Friday, December 30, 2022

Ruminations 101(5) (The year of Obatala): Looking Back on 2022 in Epigrams and Aphorisms --Part 5, "Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce"


Pix credit here ("Harley Quinn tells the story of how psychiatrist-turned-villain Harleen Quinzel breaks up with her long-time romantic interest, the Joker, and sets out to find her place among Gotham City’s villains and heroes. In the first season, we followed Harley as she formed her own crew of villains and tried to join the Legion of Doom.")



pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony


 For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, 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), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).   

Pix Credit here
At the start of this year I noted, in passing on the Annual Oracle of the Ifa practitioners of Cuba, that this was to be the year of Obatala (The Orishas Speak: The 2022 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2022 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation). "This is a year of unsuccessful revolution, of challenges that may not succeed but that may weaken all orders. This is the year of rational irrationality, of creative destruction that is both rational and irrational. It is a year of great passion, if dishonesty, and of violence." (Ibid.). The ruling Orisha of the year was Obatala.  Obatala is the essence of rationality and irrationality.  Obatala represents the highest form of rational creative potential as well as its basest forms of dissipation. Obatala is, in the tradition of the West, the King of Cups in Tarot.  These are to be taken in their semiotic sense--they provide condensed representations of a related cluster of impulses that sometimes manifest.

And 2022 did not disappoint.  It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and  rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.

And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The theme of this fifth set focuses on good intentions gone bad.  This is irresponsibility of the responsible entity. These are individuals and states that point in multiple directions simultaneously.  At some point they will snap or be snapped. . . or become irrelevant except to the tabloid press. More likely they will remain instruments of others--internally or externally. Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:

Part 1, Seeing and Knowing

Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?

Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?

Part 4:"de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"

Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce

 

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Ruminations 101(4) (The year of Obatala): Looking Back on 2022 in Epigrams and Aphorisms --Part 4, "de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum "


Pix Credit here



pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony


 For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, 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), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).   

Pix Credit here
At the start of this year I noted, in passing on the Annual Oracle of the Ifa practitioners of Cuba, that this was to be the year of Obatala (The Orishas Speak: The 2022 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2022 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation). "This is a year of unsuccessful revolution, of challenges that may not succeed but that may weaken all orders. This is the year of rational irrationality, of creative destruction that is both rational and irrational. It is a year of great passion, if dishonesty, and of violence." (Ibid.). The ruling Orisha of the year was Obatala.  Obatala is the essence of rationality and irrationality.  Obatala represents the highest form of rational creative potential as well as its basest forms of dissipation. Obatala is, in the tradition of the West, the King of Cups in Tarot.  These are to be taken in their semiotic sense--they provide condensed representations of a related cluster of impulses that sometimes manifest.

And 2022 did not disappoint.  It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and  rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.

And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The theme of this fourth set is "de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum." 2022, perhaps, provides evidence that, indeed, the greatest and most prophetic product of the Enlightenment--for its excesses of good and evil--was indeed the Marquis de Sade. Before my readers get their drawers in a bind--the reference is to the intellectual elements rather than (for the moment) the physical depravities  that are all, in their own ways, children of the Enlightenment; their depraved manifestations, at least when observed from the perspective of ideas.  "“Alfred Hitchcock was also influenced,” des Cars adds. “Once you start looking, you see Sade’s presence throughout popular culture.” (Smithsonian). 

Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:

Part 1, Seeing and Knowing

Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?

Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?

Part 4:"de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"

Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Ruminations 101(3) (The year of Obatala): Looking Back on 2022 in Epigrams and Aphorisms --Part 3, "Words, huh, yeah, what are they good for?"

 

Pix Credit here



pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony


 For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, 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), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).   

Pix Credit here
At the start of this year I noted, in passing on the Annual Oracle of the Ifa practitioners of Cuba, that this was to be the year of Obatala (The Orishas Speak: The 2022 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2022 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation). "This is a year of unsuccessful revolution, of challenges that may not succeed but that may weaken all orders. This is the year of rational irrationality, of creative destruction that is both rational and irrational. It is a year of great passion, if dishonesty, and of violence." (Ibid.). The ruling Orisha of the year was Obatala.  Obatala is the essence of rationality and irrationality.  Obatala represents the highest form of rational creative potential as well as its basest forms of dissipation. Obatala is, in the tradition of the West, the King of Cups in Tarot.  These are to be taken in their semiotic sense--they provide condensed representations of a related cluster of impulses that sometimes manifest.

And 2022 did not disappoint.  It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and  rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.

And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The theme of this third set are words. It focuses on the way that 2022 revealed words in their glory: objects, projectiles, theater, and invitations. In the process they better expose 2022 for what it was--a year that revealed as hard as it tried to veil. 

Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:

Part 1, Seeing and Knowing

Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?

Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?

Part 4:"de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"

Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Ruminations 101(2) (The year of Obatala): Looking Back on 2022 in Epigrams and Aphorisms --Part 2, "War, huh, yeah; What is it Good For?"

 

Pix Credit DW here:("'War' written by song writing legends Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong was originally an album track for The Temptations . It was re-recorded and released as single by Edwin Starr so as not to upset conservative fans of the Temptations. This version went to number one in the US in 1970 and became one of the most popular protest songs ever recorded." Ibid )


pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony


 For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, 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), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).   

Pix Credit here
At the start of this year I noted, in passing on the Annual Oracle of the Ifa practitioners of Cuba, that this was to be the year of Obatala (The Orishas Speak: The 2022 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2022 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation). "This is a year of unsuccessful revolution, of challenges that may not succeed but that may weaken all orders. This is the year of rational irrationality, of creative destruction that is both rational and irrational. It is a year of great passion, if dishonesty, and of violence." (Ibid.). The ruling Orisha of the year was Obatala.  Obatala is the essence of rationality and irrationality.  Obatala represents the highest form of rational creative potential as well as its basest forms of dissipation. Obatala is, in the tradition of the West, the King of Cups in Tarot.  These are to be taken in their semiotic sense--they provide condensed representations of a related cluster of impulses that sometimes manifest.

And 2022 did not disappoint.  It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and  rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.

And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The theme of this second set is war. It focuses on the heating up of the third world conflict one front in which began with the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, but which acquired its contemporary form in 2022.

Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:

Part 1, Seeing and Knowing

Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?

Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?

Part 4: "de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"

Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce

Monday, December 26, 2022

Ruminations 101(1) (The year of Obatala): Looking Back on 2022 in Epigrams and Aphorisms--Part 1, Seeing and Knowng

 

pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony


 For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, 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), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).   

Pix Credit here
At the start of this year I noted, in passing on the Annual Oracle of the Ifa practitioners of Cuba, that this was to be the year of Obatala (The Orishas Speak: The 2022 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2022 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation). "This is a year of unsuccessful revolution, of challenges that may not succeed but that may weaken all orders. This is the year of rational irrationality, of creative destruction that is both rational and irrational. It is a year of great passion, if dishonesty, and of violence." (Ibid.). The ruling Orisha of the year was Obatala.  Obatala is the essence of rationality and irrationality.  Obatala represents the highest form of rational creative potential as well as its basest forms of dissipation. Obatala is, in the tradition of the West, the King of Cups in Tarot.  These are to be taken in their semiotic sense--they provide condensed representations of a related cluster of impulses that sometimes manifest.

And 2022 did not disappoint.  It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and  rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.

And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. This first set focuses on history--from its etymological roots: too see; to know (to signify).  It is in the context of seeing and knowing, and putting them together, that the highs and lows of 2022 begin to emerge. 

Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:

Part 1, Seeing and Knowing

Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?

Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?

Part 4: "de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"

Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce

Friday, December 23, 2022

"Narrative, Combat, and Fealty to a Ruling Ideology--Multi-Tiered Warfare in the Post-Global": Brief Observations on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Address to a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress, 'We stand, we fight and we will win. Because we are united. Ukraine, America and the entire free world'

Pix Credit here

That connection between visual imagery, textual narrative, and its inscription onto flags (objects that serve as a symbolic representation of both) and uniforms, have been powerful semiotic devices in the United States and other great states for a long time. In contemporary societies, drifting from a primary focus on text to imagery and physical performance, the need to leverage text with visual symbols--especially flags and uniforms--has become acute. The power of these  new forms of communication, and their effectiveness as an instrument of irregular warfare, was powerfully evidenced in the United States Congress on 21 December 2022 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy., when the Ukrainian President delivered remarks--and more--to a joint session of Congress. 
 
The remarks, the text , which were republished on the Ukrainian Presidential website as 'We stand, we fight and we will win. Because we are united. Ukraine America and the entire free world' do not capture the entirety of the event, better understood by watching and hearing rather than by reading (video of remarks as delivered  here), President Zelenskyy, of course, is no stranger to the politics of the leadership class in the United States.  And he has been caught up in its intrigues and narcissistic self-indulgence, a little bit less of which might have produced substantial benefits to the Republic (though not to those in the game).  
Pix Credit HERE
In 2019, a few months after he was elected, Mr. Zelensky became something of a household name in the United States when a phone conversation he had with President Donald J. Trump helped trigger Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. At the time, Mr. Zelensky was seeking a meeting with Mr. Trump, but Mr. Trump wanted something in return. . . .Mr. Zelensky never visited Mr. Trump. Mr. Zelensky visited Mr. Biden at the White House on Sept. 1, 2021, a few months before Russia’s invasion. The visit on Wednesday is Mr. Zelensky’s first to the United States since then. (Zelensky’s entanglement in American politics started with Trump)

