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www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-censorship.html
Just days after invading Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signed a censorship law that made it illegal to “discredit” the army. The legislation was so sweeping that even his spokesman acknowledged it was easy to cross the line into prohibited speech. In the first 18 months of the war, the law scooped up a vast array of ordinary Russians — schoolteachers, pensioners, groundskeepers, a carwash owner — for punishment.
The law has led to more than 6,500 cases of people being arrested or fined, more than 350 a month on average, according to a New York Times analysis of Russian court records through last August. That’s a small percentage of Russia’s population of 146 million, but The Times analyzed the details of every case, revealing the extraordinary reach and invasiveness of the Kremlin’s crackdown; anyone questioning the war or revealing sympathy with Ukraine — even in a private conversation — is now liable to prosecution in Russia.
The censorship law has enabled Mr. Putin to perpetuate a nearly two-year invasion that has killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians, with minimal resistance from those at home who oppose it. While most Russians tell pollsters they support the war, close to 20 percent say they don’t.
In the past, the government would make examples of a few individuals, some prominent; now it is practicing widespread censorship. This year, with antiwar speech in public largely eliminated, the records show that authorities remained intent on stamping out criticism expressed online and in private. More than 3,000 cases involved social media or messaging platforms popular in Russia.
“A large number of totally unknown, nameless, nonpublic people, who simply wrote something or said something somewhere, are getting hit,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
To better understand the extent of this censorship, we spent months analyzing a database of every available public record of prosecutions under the new law provided by OVD-Info, a Russian human rights and legal aid group.
First-time offenders are typically handed a fine of 30,000 rubles — around $300 at the current exchange rate, about half the average monthly salary in Russia — while repeat offenders can receive prison time. Known as article 20.3.3, the law has become the most widely used tool in Russia’s wartime crackdown, and it is the focus of our analysis; another law punishes spreading “false information” about the Russian army with up to 15 years in prison.
Experts say the wartime censorship is transforming Russian society and setting the stage for even more widespread repression in the future, as the authorities automate their monitoring of the internet and encourage people to denounce each other online. Mr. Putin set the tone last year when he referred to opponents of the war as “scum and traitors” to be cleansed from society.
In response to the crackdown, many Russians have begun to self-censor. Demyan Bespokoyev, a private school tutor who was prosecuted for writing an antiwar message on his coat, described the process this way: “The prison forms inside your head.”
Silencing Protest
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we need to take into account that Israel is causing a reduction in the security of Diaspora Jewry, instead of the opposite. So this Zionist solution is very deficient, and we need to examine what caused this deficiency.”
When the separation of powers is in danger, the independence of the judiciary is in danger and the rights of the individual are in danger, it’s clear that the fears of the advocates of liberal democracy are definitely justified. When the majority operates according to fundamentalist religious values or racist principles, the fears are a matter of certainty. The tyranny of the majority, together with rule over another people by an apartheid-like, racist system, is a terrible mixture, certainly if we look over our shoulder to history in other places.”
Zimmermann is currently engaged in a new research project – the study of “nations that went mad” – which sets out to explain “how nations deviate from their course and become extreme,” he says. “The occupation with Germany, which went mad in 1933, until it decreed its self-destruction, and the occupation with astonishing developments in Jewish and Israeli society, led me to deal with a trans-human phenomenon: societies that at a certain point went off-course, or simply ‘went mad,’”
Israel went mad starting in 1967 when the idea of biblical territory began to dominate it politically. Romanticism is a dangerous tendency, as we saw in 19th-century Europe. The story of ‘Greater Israel’ and the settlements is the story of a society that is becoming a hostage to biblical romanticism that is sweeping the whole society to perdition. And that is the problem: Once you have embarked on the path, it’s difficult to leave it without undergoing another catastrophe. That happened to Germany in 1945 in the most drastic way. We obviously do not want a catastrophe like that.”
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delegitimization of the Supreme Court for at least a decade under Netanyahu’s leadership.
