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In Consent of the Networked, internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that the purpose of technology is to serve humanity, not the other way around. It’s time to wake up and act before the reversal becomes permanent.
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GV Author Filip Stojanovski posts pictures of Skopje's snowy and icy streets and reports on his blog: “[…] the pavements and the side streets in the municipality of Centar remain icy. Some are covered by layers of ice or re-frozen slush, by old frozen snow, or an unevenly hardened mash of snow and 'salt.' Fokus daily claimed that the authorities avoid declaring nationwide state of emergency in order to ‘prove' that they were prepared for the snow.”
On February 9, 2012, following the widely-discussed leaks of pro-Kremlin mailboxes, LiveJournal, where the leaks were published, became temporarily unavailable, Lenta.ru reported [ru]. Russian representative of Anonymous group @OP_Russia, suggested [ru] that it was a DDoS attack to hide the evidence of massive wrongdoings (including corruption, thievery, political provocations, and cybercrime) [ru] by Nashi youth movement. Later that day @OP_Russia took responsibility for taking down 3 websites of United Russia party: mos-partya.ru, er-region.ru, and er-kaluga.ru.
At OpenDemocracy.net, Olesya Gerasimenko talks to the parents of three young neo-Nazi men who were convicted of race murders: “One has adopted the views of their only child and says that violence is necessary. One blames the politicians that have incited adolescents to street fighting. One cries, convinced of the innocence of his son. They are all different, but they have all asked themselves one and the same question: ‘am I to blame for what happened?’”
While the authorities in Macedonia remain silent on the country's stance on the ACTA, bloggers, such as Airborne, emphasize the need to gain more knowledge [mk], as the traditional media mostly ignore the issue: “Maybe, one of these days, we'll just simply wake up in the ACTA-ruled world.” The new media attempting to fill this gap in local languages include Metamorphosis and IT.com.mk. Endek blog advocates [mk] standing up for Internet freedom by joining international protest movements.
Andrey Rylkov Foundation writes about the first case of enforcement of the domain seizure rules in the “.ru” and “.рф” domain zones. The rules [ru] (Article 5, point 5.5) , updated on November 11, 2011 allow any law enforcement agency (like police, Federal Security Service, Prosecutor's office or Federal Drug Control Services (FDCS)) to request domain seizure without a court order. On February 3, 2012 FDCS successfully seized the domain of rylkov-fond.ru, a website of Rylkov Foundation that had severely criticized situation with drug trafficking.
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Based on the Wikipedia list of countries, details.
Thanks for flagging this up, Vilhelm. It’s quite an issue.
A commenter on my site noted:
For people such as myself, who work outside Russia, nothing much has changed — but for people who either want to work in Russia, or stay more than 90/180, few options remain.
One can understand Putin’s animosity to NGOs, but at the same time most of the ordinary workers were Russophiles. Remember Wayan Vota, of Belly Button Window fame, who wrote endearingly about Russia while working for the Peace Corps.
Maybe Russia is now alienating some of its best ambassadors.
I’ve received some interesting comments off-site about this and I’ll write an update.
I welcome further coverage on this issue, not least because it is interesting to see how Russia handles visa regulations and residence of foreign nationals in the country. In recent years, not least the party in power – United Russia – has stressed the importance of foreign expertise to assist in developing and diversifying Russian business and economy. Tougher terms for foreigners in Russia thus seems as contrary to what actually is intended. Perhaps, it is a simple question of reciprocity as the wider implementation of e.g. EU Schengen rules may have been considered detrimental to Russia, why the country has imposed counteractive measures. Still, if you are right, Russian government officials should perhaps reconsider whether such regulations really are in the true interest of the country.
Thanks for the shout-out Copy Dude, I think about Russia often, and I have to say that I really enjoyed my time there and really glad I’m not there now.
Back in the day, Westerners were treated like rock stars – partly because we had our act together and partly because Russia didn’t. Now Russia has its act together again, and I can see the old pride coming back.
Then, they were annoyed the Peace Corps was there, “We’re not Africa! We a superpower!” but their exclamations rang hollow. Now.. well now they have a decent case to say they can do things themselves and don’t need or want foreign help.
My feelings? Good on them. Glad to see Russia strong again.