Ruminations 77(6): Looking Back on 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

(Pix © Flora Sapio 2016)

The year 2017 is ending with as great a flourish as 2016, even in the absence of a U.S. Presidential election to make the world buzz.

2017 is rich with events that expose the complex connections between law, politics, economics, religion and culture. These events will set the course for 2018, even as new actors seek to take manage people, events, states, enterprises and other institutions with substantial consequential effects of the mass. But most of all 2017 was the year of big data, of social credit, and of the realization that the algorithmic institution (state or otherwise) might well replace the regulatory state as the driving force for the management of people, institutions and behaviors. Where once the regulatory state was said to express the will of the people refined through their representatives in government, currently the algorithmic enterprise can be said to build systems for managing people and institutions from the data it harvests from them applied to metrics that both reflect their desires and directs it toward certain ends. But this was also the year of statues, of mass violence and of surprising revelations that both marked and drove significant cultural change.

With no objective in particular, this post and a number that follow provides my summary of the slice of 2017 to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here). 

This Part 6 rounds out the 2017 series, with a focus on the nature of U.S. influence, on the character and nature of the manifestation of Chinese influence in the world, and the return of open (African) slavery now (again) run by and through Africa in the context of the fundamental contradictions of labor in globalized production. Share your own!

Ruminations 77: 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms
77(1);
77(2);
77(3);
77(4);
77(5);
77(6).

Ruminations 77(5): Looking Back on 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

(Pix © Flora Sapio 2016)

The year 2017 is ending with as great a flourish as 2016, even in the absence of a U.S. Presidential election to make the world buzz.

2017 is rich with events that expose the complex connections between law, politics, economics, religion and culture. These events will set the course for 2018, even as new actors seek to take manage people, events, states, enterprises and other institutions with substantial consequential effects of the mass. But most of all 2017 was the year of big data, of social credit, and of the realization that the algorithmic institution (state or otherwise) might well replace the regulatory state as the driving force for the management of people, institutions and behaviors. Where once the regulatory state was said to express the will of the people refined through their representatives in government, currently the algorithmic enterprise can be said to build systems for managing people and institutions from the data it harvests from them applied to metrics that both reflect their desires and directs it toward certain ends. But this was also the year of statues, of mass violence and of surprising revelations that both marked and drove significant cultural change.

With no objective in particular, this post and a number that follow provides my summary of the slice of 2017 to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here). 

This is Part 5, with a focus on independence referendum, on academic freedom and on big data and social credit as a new technique of political management. Share your own!

Ruminations 77: 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms
77(1);
77(2);
77(3);
77(4);
77(5);
77(6).

Ruminations 77(4): Looking Back on 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

(Pix © Flora Sapio 2016)

The year 2017 is ending with as great a flourish as 2016, even in the absence of a U.S. Presidential election to make the world buzz.

2017 is rich with events that expose the complex connections between law, politics, economics, religion and culture. These events will set the course for 2018, even as new actors seek to take manage people, events, states, enterprises and other institutions with substantial consequential effects of the mass. But most of all 2017 was the year of big data, of social credit, and of the realization that the algorithmic institution (state or otherwise) might well replace the regulatory state as the driving force for the management of people, institutions and behaviors. Where once the regulatory state was said to express the will of the people refined through their representatives in government, currently the algorithmic enterprise can be said to build systems for managing people and institutions from the data it harvests from them applied to metrics that both reflect their desires and directs it toward certain ends. But this was also the year of statues, of mass violence and of surprising revelations that both marked and drove significant cultural change.

With no objective in particular, this post and a number that follow provides my summary of the slice of 2017 to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here). 

This is Part 4. Share your own! This post includes the contributions of Flora Sapio.

Ruminations 77: 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms
77(1);
77(2);
77(3);
77(4);
77(5); 
77(6).

Ruminations 77(3): Looking Back on 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

(Pix © Flora Sapio 2016)

The year 2017 is ending with as great a flourish as 2016, even in the absence of a U.S. Presidential election to make the world buzz.

