China's Expanding Deep Surveillance State Influence

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Ecuador’s system, called ECU-911, was largely made by two Chinese companies, the state-controlled C.E.I.E.C. and Huawei

A topic of intense ongoing interest is following the progress of China's massive social engineering experient in behavior and mind control. If the China experiment in building and implementing its deep surveillance state succeeds, it could represent the ultimate fate of most humans for a very long time, maybe forever. The most recent step discussed here in building an enduring behavior- and thought control-based tyranny, was China's recent introduction of a phone app, Study the Great Nation, that forces millions of people to study Chinese President Xi Jingping's version of socialism and his own greatness. The prior discussion included this:

Authoritarians all over the world would love to have this level of surveillance and control. In time, this model of society could be the fate of about 99.99% of humanity.

It was just a matter of time before other countries picked up on China's experiment in absolute, unassailable tyranny. The New York Times reports:

QUITO, Ecuador — The squat gray building in Ecuador’s capital commands a sweeping view of the city’s sparkling sprawl, from the high-rises at the base of the Andean valley to the pastel neighborhoods that spill up its mountainsides.

The police who work inside are looking elsewhere. They spend their days poring over computer screens, watching footage that comes in from 4,300 cameras across the country.

The high-powered cameras send what they see to 16 monitoring centers in Ecuador that employ more than 3,000 people. Armed with joysticks, the police control the cameras and scan the streets for drug deals, muggings and murders. If they spy something, they zoom in.

This voyeur’s paradise is made with technology from what is fast becoming the global capital of surveillance: China. Ecuador’s system, which was installed beginning in 2011, is a basic version of a program of computerized controls that Beijing has spent billions to build out over a decade of technological progress. According to Ecuador’s government, these cameras feed footage to the police for manual review.

But a New York Times investigation found that the footage also goes to the country’s feared domestic intelligence agency, which under the previous president, Rafael Correa, had a lengthy track record of following, intimidating and attacking political opponents. Even as a new administration under President Lenín Moreno investigates the agency’s abuses, the group still gets the videos.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has vastly expanded domestic surveillance, fueling a new generation of companies that make sophisticated technology at ever lower prices. A global infrastructure initiative is spreading that technology even further.

Ecuador shows how technology built for China’s political system is now being applied — and sometimes abused — by other governments. Today, 18 countries — including Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and Germany — are using Chinese-made intelligent monitoring systems, and 36 have received training in topics like “public opinion guidance,” which is typically a euphemism for censorship, according to an October report from Freedom House, a pro-democracy research group.

With China’s surveillance know-how and equipment now flowing to the world, critics warn that it could help underpin a future of tech-driven authoritarianism, potentially leading to a loss of privacy on an industrial scale. Often described as public security systems, the technologies have darker potential uses as tools of political repression.

“They’re selling this as the future of governance; the future will be all about controlling the masses through technology,” Adrian Shahbaz, research director at Freedom House, said of China’s new tech exports.

Right now, personal freedom is under severe attack throughout much of the world, including in America. Authoritarians are on the rise. Democracies are under pressure to be more authoritarian. If China's experiment in governance based on surveillance and behavior and mind control succeeds, the human species looks destined to be enslaved. We may be living in the dark twilight of personal freedom with the dawn of a new, harsh age awaiting.

B&B orig: 4/25/19

The Future of Democracy in K-12 Education

Thursday, April 25, 2019

A NY Times article on a 5 year effort on the part of conservative Republicans in Michigan to remove the word "democracy" from the K-12 curriculum to replace it with "constitutional republic," supposedly for the sake of fidelity to the founders. Further, they maintain that curriculum should accentuate national "triumphs" rather than "sins," and pushed for the elimination of such topics as climate change, the Roe decision and all mention of LGBTQ civil rights, among other things. Because K-12 curriculum is left to the discretion of the states, such determinations are possible. The NY Times writes:

The United States, unlike many other developed nations, lacks a national curriculum that defines what students should know. Each of the 50 states can create its own learning standards.

These documents are closely examined. While schools can teach material not included in them, they shape the content in standardized tests, and many educators rely heavily on the standards as they craft lesson plans. Student teachers are trained to use them.

Activists have long seen influencing state standards as an effective way to shape the next generation of voters. In 2010, conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education removed the word “democracy” as a description of American government, prompting protests. (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/21/AR2010052104365.html ) Georgia has also debated the term, eventually settling, in 2016, on standards that use the phrase “representative democracy/republic.”

