end games in law, society, politics, culture and economics. Global divisions, more acute in 2018, finally reached moved toward climax in virtually all states, and with respect to all systems--law, compliance, religious, societal, cultural, and economic. While 2020 will likely be the year in which the climax events of 2019 will play themselves out, the year 2019 was in many ways the year of the "big bang" for the third decade of the 21st century. (Ruminations 89(1) (Blasphemies): Looking Back on 2019 in Epigrams and Aphorisms).

The year 2020 has indeed proven to be the year of end games of all sorts, the aftermath of the big bang that was now the faded memory of 2019.  It was a year that was consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  But that was hardly all--many things happened under the cover of the virus. This was the year of the transformation of Hong Kong, of the realization that governance was becoming both data driven and managed by algorithms, and of the indulgence in state killings to suit the tastes of their leaders.  It was the year that saw the return of borders and the refinement of the techniques useful for managing the movements of populations from the most to the least developed states.  It was the year the Americans were continued their civil war and in which the rupture of the aristocratic elites produced successful campaigns to demonize virtually anyone.  Indeed, beyond the virus, 2020, appears to have been the year of the demon, it was the year of  oni (鬼, demons) and yurei (幽霊, ghosts); it was the year the demons (恶魔) left hell (地狱).

In this Part 1 we look back on the demons, ghosts, spirits, and hell we have managed to create; the lesser gods of the pantheon of humanity.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Sneak Peek Chapter 2: "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Essays from the Year that Transformed the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (June 2019 – June 2020) "

 


 

I have been sharing sneak peeks of a book to be published in early 2021"Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems':  Essays from the Year that Transformed the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (June 2019 – June 2020) " (Little Sir Press).   In an effort to avoid the prohibitive cost of hard copies, the book will be made available first as an EPub (iBook, Kindle, Amazon) (ISBN: 978-1-949943-03-0 (ebk). My thanks to the Coalition for Peace & Ethics for making this possible. I have previously shared an early draft of the preface (here).  Here I wanted to share a draft of Chapter 2 ("Saturday 15 June 2019 The Clash of Empires? Playing With Fire in the Shadow of the Umbrella Movement ").

As we get closer to publication summaries of each of the 29 essays will be posted along with the table of contents.
 

Friday, December 18, 2020

Registration Now Open: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) Conference 4-6 January 2021 ("Caught in a Perfect Storm")

 




I am delighted to announce that registration is now open for the 2021 ASCE Conference--Caught in a Perfect Storm: Are Havana's Responses Sufficient?, which is scheduled to take place 4-6 January 2021.



Conference Website may be accessed here: With information about participants, registration, and useful inks.

Concept Note: The theme of ASCE’s January conference will focus on Cuba’s current economic problems and the Cuban governments announced responses (reforms). The focus will be on analysis of policies and suggested policies that improve those reforms. Indeed, the issue of Reform, yet again, as it has so many times over the long arc of the history of post “revolutionary” Cuba, has been one of developing elegant statements of idealized objectives and then offering what in retrospect might be characterized second or third best solutions; and that might be the only thing on offer now. Yet even these second best solutions can be used to bring significant improvements to the Cuban economy.

Pre-Conference Interview Series These may be accessed via CPE YouTube Channel. Follow the link above for the listing of all interviews and links to your favorites. 

 

The Conference Program may be accessed HERE. The Conference extends over three days and offers six exciting events. They include five panels: They include (1) Cuba's Economic Situation and Strategy; (2) Cuba's External Relations; (3) US-Cuba Economic Relations; (4) Cuban Agricultural Challenges; an (5) the Cuba-Venezuela Crisis.  In addition Jorge Dominguez has organized a marvelous discussion around the book La Cuba que quisimos: Essays on the New Cuban Constitution. 


Registration is required but free; space is limited.  Registration permits the user to attend any combination of the six Conference events. Those wishing to attend all events, for example, must register for all six. Those wishing to attend fewer events may register for those panels of interest to them. Please contact us with questions. Attendance for each event requires a separate registration.

Registration links for each of the Panels follows below.

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Announcing Publication of Vol. 15(2) "Emancipating the Mind in the New Era: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics" (Special Issue: Coronavirus and International Affairs)


 

I am delighted to announce the publication of Volume 15 Issue 2 of Emancipating the Mind: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics (2689-0283 (Print); 2689-0291 (Online); ISBN: 978-1-949943-04-7 (ePub)).  The theme of this issue is "Coronavirus and International Affairs."

