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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

How does this complete silencing of a country not disturb anybody?

How is this a "complete silencing of a country"? RT is a government propaganda outlet, not all Russian media, and not the Russian people.

I would be more concerned about the "friendly" propaganda tolerated by EU/European governments than the blatant Russian propaganda. Not limited to the Ukraine war.

That's a general accusation, but what exactly are you referring to? Can you provide examples?

> blatant Russian propaganda

Propaganda isn't so blatent; it's used because it works.

Just take a look at Reddit since the last two weeks:

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/t35933/captain_ukrain...

https://old.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/t1j650/these_are_my_u...

https://old.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/t3oykr/meirl

https://old.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/t31tek/ukraini...

https://old.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/t2fb00/ze...

https://old.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/t22d53/ps...

https://old.reddit.com/r/HolUp/comments/t2y9xh/volodymyr_zel...

Notice how most of them are posted on subreddits that have nothing to do with politics, and they actually bạn all political posts and memes in “normal” times.

How does all this seem sane and not blatant or disturbing at all?

> How does all this seem sane and not blatant or disturbing at all?

I'm not sure what you mean by "sane" - are you referring to something in this conversation? How is sanity implicated? Also, did someone say it's not disturbing?

It may seem blatent, but: 1) That's the propaganda you recognize; the problem is the propaganda you don't detect. And 2) while the content might be obvious, the intent might not be. For example, you could see Trump using blatent lies, but the intent was (IMHO) to confuse and divert enemies by putting them on the defensive, and to sow chaos by creating a sense of fear and alarm - to make you feel that things are insane and disturbed.

FWIW, you can't try to divine the motives of propagandists in that way. All you can look at is to say, what are the effects and who benefits? There is some truth, as the propagadists are acting in their own interests (when they are successful).

Because if we don’t remove Russia from the world completely we are approving their invasion and keep the door open for further invasions. Only solution is to segregate whole country and all their allies from the world until they remove their leaders from positions of power

My concern is that with this, you're not just segregating Russia from the world, you're segregating the EU from the world. You're going to get a new Iron Curtain, only this time, the restrictions are going to be on both sides.

We don’t need Russia. Even China has told Russia to stop the war. Only thing Russia has is gas and we shouldn’t be using fossil fuels anyway. Building of new green nuclear plants should have already been started. If you have fucked that up (like Germans) then that means you need to start hurrying

I am not talking about the economy, I am talking about the Internet. Cutting RT off from the European Internet requires cutting the EU off from large chunks of the global Internet. If Russia responds, that would have the potential to get very ugly.

"Russian exports account for 20 percent of potassic fertilizers globally. Exports from Russia and Belarus account for a combined 40 percent of potassic fertilizers globally."

You're turning around cause and effect. The EU imposing sanction is segregating the world? How about Russia invading Ukraine?

Also read the precanned article that was accidentally released by Russian state media, this is not about Russia feeling threatened this is about Putins fantasies of a "great Russia" in the borders of the USSR

Isn't this just a repeat of the cold war where one side didn't trade with another? All while pointing enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 4 times over.

Not sure if this strategy is the safest option globally. Russia wants a buffer from nato give them some assurance.

What assurances do they need? Western world has had peace for decades and only Russians have been the aggressors in any form. They are not getting any kind of buffer in fact do to this invasion they have forced Finland and Sweden to join NATO or face the same fate as Ukraine within the next decade.

What russia is doing right now is wrong but Please read the NATO Bucharest Summit Declaration.

It has long been clear that Nato expansion would lead to tragedy. We are now paying the price for the US’s arrogance

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-e...

Well, if you don’t count the Yugoslavia, the Bosnian wars, etc. as being in the ‘Western world’…

You're right, absolutely nothing of note happened in the middle east 2001-2020 /s

TIL Middle east is part of the Western world

The Western world and the Middle East were both at war.

Have sanctions ever worked for that? Iran has been under strict sanctions for years - they haven’t removed their regime, but the people there do burn American flags in the streets… Also in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea it doesn’t seem to have helped… I don’t have any better ideas, just doesn’t seem like sanctions really work at all as either a deterrent or punishment…

I hate that innocent Russians are suffering from this and will suffer for years to come. But even if the sanctions won't help overthrow the regime, they will certainly make it harder for Russia to keep funding their war.

