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A huge proportion of this multi-multibillion-dollar market would be Chinese. It is therefore not too far-fetched to believe that the US-induced military coup itself, and particularly its timing – has something to do with Bolivia’s lithium – and more precisely with the China-Bolivia partnerhsip deal. Since the beginning of this year Bolivia has been negotiating with China, Bolivia’s linking up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The lithium extraction and industrial development was part of it. Under Evo’s guidance it could have lifted this still most impoverished country of South America out of poverty, to a level of “living well” for most Bolivians.
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China – Bolivia – a Lithium Deal – No More?
by Peter Koenig
A huge proportion of this multi-multibillion-dollar market would be Chinese. It is therefore not too far-fetched to believe that the US-induced military coup itself, and particularly its timing – has something to do with Bolivia’s lithium – and more precisely with the China-Bolivia partnerhsip deal. Since the beginning of this year Bolivia has been negotiating with China, Bolivia’s linking up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The lithium extraction and industrial development was part of it. Under Evo’s guidance it could have lifted this still most impoverished country of South America out of poverty, to a level of “living well” for
most Bolivians.
China has by far the largest lithium market. China produces already today the most electric cars, about 1 million in 2018, and will at least triplicate their production by 2025 – and in the following decade or two, demand is expected to increase exponentially.
Bolivia has the world’s largest – by far – known lithium reserves. A long-term win-win contract between China and Bolivia was under preparation since early 2019 and being negotiated as a 51% Bolivia – 49% China share-arrangement, with manufacturing of batteries and other lithium-related products foreseen in Bolivia – added value, job creation in Bolivia – with an initial investment of US$ 2.3 billion – was about to be signed, when the US-instigated Bolivian military coup occurred. It was immediately followed with the usual US-style intimidating, violent and murderous oppression, particularly directed at protests by indigenous people.
They – the indigenous people, 70% to 80% of the Bolivian people – didn’t want to lose their President, Evo Morales, who has improved their lives enormously, like nobody else before since Bolivia’s independence from Spain some 200 years ago. Evo has drastically reduced poverty and provided most Bolivians with jobs and with a decent living. President Evo Morales had to seek asylum in Mexico to protect himself and his family from threats to his life and that of his loved ones, as well as to his political associates and members of Congress, who were in line to succeed him. The CIA, its handlers and their paid assets work with impunity, without scruples.
A day after Evo Morales left Bolivia, the opposition, led by the self-proclaimed neofascist, racist President, Jeanine Añez, ransacked and looted the Central Bank of its gold and large amounts of cash reserves. The loot was seen to be transported to the airport to be flown out of the country, presumably to the US. Madame Añes said she needed the money to buy weapons, of course, from America to keep oppressing and killing the indigenous protesters.
After the long-prepared and US- orchestrated ‘civic-military’ coup on 10th November, Bolivia is being ruled by a self-appointed, illegal, temporary (they say), neofascist government which is not only supported by the United States – the “putsch-maker” – but also by the abysmally shameful European Union, as well as by the Organization of American States – OAS (boasting, the US pays 60% of OAS’ budget…).
Bolivians have been plunged into a violent military-police dictatorship knowing no restraint beating up indigenous protesters and shooting them with live ammunition. At least 25 have already been killed and hundreds wounded. Añez has signed a decree exonerating police and military from criminal prosecution for crimes and murders committed on protesters,giving the police and military a direct license to kill. Evo Morales, was forced to resign by top military brass which has been secretly trained by the School of the Americas, now called The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).Evo has been bitterly betrayed by Washington-corrupted and trained officers.
About 20 of Evo’s closest entourage, including members of congress, who according to the Bolivian Constitution would have been in line to take up temporarily the Presidency until new elections are organized – a fact Evo proposed before being forced to resign, hardly reported by the western media – were also ordered to resign. They were all granted asylum in Mexico. They were told by the new, illegal self-appointed Government, that they were not allowed to run for the Presidency in upcoming elections. This is the type of “Democracy” exported by Washington. Its more aptly called dictatorship.
The power and fervor of pro-Morales protests in Bolivia is increasing day-by-day. Evo was the first indigenous President of the plurinational Andean country. Indigenous Bolivians, the vast majority, are strong supporters of Evo’s and his MAS party (MAS = Movimiento al Socialismo, or movement towards socialism).
