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quietus (6328)
In a not unexpected move, the Russian government has outlawed news outlet Meduza.
Anybody inside Russia who reads Meduza, writes about Meduza, talks about Meduza or who has contacts with anybody who does so, is now automatically a criminal, and could be punished with up to 4 years in prison.
To conclude, just a quote taken from Everything Flows, by Vasili Grossman:
I too was influenced by it, I was just a young woman, and you heard it at meetings, at special instruction gatherings, on the radio and in the movie theatre, and from the writers, and by Stalin himself, always the same: the kulaks were parasites, they burned the grain and kill children. It was said directly: we have to raise the anger of the masses against those damn kulaks and destroy their whole class. I too became bewitched, I too thought: everything is to blame on the kulaks, and once they are destroyed, there will be better times for the peasants. You shouldn't feel pity for them, they weren't humans, but god knows which creatures.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26, @09:01PM (15 children)
Why make such a big thing about it? We have politicians here that are censoring public libraries and school books and social media, and the newspapers too. Censorship is what keeps Trump and the Clintons and countless others out of jail
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26, @09:36PM (1 child)
Flamebait
Moderator is a troll and hypocrite
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26, @11:35PM
How convenient for you!
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday January 27, @09:55AM (9 children)
Should censorship in Russia be normal?
(If your argument is about hypocrisy: can't you organize a fundraiser to take those censoring US politicians to court?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, @11:14PM (8 children)
It shouldn't normal anywhere, but who do we let draw the line?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 27, @11:52PM (7 children)
Apparently, not you, right? I find it bizarre that you're posting this helpless damsel stuff when it's painfully clear that that line got crossed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @05:12AM (6 children)
Yeah so why is Russia being singled out? Oh, that's right, they're this week's piñata
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 28, @06:22AM (5 children)
Are we supposed to care that you're either this dumb or pretending such? Russia volunteered hard to be this year's pinata by invading Ukraine. Too bad you can't seem to get that.
And you won't find hypocritcal US politicians who have managed to make it illegal to listen to a media source because it says negative things about a US war, but as we see, you can find some Russian politicians who managed that trick. This has always been the flaw with Soviet/Russian whataboutism. It tries to conflate a great evil with a minor one becoming far more hypocritical in the process than any hypocrisy they claim to see.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @07:15PM
I hear that aristarchus is banned in Russia. Hungary and Thailand, too. Reveals once again that there are Soviet operatives on SoylentNews.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @08:51PM (3 children)
They were provoked by the US/NATO coup and other aggression. Too bad you can't seem to get that.
And nobody cares about your "hypocrisy" shtick. If they did, reelection rates would be almost 0%. The whole gag is a distraction
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 29, @01:49AM (2 children)
We've gone through this before. Provocation is not a bit you set. If I provoke you by a snide remark, that doesn't give you legal pretext to shoot me. If I provoke you by shooting at you multiple times, that's different.
Apologists for the invasion magically think that if you just label a coup as a "US/NATO coup", that counts as provocation for an invasion. That's nonsense in multiple ways.
We have real world historical analogues. Over the decades, the US has helped overthrown many governments. But not every such coup stuck around. Let's consider two examples: France in 1944 and South Vietnam in 1955. In the first case, there was a ready, more legitimate government to replace Vichy France. While it's undergone turmoil and constitutional restructuring since, it's still the same France now as then. It lasted.
In South Vietnam, the circumstances were very different. This was a country created on the spot as a counterweight to North Vietnam (the Communists who inherited that part had been the ones who successfully drove the French out of the entire Vietnam colony). There never was a strong country in the south and it took hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to keep the country stable under assault from North Vietnam. The country fell immediately as US troops departed (very similar to the situation in Afghanistan).
Basically, we could label both as "US coups", but the French of 1944 were way more invested in their country then and now, than the South Vietnamese ever were.
And that's the first big thing missed here. Ukrainians are far more serious about fighting for their present country than they were of the Yanukovych regime. I'm sure this will get branded as "propaganda", but Yanukovych dropped a valuable free trade agreement with the EU for Russia. It was a terrible deal for Ukraine and a demonstration of Yanukovych's status as a tool of Russia. The Euromaidan protests immediately started.
Then what gets missed next in the "US/NATO coup" narrative is that Ukrainians brought it. There were massive protests over the entire stretch of Euromaidan. This is a huge part of the reason the label is so dishonest. It was a clear display of democracy winning. Yet Russia pushes the narrative that it's a cheesy power play by US/NATO.
Today we see the flaws of believing your own propaganda. If it really was a coup by foreign forces, then why are Ukrainians fighting so hard eight years later? Why hasn't Russia beaten them long ago? Reality isn't following your narrative and it's time for you to see why. There's substantial armament support from NATO powers, but all that firepower would be useless without someone willing and competent to use it.
This continued resistance against a powerful enemy shows the lie of claiming it was merely a coup by foreign powers. I'll note that Russia has had plenty of time, almost a year to come up with a real reason for the invasion. And they've actually lost considerable ground since the beginning of April.
You see here the end of the Russian empire at least for this generation, perhaps even for all of history. And well, I won't miss it.
(Score: -1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, @05:15AM (1 child)
Sure is funny to your blather on about "propaganda", since that is all you repeat. You have no clue who is fighting whom, or why
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 29, @06:42AM
And we have yet another post with zero details. I guess it's just not important to you? Perhaps it shouldn't be important to me either?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 27, @01:14PM (2 children)
Why don't you try to answer that question rather than merely make a whataboutism of it? For me, a common thing is having some AC come in and say my information and opinion are all propaganda and lies. That narrative wouldn't have any strength if there was no censorship, right? Because more factual information would be out there somewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, @11:09PM (1 child)
As they say, clean your own damn house first, or you're talking out your ass
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 27, @11:53PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, @03:25AM (5 children)
Kinda expected this to happen in... March 2022?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by quietus on Friday January 27, @09:49AM
Meduza, along with a whole raft of other Russian news sites and blogs was obligated to put a banner up stating that, according to Russian law, they were to be considered a Foreign Agent. That was in the autumn before the invasion, if I remember correctly. This, however, is a step up.
There could be 2 reasons. The first one is that this is standard Stalinist/'communist' operating procedure -- you strangle society step-by-step, not abruptly.
The second one has to do with dissatisfaction with the official news media within Russia. People were already complaining about the never-ending propaganda in May, but starting in the summer, the cynical/ironical comments on previously pro-Putin news media like lenta.ru really became unstoppable; and then the draft still had to come. Since then, commenting on articles mostly has been blocked, and on the few occasions the comment section is opened, it is closed again (with the comments no longer visible) within a few hours due to this news item is no longer timely anymore.
As to the pro-Putin news media themselves, there are still the hardcore supporters for whom the West is literally the equivalent of the Devil (words of Medvedev, not mine), but in the case of others like lenta.ru and izvestia.ru, the art of tongue-in-cheek reporting ain't dead in Russia. Here's an example of today's TASS press agency: Russians’ level of trust in Putin rises to 78.5%, poll shows [tass.com]. Note how the article is immediately followed by a string of articles dating to February 2022, clearly showing the damage done to Russia by the Great Leader.
(Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Friday January 27, @10:07AM (3 children)
Direct access to Meduza's website is blocked in Russia itself, since March 2022. That brings a third possible reason: that Meduza's Russian readership still has access to non-blocked VPN connections to the outside world.
(Meduza is calling for IT people who can help [meduza.io] with cyber-security or circumventing Internet censorship by the way.)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 27, @01:07PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, @06:12AM (1 child)
Khallow's approach to governance folks!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 29, @06:44AM