Pix credit here
President Zelensky, then, is well aware of the perils and opportunities to come a-beggin' to the Americans.  And he understands that these elites require something of value in return--the American way of empire and the accounting for responsibility beyond the technical territorial borders of the Republic--though the quid pro quo depends on the character of the administration then in power. What appears to serve all administration, however, is not just internal self-interest, but also an interest in the preservation of national leadership over the complex structures of supra national public and private governance that is today shorthanded as the rules based international order founded on liberal democratic principles and driven by private markets.  What stands in his way are the cultures of a narrow and rigid America First agenda by what is left of Mr. Trump's supporters in an alliance of convenience with doctrinaire and increasingly old fashioned libertarians whose view of the world and the US role in it apparently ceased to stay current toward the end of the last century. (e.g., as observed in Zelensky faces an uphill battle with many Republican House members.).

Pix Credit here
These brief observations start from the the text of President Zelenskyy's those remarks. Nonetheless its focus is on the construction and deployment of  sub-text, and of the symbols and performance (the ritual of the flags) that in some ways were more powerfully evocative and potent in both the shaping of the narrative of this war and in aligning the Ukrainian cause with the triggering symbols of the American Revolutionary struggle. These extra-textual mechanism, the deployment of symbols, the signalling through objects (cloths, flags, and the like), are essential elements in the irregular construction of relations between a smaller and dependent state and a large, fickle, and reluctant (new) patron. It also suggests the way that dependent states, faced with an aging leader state that may be losing its way, work hard to ensure that the leader class of leading states continue to serve their function--as the guardians of a system within which they derive the benefits of occupying the pinnacle space.  The Remarks acquired additional importance by reference to its mirror image--the receipt, by the senior leadership of China, of Mr. Putin's representative, Dmitry Medvedev. "Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, posted a video on his Telegram channel showing him meeting Xi, smiling for photos and a meeting between Chinese and Russian officials.Medvedev said he and Xi had discussed the two countries' "no limits" strategic partnership, as well as Ukraine" (Russia's Medvedev meets China's Xi in Beijing, says Ukraine conflict discussed)
 
The Observations start with the text and the evocation of the state of warfare in the post-global.  Mr. Zelenskyy invokes a field of battle operating simultaneously on three levels.  The first is at the level of organizing the narrative of the conflict and giving it (and its actors) moral positions.  The second is the field of traditional war and control of territory and those within it. The third is space in which the rules and world view for the ordering of the relations among states and the expectations of conduct within and between them is settled. The Observations then turn to the performative and symbolic elements of the remarks.  These play a critical role is solidifying messages and in building points of emphasis.  Here one works at the level of emotion and alignment with national cues.  The subtle invocations of American military traditions (the early 19th century US Marine Corp battle flag) and  the embrace of individual commitment to a war of liberation (from the US Declaration of Independence) work subliminally to underline key elements of the speech.  Lastly, the Observation considers the politics and burdens of gratitude. The rituals of respect and the development of the performance of state based fealty rituals in the post-global are very much in evidence. None of this is meant as a criticism.  Quite the contrary. More than any other set of leaders, both Mr. Biden and Mr. Zelenskyy appear to be among the most important actors in the reshaping of  the foundations and sensibilities of relations among political collectives and their stakeholders. Mr. Zelenskyy's remarks provide a window of clarity into its mechanics. 

The Observations and text of President Zelenskyy's remarks follow.
 

 

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Algorithmic Governance and the Constitution of Inherent Bias of Data: Brief Reflection on the Völkerrechtsblog Symposium--Racial Profiling in Germany Part 4 (Observations on Anna Hankings-Evans, "Race and Empire in International Law")


Pix credit here

 


In Basu v. Germany (215/19; Judgment 18.10.2022 [Section III Information Note published; Text of 3rd Section here and here], the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considered the applicability of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) taken in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) to the following set of facts:

In July 2012 two police officers carried out an identity check on the applicant, a German national of Indian origin, and his daughter, on a train which had just passed the border from the Czech Republic to Germany. The applicant asked the police officers why he was checked, and they said it was a random check. One of them later added that cigarettes were frequently smuggled on that train, but confirmed that there had not been any specific suspicion in respect of the applicant in this regard. The administrative courts declined to examine the merits of the applicant’s complaint about having been treated in a discriminatory manner by the identity check. (Basu v. Germany)

The ECHR concluded that (A) "the identity check by the police under these special circumstances had had sufficiently serious consequences for his right to respect for his private life. The identity check in question therefore felt within the ambit of Article 8;" and (B) "the State authorities had failed to comply with their duty to take all reasonable measures to ascertain through an independent body whether or not a discriminatory attitude had played a role in the identity check, and thus had failed to carry out an effective investigation in this regard." (Ibid.). 

