The US government's sanctions on Russia mean that it is now illegal to assist Russia and it's population, including a ban on sending cryptocurrency to Russian citizens. With Russia now banning Facebook and Twitter, it's an interesting situation for the Hive community and blockchain. Hive's combination of uncensored social networking and cryptocurrencies means it could bridge a gap between cultures but also be on the receiving end of state attacks or negative media reports.
Image Source: The Berlin Wall - Independent
I have been deeply saddened by the conflict in Ukraine.
Our world has become so interdependent that violent conflict between two countries inevitably impacts the rest of the world. War is out-dated – non-violence is the only way. We need to develop a sense of the oneness of humanity by considering other human beings as brothers and sisters. This is how we will build a more peaceful world.
Problems and disagreements are best resolved through dialogue. Genuine peace comes about through mutual understanding and respect for each other’s wellbeing.
We must not lose hope. The 20th century was a century of war and bloodshed. The 21st century must be a century of dialogue.
I pray that peace is swiftly restored in Ukraine.
The Dalai Lama
February 28, 2022
Source: DalaiLama.com
Uncensored Social Networks Can Bring Us Together
While Russia has it's own large social networks, the website Statista reports that over 60 million people in Russia were, until recently, users of Facebook. The Russian population is estimated to be at around 145.5 million people, so roughly one half of the maximum possible population were users of Facebook (remembering that some are too young to use it). With such a large number of people now suffering the effects of heavily censored social media, while also needing to access uncensored international information urgently for their own safety - a major opportunity exists for Hive to shine.
The Hive community backs Ukraine more than it does Russia in the current climate, but with so many Russians risking jail time for protesting the war, it's fair to say that the war is mostly the fault of the government and not the average Russian citizen.
Hive can be used as a tool to reach Russians and help them to access information that they can use to help shift the politics in their nation towards a climate that offers them more long term personal freedom and security - with less potential for war. Or at least it could, if the US sanctions didn't appear to make Russian use of Hive a crime!
The closing down of barriers to communication by state policies is always a problem and in a way it is the duty of the Hive community to keep serving both the Russian and Ukrainian communities in a neutral way, to stand a chance of enabling communication that might help create peace.
The Digital Berlin Wall
The control that governments are attempting to enforce on the world as a way to stop other governments from being controlling and warlike is forming something similar to a digital Berlin wall - mirroring the one that fell decades ago. By dividing populations, each government is more able to control the narrative fed to each population and to keep feeding seeds of division and hatred through lies and misinformation. George Orwell's 1984 went a long way to explaining the terrible results of long term division and breakdowns of communication between populations.
So in the spirit of unity and peace, let's do our best not to put 'another brick in the wall', but also to promote peace and do nothing to promote killing.
The Hive Demilitarized Zone
Hive can serve a purpose in helping oppressed and silenced people to connect and show their humanity to each other. One of the promises of Web 3.0 is that it is meant to empower people and be built on an ideology of respect instead of exploitation. It would be great to see Hive used to show the way towards peace, with people from both sides of the conflict working together voluntarily to solve their differences through communication.
As the Dalai Lama said in his recent statement (above), it is through communication and non violence that our problems must be solved now. Hive is perfect for this in so many ways, we just need to organize to use it in a powerful way.
This would mean more Russian people using Hive - maybe this would be achieved by reaching out to Hive's sister fork Golos? Inevitably this would mean Russian people receiving crypto from Hive, but there is not really any way to stop this anyway and who would be committing the crime if crypto is sent to Russians through Hive? That's not such a simple question to answer!
Your Thoughts?
What do you think on this? How can the Hive community work together to bypass the controls and to help to fix this latest nightmare created by state monopolisation of resources, narrative and violence?
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Excellent to read some fairly balanced ideas being explored in a way to benefit the purpose of peace-making and truth-speaking.
I for one am unable to "Support Ukraine" or "Support Russia."
The reason such an obvious dumbing down of this conflict's complex reality is due to how many different parties are involved. It's impossible to reasonably believe this is all as simple as Putin vs Freedom, so why is everyone losing all sense of reason by simplifying potential nuclear devastation into us vs them?
This is a tell-tale sign that a war is being waged upon all the world's consumers of mainstream media. The Theatre of War is a well-established term of war-empire parlance, so the real purpose to concentrate on is to question who are the actors, who wrote the script and why are we actually being shown a theatrical play broadcast through a global Western Mainstream Media apparatus controlled by warmongerers (The US Military-Industrial Complex, NATO, The United Nations).
Thanks - yes, the over-simplification is a sign that people's survival programs are being manipulated and deliberately used to keep them intimidated and supportive of more violence. The planners of this nightmare try to conduct populations as if they are orchestras, they think they need to have everyone playing their tune or they themselves will die. This is part of why thousands of protestors have been arrested in Russia, while Putin 'frees' Ukraine from the oppressive regime that he claims is doing what he is actually doing in broad daylight.
Taking sides is not helpful, but I have to question the intentions of those who support Putin since it is so painfully obvious that he is lying over and over again - even when viewed as objectively as possible.
Does one have to support Putin in this though? I don't support NATO but I don't expect that makes me automatically side with Putin either.
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