The Special Issue includes the Proceedings of the Conference Roundtable held virtually 17 April 2020, which was sponsored by CPE, the Research Network for Law & International Affairs, Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs. Also included are short Conference-Roundtable interventions, interviews and longer essays prepared around the Conference-Roundtable themes. These  touched on a variety of aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic at the height of its early stages through the summer of 2020. Special focus was made on effects in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, as well as its collateral effects on governance, higher education, the global trade and political order,  the state and nature of law and governance, and the emerging critical role of simulation and data driven analysis for the development of policy and regulation.  

All of the essays are available free online.  They may be accessed at the web page for the Bulletin HERE; Vol 15(2) webpage may be accessed HERE. The Table of Contents (with links to individual essays) and the Introduction (with brief summaries of the contents) follow below.  The entire issue may be downloaded HERE.  Comments, reactions, engagements always welcome.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Iuris Dictio: Los desafíos actuales del derecho tributario [Current Challenges of Tax Law] Contributions From Vol 26

 


It my great  honor to serve on the Scientific Advisory Board of the journal Iuris Dictio whose home is the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador).  It is one of the leading legal journals in Ecuador and the Andean region.  Its editors, Diego Falconí Trávez and María Teresa Vera-Rojas are engaged in expanding its international recognition. 

For Volume 26, the editors have assembled a marvelous set of essays in Spanish considering current challenges in tax law ( Los desafíos actuales del derecho tributario).  As María Gracia Naranjo Ponce, María Bernarda Carpio Frixone note in their Introduction to this volume:

Este año, además, han surgido retos particulares en el ámbito tributario como consecuencia de la pandemia del COVID-19. Entre los desafíos que se han presentado a los gobiernos a nivel mundial a lo largo del 2020, se ubicó el procurar un punto medio entre la adopción de mecanismos de apoyo y alivio a los contribuyentes y la implementación de medidas que salvaguarden el correcto flujo de las finanzas públicas, a fin de atender las necesidades propias de la emergencia sanitaria. A su vez, los gobiernos se han enfrentado a los enormes desafíos que genera el decrecimiento en la recaudación, en el contexto de la crisis económica derivada de la emergencia sanitaria. [This year, in addition, particular challenges have arisen in the tax field as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the challenges that have been presented to governments worldwide throughout 2020, was to seek a middle ground between the adoption of support and relief mechanisms for taxpayers and the implementation of measures that safeguard the correct flow of taxes. public finances, in order to meet the needs of the health emergency. In turn, governments have faced the enormous challenges generated by the decrease in collection, in the context of the economic crisis derived from the health emergency]
The table of contents with links to the essays (and the entire volume) follow (English translations of titles HERE):

 

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

New Draft Essay Posted: "The Metamorphosis of COVID-19: State, Society, Law, Analytics"

 

Utrecht Cathedral 2019

 

I am delighted to share with you that I have posted a draft of my essay, The Metamorphosis of COVID-19: State, Society, Law, Analytics .The final version will be included in the special issue (Vol. 15; issue 2) of Emancipating the Mind: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics which should be out shortly. 

 
The essay considers the transformations in societal organization exposed during the first shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and what it suggests for the "new normal" going forward (there is no going back, no matter how strong the nostalgia for that past). The abstract sums it up this way:

