50 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2019
    1. democracy promotion
    2. Lawyer Brian Concannon
    3. In 1995,

      "The Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd'H) were disbanded by presidential decree in January 1995, pending the adoption by the Parliament of an amendment to the Constitution. While some of the 7,000 former soldiers were incorporated into the new civilian police force, the majority were demobilized and offered a six-month vocational training programme administered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Some 5,000 of these men have acquired marketable skills while earning a monthly stipend, yet under 20 per cent have been able to secure positions in Haiti's sluggish economy. Additionally, not all their weapons were secured. " From the report. https://www.un.org/Docs/s1996813.htm In 1996 the UN mission of support in Haiti (UNSMIH) was begun to help train the new civilian police force, the HNP. Not successful.

    4. Amnesty International
    5. 500 Canadian troops

      Confirmed. There were 500 troops sent to Haiti. However their behaviour as outlined below has not been confirmed. http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/od-bdo/di-ri-eng.asp?IntlOpId=232&CdnOpId=274

    6. Operation PRINCIPAL,” February 28, 2004.)
    7. “a team of JTF2 [Joint Task Force 2] commandos to Haiti four days before the coup”
    8. “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti”

      A good outline of what happened for the coup and Canadian involvement. The author is correct about the sequence of events. Multiple sources available but have yet to find academic source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haitian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

    9. Creating the coup's ideological pretext

      Some of the information about the formation of R2P is incorrect. See where the African Union (AU) proposes some of the ideas behind R2P. dieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

    10. R2P
    11. Several times, MINUSTAH, including UNPOL officers, watched as the HNP shot into peaceful demonstrations.”

      Page 7 of this report talks about NHP killings citing Amnesty International and UN documents

    12. In its 2005 Human Rights Investigation, the University of Miami Law School published interviews with brave HNP officers, fearing for their lives, who described raids into poor pro-Aristide neighbourhoods, when HNP commanders ordered the murder of suspects and witnesses. Coup-appointed Police Chief Leon Charles also ordered the violent suppression of peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrations.
    13. In 2006, an "International Tribunal" led by former-U.S. Attorney-General Ramsay Clark found the RCMP's Beer and Muir guilty of crimes against humanity -- but to no avail. HNP and their RCMP handlers have continued to operate with complete impunity.  
  2. Apr 2019
    1. We may share information as discussed below, but we won’t sell it to advertisers or other third parties.

      Notice Drop Box states up front that it does not sell your info to advertisers and third parties. This line is crucial to your data privacy.

    1. (iii) Information we collect from other sources: From time to time, we may obtain information about you or your Contacts from third-party sources, such as public databases, social media platforms, third-party data providers and our joint marketing partners. We take steps to ensure that such third parties are legally or contractually permitted to disclose such information to us.

      So while this is a free site, they can mine your data including your social media account. All of this in the name of providing you better service.

  3. Mar 2019
    1. Each participant is allowed to establish the tentative official ruling regarding matters which are vital to him bat not immediately important to others, e.g., the rationalizations and justifications by which he accounts for his past activity; in exchange for this courtesy he remains silent or non-committal on matters important to others but not immediately important to him.

      Isn't this just what we deem common courtesy? Rules of engagement we are taught at a young age? Socialization of young children requires them to understand that they can't always just have what they want and this stretches out to adulthood.

    2. The maintenance of this surface of agreement, this veneer of consensus, is facilitated by each participant concealing his own wants behind statements which assert values to which everyone present is likely to give lip-service.

      I like this "veneer of consensus". As a manager, I often get the veneer from employees.

    3. Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey.I h a v e s a i d t h a t w h e n a n i n d i v i d u a l a p p e a r s b e f o r e o t h e r s his actions will influence the definition of the situation which they come to have. Sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner, expressing him self in a given way solely in order to give the kind of im pression to oth ers that is likely to evoke from them a specific response he is concern ed to obtain.

      So when I want someone to do something I frame it in a certain way in order to make them do it.

    4. hey must accept the individual on faith,

      Don't we all do that? Give people that we just meet the benefit of the doubt? How can we "know" anyone then? We all live with inference!

