RT, Sputnik and related Russian state media outlets are subject to sanctions in the EU, their broadcast licenses have been revoked and their channels have been removed from terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasts. Their accounts on all major social media platforms are blocked. Their apps are no longer available on the Google or Apple stores. Europe doesn't have a Chinese-style Great Firewall, but EU countries hav…
> Europe doesn't have a Chinese-style Great Firewall, but EU countries have taken every reasonable step to prevent Russian state media from reaching EU audiences. Because they think the EU audiances are stupid?
Because they don't like anti-government point of views to become too widespread.
In Italy the current defence minister is personally earning considerable amount of money by sending weapons to Ukraine, because he's also an owner and manager of companies that make said weapons.
Do you think they'd want to favour open discussions?
No. In fact besides RT being banned, they want to be able to block any website, giving providers 30 minutes to implement the ban, no appeal and no oversight from a judge (https://stop-piracy-shield.it/)
Do you have examples for Europe blocking Russia? Because all I have seen is DNS providers omitting certain sites (i.e RT), but their apps still work (plus URLs when using other DNS). An nothing of that coming from the nation states as all seems to be due to the activities of private companies doing these things.
It's part of the EU sanctions, EU ISPs are required to block certain Russian sites. But they didn't specify how, that's left up to the countries to figure out afaik. But as you say, some of the what has been done barely qualifies. Here's my personal experience with this: Germany does exactly what you describe, the bare minimum to say "we're blocking" --- DNS omitting certain sites. Spain is doing deep packet inspecti…
mullivad has a free to use DNS over https service by the way.
Their journalist were trained at BBC. It is funny that BBC exactly fits your definition :-) BTW both have very high standards and make excellent journalism. I'd like to see examples of bad Al Jazeera journalism instead of just attacks to Qatar monarchy.
>BTW both have very high standards and make excellent journalism. With respect to everything except the middle east. I won't deny that they have generally good coverage on many subjects, but the nuance is that they leverage / launder that credibility towards advancing the state aims of Qatar whenever needed. And as OP mentioned, if you look up how AJ covers a topic in English and how they cover it in Arabic, it's wil…
As an Arabic speaker I notice higher standards in the English version of Al Jazeera, I remember a Qatari cameraman was killed in a shooting attack in Benghazi-March 12, 2011, Ali Hassan Al-Jaber, unlike the English Al Jazeera team, was not wearing any protective gear nor had he undergone any media training for covering war zones. Some interesting take on this goes like this: 'Qatar is not only a historical part of the American security and energy system, as is the case with many other countries. The issue is that, thirty years ago, Qatar went through a difficult period - a crisis of legitimacy, a coup, and a real external threat - that shaped Qatari foreign policy and made the regime understand that, in order to become useful and necessary for Washington, it needed to do “more,” to excel. From the rest of the allies in the region, and for it to have a special role that no one else can play.All Qatari policies since then, from the Al-Udeid base to relations with Israel to hosting Hamas and rapprochement with Syria, then waging war against it, all come within this framework. If you do not interpret Qatari policies within their actual historical and functional context, then you are be misled on the real purpose of Al Jazeera channel.
What is interesting here is that the Qatari officials themselves do not hide these matters at all, and they publicize them at every turn and external criticism that comes their way, the latest of which is an official statement from the Qatari embassy in Washington: “We do not act on our heads. We did not host the leadership of Hamas except in response to an American request, and not only with their approval, and the same goes for relations with the Taliban, the Syrian war, and the transfer of money to Gaza was taking place with Israeli approval and under their eyes - we perform the tasks for you.” They say this to the American and Western public exclusively, and as an Arab, when you question Qatari policy and its role, you may not find a single Qatari citizen in the discussion before you. Why do you think, and within any theory of the world, might America ask Qatar to host Hamas or establish relations with Hezbollah?'
The main difference would be that Al Jazeera is from Qatar and not Gaza, this would be the equivalent of the EU banning Armenia because they are friendly with Russia.
Banning Armenia isn't really an apt comparison since Israel isn't banning all media from Qatar, just one particular news organization which has very deep ties to the enemy they're at war with.
Yes, and I'd say that was a dark day for the EU as well. Our democracies are now little more than a farce.
They’ve always been a farce.
They have always had deep flaws. Under an uncharitable interpretation you could say that they've always been a farce, I won't argue because it's a perfectly valid standpoint if you're demanding or perfectionistic enough. Under a charitable interpretation you could say that perfect democracy is an utopia, the perfect is enemy of the good, and at least many Western democracies tried, and achieved reasonably good levels of freedom and choice by the people.
Whatever the interpretation, I think it's clear that things are degrading fast in the last few decades. I don't think an EU-wide block on Russian media such as RT wouldn't have passed with such indifference 20 years ago.
That's the most worrying to me: not the measure itself, but the indifference from the general population. In fact, I have another comment in this thread saying that block was abhorrent and it's gathering downvotes... In HN, a community where most are well-educated people from the US, a country that has arguably been the staunchest defender of freedom of expression and of the press. I find that worrying. And then there is cancel culture, and other factors, that have eroded effective freedom of speech.
At this rate, in a few more decades Western democracies will be hard to tell in practice from Chinese authoritarianism, which is worrying, because they have better economic projection, more safety, booming infrastructure, a less aggressive foreign policy... Democracy and freedom is basically what makes the West worth it, if we lose it, what's even the point?
Many people would say “genocide in gaza” is exactly what the television should be saying.
its not a genocide by any definition.
I would not agree.
"In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly."
Europe has done the same with Russia. Also, I think a few other Arab countries like Egypt have blocked/banned Al Jazeera.
> Europe has done the same with Russia. Yes. Which I find abhorrent as an European, and has made me realize even more than our countries are much less democratic than we officially paint them as.
Nono, it's only undemocratic when china does it.
When the italian government wants to be able to block any website immediately and with no appeal, calling it an anti-piracy measure, it's completely fine and democratic.