Slashdot Mirror
The Kremlin Tightens Its Grip on the Internet
reporter writes "According to a report just published by "The Washington Post", the percentage of Russian adults having access to the Internet has risen from 8% in 2002 to 25% in 2007. This growth has attracted the attention of the Kremlin. Its allies are creating pro-Kremlin web sites and are purchasing web sites known for high-quality independent journalism. Pro-Kremlin bloggers have used their skills to bury news about anti-Kremlin demonstrations: at Russian news portals, web links to news about pro-Kremlin rallies consistently rank higher than web links to news about anti-Kremlin demonstrations.
The most disturbing development is that the Kremlin intends to develop a Russian Internet which is separate from the global Internet. Russian officials are studying the techniques that the Chinese use to censor the Internet."
Seriously. I got a "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Circumcision is child abuse.
Putin, and more importantly, the team of ex-KGB people around him, will of course seek to control the Internet in Russia.
All the other media, such as newpapers and TV, are firmly pro-Kremlin. Independant journalists are imprisoned or assasinated by - of course - nameless 'enemies of the state'.
It's a shame that the promise of democracy there turned out to be yet another 'false dawn'.
Europe will do nothing, since the bear's paw is firmly on their throat, i.e. the oil and gas supply...
Next up, Google et al 'voluntary censorship'?
In a world where information is power, governments who don't actually represent their people will always try to control the knowledge that their people have access to, lest they loose their grip on them.
~ All comments automatically moderated -1 since 2004 ~
Of people's attempts to silence others. After all, if we weren't, we'd have to go after a hell of a lot of muslims urgently. And they do a lot more silencing than even the kremlin.
After 10 years of research, investigators have discovered that governments are, in fact, manipulative.
So, does this mean that kremvax will be brought back online?
It seems here that they intend to airgap their country from the rest of the world. Obviously someone could run across the border to bring DVDs, or maybe hack the phones to call an international ISP, but this will certainly make things difficult.
_____
Thank you.
If you are, you haven't been paying attention. All independent TV stations have been closed, one way or the other, in Russia. The same is true for newspapers, with few exceptions. And the journalists brave enough to speak up have dire times looking ahead. Remember Anna Politkovskaya?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
In Soviet Russia, the government controls you.
No, wait...
...its the Russian mafia network.
So even if the kremlin managed to create their own country internet there would still be the russian mafias world wide internet.
You could very well replace the name "Russia" in the article with "United States" and I don't think it would surprise most here. I guess the pro-kremlin bloggers would then be Fox News?
A couple of things.
Russia is not so simple. First, Putin is enormously popular in Russia. He has put food in the belly of the Russian people, their standards of living are higher, and so on. In the mind of the average Russian, over there, someone supporting the likes of a pure democracy movement are the crooks and cronies from the Yeltsin era. Those crooks and cronies, in turn, are the very former communist leaders that they rebelled against to begin with!
Secondly, yes, there is Fox News and they tend to feature columnists that are sympathetic to the right wing of American politics. Guess what, that's half the country dude. The only reason Republicans are in trouble now, well, there are a lot, is because of the skyrocketing cost of energy and the growing realization that the Republicans in Washington aren't so Republican after all. If you think the likes of Hannity give Bush a blank check, you'd be dead wrong. Hannity -routinely- condemns Bush on immigration and was one of the key players to stop the Bush immigration reform bill dead in its tracks. Similarly, just wait until Bush flip flops on the ridiculous law of the sea treaty or tries to enact some sort of a carbon tax. He'd be dead meat.
Finally, the key difference between the USA and other places around the world that the left is so fond of comparing us too, is that, the left wing is allowed to spout its own opinions. If MoveOn was in Russia or China, they most certainly not exist. But then, neither would the NRA.
This is my sig.
This is short sighted on the part of Russia. Russia has a brain drain problem. Silicon Valley is awash in bright Russian immigrant software developers who love the opportunities and freedoms they are getting. This increased censorship and eroding of basic rights back home in Russia will only increase that trend and leave Russia holding the bag with the beaten down and uninspired population that will remain.
As Plato said, bad propaganda conditions your people to do stupid things, and they don't have time to figure it out. I'd do the same thing, but I give Russia few chances of success, given how elusive self-governance has been for them since they overthrew their Nordid leaders and replaced them with fields of peasant Slavs.
Anti-Globalism
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/07/130258 Democracy Now!
August 7th, 2007
Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker & Journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire
John Pilger: One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?"
nothing... CNN thinks the following US news are enough:
...so in the US anti-bush news are just anti-patriotic / anti-american... the only difference between the Russian news control is that Putin started a bit earlier than Bush.
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* Indian tribes expel members
* Mobile home dwellers ride out fire, wait for help
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* Mob considered whacking Guiliani Video
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> Pro-Kremlin bloggers have used their skills to bury news about anti-Kremlin demonstrations:
ahhh, if some CNN wievers want to learn about recent anti-bush demonstrations, tune into BBC.
