Ruminations 102(4) (The year of Obatala/Oshun): Looking Back on 2023 in Epigrams and Aphorisms--Part 4, The (Re)(De)(Trans)(Con)(E)-volution will be Televised

 

 

Pix credit here

 

  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 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); and 2023 (for those see here).   

2023 was the year of belief, of the believer, and in the believing. It was the year in which one could personalize truth --my truth conflated belief in a thing with the thing itself.  And it became a marker--not of the thing itself but of faith and loyalty to the holder of this personalized belief-truth. In 2023 it became clear that the suzerainty of the Enlightenment was now contested even as its own nature was being interrogated away by its feuding factions.  2023 was, in this sense, the year of total war in the sense of conflict at virtually every level of human relations. Nothing is now uncontested.  And all of the old prejudices, tactics, ploys, tropes, are on display as they are hurled into the battles among those who would claim not merely the rights of the suzerain but also that of the high priest. Yet these trajectories appeared poisoned as well by addiction, by desire, and by the irrational.  Belief here is not merely the exercise of a rational faith, but the eruption of passions and lusts which, in their own way, assert the sort of control that in its 21st century manifestation is increasingly played by our rich investment in pharmacopeia of the body and of the mind--that cornucopia now provides the ambrosia in the service of which and in the expectation of uninterrupted access  to that sustaining elixir, some sectors of the human collective have sworn fealty.

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 2023 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2023 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation ). "For 2023, there is something new and something old. Working through the semiotic signification embodied in Ifa and the ruling spirits one can translate the fundamentals of the 2023 oracle this way:  Obtalá returns as the ruling sign--but with a vengeance. " 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 in 2023 was reinforced by Oshun, the essence of fertility, wealth--and passion.  Passion that served as an intensifier of the positive and negative gyrations of the rational irrationality that marked the year.

And 2023 did not disappoint.  It was a year of the passionate and dispassionate believer; and it was the year that belief, again, became the primary addiction of the human collective and its social relations. However presented, in whatever fancy dress it might be offered up. . . .and consumed by humans who appear to have been starving for its nourishment. It was a year in which the only belief worth having, was in the passionate/dispassion of the believer. If the year had a credo, it might be this (with apologies for the inelegance of the Latin text):

Credo in unum absurdum
Quod ex fide;
Quod formare omnia potest;
Veram formationem dant desiderio meo;
Vera illa imago fidei meae communitatis est;
In quo absurditas rationis essentiam format;
et appetitus formae rationis;
Fides autem in sua transmissione est;
Credentia autem in sua logica et veritate est

I believe in one absurdity
That emerges from a faith;
That can shape all things;
That give true formation to my desire;
That is a true reflection of my community of faith;
In which absurdity forms the essence of reason;
and desire reason's form;
And faith is in its transmission;
And belief is in its logic and truth

And it is in that spirit, of belief and the believer, of the insistence of the human spirit to be human despite its best efforts, of the spirit of 2023, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The first set focuses on the manifestation of belief formed from out of its etymological roots: to desire, esteem, trust (to make these real).  It is in the context of desire and its manifesting, that the highs and lows of 2023 begin to emerge. The second set focuses on the human spirit spirited away. It looks to how that manifestation of desire marked 2023. One considers, then, the voracious appetites of the human spirit and its metamorphosis. The inability to sate that appetite appears to be an important theme for 2023.Yet even the consumption of those bodies  have become the stuff of spirit, existing more immediately in the virtual realms than in those of the physical. The third set focus on the education of the masses. Nothing says self actualization better than a guide.  And human social relations has been nothing is not about the (re)constitution of the guiding classes over the course of 2023.  But the semiotics of narrative itself has become complicated even as corruption of the idea has become something of either a fetish and a cliché. But then 2023 appears to have elevated the fetish as well as the cliché to new and odd levels.

Pix credit here

The last (fourth) set is structured as a counter riff to Gil Scott Heron's well known song, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (poem 194, lyric 1974))

You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip out for beer during commercials, because
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised
Will not be televised, will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live (Text credit here).

 

Nonetheless, the romantic notion of masses as revolutionary forces; of the individual, singularly transformed, who is a tiny but essential part of an incarnated communal transformation, in 2023 might well have been tempered by the realities that the human is increasingly an object, a consumable, in the machinations of collective interactions, made more potent by the augmentation now revealed by the operationalized devices of technology. The human is both the consumable object, and the embodied signification of collective physical and virtual reality the value of the productive force that they represent then emerging; from the people to the people is a universal concept, but one with semiotic irony.  So, indeed, the  (Re)(De)(Trans)(Con)(E)-volution will be televised, tweeted, recorded, videostreamed, performed, made virtual, analyzed, managed, realized, corrupted, (mis)directed, and overcome as a function of the technologies that can be used to, and that may themselves be the object of, these "-volutionary" trajectories. But that -volution will seep into everything--from the grandest collective drama, to the most mundane elements of human life. And it will be public. The first great transformation--the disappearance of privacy onto  -volutional decisions to refrain from disclosing.  And thus 2023's anthem:

Pix credit here

“It’s funny, but I don’t want to mess up things with my son,” Leek added. “It’s so unnecessary! It’s my birthday! Y’all didn’t have to put me out there like that. That was not supposed to be seen. I was talking to my family. They gotta give me a flag when I’m going to be on camera so I can be politically correct.” (Penn State player’s mom goes viral for reaction to Drew Allar interception)

 And its motto: “What the f— was that?”

