115 Comments
Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

As I was growing up in the west I knew, in my naivety, that we were the good guys. I’ve since adopted an altogether more nuanced position. But when ‘our side’ tells me that I will be saved from propaganda from ‘their side’ I know we’re being lied to. Censorship is never, ever, the right approach in a free world.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

The great weakness of censorship is that ultimately it consumes itself and totally corrupts those who implement it. We've learned more than enough from Covid to see how this process pans out.

Despite the current censorship in relation to the Ukraine crisis, there will always be ways of obtaining points of view from other perspectives. Perhaps what it does teach us is the art of withholding judgment, and thinking more for ourselves.

For example, how does the history of Ukraine over say the past 150 years play into what's happening now. Until a few days ago, I didn't know that Lviv (formerly Lemberg) was a jewel of a city of the Polish Kingdom, until the end of WWII when the Allies and Stalin agreed to the USSR taking a slice of eastern Poland (including Lviv) in exchange for Poland taking a slice of eastern Germany. The upshot for Lviv was a population transfer (what would be called ethnic cleansing these days) whereby Poles (the majority) were moved out and Ukrainians (until then a minority) were moved in.

The news speaks glowingly as if Ukraine were an integral nation state. As far as I have so far worked out, there are at least three ethnicities involved, each with their own language and religion, living in a state of tension for decades. The simmering war that started in 2014 is just another part of this long story. To me it looks something like the break-up of Yugoslavia, but with a really really big neighbour (Russia) batting for one of those ethnicities, and of course protecting its own long-held interests like the Black Sea ports.

I'm not sure for people like myself (UK citizen and resident with no skin at all in this game) what purpose it serves to follow the minutiae of the current tragedy, which we know are censored and distorted. I'd rather know why they are where they are, and pray they come out of it with as little loss of life as possible. We know what the Western Empire's goals are vis a vis Russia. Encircling (NATO), throttling (sanctions) and eviscerating (hydrocarbon theft) is just the start.

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Good catch, NE. I can confirm that I have the same problem as you when accessing http://en.kremlin.ru/

Using the free Hoxx VPN Chrome extension, and setting the IP to Russia, the site works perfectly.

I'm in France BTW.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I remember tuning in to Radio Moscow when there were crises during the cold war. You always knew that they were full of crap. I don’t like being treated like a child. Censorship is wrong. It’s makes you wonder what we may be trying to hide. Our government used to trust us….

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Either that, or it's a "cyberpandemic with coronavirus properties." :)

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

We all know that Google has changed its algorithms but I was recently deeply saddened by how far it has gone: classic mathematics:(. I wanted to find a good video on the Golden Rectangle however all I could find were videos on how ‘it’s your opinion on how much you like the rectangle’. I eventually remembered that the Davidson Institute had created one I had previously shared with a different student. Looking at Google’s search results in contrast to the Davidson video is both lamentable and alarming.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Throw out your books! Burn them in the streets!

Are you a traitor? Burn you!

Laser his eyes!

Lobotomise him!

How DARE you care what OUR enemy is saying?

BURN, BURN, BURN!!

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Yes the legacy media and now insidiously, social media censorship is rampant. Twitter is the worst. I don't know why i go back....possible addictive personality, possible closet abuser, or just creeping insanity. Substack is a Godsend.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

With duckduckgo.com (which is private/uncensored), the normal search page appears for en.kremlin.ru I am also using kaspersky VPN - when you try to access the site ....... the following appears.

read tcp 10.239.7.16:34641: read: connection reset by peer

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

NE, I completely agree with you about being able to read "the other side" - how else to even begin to understand? This just reinforces my feeling about the ferocity of the narrative makers, and their fears. Thank you for whatever you report back with.

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I'm being censored here. I can post, but not like posts!

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

incognito mode with chrome works for me

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

"...war is never justifiable..." according to?

But you are right. Don't censor, it's makes us all more stupid. Even by learning untruths you can learn truths - and if one wants to understand, one must undrstand the motivations and reason of that which is being observed. In this case, Russia.

The object of the censorship is likely to be part annoying Russia and making a point, part trying to protect people outside Russia from russian propaganda, which of course is both stupid and insulting.

Stupid because then we can't know what they want us to think and insulting because it implies you and me and us are too stupid to be discerning. (Though recent events regarding masks, unknown injections and the the like might conceivably undermine my argument here...)

I mean, western media never censored the ludicrous fairy tales they used to spout about the Kim family of DPRK, did they? And that's how to deal with propaganda without cnsoring it: publish/reference it, and amp it up even more by contrasting it to actual reality.

