Stop the Idiocracy: Deutsche Welle

Friday, March 4, 2022

Illegal to say ‘war.’ Russian Duma passes draconian law against spreading ‘fake news’ on the ‘military operation’ in Ukraine

Up to fifteen years in prison for, in essence, refusing to publish outright lies and propaganda. These are the actions of a government that is terrified of their public finding out the truths of what is being done in their name, and of learning the real reason why their economy is collapsing. Meanwhile, foreign news sources are being shut down within Russia -

Moscow (AFP) – Russian lawmakers moved Friday to impose harsh jail terms for publishing "fake news" about the army, which a senior lawmaker said will apply to foreigners too, as Moscow moves to muffle dissent over its invasion of Ukraine.
The new legislation sets out jail terms of varying lengths and fines against people who publish "knowingly false information" about the military.
"If the fakes led to serious consequences, (the legislation) threatens imprisonment of up to 15 years," the lower house of parliament said in a statement.
Speaking at the session, the head of the head of the parliament's information committee Alexander Khinshtein said the law "concerns all citizens, not only Russian ones, because we are talking about actions against Russia."
Amendments were also passed to fine or jail people calling for sanctions against Russia with jail terms.
The past year has seen an unprecedented crackdown on independent and critical voices in Russia that has intensified since the invasion.
The chairman of parliament Vyacheslav Volodin railed against foreign social media after Facebook was briefly inaccessible in Russia on Friday.
"All these IT companies beginning with Instagram, and ending with the others, are based in the United States of America. It is clear they are used as weapons. They carry hatred and lies. We need to oppose this," he said.
Russia's media watchdog said Friday it had restricted access to the BBC and other independent media websites, further tightening controls over the internet. (Read more)

Thursday, February 3, 2022

Stehen Sie mit der Deutschen Welle: Putin’s war on the freedom of the legitimate news outlets takes an ominous turn, as Germany’s largest news outlet is thrown out of Moscow

Unlike the loud, sensationalistic propaganda organs that comprise nearly the entirety of the news media in basketcase countries like Russia and our own United States, certain European countries still have real news organizations that inform without bells and whistles, and without corporate slant or partisan bias. In my opinion, there is no finer example than Deutsche Welle. I watch their English-language service via YouTube, along with France24 and BBC World News, and the difference between these outlets and the likes of Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and Russia’s RT is night and day. One informs and enlightens; the others kill brain cells. By and large, Americans today possess little ability to differentiate propaganda from actual journalism; or, if they do, they prefer the noise and confirmation bias. And have Russians – being only thirty years removed from the fall of the Soviet Union – ever known a time when they were fed anything but propaganda and gaslighting from their state-controlled media outlets? Germans learned a very hard lesson in the 1940s and really took it to heart, and therefore one finds they are a more intelligent, moral, and productive people who possess critical thinking skills and humanity. Russians remain the brutes they always were, and the action the Putin regime is taking toward Deutsche Welle is an age-old tactic of tyrants. Free thinking people who value truth and knowledge must stand with DW, and against the likes of Putin, Trump, and all those who would have us live as unquestioning lemmings as they rape their land and people for their own aggrandizement. Chancellor Scholz will be visiting Moscow soon, and how he handles Putin is going to be a major test of his new leadership. He must demand Moscow reverses this decision. Via Deutsche Welle themselves, and thank you to them for their wonderful service -

Russia on Thursday said it was closing the Moscow bureau of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and revoking its employees' accreditations in the country.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also said in a statement that it would "terminate the satellite and other broadcasting (output) of Deutsche Welle" on Russian territory.
Russia had earlier criticized a German regulator's ban on German-language programming by Russia's state broadcaster RT as an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
The Russian government said it was planning to initiate a procedure to label DW a foreign media outlet performing the functions of a "foreign agent," a designation that carries additional government scrutiny.
Moscow said it would also ban officials involved in restricting the broadcasting of RT in Germany from entering the Russian Federation. (Read more)