Belief, desire, education may be the necessary predicates; technology appears to be the operational force; and this year that technology emerged more clearly revealed as a vessel of belief, desire, and education in its own right (discussed here). Indeed, what 2023 may well be remembered most pointedly for, a century from now, is that it was a point of singularity volution--a rolling or revolving motion, the flows along the spiral or coil of the very human,  made up of the people who make such rotation possible. For that people will be necessary, but not central. 

Links to the 2023 Year End Ruminations here:

 Part 1:  I believe I believe I believe;

Part 2:  The Human Spirit Spirited Away

Part 3: The Masses Must be Educated!

 Part 4: The (Re)(De)(Trans)(Con)volution will be Televised!

 

 

Ruminations 102(3) (The year of Obatala/Oshun): Looking Back on 2023 in Epigrams and Aphorisms--Part 3, The Masses Must be Educated!

 

Pix credit here

 

  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 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); and 2023 (for those see here).   

2023 was the year of belief, of the believer, and in the believing. It was the year in which one could personalize truth --my truth conflated belief in a thing with the thing itself.  And it became a marker--not of the thing itself but of faith and loyalty to the holder of this personalized belief-truth. In 2023 it became clear that the suzerainty of the Enlightenment was now contested even as its own nature was being interrogated away by its feuding factions.  2023 was, in this sense, the year of total war in the sense of conflict at virtually every level of human relations. Nothing is now uncontested.  And all of the old prejudices, tactics, ploys, tropes, are on display as they are hurled into the battles among those who would claim not merely the rights of the suzerain but also that of the high priest. Yet these trajectories appeared poisoned as well by addiction, by desire, and by the irrational.  Belief here is not merely the exercise of a rational faith, but the eruption of passions and lusts which, in their own way, assert the sort of control that in its 21st century manifestation is increasingly played by our rich investment in pharmacopeia of the body and of the mind--that cornucopia now provides the ambrosia in the service of which and in the expectation of uninterrupted access  to that sustaining elixir, some sectors of the human collective have sworn fealty.

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 2023 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2023 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation ). "For 2023, there is something new and something old. Working through the semiotic signification embodied in Ifa and the ruling spirits one can translate the fundamentals of the 2023 oracle this way:  Obtalá returns as the ruling sign--but with a vengeance. " 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 in 2023 was reinforced by Oshun, the essence of fertility, wealth--and passion.  Passion that served as an intensifier of the positive and negative gyrations of the rational irrationality that marked the year.

And 2023 did not disappoint.  It was a year of the passionate and dispassionate believer; and it was the year that belief, again, became the primary addiction of the human collective and its social relations. However presented, in whatever fancy dress it might be offered up. . . .and consumed by humans who appear to have been starving for its nourishment. It was a year in which the only belief worth having, was in the passionate/dispassion of the believer. If the year had a credo, it might be this (with apologies for the inelegance of the Latin text):

Pix Credit here

Credo in unum absurdum
Quod ex fide;
Quod formare omnia potest;
Veram formationem dant desiderio meo;
Vera illa imago fidei meae communitatis est;
In quo absurditas rationis essentiam format;
et appetitus formae rationis;
Fides autem in sua transmissione est;
Credentia autem in sua logica et veritate est

I believe in one absurdity
That emerges from a faith;
That can shape all things;
That give true formation to my desire;
That is a true reflection of my community of faith;
In which absurdity forms the essence of reason;
and desire reason's form;
And faith is in its transmission;
And belief is in its logic and truth

And it is in that spirit, of belief and the believer, of the insistence of the human spirit to be human despite its best efforts, of the spirit of 2023, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The first set focuses on the manifestation of belief formed from out of its etymological roots: to desire, esteem, trust (to make these real).  It is in the context of desire and its manifesting, that the highs and lows of 2023 begin to emerge. The second set focuses on the human spirit spirited away. It looks to how that manifestation of desire marked 2023. One considers, then, the voracious appetites of the human spirit and its metamorphosis. The inability to sate that appetite appears to be an important theme for 2023.Yet even the consumption of those bodies  have become the stuff of spirit, existing more immediately in the virtual realms than in those of the physical. The third set focus on the education of the masses. Nothing says self actualization better than a guide.  And human social relaitons has been nothing is not about the (re)constitution of the guiding classes over the course of 2023.  But the semiotics of narrative itself has become complicated even as corruption of the idea has become something of either a fetish and a cliché. But then 2023 appears to have elevated the fetish as well as the cliché to new and odd levels.

Links to the 2023 Year End Ruminations here:

 Part 1:  I believe I believe I believe;

Part 2:  The Human Spirit Spirited Away

Part 3: The Masses Must be Educated!

Part 4: The (Re)(De)(Trans)(Con)volution will be Televised!