After the initial draft was reported in a local magazine called The Bridge, an intense debate was sparked about the controversial changes. According to the Times, the state recruited a "broader group of Michiganders...to redraft the standards, which will be presented to the State Board of Education on April 9." The 8 member board will then on whether or not to adopt it (the draft version can be found here).

As the Times points out, almost no historians, political or legal scholars of the US Constitution believe that a representative democracy and constitutional republic are mutually exclusive descriptors. Yes, the founders tended to avoid the word democracy because they had in mind direct democracy (like that which briefly existed in Athens). But as the article states:

A democracy is government by the people, who may rule either directly or indirectly, through elected representatives. A republic is a form of government in which the people’s elected representatives make decisions.

Some of the country’s political processes, like ballot referendums, are more democratic than others, like the Electoral College. Grappling with that complexity is key to understanding American government, according to social studies experts.

The US has become deeply polarized along party lines, and the attempt in 3 "Red states" to replace the term "deomocracy" with "republic" is partly reflective of the conservatives' ambitions to replace "Democrats" with "Republicans" in elected office. But it also coincides with the erosion of democratic norms and values both in the US and Europe, which has been documented and studied by political scientists in such books as How Democracies Die and The People vs. Democracy, among many others. Republicans, such as Reagan and Bush 1 and 2 used the rhetoric of democracy and freedom all the time. A meaner, and more unabashedly hierarchical right wing populist movement has displaced much of that rhetoric in favor of nativism with anti-democratic elements such as racism, Islamaphobia, homophobia and other forms of intolerance and discrimination which run counter to core democratic values. There is something Orwellian about removing a word from K-12 classrooms that has long been as American as Apple Pie.

Because there is no national curriculum in this area, we could end up with children learning different things about this country, thus augmenting the polarization and conflict already in play. Though decentralization of public education has the advantage of empowering those people (parents, municipal and local leaders) who know the needs of their communities, is there not also a need for certain overarching values and norms lest we lose whatever social solidarity we have left as Americans? Even if states can create their own standards, shouldn't this be something that requires extremely broad approval within the states? Right now, citizens in Michigan are locked in a tense struggle over the future of their education system. This is the third state in only a few years to try to eliminate the word "democracy' from the classroom-- a disturbing trend.

B&B orig: 4/7/19

China's Deep Surveillance State: The Next Step

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Chinese policewoman using facial-recognition sunglasses linked to artificial intelligence data analysis algorithms while patrolling a train station in Zhengzhou, the capital of central China's Henan province

A topic of great personal interest is the massive social engineering experiment now well underway in China, discussed here and here.

The point of the experiment is to apply modern technology to monitor and control people's movement, purchases, behaviors and thoughts with ever increasing pressure and effectiveness. For example, China is about midway through installing a social credit scoring system that rewards behaviors the tyrants at the top, mostly President Xi, see as acceptable, while punishing behaviors deemed unacceptable. The system is highly invasive and builds very powerful social and legal pressure to conform to the tyrants' social, political and commercial norms. People's movements and their buying habits are tracked by GPS in their cell phones, leisure time and works time activities are all monitored. Almost 500,000 million stationary cameras will monitor the streets and buildings. Police are now equipped with sunglasses with scanners wirelessly linked to facial recognition software. Places to hide are shrinking.

The New York Times describes a new tool to force compliance the government has dreamed up. This one is a real whopper.

The Chinese government has released a new cell phone app called Study the Great Nation. This fun little toy forces people to play for points or face the consequences of their slackness. The NYT writes:

CHANGSHA, China — Inside a fishing gear store on a busy city street, the owner sits behind a counter, furiously tapping a smartphone to improve his score on an app that has nothing to do with rods, reels and bait.

The owner, Jiang Shuiqiu, a 35-year-old army veteran, has a different obsession: earning points on Study the Great Nation, a new app devoted to promoting President Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party — a kind of high-tech equivalent of Mao’s Little Red Book. Mr. Jiang spends several hours daily on the app, checking news about Mr. Xi and brushing up on socialist theories.

Tens of millions of Chinese workers, students and civil servants are now using Study the Great Nation, often under pressure from the government. It is part of a sweeping effort by Mr. Xi to strengthen ideological control in the digital age and reassert the party’s primacy, as Mao once did, as the center of Chinese life.

