Latest news with #GeorgeOrwell
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Russia to fine people for searching for 'extremist' content
Russia to fine people for searching for 'extremist' content (Image: AP) Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a bill to fine internet users for searching online content that authorities consider "extremist." Unusually, the legislation has drawn criticism from both opposition activists and some pro-government figures. The lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, approved the bill with 306 votes in favor and 67 against. The bill will now be sent to Russia's upper house, where it is unlikely to face major opposition. Russia's Ministry of Justice's list of extremist materials spans more than 500 pages and contains over 5,000 entries. These include songs that praise Ukraine and blog posts by the feminist rock band Pussy Riot. The legislation would impose fines of up to 5,000 rubles (€54 or $64) on anyone who searched for or gained access to content material on the list. It is still unclear how the bill would work in practice. The question of whether internet service providers or websites would be responsible for monitoring users' searches remains unanswered. Protesters call it "something out of 1984" Several activists and a journalist from the Russian newspaper Kommersant were arrested for protesting against the bill outside the State Duma a few hours before the vote. Opposition politician and protest organizer Boris Nadezhdin compared the bill to "something out of 1984," referencing George Orwell's novel about a totalitarian regime. Meanwhile, Duma spokesperson said the bill was aimed at "those trying to destroy and ruin Russia" by using the internet.
DW
21 hours ago
- Politics
- DW
Russia to fine people for searching for 'extremist' content – DW – 07/22/2025
The lower house of the Russian parliament approved legislation imposing fines on people searching online for content that the authorities deem "extremist." Protesters are calling the bill "something out of 1984." Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a bill to fine internet users for searching online content that authorities consider "extremist." Unusually, the legislation has drawn criticism from both opposition activists and some pro-government figures. The lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, approved the bill with 306 votes in favor and 67 against. The bill will now be sent to Russia's upper house, where it is unlikely to face major opposition. Russia's Ministry of Justice's list of extremist materials spans more than 500 pages and contains over 5,000 entries. These include songs that praise Ukraine and blog posts by the feminist rock band Pussy Riot. The legislation would impose fines of up to 5,000 rubles (€54 or $64) on anyone who searched for or gained access to content material on the list. It is still unclear how the bill would work in practice. The question of whether internet service providers or websites would be responsible for monitoring users' searches remains unanswered. Several activists and a journalist from the Russian newspaper were arrested for protesting against the bill outside the State Duma a few hours before the vote. Opposition politician and protest organizer Boris Nadezhdin compared the bill to "something out of 1984," referencing George Orwell's novel about a totalitarian regime. Duma spokesperson said the bill was aimed at "those trying to destroy and ruin Russia" by using the internet. The editor-in-chief of Russia Today, a Russian propaganda media outlet, said the bill would make it impossible to investigate and expose extremist groups.
