Evidently Vladimir Putin is a bit sensitive about being compared to Big Brother. At least that is what you can surmise when you learn that a Russian activist was arrested and charged with the offense of “discrediting the military.” That’s a bit of a stretch, handing out a novel being perceived as discrediting the troops in Ukraine, but I guess you have to go with the laws that are on the books, right, ridiculously inadequate or not.
Or, maybe they just flipped a coin in deciding what to charge him with and it was between this and creating a public nuisance, which is what they charge people with if they don’t pick up their doggy doo.
An activist in Ivanovo named Dmitry Silin has been charged with the administrative offense of “discrediting Russia’s military” because he handed out free copies of George Orwell’s 1984. Welcome to Russia in 2022, everyone. https://t.co/QPYyIJTVwp pic.twitter.com/SunXxpex09
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) April 14, 2022
Marina Osyannikova, the woman who appeared behind the anchor on Russia’s Channel One state TV broadcast with the poster “You’re being lied to,” was also charged with discrediting the military. She said that she now fears for her own safety. Father Ioann Burdin of the Resurrection Church in the Kostroma region of western Russia was detained for “discrediting Russia’s military” as well.
The simple fact is that you don’t report any story that shows Putin losing the war in Ukraine, because that “discredits the military.” Which still begs the issue of how a copy of “1984” has anything whatsoever to do with the military.
We’ll never know. Kudos to this activist. He’s a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I would be terrified to oppose a lunatic like Putin.
Next thing you know, some apple vendor in the street will be arrested for discrediting the Russian military. This has all the earmarks of a catch-all crime.
Apples? That’s easy. “As American as apple pie” can be used to arrest anyone giving away, or even selling apples in Russia these days. What about some poor, misguided mom who shows up at a school gathering or worse a Russian Orthodox Church potluck (that Krill dude that heads it is really tight with Putin!) bearing an apple pie. And woe be to anyone who has an apple tree in their yard that hasn’t been chopped down. Or someone who simply walks by one while out & about and doesn’t do everything in their power to cut it down. Or at least scream obscenenities at it – there’s cultures (mainly in small south Pacific islands) that believe you can kill a tree by killing its spirit by screaming bad things at it. I could go on and on, all due to the phrase “American as apple pie.” (I could do the same with baseball btw)
It goes to show that if you just think about it, you, too, can come up with a conspiracy theory as crazy as any of the others.
Given the number of unarmed black people killed by police who have either made a mistake, i.e., Brianna Taylor, or committed the deadly sin of an expired tag, I ask all of you…aren’t we living in a glass house? By the way who thinks Trump would act any more reasonably than his puppet master? Fascism kills who it deems undesirable. Or maybe you will get lucky & only get a rubber bullet in the face for exercising your right(for today) of peaceful assembly to protest police violence. We are living in a goddamn fantasy world ?.