US President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he does not tolerate socialist governments in the world, let alone in his backyard, Latin America. Congratulating the US-trained putsch leaders, he warned Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua of what might soon happen to them. He doesn’t lose an opportunity dishing out threats to world leaders who do not follow his orders. Indeed, the CIA via locally trained and bought agents is also causing havoc and bloody uprisings in Iran, Hong Kong, Lebanon. He, Mr. Trump the Great, a President in the process of being impeached himself for corruption and other misdeeds by the US Parliament. Bravo.
Having a socialist Government was certainly a reason for the coup d’état, but not the only one, perhaps not even the key reason. Bolivia, like Venezuela, is rich in natural resources, gas, oil, minerals and metals – and lithium, a light metal, used in car batteries, especially batteries for electric cars. They are ideal assets to be privatized by a neoliberal government for the benefit of a few local oligarchs and of foreign corporations – mostly US, of course. Stealing natural resources from developing countries is a key objective for the empire’s attempting to establish monetary and territorial world hegemony.
Already before Evo Morales first took office in January 2006, he pledged to the Bolivian people that the vast and rich natural resources treasures of Bolivia belong to Bolivia, to the Bolivian people. Among the first actions of his Presidency was the partial nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry – gas and petrol. Evo inherited from his predecessors, Goni Sanchez and Carlos Mesa an absurd arrangement, whereby the foreign corporations would receive on average 82% of the profits from hydrocarbon exploitation and the remaining 18% would stay in Bolivia. It is precisely for this reason that both Goni and Mesa were thrown out by the people in bloody people’s rebellions in 2003 and 2005, respectively.
When Evo was elected President in 2005 and took office in January 2006, he reversed this proportion: 82% for Bolivia and 18% for the transnationals. The western world screamed and hollered and warned him that all the foreign investors will abandon Bolivia – and Bolivia will be alone and her economy will collapse miserably. None of this happened, of course. Because even under this new arrangement foreign corporations made enough profit for them to stay in Bolivia. They are there as of this day.
In comes lithium, a soft, light and highly flammable mineral – what some call the gold of the 21st Century. The world’s total known lithium reserves are about 15 million tons, with a potential of up to 65 million tons. Bolivia has arguably the world’s largest single known lithium deposits with a projected 9 million tons, about 60% of all known reserves.
Bolivia’s lithium has so far remined largely untapped, whereas major current producers are Chile, Argentina, Australia and China. Bolivia’s reserves are located in the Uyuni salt flats, the world’s largest salt desert (some 10,000 km2) in the remote southern tip of Bolivia, about 4,000m above sea level. Lithium is contained in salt brine pools below the Uyuni salt flats.
Access is complicated because of altitude and remoteness and lithium mining has also environmental issues. Finally, and maybe most importantly, Evo Morales has promised his people that this valuable resource will not just be exported as raw material, but processed in Bolivia so that added value and major benefits remain in Bolivia. The general manager of state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) assures that “Bolivia will be a relevant actor in the global lithium market within four or five years.”
Lithium is mainly used for the production of car batteries, cell phones, electronic devices in sophisticated weapons systems. In the age of growing environmental consciousness and electric cars, the car battery market is expected to explode in the coming years. China’s President, Xi Jinping, recently said that as of 2030, all new cars on China’s roads will be electric. Though, this may be optimistic, it speaks for a huge market. It is expected that the use of lithium in car batteries alone could triple – or beyond – in the coming 5 to 10 years.
In the last few weeks, the Bolivian Government was about to sign a contract with ACI Systems Alemania (ACISA), a small German mining company. On November 4, the deal was canceled, due to local protests over profit sharing. The local population wanted an increase of royalty payments from 3% to 11%. The deal would have brought a US$ 1.3 billion investment in the Salar del Uyuni (the Uyuni Salt Flats) over time for a vehicle battery factory and a lithium hydroxide plant. Similar deals with Tesla and other US and Canadian battery producers also failed, because of unacceptable profit-sharing arrangements.
China has the World’s largest lithium market. By far. And the one with the fastest growth potential. With a million Chinese electric cars sold in 2018 alone, demand is expected to increase almost exponentially. President Xi’s predictions may be slightly optimistic, but according to a Chinese thinktank, by 2040 all new vehicles on China’s roads will be electric. Already today, almost 100% of all scooters roaming major cities are electric.
In February 2019, the Chinese company Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd. And the Bolivian state company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) negotiated a deal that would have given Bolivia 51% and the Chinese 49% shares of a lithium extraction investment, an initial US$ 2.3 billion investment venture, expandable according to market demand. The project would have included manufacturing of vehicle batteries – and more – thus, adding value in Bolivia and creating thousands of jobs.
