They’re Back
The Soviet Union is back, apparently.
At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”
In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.
How would they know what constituted positive news?
“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”
This is what it was like during the Soviet days. They only reported positive news, which masked the severe problems that existed in Russia at the time. Putin is ex-KGB, so while they pretend to be capitalists, the old Communist ways must be hard for him to shake. As he becomes a total dictator, he is slowly turning the media into a propaganda machine.
Portraying the U.S. as an enemy is a stupid decision, but it’s done to keep the Russian people focused. Enemies are often a creation of leaders to give the people someone to hate, so that they will acquiesce to the governments orders which are “designed to protect them” from the enemy. This is just a ruse.
The same can be said about things our government does. But our society is a lot more transparent and unlike Russia, dissidents aren’t killed. Those lefties who are so convinced our government is evil should look honestly at what happens in other countries, to see how good they have it here. Which of course, they won’t. In the 50s a lot of lefties were Stalinists, even though Stalin murdered more people, by far, than Hitler. You still see ignorant college professors praising Communism, even though Communists killed more people in the 20th century than all the wars of the 20th century combined.
The crushing of dissent is what fascists (or communists) do when they take over. Hugo Chavez has done this in Venezuela. Castro did it in Cuba. Putin is doing it in Russia.
It’s sad to see freedom die in a place. It should be a lesson to those who question the value of our society.
This begs the old question, of course, What was the largest cause of death in th 20th century? Government. So far this century it doesn,t appear much has changed. And all of the sheep want to ban our weapons.
Posted by on 04/21 at 05:09 PMIn News There Is No Truth.
Posted by Macker on 04/21 at 05:21 PM
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