Version longue en français: https://www.bortzmeyer.org/coupure-russie.html
Several ISPs in France have started censoring rt.com via their DNS resolver.
Why are they doing this? I guess officially they’ll say it’s because of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and that’s partially correct.
But also worth pointing out is that despite very uncritical propaganda from the regime about what happens in Russia, RT is one of the only mass media (non-independent publication) where you can have decent news about social uproar in France (gilets jaunes, anti-police-abuse riots, etc).
We haven’t reached the point where posts to RT are censored on social media (where it’s most popular) so i can’t exactly say we have “one side” to the news yet but it’s getting closer.
This message is both a fuck you to french ISPs engaging in censorship (remember Sci-Hub? TPB?) and a reminder to all the Putin fanboys around here what “there’s only one side to the news” really means: Russia is already there (there’s a few independent publications but they’ve been struggling for years with State censorship and journalist assassinations) and France is getting closer (on the other side of the narrative). The rest of you who live in countries with more free speech can’t even realize what information control means so please don’t take these words lightly.
It’s hilarious that the Azov Battalion was formed from a bunch of racist rednecks because Russia invaded Crimea. And now you use it as the justification to for another invasion? Russia needs to learn to stay in it’s lane.
As for Wagner Group, it is directly operated as a thinly veiled proxy army. They are a Kremlin asset whose leaders flash Nazi insignia as much as those Azov yokels. I wonder how the Ukrainian denazifacation of Wagner is going in Kyiv? Three foiled assassination attempts so far…
NATO should have stayed in its lane since 1959 for 6 decades. Russia is correct in what it is doing, and Ukraine must no longer be tolerated with having a US puppet government installed since 2014 Maidan coup.
What the west should have done was Marshal Plan eastern Europe. Build them up with loans and investments rather let them wallow in corruption and poverty. Look at Japan and Germany today, compared to Russia. It was a cruel, conscious choice to use them as a cheap labor stock. And now we have to deal with the results: peace in our time? Or checking an aggressor before he starts World War III.
I’m not sure the Marshal Plan was a good deal for western Europe, although for sure it accelerated reconstruction greatly. But i’m sure eastern european countries could have fared better without western powers imposing that they must privatize everything, which was not a condition imposed on western european countries post-WWII.
I’m very much against Putin and this is not a defense of him, but the USA establishment basically created the Russian oligarchy overnight (after the collapse of the USSR) by pushing (forcing?) local authorities to sell every State asset as quickly as possible to the highest bidder while the economy is in ruins. So you end up with a handful of people owning the entire country while ordinary people need a bag of bank notes to buy bread. It’s the very same technique they used in Iraq/Afghanistan after, and in many other places: it’s a widely documented process, but i would personally recommend Naomi Klein’s The shock doctrine and Adam Curtis’ documentaries.
Once again, i’m not sure a eastern european “marshal plan” would have done better, but lack of western intervention post-USSR-collapse is certainly not what led to Russia being a capitalist hellhole.
I agree, certainly, that the fire sale was terrible and we’re living the karma from that today. Maybe leaving them alone would have been better? It’s doubtful, though. Look at Africa. Western capital avoided it like the plague and they simply suffered in stagnation until China’s investment today.
How did Vietnam independently become the economic power it is today? Free trade and public investment in education. That’s how it could have gone in Russia. Instead people traded their shares of the newly privatized infrastructure for boxes of vodka. And thus, the oligarchs came to own it all.
NATO was the aggressor. Also check what Hague Invasion Act is.
Ha ha, yep, NATO scared Putin so much he invaded an unaligned nation in response. Nobody cares to invade Russia. Russia would be a NATO member, if it wasn’t trapped in the cold war mentality of Putin. What do you get in return? Finland 2.0? Afghanistan 2.0? And a new batch of EU and NATO members. Putin has outmaneuvered himself.
Actually no, Russia will just become strong this way, leaving US-EU English Fascism in despair in long term. Ukraine would have become Afghanistan 2.0 if NATO was allowed to take over.
Are you saying that western powers were planning a military invasion of Ukraine? This makes no sense, as there was no major military deployment indicating it, nor was there any psyops in the west to mount a narrative justifying such invasion.
Western powers, specifically USA, had installed their own puppet in Ukraine in 2014 over a phone call, without any elections. And years of installation of military and warfare equipment, and the ongoing supply that has stopped only after Russia made it clear no US puppetry or NATO-isation will be allowed, Europe stopped sending equipment.
I have no reason to believe you are not lying at this point to defend NATO, so I will just try to avoid you in this matter. No use playing chess with pigeons.
As strong North Korea? They’re totally dependent on China, too. Ukraine is Russia’s next Afghanistan. Remember that fiasco? When American made Stingers cleared the sky of Spetsnaz helicopters? Does that sound familiar?
More like China. Also, North Korea was unironically a result of USA’s bombing. Russia is not a genocidal state like USA or Western coloniser states have been, stop projecting. Who carpet bombed Serbia and Yugoslavia for 78 days? Does that ring any bells?
Who genocided the muslim populations of the USSR? Was it the USA and western colonizers too? Does that ring any bells? From the wikipedia page on Deportation of Chechens and Ingush:
Just because western empires are evil does not mean other empires have to be good.
Here’s some more whataboutism for you: Aleppo. Grozny. Go all the way back to Afghanistan, where this “non-genocidal” state carpet bombed during the planting season to starve the population. Projection, indeed.