lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667 E-V-Translation-Materials-1
E V Translation (Đại học Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn, Đại học Quốc gia Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Cambodia's cyclos bring meals on three wheels to virus-hit Phnom Penh Reuters Cindy Liu
PHNOM PENH, July 23 (Reuters) - "Take what you need, donate what you can" is the
slogan written on a glass fronted cabinet full of food, water and essential daily items carried
by Cambodian cyclo taxi driver Chim Prich.
Hit hard by coronavirus movement restrictions, Cambodian cyclo drivers are flocking to
the streets of the capital, Phnom Penh, with mobile food banks that allow residents crippled
by the pandemic's economic hardships to pick up free food and essentials.
"Thanks to the kindness of those more fortunate who provided these foods and necessities, I
can deliver them to poor people like trash collectors, beggars, street sweepers and anyone
else who is struggling to make enough money to buy food," Chim Prich said.
Cyclos, three-wheeled pedal-powered rickshaws, have long been a popular choice for visitors
keen to take in the sights and enjoy the buzz of Phnom Penh at a leisurely pace. But the
coronavirus pandemic's devastating impact on global travel has crushed tourist numbers, cutting driver's incomes.
Hao Taing, a 21-year-old student in Phnom Penh, came up with the idea of the mobile
food banks after seeing the cyclo drivers struggle.
"It brings me great joy to run this project, and I've received a lot of love and support from
people both here and abroad," Hao Taing said. A full-time student, Hao Taing spends his
days working on the project and his nights studying.
"It's not easy," said Hao Taing, who added that he hoped the initiative would help
Cambodia's iconic cyclos survive the pandemic.
For their efforts, Hao Taing's organisation Local4Local, which relies on donations, pays
the cyclo drivers a small wage of around $17.50 a week to deliver food, water and other
essentials to Phnom Penh's most vulnerable people.
The initiative includes 10, colourful, hand-painted pantries placed atop the cyclos that are
then stationed across various points in the city so those in need can take, and those who have the means can donate.
"I feel like I've been reborn," said Ny Koy, a 63-year-old beneficiary of the project.
"No one has given food to me everyday like this. I'm so thankful. Now I can sleep well at night".
Reporting by Cindy Liu; Additional reporting by Chantha Lach; Writing by James Pearson; Editing by Christian Schmollinger
(Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/cambodias-cyclos-bring-meals-three-wheels-virus-hit- phnom-penh-2021-07-23) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Has Covid ended the neoliberal era?
The year 2020 exposed the risks and weaknesses of the market-driven global system
like never before. It’s hard to avoid the sense that a turning point has been reached by Adam Tooze
If one word could sum up the experience of 2020, it would be disbelief. Between Xi
Jinping’s public acknowledgment of the coronavirus outbreak on 20 January 2020, and Joe
Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the United States precisely a year later, the
world was shaken by a disease that in the space of 12 months killed more than 2.2 million
people and rendered tens of millions severely ill. Today the official death tolls stands at 4.51
million. The likely figure for excess deaths is more than twice that number. The virus
disrupted the daily routine of virtually everyone on the planet, stopped much of public life,
closed schools, separated families, interrupted travel and upended the world economy.
To contain the fallout, government support for households, businesses and markets took on
dimensions not seen outside wartime. It was not just by far the sharpest economic recession
experienced since the second world war, it was qualitatively unique. Never before had there
been a collective decision, however haphazard and uneven, to shut large parts of the
world’s economy down. It was, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put it, “a crisis like no other”.
Even before we knew what would hit us, there was every reason to think that 2020 might be
tumultuous. The conflict between China and the US was boiling up. A “new cold war” was
in the air. Global growth had slowed seriously in 2019. The IMF worried about the
destabilising effect that geopolitical tension might have on a world economy that was
already piled high with debt. Economists cooked up new statistical indicators to track the
uncertainty that was dogging investment.
… In January 2020, the news broke from Beijing. China was facing a full-blown epidemic of
a novel coronavirus. This was the natural “blowback” that environmental campaigners had
long warned us about, but whereas the climate crisis caused us to stretch our minds to a
planetary scale and set a timetable in terms of decades, the virus was microscopic and all-
pervasive, and was moving at a pace of days and weeks. It affected not glaciers and ocean
tides, but our bodies. It was carried on our breath. It would put not just individual national
economies but the world’s economy in question.
… As Britain, the US and Brazil demonstrate, democratic politics is taking on strange and
unfamiliar new forms. Social inequalities are more, not less extreme. At least in the rich
countries, there is no collective countervailing force. Capitalist accumulation continues in
channels that continuously multiply risks. The principal use to which our newfound financial
freedom has been put are more and more grotesque efforts at financial stabilisation. The
antagonism between the west and China divides huge chunks of the world, as not since the cold
war. And now, in the form of Covid, the monster has arrived. The Anthropocene has shown its
fangs – on an as yet modest scale. Covid is far from being the worst of what we lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
should expect – 2020 was not the full alert. If we are dusting ourselves off and enjoying the
recovery, we should reflect. Around the world the dead are unnumbered, but our best guess
puts the figure at 10 million. Thousands are dying every day. And 2020 was a wake-up call.
