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[smjjames]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/23/613662601/rohingya-militants-massacred-hindus-amnesty-says-they-were-all-slaughtered

War makes monsters out of men. God damn it humanity. Stop being shitty to each other.

Also really not helping the whole Rohingya crisis as Thailand now has an actual crime to use against them.

You know the Rohingya are in Myanmar, not Thailand, right?

Whoops, meant Myanmar, couldn’t remember which one, or I could have just double checked the article.

Edit fixed now.

[Loud Whispers]

Also really not helping the whole Rohingya crisis as Thailand now has an actual crime to use against them.

So are we also just going to ignore the whole Burmese police being murdered thing? I feel like it's unhelpful to ignore that before the Burmese crackdown, the jihadists were blowing up bridges, attacking police bases and army bases all in one day of coordinated strikes and burning down villages/surrounding villagers so they can't escape.

Myanmar denies that, saying its forces are fighting ruthless terrorists. For the government, the proof of the insurgents’ brutality is plain to see, lying in rows by the mass graves just outside the village of Ye Baw Kya.
“This is terrorism,” Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Win Myat Aye, who visited the site on Tuesday, told Reuters.
The ARSA has denied killing the Hindus saying they never kill civilians.
Exactly why Myanmar’s tiny Hindu minority in Rakhine state got caught up in the bloodshed is not clear, and different people have given different accounts at different times.
Some villagers have said the insurgents suspected Hindus of being on the side of the government and acting as government spies.
In late August, Reuters reporters in Bangladesh interviewed a group of Hindu women from the village who said their male loved ones were killed by Rakhine Buddhists.
However, three of the same women told Reuters this week that Muslims who brought them to Bangladesh had ordered them to say it was Buddhist vigilantes who had done the killing.

Western blockheads literally took the word of terrorists that they weren't slaughtering innocents in order to have a morally black and white situation that didn't exist

I love that the BBC version of these events paints Amnesty International as making a controversial report for pointing out who actually massacred the village. Like how the fuck can the truth be controversial. It's like calling Al Qaeda mandems Freedom Fighters all over again

[SaberToothTiger]

Who could expect that the West lives in a loveable bubble believing it's values are upheld by everyone in the world? Who could expect that said bubble would burst violently when confronted with reality? I mean, western style democracy and liberal capitalism solve all problems in the world, so clearly any situation that does not conform to said worldview is too complicated for us and needs to be simplyfied.

And yes, before anyone asks, I am an embittered and snarky cunt.

[redwallzyl]

Looks like xenophobia is the same the world over.
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/625915526/anti-refugee-backlash-in-south-korea-targets-yemenis-fleeing-war-and-seeking-asy

[Reelya]

I've been reading some interesting stuff about the Chinese "social credit" system. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I know enough to say:

"every single article you've read about it is probably complete bullshit that doesn't in fact have a single thing to do with the social credit system".

And it's pretty easy to dissect. For example:

The Chinese government has developed a mobile app that tells users if they are near someone who is in debt. The app, called a "map of deadbeat debtors," flashes when the user is within 500 meters of a debtor and displays that person's exact location. TechSpot reports:

News of the app has caused quite a bit of controversy after it was originally reported by the state-run China Daily. It is an extension to China's existing "social credit" system which scores people based on how they act in public. The app is available through the WeChat platform which has become immensely popular in China. The government stated that "Deadbeat debtors in North China's Hebei province will find it more difficult to abscond as the Higher People's Court of Hebei on Monday introduced" the app. Once a user is alerted that they are close to a debtor, the user can then view their personal information. This will reveal their name, national ID number, and why they were added to the debtor list. The debtor can then be publicly shamed or reported to the authorities if it is deemed that they are capable of repaying their debts.

Here's the actual article:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/16/WS5c3edfb8a3106c65c34e4d75.html

First:

The Chinese government has

No, it turns out this was concocted by a single provinces' court system. So, it's a local government thingy in only that province. And not "The" Chinese government. If the high court in California did something would you say "THE" American government has done such-and-such?

has developed a mobile app

Uh, turns out there is no actual mobile app that has been developed. It's a thingy you subscribe to on WeChat, which is like Chinese twitter. Maybe that's quibbling, but Twitter bots and the like aren't really much of an "app".

It is an extension to China's existing "social credit" system

Well, it's actually not anything to do with the "social credit" system, so it's not any sort of "extension" of that. This is about people who've actually defaulted on actual money loans.

Also note "the government stated", when in fact there has been no official statement about the program whatsoever. The stated text was just the body of the article on China Daily. At best, "reporter at the China Daily stated" such-and-such. Sure, we can move the goalposts and say anything written in The China Daily is "the government stated" but that's stretching the definition of an official statement a little.

Similarly:

https://www.gamesradar.com/minus-10-social-credits-600-million-gamers-face-punishment-for-their-hobby-as-life-imitates-a-black-mirror-episode/

Buying games could potentially lower your ‘social credit’ in China by 2020 if a new government scheme gains traction

Chinese gamers face direct ‘social penalties’, such as lack of access to Visa schemes and dating sites, as part of an upcoming surveillance program which rates citizens based on their economic and social behaviour. The Black Mirror style trial scheme discourages certain types of behaviour and can even penalise people for buying video games.

OK, where to start with this one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186

First, these ideas were for a privately-owned social media site, and aren't part of any government designed program.

Second, they didn't say you'd be downrated for buying games (both companies and governments in China want people to buy stuff, duh), they said that if you played games for 10 hours a day that would look bad.

Third, it was just a random comment by some tech representative from the company, and they don't in fact have any technology in place that can tell whether you "gamed for 10 hours a day".

