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Vladimir Putin Signs Sweeping Internet-Censorship Bills (arstechnica.com)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed two censorship bills into law Monday. One bans "fake news" while the other makes it illegal to insult public officials. Ars Technica reports on the details: Under one bill, individuals can face fines and jail time if they publish material online that shows a "clear disrespect for society, the state, the official state symbols of the Russian Federation, the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and bodies exercising state power." Insults against Putin himself can be punished under the law, The Moscow Times reports. Punishments can be as high as 300,000 rubles ($4,700) and 15 days in jail.
A second bill subjects sites publishing "unreliable socially significant information" to fines as high as 1.5 million rubles ($23,000). [T]he Russian government has "essentially unconstrained authority to determine that any speech is unacceptable. One consequence may be to make it nearly impossible for individuals or groups to call for public protest activity against any action taken by the state," [analyst Matthew Rojansky told the Post]
A second bill subjects sites publishing "unreliable socially significant information" to fines as high as 1.5 million rubles ($23,000). [T]he Russian government has "essentially unconstrained authority to determine that any speech is unacceptable. One consequence may be to make it nearly impossible for individuals or groups to call for public protest activity against any action taken by the state," [analyst Matthew Rojansky told the Post]
You can't really 'insult' 'important' people anywhere in the world - usa, russia, china - same shit. You can talk unimportant rubbish of course, but say one damaging i mean 'insulting' word and you will see what 'freedom of speech' really means in practice, in theory its:
"Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction."
This is straight-up statist/authoritarianism that any Socialist/"progressive" would be proud of.
Or have you missed who's going around the US saying crap like "speech is violence" and actually institutionalizing methods to shut down dissenting voices to the point it has a fucking Wikipedia page? And to hell with free speech?
Who calls ideas they don't like "hate speech"?
Hint: it ain't Trump.
Hell, even Chelsea Clinton gets attacked by "progressive" bigots for daring to speak against anti-Semitism.
Not me dude, luckily he's literally not my president so I couldn't give a shit, but he does seem to be the one with the hurt feelings. Twitter rants all the time because tv people joked and hurt his ickle wickle feelwings :_( Awww whassa matter poor little snowflake? If he can put a stop to people criticising him you know for a fact he'd jump at the chance. It might even over take his wall on the list of things to pretend to be doing.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Remember that time Obama and the Democrats proposed the same thing? I remember. It's convenient that you forgot.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/flashback-that-time-obama-declared-war-on-fox-news-and-wanted-to-limited-their-access/
Or...perhaps not. Obama pointed out that Fox news hated him and continued to attack him (to include fostering the false claims he was not a natural born US citizen). The link you provided was pretty biased, and based on the comments section, followed by those who barely are able to understand anything too complex. But at no point in the biased opinion piece did it say that Obama or the Democrats had put force a bill or even suggested that people should go to prison for insulting the government or its leaders.
Perhaps not knowing the difference is because English isn't your native language, Gospodin AC?
Wow. BOTH of the posts were simple, one-dimensional caricatures of the other side. If you think that the first post "accurately named" any left-leaning policies, you need to get out of your bubble.
Seriously, I'm about as left as they come, but none of those statements was even close to something I'd claim as a valid position.
While you're right that support of transgender rights is a left-wing position, the issue is more complicated than simply insisting that "men can be women." In fact, all of the positions listed in the original post are gross oversimplifications of complicated positions designed to appear stupid. This is, at its heart, the very definition of caricatures.
For the sake of trying to illuminate some of this complexity, let's just try to unpack this single issue, shall we? (I assume that I'm probably wasting my time, as conversations on the internet rarely change people's opinions, but I'm bored at work.)
First off, how do you define what is even means to be "men" vs. "women"? We all have some basic common-sense ideas, but none of them work as solid definitions. If we try to define things at the chromosome level, you can try to say that XX is a woman and that XY is a man, but what about XXY or XYY or XXXY? There are more, but you get the idea. If we then say that is complicated, but we can define based upon external genitalia, things get even more complicated. For one, there are hermaphrodites - where do they go? Also, some people have the standard XX or XY genotypes yet have external genitalia consistent with the opposite sex. I work in biotech and a colleague of mine tells a story of working for a prenatal genetic testing group that found an expecting mother had an XY genotype with a pure female phenotype.
Already, just trying to define terms, we are forced to abandon any kind of simplistic binary gender identity. It turns out that things are more complicated, even if we only focus on concrete issues like genotypes and external physiology.
Next, we turn to the even more complicated issues of sexual identity. In other words, how does any given person identify their own gender? I know very little about you personally, but I'll guess (based upon /. demographics) that you think of yourself as a man. (I also am a man, FWIW) When is it that you made this decision? Have you ever considered yourself or thought of yourself as a woman? Personally, I haven't. I'm a dude, and I've always seen myself that way. In other words, my gender identity was not a choice, but rather something that is intrinsic to who I am.
Now, imagine that you have this same sense of being a particular gender, but the organs between your legs don't match your particular sense of self. Most people's identities match their genitals, but for some people, they don't.
The current "left-wing dogma" is that people should get to decide for themselves their own gender identity, based upon the same intrinsic sense that you are using to identify your own gender, regardless of their genitals.
The statement "men can be women" misses this complexity. Instead, it tries to mix up various terms and frames the whole issue in a way that tries to deny all of the complexity mentioned above. That is what makes it a caricature.
As a side note, why should anyone else even give a shit about my gender? In a great many ways, allowing a flexible gender identity should be considered the right-wing, libertarian position. After all, unless I'm trying to have sex with someone, I really don't give a rat's ass how their clothing, etc. relates to what is under the clothing.
Many Russians in the West think that Putin is the best given the choice between inept unconstructive and immoral opposition and him.
It's not the lack of data, it's just the reality does not match fairy tales of sjw liberals.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.