(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/02/covid-and-the-crisis- of-neoliberalism) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
CONQUERING THE GREAT DIVIDE Joseph Stiglitz Fall 2020 Issue
The pandemic has laid bare deep divisions, but it’s not too late to change course
COVID-19 has not been an equal opportunity virus: it goes after people in poor health and
those whose daily lives expose them to greater contact with others. And this means it goes
disproportionately after the poor, especially in poor countries and in advanced economies
like the United States where access to health care is not guaranteed. One of the reasons the
United States has been afflicted with the highest number of cases and deaths (at least as this
goes to press) is because it has among the poorest average health standards of major
developed economies, exemplified by low life expectancy (lower now than it was even seven
years ago) and the highest levels of health disparities.
[…] Unfortunately, as bad as inequality had been before the pandemic, and as forcefully as
the pandemic has exposed the inequalities in our society, the post-pandemic world could
experience even greater inequalities unless governments do something. The reason is simple:
COVID-19 won’t go away quickly. And the fear of another pandemic will linger. Now it is
more likely that both the private and the public sectors will take the risks to heart. And that
means certain activities, certain goods and services, and certain production processes will be
viewed as riskier and costlier. While robots do get viruses, they are more easily managed. So
it is likely that robots will, where possible, at least at the margin, replace humans. “Zooming”
will, at least at the margin, replace airline travel. The pandemic broadens the threat from
automation to low-skilled, person-to-person services workers that the literature so far has
seen as less affected—for example, in education and health. All of this will mean that the
demand for certain types of labor will decrease. This shift will almost surely increase
inequality—accelerating, in some ways, trends already in place.
[…] COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated inequalities between countries just as it has
within countries. The least developed economies have poorer health conditions, health
systems that are less prepared to deal with the pandemic, and people living in conditions
that make them more vulnerable to contagion, and they simply do not have the resources
that advanced economies have to respond to the economic aftermath.
The pandemic won’t be controlled until it is controlled everywhere, and the economic
downturn won’t be tamed until there is a robust global recovery. That’s why it’s a matter of
self-interest—as well as a humanitarian concern—for the developed economies to provide the
assistance the developing economies and emerging markets need. Without it, the global
pandemic will persist longer than it otherwise would, global inequalities will grow, and there will be global divergence.
While the Group of Twenty announced that it would use every instrument available to
provide this kind of help, the aid so far has been insufficient. In particular, one instrument
used in 2009 and easily available has not been employed: an issuance of $500 billion in
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). So far, it has not been possible to overcome the lack of
enthusiasm of the United States or India. The provision of SDRs would be of enormous
assistance to developing economies and emerging markets—with no or little cost to the
taxpayers of developed economies. It would be even better if those economies contributed lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
their SDRs to a trust fund to be used by developing economies to meet the exigencies of the pandemic.
So too, the rules of the game affect not just economic performance and inequalities within
countries, but also between countries, and in this arena the rules and norms governing
globalization are central. Some countries seem committed to “vaccine nationalism.” Others,
like Costa Rica, are doing what they can to ensure that all knowledge relevant to addressing
COVID-19 is used for the entire world, in a manner analogous to how the flu vaccine is updated every year.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ is a professor at Columbia University and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
(Source: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/09/COVID19-and-global-
inequality-joseph-stiglitz.htm) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Inequality and conflict—some good news
DR. HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD|MARCH 29, 2018
Political violence, conflict, and inequality are closely related, but not necessarily in the ways that people
think. Countries in which there is great inequality between rich and poor do not experience more
violent conflict than countries with less economic inequality. In contrast, inequalities between groups
defined by religion, ethnicity, or regional identities are linked to a significantly higher risk of armed
conflict. The good news is that while income inequality between individuals is increasing, identity
group-based inequality seems to be decreasing. This could lead to less conflict in the future.
There has never been more inequality
When we talk about inequality, we generally focus on differences between individuals. This is
also the type of inequality that has been the starting point for most existing research on this
topic. The well-known Gini index is exactly such a measure of inequality between individuals.
We have collated the best available data from a number of countries in order to measure levels of
income inequality between individuals. This provides us with sound data that is comparable across
countries and goes back all the way to the 1960s. Not surprisingly, we find that during the period
for which we have data, the world has never experienced greater economic inequality than it does today.
Increasing economic inequality is worrying for a number of reasons, but it is not an important cause
of armed conflict. This is because armed conflict is not an individual activity. Violent political
conflicts are fought between groups—either between an organized group and the state, or between
organized identity groups. Economic inequality in itself is not a strong enough unifying factor to
bring together groups large enough to rebel against the state.
Not all inequalities between groups are problematic. In many countries, everyone under the age
of 18 is excluded from participating in elections. This form of group inequality is widely accepted.
