Mediaboss Marketing

Curriculum censorship

Regarding the WeTheParentsMB flier: I respectfully ask that you stop your disruptivenonsense now. You are attempting to stir up a problem that does not exist. We are proud of our Blue Ribbon schools status. Our children go on to attend the best universities in thecountry. People move to our community specifically for our high performing public schools. Curriculum censorship does not figure into a well-educated populace. You may consider taking your children elsewhere if control over their curriculum is what you seek. Or homeschool them.Marie Brown, Manhattan Beach

Bright day of justice

It is ignorant at best to trot out one phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr.s I Have A Dream speech and then use it to pretend that Dr. King would be on your side as you fight to erase Black history from school textbooks. A recent writer to your paper has done just that, and worse he claims that Dr. Kings dream for America has been realized. Let me reply, using Dr. Kings warning from that same speech: The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. Fight on, anti-racists.

Carole Cooper, Manhattan Beach

Green line extension

Stop the Metro Green Line extension along the existing right of way freight line. Move it to where it makes more sense along Hawthorne Blvd.

I went on the LA Metro line walking tour to see the proposed Green Line extension along nearly 480 existing residences in the eastern portions of Redondo Council Districts 3 and 4. The proposed plan is to add another rail line literally a few feet away from the backyard fences of many residents. If built running through part of Redondo Beach residential neighborhoods, the Metro Green line will operate approximately 20 hours a day. During rush hour a train will pass every 7 to 8 minutes directly behind or by existing homes, over 100 of which are senior retirement dwellings! Can you imagine how horrible that would be?

Along with other concerned Redondo neighbors, I told the Metro people it makes more sense to build an elevated line along Hawthorne Blvd as that is where the original Red Cars traveled. Many real estate professionals have already stated that existing homes on the proposed route could see their values reduced using conservative estimates from $60 to $70 Million dollars for those 480 homes, or an average of $135+ Thousand dollars per homeowner dwelling.

Write to LA Metro and tell them to move the Green Line to Hawthorne Blvd.GreenLineExtension@metro.netOrGeorgia Sheridan, Project Manager MetroOne Gateway Plaza M/S 9922-SLos Angeles, CA 90012

Wayne Craig, Redondo Beach

Bruces Beach Park usage

Possibly twice a year for a few hours advocates for Bruces Beach Park are asking to celebrate a significant historic focal point. The result is that some view this as a threat to law and order. The apoplectic vitriol has generated so much fervor that all of a sudden our Parks & Recreation Commission and City Council find it necessary to review City Park policy for permits to access our cities parks.

This should be an opportunity for our community to come out and celebrate with others the peaceful liberation from bigotry on this spot that has brought national attention to Manhattan Beach and now highlights the change and observance that it deserves.

For most of us who recognize the real underlying hypocrisy, its time to encourage a better sense of community by stopping the back and forth, Next-Door Neighbor-Facebook, yelling at each other judgments of moral high ground. This behavior is confrontational and divisive. Our strength is our resolve to share inclusive values no matter who you are or where you come from. Thats our true beach culture.

Stewart Fournier, Manhattan Beach

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LETTERS to the Editor: Week of March 17 - Daily Breeze

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -/Kremlin/dpa

MADRID, March 20. (EUROPE PRESS)

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has criticized the great censorship to which he considers the Western media to be subjected, more evident in the face of the war in Ukraine.

We know the ways and tricks that Western countries use to manipulate the media. We have long understood that there are no independent Western media. There is still great censorship there, Lavrov said, according to the Ministry he directs in his Twitter account.

Lavrov has thus denounced an information war against Russia highlighted when they understood that the country would not obey their orders. This is not about Ukraine. It is the culmination of the course taken in the early 1990s, when it became clear that Russia would not be obedient and would stand by its own opinion, he said on Russian television.

In particular, Lavrov has targeted the dominance of the British and American media. Another issue is the quality of the information in these media, he warned.

In the United States, only Fox News is trying to present an alternative point of view, but when you see other networks, when you read social networks and Internet platforms, when the sitting president was blocked, you understand that this censorship continues to exist on a large scale , has argued in reference to the withdrawal of Donald Trump from Twitter and other platforms just before the relief in the White House.

The head of Russian Diplomacy has also warned that they try to brainwash very young boys and girls with platforms like TikTok that are accessible. If you want there to be competition between the media, there have to be some rules, he has riveted him.

In addition, Lavrov has charged against the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, who defends that he does not support neo-Nazis. President Zelensky asks how he can be accused of being a Nazi if he is of Jewish origin, but he says so while Ukraine withdraws from the agreement for the protection of the monuments of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, the Second World War.