The Chinese Ambassador to Bolivia estimates that China would need some 800,000 tons of the light metal by 2025. Electric cars with today’s technology require massive amounts of lithium, about 63 kilograms for a single 70 kWh Tesla Model S battery pack.Officially known reserves in the Salar Uyuni of some 9 million tons, correspond to about a quarter of total known world reserves, according the US Geological Survey. Countrywide lithium deposits in Bolivia, but not yet proven, may reach 21 million tons, mostly in the Uyuni salt flats, according to government projections. World Bank projections see global demand for lithium skyrocketing in the coming years, reaching more than 1,000% of present demand by 2050.
A huge proportion of this multi-multibillion-dollar market would be Chinese. It is therefore not too far-fetched to believe that the US-induced military coup itself, and particularly its timing – has something to do with Bolivia’s lithium – and more precisely with the China-Bolivia partnerhsip deal.
Since the beginning of this year Bolivia has been negotiating with China, Bolivia’s linking up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The lithium extraction and industrial development was part of it. Under Evo’s guidance it could have lifted this still most impoverished country of South America out of poverty, to a level of “living well” for most Bolivians. China, with her win-win approach for the BRI expansion around the globe and for such bilateral deals, as would have been lithium development in and with Bolivia – would have contributed greatly to the improvement of living conditions for this landlocked Andean country.
With China being lambasted, thrashed and aggressed on every occasion, clearly, such a multiple billion-dollar long-term arrangement, for a market the west wants to claim for itself, is not allowed by the true axis of evil, the United States, the vassalic Europeans, Canada and Australia. So, President Evo Morales and his close MAS party allies – and potential successors – had to go. Unarmed indigenous people had to be intimidated by bought police and military forces. They are beaten up and shot at with live ammunition. As of today, the dead toll has reached at least 25, since the police-military violence began when Evo was forced to resign, about a week ago.
It is predictable that the current “interim” government will call a State of Emergency, meaning a de facto military-police dictatorship. The natural riches of a poor country that wants to use reserves for the betterment of her people, can be a curse – and especially if that country has a socialist regime.But – as a positive glare of hope, the Bolivian people are known to be headstrong and staunch defenders of their rights. So, with the support and solidarity of neighboring countries’ people protesting for their lost civil rights, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and maybe soon also Brazil, not all may be lost.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Lithium, Geopolitics and The Laws of the Dialectic
by Mary Metzger
I think it is imperative for anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of geopolitical forces to read Enghdahl’s article, not only for his detailed explanation of the struggle of the economic powerhouses of the world to secure adequate supplies of lithium for the future, but also because he points out that their hunger for lithium reflects a revolution in the international forces and relations of capitalist production that are underway today – a revolution every bit as important as the information technology revolution.
The first article I confronted when I opened my email this morning was F. William Enghdahl’s short but extremely informative piece in “Global Research” titled “China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium”. In it he elaborates in far greater detail the point also brought out by Vijay Prashad in his article, “After Evo, the Lithium Question Looms Large in Bolivia” (https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/11/13/after-evo-the-lithium-question-looms-large-) and which I later took up in my article, “Evo Morales: Victim of the Longing for Lithium and Yes, the Chinese American Trade War” published in “Countercurrents” just this week. Our articles, following as they do one after the other, can be treated as three steps each leading to a deeper more comprehensive understanding of the great confrontation between great capitalist forces that lie at the heart of the overthrow of Bolivia’s elected leader, Evo Morales. Prashad took the first step in illuminating the why of Morales forced separation from his people – Lithium. I went on to note the fact that it was China which had been chosen by Morales to extract the lithium from Bolivia’s vast resources of the mineral, and to place that fact in the framework of the current economic tensions between America and China. Enghdahl takes it a step further, and in greater detail, explores the geopolitical implications that have been provoked by the longing for lithium. I think it is imperative for anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of geopolitical forces to read Enghdahl’s article, not only for his detailed explanation of the struggle of the economic powerhouses of the world to secure adequate supplies of lithium for the future, but also because he points out that their hunger for lithium reflects a revolution in the international forces and relations of capitalist production that are underway today – a revolution every bit as important as the information technology revolution. Enghdahl states: “For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come into focus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil.” It is only by viewing his insightful statement from a dialectical perspective that we can fully understand all that it implies.