This an example I've used teaching media analysis: picture of Madeleine Albright and a quote about collateral damage juxtaposed with a picture on children's bodies torn to pieces with the same quote. (And do note I do not use that example to pick sides - Baghdad Bob provided plenty too.)

Just take Russia's latest attempt at controling the narrative as an example: the invasion is to prevent Ukraine from developing nuclear weapons. Clever, since the rethoric used mimics the US' rethoric regarding "weapons of mass destruction", and pointing out (or making it look like) hypocrisy is a standard tool in russian propaganda, always was.

Edit: oh and just to add to the paranoia one always start to feel when looking at censorship and propaganda, what if it's Russia who's making it seem as if they are being attacked? (Not that I believe that to be the case.)

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

How is this not a form of editorialzing? I know the two are not the same per se as an apple and an orange aren't the same, but it is taking a side etc by proxy.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I pay a little extra on my Malwarebytes account for a facility called "Privacy" & can change my VPN as often as I like. This means I can appear to be in whatever country I am investigating for as long as I need. I then have access to local news. It has been very useful to me so far...

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

The internet has always been under observation with a view to censor.... I wrote about it here:

https://francesleader.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-thought-ghetto?utm_source=url

plus see this report:

https://youtu.be/qIveKFTjW-Q

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Can't get to http://en.kremlin.ru unless I use the opera free vpn and set the virtual location to asia (americas and europe are blocked).

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DuckDuckGo appears to work...until you actually try to open anything on the list.

So its not just google censoring.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I get the exact same error message I just tried here in Thailand. It's possible that the site is overwhelmed with web traffic for its servers you aren't the only one curious what Putin has to say about this stuff. It's also possible that they're going to use all this stuff as cover for Cyber Polygon parts of the Great Reset, perhaps one place at a time...

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

If a VPN allows access, it sounds like access to the websites are being geo-blocked from the Russian side.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

According to zeenews.India, top Russian government websites are intermittently unavailable, including Purim’s and the State Duma websites…..(Bing), also Ukrainian websites are also problematic…..

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

“Yes, war is never justifiable.” Did you really mean to state that?

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

UK - can't get to it. No VPN.

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I posted the following message on another substack column and it seems relevant here as it looks at the "other side" to try and understand what is going on. Here are some points that provide greater context than the simple "Putin is mad, bad..."; "supporting democracy and upholding the values of freedom" and other platitudes of war-mongering:

1) When the USSR fell, the George H.W. Bush administration pledged to Gorbachev that NATO would not push further east in Europe as that would be recognized as a legitimate national security concern to Russia. Since that pledge in 1991, NATO has invited, among others, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Slovakia, and they have all joined NATO. There are two countries which are not NATO members which have long borders with Russia — Belarus and Ukraine. U.S. foreign policymakers and experts, for years after the fall of the USSR, acknowledged that eastward expansion of NATO was, and had to be, a red line for Russia and that such a position was entirely rational. Putin has always insisted, again and again, that this push of NATO eastward toward the border of Russia was a provocation that would not have good outcomes. Here we are at those bad outcomes.

2) Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine in 2010 in a democratically free and fair election. In time, he rejected the Ukrainian-European Association Agreement and decided to strengthen Ukraine’s ties to Russia.

3) The U.S. and the West took issue with this and in 2014 promoted and paid $6 billion for an uprising in Ukraine against the Yanukovych government. This was, simply put, another regime change operation. The orchestration of the coup by the U.S. was documented by the leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state at that time and then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. They discussed, among other things, who should replace Yanukovych once he was ousted.

4) The protests were fueled by the U.S. and the West, as protests were paid for, encouraged and egged on. Those Ukrainians who wanted Yanukovych gone were Ruossophobic ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis. It is known but not widely reported by the MSM, then or now, that the snipers who ratcheted up the protests by shooting both protestors and policemen were not sent and instructed by Yanukovych but by others, most likely the anti-Russia element looking to create chaos and replace the duly-elected Yanukovych. This was what a violent, armed coup, an actual insurrection, looks like. Yanukovych and other officials had to flee the country with their families as armed militiamen stormed the halls of government.

5) Ultra-nationalist militia members began attacks on ethnic Russians, gay people, Jews, and others who are considered by the pro-Nazi extremists to be untermenschen, sub-humans. The pro-West, “democratic” authorities installed after the coup did nothing to stop the attacks or prosecute the extremists.

6) The militias were incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

7) A 2017 Amnesty International report stated that Kiev had lost control of the radical groups. Some statements from militia members over the years since the coup have indicated that eventually they might have to oust the existing government and install a more ultra-nationalist regime.