Abstract: Almost from the start of global awareness of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a general sense that it would be a transforming event. For some those transformations would be temporary, for others far more profound and long lasting. This essay examines the idea of transformation. And the emergence of its trajectories at the start of the pandemic. Focusing on the first half of 2020, the essay considers this idea of metamorphosis in four critical aspects of global and collective societal organization. That idea of metamorphosis is not based on the notion that COVID-19 has transformed the societal order into something else—rather the thesis of this essay is that COVID-19 has stripped away pre-pandemic pretensions and has made it possible for societal order to transform into itself—its more accurate representation of itself. Section 2 first considers COVID-19 as the virus of societal acceleration. That is of the way that COVID-19 accelerates trajectories already present and latent in collective bodies (and as well in the bodies of individuals within their own family collectives). Section 3 then considers the transformation of origin stories. The transformation of the story of the origins of COVID-19 align with the transformations of the relations between China and the US and between China and the international community. And these are not without consequence. Origins point to culpability, and the culpable might be held accountable. Section 4 then examines the moral transformation accelerated by pandemic. The focus here is on sacrifice—the sacrifice of the aged by the healthy, the sacrifice of the poor by those with greater means, and the sacrifice of women’s autonomy. Section 5 then considers the transformation of law. The science of law has been overcome by that of the science of data, of psychology, and of prediction. And with that transformation, an even greater transformation of the autonomy of the individual before the state. Where individuals were once assumed to be autonomous actors capable of adhering and culpable for lapses in conforming behavior to commands, now they are understood as the aggregation of the sum of their actions, actions which can be predicted and nudged through rewards and punishment. Entities, in turn, build policy by incarnating the aggregated mass of human behaviors within a community. Law is transformed into simulation even as the individual is transfigured as the incarnation of the sum of the data she generates. The essay ends with a brief consideration in Section 6, Metamorphoses, of the consequences of these transformations. It suggests the contours of the character of societal organizations that COVID-19 has revealed.
The draft may be accessed HERE.  The Introduction and Section 6 ("Metamorphoses") follow below. 

 

 

Friday, December 11, 2020

"From the Belt and Road Initiative to Social Credit Systems: Tech and Business Relations Between the US and China": Presentaiton for the Global China Connection Penn State Chapter Industry Expert Series

 


 

I was delighted to have been invited to speak as part of the Global China Connection Penn State Chapter Industry Expert Series on 10 December on issues relating to the impact of U.S.-China tensions on business and technology. I entitled my presentation  From the Belt and Road Initiative to Social Credit Systems: Tech and Business Relations Between the US and China

The framework for this discussion of China, business and tech was on the fundamental shift in baseline from the end of the golden age of globalization, definitively marked by the election of Mr. Trump in 2016 (but marked as well by the development of "New Era" China during the 2nd term of the Obama administration) to what appears to be the emerging shape of post-global globalization now much more clearly discernible on the cusp of the Biden Administration which begins January 2021. This transformation of baseline is marked by key shifts: () from competition to conflict; (2) from integration to de-coupling; (3) from market penetration to inward turning and regional self-sufficiency; (4)  from human rights universalism to human rights entanglement; (5) from the development to the business and politics of data; and (6) from the business of the development fo productive forces to tat of the control of global production chains. 

I focused on three issues within the galaxy of possible analytic approaches to make some sense of this shifts and draw supplication.  The first was to focus on fundamental ideological differences driving deepening divisions in approach and in the way in which the world is seen, understood, and exploited. The second was to examine the shape of emerging business structures in post-global globalization in the shape of the new Chinese and American imperial structures. The third was to explore the role fo tech in these new environments.  In each of thes contexts it was as important o ask what was driving the results--for example was tech driving change or was change driving tech, etc.   

I noted points of conflict: (1) ideology has become more incompatible and mutually incomprehensible; (2) global trade as an expression of ideological vision and objectives; (3) tech as protagonist, language or instrument; and (4) data regulation as a basis for border building and the reification of new imperial communities built around China and the U.S. as respective centers of political ideology expressed as business, tech, and trade. I concluded the presentation by suggesting that tech and business will remain high priority issues. Both tech and business (understood as clusters of economic activity around value producing sectors) will be driven by collateral effects and objectives as they become more closely tied to issues of security arrangements and peace. The ethics of big data and the use of data and analytics (descriptive, predictive, and managerial) will remain highly contested. The ideological differences will intensify international contests for control of global baseline narrative. Lastlym the way these conflicts will manifest will depend on the vision and calculations of the incoming Biden Administration; those of the current Chinese Administration are clear enough.

PowerPoint available here: PSU_Presentation_ChinaBusinessTech12-2020

VIDEO RECORDING OF THE TALK MAY BE ACCESSED HERE


Tuesday, December 08, 2020

The Affair of the Sonic Weapons Attack: Digesting the Long (Long) Awaited and Ably Curated State Department Report: "An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Emloyees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies"

Sally Rand, 'Fan Dance' 1942



It has been quite some time since I considered the ongoing and slow motion--and well curated--theatre that has been the search for the causes of so-called Havana Syndrome (last discussion at The Affair of the Sonic Weapons Attack: The Mystery that is at its Most Useful When it Remains Unresolved).  I noted then (in connection with the release, again well curated, of certain UK diplomatic cables) that this Affair of the Sonic Weapons Attack:

 suggests a mystery wrapped around what everyone is sniffing around--that the protagonists in this Affair appear to be beyond the reach, including the reach of the state security services--of key actors at the center of the action. It is quite likely that the usual suspects are not worthy of much attention, and everyone else is beyond reach. So one might be left with the contemplation of a black box, the contours of which can only be discerned by the effects it has when it projects activity outward. We are likely to see that in the future, but connecting the dots may be harder. This is not to pander to conspiracy theories, but rather to acknowledge that that institutionalization of power may not be as transparent or exercised from places that one might expect.