2017 is rich with events that expose the complex connections between law, politics, economics, religion and culture. These events will set the course for 2018, even as new actors seek to take manage people, events, states, enterprises and other institutions with substantial consequential effects of the mass. But most of all 2017 was the year of big data, of social credit, and of the realization that the algorithmic institution (state or otherwise) might well replace the regulatory state as the driving force for the management of people, institutions and behaviors. Where once the regulatory state was said to express the will of the people refined through their representatives in government, currently the algorithmic enterprise can be said to build systems for managing people and institutions from the data it harvests from them applied to metrics that both reflect their desires and directs it toward certain ends. But this was also the year of statues, of mass violence and of surprising revelations that both marked and drove significant cultural change.

With no objective in particular, this post and a number that follow provides my summary of the slice of 2017 to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here). 

This is Part 3. Share your own!

Ruminations 77: 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms
77(1);
77(2);
77(3);
77(4);
77(5);
77(6).

Ruminations 77(2): 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

(Pix © Flora Sapio 2016)

The year 2017 is ending with as great a flourish as 2016, even in the absence of a U.S. Presidential election to make the world buzz.

2017 is rich with events that expose the complex connections between law, politics, economics, religion and culture. These events will set the course for 2018, even as new actors seek to take manage people, events, states, enterprises and other institutions with substantial consequential effects of the mass. But most of all 2017 was the year of big data, of social credit, and of the realization that the algorithmic institution (state or otherwise) might well replace the regulatory state as the driving force for the management of people, institutions and behaviors. Where once the regulatory state was said to express the will of the people refined through their representatives in government, currently the algorithmic enterprise can be said to build systems for managing people and institutions from the data it harvests from them applied to metrics that both reflect their desires and directs it toward certain ends. But this was also the year of statues, of mass violence and of surprising revelations that both marked and drove significant cultural change.

With no objective in particular, this post and a number that follow provides my summary of the slice of 2017 to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here). 

This is Part 2. Share your own!

Ruminations 77: 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms
77(1);
77(2);
77(3);
77(4);
77(5);
77(6).

Ruminations 77(1): Looking Back on 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms

(Pix © Flora Sapio 2016)

The year 2017 is ending with as great a flourish as 2016, even in the absence of a U.S. Presidential election to make the world buzz.

2017 is rich with events that expose the complex connections between law, politics, economics, religion and culture. These events will set the course for 2018, even as new actors seek to take manage people, events, states, enterprises and other institutions with substantial consequential effects of the mass. But most of all 2017 was the year of big data, of social credit, and of the realization that the algorithmic institution (state or otherwise) might well replace the regulatory state as the driving force for the management of people, institutions and behaviors. Where once the regulatory state was said to express the will of the people refined through their representatives in government, currently the algorithmic enterprise can be said to build systems for managing people and institutions from the data it harvests from them applied to metrics that both reflect their desires and directs it toward certain ends. But this was also the year of statues, of mass violence and of surprising revelations that both marked and drove significant cultural change.

With no objective in particular, this post and a number that follow provides my summary of the slice of 2017 to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here).  

This is Part 1. Share your own!

Ruminations 77: 2017 in Epigrams and Aphorisms
77(1);
77(2);
77(3);
77(4);
77(5);
77(6).

Interview in Tehran Times With Mehr News Agency (Iran): "Prof. Backer: Nothing in NSS suggesting a strategic objective to reject JCPOA "

 

It comes as no surprise that the National Security Strategy of the United States (4 Dec. 2017) (hereafter the "NSS") has generated substantial interest (my assessment of NSS HERE). 

I was delighted to give an interview on some of the elements of the NSS .  The Interview, Prof. Backer: Nothing in NSS suggesting a strategic objective to reject JCPOA,  appeared in the 24 December 2017 issue of the Tehran Times.  The interview considered the extent to which the NSS advanced both soft power and military power strategic initiatives (see, e.g., here (Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act) and here), and the role of diplomacy going forward.  Also considered was the extent to which the NSS excluded or otherwise incorporated issues of human rights and sustainability, especially climate change.  We discussed, as well, the extent to which the3 NSS indicated a greater willingness on the part of the U.S. to engage in military interventions. ,

The interview be accessed here and follows below.  My great thanks to Payman Yazdani for Mehr News Agency (Iran) for his thought provoking questions.