The folks at the Völkerrechtsblog have now confronted this issue in a very interesting online symposium: Racial Profiling in Germany. "In this symposium, scholars reflect on the European Court of Human Rights’ recent Basu v. Germany decision. They situate the decision within recent conversations surrounding race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse more broadly." (Racial Profiling in Germany Symposium). The Symposium Introduction provides a nice description:

In Basu v. Germany, an international body reminded Germany once again of its less-than-perfect human rights record regarding racial discrimination. In this case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that Germany had violated the right to privacy according to Article 8 of the European of Human Rights (ECHR) in conjunction with the right to non-discrimination (Article 14 ECHR) by failing to provide a proper and independent investigation into allegations of racial profiling. This symposium takes the decision as a starting point to reflect on the practice of racial profiling in Germany and, more generally, on the place of race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse. (Racial Profiling in Germany )

The excellent symposium essays seek to translate the practices at issue in Basu v. Germany into the language of race and racism (and this appears to be an easy case in that respect given the sensibilities of the times). At the same time, the essays provide a doorway through which it might also be worth looking at the larger issues lurking in the background.  

I will be posting the Symposium contributions here and will also contribute some brief reflections and engagement with each of the excellent and thought provoking contributions. For this Part 4 we consider Anna Hankings-Evans, "excellent essay, "Race and Empire in International Law." Using the Basu decision "as an entry-point and example," and drawing from the insights of Critical Race Theory, Hankings-Evans argues that "both the structuring power of ‘race’ and its marginalization are a product of the history of international law and its construction of the 'other'.” (Hankings-Evans essay). Basu, then, while a strep in a preferred direction for conception and application of anti-discrimination principles, requires further development. Hankings-Evans then astutely criticizes the jurisprudential conception of neutrality in the context of an objective and reasonable test.  The rationale is well known--objective subjectivity is both  deeply historically embedded and ideologically constructed. Because, it is argued, international law cannot be detached from its history, and that history structurally embeds the animating notion of racial and ethnic categories as a useful means of ordering the hierarchy of political communities as a basis for constructing pre-21st century imperial orders, the failure to interrogate of whiteness (the whiteness of international law), and individuated administrative subjectivity (intent) in the German context reduces the relevance and value of the jurisprudence. The implications for data based analytics can be profound.

Other Essays and Reflections produced for this online symposium may be accessed here:

Part I Introduction

Part 2 Observations on the Case Information Note 

Part 3: Observations on Elisabeth Kaneza, "Human Rights Standards for Accountability and Effective Remedies.

Part 4: Observations on Anna Hankings-Evans, "Race and Empire in International Law"

Part 5: Observations on Lisa Washington, "Racist Police Practices"

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Algorithmic Governance and the Constitution of Inherent Bias of Data: Brief Reflection on the Völkerrechtsblog Symposium--Racial Profiling in Germany Part 3 (Observations on Elisabeth Kaneza', "Human Rights Standards for Accountability and Effective Remedies")

Pix Credit here

 


In Basu v. Germany (215/19; Judgment 18.10.2022 [Section III Information Note published; Text of 3rd Section here and here], the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considered the applicability of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) taken in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) to the following set of facts:

In July 2012 two police officers carried out an identity check on the applicant, a German national of Indian origin, and his daughter, on a train which had just passed the border from the Czech Republic to Germany. The applicant asked the police officers why he was checked, and they said it was a random check. One of them later added that cigarettes were frequently smuggled on that train, but confirmed that there had not been any specific suspicion in respect of the applicant in this regard. The administrative courts declined to examine the merits of the applicant’s complaint about having been treated in a discriminatory manner by the identity check. (Basu v. Germany)

The ECHR concluded that (A) "the identity check by the police under these special circumstances had had sufficiently serious consequences for his right to respect for his private life. The identity check in question therefore felt within the ambit of Article 8;" and (B) "the State authorities had failed to comply with their duty to take all reasonable measures to ascertain through an independent body whether or not a discriminatory attitude had played a role in the identity check, and thus had failed to carry out an effective investigation in this regard." (Ibid.). 

