The upheaval in the West

There is a crisis of senescence in liberal politics. The reason Biden, Harris and Sanders are competitive is their ideas are all roughly the same age.

The strategy of recruiting fresh new faces like Beto, AOC cannot obscure the basic problem of intellectual decrepitude. The challenge facing the West is that a generational agenda has become the ex-future.

The current tide of political upheaval is basically rejectionist. It is a backlash against the 20th century nihilist project. It’s necessary but insufficient. The harder part, which comes next, is building a successor to the ruins of 20th century ideology.

The question every revolution answers is “what is man”? Once the answer was that he was free under the sky of truth, entitled to a personal relationship with eternity. Then he became a blob of tissue, a ward of history as represented by the state. What will he be now?

Whatever the answer turns out to be it will be stamped by the age of information, the first era in which humanity has had to explicitly account for reality of ethereal things.

Remember when the Internet meant freedom?

The simulation, presented at an industry fair in China, offered a rare look at a system that now peers into nearly every corner of Xinjiang, the troubled region where Kashgar is located.

This is the vision of high-tech surveillance — precise, all-seeing, infallible — that China’s leaders are investing billions of dollars in every year, making Xinjiang an incubator for increasingly intrusive policing systems that could spread across the country and beyond. …

The system taps into networks of neighborhood informants; tracks individuals and analyzes their behavior; tries to anticipate potential crime, protest or violence; and then recommends which security forces to deploy, the company said.
On the screen during the demonstration was a slogan: “If someone exists, there will be traces, and if there are connections, there will be information.”

New York Times

Remember when universities were about academic freedom? How is this different in principle, from the hate speech filters being developed with the help of data fusion? Or is it just a matter of degree, a question of how far you twist the dial?

One of the most interesting features of the Chinese system is it allows authorities to create “virtual cages”. In an IOT world you credit card, phone, car etc can automatically stop working or flag you should you stray from the authorized zone.

Perhaps if we don’t have coarse-grained walls enclosing nations we will wind up with fine grained walls built around individuals. We will live in a world “without borders” but the drone will flag you if you try to enter any locality without the right digital token.

Escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing are wiping billions from the net worth of China’s richest surveillance tycoons.

The billionaires behind Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. have watched their combined fortunes sink by more than $8 billion since March 2018 as shares of both companies sank on speculation of potential U.S. sanctions. The losses deepened on Wednesday after reports that Donald Trump’s administration is considering blacklisting the surveillance giants, in part because of their alleged role in human rights violations

Bloomberg

Power? No, Thanks, I’m Good

Most people are happy to live their own lives, content in the miraculous experience of being alive. But a significant minority are happy only if they are leading other people’s lives. They feel nothing but what is underfoot.

The wish to have power over others is altogether alien to me; I just don’t get it, any more than I get why anyone wants to have kids or play Settlers of Catan. Even sexual fantasies based on power dynamics don’t particularly appeal to me. Why would I want to boss other people around? What would I make them do? My taxes, maybe? It just sounds awkward, and like a huge hassle. I don’t even like being waited on by people I’d rather have a beer with; I’m uncomfortable holding the meager (and mostly illusory) power of grades over my students.

NYT

True facts

Everyone presumably pays for accurate polling even if it shows them losing because how else can they adjust strategy unless they are in possession of the true facts. Now 3 failed polling predictions in 3 major Anglo democracies raise the question of how they could be so wrong?

David Cameron called the Brexit referendum confident Remain would win. The Hillary Clinton victory fireworks were already laid out. The Australian bookies had already paid those who had bet on Labor to win. Then the unthinkable happened. The sure thing didn’t happen.

Just as historians will forever wonder why the Titanic’s lookouts didn’t see the iceberg so also will political scientists wonder at how pollsters, presumably in honest search of the true facts, with vast sampling resources at their disposal, got it so totally wrong.

The screws tighten

LONDON (Reuters) – Iranian crude oil exports have fallen in May to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) or lower, tanker data showed and industry sources said, after the United States tightened the screws on Tehran’s main source of income, deepening global supply losses.

Reuters

Meanwhile …

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran said on Friday it could “easily” hit U.S. warships in the Gulf, the latest in days of saber rattling between Washington and Tehran, while its top diplomat worked to counter U.S. sanctions and salvage a nuclear deal denounced by President Donald Trump.

Reuters

Insurer says Iran’s Guards likely to have organized tanker attacks

A confidential assessment issued this week by the Norwegian Shipowners’ Mutual War Risks Insurance Association (DNK) concluded that the attack was likely to have been carried out by a surface vessel operating close by that despatched underwater drones carrying 30-50 kg (65-110 lb) of high-grade explosives to detonate on impact.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-oil-tankers-exclusive-idUSKCN1SN1P7