Generation-based inequality of this kind seldom leads to serious armed conflict, but from time to
time it contributes to mobilizing support for political change. In Norway, for instance, young
people are demanding that 16-year-olds get the right to vote.
Group inequality generates conflict
The situation is more serious when ethnic or religious affiliation determines access to social,
economic, or political goods. In the United States, there was a clear case of political group
inequality when African Americans were systematically excluded from political participation until
the mid-1960s. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime excluded other groups in the
Syrian population from political influence.
Research has shown that such identity group inequality is an important cause of armed conflict.
This is especially the case when the relative position of identity groups is changed—for instance, if a
group that has had access to political power is suddenly excluded from political participation. There
is a significantly higher risk of conflict in states that exclude ethnic groups from political power
when those groups have previously had the opportunity to participate in political processes. lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Group inequality is declining
We have collated data on identity group inequality over time, including data on inequalities in infant
mortality between different groups over time. Infant mortality rates are a useful universal measure
of socioeconomic development. As such, they are of particular interest for researchers interested in inequality.
The disparities in rates of infant mortality between different groups increased until the start of the
1990s. Since then, these disparities have decreased at the same rate that infant mortality has
declined overall. The world has never experienced such low overall rates of infant mortality as it
does today, and as far back as we have data we can say that the world has never seen such low
levels of inequality in infant mortality between different identity groups.
Identity group inequality is a significant cause of conflict. A decline in such inequality will, if the
trend continues, help reduce the risk of conflict in the future. This is encouraging news. But these
changes have not happened on their own. A stronger focus on the new Sustainable Development
Goals and an acknowledgement that it is important to reduce identity group inequality will be
decisive for preventing conflicts and sustaining peace.
Co authors on the background study on which this blog is based are Karim Bahgat, Gray
Barrett, Kendra Dupuy, Scott Gates, Solveig Hillesund, Siri Aas Rustad, Håvard Strand, Henrik
Urdal, and Gudrun Østby, all researchers at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
(Source: https://blogs.worldbank.org/dev4peace/inequality-and-conflict-some-good-news) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
The long arm of China's new maritime law risks causing
conflict with US and Japan
Analysis by Brad Lendon and Steve George, CNN
Updated 0843 GMT (1643 HKT) September 3, 2021
Hong Kong (CNN) Beijing wants foreign vessels to give notice before entering "Chinese
territorial waters," providing maritime authorities with detailed information -- including
the ship's name, call sign, current position, next port of call and estimated time of arrival.
It may sound like a reasonable enough request, especially if the ship is carrying hazardous
goods, that is until you consider what constitutes "Chinese territorial waters."
Beijing asserts sovereignty over vast swathes of the South China Sea, under its widely
contested and far-reaching nine-dash line, as well as disputed islands in the East China Sea.
As of September 1, five types of foreign vessels -- submersibles, nuclear-powered vessels,
ships carrying radioactive materials, ships carrying bulk oil, chemicals, liquefied gas or other
toxic substances, as well the seemingly catch-all "vessels that may endanger China's
maritime traffic safety" -- will be required by law to provide detailed information to state
authorities on entering "Chinese territorial waters," according to a notice released by China's
maritime safety authorities last Friday.
However, the regulations lack specifics and Western analysts say they skirt close to
countering the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which guarantees a
coastal state will not hamper the right of passage of foreign vessels if they don't threaten a nation's security.
The new regulations are the second such instance of Beijing attempting to provide a legal
justification for its maritime reach this year, following a law introduced in February that
allows the Chinese Coast Guard to use weapons to protect China's national sovereignty,
an action previously reserved for units of the People's Liberation Army.
The main focus of both of China's new legal claims is widely considered to be the South
China Sea, almost all of which Beijing claims as its sovereign territory, despite
overlapping claims by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan.
The US Coast Guard's top commander in the Pacific, Vice Adm. Michael McAllister, on
Friday called the new law "very concerning," telling CNN that if enforced, it "begins to
build foundations for instability and potential conflicts" in the South China Sea.
The US has shown a staunch unwillingness to comply with China's demands in the region,
routinely carrying out freedom of navigation operations, which challenge Beijing's claims
to disputed islands. During a speech in Singapore in July, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd
Austin pushed back against what he described as China's illegitimate claims to the vast resource-rich waterway.
But the more volatile area may be in the East China Sea, and the waters around the
Japanese-held Senkaku Islands, claimed by China as the Diaoyus.
"Exercising coastal state rights is an important step in corroborating sovereignty through
practice," said Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King's College in London.
"But in spaces like the waters around the Senkaku Islands, a strict implementation of these lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
navigational rules will inevitably lead to a clash with coast guard authorities of
competing claimants like Japan."
And, looking at the numbers, the forces that could precipitate a clash have been in
place almost constantly this year.
According to Japan's Coast Guard, Chinese Coast Guard vessels have been in Japan's
territorial waters -- within 12 nautical miles of Japanese land -- 88 times this year. In the
contiguous zone -- waters between islands but not within 12 miles of shore -- there have
been 851 Chinese incursions, the Japan Coast Guard says.