Yes. It sucks we can’t just target the bullies

Russia is a modern country with quite a lot of wealthy people. Maybe this time they can put up enough pressure to change the leadership. Anyway this is all we can do without starting a world war

^ Because if we don’t remove Russia from the world completely we are approving their invasion and keep the door open for further invasions. Only solution is to segregate whole country and all their allies from the world until they remove their leaders from positions of power

How can you even think about segregating Russia, if China and India aren't onboard? Yes, these two countries are not going to sanction Russia. Or do you want China and India sanctioned too, remember if you sanction everybody then you are sanctioning yourself.

Because it’s economic warfare and pretty fuckin based.

All they can do is brutalize civilians with military force.

The West (aside from arming local militias to the teeth) is mobilizing the civil society.

No boots on the ground, not even much impact to our lives beyond the inevitable supply shocks. We are sticking it to Putin from our sofas, via democratic government.

It does bother me and frankly I'm surprised by the lack of backlash.

That said, RT alone surely must have caused many Covid deaths due to the doubts about the vaccinations and other measures they have been spreading in the past years.

The Russian government with its propaganda has caused a few millions of covid deaths worldwide, supported fringe groups and conspiracy theorists that lead to an insurrection, stole from foreign countries by installing puppets (Schroeder/Trump/GOP), supported Brexit, and has caused so much damage to humanity, sent thousands of kids to their death, is actively killing civilians and levelling cities.

It is a plague that needs to be eradicated. That isn't silencing a nation though, that is silencing a cancerous government that is infecting every nation it can.

You know what disturbs me? Invading a sovereign country and murdering 2000 civilians. That really disturbs me.

Banning a news channel dedicated to defending the murder of 2000 civilians? Not so much.

I'm concerned about the EU, an economic union, thinking it has the authority to rule on this matter.

The EU is more than just an economic union and always has been.

It's also pretty clear that they do have the ability to shut out a company from doing business within their borders, so I'm unclear why media corporations should be getting a free pass compared with other industries.

That is an extremely coarse brush. - The way they have chosen to go about preventing this business from operating in the EU involves heavy-handed technological measures.

I find it worrying. Even if Russia is in the wrong here, I do see an RT ban in particular as a dangerous move. Even in wartime I do think it's important to be willing to listen to the other side. They may be wrong about the big picture, but there could still be an interesting tidbit or two to takeaway. All this talk made be go check RT out and one thing I learned is that the flight ban has left Russian tourists stranded. Allowing them safe passage home does not seem unreasonable.

I also see it as turning up the tension in a way that may be hard to dial back down later. When you are cutting your self of from information, you are also cutting yourself of from the information that lets you reevaluate that decision.

You're aware that RT does not present "the other side", right? As in they don't provide an alternative valid-even-if-misguided/conflicting view. They provide what Kremlin wants them to publish. There are other Russian publications which are still Russia-censored, but are actual news reports which will give you similar information to what you've found.

This is not "we ban Russia's news", it's "we ban Russia government publications pretending to be news and benefiting financially from it".

A determination subject to whom?

1. RT does provide a view, and I would like to hear it, thanks. 2. Who decides what are the "actual news reports"? Who decides that RT is not "valid"?

> Who decides what are the "actual news reports"?

Ofcom for example: (yes, I know they're not EU anymore, first example I remembered, but in general government orgs tasked with media oversight) https://pressgazette.co.uk/ofcom-rules-against-russia-today-...

You can still find the material yourself if you're interested. It's the broadcasting that's being limited. Worst case, contact someone in Russia to send you screenshots. Your rights to seek that information are not affected. It's just that EU entities are not allowed to specifically help you.

If you want to read that view though and skip the pretense, just check https://twitter.com/russia or https://twitter.com/KremlinRussia_E or dedicated government websites.

>You're aware that RT does not present "the other side", right?

You just described most american media

I'm aware Deutsche welle and RT are financed by their respective govs, can I now click OK and enter the site?

You may read RT and see the other side of things, weight both sides, choose which is right, other people, will buy straight into it. I see a lot of people affected by russian propaganda in my country, they currupted the stupid people easily.

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