Ruminations 102(2) (The year of Obatala/Oshun): Looking Back on 2023 in Epigrams and Aphorisms--Part 2, The Human Spirit Spirited Away

Pix credit here

 

  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 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); and 2023 (for those see here).   

2023 was the year of belief, of the believer, and in the believing. It was the year in which one could personalize truth --my truth conflated belief in a thing with the thing itself.  And it became a marker--not of the thing itself but of faith and loyalty to the holder of this personalized belief-truth. In 2023 it became clear that the suzerainty of the Enlightenment was now contested even as its own nature was being interrogated away by its feuding factions.  2023 was, in this sense, the year of total war in the sense of conflict at virtually every level of human relations. Nothing is now uncontested.  And all of the old prejudices, tactics, ploys, tropes, are on display as they are hurled into the battles among those who would claim not merely the rights of the suzerain but also that of the high priest. Yet these trajectories appeared poisoned as well by addiction, by desire, and by the irrational.  Belief here is not merely the exercise of a rational faith, but the eruption of passions and lusts which, in their own way, assert the sort of control that in its 21st century manifestation is increasingly played by our rich investment in pharmacopeia of the body and of the mind--that cornucopia now provides the ambrosia in the service of which and in the expectation of uninterrupted access  to that sustaining elixir, some sectors of the human collective have sworn fealty.

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 2023 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2023 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation ). "For 2023, there is something new and something old. Working through the semiotic signification embodied in Ifa and the ruling spirits one can translate the fundamentals of the 2023 oracle this way:  Obtalá returns as the ruling sign--but with a vengeance. " 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 in 2023 was reinforced by Oshun, the essence of fertility, wealth--and passion.  Passion that served as an intensifier of the positive and negative gyrations of the rational irrationality that marked the year.

And 2023 did not disappoint.  It was a year of the passionate and dispassionate believer; and it was the year that belief, again, became the primary addiction of the human collective and its social relations. However presented, in whatever fancy dress it might be offered up. . . .and consumed by humans who appear to have been starving for its nourishment. It was a year in which the only belief worth having, was in the passionate/dispassion of the believer. If the year had a credo, it might be this (with apologies for the inelegance of the Latin text):

Credo in unum absurdum
Quod ex fide;
Quod formare omnia potest;
Veram formationem dant desiderio meo;
Vera illa imago fidei meae communitatis est;
In quo absurditas rationis essentiam format;
et appetitus formae rationis;
Fides autem in sua transmissione est;
Credentia autem in sua logica et veritate est

I believe in one absurdity
That emerges from a faith;
That can shape all things;
That give true formation to my desire;
That is a true reflection of my community of faith;
In which absurdity forms the essence of reason;
and desire reason's form;
And faith is in its transmission;
And belief is in its logic and truth

Pix credit here

And it is in that spirit, of belief and the believer, of the insistence of the human spirit to be human despite its best efforts, of the spirit of 2023, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The first set focuses on the manifestation of belief formed from out of its etymological roots: to desire, esteem, trust (to make these real).  It is in the context of desire and its manifesting, that the highs and lows of 2023 begin to emerge. The second set focuses on the human spirit spirited away. It looks to how that manifestation of desire marked 2023. One considers, then, the voracious appetites of the human spirit and its metamorphosis. The inability to sate that appetite appears to be an important theme for 2023.Yet even the consumption of those bodies  have become the stuff of spirit, existing more immediately in the virtual realms than in those of the physical.

Links to the 2023 Year End Ruminations here:

 Part 1:  I believe I believe I believe;

Part 2:  The Human Spirit Spirited Away

Part 3: The Masses Must be Educated!

 Part 4: The (Re)(De)(Trans)(Con)volution will be Televised!

Sanctioning Facilitation of the Application of the Hong Kong National Security Law: Congressional-Executive Commission on China Weighs in With Biden Administration

 

Pix Credit here

Hong Kong remains in the cross hairs of key U.S. policy makers.  More specifically, efforts to target, interrogate, and challenge the development and application of the Hong Kong National Security Law continue to serve the interests of key U.S: officials and their supporters.  The reasons are obvious.  First it serves as a critical point of differentiation between Marxist-Leninist and liberal democratic structures for disciplining  legitimate political engagement. Liberal democracy has been focusing on insurrection and the legitimacy of election processes and the officials who manage it. Marxist Leninist sensibilities continue to focus on the critical distinctions between patriots and others, the line between which is the essence of the People's Democratic dictatorship, and its disciplinary apparatus is the National Security Law. Second, it provides a means of refining the essence of the liberal democratic system of operative principles, grounded in individual privilege and the expression of opinion,  but in a context in which hierarchies of influence (the marketplace of ideas) and the influence of private political faction serve as the key disciplinary role.Third, it continues the development of the targeted sanctions based approach to conflict management that has apparently won enough acceptance within influential circles so that the political cost of that means of that conflict tactic is smaller than its cost in terms of the net negative effects. In this sense it serves as a quite important weapon crafted to suit the personal needs of the administrators--on both sides of the conflict. 