 

The Trump Administration had promised some sort of explanation, and after several efforts, some connected to the state, others free lance or connected to other actors, the long awaited report prepared for the Department of State has been released. The Report, An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies, was released to the public  in the first week of December 2020 and may be downloaded for free from THIS SITE.  The Report was edited by  by David A. Relman and Julie A. Pavlin for the Standing Committee to Advise the Department of State on Unexplained Health Effects on U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies and is styled a Consensus Study Report of the National Academies of Sciences (eg one that documents "the evidence-based consensus on the study’s statement of task by an authoring committee of experts)", Engineering and Medicine. The Standing Committee was charged generally to "provide a forum for discussion of scientific, technical, and social issues relevant to effective health management and protection of staff and family members assigned to overseas locations. (Standing Committee to Advise the Department of State). 

The popular press response was predictable, both in its conventionally respectable and its tabloid forms, though the tabloid forms are always the more provocative reads. Yet in this case the rports are remarkably similar, and in both cases quite restrained.  The Daily Mail (beyond its usual screeching headline) notes only: "The mysterious symptoms American spies and diplomats in Cuba and China have suffered could be due to a directed microwave energy, says a new report by the National Academies of Sciences. The new report, which has been obtained by NBC News, does not explicitly say that the microwaves were deployed intentionally as a weapon, but does not rule that possibility out. Medical and scientific experts from the Academies of Sciences studied 40 State Department employees and noted that no similar symptoms had previously been recorded in medical literature." (Mysterious neurological symptoms suffered by American spies and diplomats in Cuba and China - dubbed 'Havana Syndrome' - could be the result of a microwave energy weapon, says new report). NBC News noted "The report, obtained Friday by NBC News, does not conclude that the directed energy was delivered intentionally, by a weapon, as some U.S. officials have long believed. But it raises that disturbing possibility." (Havana Syndrome' likely caused by pulsed microwave energy, government study finds). See also BBC; the Guardian; .  Interestingly the Report from outside the West was more pointed. The India Express noted "By calling it “directed” and “pulsed” energy, the report leaves no room for confusion that the victims’ exposure was targeted and not due to common sources of microwave energy, such as, a mobile phone. The report also mentions that the immediate symptoms that patients reported — including sensations of pain and buzzing sound — apparently emanated from a particular direction, or occurred in a specific spot in a room." (Explained: What is ‘Havana Syndrome’, what does the latest report say about the mysterious illness?). And the New York Times considered the consequences of whatever narrative would be built around the Committee Report  in the usual dismissive tones it has adopted since 2016 and will likely abandon after January 2021 ("For the Trump administration, acknowledging that the incidents were the result of a foreign attack could have necessitated evacuating American missions in China, disrupting an important economic relationship. The administration did take a harder approach in Cuba, which aligned with its larger goal of reversing President Barack Obama’s diplomatic opening with Havana.").


There were two sentences in the report worth noting, which follows without comment: "The committee is left with a number of concerns. First, even though it was not in a position to assess or comment on how these DOS cases arose, such as a possible source of directed, pulsed RF energy and the exact circumstances of the putative exposures, the mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm to others, as if the U.S. government does not have its hands full already with naturally occurring threats." (An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies, p. xi).