Under Cover of the Sonic Weapons Attack: The Cuban Private Sector as Collateral Damage as Cuba Retreats Toward Central Planning

(Pix Credit: Cuba tightens regulations on nascent private sector )

Since the end of the 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) it has become increasingly clear that the conservative elements of the Cuban state apparatus have been concerned about economic reform.  The source of their concern is not that economic reform within a Marxist Leninist context is not working, rather their alarm has grown precisely because even in Cuba is has become apparent that Markets Marxism might actually work (On Markets Marxism see, HERE).

This post considers the recent efforts by the Cuban state to freeze movement toward opening the private sector in the shadow of the Affair of the Sonic Weapons Attack and of the resetting of the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.  It appears that with the movement toward tightening the aperture through which U.S.-Cuba relations were developing, and the loudly trumpeted American efforts to focus its economic relations on the Cuban private sector, Cuban reforms in that area, tentative at best, are now threatened. 

Ruminations 76: From Global to Fortress America; Thoughts on "National Security Strategy of the United States" (4 Dec 2017)

On 4 December 2017 the Office of the President of the United States released its national security strategy going forward, Office of the President of the United States, National Security Strategy of the United States (4 Dec. 2017) (hereafter the "NSS").  This is an annual report mandated under the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Department Reorganization Act of 1986 (amending Title 50, Chapter 15, Section 404a of the US Code). "The NSS is intended to provide strategic yet prioritized guidance from which national security agencies base their own guidance documents, budgets, directives, and policies." (Micah Zenko, Trump’s National Security Strategy Deserves to Be Ignored, Foreign Policy (Dec. 18, 2017)). The President gave a speech at the unveiling of the new NSS (Read Trump’s full speech outlining his national security strategy, WPSU (18 Dec. 2017)).

This post considers the NSS in its own context and offers some thoughts on what it might reveal of the direction of U.S. strategic thinking under the current administration. It suggests that there is as much continuity as there are breaks with prior practice.  But more importantly it brings to the surface and affirms a global trend that has tended to exist strong but submerged: the core principle of our national security strategy will rest on an "all around" policy of convergence of strategic forces--advances the basic strategic thrust of privatization of governmental efforts, responsibilities and objectives and the simultaneous governmentalization of private efforts coordinated for strategic advantage by the state.  In that respect, the United States and China, for example, appear to have achieved a level of convergence as they form and adapt their strategic interests to the thrusts and counter thrusts of the other.

The paper may also be downloaded here:  Larry Catá Backer, From Global to Fortress America; Thoughts on “National Security Strategy of the United States” (4 Dec 2017), CPE Working Paper 12/1 (December 2017). ACCESS HERE: BackerNationalSecurityStrategy12-2017

Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

(pix credit; here)

The Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has just been posted to the UN's website.  It is, at a minimum a "conversation starter," and in any case something worthy of a careful read and thoughtful response. Professor Alston presents a fundamental challenge (¶¶8-9) that is well worth considering dispassionately in this passionate age: If we are to remain true to core U.S. values--that civil and political rights are the foundation of all human rights and from them flow the scope and protection of social, economic and cultural rights (including the rights to and of religion)--then to what extent have we as a political community well undertaken our responsibility to ourselves and our progeny to ensure that our core values, expressed as our civil and political rights applied within the structures of our constitutional system,  actually promote and protect those economic, social and cultural rights (or in our more traditional language,  the fundamental and customary rights, privileges and immunities) of this free and democratic people who are (again in the traditional language of this Republic)

endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (Declaration of Independence)

"Spieglein, Spieglein, an der Wand / Wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?" (here) That is the question that we have been asked and on which we might reflect before answering.

Professor Alston's Statement is posted below without comment.