For those who understanding nothing of the dialectical method I would like to begin by saying that it is a way of looking at the world which, more than any other method of inquiry, such as statistical analysis, mathematical modelling, or even systems analysis, of which it might be considered a type, provides us with an accurate understanding of our selected objects of inquiry, whether they be natural or social. This method had its origins in the ancient philosophy/logic of the Pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus. It was elucidated in all its detail by the German philosopher Hegel in the 18th Century, and first put into practice by Karl Marx who first employed it as a method of social and economic analysis. It differs from other “philosophies” in that it is considered by its practitioners to be a “science” which reflects the basic structure of material reality itself and so can be proven by science and social science. To think dialectically is to follow the most basic laws underlying creation; laws present at the moment of creation (the big bang) which have guided creation. They are manifestations of the structure of reality itself first of the the four dimensions of space, which as a result of minute fluctuations in the essential smoothness of the newborn universe, gave rise to time, as time is contingent on differences and the measuring and counting of difference. These same fluctuations are the source of gravity and so begin to “clump” the three essential components of the early universe: helium, hydrogen, and yes, lithium. We thus find arising the unity of the polar opposites time/space which Einstein noted. From its inception the universe was defined as well by the unity of the polar opposites energy and matter, which are the essence of the universe and unlike time/space present from the very beginning. In turn, as the unity of opposites, they are the source and essential nature of all changes. We may say that energy and matter, existing in the dimension of time/space and moving at the maximum speed which is the speed of light, define reality, and that things like speed, momentum, direction, distance, location, etc. are their derivatives. Thus, it is the structure and nature of reality which shapes our perceptions and any true understanding of that realty must proceed accordingly.
The laws of the dialectic, which are also the laws of creation, in their most simplified form, thus state that the essence of the world, deriving from the fact that all has a common point of origin, is internally related unity. Moreover, the unity of energy and matter demonstrates that the essence at the core of that unity is the unity of polar opposites. These opposites also manifest themselves as the unity of differences as for example, matter transforms into various forms of energy, and energy expresses itself in various forms of matter. There is also one more “law” which bears mentioning in relation to our current analysis of the revolution in global politics vis a vis lithium, and that is the law often referred to as the “transformation of quantity into quality.” At a give point in time, an increase (or decrease) in quantity produces a “phase transition” which gives rise to a change in quality. We can consider this to be a revolutionary transformation as opposed to an evolutionary one.
Thus, when we examine the increasingly important role of lithium in world geopolitics we can conclude the following: that from approximately the turn of the 20th C, we witness the world mode of production undergoing a phase transition from the use of human/animal energy to that dependent upon machines which in turn, are powered by energy in the form of electricity and ever increasingly, carbon fuels. The use of these carbon fuels in turn, produced forms of matter (pollutants, most significantly CO2), which having grown quantitatively produced qualitative changes in the earth’s environment and affected its forms of life. This phase transition became so challenging to human life, that human beings began to revolt against the companies that produced those things that produced the pollution. We can say, that revolutionary energy manifested as the demand for a phase transition in the means and forces of production, and anger (which is itself both a manifestation and source of energy) at those who controlled them, arose. It was this revolutionary energy, itself a manifestation of the instinctual drive to exist and replicate the first purpose of all creation, or “beingness” which exists as becoming, which was the final impetus for the phase transition in energy to occur. Thus, the need arose for a new source of energy to drive the forces and means of production that was not fossil fueled based. So, the hunger lithium came into being, and with it a shifting in the global power structure. Sooner or later, all those nations whose influence in the world has derived from little more than their possession of oil and their military power-the destructive energy-which they have been able to purchase as a result of their oil, will find their powers and influence greatly diminished. In turn, those countries that today possess the new form and source of energy that will move the future of the world, most specifically lithium, but also China, Australia, and of course, Bolivia, will find themselves playing an increasingly powerful role in the world. And yes, Enghdahl is so right, the wars that were once waged for oil, will be waged for lithium. Perhaps the first of these is being waged in Bolivia, where people’s lives have already been sacrificed for that precious commodity.
Mary Metzger is a 74 year old semi retired teacher. She did her undergraduate work at S.U.N.Y. Old Westbury and her graduate work In Dialectics under Bertell Ollman at New York University. She has taught numerous subjects, from Public Sector Labor Relations to Philosophy of Science, to many different levels of students from the very young to Ph.D. candidates, in many different institutions and countries from Afghanistan to Russia. She has been living in Russia for the past 12 years where she focuses on research in the Philosophy of Science and History of the Dialectic, and writes primarily for Countercurrents. She is the mother of three, the grandmother of five, and the great grandmother of two.