Russia Today
a day ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
The snowflakes of information war: How the New York Times sinned by honesty
It's a platitude that war kills not only people but truth. And as all platitudes, the statement is true, boring, and misleading. Because it omits the real murderers: 'War' does not, actually, kill truth; people kill truth. War just tempts them to do so as few other things – such as job applications or marriage – can. The flipside of that fact is that it is perfectly possible to stick to the truth – or at least make an honest effort to do so – in war, too. That effort is different from 'getting it right.' Think of, for example, George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia', his unabashedly personal account of the Spanish Civil War. It was not even meant to be neutral because he sided with – indeed fought for – the underdog Trotskyists; historians, as always, feel they know better about the context and details; and – notwithstanding the sad mainstream sanctification Orwell has suffered posthumously at the hands of conformist mediocrities – 'Homage to Catalonia' is, of course, flawed. Saint Orwell was fallible. Duh. But 'Homage to Catalonia' was an honest effort to find out and tell true things about a war and, importantly, from a war. How do we know that? Most of all by reading it, of course. But apart from that, there is another test: the manner in which it was received when it came out, namely badly. Making no concessions to what his audience might want to read, Orwell had trouble getting 'Homage to Catalonia' published and rightly suspected that was due to its politics, which antagonized everyone: Orwell's own tribe, the Left, no less than the Right. In the end – with the work, in Orwell's words, 'boycotted by the British press' – barely over a third of its modest first edition of 1,500 copies were sold. Homage to Catalonia is a modern classic now. But when it hit the shelves in 1938 and until Orwell died in 1950, it was a dud. That's, in essence, because it was too honest. Without stretching the comparison too far, it is fair to say that recently we have witnessed the same principle at work, when the New York Times published an article by photographer and reporter Nanna Heitmann. Under the title 'A Landscape of Death: What's Left Where Ukraine Invaded Russia', Heitmann's sophisticated account is based on her own six-day visit to the Russian town of Sudzha and its surroundings. Sudzha is located in Kursk Region, which borders Ukraine and where Kiev's forces staged a large-scale incursion that brought great destruction, fierce fighting, and ended in a – predictable – fiasco for Ukraine. As its title indicates, Heitmann's article gives much room to the devastation and suffering wrought by the fighting. She also describes a surprise advance by Russia's military through an empty gas pipeline. Throughout she lets individuals with different experiences and points of view speak, civilians and soldiers, and is careful to record official statements from both sides, Ukraine and Russia. It is obvious to any fair reader that no favors are extended to Russia. Heitmann, for instance, dwells on local criticism of Russian evacuation efforts and the adverse health effects suffered by some of the ethnically Chechen fighters who carried out the pipeline operation. She ends her story by reporting both a local man's hope for reconstruction and the skepticism of a woman who cannot see a future for herself in the region, whether reconstructed or not. The reactions by high-ranking Ukrainian officials and media outlets in Ukraine to Heitmann's article have been hostile. Georgy Tikhy, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, tagged the New York Times in an X post accusing Heitmann of reproducing 'Russian propaganda' and engaging in 'Duranty-level manipulation.' Walter Duranty was an American journalist who is now infamous for spreading Stalinist deceptions. Heitmann has done nothing remotely comparable. Tikhy's wildly unfair comparison reveals his malicious intent, namely to smear Heitmann as badly as he can before the public in general and her employer in particular. Ironically though not surprisingly, it is not Heitmann but the Ukrainian government official who is conducting information war here, and in an especially dirty, personal way. That Heitmann is being targeted by a systematic campaign is obvious from the involvement, as if on cue, of additional attackers: The so-called Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has joined in, also charging Heitmann with manipulation. In particular, the CCD is angry about the fact that Heitmann didn't spend precious words on reiterating the Ukrainian and Western narrative about wicked Russia invading Ukraine. Notwithstanding that every New York Times reader is certain to have had that story hammered into their consciousness for years already not only by that newspaper but every other Western mainstream news outlet, Heitmann, actually writing about a case in which Ukraine – proudly – invaded Russia, is faulted for not ritualistically restating that part of the Western narrative. In the same spirit – and in an especially perverse but also revealing turn – the CCD even went as far as to explicitly impugn Heitmann's 'neutrality.' Being unbiased, so the message from the Ukrainian information warriors, is wrong in and of itself. The Kiev regime, in other words, has a right to expect bias in its favor: mere honesty will not do. This is nothing less than an astonishingly aggressive and open demand for the Western media to be as submissive and streamlined as Ukraine's is. It is testimony to the sense of entitlement that the West has long fostered among its political and media proxies in Kiev. A 'colleague' also hurried to put the boot in, denouncing Heitmann for 'moral equivalency' – translation: honesty we do not like – and gaining access to Sudzha through soldiers from Russia's Chechen Akhmat unit. That, in and of itself, is, we are to understand, an unforgivable sin. Curiously enough, the same logic doesn't seem to apply when Western journalists 'embed' – a telling term – with Western forces conducting wars of aggression, regime change operations, and 'counter-insurgency,' that is, dirty war campaigns of torture and assassination. It also seems to make no difference to Heitmann's denouncer from within the profession – how very Stalinist, really – that her article shows no favor to Akhmat. Regarding its soldiers, too, it is simply factual and calm. Clearly, though, hysterical condemnation is the least Kiev and its Western propagandists feel they have a right to expect. In reality, Heitmann's article is informative, well-written, and free of bias. What is really intriguing about the backlash against her work is not the work – which is simply good, conscientious reporting – but the backlash itself. The high-level and widespread hostile reaction to Heitmann's piece reveals only one thing, and it is not anything about Heitmann and her work: Western and Ukrainian authorities and information warriors have had it far too easy for far too long. Pampered by years of easily feeding their bias to Western publics, while any dissent was repressed and marginalized, they react with allergic fury to even modest signs of unbiased, clear-eyed reporting breaking through into a mainstream outlet. How fragile they must feel.