    5. Masks

      Interesting that he uses this quote to begin his monograph as physical masks have been linked to hooliganism. Young boys and men are more likely to wear a mask at Halloween than girls and most of their costumes are designed that way. I think this article that looks at the power of masks, both with in a theatre context and online context is useful. The idea that a mask can transform the wearer into something else, potentially violent, also happens online is frightening. https://aeon.co/essays/how-masks-explain-the-psychology-behind-online-harassment

    6. The perspective employed in this report is that of the theat rical performance ; the principles derived are dramaturgical ones. I shall consider the way in which the individual in ordin ary work situations presents himself and his activity to others, the ways in which he guides and controls the impression they form of him, and the kinds of th in g s he may and may not do while sustaining his performance before them. In using this model I will attempt not to make light of its obvious inadequa cies. The stage presents things that are make-believe ; presum ably life presents things that are real and sometimes not well rehearsed. More important, perhaps, on the stage one player »resents himself in the guise of a cha^.cter to characters pro jected by other players; the audience constitutes a third party to the interaction—one that is essen tial and yet, if the stage performance were real, one that would not be there. In real life, the three parties are compressed into two; the part one indi vidual plays is tailored to the parts played by the others pre sent, and yet these others also constitute the audience. Still other inadequacies in this model will be considered later.

      All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages." As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII Very Shakespearean approach to this question. I am not sure if I like it. So every one is playing a part? What, then, is real? This does tie into the fakery of the internet though but without the physical presence.

    7. thar is organised within the physical confines of a building or plant.

      Interesting that he chose a physically restrained place with fixed roles (foreman, labourer, worker, janitor, assembly worker, mechanic, electrician) where people have assumed a work role with a fixed identity. Easier to judge and find a pattern?

    8. When a n i n d i v i d u a l e n t e r s t h e p r e s e n c e o f o t h e r s , t h e y commonly seek to acquire information about him or to bring into play information about him already possessed.

      First impressions, physical dress, uniform, already existing class assumptions. This is within a fixed setting.

    9. They can also assume from past experience that only individuals of a partic ular kind are likely to be found in a given social setting.

      Preconceived class consciousness.

    10. his conception of self,

      Are people really that interested? Or are they interested within a fixed hierarchical setting? Is it so they know where to position themselves? We are talking about research done in the British Isles a thoroughly stratified class society.

    1. If you give up Facebook and all the companies it owns, you’re cut off from participating in your community, whatever your community may be.

      And this is the issue. It owns my community. I don't have a huge number of Facebook friends and I have been whittling it down hard recently as I realised how depressing all the political crap from the US really is. I use it to connect with my immediate family on Messenger. But then they've got that pixel thing were you're tracked all the time.

    2. Once the pixel captures you looking at the sneaker page, the shoe company can retarget you through Facebook,

      And that is just so unsettling! I didn't use any Facebook sites to shop for my car, I looked it up on google - but then it was on Facebook!

    1. “Your smart home pings Google at the same time every hour in order to determine whether or not it’s connected to the internet,” Dhruv tells me. “Which is funny to me because these devices’ engineers decided to determine connectivity to the entire internet based on the uptime of a single company. It’s a good metaphor for how far the internet has strayed from its original promise to decentralize control.”

      "The uptime of a single company." Internet did start that way "decentralized" but I was using Google as a search engine in 1999 and you could see it take off as the search engine of choice. https://bit.ly/2GPPubQ is a link to a great article on the history of the internet.

    2. “Google’s the biggest threat in sheer size and the amount of data they have. And they’re really good at crunching that data,” he says. “If you can get out of Google’s messed-up ecosystem, do it, but otherwise try to use only one or two apps. Even me as an activist on these issues, a privacy maximalist, I can’t completely cut myself off.”

      And this is super scary. I use Google every day. I use its translation service while I am living in Europe. And you can't cut out of your life- unless you give up the tool.

    3. Making the switch to decentralized, privacy-focused companies means you might actually have to pay for a service because they’re not necessarily monetizing your data.

      As mentioned in last week's discussion as part of Networked Narratives by Anne Marie Scott from the University of Edinburgh only wealthy people will be able to afford privacy.

    4. And one day, blocking Google could be even harder. With Sidewalk Labs, a product from the company to “smarten up” urban areas, Google’s trackers will extend into the real world, tracking not just how we move around the web but how we move around our cities.

      More surveillance!

  4. Feb 2019
    1. Amazon did not respond to an inquiry about how it uses data gleaned through hosting other companies’ web offerings.

      Of course not! What are they going to say? "Why yes we are vacuuming up all of our competitors data so we can price them out of the market." Walmart wil convince a producer of a good to work exclusively for them and then demand that they sell their product at a price were they can't make any money- and the business has to start again to restructure and rebuild their client base.

    2. Given Amazon’s access to data about many, many businesses through hosting websites via AWS, it could be collecting similar competitive data on a vast scale. In fact, in the past, it has used insights gleaned from AWS to make investments in start-ups that it saw were doing gangbusters growth in its cloud.

      And this is how they made monster profits. On the backs of their competitors.