Faith Bacon, 'Dance of Shame' 1942
And that leads to the only point I will make here:  It s clear that there is a race among states to exploit advances in technology.  And what better than the sort of weapon that can disable or kill an enemy without disturbing the property or terrain that is the object of conflict.  More importantly most states now realize (conformed by the fiascos of American 20th century police actions in the Middle East and Central Asia) that the era of large armies projecting strength may be giving way in most ordinary actions (exceptions of course include invasions of claimed territories and the like) to quite targeted projections of lethal force.  And where that projection can be undertaken from a distance (the pioneering American approach) or with tech that treats an individual perhaps like a piece of chicken in a microwave machine) the fighting, then the cost of conflict goes down (for the moment) and its value increases (provocatively here). More importantly such a movement parallels moments on that other theatre of warfare--economic warfare through targeted sanctions regimes--Global Magnitsky in the United States and the European Union version about to be rolled out. In this context resolution becomes politically unpalatable--not because of a lack of feeling for those who have been the subject of the cynical experiments and dueling among the states with a stake in these technologies and their refinement--to the credit of none of them. I suspect this is as good as the public will get--and we are lucky to get even this fan dance.  Even the Committee that produced this report was allowed a quite limited access ("much of the detail and many of the investigations performed by others were not available to it, either because they are classified for reasons of national security or restricted for other reasons").

Make no mistake: sonic and microwave weaponry (so-called) are here and here to stay.  That no one wants to acknowledge their existence, or the desire to produce a wide variety of these tools for everything from the control of the masses, to mass surveillance, to offensive and defensive uses in conflict (either external or internal) speaks both to their power and the delicate stage of development in of these tools. The pity is that states are being secretive and their connection to the law-state tenuous. This is in turn a problem that presents differently in liberal democratic and Marxist Leninist states each seeking global moral authority and legitimacy in exercising (sometimes destructive) power. The greater pity is what these weapons suggest about the ordering of society.  One learns a great deal about the underlying principles of actual social organization by the kind and use of the tools used to manage people--individuals and collectives.  And sonic and microwave weaponry tell us that society must be managed; that social collectives are commodities necessary for the production of social ordering, that this social ordering is grounded on stability and productivity.  These devices (weapons when used offensively against other collectives, though it is not clear that there is a consensus on the nomenclature for these devices and many uses) are in turn an essential component in the larger toolkit of managerialism (in domestic and international) ordering.  That is what is slowly emerging.  Combined with big data analytics these devices might have utility for all sorts of purposes, only some of which cause injury and death. "Reading from a script, Indian CDS General Bipin Rawat commented, “Non-contact warfare will help us in gaining advantage over the adversary in future. Therefore, it is important to understand the context in which we need to move forward in this direction...Quantum technology, cyberspace and above all artificial intelligence, all these need to be leveraged”." (Sixth generation warfare).
 
To understand  both it and the secrecy surrounding it, one strong enough to tempt both Democratic and Republican Administrations to tolerate the sacrifice of diplomatic personnel and others in the testings and deployments of prototypes and scalable versions of what may be rolled out,, it may be necessary to understand better the emerging forms of 6th generation warfare.  6GW:
leverages sophisticated technology to manipulate space and time. . .  Just understand that in 6GW, we are getting inside our enemy’s OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act). Once inside, we can control what they see and hear, what they think, what they decide, and what they do, all to our advantage. .  . . Meanwhile, let's consider what Sun Tzu teaches:"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate."(Sixth generation warfare: manipulating space and time)
6GW makes little distinction between offensive and defensive between weapons that disrupt economies, information flows, or the physical functioning of the human capital of opponents (whether domestic or foreign). As part of a toolkit of rewards and punishments in domestic and international affairs they will likely offer substantial new options that at once avoid the controversies of old fashioned warfare and conflict management.  But they do that by avoiding the conversation int he first place. There is much more to come.

The Report reface and Summary follow.

Ruminations 98: Brief Reflections on National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

 
AP file photo 1941 (available HERE)

As time passes, what was for the Nation a personal and deeply felt event, one that changed the course of American history, or at least the narrative of the nation and its self conception,  becomes  more an more a historical moment.  That historical moment in turn, becomes the object of narrative rewriting (if the event is to retain meaning in the historical resent) or otherwise recede in the national memory into what eventually will be a footnote used to torment students of history by teachers obsessed by dates and events.

Sometimes, and for a little while, the political branches of the general government will be moved to legislate an importance to such events. And in the process will also seek to legislate its meaning. So it was that as the generation that lived through the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the then fairly new territory of the Hawaiian Islands began to age and die in increasing numbers, Congress sought to legislate memory by enacting Public Law 103-308, as amended, designating December 7 of each year as “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.” Much more advanced in its progress toward the hidden recesses of history has been the 8 December attack on facilities in the US territory of the Philippines on 8 December 1941 initiated within hours of the strike on Pearl Harbor and launched the invasion of the territory by Imperial ground troops (a remembrance here).