But China says its coast guard vessels are only patrolling its waters around its Diaoyu islands.
According to Beijing, Japanese craft are the interlopers and China would be within its rights
to use force to get rid of them.
"If the vessel is military and trespassing in China's territorial waters without advance notice,
it will be considered as serious provocation, and the Chinese military will take over to
dispel or take even stronger measures to punish the invaders," the state-owned Global
Times nationalist tabloid reported this week, quoting a Chinese military expert.
China has been ramping up legal pressure on the Senkakus since 2013, when it declared them
part of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), with requirements similar to the latest
Maritime Safety Administration rules. And that ADIZ has not resulted in armed clashes.
But, as many analysts point out, combat often comes by mistake, not careful planning. A
field commander eager to show his or her mettle, a mistaken order or miscommunication, a
mechanical breakdown of a ship or plane -- any could be a spark that ignites a conflict.
And in the current state of bellicose rhetoric between China and Japan, and its ally the United
States, once shots are fired, it could be hard to back down.
(Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/03/china/coast-guard-law-mic- intl-hnk/index.html) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Understanding China's conflicted nationalism
Beijing's aggressive behavior undermines its soft power ambitions David Shambaugh
August 29, 2021 05:00 JST
Why is it that every time the world thinks China is becoming a constructive and cooperative
international partner, Beijing lashes out and undermines its own global reputation?
Just when it seems that China is becoming a comfortable status quo power exhibiting
"confident nationalism," as the late Sinologist Michel Oksenberg once described it, its
government reverts to more assertive, acerbic, defensive, and revanchist forms of public diplomacy.
Despite China's long-standing propaganda protestations that it is a well-meaning benign
country, a good neighbor, that it will "never seek hegemony," and that it works with others
for "win-win solutions" to global problems, it frequently undermines these messages with
contradictory rhetoric and behavior.
The Chinese government is often accused of ignoring public diplomacy to the extent that it
weakens its soft power. In fact, Beijing has long paid attention to public diplomacy and
efforts to project a positive image to the outside world -- beginning with Mao's interviews
with Edgar Snow in Yanan in 1939, the friendship diplomacy of the 1950s, the
revolutionary diplomacy of the 1960s, the ping-pong diplomacy of the 1970s, the reform
and opening diplomacy of the 1980s, and then-President Hu Jintao's admonition to build soft power in 2007.
More recently. President Xi Jinping instructed in his June 2 Politburo directive to display
a "more credible, lovable, and respectable China," "tell China's story well," and become a
"public communications power."
In the early 2000s, a separate Central Committee department of external propaganda was
created to spearhead a multifaceted campaign to promote China abroad, which has since
been reabsorbed within the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department. In 2009,
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs inaugurated its own public diplomacy department, and a
system of ministerial spokespersons was created to interface with foreign media. China's
embassies abroad similarly designated spokespersons.
Notwithstanding these efforts to project a positive image, Beijing has punctuated them
with periodic angry outbursts, accusatory rhetoric, and an aggrieved national persona-now
commonly described as "wolf warrior diplomacy" led by Foreign Ministry spokespersons Hua Chunying and Zhao Lijian.
Chinese ambassadors abroad are also increasingly outspoken. Ambassador to France Lu
Shaye and ambassador to Sweden Gui Congyou have been particularly caustic in their public
remarks. Following criticisms of China in the communiques from the Group of Seven, U.S.-
EU, and NATO summits in June 2021, the London and Brussels embassies sprang into action with sharp critiques.
Xi's June 2 speech seemed to evince awareness of this when he also said that China should be
"open and confident, but also modest and humble." Xi's convening of the special Politburo lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
study session on public diplomacy is thought to have been a response to the wolf warrior
critiques as well as global public opinion polls that show China's global favorability ratings
at all-time lows. In mid-August, the Pew Research Center issued new data showing a
continued sharp deterioration dating back to 2018.
This acerbic nationalist posture is likely to become a continual feature of China's diplomacy.
What is odd -- and conflicted -- about China's nationalism today is that it reflects both
security and insecurity. On the one hand, China takes great pride in its accomplishments, its
history, and sense of global importance. On the other hand, there remains a strong residual
streak of aggrievement, and revanchism -- which produces a sense of brittleness that is
quick to react to any perceived slight and hit back against perceived "foreign hostile forces."
China's pushback is also coupled with a sense of payback -- as Chinese nationalists are
increasingly demanding punitive actions against those who have previously infringed on China's
sovereignty and sense of dignity. The U.S., Europe, Australia and Japan head the list.
With this new aggressive national persona on display, it will only alienate other countries,
undercut Beijing's official protestations of cooperation and peaceful intent, and contribute
to the growing global image of China as a threat.
David Shambaugh is Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science &
International Affairs, and Director of the China Policy Program at George
Washington University. He is author of "China's Leaders: From Mao to Now."