“We must love our country,” said Mr. Jiang, one of the top scorers on the app in Changsha, the capital of the southern province of Hunan. “We are getting stronger and stronger.”

Since its debut this year, Study the Great Nation has become the most downloaded app on Apple’s digital storefront in China, with the state news media saying it has more than 100 million registered users — a reach that would be the envy of any new app’s creators.

But those numbers are driven largely by the party, which ordered thousands of officials across China to ensure that the app penetrates the daily routines of as many citizens as possible, whether they like it or not.

Schools are shaming students with low app scores. Government offices are holding study sessions and forcing workers who fall behind to write reports criticizing themselves. Private companies, hoping to curry favor with party officials, are ranking employees based on their use of the app and awarding top performers the title of “star learner.”

Many employers now require workers to submit daily screenshots documenting how many points they have earned.

One can see both mind and behavior control in the app. People accept the app, even if it is forced on them. Human nature being what it is, many or most of the people resistant to this will have no choice but to fall in line and over time, most of these reluctant minds will conform.

This social engineering experiment is of great personal interest because it could be the model for how the future will be for the entire human species. Authoritarians all over the world would love to have this level of surveillance and control. In time, this model of society could be the fate of about 99.99% of humanity.

The question for the China situation is simple: Will it ever be possible for the people to rebel and overthrow this level of intrusiveness and control, either peacefully or by force? At present, it looks like this deep surveillance state model could be very durable because it affords no means for people to rebel.

Just how much misery and loss of freedom can human societies take before hitting a breaking point? Looking at modern North Korea, Germany under Hitler and Russia under Stalin as evidence, the answer appears to be an awful lot. Maybe so much that the human spirit is broken such that rebellion simply is not possible, like it appears to be the case in North Korea today.

We live in interesting, scary times.

B&B orig: 4/8/19

An Origin of America's Deadly Culture War

Monday, April 22, 2019


The origins of America's culture war is of great personal interest. The war could usher in the end of the American experiment and the rise of a kleptocratic tyranny grounded in illiberal democracy. At present it seems that the rule of law is in a process of falling to the tyrant wannabe, Donald Trump and the interests arrayed behind him.

In her 2017 book, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History Of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America, Nancy MacLean (history Professor, Duke University) describes the concerns that ultimately led to widespread resistance among radical hard core conservatives (RHCCs)[1] to social changes in America.

Those changes were being reflected in society at large and how the right of citizens were coming to be seen. Sometimes those social changes were being reflected in Supreme Court decisions that RHCCs viewed as an all-out war on their sacred way of live, their sacred vision of proper governance, and their sacred values and freedoms. They viewed social change with a mix of terror, rage and hate. They were not going to accept it and they were going to fight it tooth and claw.

This really was a culture war.

MacLean writes this about the second Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1955 that ordered public schools to be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.”[2]

“At a minimum, the federal courts could no longer be counted on to defer reflexively to states’ rights arguments. More concerning was the likelihood that the high court would be more willing to intervene when presented with compelling evidence that a state action was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” under the law. State’s rights, in effect, were yielding in preeminence to individual rights. It was not difficult for either Darden [President of the University of Virginia] or Buchanan [chairman of the economics department at UVA] to imagine how a court might rule if presented with evidence of Virginia’s archaic labor relations, its measures to suppress voting, or its efforts to buttress the power of reactionary rural whites by underrepresenting the moderate voters of cities and suburbs of Northern Virginia. Federal meddling could rise to levels once unimaginable.

James McGill Buchanan was not a member of the Virginia elite. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that for a white southerner of his day he was uniquely racist or insensitive to the concept of equal treatment. And yet, somehow, all he saw in the Brown decision was coercion. And not just in the abstract. what the court ruling represented to him was personal. Northern liberals -- the very people who looked down on southern whites like him -- were now going to tell his people how to run their society. And to add insult to injury, he and people like him with property were no doubt going to be taxed to pay for all of the improvements that were now deemed necessary and proper for the state to make. What about his rights? Where did the federal government get the authority to engineer society to its liking and then send him and those like him the bill?Who represented their interests in all of this? I can fight this, he concluded. I want to fight this.

Find the resources, he proposed to Darden, for me to create a new center on the campus of the University of Virginia, and I will use this center to created a new school of political economy and social philosophy. It would be an academic center, rigorously so, but one with a quiet political agenda: to defeat the “perverted form” of liberalism that sought to destroy their way of life, “a social order,” as he described it, “built on individual liberty,” a term with its own coded meaning but one that Darden surely understood. The center, Buchanan promised, would train a “new line of thinkers” in how to argue against those seeking to impose an “increasing role of government in economic and social life.”