That campaign never had the best interests of democracy or the liberal constitutional order in mind, as it mendaciously claimed. Rather, undermining the top court, and constraining its ability to review executive action, is important to achieve this government’s desired policy outcomes. The fanatical prewar governing coalition has kept its eyes on the prize. These
parties want to cut down civil liberties, constrain the media and civil society, suppress or even disenfranchise Arab citizens, deepen the theocratic influence on Israeli public and private life. And the jewel in the crown: they want Israel to rule permanently over Palestinians in all occupied territories through brazen, institutionalized inequality forever.
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Thursday 28 December 2023
News Notes
Democracy Now
- A young man in Israel has refused to sign up for military duty to go to Gaza. “I believe that slaughter cannot solve slaughter….violence won’t solve slaughter.” “I want security and I want peace for everyone.” “There is an alternative of peace.” Tal Mitnick has been sentenced to thirty days in prison.
- Progressive Democratic Party for Peace representative, Aida Touma-Sliman, suspended Knesset member. She criticized Israeli’s assault on Gaza. Hadash Party, she is from.
- This is an extreme right-wing government determined to squash any opposition voice. They want to silence the voices that refuse to believe that wars might get us anywhere. Palestinian member of the Israeli legislature. For a young man to stand up against the main stream is “very brave.” “It is not easy.” We think that there might be others.
- The number of people within Israel who have turned against the war, is increasing, according to Touma-Sliman.
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to explain a gulf between international and Israeli perspectives. In my decades of straddling both worlds, the chasm has never been wider.
If anything, ongoing conflict and occupation led inevitably to violence, as they do everywhere when conflicts are unresolved. This was compounded by a failed policy of isolating Gazaunder a crushing blockade that harmed civilians rather than helping security, while boosting Hamas all the while. Nothing excuses what Hamas did – nothing – but extreme violent escalation of some sort was inevitable.
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Israelis and Palestinians are both trapped by power-hungry leaders who are ready to sacrifice their own people to fight to the death of the other. Both Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas know they depend on this war, and the conflict more broadly, enduring
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As early as 1996, when it appeared following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that Shimon Peres, who pledged to continue the peace process he and Rabin began, was on the verge of winning the election as prime minister, Hamas suicide bombers blew up two buses on Jaffa Road in downtown Jerusalem, killing 45 people. (The attacks were masterminded by Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif in Gaza, who Israel has been trying unsuccessfully to assassinate for decades.)
The bombings turned enough voters away from the peace process which Netanyahu opposed and undermined in his campaign, resulting in a surprise narrow victory for Netanyahu by slightly less than 30,000 votes. This put into power a prime minister who allowed Hamas to grow and prosper thereby weakening the Palestinian Authority, a tactic meant to scotch all possibilities of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Since that election, both Hamas and Netanyahu have maintained a constant level of hostility that puts off any possibility of peace and has kept them both in power.
Never have these shared interests been more obvious than during the current war. Hamas has not only outperformed all of Israel’s enemies with the devastating attacks of October 7, but it also manages to elude defeat and score support worldwide as it absorbs punishing retaliation from Israel. Hamas cynically use the suffering of their fellow Palestinians for their own gain while shielding themselves from punishment.
Before the war, Netanyahu, busy with the agenda of his right-wing extremist government, legal troubles and national protests against his self-serving anti-democratic judicial “reform”‘ disregarded warnings that he was endangering Israel’s security.
The prime minister and his government’s inattentiveness and mistakes were colossal, but he works now to play them down as he stokes fury against the Palestinians and argues this is a war only he must lead.
Just before Hamas launched its October 7 assault, a poll found in early October that an absolute majority of the Gazan public (67 percent) expressed little confidence in Hamas, compared to 29 percent who expressed a high degree of trust. Moreover, 73 percent of Gazans supported a non-violent settlement of the conflict, compared to only 20 percent who favored violent action against Israel. But according to a more recent poll in November, Hamas popularity has soared since the war began.
Both Netanyahu and the Hamas leaders realize that in a time of true peace they would be replaced by leaders who offer hope and good government. They therefore have no incentive to end this war since its end would end of their hold on power.
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Israel’s belief that heavy military pressure, coupled with humanitarian aid, will force Hamas to agree to another exchange is aimed at proving the argument that using force is for the hostages’ own good rather than solely to destroy Hamas
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