The fines the Russian government threatened to levy would've been ruinous, yes, but I'm old enough to remember when the motto for @Google, co-founded by Moscow-born Sergey Brin, was "Do no evil."
Apparently, the Kremlin threatened specific @Google employees with prosecution. A good summary of what @navalny's "Smart Vote" is—and how effective it has been—is here, from @meduza_en. meduza.io/en/feature/202…
More and more, the West—its leaders, its companies—are telling people fighting authoritarian regimes across the world: "You're on your own."
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Completely floored by the beautiful, poignant story-telling I'm seeing on this anniversary of 9/11.
Here's @LeilaFadel's powerful story on a young Muslim man whose life was changed by the surveillance and religious profiling of Muslims after 9/11: npr.org/2021/09/11/103…
Today, my good friend Roman @Dobrokhotov, head of @the_ins_ru and Russian partner of @bellingcat, had his home searched and was taken for questioning. He's been released but all his electronic equipment and passport have been seized. All part of the wave of repression in Russia.
@Dobrokhotov@the_ins_ru@bellingcat The current wave of political repression in Russia is unlike anything we've seen in the post-Soviet era. Yet the world seems resigned that that's just how Russia is. But there are real people at the heart of this, fighting for their freedom at great risk to themselves.
Roman has two small children and two elderly parents, whose apartment was also searched today. But knowing Roman, this isn't going to stop him. Would that we all had that kind of bravery and commitment to the cause.
Sunday read: For a long time, people like me who were foreign correspondents saw Facebook as a tool that would *help* democracy, not hurt it. I asked @sheeraf about this: ckarchive.com/b/68ueh8h84wpr
Sheera, the author, with @ceciliakang, of a new best-selling book about how Facebook became so dangerous to democracy, told me how she witnessed the shift from “Facebook will spread democracy” to “Facebook helps authoritarians” in real time while based in Cairo.
She also talked about how no one in Facebook’s executive ranks anticipated this because they all come from similar, sheltered backgrounds. It is another point in why diversity at the top matters.
"There are so many fucking Trump books," says one book editor, wondering what we're learning from any of them. Or as one industry insider quipped, “What are we going to find out in these books? That Trump threw a banana at John Kelly?” My latest:
So about that Guardian story about that document Putin allegedly signed authorizing an operation to put Trump in the White House? I spoke to a fmr intelligence officer who handled that intel in real time and they were…skeptical. (My latest: ckarchive.com/b/68ueh8h8md7z)
The other thing that should make you skeptical: the byline on that story.
And it’s not just that Manafort/Assange story that Luke got wrong. He was known for stories that sounded amazing and sensational—but were thinly sourced.
“Everything seems more buttoned up than the streaking convention that was the Trump White House,” says @Olivianuzzi.
“The truth is the Biden White House is very opaque,” said @sbg1.
“The mechanics of reporting have changed so much,” another reporter said. “It was just this really aberrant period in which you could almost guarantee that, with enough effort, you could find out what’s going on in the Situation Room. Now you can’t—and it’s infuriating.”