The text of the "National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.” is worth reading from time to time and on no better day than this:
Public Law 103-308 103d Congress 36 USC 169. Joint Resolution Designating December 7 of each year as "National Pearl Harbor Remembrance

Aug. 23, 1994 Day".

[H.J. Res. 131] Whereas, on December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy and Air Force attacked units of the armed forces of the United States stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Whereas more than 2,000 citizens of the United States were killed and more than 1,000 citizens of the United States were wounded in the attack on Pearl Harbor; Whereas the attack on Pearl Harbor marked the entry of the United States into World War II; Whereas the veterans of World War II and all other people of the United States commemorate December 7 in remembrance of the attack on Pearl Harbor; and Whereas commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor will instill in all people of the United States a greater understanding and appreciation of the selfless sacrifice of the individuals who served in the armed forces of the United States during World War II: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That December 7 of each year is designated as "National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day" and the President is authorized and requested— (1) to issue annually a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe the day with appropriate ceremonies and activities; and (2) to urge all Federal agencies, and interested organizations, groups, and individuals, to fly the flag of the United States at halfstaff each December 7 in honor of the individuals who died as a result of their service at Pearl Harbor. Approved August 23, 1994.
Presidents have duly produced the required proclamation in the years since. They do not vary much within the terms of an administration.  The 2020 Proclamation of Mr. Trump may be accessed here; compare the text of the 2012 Proclamation of mr. Obama HERE. Governors will usually then order flags flown at half staff (example here), and perhaps increasingly muted commemorations are held as the pool of those wil direct memories shrinks and their memories as well. Generally they follow the language of the Proclamation and explain it to suit the year, though usually in marginally different ways.  But then, in how many different ways may one proclaim a day of remembrance for the dead during the course of an event that formally brought the United States into war with the Japanese Empire and thereafter with the German Reich? To what ends a reduction of the event to a (well deserved) commemoration of individual sacrifice quite precisely contextualized within history?


Perhaps a way to think about the answer to these questions  depends on the utility of key moments in history to those who manage the construction and reconstruction of national identity, national purpose, and national senses of one's place i the world and in relation to others. The Japanese Imperial attacks on Pearl Harbor, as part of its half century long effort to construct its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere then blocked by the Americans, has been overtaken by events.  Japan is now a key American ally and a key partner in the development of economic and cultural globalization. The American war to reconstruct its own sense of its national volk has produced a refocus from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the incarceration of Japanese citizens and residents by the Americans after  that start of the war. And Americans  have cultivated a quite distinct and self critical view (or rather a war among its elites respecting the view) of militarism and imperialism especially after 11 September 2001. New forms of co-prosperity have been put forward since 1945; and these new models of co-prosperity keep coming to suit the times and the reach of those states with the power not just to conceive of new forms of such shared prosperity but of the ideological principles and power relations necessary to give them effect.
 
And yet, despite the fairy wooden and increasingly detached motions of memory practices with increasingly less enthusiasm by Americans to honor their own history and their own historical choices (however flawed they may appear to their descendants, and thus judged, used strategically for modern internal battles for the national soul), there are others  who continue to invest the Great Japanese War of the Pcific with increasing rather than decreasing meaning.  It is to that  movement--to the re invigoration of the "meaning" of the defeat of the Greater East Asia Co-Propserity Sphere, and the contemporary contests for its replacement with a different foundation for East Asian Co-Prosperity centered elsewhere and under a distinctly different ideological basis, that perhaps ought to be worth the moment of contemplation that the commemorations of 7 December 1941 were designed to foster.
 
But that will not happen. And the opportunity to consider the cyclidity of history and the repetition of patterns of long term movements in the region--as well as their effects in the world, will be missed: certainly by the Trump Administration, quite likely by the incoming Biden Administration, and yet not by the administrations of those other national victims of that Japanese experiment in global economic and political control.  As Americans continue their journey to the innermost regions of a national soul now in construction, others may now be (quite vocally and publicly) drawing a different and more aggressively outwardly projected, set of lessons that may one day soon be put to the test.  

To those who died on that day, and in the years that followed, the nation rightly salutes you and acknowledges that supreme sacrifice in defense of the nation. May you find peace everlasting, and may your loved ones find solace  in the great good that emerged through so much pain.