The folks at the Völkerrechtsblog have now confronted this issue in a very interesting online symposium: Racial Profiling in Germany. "In this symposium, scholars reflect on the European Court of Human Rights’ recent Basu v. Germany decision. They situate the decision within recent conversations surrounding race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse more broadly." (Racial Profiling in Germany Symposium). The Symposium Introduction provides a nice description:

In Basu v. Germany, an international body reminded Germany once again of its less-than-perfect human rights record regarding racial discrimination. In this case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that Germany had violated the right to privacy according to Article 8 of the European of Human Rights (ECHR) in conjunction with the right to non-discrimination (Article 14 ECHR) by failing to provide a proper and independent investigation into allegations of racial profiling. This symposium takes the decision as a starting point to reflect on the practice of racial profiling in Germany and, more generally, on the place of race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse. (Racial Profiling in Germany )

The excellent symposium essays seek to translate the practices at issue in Basu v. Germany into the language of race and racism (and this appears to be an easy case in that respect given the sensibilities of the times). At the same time, the essays provide a doorway through which it might also be worth looking at the larger issues lurking in the background.  

I will be posting the Symposium contributions here and will also contribute some brief reflections and engagement with each of the excellent and thought provoking contributions. For this Part 3 we consider Elisabeth Kaneza's excellent essay, "Human Rights Standards for Accountability and Effective Remedies." Kaneza focuses on a legal and normative construction of profiling--in the context of information that is or can have discriminatory effects. The essay is particularly useful for helping to unpack the issue of definition (of profiling) and with it the normative baseline from which such definitional possibilities may be identified. The three standards for triggering remediation of prohibited discrimination--(1) "mainly prompted"; (2) "objective and reasonable justification"; (3) "to any degree"--are usefully compared to the standard that appears to be emerging from  Basu v. Germany and its two part "severity" standard. Kaneza makes a case for the "to any degree" standard; my observations suggest consequences for data driven descriptive and predictive analytics. 

Other Essays and Reflections produced for this online symposium may be accessed here:

Part I Introduction

Part 2 Observations on the Case Information Note 

Part 3: Observations on Elisabeth Kaneza, "Human Rights Standards for Accountability and Effective Remedies.

Part 4: Observations on Anna Hankings-Evans, "Race and Empire in International Law"

Part 5: Observations on Lisa Washington, "Racist Police Practices"

Saturday, December 17, 2022

Algorithmic Governance and the Constitution of Inherent Bias of Data: Brief Reflection on the Völkerrechtsblog Symposium--Racial Profiling in Germany Part 2 (Observations on the Case Information Note)

 

Pix Credit here

 


In Basu v. Germany (215/19; Judgment 18.10.2022 [Section III Information Note published]; Text of 3rd Section here and below), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considered the applicability of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) taken in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) to the following set of facts:

In July 2012 two police officers carried out an identity check on the applicant, a German national of Indian origin, and his daughter, on a train which had just passed the border from the Czech Republic to Germany. The applicant asked the police officers why he was checked, and they said it was a random check. One of them later added that cigarettes were frequently smuggled on that train, but confirmed that there had not been any specific suspicion in respect of the applicant in this regard. The administrative courts declined to examine the merits of the applicant’s complaint about having been treated in a discriminatory manner by the identity check. (Basu v. Germany)

The ECHR concluded that (A) "the identity check by the police under these special circumstances had had sufficiently serious consequences for his right to respect for his private life. The identity check in question therefore felt within the ambit of Article 8;" and (B) "the State authorities had failed to comply with their duty to take all reasonable measures to ascertain through an independent body whether or not a discriminatory attitude had played a role in the identity check, and thus had failed to carry out an effective investigation in this regard." (Ibid.). 

The folks at the Völkerrechtsblog have now confronted this issue in a very interesting online symposium: Racial Profiling in Germany. "In this symposium, scholars reflect on the European Court of Human Rights’ recent Basu v. Germany decision. They situate the decision within recent conversations surrounding race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse more broadly." (Racial Profiling in Germany Symposium). The Symposium Introduction provides a nice description:

In Basu v. Germany, an international body reminded Germany once again of its less-than-perfect human rights record regarding racial discrimination. In this case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that Germany had violated the right to privacy according to Article 8 of the European of Human Rights (ECHR) in conjunction with the right to non-discrimination (Article 14 ECHR) by failing to provide a proper and independent investigation into allegations of racial profiling. This symposium takes the decision as a starting point to reflect on the practice of racial profiling in Germany and, more generally, on the place of race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse. (Racial Profiling in Germany )

The excellent symposium essays seek to translate the practices at issue in Basu v. Germany into the language of race and racism (and this appears to be an easy case in that respect given the sensibilities of the times). At the same time, the essays provide a doorway through which it might also be worth looking at the larger issues lurking in the background.  

