Facebook and the Freedom of Speech

Yesterday I posted in my Facebook account the following message:


It's bilingual; the English part reads:

Things are even worse than I thought. Recently, Facebook banned quite a number of respected personalities, including:
Dmitry Puchkov
Zakhar Prilepin
Ruslan Karmanov
Ivan Rakhmetov
Lev Shyaransky
SHAME ON FACEBOOK'S POLITICAL CENSORSHIP!
GET THE UKRAINIAN NAZIS OFF THE RUSSIAN FACEBOOK MANAGEMENT!

At present, this post of me, being far from any 'top-bloggership', has 244 'likes' and 41 'shares', and the count is still going on. That means, not only I see the problem, and do it this way.

Pro-Ukrainian activists seem to completely win the management over the Russian language segment of the social network.

Any possible kind of Russophobic, anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda is allowed, including posts that contain all obscenities the russian language is so rich of, including those based on racial or ethnic hatred. However, even the most innocent traces of dislike regarding the sutiation in Ukraine, its foreign and internal policies are usually punished with temporary bans. The five popular accounts I name as examples, are banned for a month now, and these are 'heavy bans', preventing the people even from private messages.

I see the situation as totally intolerable. Instead of uniting people, the Zuckerberg's invention has become a place for political trolling and spreading international hatred; one the basic democratic rights, namely the freedom of speech, is openly biased and suppressed.

Any Facebook user can see it with his or her own eyes: there are many ways to complain for the acivity he or she considers unappropriate. However, it's almost impossible to complain over these complains, to complain over unfair actions of Facebook's authorities.

The top managenet of Facebook, apparently, is not aware of the situation, because such awareness requires good knowledge of Russian. Thus,

Shame on Facebook!
Shame on Zuckerberg!
Stop political censorship in Facebook now!
Get the supporters of Ukrainian Nazis off the Russian Facebook management!

RT Celebrates 10 Years on Air

My sincere congratulations to the people behind the project.

You've done great job, you are alive and kicking'em all, and you still have a lot to do in the future.

Watch RT and think different, people!

Is Erdoğan a Man of His Word?

Yesterday Al-Jazeera quoted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan:

I will say something very strong here. If such a thing is proven, the nobility of our nation would require that I would not stay in office.

So he commented recent Vladimir Putin's accusations that Turkey had shot down the Russian Su-24 to protect oil supplies from ISIL.

Meanwhile, earlier today Elissa Smith of Pentagon told RIA Novosti:

We reject the assumption that the Turkish government is in arrangement to IS for oil smuggling. We didn't see any proofs in support of such charges.

Come on, people, here are the proofs as presented today by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Cameron's 70,000 Moderate Fighters and Freedom of Speech

Sometimes reading Western media reveils true gems of journalism (albeit seldom without some specific Western taste).

Now it's Independent and an article of Robert Fisk titled "David Cameron, there aren't 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria - and whoever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov, anyway?". You are very welcome to follow the link and read it yourself, it well worth it.

However, the author cannot just pass by, leaving Russia untouched.

Vladimir Putin comprehends this. He knows that Turkey is helping Isis – this is why he is going to destroy the Isis oil smuggling route to Turkey – and, as a former serving KGB officer, he understands the cynicism of any crisis. If an American aircraft had strayed into Turkish airspace, he asked at his Kremlin press conference with François Hollande last week, does anyone believe that Turkey would have shot down the US pilots? We all know the answer to that. If Turkey wished to destroy Isis, why does it bombard Isis’ Kurdish enemies? Why does it imprison two of Turkey’s top journalists for reporting how the Turkish intelligence service smuggled weapons to Islamist fighters in Syria? And Putin is hardly going to object if the EU is bent on suicide-through-fear.

You know what?

The EU members do remember, I hope, advantages of unification and joining forces. So do we, former citizens of the Soviet Union. It's just natural, for people to unite. And unnatural — to disintegrate. The USSR fell apart due to problems carefully fed up by external forces using hot and cold warfare; and it became a geopolitical tragedy that cost tens millions of lives; at least 13 millions for Russia alone; quite close to losses in the WW2.

Now some external forces are striving to blast the EU from inside. And it looks like some people see some profit Russia could get of it. I would greatly appreciate if you explain me the reasons of such thoughts; I just do not see any advantages for Russia from Europe in flames.

It looks like authors are just obliged to bite Russia and/or Putin at least once. In the "world of democratical rights and freedoms" only that speech is free, which is politically correct and meets some "corporate standards", isn't it?