7 ms·

Reeducation camps, mass surveillance, the Social Credit System - China has made last century's dystopian fiction its playbook.

by cygx 8y ago

ddtaylor 8y ago
.
- eastWestMath 8y ago
  The public school system is absolutely not a re-education camp, you loon.
  - danharaj 8y ago
    You're right, it's a child's first and main source of inculturation. No re- about it.
    - mattnewton 8y ago
      Read the article. Let me know where in western public schools they ask people to denounce their family on threat of starvation.
      - danharaj 8y ago
        It's possible to indoctrinate without violence, you know that. It's possible for educational institutions to be ideologically motivated and coercive without starving their subjects. In fact, perhaps the it's the case that the more effective such institutions are the less violent they have to be. Thankfully, enlightened western nations like Canada have not been so cruel since the distant, distant year of 1996 [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
    - mc32 8y ago
      China has these schools too, so it seems even if they’re equivalent to the west, they are not effective enough at indoctrination, so more remedial indoctrinstion is needed... But honestly, do you think ours and their systems are equivalently indoctrinational?
      - danharaj 8y ago
        It depends on who you are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
        Lionsion 8y ago
        > It depends on who you are Correction: it depended on who you are. Those schools have been closed and have been repudiated at the highest levels of the Canadian government: > On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology, on behalf of the sitting Cabinet, in front of an audience of Indigenous delegates, and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC, for the past governments' policies of assimilation.[78][79] The Prime Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but for the creation of the system itself. Harper delivered the speech in the House of Commons; the procedural device of a Committee of the Whole was used, so that Indigenous leaders, who were not Members of Parliament, could be allowed to respond to the apology on the floor of the House.
        ficklepickle 8y ago
        And yet the resulting intergenerational trauma lives on. The echoes of these abuses continue long after the abuse itself ends. Lots of similarities, actually. Both systems were designed to destroy a culture seen as backwards by the powers that be.
        Lionsion 8y ago
        > Lots of similarities, actually. Both systems were designed to destroy a culture seen as backwards by the powers that be. Yeah, except one occurred in the past and is now condemned; the other is a present, newly-created reality.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    No, it's a warehousing system to keep children watched and fed while their parents work.
    - vuln 8y ago
      I agree and I find it interesting that teachers are wanting more money for less work... My 8 year old son who is in the third grade has spent all year 'studying' for the SOL (Standards of Learning) test. All day everyday for the last year nothing but SOL 'prep'. He sits on a Chromebook all day. All of his work is done on a Chromebook, his teacher doesn't even have to grade the assignments it's automatically done by the application. The teacher doesn't even come up with the lesson plan, it's all pushed by the school system. No deviation. The only reason he has to 'attend' school is because his mother and I work full time. I've considered working remote and just homeschooling my son but I worry about him missing out on the social aspect of school. but that's a double edge sword also. One last kicker. I never signed anything that would allow my son to use a chromebook or consent to google data mining my son who is under the age of 13. But alas I am sure google has a whole profile built around him and his classmates...
      - aoeusnth1 8y ago
        I think we both agree that American public education isn’t in a good state of affairs - but through personal experience I know just how much work it is to do a proper job at teaching. It’s at least 70 hours a week of work just to tread water. So yes, teachers are underpaid and overworked, and I believe that’s partially causing our system to be so mediocre - it’s hard to hire talented teachers who have time and energy to do a good job when the job is so exhausting and financially unrewarding.
  - fsloth 8y ago
    No, it was deviced as a system after child labour became illegal to keep jobless children out of the streets practicing delinquency. This is the uncharitable, slightly tongue in cheek interpretation of events.
- cygx 8y ago
  Care to carify? What would be the European equivalent of the Social Credit program?
  - lmm 8y ago
    Getting denied a bank account/job/housing rental/... for no clear reason and with no way to appeal is becoming increasingly common, and seems to have all the same negatives as the social credit program - if anything worse, since at least you can see your "social credit" score and have some idea of how to improve it.
    - Lionsion 8y ago
