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Mr. Murray published an article about how the situation has worsened over the past decade.
Snowden and Texeira: Ten Years of Disaster
I’d like to give you an idea of similar views here in Russia, re. the freedom of expressing views. This is a discussion from a Russian social network. Those who speak Russian can directly read the source.
Russia we lost—
Russia in the early 2000s.
Absolute freedom. You are not afraid to joke about the church, the authorities, to make black and near-racist jokes. The whole world is outraged by homosexual Russian girls on stage*, but we are fine with it. There is no censorship on the Internet, Roskomnadzor and other things.
Russia 2020: they try to cover up all the jokes even on the Internet so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Constantly someone apologizes to Kadyrov or gets imprisoned for inciting hatred because of posting VKontakte memes. Homosexuality is hated. On the Internet – Roskomnadzor everywhere. New articles of the law “insulting the feelings of believers” and insulting authorities. Only 20 years have passed. Hmm.—
*before I move to translating the discussion itself, I’d like to give you some background. Homosexual girls are the t.A.T.u singers. Here is the story:Ah, the 2000s! The time when two girls with an openly lesbian image performed the songs “I’m crazy”, “They won’t catch us”, “220”, “Gay boy” and many other equally famous texts. And it wasn’t just completely normal, people LOVED it.
The female duet in the person of the brunette Yulia Volkova and the red-haired Lena Katina blew up the world charts and occupied the top lines of various ratings. They even went to Eurovision!
As you may have guessed, we will talk about one of the episodes from the life of the group t.A.T.u.
2003 North Korea terminates the agreement with the IAEA. Tension is growing in the Middle East (well, when it did not grow there). The US is about to send troops into Iraq.
The Tatu group is starting a two-week promotional trip around America.
Already on the plane, the girls learned that any anti-war slogans are prohibited: at the recent Grammy Awards ceremony, the organizers warned the participants: if anything, the microphone will be turned off. Later, the editor of the TV channel said in general: if Tatu says even one word against the war in Iraq, they will launch an advertisement over the group’s performance.
They were also warned before the show: no kissing, the show is for family viewing, and your lesbian gestures can generally be considered child pornography.
Well, what do you think happened?
“Tatushki” took to the stage of the night show of comedian Jay Leno in T-shirts with the inscription “Fuck the war.” They sang their famous “All The things she said” (“I went crazy”) and kissed anyway, although this moment was still not shown, having managed to switch to other cameras.
The next day, all of America knew what this inscription meant. And when the girls in the same T-shirts showed up on the Jimmy Kimmel show, they were strictly forbidden to wear them. Yulia and Lena did not lose their heads and changed into other T-shirts with the inscription “Censored”. And yet, it was not without hooliganism – Yulia Volkova could not resist and wrote the same obscene inscription with a marker right on the presenter’s hand!
These t.A.T.u. literally blew up American society. Teenagers went to anti-war rallies with “Fuck the war” T-shirts, caps, mugs and other items with this inscription were sold everywhere. The girls were invited to many talk shows and interviews. And the music magazine Rolling Stones invited them to star in a photo shoot that immortalized this slogan.translated from here, photo and video avalable in the source
Fuck the warHere are people’s opinions about change. I’m balancing in between keeping the translation close to the original and removing some completely obscene expressions. The matter is, the more obscene words a person uses, the more emotionally involved they are. On the other hand, I don’t want dirty words to screen the sense from you.
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– Then we thought we reached the bottom– I don’t care about homosexuality. I *obscene phrase describing oral sexual intercourse*. Previously, the Power had little power, but they were not afraid of *rude word for ‘talker, chatterbox, piss artist’. Now the authorities have fucking power and more, but they are afraid of them. Get fired, put in jail, killed.
– Previously, ‘a talker’ didn’t broadcast further than his entrance. Airtime, as you probably guessed, was not given to ‘talkers’, now on the Internet any ‘talker’ takes this airtime and broadcasts to the whole world, and there are a lot of such ‘talkers’.
– You have confused Russia with Ukraine.
– They are very difficult to confuse. The stupidity of the authorities and the tightening of the screws in both, albeit not always expressed in the same way, but the focus is absolutely similar.
– Yes, sometimes you look at the news and it’s hard to understand who it’s about.
I remember that everyone made fun of the stupid Ukrainian propaganda of 2015th, saying that it is at war with all of Russia.
Now they are broadcasting from every hole, Russia is at war with all NATO, what the heck.
I remember that at one time everyone was indignant at the bombing of Yugoslavia, which the insidious NATO bombed into the Stone Age.
And here you go, strikes on power plants.
I remember that everyone was indignant at the draconian measures against dissidents in the same Ukraine in the time of Donbas war, over “you get summons to the military” and so on.
And here you go, one law is more interesting than another, some kind of magical operations, mobilization in peacetime.
It’s only the beginning.– And also excuses in the style of “they do it the same way / and it’s worse there.” Damn, you have to do not the same, but much better. If a neighbour shits in his apartment, then this is not a reason to do the same at home.
– Yes, it is clear that this is cheap populism.
You and I argue from the point of view of the formal logic of an ordinary person, and a situational bureaucrat who does not have any consistent program of action, who does not have a clear plan and idea, according to which the plan should be built – he will always sing in any way and be guided just to justify their actions “here and now.”
