Russia Blocks Internet Sites of Putin Critics 309
An anonymous reader writes in with news about Russias censorship of internet sites critical of President Vladimir Putin. "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it 'monstrous' and a 'direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,' More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post, and Deutsche Welle, which notes, 'This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the "Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes.'"
Hopefully Russians don't give up their freedoms (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Reassembling the Soviet Union (Score:4, Interesting)
I grew up in the shadow of fucking Soviet warheads. When the abomination that was the Soviet Union collapsed (because that is what it was, a collapse that forced a dissolution), everyone were better off. We've never had it better here in fact, than since that monstrosity of a union disappeared, and Russians could have had it just as good, were it not for Putin.
There is no interest in "eradicating the old elements", Putin is one of those old elements himself. He's building himself a buffer zone that he can steal from without repercussions, because he wants a new empire and he can't afford it on Russian GDP alone. He needs vassals he can exploit without affecting the core of his new empire. He is in essence rebuilding the Soviet Union, one invasion at a time. He couldn't have done it without you though, and I'm sure he's grateful for your support (no, not really).
The way he is doing this is actually quite smart, although the end goal doesn't serve the widest of interests. He's filling the Russian media with macho propaganda and grand standing to seed the yearning for the old days of power. Ask almost any Russian and they'll have zero clue what the fuck is going on, except what Putin has made them believe. If he says green is red, that is what the Russians will walk into the future believing. "Solving" the world's problems isn't on the agenda for you great leader, it is a talking point - and nobody outside of Russia is buying it, but that's not the point of it. All that sauce is for you, not us, so you can stop regurgitating it, Putin already knows it's a sham and you sound ridiculous when you do.
When there are no protests at home, you can pretty much act as you wish. When you act like a dick and the negative responses start flooding in, you can always point to them and go: "everyone is afraid of us, they don't understand our grand design, we must continue on with our master plan". But what your great leader has forgotten to tell you is that his grand standing is hinging on a bluff, and an assumption that nobody is going to call it out of fear of "Old Russia".
If the gas revenue stream dries up, you guys are going to be seriously fucked. For the takers of the gas, the price of heating a living room will rise, but that is not the end of the world over here - we still have the money we're not giving to Putin in our hands. But for the Russian end of the transaction is a catastrophe. There will only be more gun point diplomacy or capitulation left, again. An argument can be made that those two options really are the same, the only difference is the length of time it takes the first option to merge into the second option, or you could count the number of bodies that has to pile up before that happens - your choice really.
What all this amounts to, is a massive failure in learning from your collective mistakes. All of this will not end well for anyone but Putin himself, he's already pocketed enough money to not care what happens to the rest of Russia, the worst that can happen (bar a gunshot wound to the head, launched from a mile out) is exile with pockets full of cash, so of course he's moving forward. Just don't keep kidding yourselves and thinking he's going to take you all with him.
What's more likely to happen down this path you're following, is another era of an isolated, poverty stricken Russia, and the really, really sad part is that you're all buying into it as the only way to go. I feel for you guys, I really do. It saddens me, because I remember the 80s. Do you?
Tell Putin that you disapprove (Score:4, Interesting)
Commenting here is great, but Putin does not read Slashdot. Write to your country's Russian ambassador, tell him what you think. OK: what you say will be ignored, but if 10,000 of you write - then Putin may hear of it ... maybe no more than 2 lines at the bottom of some report, but that is better than nothing.
Just to make it easier for you: the UK Russian embassy contact page [rusemb.org.uk] (I would suggest Russia-UK relations queries); the USA Russian embassy contact page [russianembassy.org], post & 'phone only, unless someone can dig better than I can. Also feel free to reply to this comment with contact info for the Russian embassy in your country.
If you say nothing, then you will be ignored. Saying something cannot be worse than that !
Re:Reassembling the Soviet Union (Score:5, Interesting)
No side wants to be part of the Russian block, that's a key myth that Putin is desperately trying to peddle:
http://www.cityam.com/blog/139... [cityam.com]
The whole reason Putin has troops locking down Crimea and spreading propaganda left and right is precisely because he knows he could not win the referendum there legitimately. It's a sham, a stitch up, theft of Ukranian territory against the genuine will of the people. Even with a majority of 58% of ethnic Russian origin in Crimea most of those ethnic Russians still identify their nationality as Ukrainian, even though their ethnicity is Russian.
There is no division in the Ukraine, separatists across the whole nations are an absolute minority. It's no different to Scotland and the UK in this respect - the fact that 90% of the population there are Scottish doesn't mean 90% are in favour of independence, on the contrary, polling consistently puts only about 30% in favour of independence.