Newsroom
2 days ago
- Politics
- Newsroom
Anne Salmond: New Zealanders deserve better
Comment: The past few weeks have been extraordinary. It's not every day that you're targeted in an online 'Victim of the Day' trolling campaign authorised by an Acting Prime Minister, and delivered via the Parliamentary Service from the Beehive, for writing a Newsroom article about the Regulatory Standards Bill. Or that the same Acting Prime Minister attacks you on Breakfast TV, accusing you of misinformation and having described a New Zealand government as Nazis. It's been surreal – reminiscent of George Orwell's imaginary Oceania in 1984, with Big Brother and his 'thought police' (think tanks?) with their 'doublethink' slogans – 'Truth is Falsehood,' 'Inequality is freedom'. Or since I'm a woman, maybe Margaret Attwood's Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale, with its tales of female oppression and its hidden motto of resistance, carved on the closet floor -'Nolite te bastardes carborundorum'- 'Don't let the bastards grind you down.' That's what my brothers and my sister said when I phoned during a family gathering recently. And those 25,000 citizens who signed an Action Station petition protesting against the 'Victim of the Day' campaign, asking the Prime Minister to call the Acting Prime Minister to account, said much the same thing. Rather than a barrage of hate mail, there's been a stream of messages of support and encouragement, and strangers coming up and asking 'Are you all right?' The radical disjuncture between the tactics adopted by some politicians and the expectations that New Zealanders have of their leaders is dismaying, but at the same time, a sign of hope. It seems that those who use the tactics of verbal bullying and intimidation to try and silence critics, or to divide and rule are misjudging their audience, or most of them. This is not Orwell's Oceania or Attwood's Gilead – not yet, at least; and these tactics are more likely to backfire and damage their own credibility. Across the board, many Kiwis are disenchanted with the political class in New Zealand and their top-down ways, the radical zig-zagging from 'left' to 'right,' the rush to cancel the projects of the last administration, and the self-serving lobbying and elite capture. In their tit-for-tat exchanges, too many politicians are forgetting the 'middle ground' inhabited by most New Zealanders, who want governance that is honest, respectful and competent, and relatively consistent through time. In the past, responsible leaders have worked to build cross-party consensus on key matters including climate change, Te Tiriti and the need for a healthy environment. Divisive tactics including climate denial, 'Iwi vs. Kiwi' politics and a disdain for 'Freddy the Frog' work against the national interest, making it harder for New Zealanders to agree on long-term strategies that give us a chance of a prosperous, peaceful future. Measures like changes to the Pay Equity Act put the boot into people who are already struggling. From the 'politics of kindness' we've switched to an empathy bypass, making radical inequality even worse in New Zealand. At present, many Kiwis feel that the occupants of the Beehive need reining in. The executive has seized too much power, both within government and beyond it. At the same time, fringe parties are allowed to run riot, imposing unpopular measures on the electorate without their consent. Some politicians seem to regard themselves as a higher form of life, looking down on the populace, berating us and telling us what to do, rather than listening. As a result, many voters feel disenchanted and resentful. My recent experience may be a case in point, when minor politicians assume power beyond their capacity to wield it wisely. With public displays of bullying and abusive behaviour, they authorise others to do the same. New Zealanders deserve better. Law-making has become shoddy, rushed and peremptory, often serving the interests of particular elites rather than