Facebook and Google, “Surveillance Giants”, threaten human rights, says Amnesty
by Countercurrents Collective
Tech titans Google and Facebook employ
“surveillance-based business models” that threaten human rights and erode privacy worldwide, said Amnesty International (AI) in its new report Surveillance Giants: How the Business Model of Google and Facebook Threatens Human Rights
Tech titans Google and Facebook employ “surveillance-based business models” that threaten human rights and erode privacy worldwide, said Amnesty International (AI) in its new report Surveillance Giants: How the Business Model of Google and Facebook Threatens Human Rights (Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW, UK).
The AI in its report called for an end to the data-grabs.
Published on Wednesday, the report outlines how Facebook and Google, and their many affiliated platforms, operate in ways that are simply incompatible with the right to privacy and pose a “systemic threat” to free expression on the internet.
“Despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost”, said the report.
While other large technology companies have also obtained significant power in other areas of the internet landscape, AI singled out Facebook and Google for their increasing dominance over the “new global public square,” controlling the main channels that netizens around the world use to communicate, transact and “realize their rights online.”
Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty’s Secretary General, said in a press release: “Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives – amassing unparalleled power over the digital world by harvesting and monetizing the personal data of billions of people.”
Naidoo called for a “radical overhaul of the Big Tech operates.
He also called to create an internet that puts human rights front and center.
The report has only confirmed what has long been a poorly guarded secret, as both tech giants have been caught red-handed countless times.
Last week, a report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Google partnered with healthcare provider Ascension to secretly collect and store medical records on millions of patients across 21 states – all after the company failed to convince customers to hand over their medical data voluntarily through its Google Health venture, which folded in 2011 for lack of participation.
In addition to an inability to keep stored data safe from hacks and breaches, Facebook has also come under fire for the way it shares data with other companies, coming under investigation earlier this year for over 150 potentially illegal partnerships that allowed other tech firms to access information on Facebook users, even when they disabled all data sharing on their account.
Half of the world’s population
The AI report said:
The internet has revolutionized our world on a scale not seen since the invention of electricity. Over half of the world’s population now relies on the web to read the news, message a loved one, find a job, or seek answers to an urgent question. It has opened social and economic opportunities at a scale and speed that few imagined fifty years ago.
Recognizing this shift, it is now firmly acknowledged that access to the internet is vital to enable the enjoyment of human rights. For more than 4 billion people, the internet has become central to how they communicate, learn, participate in the economy, and organize socially and politically.
Just 2 corporations
Yet when these billions participate in life online, most of them rely heavily on the services of just two corporations. Two companies control the primary channels that people rely on to engage with the internet. They provide services so integral that it is difficult to imagine the internet without them.
Facebook is the world’s dominant social media company. If you combine users of its social platform, its messenger services, WhatsApp and Messenger, and applications such as Instagram, a third of humans on Earth use a Facebook-owned service every day. Facebook sets terms for much of human connection in the digital age.
A second company, Google, occupies an even larger share of the online world. Search engines are a crucial source of information; Google accounts for around ninety percent of global search engine use. Its browser, Chrome, is the world’s dominant web browser. Its video platform, YouTube, is the world’s second largest search engine as well as the world’s largest video platform. Google’s mobile operating system, Android, underpins the vast majority of the world’s smartphones.
Android’s dominance is particularly important because smartphones have replaced the desktop computer as the primary way people access and use the internet.
Smartphones reveal information about us beyond our online browsing habits — such as our physical travel patterns and our location. They often contain thousands of intimate emails and text messages, photographs, contacts, and calendar entries.
To realize human rights
The report added:
Google and Facebook have helped to connect the world and provided crucial services to billions. To participate meaningfully in today’s economy and society, and to realize their human rights, people rely on access to the internet — and the tools Google and Facebook offer.
Surveillance-based business model
But despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost. The companies’ surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse.
Firstly, an assault on the right to privacy on an unprecedented scale, and then a series of knock-on effects that pose a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion, to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination.
Dominant power
This isn’t the internet people signed up for. When Google and Facebook were first starting out two decades ago, both companies had radically different business models that did not depend on ubiquitous surveillance. The gradual erosion of privacy at the hands of Google and Facebook is a direct result of the companies establishing dominant market power and control over the global “public square”.
The report sets out how the surveillance-based business model works: Google and Facebook offer services to billions of people without asking them to pay a financial fee. Instead, citizens pay for the services with their intimate personal data. After collecting this data, Google and Facebook use it to analyze people, aggregate them into groups, and to make predictions about their interests, characteristics, and ultimately behavior – primarily so they can use these insights to generate advertising revenue.
