How He Used Facebook to Win | by Sue Halpern. Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy by Daniel Kreiss Oxford University Press, 291 pp., $99.00; $27.95 (paper) Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters by Eitan D. Hersch Cambridge University Press, 261 pp., $80.00; $30.99 (paper) Not long after Donald Trump’s surprising presidential victory, an article published in the Swiss weekly Das Magazin, and reprinted online in English by Vice, began churning through the Internet. According to Grassegger and Krogerus, Cambridge Analytica had used psychological data culled from Facebook, paired with vast amounts of consumer information purchased from data-mining companies, to develop algorithms that were supposedly able to identify the psychological makeup of every voter in the American electorate.
Even more troubling was the underhanded way in which Cambridge Analytica appeared to have obtained its information. And this was just Facebook. There were other digital innovations as well. America’s Mad Rush to the Bottom. US foreign policy is the country’s Achilles heel. On the domestic side, it faces few challenges and can get away with pretty much what it pleases, e.g., massive surveillance, Espionage Act prosecutions to silence revelations of war crimes, taxation policies which widen inequities of income distribution, regulatory policies ditto for further concentration of wealth and power through ever-tighter monopolization, and, not least, a militarization of capitalism itself, all of which bring the domestic sector into alignment with the foreign sector, making for a ruthless machinery of political-ideological aggrandizement.
No wonder the fear of the US government in the world. Trade agreements appear innocuous and the normalization of international relations; in reality, they are one-sided arrangements as part of a US-defined global power struggle, as much ideological and military as purely economic. Come forward to today. Why should a changing world structure appear so menacing to America? The America of 'Team America,' a Decade Later. As the geopolitical satire turns 10, it reminds of how much the world has and hasn't changed. Paramount To remember what the world felt like to a lot of people in the fall of 2004, look no further than the opening scene of Team America: World Police, the South Park-driven marionette action spoof/international affairs crash course/musical that was released during one of the most divisive election seasons ever.
Islamic terrorists are just about to detonate a weapon of mass destruction in Paris before an elite squad of swaggering American puppet commandos confront them. The Americans foil the terrorists' designs, but not without also laying to fiery waste the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre. After all the terrorists are dead (one is blasted through the window of a baguette shop) and the Parisians look around mouth-agape at their half-demolished city, one member of Team America gives his Patton speech: "Bonjour, everyone!
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Nuclear Weapons (HBO) Step Away, Do Nothing, Pat Self on Back. Most people probably think of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a pugnacious hawk. In interviews with the media, his stern baritone insists on the dire threats to Israel's security. He has warned that he will unilaterally bomb Iran's nuclear facilities if Tehran crosses a "red line. " Before his political career, he was respected in Israel as a commander of special-forces overseas operations. The Gaza conflict over the past month and a half seems to have only solidified Bibi's image: Israeli forces have conducted extensive airstrikes against military targets in Gaza, and the Israel Defense Forces have undertaken audacious operations to undo Hamas's network of tunnels into Israel.
This image of a combative Netanyahu, however, is misleading. Operation Protective Edge, as this summer's Israeli military venture was deemed, goes against everything that typically makes Netanyahu who he is. So what does it take to get Netanyahu to do something drastic? Kobi Gideon/GPO via Getty Images. The Top 10 Questions About the World's Biggest Problems.
When it comes to U.S. Mideast policy, Martin Indyk is something like a human seismograph. Having spent three and a half decades at the leading edge of U.S. policy in the region, the English-born, Australian-raised Indyk has grown acutely sensitive to the shifts, tremors, and upheavals that have signaled change across the Middle East. Indyk has twice served as America's ambassador to Israel, is a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and most recently has played the role of U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He remains an advisor to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on these issues. Earlier this summer, Indyk stepped down from his negotiator's role when U.S. Indyk believes that much has changed but that Israel's leaders and their Palestinian counterparts may be the last to recognize it. In short, recent events may amount to nothing less than a strategic earthquake.
DR: That's interesting. MI: It might be. MI: No, I don't think so. Old World Order vs. New World Order: The Geopolitics of Chaos and Stochastic Change. It’s now official: our political leaders are still drunk on 20th century booze. Egged on by a clique of hereditary banking families, politicos always seem keen to push us into the latest war, only they are not altogether sure why they are actually doing it now. The plans they inherited are based on an old and aging set of principles which may, or may no longer apply to the 21st century world. This disconnect is a real problem, and it’s becoming visible as we speak.All signs currently point towards the transition towards their plan for a One World Order, but expect a bumpy road ahead… Geopolitical Harbingers Certainly by the closing decades of the 19th century, geopolitical theory was splitting into two camps: Global Seaborne Hegemon theory of US admiral Albert Thayer Mahan, and Pan-Asian Landward Hegemon theory championed by British academic and director of the London School of Economics, Sir Halford Mackinder.
Old Order Somnambulism The Political Disconnect This is where we are today. Nudge: The gentle science of good governance - opinion - 25 June 2013. NOT long before David Cameron became UK prime minister, he famously prescribed some holiday reading for his colleagues: a book modestly entitled Nudge. Cameron wasn't the only world leader to find it compelling. US president Barack Obama soon appointed one of its authors, Cass Sunstein, a social scientist at the University of Chicago, to a powerful position in the White House. And thus the nudge bandwagon began rolling.
It has been picking up speed ever since (see "Nudge power: Big government's little pushes"). So what's the big idea? We don't always do what's best for ourselves, thanks to cognitive biases and errors that make us deviate from rational self-interest. If you live in the US or UK, you're likely to have been nudged towards a certain decision at some point. There are other grounds for suspicion.