(Source: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Understanding-China-s-conflicted-nationalism) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Hard power: Europe’s military drift causes alarm
Zach Campbell, Caitlin Chandler and Chris Jones Wed 19 May 2021 11.00 BST
The EU was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2012 in recognition of “six decades of
promoting peace and reconciliation” in Europe. In his acceptance speech in Oslo, the then
president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said the world could “count
on our efforts to fight for lasting peace, freedom and justice”.
Yet less than a decade on, the EU is taking two big steps to bolster its defence capacity and
engage in military conflicts through training and equipping governments outside the bloc. In
the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic these developments have slipped under the radar, but
they represent a significant expansion in security policy with wide-ranging consequences.
An €8bn (£6.9bn) European defence fund (EDF), aimed at developing and acquiring new
weapons and technology for militaries within the EU and abroad, was agreed last
December. The EU also recently launched the European peace facility (EPF), a mechanism
that will boost the bloc’s ability to provide training and equipment – including, for the first
time, weapons – to non-European military forces around the world.
France and Germany, the commission, and a majority of MEPs have pushed for these tools
to boost European power abroad. They point to conflicts in the Middle East, the Sahel and
Ukraine, and the more isolationist direction the US took under the Trump administration, as justification.
The twin initiatives will bolster the EU’s economic and diplomatic influence with a hefty
dose of “hard power”, say advocates who also point to the inefficiency of 27 national
militaries acquiring their own new weapons systems. But the measures will also benefit the
European arms industry by providing research and development funds and new outlets for arms sales overseas.
“The challenges are coming closer and they are getting more diverse, especially in areas
where the Americans tell Europeans: ‘Hey! Care for your [own] back yard’,” said the
German conservative MEP Michael Gahler, who sits on the European parliament’s security
and defence subcommittee. He says Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea is one of the main
factors in driving support for greater EU military involvement. “Don’t think of Donald, think of Vladimir,” he said.
But a vociferous network of peace activists, critical MEPs and campaigners accuses the EU
of abandoning its founding principles and giving in to lobbying from the arms industry for
more public funding. “For the first time in the history of the European Union, we have budget
lines with military components,” said Özlem Demirel, an MEP from Germany and vice-chair
of the security and defence subcommittee.
A legal opinion drafted for Demirel’s European parliamentary group argues the EDF is a
“manifest violation” of the EU’s founding treaties, which prohibit use of the bloc’s budget
for “operations having military or defence implications”. lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
… In discussions around a more prominent military role for the EU, there is much mention of
defending the bloc’s interests. But some people question whether the geopolitical interests of
the EU and those of its citizens are the same thing.
“If you want to defend a peace project, if you want to defend peace in the world, the focus
should not be in creating bigger weapons systems, but in creating more disarmament
treaties,” Demirel said. “We are in a pandemic, we need this money for health projects, and not for weapons.”
Slijper put it more bluntly: “It’s clear that the European Union is drifting farther and farther
away from that initial idea of a peace project and these instruments, the peace facility and
the defence fund, are very clear examples.”
However, in the halls of power in Brussels, these views are a minority. “Sometimes you
need military means to establish peace,” said Vautmans. “A geopolitical Europe also needs
the means to be able to have an impact.”
Exactly what that impact is remains to be seen. “2021 is a startup year,” said the EU
official. “The EU is changing, and this is part of that change.”
(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/19/hard-power-europes- military-drift-causes-alarm) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
You Are Now Remotely Controlled
Surveillance capitalists control the science and the scientists, the secrets and the truth. By Shoshana Zubof Jan. 24, 2020
The debate on privacy and law at the Federal Trade Commission was unusually heated
that day. Tech industry executives “argued that they were capable of regulating themselves
and that government intervention would be costly and counterproductive.” Civil
libertarians warned that the companies’ data capabilities posed “an unprecedented threat to
individual freedom.” One observed, “We have to decide what human beings are in the
electronic age. Are we just going to be chattel for commerce?” A commissioner asked,
‘‘Where should we draw the line?” The year was 1997.
… The rise of surveillance capitalism over the last two decades went largely unchallenged.
“Digital” was fast, we were told, and stragglers would be left behind. It’s not surprising that
so many of us rushed to follow the bustling White Rabbit down his tunnel into a promised
digital Wonderland where, like Alice, we fell prey to delusion. In Wonderland, we
celebrated the new digital services as free, but now we see that the surveillance capitalists
behind those services regard us as the free commodity. We thought that we search Google,
but now we understand that Google searches us. We assumed that we use social media to
connect, but we learned that connection is how social media uses us. We barely questioned
why our new TV or mattress had a privacy policy, but we’ve begun to understand that
“privacy” policies are actually surveillance policies.
[…] All of these delusions rest on the most treacherous hallucination of them all: the belief
that privacy is private. We have imagined that we can choose our degree of privacy with an
individual calculation in which a bit of personal information is traded for valued services —
a reasonable quid pro quo. For example, when Delta Air Lines piloted a biometric data
system at the Atlanta airport, the company reported that of nearly 25,000 customers who
traveled there each week, 98 percent opted into the process, noting that “the facial
recognition option is saving an average of two seconds for each customer at boarding, or nine
minutes when boarding a wide body aircraft.”
