0 sats \ 6 replies \ @Signal312 29 Dec 2023 \ parent \ on: Ethiopia defaulted on its USD debt news
I'd love to hear more about this whole idea, "there's really no social credit score in China".
I listened to a podcast some time ago, where the interviewee made the same point. I can't remember details though, and would be interested in hearing more, and also who, specifically, is promoting the story, if it's not true.
maybe you saw brian berletic? it's here:
always hard to say who exactly, but it's part if a pattern known as "atrocity propaganda", where one side tries to spread dehumanizing horror stories about supposed crimes that portray an enemy as an animalistic uncivilized terror. it's old, it's been around in WW1, but today you see it against hamas, russia, iran, china, among many others. it was used against serbia, afghanistan, lybia in the past, anyone really who the US wanted to discredit.
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Very interesting, thanks for the pointer to Brian Berletic.
You know, I think this whole concept, that the CCP social credit score story is propaganda, is really interesting and worthy of a top-level post. Specifically because it's one of the items that's often brought up by people who are, often, our ideological friends. People who hate the idea of a social credit score.
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Hello and thanks again. I think what we can say is that the world is in a surveillance race and a battle to outdo each other. We have known this at least since Edward Snowden that the west has also fallen into this trap. What the article does tone down, however, is the fact that in my opinion China has taken the lead in this race and is being used by the west as a shield and line of argument to introduce the same surveillance systems, if not more stringent ones, as in the european union. And that's why the observation that the western media is playing the game of western politics and exaggerating the Chinese surveillance system is completely correct. What i knew was that a variety of different credit scoring systems similar to ours existed. What I had assumed and that doesn't seem to be the case yet, you're absolutely right, is the bundling and centralization of all this data. Whether this is the long-term goal: i think so. But it won't be any different for us. All in all, bad times are dawning. Thanks again for the article which put everything into perspective a bit. greetings
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Yeah, bad times are dawning. I've already moved to the global south, at least there nobody bothers me to pay with cards and payment systems.
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Thank You, I will watch the video this morning. But before I'll do this keep in mind that the other side has its own propaganda department
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In general, I'm aware that absolutely everything "formal" I consume was made by someone with an institutional connection, and thus under the pressure and structural limits imposed by these institutions. Sometimes that's dependence on local governments, like any mainstream media corporation ("private" corporate networks don't exist without being in the good graces of the governments that license them, give them access to sources, etc.); sometimes that's a social media platform that can block and ban them; sometimes it's an audience they depend on for monetization, so they can't go against the hard preconceptions of that audience or lose subscribers that pay their rent. Often it's some combination of those three. You might call that skepticism a hermeneutics of suspicion.
And it's especially useful when it comes to the designated enemies of the day. I always find it useful to remember: I don't speak Russian, Chinese, or Korean, Farsi or Arabic. I have little access to internal stories there. What I get is from mostly Western sources with their interests, and I generally assume 100% of what Western media (and politics, and school) tells me about Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc. - anyone who goes against them - is a bold, dirty lie until proven otherwise. I recommend this stance to everyone.
I have some friends in some of these places I trust who can help me put things into perspective; that's a privilege, but they're all still trapped in the frames of their upbringings and are also not immune to all this. (I always remember that I wouldn't trust 90% of people in MY country when they try to explain something about that very country to me... but at least with friends,. I KNOW their preconceptions and can adjust for them. Also, they're critical, resistant souls, they're my friends, after all, and I picked them that way.)
You have to assemble it and see what sticks. And you still can't really know.
That said, it's also good to remember that "that's propaganda!" is the usual rallying cry OF propaganda against everything that goes against it. "flak" is what Chomsky calls it. And while your country has you surrounded with school, media, politics, and everyday conversation culture all reinforcing its propaganda, "foreign" one has to break through, sneak in, and when it does, goes against everything you've learnt.
Which is to say: the people propagandizing you are usually your own, the other side has much, much less access to you. Or, with another quote: Always remember your main enemy is in your own country.
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