I don’t speak this language and have no idea of this culture, but as always we must be careful as any literal translation from one language into another often conveys a different meaning, even when the words are the same.
Today, haka is used as a sign of respect and is performed on important occasions, such as sporting events, weddings, funerals, and powhiri (a traditional welcome).
Lorde performs one of her songs also in Maori (the song’s OV is in English, the song is called ‘Solar Power’). You may also be in interested in Olivia Foa’i, a singer who also performs in Gagana Tokelau, the indigenous language of Tokelau, a collection of atolls between Australia and Hawaii, and in this story.
Insane how many journalists they’ve killed. I still remember how fucked up it was when they bombed the Aljazeera building (and of course said that Hamas’ people were there)
So, it’s worth clarifying the nature of the this kind of “law” passed in Beijing. Which this article fails to do and comes across to me partially as fear mongering because of it.
Generally speaking when Beijing passes a law like this, they are not passing a law as we know it, it is a set of guide lines for the leaders of local provinces to implement their own policies and laws based on what they think will accomplish the goals set out from Beijing. Then Beijing observes what they come up with and if they like the outcomes of one, they implement it country wide.
For instance when everyone was hyper ventilating about “ ALL OF CHINA IS LITERALLY 1984 BECAUSE OF THE NEW SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM” in reality, Beijing had just essentially just asked the provinces to create their own systems that fallowed a vague guideline. And the provinces did, some provinces set up systems that would give people fines for saying mean things, some just set up an American style credit score system. In the end Beijing didn’t really find that any of them lived up to what they were asking for and all of the programs were quietly spun down.
Regarding the ‘1984 social credit system’ there are a lot of good resources which tell a story far diffrrent from yours. One recent example is tbe documentary ‘Total Trust’ by Chinese film maker Zhang Jialing. The film’s introduction says:
Total Trust is an eye-opening and deeply disturbing story of surveillance technology, abuse of power and (self-)censorship that confronts us with what can happen when our privacy is ignored. Through the haunting stories of people in China who have been monitored, intimidated and even tortured, the film tells of the dangers of technology in the hands of unbridled power.
Watch the film. There are many reviews about it (and other sources about surveillance in China). It’s really easy to find on the web.
I think this law has similar intentions.
Addition: <a href="">@megopie</a> it would be great if you could post a source of what you say. Thanks in advance.
That’s not about the social credit system though, that’s about the general censorship and surveillance apparatus. Which although robust and invasive is quite fragmented, there is no central database. local branches of law enforcement or internal intelligence or a million other parts of china’s own alphabet soup, manage, collect and use surveillance data, some terrifyingly effectively, some pathetically. Some not at all.
China is a big country with a lot of tasks being delegated to lower authorities, (and delegated from them to even lower authorities). Anytime I see someone talk as if the Chinese government is a monolithic entity it makes me want to pull my hair out. 90% of the time when someone talks about some new law in Beijing being created, they’re misrepresenting the reality, which is generally that the central government has directed provincial and local governments to pass their own laws and implement their own policies to address what ever Beijing has talked about.
For references about social credit in particular here you go:
Americans: demand from your government the responsibility to handle your taxes directly.
I’m in the EU, from a small country, and all tax forms have to be filed through government tax authority servers, running state designed programs.
I can hire a legion of accountants, a lawyer firm and third party to represent me and still everything will still go through the same channels.
Or I can simply use that same program, through the same website, with my secure credentials, and file my own taxes for free, calling the tax department whenever I have doubts on what I’m doing.
demand that your taxes supply you with the government services it supports
Here in Australia, you can literally file your tax now for free in a few clicks using the government website. If you wait a few weeks, everything for most people is prefilled except deductions
Pretty much the same in the UK. Most people don’t have to file their tax at all (it’s automatically deducted from wages for most people), but for those that do, you can do it for free on the government’s website, which is largely a matter of saying how much you earned, and any relevant deductions. The government then calculates what tax you have to pay. If your tax affairs are more complicated than that, you’re earning enough that you’re in the “having an accountant is mandatory” territory anyway.
Yeah, it’s not flawless, but it’s straightforward to use, which really is the thing you need for this kind of service, since it’s intended to be used by normal people rather than experts. The one and only thing that our glorious Conservative overlords have done well in the last 13 years is modernising a lot of official administrative processes like this so they can be done digitally and without a load of needless complexity.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose real power derives from his position as the head of the ruling Communist Party, has placed more emphasis on quality over quantity. He has demanded absolute loyalty from party members, launched an ideology drive to shore up their faith, and unleashed a crackdown on internal dissent. Members are bound by more stringent rules – and millions of cadres have been investigated for violating them in the past nine years since Xi took control of the party.
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