Recently the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) sought to develop additional measures to ensure that the U.S reduces the risk that it might be facilitating  the development of a political model incompatible with its own in a space that the U.S. has long asserted is to some extent (and for the moment) internationalized (on the U.S. position as it developed after June 2019 here).  Their Press Release elaborated objectives and rationale:

Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the Chair and Cochair, respectively of the bipartisan and bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China, released today a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking that he impose sanctions on the Hong Kong and People’s Republic of China officials responsible for the bounties placed on overseas activists using the authorities available under the Hong Kong Autonomy Act and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The Chairs were joined by the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) in making this request.

Background: The Chairs have urged the Biden Administration to sanction judges and prosecutors for their role in the arbitrary detention of Hong Kong democracy and rights activists, particularly in National Security Law cases. The last sanctions imposed by the Administration on Hong Kong officials was in January of 2021.

The Chairs are also lead sponsors of two bipartisan bills to address efforts by the Hong Kong and PRC governments to demolish the democratic freedoms guaranteed to the Hong Kong people by international treaty:

The Transnational Repression Policy Act (S. 831 / H.R. 3654) which would give the Administration additional tools to hold foreign governments and individuals accountable when they stalk, intimidate, or assault U.S. citizens and residents.

The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Certification Act (H.R. 1103 / S. 490) which would give the President the authority to strip the immunities and privileges granted to the three Hong Kong government diplomatic outposts in the United States, which reportedly engage in the surveillance of Hong Kong democracy advocates in the United States.

 The Transnational Repression Policy Act (S. 831 / H.R. 3654) may be accessed here.

 The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Certification Act (H.R. 1103/S. 490) may be accessed here. 

The text of the Letter follows

Ruminations 102(1) (The year of Obatala/Oshun): Looking Back on 2023 in Epigrams and Aphorisms--Part 1, I believe I believe I believe

 

 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 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); and 2023 (for those see here).   

2023 was the year of belief, of the believer, and in the believing. It was the year in which one could personalize truth --my truth conflated belief in a thing with the thing itself.  And it became a marker--not of the thing itself but of faith and loyalty to the holder of this personalized belief-truth. In 2023 it became clear that the suzerainty of the Enlightenment was now contested even as its own nature was being interrogated away by its feuding factions.  2023 was, in this sense, the year of total war in the sense of conflict at virtually every level of human relations. Nothing is now uncontested.  And all of the old prejudices, tactics, ploys, tropes, are on display as they are hurled into the battles among those who would claim not merely the rights of the suzerain but also that of the high priest. Yet these trajectories appeared poisoned as well by addiction, by desire, and by the irrational.  Belief here is not merely the exercise of a rational faith, but the eruption of passions and lusts which, in their own way, assert the sort of control that in its 21st century manifestation is increasingly played by our rich investment in pharmacopeia of the body and of the mind--that cornucopia now provides the ambrosia in the service of which and in the expectation of uninterrupted access  to that sustaining elixir, some sectors of the human collective have sworn fealty.

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 2023 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2023 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation ). "For 2023, there is something new and something old. Working through the semiotic signification embodied in Ifa and the ruling spirits one can translate the fundamentals of the 2023 oracle this way:  Obtalá returns as the ruling sign--but with a vengeance. " 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 in 2023 was reinforced by Oshun, the essence of fertility, wealth--and passion.  Passion that served as an intensifier of the positive and negative gyrations of the rational irrationality that marked the year.

And 2023 did not disappoint.  It was a year of the passionate and dispassionate believer; and it was the year that belief, again, became the primary addiction of the human collective and its social relations. However presented, in whatever fancy dress it might be offered up. . . .and consumed by humans who appear to have been starving for its nourishment. It was a year in which the only belief worth having, was in the passionate/dispassion of the believer. If the year had a credo, it might be this (with apologies for the inelegance of the Latin text):

Credo in unum absurdum
Quod ex fide;
Quod formare omnia potest;
Veram formationem dant desiderio meo;
Vera illa imago fidei meae communitatis est;
In quo absurditas rationis essentiam format;
et appetitus formae rationis;
Fides autem in sua transmissione est;
Credentia autem in sua logica et veritate est

I believe in one absurdity
That emerges from a faith;
That can shape all things;
That give true formation to my desire;
That is a true reflection of my community of faith;
In which absurdity forms the essence of reason;
and desire reason's form;
And faith is in its transmission;
And belief is in its logic and truth

And it is in that spirit, of belief and the believer, of the insistence of the human spirit to be human despite its best efforts, of the spirit of 2023, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. This first set focuses on the manifestation of belief formed from out of its etymological roots: to desire, esteem, trust (to make these real).  It is in the context of desire and its manifesting, that the highs and lows of 2023 begin to emerge. 

Links to the 2023 Year End Ruminations here:

 Part 1:  I believe I believe I believe;

Part 2:  The Human Spirit Spirited Away

Part 3: The Masses Must be Educated!

Part 4: The (Re)(De)(Trans)(Con)volution will be Televised!