It is very difficult to take the position of the Ukrainian leadership seriously when the president personally supports certain tendencies, he said.

Regarding the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov has expressed his hope that it will end with the signing of agreements on the neutrality of Ukraine, the recognition of the annexation of Crimea and security guarantees for Russia, as Moscow has already proposed to the United States. and NATO.

When the preparatory bombardment of a combat action in Donbas began, we had no choice but to protect the Russian people of Ukraine, he said.

Regarding sanctions, Lavrov has denounced an attempt to marginalize and contain Moscow in the geopolitical field and consolidate a unipolar world led by the White House.

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Lavrov denounces the "great censorship" of the Western media - Royals Blue

Vladimir Putins government continues to call Russias February 24 invasion of Ukraine a special military operation and has instituted harsh punishments for media outlets that do not hew to the state line. However, some foreign-based media have bypassed Russian censorship in various ways, providing Russian citizens vital access to facts about the war.

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It is nearly impossible. The few remaining Russian independent media outlets with any sizeable followings, notably TV Rain and the radio station Echo of Moscow, shut down following Putins signing of the March 4 fake news law, which threatens imprisonment for any journalist who deviates from the Kremlins portrayal of the conflict in Ukraine. Many Western outlets shut down their Russia bureaus as well, depriving their audiences of access to news from within the country.

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Meanwhile, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other foreign social media platforms that disseminate Russian-language information are blocked, and TikTok temporarily banned users in Russia from uploading new content. But YouTube and the encrypted message app Telegram, which are used heavily by state propaganda sources, are reportedly still available and widely used in Russia.

The March 4 law followed years of mounting government pressure on media outlets, and surveys have shown that most Russians get their news from state television. Official media typically downplay the severity of the conflict in Ukraine while echoing Kremlin falsehoods about what it calls a peacekeeping operation against Ukrainian aggressors.

Still, news of the invasion appeared to spur protests in cities across Russia, leading to an estimated fifteen thousand arrests in the first three weeks of the war. In addition, thousands more Russians reportedly fled the country as the war intensified and tough Western-backed sanctions kicked in, though that could mean fewer dissenting voices remain within Russia.

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Yes, but this has become more of a challenge. Since the invasion, the government has blocked the Russian-language websites of media outlets including the BBC, Latvia-based Meduza, the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA), and Germanys Deutsche Welle. These organizations were already under increasing Kremlin pressure from a foreign agents law instituted last year and had largely closed their bureaus in Moscow due to the draconian media law signed in March.

Despite the crackdown, these media outlets say they had large Russian audiences in the pre-invasion months. RFE/RL, which began broadcasts in Russian in 1953, said in a news release that the extensive network of websites run by its Russian Service attracted a monthly average of more than twenty million page views in 2021, and that its videos were viewed nearly three hundred million times that year on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Its YouTube videos have attracted millions more views since the invasion began. The BBC said its Russian-language news website reached more than ten million visits per week in the early phases of the war.

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Its not clear whether they can replicate these audiences given the current censorship, but just this week, data from Apples App Store and Googles Play Store showed that twelve of the top twenty apps in Russia were virtual private networks (VPNs), which disguise a users location and help access region-restricted content, and Telegram was the fifth-most-downloaded app.

The intensified media clampdown reflects the Kremlins concern about the impact that real news would have on Russian citizens. Experts say exposure to objective reporting on the military campaign, including the indiscriminate attacks on civilians, could be influential to the Russian public.

The efforts underway by trusted agencies such as the BBC, RFE/RL, and VOA in some ways hearken back to the Cold War era when, primarily as broadcasters, they developed major news-gathering operations to try to reach audiences behind the Iron Curtain. Research has shown that those broadcasts played an important role in informing both regime elites and citizens in the former communist bloc.

Russian media experts also express concern that intensifying Western-led international sanctions on Russia could have the unintended effect of severing many Russians from the internet at a time when they crave straight information. Its gonna be pretty grim, and its pretty unfair to young Russians who would want to maintain some connection with this world that now rejects them, Meduzas Alexey Kovalev said in an interview with the University of Oxfords Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. I hope the outside world finds a way to incorporate young Russians into the global community.

Antonio Barreras Lozano contributed to this report.

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Russia Is Censoring News on the War in Ukraine. Foreign Media Are Trying to Get Around That. - Council on Foreign Relations

TargetingS, a Redmond-based company, has spent the last 20 days helping independent media report on the war from inside and outside of Russia, all free of charge.

REDMOND, Wash. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has blocked access to independent news sites and Western media. TargetingS, a Redmond-based company, is responding to the war censorship in a big way.

They are using their technology to fight for the truth. In order to make that happen, TargetingS is reacting in real time, according to Chris Deco, the company's general manager of North America.