      > Getting denied a bank account/job/housing rental/... for no clear reason and with no way to appeal is becoming increasingly common, and seems to have all the same negatives as the social credit program - if anything worse, since at least you can see your "social credit" score and have some idea of how to improve it. You seem to be confused about the salient differences between the social credit system and Western credit scores. Focusing on the fact that you can be "denied...for no clear reason or way to appeal" to draw an equivalence entirely misses the point. What's novel and scary about the social credit system is that political actions like criticizing the government or associating with activists could hurt your score. It's not scoped to financial activity like western systems. If I have a low FICO score, I'm 100% certain that it's not because I didn't vote for Trump.
      - lmm 8y ago
        > What's novel and scary about the social credit system is that political actions like criticizing the government or associating with activists could hurt your score. It's not scoped to financial activity like western systems. If I have a low FICO score, I'm 100% certain that it's not because I didn't vote for Trump. What gives you that certainty? I worked on this stuff in the finance industry a few years back. Even at that stage we were taking any available data and throwing it into opaque machine learning models, and using those to make lending decisions. There was no nefarious intent, but it's not like we had (or cared to have) any way to exclude political affiliation effects either.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  You've gotta be kidding me. What in "western politics" is the equivalent of detaining free adult citizens charged with no crime, with no evidence toward any imminent threat, denied legal representation and speedy trial, in the hundreds of thousands?
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    We do the same thing, we just create laws out of thin air first. Black people smoke marijuana? Make marijuana illegal! Now we can put them in prison!
    - hungerstrike 8y ago
      Yep and also China of today was created by western powers. Mao Zhedong came out of Yale, the home of Sull and Bones. It’s not like a bunch of Chinese farmers decided that they wanted this government. This is the model for the next world-wide government after China wipes the USA off the map as planned. Most people can’t deal with this information, despite the fact that it is staring them right in the face. “Made in China” is a curse that people have accepted though, so as usual they get exactly what they deserve.
      - johnaoss 8y ago
        You do realize Mao Zedong didn't go to Yale right? His affilation with Yale was pretty loose at best. His father was a Chinese farmer too. The "China of Today" one could say was created by Western Powers would be Taiwan, but even Taiwan had it's foundings on anti-Western sentiments (Chiang Kai-Shek despised Western democracy).
        hungerstrike 8y ago
        Sure. They just put him in charge of their school paper over there for no reason where ‘he edited its student magazine, re-focusing it on "thought reorientation," ‘ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale-China_Association#Early_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale-China_Association#Early_y... You can also read an article about it on Yales website titled “Yale spurs Maos emergence“. I wish I were wrong about the direction things are heading in, but I'm not.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
obelix_ 8y ago
Yup they really need to be feeding their population the Kardashians, WWE, Alex Jones, super hero movies and space operas the whole day.
- linkmotif 8y ago
  They do that, too.
- techterrier 8y ago
  #savetheexpanse
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 8y ago
  I'm sorry the actual choices free people make seem to disappoint you so much. What do you think should be done about it?
  - teekert 8y ago
    "Free people" as in, attention high-jacked, rent paying, sugar'd up, Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires represented by purchasable politicians? What is freedom today anyway? We don't work for a company anymore, we work for share holders. We don't pay eachother for housing anymore, we pay banks. We don't choose what we eat anymore, we are seduced. We don't spend our time anymore, companies sell our time and attention for us. At the very least freedom should come with "being well informed", however we are informed by commercials nowadays. Is this freedom?
    - fwn 8y ago
      Deconstructing freedom might be a fun exercise, it is, however, completely unrelated if it comes to criticising dystopian state oppression. (Which the linked article is about.) Torture & forced reeducation camps are wrong regardless of some other wrongness somewhere else.
0x4f3759df 8y ago
WSJ did a piece about Xianjiang: Life Inside China’s Total Surveillance State https://www.wsj.com/video/life-inside-chinas-total-surveillance-state/CE86DA19-D55D-4F12-AC6A-3B2A573492CF.html https://www.wsj.com/video/life-inside-chinas-total-surveilla...