This surveillance machinery reaches well beyond the Google search bar or the Facebook platform itself. People are tracked across the web, through the apps on their phones, and in the physical world as well, as they go about their day-to-day affairs.
What we read and say
These two companies collect extensive data on what we search; where we go; who we talk to; what we say; what we read; and, through the analysis made possible by computing advances, have the power to infer what our moods, ethnicities, sexual orientation, political opinions, and vulnerabilities may be. Some of these categories — including characteristics protected under human rights law — are made available to others for the purpose of targeting internet users with advertisements and other information.
Intrusion into private life
The report sets out how this ubiquitous surveillance has undermined the very essence of the right to privacy. Not only does it represent an intrusion into billions of people’s private lives that can never be necessary or proportionate, but the companies have conditioned access to their services on “consenting” to processing and sharing of their personal data for marketing and advertising, directly countering the right to decide when and how our personal data can be shared with others.
Shape our own identities
The Amnesty report said:
The companies’ use of algorithmic systems to create and infer detailed profiles on people interferes with our ability to shape our own identities within a private sphere.
Advertisers, the original beneficiaries
The report said:
Advertisers were the original beneficiaries of these insights, but once created, the companies’ data vaults served as an irresistible temptation for governments as well. This is for a simple reason: Google and Facebook achieved a degree of data extraction from their billions of users that would have been intolerable had governments carried it out directly. Both companies have stood up to states’ efforts to obtain information on their users; nevertheless, the opportunity to access such data has created a powerful disincentive for governments to regulate corporate surveillance.
Abuse of privacy
The abuse of privacy that is core to Facebook and Google’s surveillance-based business model is starkly demonstrated by the companies’ long history of privacy scandals.
Despite the companies’ assurances over their commitment to privacy, it is difficult not to see these numerous privacy infringements as part of the normal functioning of their business, rather than aberrations.
Companies’ interests
The report looks at how Google and Facebook’s platforms rely not only on extracting vast amounts of people’s data, but on drawing further insight and information from that data using sophisticated algorithmic systems.
These systems are designed to find the best way to achieve outcomes in the companies’ interests, including finely-tuned ad targeting and delivery, and behavioral nudges that keep people engaged on the platforms.
As a result, people’s data, once aggregated, boomerangs back on them in a host of unforeseen ways. These algorithmic systems have been shown to have a range of knock-on effects that pose a serious threat to people’s rights, including freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination.
These risks are greatly heightened by the size and reach of Google and Facebook’s platforms, enabling human rights harm at a population scale.
Moreover, systems that rely on complex data analytics can be opaque even to computer scientists, let alone the billions of people whose data is being processed. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from 87 million people’s Facebook profiles were harvested and used to micro-target and manipulate people for political campaigning purposes, opened the world’s eyes to the capabilities such platforms possess to influence people at scale – and the risk that they could be abused by other actors.
However, although shocking, the incident was the tip of the iceberg, stemming from the very same model of data extraction and analysis inherent to both Facebook and Google’s business.
Power concentration
The report shows how vast data reserves and powerful computational capabilities have made Google and Facebook two of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world today.
Google’s market capitalization is more than twice the GDP of Ireland (both companies’ European headquarters); Facebook’s is larger by a third.
The companies’ business model has helped concentrate their power, including financial clout, political influence, and the ability to shape the digital experience of billions of people, leading to an unprecedented asymmetry of knowledge between the companies and internet users – as scholar Shoshana Zuboff states “They know everything about us; we know almost nothing about them.”
This concentrated power goes hand in hand with the human rights impacts of the business model and has created an accountability gap in which it is difficult for governments to hold the companies to account, or for individuals who are affected to access justice. Governments have an obligation to protect people from human rights abuses by corporations.
World’s largest ungoverned space
But for the past two decades, technology companies have been largely left to self-regulate – in 2013, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt described the online world as “the world’s largest ungoverned space”.
However, regulators and national authorities across various jurisdictions have begun to take a more confrontational approach to the concentrated power of Google and Facebook — investigating the companies for competition violations, issuing fines for infringing Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or introducing new tax regimes for big technology companies.
Businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights in the context of their business operations that requires them to carry out “human rights due diligence” to identify and address their human rights impacts.
Google and Facebook have established policies and processes to address their impacts on privacy and freedom of expression – but evidently, given that their surveillance-based business model undermines the very essence of the right to privacy and poses a serious risk to a range of other rights, the companies are not taking a holistic approach, nor are they questioning whether their current business models themselves can be compliant with their responsibility to respect human rights.