 

Now Out Current Histoty January 2024 Issue 123 (Issue 849)

 

Current History’s January 2024 issue, the annual Global Trends issue, is now available in print and on our website at https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/123/849. The issue is free access in its entirety for a limited time and features the following essays:

Transitional Justice at 40: A Critical Appraisal
Omar G. Encarnación (Bard College)
In some cases, holding old political regimes accountable for their crimes has hindered countries’ transitions to democracy and eroded the rule of law.

The Return of Inflation
Barry Eichengreen (University of California, Berkeley)
Economists who thought deflation was a greater danger than rising prices did not foresee the unprecedented supply-side disruptions wrought by a pandemic and a war.

The Climate Risk of Green Industrial Policy
Joanna I. Lewis (Georgetown University)
Proliferating state interventions to promote local green industries in response to China’s dominance in the field could slow the global clean energy transition.

The Dark Arctic
Mia M. Bennett (University of Washington)
While climate change melts the circumpolar North, unscrupulous operators are exploiting resources and vulnerable populations in a region where monitoring and regulation are sparse.

An Aging World Relies on Migrant Care Workers
Cati Coe (Carleton University)
To care for older adults at home, Western societies have turned to migrant workers in arrangements that often amount to domestic servitude.

PERSPECTIVE
Can Affirmative Action Survive on the World’s Campuses?
Laura Dudley Jenkins (University of Cincinnati)
Despite a backlash against race-based preferences in the United States and elsewhere, some countries continue to prioritize access to higher education for disadvantaged groups.

BOOKS
Will AI Slay the Poverty Dragon?
Anirudh Krishna (Duke University)
The latest technologies could help the world’s poorest people, but the history of previous innovations that raised similar hopes shows that thoughtful policies are also needed.

FROM THE ARCHIVES
Why Have Progressive Schools?
John Dewey
Excerpts from an essay published by Current History in 1933.

2023 Holiday Season Greetings

 

 

Jiě

 [解]

All best wishes for the season and for an auspicious new year

May it bring an auspicious release of tension and liberation.

The Business of Facilitation and the Presumption of Corporate Untrustworthiness; The Norwegian "Guiding Cases" in Delek Group, Sumitomo, and KDDI

Pix credit here

It is always interesting to see how the apparatus of the Norwegian Pension Fund Global dribbles out its parameters for investment that aligns Norwegian national policy with a Norwegian interpretive universe of those portions of international law and norms that suit it to develop and apply to its own investment universe. In some respects the operative model of the Ethics Council Recommendations along with fial action by the Norges Bank--only later distributed to a  group of interested outsiders suggests a convergence with Leninist judicial models for developing frameworks for interpretation. Chinese Guiding Cases (指导性案例) are part of a system (Susan Finder, How 'Case Law' Works in the Chinese Courts) developed for rationalizing the use of prior judicial determinations in the administration of litigation in Chinese courts, and should be referred to by courts at all levels when hearing similar cases (here; and here). For our purposes ere, what makes Guiding Cases so interesting in the Norwegian context is the way that specific investigations are undertaken, the recommendations and decisions of which, now broadly publicized, can serve  to leverage the determination among the relevant community of stakeholders for whom decisions o and actions of the Norwegian Pension Fund Global are important.  More specifically, it suggests, like the development of Guiding Cases, the way that judicial ad quasi-judicial bodies within formal or informal (public or private) administrative organs can more explicitly use their "specific" decisions as quasi legislative devices (at east within the scope of the judicial or administrative authority of those organs).  The idea of the Norwegian Pension Fund Global apparatus as a lawmaker is not new (e.g., here, here), though it may be soft peddled by influencers. 

Critically now, presuppositions of corporate untrustworthiness appear to serve as an unspoken parameter guiding the scope and application of the analytical project of quasi state organs like the Norwegian Pension Fund Global Trustworthiness has become, indeed, an important principle that has been a key element in the constitution of Chinese "Social credit" systems.  But in liberal democracies, it is meant to reflect, in jurisprudential analytics and interpretation, an ideological belief in the character, motives and behavioral compulsions of economic enterprises--at least when measures against the desires and lusts of states and non-governmental organs.  All of this is fair--except to the extent that it is done in secret, or without any sort of exposed engagement with public constituencies--constituencies that might prefer to debate the presumptions that organs like the Ethics Council adopt as a matter of their own internal self-actualization. On trust in corporate governance, see, e.g.,   Larry Catá Backer, "Trust Platforms: The Digitalization of Corporate Governance and the Transformation of Trust in Polycentric Space."

None of this matters except where, as here, these presumptions play a critical role in the evolution and application of concepts of facilitation as an extension of the legal/normative principle of complicity.  It is in this interplay that the Ethics Council might find itself succumbing its own own last temptation--the idea that an ideal state can exist in which pain and suffering can be effortlessly transposed onto the Luciferian enterprise in its relentless amorality in search of profit or advantage. That temptation is much on display in the decisions recently circulated by the Norges Bank and its staff.