These don't really hold up. Nudging is a less blunt instrument than regulation or tax. This article appeared in print under the headline "Gently does it" More From New Scientist. SPONSORED: The Taliban Is A Vibrant And Thriving Political Movement. KABUL—2012 proved to be just another in a succession of landmark years for the Taliban, as the influential Islamic fundamentalist organization continued its awe-inspiring push toward unprecedented expansion. Even following a decade marked with some difficulties, the devoted members of the Afghani cultural and political movement have proven consistently successful in their trailblazing efforts to continue the Taliban’s constant recruiting of talented and diverse young insurgents and building its thriving base of support from politicians and citizens alike to over 30 times that of a decade ago.
“It was our goal in the beginning of 2012 to make sure we never stayed too complacent and continued working to spread our message internationally,” said Taliban leader Mohammed Omar, who has worked tirelessly to ensure that the movement would not just attain the same level of progress from years past, but also move far beyond it. Never underestimate the power of confusion. If you read this blog, you've probably heard about the various "isms" in the field of international relations.
There's realism, of course, but also liberalism, idealism, and social constructivism. And don't forget Marxism, even though hardly anybody claims to believe it anymore. These "isms" are essentially families of theory that share certain common assumptions. For example, realists see power and fear as the main drivers of world affairs, while liberals place more weight on human acquisitiveness and the power of institutions. But there's another major force in world affairs, and sometimes I think it deserves an "ism" all its own.
Confusionism is the opposite of the assorted conspiracy theories that you often read about. These warped world-views all assume that there are some Very Clever People out there who are busy implementing some brilliant long-term scheme for their own selfish benefit. Which is where Confusionism comes in. Evidence that supports Confusionism is easy to find. 1.
Noam Chomsky: Why America and Israel Are the Greatest Threats to Peace. September 3, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. It is not easy to escape from one’s skin, to see the world differently from the way it is presented to us day after day. But it is useful to try. Let’s take a few examples. The war drums are beating ever more loudly over Iran. Iran is carrying out a murderous and destructive low-level war against Israel with great-power participation. Iranian leaders are therefore announcing their intention to bomb Israel, and prominent Iranian military analysts report that the attack may happen before the U.S. elections. Iran can use its powerful air force and new submarines sent by Germany, armed with nuclear missiles and stationed off the coast of Israel.
All unimaginable, of course, though it is actually happening, with the cast of characters reversed. Like its patron, Israel resorts to violence at will. Objectivism (Ayn Rand) Objectivism is a philosophical system that originated as the personal philosophy of Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand (1905–1982).[1] First developed in her novels and polemical essays,[2] it was later given more formal structure by her designated intellectual heir,[3] philosopher Leonard Peikoff, who characterizes it as a "closed system" that is not subject to change.[4] Academia has generally ignored or rejected her philosophy, but it has been a significant influence among libertarians and American conservatives.[5] The Objectivist movement, which Rand founded, attempts to spread her ideas to the public and in academic settings.[6] Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and other works.
She further elaborated on them in her periodicals The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, and The Ayn Rand Letter, and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness.[7] Libertarianism. Traditionally, libertarianism was a term for a form of left-wing politics; such left-libertarian ideologies seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[6][7][8][9] In the United States, modern right-libertarian ideologies, such as minarchism and anarcho-capitalism, co-opted the term in the mid-20th century to instead advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights, such as in land, infrastructure, and natural resources.[10][11][12] Etymology[edit] The 17 August 1860 edition of Le Libertaire: Journal du Mouvement Social, a libertarian communist publication in New York In the mid-1890s, Sébastien Faure began publishing a new Le Libertaire while France's Third Republic enacted the lois scélérates ("villainous laws"), which banned anarchist publications in France.
Socialism. Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] though social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms.[5][14][15] Etymology The origin of the term "socialism" may be traced back and attributed to a number of originators, in addition to significant historical shifts in the usage and scope of the word.
For Andrew Vincent, "[t]he word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas. History Early socialism Paris Commune First International Second International Early 20th century. Www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R42681.pdf. The Decline of Political Protest. Paris. Once upon a time there was an organization called Amnesty International which was dedicated to defending prisoners of conscience all over the world. Its action was marked by two principles that contributed to its success: neutrality and discretion. In the context of the Cold War, the early AI made a point of balancing its campaigns between prisoners from each of three ideological regions: the capitalist West, the communist East and the developing South. The campaigns remained discreet, avoiding ideological polemics and focusing on the legal and physical conditions of captives.
Their aim was not to use the prisoners as an excuse to rant against an “enemy” government, but to persuade governments to cease persecuting non-violent dissidents. It strove successfully to exercise a universal civilizing influence. Since the end of the Cold War, the work of Amnesty International has become more complicated and more difficult. For instance: Paying the Price The whole world? Avaaz goes on: On Translating Securityspeak into English. One might wonder, reading the American “national security” community’s pronouncements, if they refer to the same world we live in. Things make a little more sense when you realize that the Security State has its own language: Securityspeak. Like Newspeak, the ideologically refashioned successor to English in Orwell’s “1984,” Securityspeak is designed to obscure meaning and conceal truth, rather than convey them.
As an example, take these 2010 remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Ambassador Jaime Daremblum, Senior Fellow and Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Latin American Studies. Daremblum, after praising Senators Lugar and Dodd for their promotion of “national security and democracy” in Latin America over the years, warned of the threat of “radical populism, which has taken root in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.” Chavez’s alliance with Iran, in particular, is “the biggest threat to hemispheric stability since the Cold War.”
Wow!