the public interest. Serious constitutional reform is needed. At present, the constant use of urgency, the degradation of select committees, the overreach by minor parties and the debates over the Regulatory Standards Bill and the attempted treaty principles bill make this urgent, and imperative. According to the Cabinet Manual 'there is no statutory provision that constitutes the office of Prime Minister or defines its role.' That needs to change. The current mantra that a coalition agreement overrides the clearly expressed will of the people, in the case of the Regulatory Standards Bill, for instance, is deeply undemocratic. A Prime Minister should be required to uphold democratic conventions in New Zealand, and their constitutional duties defined more precisely, so it's clear what's expected. Otherwise, as they say, 'Rot starts from the head of the fish' – which in te ao Māori, is in Wellington.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Fake Or Fortune? on BBC1: Was this £140 market find really a priceless painting by Churchill?
The question divided an empire. When pouring a cuppa, should you put the milk in first, or add it to the tea afterwards? George Orwell, writing in 1946 when tea was strictly rationed to two ounces a week (about enough for 30 teabags), was adamant. 'Pour tea into the cup first . . . One is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.' But Evelyn Waugh, in a letter nine years later to Nancy Mitford, took the opposite line: 'All nannies and many governesses, when pouring out tea, put the milk in first. (It is said by tea-fanciers to produce a richer mixture.)' Clearly, it's an issue of class. Orwell was the son of a petty official in the Indian civil service, and solidly lower-middle class. Waugh, an inveterate snob and social climber, yearned to be as upper-class as the Mitfords actually were. And what do you suppose Fiona Bruce is - a milk-in-first toff or an add-to-taste commoner? The answer was revealed as she wielded a teapot in the tea-rooms of Blenheim Palace on Fake Or Fortune?, at the beginning of an examination of an unsigned oil painting allegedly by Winston Churchill. Best excuse of the night: Tackling her driving test as the hilarious Mandy (BBC2) returned, Diane Morgan's devious, feckless character begged for leniency from the examiner. 'I'm perimenopausal and I've got ADHD,' she pleaded. That's a free pass for everything. Casually, she poured the tea into a porcelain cup with the milk already in it. Now we know. Sadly, we never did find out for sure about the Churchill. All the signs were that this picture, painted in the gardens of Herstmonceux castle in Sussex, was the real deal - one of Winston's earliest, from 1916, with his wife, Clementine, perched on a wall above a cascade of pink roses. But despite a wealth of corroborating evidence, no expert was willing to risk authenticating it without paperwork. And as the owner, an amateur enthusiast named Barry, had picked it up at an open-air market for £140, it lacked what Fake Or Fortune? fans have learned to call 'provenance'. This was glum news for Barry. A kosher Winston could fetch half a million quid. A questionable one is worth perhaps a fifth of that. Still, a tidy little profit on a punt at an art fayre. As always, the real interest in this show lay in the clues picked out by discerning eyes. Art dealer Philip Mould pointed out how dabs of blue were smeared onto the green mass of a tree in the background, giving the impression of sky shimmering through the leaves - a trick typical of the British Bulldog himself. A note on the back of the canvas also attributed it to Churchill. Handwriting expert Emma Bache compared this inscription to various letters and matched it to the pen of Colonel Claude Lowther, an MP who owned Herstmonceux a century ago. Conclusive, surely. With mealy-mouthed BBC prissiness, Philip pointed out that, 'in recent years, Winston Churchill has become a more divisive figure'. Why's that? Did he pour his tea in before the milk?