Reeducation camps, mass surveillance, the Social Credit System - China has made last century's dystopian fiction its playbook.

by cygx 8y ago

Reeducation camps, mass surveillance, the Social Credit System - China has made last century's dystopian fiction its playbook.

ddtaylor 8y ago

eastWestMath 8y ago
The public school system is absolutely not a re-education camp, you loon.
- danharaj 8y ago
  You're right, it's a child's first and main source of inculturation. No re- about it.
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    Read the article. Let me know where in western public schools they ask people to denounce their family on threat of starvation.
    - danharaj 8y ago
      It's possible to indoctrinate without violence, you know that. It's possible for educational institutions to be ideologically motivated and coercive without starving their subjects. In fact, perhaps the it's the case that the more effective such institutions are the less violent they have to be. Thankfully, enlightened western nations like Canada have not been so cruel since the distant, distant year of 1996 [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
  - mc32 8y ago
    China has these schools too, so it seems even if they’re equivalent to the west, they are not effective enough at indoctrination, so more remedial indoctrinstion is needed... But honestly, do you think ours and their systems are equivalently indoctrinational?
    - danharaj 8y ago
      It depends on who you are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
      - Lionsion 8y ago
        > It depends on who you are Correction: it depended on who you are. Those schools have been closed and have been repudiated at the highest levels of the Canadian government: > On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology, on behalf of the sitting Cabinet, in front of an audience of Indigenous delegates, and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC, for the past governments' policies of assimilation.[78][79] The Prime Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but for the creation of the system itself. Harper delivered the speech in the House of Commons; the procedural device of a Committee of the Whole was used, so that Indigenous leaders, who were not Members of Parliament, could be allowed to respond to the apology on the floor of the House.
        ficklepickle 8y ago
        And yet the resulting intergenerational trauma lives on. The echoes of these abuses continue long after the abuse itself ends. Lots of similarities, actually. Both systems were designed to destroy a culture seen as backwards by the powers that be.
        Lionsion 8y ago
        > Lots of similarities, actually. Both systems were designed to destroy a culture seen as backwards by the powers that be. Yeah, except one occurred in the past and is now condemned; the other is a present, newly-created reality.
- megaman22 8y ago
  No, it's a warehousing system to keep children watched and fed while their parents work.
  - vuln 8y ago
    I agree and I find it interesting that teachers are wanting more money for less work... My 8 year old son who is in the third grade has spent all year 'studying' for the SOL (Standards of Learning) test. All day everyday for the last year nothing but SOL 'prep'. He sits on a Chromebook all day. All of his work is done on a Chromebook, his teacher doesn't even have to grade the assignments it's automatically done by the application. The teacher doesn't even come up with the lesson plan, it's all pushed by the school system. No deviation. The only reason he has to 'attend' school is because his mother and I work full time. I've considered working remote and just homeschooling my son but I worry about him missing out on the social aspect of school. but that's a double edge sword also. One last kicker. I never signed anything that would allow my son to use a chromebook or consent to google data mining my son who is under the age of 13. But alas I am sure google has a whole profile built around him and his classmates...
    - aoeusnth1 8y ago
      I think we both agree that American public education isn’t in a good state of affairs - but through personal experience I know just how much work it is to do a proper job at teaching. It’s at least 70 hours a week of work just to tread water. So yes, teachers are underpaid and overworked, and I believe that’s partially causing our system to be so mediocre - it’s hard to hire talented teachers who have time and energy to do a good job when the job is so exhausting and financially unrewarding.
- fsloth 8y ago
  No, it was deviced as a system after child labour became illegal to keep jobless children out of the streets practicing delinquency. This is the uncharitable, slightly tongue in cheek interpretation of events.
cygx 8y ago
Care to carify? What would be the European equivalent of the Social Credit program?
- lmm 8y ago
  Getting denied a bank account/job/housing rental/... for no clear reason and with no way to appeal is becoming increasingly common, and seems to have all the same negatives as the social credit program - if anything worse, since at least you can see your "social credit" score and have some idea of how to improve it.
  - Lionsion 8y ago
    > Getting denied a bank account/job/housing rental/... for no clear reason and with no way to appeal is becoming increasingly common, and seems to have all the same negatives as the social credit program - if anything worse, since at least you can see your "social credit" score and have some idea of how to improve it. You seem to be confused about the salient differences between the social credit system and Western credit scores. Focusing on the fact that you can be "denied...for no clear reason or way to appeal" to draw an equivalence entirely misses the point. What's novel and scary about the social credit system is that political actions like criticizing the government or associating with activists could hurt your score. It's not scoped to financial activity like western systems. If I have a low FICO score, I'm 100% certain that it's not because I didn't vote for Trump.
    - lmm 8y ago
      > What's novel and scary about the social credit system is that political actions like criticizing the government or associating with activists could hurt your score. It's not scoped to financial activity like western systems. If I have a low FICO score, I'm 100% certain that it's not because I didn't vote for Trump. What gives you that certainty? I worked on this stuff in the finance industry a few years back. Even at that stage we were taking any available data and throwing it into opaque machine learning models, and using those to make lending decisions. There was no nefarious intent, but it's not like we had (or cared to have) any way to exclude political affiliation effects either.
lr4444lr 8y ago
You've gotta be kidding me. What in "western politics" is the equivalent of detaining free adult citizens charged with no crime, with no evidence toward any imminent threat, denied legal representation and speedy trial, in the hundreds of thousands?
- jbob2000 8y ago
  We do the same thing, we just create laws out of thin air first. Black people smoke marijuana? Make marijuana illegal! Now we can put them in prison!
  - hungerstrike 8y ago
    Yep and also China of today was created by western powers. Mao Zhedong came out of Yale, the home of Sull and Bones. It’s not like a bunch of Chinese farmers decided that they wanted this government. This is the model for the next world-wide government after China wipes the USA off the map as planned. Most people can’t deal with this information, despite the fact that it is staring them right in the face. “Made in China” is a curse that people have accepted though, so as usual they get exactly what they deserve.
    - johnaoss 8y ago
      You do realize Mao Zedong didn't go to Yale right? His affilation with Yale was pretty loose at best. His father was a Chinese farmer too. The "China of Today" one could say was created by Western Powers would be Taiwan, but even Taiwan had it's foundings on anti-Western sentiments (Chiang Kai-Shek despised Western democracy).
      - hungerstrike 8y ago
        Sure. They just put him in charge of their school paper over there for no reason where ‘he edited its student magazine, re-focusing it on "thought reorientation," ‘ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale-China_Association#Early_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale-China_Association#Early_y... You can also read an article about it on Yales website titled “Yale spurs Maos emergence“. I wish I were wrong about the direction things are heading in, but I'm not.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