I will be posting the Symposium contributions here and will also contribute some brief reflections and engagement with each of the excellent and thought provoking contributions. For this Part 2 we consider the information Note that summarizes the key part of the ECHR determination.  The textual analysis is useful for unpacking the complexity beneath what can appear, on a its surface, to be an unremarkable jurisprudence. The issue is not so much the elaboration of an anti-discrimination jurisprudence in general, and as a constraint on the police power more specifically; the issue is that development in the context of the construction and application of data driven analytical and operational tools, both to enhance racial justice and to profile targets of enforcement. What appears simple at first blush becomes more complicated where the legitimacy of data, analytics and its application may depend as much on intent and objective as it does on the inherent qualities of the data or the analytics. More complicated still is the use of forbidden analytics and application to police those constraints. 

Other Essays and Reflections produced for this online symposium may be accessed here:

Part I Introduction

Part 2 Observations on the Case Information Note 

Part 3: Observations on Elisabeth Kaneza, "Human Rights Standards for Accountability and Effective Remedies

Part 4: Observations on Anna Hankings-Evans, "Race and Empire in International Law"

Part 5: Observations on Lisa Washington, "Racist Police Practices"

Thursday, December 15, 2022

Clumsy (Mis)Alignments: Norges Bank Excludes Companies due to an unacceptable risk that the companies contribute to serious human rights abuses

 

Pix credit here

As has become its custom, on 15 December 2022, Norges Bank has announced another batch of decisions. This time,  following recommendations by Council on Ethics, it has decided to exclude the companies PTT PCL, PTT Oil and Business PCL and Cognyte Software Ltd due to an unacceptable risk that the companies contribute to serious human rights abuses. The Council's recommendations on the exclusion of PTT PCL and PTT Oil and Business PCL may be found here. The Ehtics Council's  recommendation may be found here. The recommendation on the exclusion of Cognyte Software Ltd may be found here.

In better news for a company, Norges Bank also announced its decision to discontinue its observation of Leonardo SpA. The basis was a Council determination that  Council the risk of gross corruption in the company’s operations no longer is unacceptable. The recommendation on the discontinuation of observation may be accessed here

The action against PTT PCL; PTT Oil and Business PCL continue Norways use of the Pension Fund Global as a private sector sanctions instrument.  In the process they have expanded, in an interesting way, the reach of complicity principles--in this case with the abuse of its citizens by the military government currently in control of Myanmar (Burma). In this case, the connection is a joint venture for building important infrastructure and capacity with the military-owned conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC). 

In February 2021, the armed forces in Myanmar staged a coup d’état, after which the military has intensified its extremely serious abuses of civilians. Through their activities in the country, PTT and PTTOR provide the armed forces with substantial revenue streams that can finance military operations and abuses. The companies’ business partnerships with MOGE and MEC represents an unacceptable risk of contributing to extremely serious norm abuses in the future. (here)
Recall that the trigger is the risk and not the realization of harm. In that context broad inferences can be drawn from a relationship.  This produces potential conflict with the UN Guiding Principle of Business and Human Rights. It is not clear that, for example, the company runs a greater risk of contributing to human rights harms in Burma by leaving or by staying. See UNGP ¶ 24 ("Where it is necessary to prioritize actions to address actual and potential adverse human rights impacts, business enterprises should
first seek to prevent and mitigate those that are most severe or where delayed response would make them irremediable"). Neither Ethics Council nor Company directly considered this, though the company sought to justify its actions by the economic benefit it provides to Thailand (in part).  A pity. 

It may be time to rethink the way that the Ethgics COuncil and Bank continue to serve as quite clumsy instruments for sanctions programs against states that are deemed to fall beyond the bounds of acceptable conduct.  Being more open about this would substantially streamline the process and align Norges Bank action better with the sanctions programs of the Foreign Ministry.  Unless of course making those those connections murky is the object of current practice.

The Cognyte Software Ltd action continues to evidence the special relationship between Norway and Israel. But that is an old and to some extent uninteresting policy story.  Much more interesting is the way that the decision broadens the concept of causation to a cocktail composed of a "must have known that some of its customers have been accused of extremely serious human rights violations" standards combined with a foreseeability standard tied to risk.  Nonetheless, what really animated the interest of Ethics Council and Bank was a report released by Meta (Meta, Threat Report on the Surveillance-for-Hire Industry, December 2021), annoyed that Cognate was using its platforms for data driven interventions without its permission targeting people that, without permission were considered out of bounds for the sort of aggressive interventionist surveillance undertaken by the company. That report was augmented by reporting by CSOs and others in other places suggesting a connection between the company, its services, and governmental activities that would be deemed unacceptable by Norway (at least without its permission and according to the law of Norway, including its sense of its international obligations). 

This is not to excuse the bad behavior of the company; it is however, a suggestion that in this area (once one gets over the thrill of dinging an Israeli company, something of a sport apparently among Norwegian elites) that the Ethics Council (and more broadly the Ethics Guidelines) ought to consider a blanket ban on companies offering surveillance services and equipment, rather than engage in this sort of one off exercise. that tends to leave mote holes than it can possibly plug.