The AI gave both Google and Facebook an opportunity to respond to the findings of this report in advance of publication.
Amnesty International had a conversation with senior Google staff, who subsequently provided information around its relevant policies and practices.
The report has incorporated both responses.
No more self-regulation
The AI report said:
Ultimately, it is now evident that the era of self-regulation in the tech sector is coming to an end: further state-based regulation will be necessary, but it is vital that whatever form future regulation of the technology sector takes, governments follow a human rights-based approach. In the short-term, there is an immediate need for stronger enforcement of existing regulation.
Governments must take positive steps to reduce the harms of the surveillance-based business model—to adopt digital public policies that have the objective of universal access and enjoyment of human rights at their core, to reduce or eliminate pervasive private surveillance, and to enact reforms, including structural ones, sufficient to restore confidence and trust in the internet.
Neoliberalism Backfires
by Robert Hunziker
Nick Hanauer, a self-professed capitalist billionaire, spoke at a TED conference only recently. He exposed neoliberalism’s brand of capitalism getting away with murder in plain sight.
Another Syllogism of Death
by Dan Lieberman
Examination of Israel’s November 2019 missile attacks on Gaza reveals deliberate actions that can be expressed by propositions, which lead to formulation of a syllogism – a syllogism of death that does not spare civilians.
Examination of Israel’s November 2019 missile attacks on Gaza reveals deliberate actions that can be expressed by propositions, which lead to formulation of a syllogism – a syllogism of death that does not spare civilians.
Israeli military targeted Bahaa Abu al-Ata, “a top Islamic Jihad commander,” who, Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed, “… was a ticking bomb, in the midst of planning additional attacks in the immediate short term.”
The analysis leads to two propositions:
- From targeting Bahaa Abu al-Ata, Israel realized it was provoking an Islamic Jihad reprisal,
- Knowing there would be reprisal attacks means that Israel initiated an occurrence they claimed they wanted to prevent.
Placing these propositions in proper context as a syllogism, forms a conclusion – Israel’s initial attack on Bahaa Abu al-Ata was meant to provoke a reprisal so Israel could retaliate and pound Gaza more ferociously – a syllogism of death.
Why did, or does Israel periodically, bomb Gaza and cause multiple deaths and wounded? The answers are conjectural, but fit a pattern:
- To diminish Gazan spirit and ontological security as part of a slow genocide.
- To test defensive and offensive weapons.
- To give military personnel live action training.
From past experiences, Israel knows that its defenses can neutralize 90 percent of the rocket fire from Gazan militants and that the other ten percent have infinitesimal likelihood of causing serious civilian harm. Statistics and images from the November 12 – November 14 assault exchanges tell that story:
Haaretz, November 16, 2019.
Islamic Jihad launched some 450 rockets at southern and central Israel, but the army said its Iron Dome defense system intercepted 90 percent of them. Rockets were fired as far north as Tel Aviv, shutting schools and businesses and forcing one million Israeli children to stay at home, as well as causing some damages and minor injuries. (ED: Minor injuries are most often Israelis getting scratched or falling while seeking shelter.)
Associated Press, November 14, 2019.
The fighting killed 34 Palestinians, including 16 civilians, according to rights groups.
NOTE: Finding exact, and up to date statistics on Gazan casualties, including wounded, was strangely not possible. Exact, and up to date statistics on Israeli casualties was simple – vague numbers that meant no casualties. Images tell another story.
The media tell their own story. Google the words “Israel attacks Gaza,” and we get on the first page two headlines of attacks on Gaza, both from foreign news sources, and four headlines that describe what was not asked – “Gaza attacks Israel.”
Israeli attacks:Al Jazeera
1 hour ago – Israeli forces have killed a top Islamic Jihad commander in an air raid on his home in Gaza City, unleashing a new spiral of violence. Shortly after the attack on Tuesday morning that killed Bahaa Abu al-Ata and his wife, salvos of rockets were launched from Palestinian groups in …
1 hour ago – Israeli forces have killed a top Islamic Jihad commander in an air raid on his home in Gaza City, unleashing a new spiral of violence. Shortly after the attack on Tuesday morning that killed Bahaa Abu al-Ata and his wife, salvos of rockets were launched from Palestinian groups in …
Israel hit by rockets from Gaza after airstrike kills Islamic Jihad …https://www.nbcnews.com
1 day ago – Scores of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in … was the mastermind of many recent attacks against Israel and was a …
1 day ago – Scores of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in … was the mastermind of many recent attacks against Israel and was a …
Gaza Rocket Attacks on Israel Resume, Risking Wider Conflict …https://www.wsj.com
6 hours ago – Israel’s foreign ministry said the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad has fired more than 360 rockets from the Gaza Strip, threatening Israel’s attempts to reach a long-term cease-fire with the Hamas group that controls the area.