In fact the rapid development of facial recognition systems reveals the public consequences
of this supposedly private choice. Surveillance capitalists have demanded the right to take
our faces wherever they appear — on a city street or a Facebook page. The Financial
Times reported that a Microsoft facial recognition training database of 10 million images
plucked from the internet without anyone’s knowledge and supposedly limited to academic
research was employed by companies like IBM and state agencies that included the United
States and Chinese military. Among these were two Chinese suppliers of equipment to
officials in Xinjiang, where members of the Uighur community live in open-air prisons
under perpetual surveillance by facial recognition systems. lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Our digital century was to have been democracy’s Golden Age. Instead, we enter its third
decade marked by a stark new form of social inequality best understood as “epistemic
inequality.” It recalls a pre-Gutenberg era of extreme asymmetries of knowledge and the
power that accrues to such knowledge, as the tech giants seize control of information and
learning itself. The delusion of “privacy as private” was crafted to breed and feed this
unanticipated social divide. Surveillance capitalists exploit the widening inequity of
knowledge for the sake of profits. They manipulate the economy, our society and even our
lives with impunity, endangering not just individual privacy but democracy itself.
Distracted by our delusions, we failed to notice this bloodless coup from above.
The belief that privacy is private has left us careening toward a future that we did not choose,
because it failed to reckon with the profound distinction between a society that insists upon
sovereign individual rights and one that lives by the social relations of the one-way mirror.
The lesson is that privacy is public — it is a collective good that is logically and morally
inseparable from the values of human autonomy and self-determination upon which privacy
depends and without which a democratic society is unimaginable.
(Ms. Zuboff is the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”)
(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance- capitalism.html) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
The professor who assigns value to nature — then
persuades world leaders to save it
Gretchen Daily is a pioneer in the field known as “natural capital.” Using science
and software, she shows stakeholders why it benefits everyone to prioritize conservation. Tik Root July 30, 2021
Daily is a professor of biology at Stanford University and a pioneer in a field known as
“natural capital.” The term refers to the soil, air, water and other assets that nature has to
offer. As a conservation model, it is rooted in the idea that nature has a measurable value
to humans and that protection efforts must go far beyond walled-off reserves and be
broadly integrated into development practice and planning.
She has spent more than 30 years developing the scientific underpinnings of natural capital
and is the co-founder of the Natural Capital Project, which has grown to include a group of
250 partners around the world. The organization has integrated science into its cornerstone
computer program to help governments and other stakeholders prioritize conservation.
“I’m always looking for the win-win-win type situations,” said Daily, whose colleagues say
her optimism and charm are at the core of her success. The Natural Capital Project says it
has now worked on some 1,700 projects around the world, and its open-source software has
been downloaded in more than 185 countries.
She has been widely recognized for the work, including with the 2020 Tyler Prize for
Environmental Achievement. She’s also helped mentor the next generation of natural
capital researchers and practitioners.
“There are many people who define themselves as ecosystem services scientists now,”
said Taylor Ricketts, one of the hundreds of people Daily has taught or advised over the
years. “That’s what she lit the spark for.”
Over the years, Daily has been involved in dozens of natural capital initiatives around
the globe. It always starts, she said, from a foundation of basic science.
But to help turn science into tangible outcomes, Daily and the Natural Capital Project
combined their research with mapping data to create a software called InVEST, which stands
for “Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs.” It can help guide
policymakers by pinpointing where, and for whom, conservation efforts can have the greatest payoff.
In Colombia, officials are eager to participate in another of Daily’s efforts: to have nations
adopt “gross ecosystem product” — a measure of economic well-being that places nature
at the fore. It’s a metric that Daily says should be used alongside the more ubiquitous gross domestic product.
“For decades people have been noting the shortcomings of GDP, but politically it’s
always been too fraught to remedy,” said Daily. “It’s time to deploy something new.” lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Gross ecosystem product is, in many ways, a culmination of much of Daily’s work. Along
with others, she has lobbied the United Nations to make it an official metric. In March
2021, the push bore results when the United Nations Statistical Commission adopted the
standard. “This is a historic step forward toward transforming how we view and value
nature,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said.
Daily heard the news by email, and it brought tears.
“It gave me a feeling of hope,” she said.
(Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/gretchen-
daily-natural-capital-environment) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council - on
addressing climate-related security risks to international peace
and security through mitigation and resilience building Mr. President, Excellencies,
I thank the British Presidency for convening this debate, and for your invitation to brief on a subject of grave concern.
The climate emergency is the defining issue of our time.
The last decade was the hottest in human history. Carbon dioxide levels are at record highs, and
wildfires, cyclones, floods, and droughts are the new normal. These shocks not only damage the
environment on which we depend; they also weaken our political, economic and social systems.