During the 50's, 60's, and 70's, America, and then the whole of the free world lead the planet. The reason is that we had a capitalism helping us move things alone. In particular, we developed our resources VERY quickly. Neither China nor USSR was not able to do that, because they were totalitarian states combined with command economics. Now, Russia is heading to what China is, but the difference is that China has the lead in manufacturing and Russia now has the resources, all of which America was the leader in before. The point being unless the free world quickly develops alternative and nuclear energy, we are probably going to be in the same place that we were in before, only with us on the losing end. The truth is that totalitarian govs. are VERY efficient (do not like the result? shoot it). It was the command economy that was not. If we have a low cost energy again, then the free world can expand rapidly into automated manufacturing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Perhaps the iCurtain?
The "Washington Post" recently published a chilling story about "police psychiatry" in Russia. Powerful thugs in the government (including the police) and in commercial businesses bribe judges and doctors to declare that a mentally healthy person is mentally incompetent. Then, the "justice" (in a very loose sense of the word) system will imprison the victim in a mental institution. There, the doctors proceed to "treat" the victim with beatings and injections of psychotic substances.
The article by the "Washington Post" mentions that Larissa Arap, a human-rights activist, was one such victim. She had written a damning article about the horrible state of psychiatric wards in Russia. In response, psychiatrists and judges -- under orders from the Kremlin -- imprisoned her in a psychiatric ward. She was subjected to 6 weeks of beatings and injections with an unknown psychotic substance. After numerous letters pleading for her life from Gary Kasparov and other human-rights activits, the Kremlin finally released her.
What is most disturbing about police psychiatry is that it is practiced not only by the Kremlin. This "tool" is also used by ordinary Russians who want to rid themselves of people whom they dislike.
Slashdot should create a new topic category for Russia. It deserves its own topic category for story submissions; the horrors in today's Russia should be an active topic of discussion (condemnation?) for any Westerner who has an iota of compassion. This article by the "Washington Post" should scare any Westerner.
Couple of words of Internet landscape in Russia. As many of you know, Livejournal is the service of choice for most of Russian bloggers and, most importantly, the only service that is used for the political discourse. Other services like number #2 in ratings, Liveinternet.ru populated by pop-music fans and all kinds of juvenile nonsense.
On the contrary, there are many political blogs among top bloggers at the cyrillic sector of Livejournal. It interesting that the most dominant and most vocal part of political blogs are not those that advocate Western style democracy and human rights, but on the contrary are criticizing Putin from extremely right-wing position.
I am looking at blogs.yandex.ru, 5 most cited blog entries, and among number 2 (rus) is defending arrested leader of "Red blitzkrieg" by the blogger well known for his sympathies for all things Soviet.
number 3 (rus) is also on the same subject by the relatively well known lady journalist of the similar political views.
The highest ranking blog among the official politicians (#22 in the all-list) belongs to a politician who was in political leadership of Latvia at the time of breakup from the former Soviet Union and spent a lot of time undermining efforts of Latvians to gain independence. Right wing.
Blogger number 19 is a Nazi sympathizer with Russian pseudo-pagan twist.
The lefties are presented much less among top bloggers.
I am saying this because among quite diverse opposition to Putin right-wingers opposing Western style democracy and human-rights issues are dominating. If they would come to power, the situation would be even worse than at Putin's time from the Western point of view.
In the West Putin's seems like an autocrat, anti-democrat, but to THAT opposition he is a Western poodle. The most viable alternative to Putin at the hypothetical condition of free election (free from government manipulation as well as foreign financial and all other kinds of support to the "liberal" opposition) would be not much famed recently chessmaster, but people like Rogozin (Russian equivalent of Le Pen or Heider).
This might be irrelevant to the topic of censorship, but it is quite relevant to Russians.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I'm just saying that a strong national defense is not just about guns and bombs, it's about diplomacy. Like the doctors say, the best medicine is prevention. Eat right and exercise, you've already won the battle. If the doc is cracking your chest open for a quadruple bypass, you could call that a shooting war and it's a sign you already lost. (complicated metaphor, I know.) But like Big Pharma and Medicine, the defense industry isn't about prevention or curing the disease, they're about making money off of treating the symptoms. The hospital is just as happy you had a heart attack, more moolah for them.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
RedCurtain2.0 will look better :)
I'm not Russian, I'm Asian, but from my point of view, a lot of the criticism against the Kremlin comes from pro-NATO Cold War biases. ie. Everything that NATO countries do is right, and everything Putin & Co do is wrong.
As somebody who doesn't want to see the world return to its pre-ColdWar state of European hegemony, I'll say that I'm glad that Russians are fostering a robust sense of nationalism, because historically they've been ruled over by outsiders and foreign-imposed govts. Even if you look at the Bolshevik Revolution that brought Russia under communist rule, it was backed by Western European powers trying to undermine the Czar. That drunken Boris Yeltsin was likewise a Manchurian Candidate who used to give away all kinds of concessions on international treaties, while using his control over the media to suppress the opposition, but he wasn't criticized because the West was benefitting from his undemocratic rule. Those aren't good precedents, and I think the Russians need to develop some natural immunity against foreign manipulation.
While some in the West cry for "more democracy in Russia," one can also note how there was a cry to "bring democracy to Iraq" -- and look what that caused. Similarly, while some will cry that Russia "must share oil" with the world, there was the similar "liberate vital oil supplies from Saddam's tyranny."
It's good to see the Russians regaining their natural strength after having it sapped by carpetbaggers from abroad. It's their country, and I like the fact that Russians can produce politicians who are willing to stand up for their nation, even if it comes to going nose-to-nose with Westerners who think the world is their oyster.