6 hours ago – Israel’s foreign ministry said the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad has fired more than 360 rockets from the Gaza Strip, threatening Israel’s attempts to reach a long-term cease-fire with the Hamas group that controls the area.
Rockets launched deeper into Israel as Gaza death toll …https://www.haaretz.com
2 hours ago – Gaza factions launched massive rocket barrages at Israel for the … The Israeli army resumed attacks on Gaza, presumably in response to the …
2 hours ago – Gaza factions launched massive rocket barrages at Israel for the … The Israeli army resumed attacks on Gaza, presumably in response to the …
Israel bombs Gaza as crisis escalates with more Hamas rocket …https://www.telegraph.co.uk
Israeli warplanes have kept up deadly raids on Gaza but failed to stop … Israel bombs Gaza as crisis escalates with more Hamas rocket attacks: In pictures.
Israeli warplanes have kept up deadly raids on Gaza but failed to stop … Israel bombs Gaza as crisis escalates with more Hamas rocket attacks: In pictures.
Rockets Rain On Gaza And Israel After Airstrike Kills Militant https://www.npr.org
1 day ago – “He was a ticking bomb,” Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu said of Bahaa Abu … Militants in Gaza have responded with rocket attacks of their own.
1 day ago – “He was a ticking bomb,” Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu said of Bahaa Abu … Militants in Gaza have responded with rocket attacks of their own.
The syllogism of death does not spare civilians.
Unguided rockets from Gaza have no explosive power and therefore can be regarded as “oversized flying bullets,” which only harm civilians by a rare direct hit or by shrapnel. They are meant to disturb the Israeli population but, because they are neither powerful nor directed, cannot be characterized as “directly targeting civilians.”
Unguided rockets from Gaza have no explosive power and therefore can be regarded as “oversized flying bullets,” which only harm civilians by a rare direct hit or by shrapnel. They are meant to disturb the Israeli population but, because they are neither powerful nor directed, cannot be characterized as “directly targeting civilians.”
Israel’s guided missiles, which means they can be steered directly to chosen targets, have killed more than a thousand civilians and injured more than ten thousand, many seriously.
We have Gazan unguided rockets that are said to target civilians, with few of them finding their unguided target. And we have Israeli guided missiles, which do not seek civilian targets, mostly finding their way to civilian targets. The syllogism of death does not spare civilians.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, on CNN’s State of the Union program, proclaimed that Hamas wants casualties. “All civilian casualties are unintended by us, but intended by Hamas. They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can – it’s gruesome. They want the more dead the better.”
So, what is the problem? Why is Netanyahu cooperating with Hamas’ wishes? Just stop killing civilians and Hamas will be defeated. It is that easy.
Dan Lieberman edits Alternative Insight, a commentary on foreign policy, economics, and politics. He is author of the book A Third Party Can Succeed in America, a Kindle: The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name). Dan can be reached at alternativeinsight@earthlink.net
Opposition MPs Could Try To Impeach The President of India For His Executive Orders of 5th, 6th August, 2019 Regarding
Kashmir
by Dr P S Sahni
The opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) in RajyaSabha(Council of States) could initiate the proceedings for the impeachment of the President of India for violation of the Constitution in right earnest in this winter session of the Parliament. Article 61 of the Constitution of India details the procedure for impeachment of the President.
In place of shock and despair, need is to understand the situation and move on
by Akhilendra Pratap Singh
RSS and BJP will continue to politicise temple or other emotive issues until they fully transform Indian state into an authoritarian state. So, instead of being overwhelmed by shock and despair, what is needed is to intensify the battle for
democratisation of Indian society and state.
Abrogation of Article 370 and the Aftermath
by Zulafqar Ahmed
Kashmir issue has always been a tool for all the mainstream political parties in general and BJP in particular to invoke it for the consolidation of Hindu vote bank. After doing all the wrongs with the state of Jammu and Kashmir from overthrowing Sheikh Abdullah from the office in 1953 to Election rigging of 1987; abrogation of Article 370 was the last nail in the coffin by New Delhi.
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