The science is clear: we need to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by
the end of the century. And our duty is even clearer: we need to protect the people and
communities that are being hit by climate disruption. We must step up preparations for the
escalating implications of the climate crisis for international peace and security.
Climate disruption is a crisis amplifier and multiplier. Where climate change dries up rivers,
reduces harvests, destroys critical infrastructure, and displaces communities, it exacerbates the
risks of instability and conflict. A study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
found that eight of the ten countries hosting the largest multilateral peace operations in 2018
were in areas highly exposed to climate change.
The impacts of this crisis are greatest where fragility and conflicts have weakened coping
mechanisms; where people depend on natural capital like forests and fish stocks for their
livelihoods; and where women – who bear the greatest burden of the climate emergency – do not enjoy equal rights.
In Afghanistan, for example, where 40 percent of the workforce is engaged in farming, reduced
harvests push people into poverty and food insecurity, leaving them susceptible to recruitment by
criminal gangs and armed groups.
Across West Africa and the Sahel, more than 50 million people depend on rearing livestock for
survival. Changes in grazing patterns have contributed to growing violence and conflict between pastoralists and farmers.
In Darfur, low rainfall and recurrent droughts are increasing food insecurity and competition for
resources and we are seeing the result. The consequences are particularly devastating for women
and girls, who are forced to walk farther to collect water, putting them at greater risk of sexual and gender-based violence.
Vulnerability to climate risks is also correlated with income inequality. In other words, the poorest
suffer most. Unless we protect those most exposed and susceptible to climate-related impacts, we
can expect them to become even more marginalized, and their grievances to be reinforced.
High levels of inequality, that climate change enhances, can weaken social cohesion and lead to
discrimination, scapegoating, rising tensions and unrest, increasing the risk of conflict. Those who
are already being left behind will be left even farther behind.
Climate disruption is already driving displacement across the world. In some small island nations in
the Pacific, entire communities have been forced to relocate, with terrible implications for their lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
livelihoods, culture and heritage. The forced movement of larger numbers of people around the
world will clearly increase the potential for conflict and insecurity beyond their suffering.
When I was High Commissioner for Refugees, I spent time with people who had been uprooted by
the impact of climate change, in the Horn of Africa, Darfur, the Sahel and elsewhere. Listening to
their stories, I understood the deep suffering and trauma of families forced to abandon homes and
land that had been theirs for generations.
[…] The climate crisis is the multilateral challenge of our age. It is already impacting every area of
human activity. Solving it requires coordination and cooperation on a scale we have never seen
before. The engagement of all multilateral bodies, including this Council, can play an important
role in facing this challenge.
I urge Council members to use their influence during this pivotal year to ensure the success of
COP26, and to mobilize others, including international financial institutions and the private sector, to do their part.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, I guarantee the full support of the United Nations for the British
presidency of COP26, together with the Italian co-chairs.
2021 is a make-or-break year for collective action against the climate emergency. Thank you.
(Source: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/secretary-generals-remarks-security-council-addressing-
climate-related-security-risks) lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667 "Be Your Own Story" Toni Morrison
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts USA MAY 28, 2004
I have to confess to all of you, Madame President, Board of Trustees, members of the
faculty, relatives, friends, students. I have had some conflicted feelings about accepting this
invitation to deliver the Commencement Address to Wellesley’s Class of 2004. My initial
response, of course, was glee, a very strong sense of pleasure at, you know, participating
personally and formally in the rites of an institution with this reputation: 125 years of history
in women’s education, an enviable rostrum of graduates, its commitment sustained over the
years in making a difference in the world, and its successful resistance to challenges that
women’s colleges have faced from the beginning and throughout the years. An extraordinary
record-and I was delighted to be asked to participate and return to this campus.
But my second response was not so happy. I was very anxious about having to figure out
something to say to this particular class at this particular time, because I was really troubled
by what could be honestly said in 2004 to over 500 elegantly educated women, or to relatives
and friends who are relieved at this moment, but hopeful as well as apprehensive. And to a
college faculty and administration dedicated to leadership and knowledgeable about what
that entails. Well, of course, I could be sure of the relatives and the friends, just tell them that
youth is always insulting because it manages generation after generation not only to survive
and replace us, but to triumph over us completely.
And I would remind the faculty and the administration of what each knows: that the work
they do takes second place to nothing, nothing at all, and that theirs is a first order
profession. Now, of course to the graduates I could make reference to things appropriate to
your situations–the future, the past, the present, but most of all happiness. Regarding the
future, I would have to rest my case on some bromide, like the future is yours for the taking.
Or, that it’s whatever you make of it. But the fact is it is not yours for the taking. And it is
not whatever you make of it. The future is also what other people make of it, how other
people will participate in it and impinge on your experience of it.