obelix_ 8y ago

Yup they really need to be feeding their population the Kardashians, WWE, Alex Jones, super hero movies and space operas the whole day.

linkmotif 8y ago
They do that, too.
techterrier 8y ago
#savetheexpanse
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
simonh 8y ago
I'm sorry the actual choices free people make seem to disappoint you so much. What do you think should be done about it?
- teekert 8y ago
  "Free people" as in, attention high-jacked, rent paying, sugar'd up, Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires represented by purchasable politicians? What is freedom today anyway? We don't work for a company anymore, we work for share holders. We don't pay eachother for housing anymore, we pay banks. We don't choose what we eat anymore, we are seduced. We don't spend our time anymore, companies sell our time and attention for us. At the very least freedom should come with "being well informed", however we are informed by commercials nowadays. Is this freedom?
  - fwn 8y ago
    Deconstructing freedom might be a fun exercise, it is, however, completely unrelated if it comes to criticising dystopian state oppression. (Which the linked article is about.) Torture & forced reeducation camps are wrong regardless of some other wrongness somewhere else.

0x4f3759df 8y ago

WSJ did a piece about Xianjiang: Life Inside China’s Total Surveillance State https://www.wsj.com/video/life-inside-chinas-total-surveillance-state/CE86DA19-D55D-4F12-AC6A-3B2A573492CF.html https://www.wsj.com/video/life-inside-chinas-total-surveilla...