"We're helping these these independent media outlets play that game of Whack-A-Mole with Putin and the oppressive regime there," said Deco.

Val Khotemlyansky is the vice president of product development for TargetingS. He was born in Russia, but left the country 30 years ago.

"I think that our job is very important," said Khotemlyansky. "Our goal is to bring the truth to Russian citizenship and citizenship around the globe."

For the past 20 days, they have been helping independent media outlets to keep publishing. A prime example is the widely-shared video of a 'No War' sign being displayed during a government-run newscast in Russia.

"One of our partners that's operating within Russia, Republic, was able to publish that across social media networks using the TargetingS platform. They've been banned. However, as they continue to pivot, where they're able to post that information, we're able to grab it and distribute it to multiple networks and messengers," said Deco.

Deco said objective content is still finding a way to break through even as Russia works to control information.

"Democracy dies in darkness. We want to keep the lights on, and we will champion and hope everybody else will do the same," said Deco.

They are providing this service free of charge as they pivot with their partners, who are navigating censorship and blocked access in Russia.

"This is the fight for freedom of the press and expression and basic human rights. And we're going to do what we can to help," Deco said.

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Redmond company fighting censorship in Russia amid Ukraine invasion - KING5.com

Bruce Lawson from Birmingham, England, has sent approximately 100 texts to strangers in Russia about the true extent of the war in Ukraine during the past week, he told Insider.

The software engineer said he has been copying chunks of prewritten Russian-language text provided by the Polish hacktivist group Squad303 and sending SMS messages to randomly selected numbers between business meetings.

"It's so easy to do," Lawson said. "I just get a new number, hit send, enter, get a new number, hit send, enter."

Lawson has been using 1920.in, an online tool designed to cut through Russian President Vladimir Putin's censorship, which The Wall Street Journal notes use a bank of nearly 140 million Russian email addresses and 20 million cell phone numbers.

Users can send texts, WhatsApp messages, or emails from anywhere in the world to inform Russians that soldiers and civilians are being killed in the deadly invasion of Ukraine that the Kremlin is trying to characterize as a "special military operation."

According to Squad303, who are connected to the Anonymous hacking collective, some 30 million messages have been sent to random Russians since the website was launched on March 6, Insider's Kieran Press-Reynolds reported.

Lawson started using the online tool last week, hoping that he might "change somebody's mind" and encourage a stranger to see beyond the lies that the Russian propaganda machine is pumping out.

So far, he's received a mixed response. "I've had a fair few, 'Fuck off, motherfucker,' messages," Lawson said. "But I've also had quite a few nice conversations with people who are saying, 'We don't want this either, and we're scared.'"

That's more than can be said for Nan, who asked to only be referred to by his first name due to the fear of being trolled. So far, the marketing executive from San Antonio, Texas, hasn't received a single response to any of his WhatsApp messages.

"Nobody wrote me back," he told Insider. "I'd say that about from the 14 people that I sent messages to, about 10 of them showed the double checkmark with the blue, which means they read it."

Nonetheless, Nan said he plans on continuing to send messages because he wants Russians to "really reconsider what they're hearing" about Ukraine from state media outlets.

A combination of censorship and propaganda is so effective the Ukrainians are struggling to persuade their relatives in Russia that their country is under attack, Insider's Mia Jankowicz reported.

Alexander Nielsen, a military analyst from Copenhagen, Denmark, was initially frustrated by the lack of responses to the deluge of texts he and his girlfriend had been sending. At first, he told Insider, he felt like he was sending messages "out into the void."

That was until he received a call from a number he had texted. Unable to speak Russian, Nielsen couldn't hold a conversation with the stranger, but, he said, it felt "empowering" to get a reply.

It made it clear that he spoke to "real people," he said. "It felt good to actually do something and be on the digital frontline," Nielsen added.

Energized by that call, Nielsen recruited his friend Kathrine Richter to join the international army of online volunteers sending messages via 1920.in.

Richter, who is Denmark's country-lead for the European political movement Volt Europa, told Insider that she has sent a handful of messages via the online tool and intends to continue doing so.

"Putin's Russia is being dislocated from the rest of the world, divorced from democracy, so we need more than ever to penetrate that and make some connections at a personal level with direct contact," Richter explained.

She said that sending these formulated texts to strangers might feel inconsequential but, Richter added, it still serves to make a difference.

"I think when we look at what's happening in Ukraine, we can't be complacent anymore," Richter continued. "We have to do everything we can, even if it's just a small thing."

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Meet the army of volunteers who are beating Putin's censorship by sending texts about the Ukraine war to Russian strangers - Business Insider Africa