Slashdot Mirror
Russia Blocks Internet Sites of Putin Critics
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.'"
Rules against criticizing the government makes a political campaign all but impossible for anyone but the incumbent. In other words, they are now a dictatorship. Hopefully the Russian people won't give up their freedoms so easily, and push back.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
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...
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.