Recently, following a recommendation from the Council on Ethics, Norges Bank announced its decision to exclude the company Delek Group Ltd from the Government Pension Fund Global. "Delek Group is an Israeli company, listed on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. Delek Group’s wholly owned subsidiary NewMed Energy is involved in exploration, extraction and production of natural gas and condensate." (Ethics Council Recommendation). The basis for that decision was a determination that the company is responsible for a serious violation of fundamental ethical norms relating to its connection to the company’s petroleum prospecting offshore Western Sahara. The decision was based on Norway's political determination of the consequences of its policy respecting the sovereignty of  Western Sahara, to which the Kingdom of Morocco has asserted claims:  "The company has entered into an agreement with Moroccan authorities for petroleum exploration offshore Western Sahara. Morocco does not have legal, sovereign rights over this area’s natural resources." (Delek Group Norges Bank Decision). In the process the Ethics Council produced clarifying language about the Norwegian position respecting exploitation of the natural resources of disputed territory. The Council on Ethics Recommendation may be accessed here; Delek Group Council Recommendation.

Also, in June 2023, the Council on Ethics recommended to exclude the company Sumitomo Corp from investment by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) due to an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious violation of the rights of individuals in situations of war and conflict. "Sumitomo is a Japanese conglomerate with one of its business areas being digital services. The company is partner in a joint venture which has a Joint Operation Agreement with Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT). Sumitomo provides expertise and advice relating to sales and marketing and the expansion of MPT’s network." (Sumitomo Norges Bank Decision). Nonetheless, rather than exclusion, the Norges Bank placed Sumitomo Corp under observation, requesting that the Council to follow developments in the case. The central issue is one around facilitation of the perpetuation of a government that the Norwegian Kingdom opposes as an expression of its own application of what it perceives to be international consensus. These decisions add to the growing corpus of privatized public law around the emerging cluster of presumptions that together constitute the norm of facilitation, a close companion to but not the same thing, as complicity, especially respecting the current government in Myanmar (Burma). See, e.g., here, here, here.

Again, what makes this of interest beyond the small circle of people interested in whatever it is that the apparatus of the pension Fund Global has to say about anything important, is that it has actually been wrestling, unlike other bureaucracies that ought to know better, with the issue of the scope of activity that ought to be subsumed within the scope of activities that ought to constitute actionable complicity like conduct. The idea of facilitation as a standard of complicity has important consequences. (Human Rights Goes to War in Myanmar)

More specifically the issue revolved around the use by other institutions of government of data generated by or through MPT (Ethics Council Recommendation, pp. 8-9).  The Ethics Council took an absolutist approach grounded in the consequences of presumption (along the analytical lines it tends to follow and nicely illustrated in the Delek reasoning). 

Based on the information available concerning surveillance of the telecoms network in Myanmar, the Council presumes that MPT, which is subject to the authority of the government in Myanmar, has installed technology which enables the surveillance of civilians, that the surveillance has been ramped up after the coup, and that police and military units have access to the surveillance data generated by MPT. (Sumitomo Ethics Council Recommendation, p. 11). 

As it did in Delek, the Council effectively gave almost no weight to the efforts of the company to identify mitigate, and remedy.  

In its dialogue with the Council, Sumitomo said that it performs due diligence assessments in order to identify and mitigate negative human rights impacts related to its operations, that it has attempted to use its influence to address the risk of human rights abuses relating to surveillance, and that it has called on MPT to take account of human rights. Although this is positive, the Council considers that the steps the
company has taken to prevent its contribution to human rights violations have produced very few tangible results.

In its dialogue with the Council, Sumitomo said that it performs due diligence assessments in order to identify and mitigate negative human rights impacts related to its operations, that it has attempted to use its influence to address the risk of human rights abuses relating to surveillance, and that it has called on MPT to take account of human rights. Although this is positive, the Council considers that the steps the company has taken to prevent its contribution to human rights violations have produced very few tangible results.  (Sumitomo Ethics Council Recommendation, p. 12). 

Compare Delek:

The Council can give no weight to the company’s assertion that, if viable discoveries are made in the area, it would seek to conduct its operations such that its continued activities would comply with applicable international regulations and standards. In the Council’s view, if viable discoveries are made in the area, the damage would already have been done, in the sense that the chances of reaching a negotiated solution to the area’s future would be further diminished. (Delek Group Council Recommendation , p. 11)

There is an underlying presumption that is worthy of some interrogation-that companies cannot be trusted but states can; or put differently that public institutions are more trustworthy, legitimate, and authoritative than private. Not that this presumption is irrational--but at the same time it is a presumption that eviscerates context and that drives a number of important European initiatives, including the so called Business and Human Rights Treaty and the legalization of the UN Guiding Principles 2nd Pillar.  As political choices those are as good as any other.  Bit their justification might not be as sturdy as the rhetoric on which those presumptions are built. 

In the case of Sumitomo, Norges Bank chose to avoid the presumption and placed Sumitomo under observation. Effectively, Sumitomo will have a form of due diligence reporting to undertake  in addition to other diligence obligations. That leaves the issue of coordination and conflict for another day--and a different body.