Friday, December 04, 2020

Save the Date: "Caught in a Perfect “Storm”: Are Havana’s Responses Sufficient?": An ASCE Virtual Conference" 4-6 January 2021

 



 

 I am delighted to share this "Save the Date" for the event: Caught in a Perfect “Storm”: Are Havana’s Responses Sufficient? to be held 4-6 January 2021.

The Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy usually holds its annual conference in late July. This year, the COVID pandemic made that impossible. In its place we have been working hard, to offer people interested in contemporary issues the study of Cuban society, politics, economy and law an accessible, alternative program. This year we divided the annual program into two parts.  The first entitled From the Castros to COVID: n ASCE Virtual Conference" was held 13-15 August 2020. Caught in a Perfect “Storm”: Are Havana’s Responses Sufficient? will round out our 2020 virtual programming. 


We will offer six panels over three days. They include (1) Cuba’s Economic Situation and Strategy; (2) External Relations; (3) US-Cuba Economic Relations; and (4) Agriculture.  In addition, the Program includes a book discussion around the essays in La Cuba que quisimos. Essays on the New Cuban Constitution; and a quite timely panel on Contemporary Crises in Cuba and Venezuela.

The theme of ASCE’s January conference will focus on Cuba’s current economic problems and the Cuban governments announced responses (reforms). The focus will be on analysis of policies and suggested policies that improve those reforms. Indeed, the issue of Reform, yet again, as it has so many times over the long arc of the history of post "revolutionary" Cuba, has been one of developing elegant statements of idealized objectives and then offering what in retrospect might be characterized second or third best solutions; and that might be the only thing on offer now. Yet even these second best solutions can be used to bring significant improvements to the Cuban economy.

A tentative Program follows.  Registration is free but required (there is limited capacity).  More information will be made available in future posts along with the link to registration. 

Prior to the conference ASCE will prepare a number of interviews of the participant. The interviews will be posted to the ASCE YouTube page as well as to the ASCE Playlist of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics.

 

Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Automated Law and Social Media Platforms as Private Administrative Agencies: On Amnesty International's New Report--"''Let us Breathe!': Censorship and criminalization of online expression in Viet Nam"

 

On 1 December 2020 Amnesty International released a highly critical report entitled ''Let us Breathe!': Censorship and criminalization of online expression in Viet Nam. The subject of that report was in the relationship between state authorities and Western social media platforms in the business of facilitating (and managing) discursive space online in Vietnam. In its Press Release, Amnesty noted:

Tech giants Facebook and YouTube are allowing themselves to become tools of the Vietnamese authorities’ censorship and harassment of its population, in an alarming sign of how these companies could increasingly operate in repressive countries, a new report by Amnesty International reveals today. The 78-page report, "Let us Breathe!”: Censorship and criminalization of online expression in Viet Nam”, documents the systematic repression of peaceful online expression in Viet Nam, including the widespread “geo-blocking” of content deemed critical of the authorities, all while groups affiliated to the government deploy sophisticated campaigns on these platforms to harass everyday users into silence and fear.

* * *
“In the last decade, the right to freedom of expression flourished on Facebook and YouTube in Viet Nam. More recently, however, authorities began focusing on peaceful online expression as an existential threat to the regime,” said Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Campaigns. * * * In 2018, Facebook’s income from Viet Nam neared US$1 billion – almost one third of all revenue from Southeast Asia. Google, which owns YouTube, earned US$475 million in Viet Nam during the same period, mainly from YouTube advertising. The size of these profits underlines the importance for Facebook and Google of maintaining market access in Viet Nam.

The Report is more nuanced than its Press Release might suggest. Its authors admit that the baseline for much of the criticism is founded on the sometimes significant differences in political ideology, and in the understanding of the scope and practice of human rights that separate Western internationalist understandings and those of Marxist Leninist states. (e.g.,
''Let us Breathe!': , p. 16).  Yet that is hardly the principal value of this report.  Rather, perhaps the more significant element of the report focuses on the social media platforms themselves--their character as administrative organs responsible for the reliable operation of discourse that does not offend its principal stakeholders as those stakeholding communities change from place to place.  Social media platforms, then, assume a protean character, one that can change ist form to suit time, place and ruing ideology, but which preserves its position as the space within which such discourse is managed.  

The Executive Summary of the Report and my own very brief reflections follow.