Hence these magical constructions, sometimes even with changing shoes in the air from “but look, we don’t shit in the apartment” to “shitting in the apartment is a global practice, even developed apartments shit, yet they are not fools, so why are you unhappy?”– Since we have a pro-Ukrainian here, how is it in Ukraine with freedom of speech today? For what joke will the SBU lynch you, and for what meme will the militant pigs kick the door of your hut?
Here the comment “I don’t care about homosexuality. I *obscene phrase describing oral sexual intercourse*.” gets quoted and answered with the meme ‘something suspecting a dog’
– I think that Putin shit in his pants many times with his policy, I look at the priests of any religion as parasites and obscurantists, at migrants and *non-Russian village people* as stupid aggressive people, I have a neutral and indifferent attitude towards homosexuals.
Let’s see if the men in black come for me.
Suddenly, the Internet freemen of the late 90s – early 00s ended, the network began to be regulated in China, and in Europe, and in the USA, and in our country.
And then the over-age infantiles, accustomed to defecate in the net, SUDDENLY realized that *they can be made responsible for their words* the phrase used by that commentor is from the jargon of gangster groups, something like “rotten words”– Well… That’s just the ‘demand to take responsibility for your rotten words on the Internet’ – it is nothing more than a relic of the past with a light flair of criminal lifestyle.
On the internet of the 2000s, the ‘rotten words’ remained the ‘rotten words on the Internet’. Like, you could tell them to fuck off, ban the interlocutor, answer with the same ‘rotten words’ if you wanted. That’s what was lovely about it then.
Oh, if my mother knew how many unflattering words were said about her by my web interlocutors …
But me and my comrades never had the thought to figure out someone by IP and arrange a showdown in real life. All the stupidity of this idea Kevin Smith in “Jay and Silent Bob” showed.
Because these are words. Empty talk from anonymous cocksuckers, which you yourself were. Not personally you in the sense (otherwise you will be offended more), but I, leading the dialogue. (*in Russian, we often use ‘You’ instead of ‘I’ when describing some imaginatory abstract situation)
And instead of developing this new communicative model, fucking sissies with the old communicative model “asking from people for their rotten words” came into it.
Just like a modern “electronic document management system”, when you print, sign, then scan again.
Ugh, damn. 🙁now, some heated discussion about censorship and surveilance on the Internet
– Pfft, why be offended 🙂 swearing of web-interlocutors appeared at about the same time as porn.
As for rotten words, it’s one thing to say ‘fuck off’ to a certain anonymous, and it’s completely different thing to call for murder, preach some kind of pseudo-religious nonsense, leak personal data or bully someone.
Well, since the late 90s, the Internet has turned from the fun of geeks into a tool to influence the masses. It would be strange if the Collective Comrade Major didn’t bother to regulate it.– Here! Here is the trouble!
Because instead of treating these calls and sermons as more empty crap, and instead of broadcasting the same to the masses: “People, this is empty crap”, Comrade Major did what he does best – prohibit and not let go. I understand him, of course, as a human being, he has a passion for regulating something.
Harassment and data leaks are a crime, unconditionally. But it has nothing to do with censorship and regulation.– You are an idealist, sir, and you seem to underestimate the number of not-so-smart people who have access to the Internet and take “blank bullshit” seriously as a guide to action.
Yes, Comrade Major is also not very intellectual, but a crowd of stupid brainwashed people is capable of doing such nonsense that it’s better to regulate somehow. Just to avoid, so to speak.– “You are an idealist, sir” Yes, I’m subject to this sin 🙁
There are really a lot of such people, I can imagine their number perfectly.
But instead of raising their level of education, developing critical thinking in them, teaching them how to filter incoming information and discourage them from walking in a crowd, it’s easier to say: “Forbidden.” And intimidate with some populist horror story.
The shepherd puts a high fence around the herd,
Explaining this to the sheep by the presence of bad wolves.
The sheep are calm. And the sheep don’t need to know
That this was made to keep them away from other shepherds.Beautiful .
Back in the day of early web, not the internet it was born from, I knew that this was like the mythical Wild West of the American Dream. I knew they would aim to curtail it. Build fences. Stop the unregulated movement across these ranches.
Well, here we are. The ranches are deploying their cowboy gangs and gunslingers!But, this isn’t Hollywood. It isn’t Invented Myth. It isn’t going as they planned. Even if they believe it is.
Even as they are fought back to their Bunker. Which as we have all heard, isn’t impregnable from non-nuclear weapons.This is good stuff – more please!
You have given me some laughs and left with me with some thoughts.
I was struck by how similar Russians sound to the people I know. From the above I can see Russians “call a spade a spade”. (“Call a spade a spade” is a figurative expression. It refers to calling something “as it is”—that is, by its right or proper name, speaking truthfully, frankly, and directly about a topic, even to the point of bluntness or rudeness, and even if the subject is considered coarse, impolite, or unpleasant.”)
I have never heard of the t.A.T.u singers, thanks for informing me about some important recent history .
“..Comrade Major..” lol
“..it’s one thing to say ‘fuck off’ to a certain anonymous, and it’s completely different thing to call for murder, preach some kind of pseudo-religious nonsense, leak personal data or bully someone.” I agree with this statement – does that make me a “traitor” because I agree with a Russian, Tatanya?
I apologise for taking so long to read and respond. I thought it was going to be a difficult political discussion. If you write/translate any more, I will be a lot quicker in my response. Also, I had to contact my government and ask them if I was allowed to read it. They said it was okay because it was a cultural discussion not a political one. Phew!
p.s. Any news on Vissarian?