Lastly, and also in June 2023, the Council on Ethics recommended to exclude the company KDDI from investment by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) (KDDI Council Recommendation) due to an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious violation of the rights of individuals in situations of war and conflict. The recommendation relates to the company’s telecom operations in Myanmar. In this case, "KDDI is a Japanese integrated provider of telecommunication. The company is partner in a joint venture which has a Joint Operation Agreement with Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT). KDDI provides technology and engineering capacity to MPT." (KDDI Norges Bank Decision). As in Sumitomo, Norges Bank declined the invitation and instead placed KDDI under observation (KDDI Norges Bank Decision) and  asked the Council to follow developments in KDDI's operational due diligence.

And again, the Ethics Council applied a set of presumptions about corporate trustworthiness. Its risk parameters guided is analysis:

It has been reported that MPT and other telecoms operators in Myanmar have been ordered to install and activate spyware and surveillance software that enable the regime to monitor customers’ phone and internet use in real time. In this way, the regime can listen into conversations, read text messages, monitor internet and email traffic, and track the location of users. The level of surveillance has intensified since the coup. (KDDI Ethics Council Recommendation, Summary)

Like the rest of us, the Ethics Council gets its news from Reuters and other press organs. And like the rest of us, those organs reporting are given weight. On the other hand, company assertions are given less weight, and the sense of untrustworthiness is suggested.

Although KDDI plays no direct role in the surveillance, the Council attaches importance to the fact that KDDI must know that MPT has installed and activated tools which enable the regime to monitor human rights activists, political opponents and other individuals, and that MPT is thereby enabling serious human rights violations. In its dialogue with the Council, KDDI said that it has performed a human rights impact assessment in order to identify and mitigate negative human rights impacts related to its operations, that it has attempted to use its influence to address the risk of human rights abuses relating to surveillance, and that it has called on MPT to take account of human rights. The Council also notes that the company so far, has elected to remain in Myanmar to help maintain the telecoms infrastructure that is also vital for the civilian population. In the Council’s opinion, the steps the company has taken to prevent its contribution to human rights violations through its partnership with MPT have produced very few tangible results. (KDDI Ethics Council Recommendation, Summary)

KDDI's discussion of its human rights risk balancing is also given short shrift (Ibid., 10). That is a balancing that appears to trouble less when the issue revolves around enterprises remaining is Russia after the start of its Ukrainian adventurism (discussed here). 

All in all, an interesting set of decisions.  The development of principles of facilitation ought to be encouraged, and taken up elsewhere; the issue of principles of trustworthiness, especially in the context of complex balancing analytics with human rights implications requires substantially more work.

New On the European Chinese Law Research Hub Blogsite: Baiyang Xiao, "Making the Private Public: Regulating Content Moderation"

 

Capture of the video installation “Unerasable Characters II” by Winnie Soon: Drawing on the Weiboscope database, she designed software that visualizes Weibo posts that have been erased on a daily basis during the pandemic. ^{Exhibit “Data Relations“, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne}

 

The folks over at the European Chinese Law Research Hub (with thanks to Marianne von Blomberg, Editor ECLR Hub, Research Associate, Chair for Chinese Legal Culture, University of Cologne) have posted  a marvelous essay by Baiyang Xiao, "Making the Private Public: Regulating Content Moderation." Xiao aims to study the way that legal measures China adopted to serve the needs of content control and compares the framework with the regulatory approach of the EU.

The study is particularly interesting for the way it nicely frames the core issue of regulation--the way that broad political principles are translated into policy, and then the way that policy is transposed into regulatory structures sensitive to political principles.  More interesting still is the way that this self-referencing regulatory framework is then plugged into what is extracted as emerging international norms and standards, but then applied with a socialist perspective. Lastly, the objectification of platforms as a site for regulation--that is as a virtual regulable space that assumes some of the characteristics of physical territory, is also quite useful. All of this comes at a price--which all states and political systems are discovering must be paid. 

I am cross posting the link to the essay which may also be read below. The original ECLRH post may be accessed HERE. And as a plug for the marvelous work at the European Chinese Law Research Hub: if you have observations, analyses or pieces of research that are not publishable as a paper but should get out there, or want to spread event information, calls for papers or job openings, or have a paper forthcoming- do not hesitate to contact Marianne von Bloomberg.

Conference: "The Features and the Future of the Chinese Legal Paradigm"

 

 For those interested, this is a conference that may be worth attending:

The Features and the Future of the Chinese Legal Paradigm

Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università Roma TreWednesday 20th December - 9h45-12h00 – Aula 248

Opening and institutional greetings: Giorgio Resta, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Speakers
Flora Huang, University of Derby, U.K.
Shu Zhang, Deakin University Melbourne
Peng Guo, Swinburne University Melbourne
Wen Xiang, University of Copenhagen

Moderator: Enrico Toti, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Scientific committee: Simone Benvenuti; Giorgio Pino; Enrico Toti

Segreteria organizzativa: Enrico Toti Link identifier #identifier__49065-1

enrico.toti@uniroma3.it

 

On Socialist Cultural Production in the New Era--中国文联党组书记李屹：深刻领会习近平文化思想担负起新的文化使命 学习时报 | 作者 李屹 [Li Yi, Party Secretary of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles: Deeply understand Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts and shoulder new cultural missions]

 

Pix Credit Here

 