He could win this war, and he would do it with ideas.”

This is one of the origins of the culture war that is tearing America apart. Today, those arguing to get the federal government out of their lives would no doubt say that they are not racist or bigoted, but instead argue they are simply fighting for personal freedom and the sacred Constitutional right of states to be left alone to do as they wish. This helps explain the roots of modern voter suppression that most RHCCs seem to favor. It seems that there may be millions of adult Americans who wish to replace the Constitution with the failed Articles of Confederation. That would be the end of the American experiment.

Footnotes:
1. This label may be not quite accurate for the people it applies to in the 1950s, but it appears to this observer to be reasonable for modern conservatives and populists in view of where American society is today in 2019.

2. The Supreme Court waited for years to rule on racial segregation based on the ‘separate but equal’ myth. Schools for black and white students were not close to equal and everyone awake knew it. The justices waited until they got a case that did not arise in the deep South. They knew desegregating public schools would be highly divisive and offensive for whites in the South. They wanted the case to come from someplace other than the deep South to try to minimize the profound social discord they knew would come from school desegregation. Profound social discord is exactly what the Brown decision caused and it wasn't just in the South. Racism is inherent in the human mind. That aspect of our evolutionary heritage has to be tamed by learning.

B&B orig: 4/14/19

The Quiet War for American Theocracy

Monday, April 22, 2019


In an article by Salon entitled, The plot against America: Inside the Christian right plan to “remodel” the nation, author Paul Rosenberg argues that “the religious right's blueprint for theocratic state laws keeps creeping forward.” Rosenberg cited the Texas Senate, which passed SB-17 earlier this month. SB-17 is a law that protects anti-LGBTQ discrimination by all licensed professionals who claim to act on a “sincerely held religious belief.”

The article comments:

“It’s time for Americans to wake up to the harsh reality that the religious right, fueled by their fear of loss of power from the changing demographics in our country and their support from the Trump administration, is emboldened and aggressively pursuing all means possible to maintain white Christian power in America,” Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, told Salon. “Project Blitz, for example, has already introduced over 50 bills in at least 23 states this year alone,” she added.

The first tier of Project Blitz aims at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere, the second tier aims at making government increasingly a partner in “Christianizing” America, and the third tier contains three types of proposed laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry.

Project Blitz is akin to the powerful but well-known American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which combines business interests with movement conservatives. ALEC writes laws for a coordinated national conservative movement. The organization has influenced or written hundreds or thousands of state and federal laws.

The goal of Project Blitz is to completely destroy the wall of separation between the church and state. The existence of Project Blitz was uncovered in 2018 when religion reporter Frederick Clarkson found a 116-page Evangelical political playbook (here it is)[1] on how to influence state and federal laws using the same sophisticated tactics that ALEC uses.

When the concern that America is moving toward some form of Christian theocracy, conservatives are quick to denounce the idea as a lie, ridiculous, fake news or something simply not believable. I have experienced the white hot heat of those flames personally in recent weeks at another site.

Secular American law and society are under a powerful, sustained attack by an aggressive, vindictive white Christian authoritarianism. Americans will either let this happen at their own peril, or they will fight to protect liberal democracy and the rule of law. The battle lines could not be much clearer, or the stakes much higher.

Footnote:
1. The 116-page report begins with the following introductory comments: “This report is the 2017 version of religious liberty measures that relate to prayer and faith in America. Following distribution of last year’s version of this report, entitled “An Historical Report and Analysis of Religious Liberty Measures That Impact Prayer and Faith in America” (“Historical Report”), CPCF tracked approximately 33 separate pieces of legislation passed in the 2017 terms of the various state legislatures that were favorable to prayer and the free exercise of religion in our country. That compares to only six passed during 2016, by our count.

The purpose of this report is to give you, as legislators, the benefit of good work done by others and model legislation on various related topics for your consideration and potential use. We have expanded the analysis and “talking points” in many areas and have attempted to make this version more user-friendly. But, like the Historical Report, this report reflects the collective wisdom and experience of individual legislators and legal teams who have worked with various pieces of legislation, as well as groups who have or will support such legislation, and the strategic analysis of many organizations, teams, and individuals who have studied these measures. This is not an exhaustive collection of model acts, resolutions, and proclamations on the topic, but it addresses most areas of recent interest.