Taken together, the exclusions suggests the way that both Ethics Council and Norges Bank continue to fail in their basic duty by a stubborn insistence on the perpetuation of a way of approaching the issue of exclusion (and more generally the discipline of financial interventions). And that is the greater pity.  Surely their hearts are in the right place; their textual authority less so, and their strategic vision (as well as their willingness to take interpretive and inferential leaps) in need of rejuvenation. By now, it ought to seem clear to everyone (except perhaps among the drivers of these practices in Norway), that the Ethics Council and Bank are lurching toward a blanket unwillingness to invest in companies that facilitate the operations of the Myanmar government (at least until the military government is overthrown) on the not unreasonable assumption that all such economic intervention facilitates the dictatorship, and thus is capacity to breach Ethics Guidelines. It is as clear that applying emerging European principles (again sadly underdiscussed), that the Ethics Council and Norges Bank are also stumbling toward a blanket presumption .that the economic field of tech enhanced surveillance (hardware, software, and consultation) runs too great a risk of causing human rights harms to be permitted to constitutive a part of the Pension Fund Global's investment universe.  As the late Duke of Edinburgh is said to have uttered on more than one occasion, perhaps it is just time to get on with it. And move on.

Archiving the Ukrainian Internet; Preserving Objects of Cultural Value

 


"More than 1,200 volunteers with SUCHO have saved 10 terabytes of data including 14,000 uploaded items (images and PDFs) and captured parts of 2,300 websites so far. This includes material from Ukrainian museums, library websites, digital exhibits, open access publications and elsewhere.The initiative is using a combination of technologies to crawl and archive sites and content. Some of the information is stored at the Internet Archive, where it can be discovered and accessed using open-source software." (Volunteers Rally to Archive Ukrainian Web Sites)

In March 2022 a group of CSOs, including the Internet Archive, announced efforts to save  what they could of Ukrainian culture and cultural objects online ((Volunteers Rally to Archive Ukrainian Web Sites). It may be recalled that cultural objects may be lost both by direct targeted activities.  Such objects may also be lost especially where such objects are found online, through the targeted or reckless destruction of online infrastructures--servers, and the infrastructure necessary to support the storage and retrieval of such material. The destruction of infrastructure, especially in recent months meant to bomb the Ukrainian population back to the Stone Age and break their spirit and capacity to continue to wage defensive war against the forces of regular and irregular Russia adds to the risk of loss. Preservation, then, may require not just duplication but expatriation of the objects and the infrastructure within which they may be preserved. 

Through Archive-It, a customizable self-service web archiving platform that captures, stores, and provides access to web-based content, free online accounts have been offered to volunteer archivists. Mirage Berry, business development manager for Archive-It, has coordinated support with other preservation partners including the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, and East European & Central Asian Studies Collections librarian Liladhar Pendse at University of California, Berkeley. (Volunteers Rally to Archive Ukrainian Web Sites)

As important, of course, is the destruction of the physical objects that are represented online. The semiotics of the effort ought not to be lost.  One here preserves not the object in certain cases, but the representation of that object, as encoded and retrieval online. Where the object thus represented  is important because of its physical characteristics (a painting, sculpture, etc) then the preservation efforts are doubled--first to protect the physical object, and then to preserve its representation online. This applies to text as well--especially where the objects onto which text is first encoded (old manuscripts or printed works) are themselves of cultural value in their own right.

It appears that the targeting of cultural property will be yet another basis of liability-a double accountability--for whatever government in Russia is ultimately faced with the consequences of this military adventurism with an increasingly apparent absence of moral compass.

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Algorithmic Governance and the Constitution of Inherent Bias of Data: Brief Reflection on the Völkerrechtsblog Symposium--Racial Profiling in Germany Part 1 (Sué González Hauck, Symposium Introduction)

 


 As both liberal democratic and Marxist-Leninist societies lurch inexorably forward in the construction of  systems of algorithmic governance, the transposition of political and normative preferences of society becomes a more significant and immediate issue.  That transposition is necessary because, like words, neither data nor analytics has an ideology or a morality.  Neither is inherently politically sensitive; and both have little regard to social taboos.  That detachment produces the danger--that data and analytics can be weaponized to undermine social taboos, or in the case of the early 21st century--the concentrated efforts of leading forces in both liberal democratic and Marxist-Leninist states to engineer a specific form of morality, and of social relations in the instruments of collective control.  This is neither a terrible thing nor unusual in any respect.  But it is an insight that must be foregrounded to avoid the great error of contemporary debates about the mechanisms of social control--that data, information or analytics is inherently imbued with a soul and a consciousness or character sufficient to express a forbidden bias given the proclivities and objectives of leading ideology (expressed either in constitutional law or in the general program of leading forces constituted as the organized holders of political authority). 