8) Attacks on the Donbass region where ethnic Russians live, including Donetsk and Luhansk (these two cities have asked Putin to recognize them as independent republics), have continued unabated for the years since the coup.

9) Putin is a realpolitik leader. He is not a new Hitler, nor a madman. The neocons hate him and Russia. The American people have been indoctrinated for a long time to despise him and Russians.

It appears to me that that the U.S. has been playing a bait-the-bear game for a long time. And putting into effect the idea that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the U.S. has enabled and fed the growth of fascism in Ukraine. Paying and propping up “rebels” in every country in which we have intervened and brought about regime change has resulted not in “democracy” and “freedom,” but in failed states, intensified ethnic rivalry and hatred, and social chaos.

Putin’s speech made on 2/24 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/full-transcript-vladimir-putin-s-televised-address-to-russia-on-ukraine-feb-24) is pretty rational and sensible. That does not make him a “good” guy. But there is blame and responsibility on the West for the 2014 interventionist, regime-change part played in creating this mess. Now some U.S. politicians and pundits are calling for regime change in Russia!

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Last Thursday when I was doing my site I could not get on RT at all. Haven't had a problem since, but I'm sure that could change at any moment. Will be linking your heads up today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I'm in Mexico and no access.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I have proton VPN and can connect to Russian servers but cannot access the Kremlin's site. The US may have taken it down in a cyber attack? Perhaps that's why they're preparing us for one givent hat we've attacked them?

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

It is for me. This is very concerning. That means they can fully control the narrative when moved to do so.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Can't access it from Germany, and not with Opera's free VPN when set to e.g. Asia (or anything else of the few things it offers)

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Same here. So we can expect also that covid/vaccine information will be black-holed as well.

The sheer fact that this censorship is applied shows actually what is going on.

Back in the communist time the folks in the communist countries did try to cut off the western media, while for obvious reasons the west didn't bother.

Now it seems the roles have been switched.

Regarding your open thread about the Ukraine war - the black-holed information from Russia adds to the argument that Russia/Putin is genuinely against the WEF agenda.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I did get in using my Brave browser. Chrome and Bing I could not.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Did you try Wayback? I don’t have any other ideas….

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I’m in Asia. Tried setting my VPN to various countries and no luck until I set it to Russia.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Try using the Way back machine archive. This link contains some useful commentary and at least part of an important speech. The link to the entire speech is broken though. To use the archive, copy this link into the search bar. You'll get a calendar showing highlighted dates. Click on one to access the versions on that date. It should bring the article up. Worked for me just now when my bookmarked page didn't.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/24/what-putin-says-are-the-causes-aims-of-russias-military-action/

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

AVG VPN Moscow....while in Germany. Okay to view in my side

http://en.kremlin.ru/

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

No access through chrome incognito or duckduckgo here in MA, USA

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Yeah it probably is. I don't think anyone (or at least any non state actor) can DDOS the entire Russian government. If it was being censored, the relevant agencies (to use a Putin term) would do it under the deniable guise of grassroots hacktivism.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Can't get it here in Canada. According to Wikipedia, it's been intermittent since the 24th. Here is an article in the Independent about it going dark: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/kremlin-website-down-broken-russia-putin-ukraine-b2022503.html

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

StartPage gets me to a # of articles that the site is down or hacked due to the war; clicking on the website goe nowhere. I don’t even get the message you got (but I may not be waiting long enough.

There is some sort of site or app called Way back machine that I’ve heard of but never used that holds things supposedly disappeared. Try that?

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

No availability from France (Chrome, Chrome incognito, Firefox, Firefox private).

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Is invasion never acceptable? Is was never acceptable? Never? Are you sure?

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Mar 1, 2022·edited Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

I can't open http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67843 using Firefox or Brave from Southern California

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

N/a in neither Norway nor Switzerland (the latter via VPN). Note that neither country is in the EU.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Not available in Spain.

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Nope-Maryland, USA

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Censorship or hackers?

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Mar 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com

Not available in South Africa

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I noticed very early on in 2020 that mask testing and hydroxychloroquine trials for SARS and MERS were being censored. Not hard censored as in removed, but not easy to find. Maybe in January I could search for the information and it would come up on the first page. 4 months later when I am telling someone about what I read a searched the same terms and got nothing but propaganda. Not until I did a search with date parameters did I find the trials on both topics. I bookmarked them then I copied them to my computer. I tell you this, at that moment I knew it was game on. I suspected it before, but I knew things were gonna get strange and dirty.

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This is interesting: emails from Ukraine to US tech companies asking them to block Russian 'propaganda' https://the.ink/p/exclusive-ukraines-email-pleas-to

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