Fourth, they didn't say that anyone would be blocked from "dating sites", they said that your rating would affect your placement in search results in the one specific dating site affliated with their social media site. Standard algorithm stuff, duh. Tinder does the same

So, really rather than whatever Gamesradar is saying, the actual story is that "a single employee of a Chinese Facebook equivalent throws out a vague idea using non-existent tech and how it could affect you search ranking in their affiliated dating site. BTW, they expose the numerical rating the algorithm gives you". Basically, the western media took a vague hypothetical from some loose-lipped Elon Musk type in China and turned it into a story about how it's real tech that's coming next year (totally!) and it's going to be run by the government.

Additionally the Sesame Credit Score idea isn't really much different to Facebook algorithms, except Sesame at least tells you you're being rated and gives you some of the criteria. Which is ... a damn sight better than actual Facebook. That's the thing, as Orwellian as  the "Sesame Credit" scoring system sounds, it's actually the same as what Facebook does, but more transparent.


Additionally, a ton of other things that are supposedly something to do with the social credit system don't really have a whole lot to do with it. For example, there's mention of being blocked from expensive hotels, travel on the bullet train and first-class flight. but, if you look up those things, all of them were in fact rules for debt defaulters or senior executives of companies who had legal breaches against them. Basically, it's not a whole lot different to how American courts garnish your wages: in China if you're forced by the courts to pay back debts then they also require you to travel economy class. This, again, can be debated, but fundamentally doesn't have anything at all to do with the main story "social credit system", and it's not even something that would be especially out of whack if proposed in America. It's not that far off from normal bankruptcy conditions. Lumping this stuff in with the social credit stories is just clickbait.

I haven't touched on what the social credit system is actually about, if you drill down, but almost all the stuff mentioned has very little to do with it. The Chinese government doesn't really want to micro-manage peoples game purchases and the like, because the costs far outweigh the benefits.

In fact, if you look into it the Social Credit system seems to have a completely different purpose: to try and build up a "trust culture". Fraud and corruption are rampant, and the "social credit" system's original pitch was that it would cover 4 types of entities: (1) local governments, (2) private businesses, (3) judicial system and (4) individuals. It seems like every entity will be vetting the trustworthiness of every other type, and the actual core goal is to allow transactions without the absurd levels of distrust, fraud and corruption that exist at the moment. It seems more like a huge Yelp style system than anything else. The Chinese government seriously couldn't give a shit if you're playing a lot of MMOs, but they do give a shit about improving commerce and stamping out low-level corruption, and it makes a whole lot more sense that this is what they care about, rather than you bought too many video games, or where to place you on the search rankings for Chinese Tinder.

[sluissa]

You can say the Chinese government doesn't give a shit if you're playing an MMO...

but they do seem to give a shit if men wear earrings.

Your arguments seem to ignore the fact that these things are rarely done for no reason and often are only part of a larger initiative.

[Reelya]

That earring thing. If it was a government demand, then wouldn't all Chinese TV channels be doing it, and not just that one streaming site? You can infer from the article that there are a zillion other media outlets in China - including a bunch of state-owned channels - that aren't iQiyi where you can see the same actors / singers with earrings intact, and no sign of blanket earring-censorship. It's literally only one outlet doing it.

iQiyi claims that there's no official mandate on earring-censorship, and I believe them, because of the lack of evidence that any channel which isn't iQiyi has ever done the same thing. When other channels start having the same thing then I'd buy it that there's a central plan behind it.

[Kagus]

Maybe the earrings were just making offensive gestures at the time?

[ChairmanPoo]

I had not seen this thread pop up in a while. Does anybody know if we still at war with East Asia?

[Kagus]

I had not seen this thread pop up in a while. Does anybody know if we still at war with East Asia?

We have always been at war with East Asia.

[Culise]

We don't really have a South Asia thread, so I suppose it can be lumped in here: India is certainly east of something, after all.

The Indian BJP-led government has just repealed the autonomy statutes that govern Jammu and Kashmir and have occupied the state.  As preemptive measures in advance of the formal announcement, two former chief ministers have been placed under house arrest, Internet and media have been blacked out, and tens of thousands of Indian soldiers have been deployed to enforce martial law.  The announcement includes a reorganization of the political structure of the state to merge Jammu and Kashmir and separate Ladakh, which will become its own state with direct rule from Delhi.  Based on the stated reasons including easing restrictions to permit an "increase in investment in the region," we can expect a significant part of this to have to do with recolonizing the state: the autonomy statutes included restrictions on ownership of property in the region to permanent residents of the state, which was limited to those who had lived there for ten years, and slowed any increase in Hindu ownership in the Muslim-majority region.  I suspect it's unlikely we'll see a Fourth Kashmir War from Pakistan over this, but we'll likely see a sharp spike in the long-standing separatist movement in the region.  BBC and NYC links. 

Somewhat surprised the Hong Kong news didn't make it in here, either.

[Autohummer]

I don't know if there are any Hong Kong forumites aside from myself on Bay 12, so it is not surprising for me that it hasn't appeared here yet.

[scriver]

Hello Hong Kong-forumite, I hope you're all right.

[Jimmy]

FWIW, I sympathize with the plight of Hong Kong natives. We have a lot of ex-pats here in kangaroo land from Hong Kong, some of which I consider good friends. They're here due to the writing on the wall with China and its authoritarian political system taking over their home. It's sad to see yet another protest for democracy fail, and I predict similar scenes in the future being reported in Taiwan sooner or later.

I just hope like hell that I never live to see the same images appear in my own country, although it's not beyond the realm of possibility I might.

[Dorsidwarf]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49267912

Pakistan prepares to cut trade and expel the Indian ambassador over the Kashmir incident