Surveillance Capitalism

I. Surveillance Capitalism
Shashana Zuboff, the author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism", explains that "Silicon Valley firms are looking to wearable technologies and other  smart devices to gain an increasingly detailed view of our physical information that Mark Zuckerberg's company has gathered from users, transforming Facebook from 'a social networking site to an advertising  behemoth.' Thus, these companies have a direct financial stake in the broadening, deepening, and perfecting of the surveillance they already profit from -- and in making sure that it remains legal." [1]

Drawing primarily on Adam Smith, Zuboff asserts that the "vast amounts of data available to technology companies will make once-unknown markets predictable, thus granting those companies an unprecedented power over our economic lives." "Their goals are much simpler: first, to acquire profits through targeted advertising; and second, to promote their direct economic and political interests." "If those at the margins of our society are the most likely to be directly affected by surveillance, then building power at those margins --among tenants, debtors, immigrants, prisoners, and of course, workers, will allow us to resist the worst abuses of surveillance capitalism at the point of their application."

"Telecommunications is a highly regulated industry, and under Trump the government has consistently furthered [Rupert] Murdoch's business interests, to the detriment of his rivals."

Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, believes that the President records "Fox and Friends", and frequently posts about points with which he agrees. Since August 2018, Media Matters has tallied more than two hundred instances of Trump disseminating Fox News items to his fifty-eight million Twitter followers. 

II. Let Afghan Women Make Peace
Angeline Jolie, with a UN ambassadorial portfolio, has said that the women of Afghanistan have the most to lose if the Taliban return to power, "have the least to say in the process by which they do so." Jolie proposes a three-point plan for the women to exercise power. "First, Afghan women must be able to speak for themselves. Second, women's rights and concerns must be on the formal agenda, not relegated to side events or made the sole responsibility female delegates, Third, as the U.S. possesses a position of power in the peace process, Afghan women look to us to bring our diplomatic leverage to bear to uphold their rights, alongside their own government." [2]

III. Putin's Autocrats
There has been "a flood of Russian ventures in Sudan, from political consulting to mining and military aid," according to documents obtained by TIME. "They have been targeting countries that have toxic relations with the West, says Andrew Weiss, who studies Russia at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a think tank based in Washington D.C. "Last year alone, Russia made major arms deliveries to at least 23 nations. It won the rights to build logistics hubs on the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It has struck major energy deals over the past three years with Turkey, India and Iraqi Kurdistan. Russia even brought the Taliban to Moscow last fall to try to broker peace in Afghanistan." "But the ambitions set out in the document suggest that Russia has begun to offer its allies in Africa the sort of soft-power assistance with state building typically provided by NGOs and development agencies." [3]

"Today, while some in the West still offer sermons about democracy and human rights, the value that Russia champions on the world stage is sovereignty -- which holds that each regime has the right to rule its ow territory without fear of foreign interference." "In Africa, where the rule is too frequently tenuous, at least 18 governments have signed military-cooperation deals with Russia since its warplanes roared in to save Assad in 2015."

Footnotes:
[1] Katie Fitzpatrick, 'None of Your Business," The Nation, May 13, 2019.

[2] Angeline Jolie, "Let the women of Afghanistan make peace," TIME, April 22, 2019.

[3] Simon Shuster, "Putin's Empire of Autocrats," TIME, April 22, 2019.