But I’m not going to talk anymore about the future because I’m hesitant to describe or predict
because I’m not even certain that it exists. That is to say, I’m not certain that somehow,
perhaps, a burgeoning ménage a trois of political interests, corporate interests and military
interests will not prevail and literally annihilate an inhabitable, humane future. Because I
don’t think we can any longer rely on separation of powers, free speech, religious tolerance
or unchallengeable civil liberties as a matter of course. That is, not while finite humans in the
flux of time make decisions of infinite damage. Not while finite humans make infinite claims
of virtue and unassailable power that are beyond their competence, if not their reach. So, no happy talk about the future.
Maybe the past offers a better venue. You already share an old tradition of an
uncompromisingly intellectual women’s college, and that past and that tradition is important to
both understand and preserve. It’s worthy of reverence and transmission. You’ve already lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
learned some strategies for appraising the historical and economical and cultural past that
you have inherited. But this is not a speech focusing on the splendor of the national past that you are also inheriting.
You will detect a faint note of apology in the descriptions of this bequest, a kind of sorrow
that accompanies it, because it’s not good enough for you. Because the past is already in debt
to the mismanaged present. And besides, contrary to what you may have heard or learned,
the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still in process, which is another way of saying that
when it’s critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself. The past is already
changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being listened to for deeper resonances. Actually
it can be more liberating than any imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions,
its distortions, its lies, and are willing to unleash its secrets.
But again, it seemed inappropriate, very inappropriate, for me to delve into a past for people
who are in the process of making one, forging their own, so I consider this focusing on your
responsibility as graduates -- graduates of this institution and citizens of the world-and to tell
you once again, repeat to you the admonition, a sort of a wish, that you go out and save the
world. That is to suggest to you that with energy and right thinking you can certainly
improve, certainly you might even rescue it. Now that’s a heavy burden to be placed on one
generation by a member of another generation because it’s a responsibility we ought to
share, not save the world, but simply to love it, meaning don’t hurt it, it’s already beaten and
scoured and gasping for breath. Don’t hurt it or enable others who do and will. Know and
identify the predators waving flags made of dollar bills. They will say anything, promise
anything, do everything to turn the planet into a casino where only the house cards can win-
little people with finite lives love to play games with the infinite. But I thought better of that,
selecting your responsibilities for you. If I did that, I would assume your education had been
in vain and that you were incapable of deciding for yourself what your responsibilities should be.
So, I’m left with the last thing that I sort of ignored as a topic. Happiness. I’m sure you have
been told that this is the best time of your life. It may be. But if it’s true that this is the best
time of your life, if you have already lived or are now living at this age the best years, or if
the next few turn out to be the best, then you have my condolences. Because you’ll want to
remain here, stuck in these so-called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to
feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain.
One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless
but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic-all designed to
maintain hunger for stasis. While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being
exoticized into eternal juvenilia. I know that happiness has been the real, if covert, target of your
labors here, your choices of companions, of the profession that you will enter. You deserve it
and I want you to gain it, everybody should. But if that’s all you have on your mind, then you do
have my sympathy, and if these are indeed the best years of your life, you do have my
condolences because there is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true
adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not
inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard won lOMoAR cPSD| 40799667
glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.
Now, if I can’t talk inspiringly and hopefully about the future or the past or the present and
your responsibility to the present or happiness, you might be wondering why I showed up. If
things are that dour, that tentative, you might ask yourself, what’s this got to do with me?
What about my life? I didn’t ask to be born, as they say. I beg to differ with you. Yes, you
did! In fact, you insisted upon it. It’s too easy, you know, too ordinary, too common to not
be born. So your presence here on Earth is a very large part your doing.
So it is up to the self, that self that insisted on life that I want to speak to now – candidly –
and tell you the truth that I have not really been clearheaded about, the world I have
described to you, the one you are inheriting. All my ruminations about the future, the past,
responsibility, happiness are really about my generation, not yours. My generation’s
profligacy, my generation’s heedlessness and denial, its frail ego that required endless
draughts of power juice and repeated images of weakness in others in order to prop up our
own illusion of strength, more and more self congratulation while we sell you more and more
games and images of death as entertainment. In short, the palm I was reading wasn’t yours, it
was the splayed hand of my own generation and I know no generation has a complete grip on
the imagination and work of the next one, not mine and not your parents’, not if you refuse to
let it be so. You don’t have to accept those media labels. You need not settle for any defining
category. You don’t have to be merely a taxpayer or a red state or a blue state or a consumer or a minority or a majority.
Of course, you’re general, but you’re also specific. A citizen and a person, and the person
you are is like nobody else on the planet. Nobody has the exact memory that you have. What
is now known is not all what you are capable of knowing. You are your own stories and
therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it
feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without
fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned
in the sandbox. And although you don’t have complete control over the narrative (no author
does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it.
Although you will never fully know or successfully manipulate the characters who surface or
disrupt your plot, you can respect the ones who do by paying them close attention and doing
them justice. The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own
story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language
to say who you are and what you mean. But then, I am a teller of stories and therefore an
optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind’s disgust
with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of
view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art. Thank you.
(Source: http://www.humanity.org/voices/commencements/toni-morrison-wellesley-college- speech-2004)