    3. but that regulators have failed to act because that law has evolved in a way to ignore monopolies if they result in immediate low costs to consumers.

      So as long as we live in a society "where the lowest price is the law" it is ok to do anything if it benefits consumers? But my data belongs to me doesn't it?

    4. and being able to kill off competitors who would otherwise offer consumers a variety of options and prices (R.I.P. Diapers.com).

      Walmart did the same- ate up the competitors and then started forcing manufacturers to produce goods at the cost they wanted.

    5. the stunt

      I don't see this as a stunt which means a trick. I see this as research into how much the Big Five have a piece of your life.

    6. Dhruv keeps track of all the times my devices try to ping Amazon’s servers during the week. It happens nearly 300,000 times, probably in part because apps frustrated not to get a reply from the mothership keep pinging repeatedly until I close them. My devices try to reach Amazon via 3,800 different IP addresses, which suggests that there are a lot of different apps and websites attempting to connect to Amazon throughout the week.

      Amazon is highly intrusive.

    7. We also wean our daughter from much of her screen time, which means quality time playing with her or taking her to a playground rather than giving her a “movie treat.”

      Better for her.

    8. Also, since we mostly use Signal to text each other, I find myself sending him fewer texts and instead talk to him about things IRL.

      Social media leads to a disconnect in the home life? No kidding!

    9. Maybe that’s for the best. Our ability to get access to any information we want whenever we want has created some unhealthy data addictions.

      Yes it has. Do we need to know everything?

    10. Ultimately, Signal caved to Amazon’s demand because, as Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike tells me, there’s no good alternative.

      An indication of a monopoly- if a business cannot find another viable source. They broke up Bell all those years ago- time to go after Amazon. I was thinking of using Signal now that WhatsApp has been taken over by Facebook. maybe not.

    11. Like millions of other Americans, we use a lot of Amazon products in our house. We have an Echo, an Echo Dot, two Kindles, two Amazon Prime Chase credit cards, Amazon Prime Video on our TV, and two Prime accounts. (Note to self: Why are my husband and I each paying Amazon $119/year?)

      My husband has an Amazon account. We use it to buy books.I do not. I own none of the other technology listed. Thank goodness I am older and don't even recognize some of this stuff.

    1. including virtually every way I communicate with my friends, family, and colleagues.

      My current dilemma as well!

    2. The reason a lot of large companies publish these lists has to do with how the internet works. I’m sorry to evoke the dated “information highway” metaphor, but IP addresses are, essentially, the directions that data uses to get from a company’s servers to your smartphone screen and vice versa. IP addresses help information get where it needs to go in the same way that street names and addresses help people figure out how to get from place to place.

      Hence the tracking from them to you. It's your IP address they are looking for.

    3. It’s not just logging off of Facebook; it’s logging off the countless websites that use Facebook to log in. It’s not just using DuckDuckGo instead of Google search; it’s abandoning my email, switching browsers, giving up a smartphone, and living life without mapping apps. It’s not just refusing to buy toilet paper on Amazon.com; it’s being blocked from reading giant swaths of the internet that are hosted on Amazon servers, giving up websites and apps that I didn’t previously know were connected to the biggest internet giant of them all.

      Few of us understand the reach of these companies and how ubiquitous they are. It's not just the original companies themselves but how many other companies they've bought to gain control of data. These are the robber barons of the 21 century, controlling a vast monopoly of personal information in a consumer economy.

    4. How do you reduce their power?

      Will governments be able to force these companies into compliance? They have a higher GDP than some European countries.

    5. We’re now realizing it’s as possible to get addicted to these buttons, clicks, screens, and scrolls as it is to get hooked on nicotine or heroin. Who, after all, can deny the high that comes from an Instagram like?

      I think the sad thing is as an adult who wasn't raised on this type of feedback I can walk away from my tech more easily than someone who was raised in this environment and expects that type of immediate feedback and has come to require it. How do you undo the damage from that need for immediate gratification?

  5. Jan 2019
    1. Surveillance capitalism

      Incredibly scary to me as an individual. More than once I have contemplated leaving Facebook forever, or gasp!, cut down the amount I use Google, because I know I am being surveyed. The only reason I haven't is my friends and family use it. My 80+ year old parents use Facebook to stay in touch so I can't turn that off. And Google? Someone show me an alternative in order to continue to appease my endless curiosity.

    1. being conducted live during our NetNarr class on January 29

      Can you give us a time when this will occur? I am in Latvia so I just need to know how late I have to stay up so I can attend. Thanks!

    2. Okay, that is cool! I was always fascinated with the epidemiology of Ancient Greece and European history and the development of vaccines.