Travelers to China are often surprised by the efficiency of the Great Firewall. For a westerner dropping in, it can be a shock to find that Twitter is blocked. And Facebook is blocked. And even Google searches are blocked. Instead, both visitors and Chinese citizens are restricted to using the local domestic equivalents — equivalents that somehow lack any information on Chinese actions against Uyghurs, the protest at Tiananmen Square, and the circumstances of how Tibet ceased to be a free, independent country. Though clever students and hackers are forever finding a way around some parts of the Great Firewall, and Chinese officials sometimes turn a blind eye to their efforts, there’s a second wall that backs up the technological one: legislation. The consequences of peeking through a crack in that wall can be startlingly harsh.
At a small college in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stopped by in 1946 to deliver a speech about a different kind of wall. He did so at the request of President Harry Truman, who pointed out that the college was named Westminster, and said that, should Churchill have the time for a visit, ”This is a wonderful school in my home state. If you come, I will introduce you. Hope you can do it.”
Churchill did. At it was at this little college he made the speech which included the line, “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” That speech is sometimes regarded as the informal start of the Cold War.
Now we are, as Fiona Hill stated so clearly, in the midst of a different kind of world war; one in which a single nation — Ukraine — is bearing all the physical burden of conflict, while the rest of the world watches to see if they can bring an aggressor to bay by denying them money. And super yachts. And new iPhones. The question now really is about what will be the extent, and the cost, of that war before Russia’s inevitable defeat.
In this new not-so-cold war, Russia is pulling around it a new kind of wall. A silicon curtain. In the last few days, Russia has blocked Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. It’s a cruder thing than the Great Firewall, with little subtlety or fallbacks. It’s just chopping its populace off from the world, in an effort to feed them a fantasy in which Vladimir Putin is right, and everyone, everyone, everyone else is wrong. Like China, it’s already started building up the legislative wall to back up that technological severing. That’s a crude thing too, offering nothing but harsh penalties to anyone who lets a little light slip through the Silicon Curtain.
This, for all those on the right who don’t recognize it, is what actual censorship looks like.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 12:29:05 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Deadline reports that the BBC has temporarily suspended the work of all journalists in Russia. This is in response to the draconian censorship laws forced through the Russian parliament in the last two days.
Those laws mean 15 years in prison for anyone who dares to publish the truth about what’s happening in Ukraine.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 12:43:34 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
U.S. officials confirming the statement that came out of the Ukraine defense ministry earlier. That Russia failed to achieve air superiority before rolling in the first ground troop seemed almost impossible. That Ukraine is still flying—and scoring shoot-downs of Russian planes—nine days into the conflict, is just staggering.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 12:46:47 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Earlier today I posted that Ukraine might soon have more T-80s than Russia. That might be something of an exaggeration, but they certainly seem to be building quite a collection. This is another one. If all accounts are accurate, Ukraine captured at least 6 or 7 on Friday alone.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 12:49:44 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Since Germany has broken with it’s 75-year tradition of not shipping weapons to combatants in other nations, Ukraine has apparently decided they might as well ask for the whole enchilada. Submarines seems like a big ask. What they get is going to be interesting.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 1:01:26 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
The shelling of the plant at Zaporizhzhia was a horror show that many around the world watched live. Now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. warns that Russia may be ready for a repeat at another nuclear plant. Russian forces are reportedly just 20 miles away from Ukraine’s second largest nuclear facility, the Yuzhnoukrainsk Nuclear Power Station near Mykolaiv.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 1:12:49 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Both cameras in the area and reports on the ground indicate that Kharkiv is once again under heavy bombardment. Since the city can be hit from across the border in Russia, it has been a near constant target for both artillery and MLRS fire.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 1:45:11 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
As they have done on other nights after it became clear that Russian forces are communicating with analog radios lifted straight from 1980, Ukrainian troops are jamming their communications and providing entertaining comments. Such as “Putin is a dickhead.”
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 1:49:28 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
A fake message apparently circulated earlier in the evening that claimed to come from the U.S. Embassy and warned of and upcomign assault. Whether this was a Russian action, or a social media account wanting attention, it’s sometimes hard to tell.
Saturday, Mar 5, 2022 · 3:37:48 AM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
This kind of sentiment is getting a lot of play, but there’s absolutely no benefit in underestimating Russian capabilities. There have been many instances in history where seemingly unstoppable armies have melted away in battle, but no one should be making plans based on that assumption.