The following principles apply to all of the measures and should be considered early on: 1. Nothing is more important than learning to tell a story that shows why the legislation is needed. While the text of legislation is critical, it can become sterile without painting a picture of “why” it says it. Remember to tell the story! Tell it often, and tell it well. When you have limited time, tell the story and let the legislation speak for itself.

2. Never forget that you often communicate more with your actions than your words. Tone and temperament are vital.

3. The name matters. For example, “Protecting Religious Freedom in Private Homes Act” is not nearly as powerful as the “Home Privacy Protection Act.”

4. Do not let the ‘perfect’ be the enemy of the ‘good.’”

B&B orig: 4/14/19

Book Review: How Democracies Die

Monday, April 22, 2019


Demagogue: a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.

In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, Harvard political science professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (L&Z) describe the various ways in which democracies die. For the last 15 years, L&Z have studied democracy deaths as the main focus of their research.

What they find is that these days, democracies often do not die after a military coup. Instead, many modern authoritarians or demagogues gain power by striking deals with existing political parties who are often under stress and losing influence. Hitler and Mussolini took that route. In both cases, the existing order was confident that they could control the demagogues they helped to legitimize.

In this regard, L&Z see political parties and especially their leaders and insiders as gatekeepers who are in a position to prevent legitimizing and/or the rise to power of demagogues. L&Z comment on this legal route to power: “The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it. . . . . One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion.”

American democracy vs. Trump: L&Z write to express their deep concern that President Trump, a demagogue in their view, could rise to become a full-blown authoritarian. They find that two critical norms that have kept American demagogues in the past from gaining power have largely collapsed. One weakened norm is “mutual toleration” which exists when political parties accept each other as legitimate political opposition. The other norm is “forbearance” wherein politicians exercise restraint in using power and institutional prerogatives. L&Z calls these norms the “soft guardrails of American democracy.”

L&Z argue the erosion of these norms began in the 1980s and by the time Obama was elected in 2008, “many Republicans, in particular, questioned the legitimacy of their Democratic rivals and had abandoned the forbearance strategy for a strategy of winning by any means necessary.” They point out that Trump accelerated the trend, but didn't initially cause it. L&Z see extreme polarization as a root cause of the weakening of the norms that helped defend democracy from demagogues: “And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.”

Some may recall that the 2018 presidential greatness survey by experts ranked Trump as the most polarizing president in US history. 2018 was the first year that the question had been asked. It was asked in view of the obvious polarizing effect that Trump had on American politics and society.

The tyrant test: L&Z find that authoritarians tend to use the same rhetoric and tactics in making their run for power. Keying off of earlier research of democratic breakdowns by political scientist Juan Linz, L&Z articulate four behavioral warning signs that help identify an authoritarian. Evidence of any one of the four behaviors in words or actions point to an authoritarian politician.

The four signs are evident “when a politician (1) rejects the democratic rules of the game, (2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, (3) tolerates or encourages violence, or (4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.” Trump has shown behaviors that fit all four of the warning signs. For example, he rejected the democratic rules of the game by claiming he would not accept election results if he lost the 2016 election and falsely claimed there was massive voter fraud. Similarly, he denied the legitimacy of Hillary Clinton by calling her a criminal and calling for her to be imprisoned. He also publicly tolerated and encouraged violence by his supporters, e.g., “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would 'ya? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay the legal fees. I promise you.”

L&Z argue that the republican party has abdicated essentially all responsibility to try to keep the authoritarian demagogue Trump from gaining power or undermining democracy. We are undergoing the kind of stealth attack on democracy that people have a hard time seeing. L&Z point out that there have always been about 30-40% of Americans who were ready to support a populist demagogue. Trump’s populist demagogic rhetoric and behavior, coupled with the the republican party’s abdication of responsibility to defend democracy, make America’s current political situation look truly frightening.

Warning: L&Z point out that opposition to demagogues must be legal. The demagogue can use anything illegal by the opposition as an excuse to further undermine democratic freedoms and the rule of law. In other words, Antifa and any other pro-violence groups that want to help defend democracy need to cool their jets and get their act together. Stupidity such as violence plays into the tyrant’s hands.

B&B orig: 4/15/19 DP orig 4/22/19; DP reposted 5/27/20