That error, and especially the consequences of investing data, information, or analytics, with an inherent moral character, continues to spice the still nascent and efforts by the vanguards of the traditional legal and constitutional orders to confront and embed these modalities--these languages and forms--of law within their political, economic, social, and political systems. In the liberal democratic West, where many states continue to wrestle with the aftermath and consequences of a race and ethnic based colonial and imperial system, the issues become acute and usually erupt where they touch on race (however constructed and deployed in national context). The issues are compounded where retrograde elements of society, still under socialized to the realities of contemporary social justice moralities (however manifested in local context).

 The folks at the Völkerrechtsblog have now confronted this issue in a very interesting online symposium: Racial Profiling in Germany. "In this symposium, scholars reflect on the European Court of Human Rights’ recent Basu v. Germany decision (215/19; Judgment 18.10.2022 [Section III Information Note published; Text of 3rd Section here and here]. They situate the decision within recent conversations surrounding race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse more broadly." (Racial Profiling in Germany Symposium). The Symposium Introduction provides a nice description:

In Basu v. Germany, an international body reminded Germany once again of its less-than-perfect human rights record regarding racial discrimination. In this case, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that Germany had violated the right to privacy according to Article 8 of the European of Human Rights (ECHR) in conjunction with the right to non-discrimination (Article 14 ECHR) by failing to provide a proper and independent investigation into allegations of racial profiling. This symposium takes the decision as a starting point to reflect on the practice of racial profiling in Germany and, more generally, on the place of race and racism in Germany and in international human rights discourse. (Racial Profiling in Germany )

While the symposium seeks to translate the practices at issue in Basu v. Germany into the language of race and racism ( and this appears to be an easy case in that respect given the sensibilities of the times), it may be worth looking at the larger issues lurking in the background.  

I will be posting the Symposium contributions here and will also contribute some brief reflections and engagement with each of the excellent and thought provoking contributions. For this Part 1 we consider Dr. Sué González Hauck's excellent introduction.

If racism can be understood as a manifestation of profiling for the wrong reasons--that is through an analytics that presupposes that race inevitably triggers something-- does it follow that race is inherently racist as a point of data (that cannot be true if one is looking at this from a racial justice or reparations perspective for example). If that is not the case, then might the issue be the challenge of transforming the use of race in analytics, preserving its criticality in data based governance; or perhaps the equally challenging confrontation with the issue of the gaps between academic, political, cultural, and legal approaches to the identification of data on the basis of taxonomies that may reflect current culture but that have been slated fr transformation by elites.  We return, in an odd and roundabout way to an insight somewhat inadvertently identified a generation ago in Posner's 1992 Sex and Reason or more pointedly as the signification of things (Culturally Significant Speech: Law, Courts, Society, and Racial Equity). In other words, in an algorithmically focused governance color, though in itself not a crime or an element of criminality (for example), it have operational significance. 

That raises a number of questions that touch on the evolving conversations in developed states about the nature and role of multi-ethnic, religious and racial societies, which itself continues a conversation first seriously attempted in the aftermath of the decision to break up some of the European Empires in 1918. Among them: is it even possible to consider such characteristics if they are connected to historical cultural assumptions? would it make a difference if bias is exercised by an individual officer rather than systematically? does balancing the costs and benefits of the recognition and use of such data for predictive or descriptive analytics serve a useful function? how does one distinguish between the use of such data for positive purposes (racial or social justice campaigns and policies) but not in others (eg policing)? More generally profiling, when attached to elaborated systems of interlinked predictive or descriptive analytics nudges further thinking about the  way that constitutional principle affect or ought to affect  the signification of something (like color) in law, economics, politics, and social relations.

The repercussions are significant. They touch on issues of compliance and accountability--as it moves towards a more metrics based set of forms.  It also suggests the difficulty of race based therapeutics--racial justice requires  the development of a semiotics of race (for example--also gender and other privileged categories), but those categories are also the subject of what may be forbidden to states and other actors. That suggests both the need for a greater development of the ideologies of data recognition around sensitive "facts" and the broader discussion about the use of that data (bias) both as a category and as an object of analytics. One is only at the beginning of these conversations.

Other Essays and Reflections produced for this online symposium may be accessed here:

Part I Introduction

Part 2 Observations on the Case Information Note 

Part 3: Observations on Elisabeth Kaneza, "Human Rights Standards for Accountability and Effective Remedies.

        Part 4: Observations on Anna Hankings-Evans, "Race and Empire in International Law"

 Part 5: Observations on Lisa Washington, "Racist Police Practices"