Pix Credit here

对于文艺界和广大文艺工作者而言，学习贯彻习近平文化思想，就要深刻领悟其中蕴含的宏阔的国际视野、开放的文明胸襟，在坚守中华文化立场的基础上，把目光投向世界、投向人类，提炼展示中华文明的精神标识和文化精髓，加快构建中国话语和中国叙事体系，创作更多彰显中国审美旨趣、反映全人类共同价值追求的优秀作品，用文艺的形式讲好我们正在经历的新时代故事，展现可信、可爱、可敬的中国形象，表达对于人类命运的普遍关怀，让世界人民在艺术审美的过程中深化对中国的认识、增进对中国的了解，为人类文明进步搭建相互了解、理解、包容的桥梁，谱写人类文明新形态的文艺篇章。 For the literary and art circles and the majority of literary and art workers, to study and implement Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts, all must deeply understand the broad international vision and open civilized mind contained in it, and on the basis of adhering to the Chinese cultural position, set our sights on the world. To that end it is necessary to focus on human beings, refine and display the spiritual symbols and cultural essence of Chinese civilization, accelerate the construction of Chinese discourse and Chinese narrative system, create more outstanding works that highlight Chinese aesthetic tastes and reflect the pursuit of common values ​​of all mankind, and use literary and artistic forms to explain what we are experiencing The story of the new era shows a credible, lovely and respectable image of China, expresses universal concern for the destiny of mankind, allows people around the world to deepen their understanding of China and enhance their understanding of China in the process of artistic appreciation, and contributes to the progress of human civilization. Build bridges of mutual understanding, understanding, and tolerance, and write a literary and artistic chapter for a new form of human civilization

 Li Yi (李屹), Party Secretary and Vice Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, has written a most interesting essay on the importance and forms of cultural production as aspects f national productive forces essential to the  realization of the project of socialist modernization in the new era. The essay, Deeply understand Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts and shoulder new cultural missions [深刻领会习近平文化思想担负起新的文化使命 学习时报 | 作者 李屹] appeared recently in Study Times [学习时报].  It represents a further development of the New Era's all around approach the development of the nation's productive forces as inevitably including cultural and social forces. In a sense it represents an older movement within Leninist theory that considers the role of the cultural and artistic within the framework of the Leninist imperative of vanguard forces to lead the nation toward its goal. That more ancient expression--a product of the European branch of Leninism transposed to the North American Caribbean, was expressed by Fidel Castro in 1961 in an address to the leading cultural and artistic forces of the nation of that era:

The Revolution must understand that reality, and consequently must act in such a way that the entire sector of artists and intellectuals who are not genuinely revolutionary find a place to work and to create within the Revolution, and so that their creative spirit will have an opportunity and freedom for expression within the Revolution, even though they are not revolutionary writers or artists. This means that within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing. Nothing against the Revolution, because the Revolution has its rights also, and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist, and no one can stand against the right of the Revolution to be and to exist, No one can rightfully claim a right against the Revolution. Since it takes in the interests of the people and Signifies the interests of the entire nation. (Fidel Castro Ruz, Pamphlet entitled Palabras a los Intelectuales (Words toIntellectuals), Havana, National Cultural Council, 1961).

In terms of Chinese Leninism of the New Era, the same divide separates patriots from counter-revolutionary forces. The former is to be accorded the privileges of democratic participation, the later the burdens of dictatorship. In a sense, them what is being developed here are the cultural aspects of the Peoples' Democratic Dictatorship (Chinese State Constitution Art. 1 (" The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.")) to arts and culture. In that sense, it accords with the times. 

It applies as well those principles to the projection of New Era culture into the international sphere. It represents, in that respect, an emerging aspect of Socialist  Internationalism that is geared for time, space, and place.  Aligned with the related aspects of economic, political, and security convergence, the leveraging of socialist cultural production suggests the way that cultural production, like the production of ideological baselines, economic commodities, and political institutions and frameworks, can be deployed in the service of the overall construction of a socialist democratic framework that, in its own ways, mimics the framework of the cultural production of liberal democracy and its integration with the overall organization and functioning of social relations across fields of human collective enterprise. The difference, for the moment still significant, touches on (1) the identification of the leading forces (still more or less private and markets driven in liberal democracy; under the overall leadership of the political vanguard in Leninist states); and (2) the overall direction and utility of such cultural production. The inter-connectedness within Leninist circles is easy to spot at least in its formal constitution (it does get messy at the level of production); the connections and tensions are more informal and coordination by and through the state or elite institutions more difficult (but not impossible in the level of overall management  of cultural production at elite levels) in liberal democratic environments. The overall framing of patriot-opponent or inside-outside marks both in quite different ways. In both the fundamental issues remain: to what extent are current manifestations appropriately aligned to the overall ruling ideology (liberal democratic or Marxist Leninist); and, to what extent is a formation of development and post colonial ruling ideologies different?

The essay, Deeply understand Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts and shoulder new cultural missions [深刻领会习近平文化思想担负起新的文化使命 学习时报 | 作者 李屹] follows below in the original Chinese and in a crude English translation.