Free Press
An example of the joke which is 'free press' in this country.
Watch:
She is censored for stating a mostly unheard-of perspective regarding the conflict. What is the significance of her saying that it's Russian troops and not Georgian troops that helped her?
The importance is the wholly pro-Georgian slant that perpetrated the western media at that time, when in fact, the Russian troops prevented (for a change) atrocities against the South Ossetian people. When the Georgian army invaded (and they did start this) there were reports of multiple atrocities against the Ossetian people including, but not limited to, the throwing of cluster bombs into civilian shelters and the shooting of a pregnant woman through the head, as well as flooding basements that held hiding civilians with water, then shooting them when they tried to escape. Within 48 hours of the initial offensive, 75% of Tskhinvali, the Ossetian capital had been destroyed through indiscriminate shelling and mortaring.
So why the slant? I've already covered the reasons that America continues to back this country, due to pipelines and Georgia's support in the Iraq conflict. We supply Georgia with tanks and Humvees and military equipment (some of which is now in Russian hands). This slant is not limited to U.S. media outlets. A good friend of mine recently stated "All western media speaks of Russia's 'overly aggressive reaction', but never ask 'reaction to what?"
Why don't people ask these questions? I continually hear of the same kind of 'ground-up' understanding of events, where the roots of an issue are never explored or questioned. The press are simply trusted to report the news, and we swallow whatever is said at face value. No questions.
"Do we have a free press today? Sure we do. It’s free to report all the sex scandals it wants, all the stock market news we can handle, every new health fad that comes down the pike, and every celebrity marriage or divorce that happens. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff—stories like Tailwind, the October Surprise, the El Mozote massacre, corporate corruption, or CIA involvement in drug trafficking—that’s where we begin to see the limits of our freedoms. In today’s mass media environment, sadly, such stories are not even open for discussion. Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping Europe, legendary investigative reporter George Seldes observed that “it is possible to fool all the people all the time—when government and press cooperate.” Unfortunately, we have reached that point."
-Gary Webb, an investigative reporter for 19 years. He was one of six reporters to win a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on northern California's 1989 earthquake. He also received the 1997 Media Hero award, and in 1996 was named Journalist of the Year by the Bay Area Society of Professional Journalists. He was the author of Dark Alliance, which covered the links between cocaine shipments to the Crips and Bloods gangs, the CIA and Latin America, for which he lost his job.
He also died from suicide by shooting himself in the head - twice. How does anyone shoot themselves in the head twice? You tell me.
posted by Shem
2 Comments:
I appreciate the comments, but I do not think the trial or judgment of who started the war is over. It will be a while before we really know what happened and who fired the first shot. All in all, I believe it was the Russians who had everything to gain and nothing to loose from this conflict. On the other hand, The Georgian president almost lost his country and there was no way he could have won a tactical victory over the Russians who outnumber his military almost 10 to 1. On the eve of NATO membership, would the president of Georgia risk looking like a warmonger? Also, tactically speaking, Georgia's best soldiers and equipment were in Iraq, far from Ossetia. If he seriously wanted to attack Ossetia and rid it of Russian occupation (it is still Georgia), why would he not have full military strength or capabilities? The Russians have been beefing up the border in North Ossetia for almost a year with tanks, mechanized and light infantry. The little girl in the clip was not censored by saying, "you can't say that." She openly said Russians rescued her, but from what? She saw no bombs drop or Georgian planes and it was during the day after the fighting had started the night before. If she was in South Ossetia, she is most likely an ethnic Russian, of course she would be happy; could it not be propaganda on her side? Everyone is in agreement that the fighting started at night, which makes it harder to definitively say who did what. Russia has no track record of human rights, and I will not even reach back to the Soviet era, which would be too easy. The Russian government assassinated a former spy in London, without a whimper from the EU. The Russian government assassinated a reporter in Russia, Anna Politkovskaia. The Russian Air Force has repeatedly violated Georgian, British, Lithuanian, Polish and American airspace without cause or reason several times. The Russian Air Force also shot down a Georgian drone over Georgian airspace and it was caught on film. Diplomatically the Russians have tried to bully their former satellite states and that is the reason why they are in solidarity today. Much of this has to do with Russian atrocities In Chechnya. Chechen rebels were hiding in Georgia and the Russians were angry since they were busy murdering whole towns worth of people in which thousands simply disappeared. The Russians caused cyber attacks on the Georgian government and cut off their oil supplies in the wintertime several times (now you know why they wanted their own pipeline). This sudden war is also ironically close to the date the Russians had formerly agreed to withdraw forces from Ossetia as 'peacekeepers'(by the end of 2008). Why didn't the Georgian president just wait until the end of the year when the Russians were gone? There were atrocities on both sides and it is hard to say who started what, but tactically and politically the Russians have the upper-hand and the more reason to start the war with Georgia who has a democratically elected government, unlike Russia. Simultaneously, the Russians invaded Abkhazia where it was quiet and the Russians took it upon themselves to seize more Georgian land. Now the Russians have a reason to stay and they can redraw the map to fix its generic false borders that date from Stalinist Georgia. What I mean by that is Ossetia is a made-up place and a made-up colony of Russians that were there originally to assimilate the local populace. It had been a Georgian province settled by ethnic Georgian people for thousands of years before the Russians kicked out the Georgians and sent them packing to Siberian Gulags. The Lithuanians were smart and gave their ethnic Russians a choice. Either you get rid of your Russian passport and assimilate or you can leave and go back to your 'peace loving' country. They knew that Russia would use false claims of abuse on Russian citizens to inflame a crisis in internal politics. Remember, the Ossetians (ethnic Russians) have a guerrilla force that openly wages a war with Georgian troops and are supported by the Russian military. They are a source of much of the conflict in Georgia. Then there is a current piece of evidence that proves Russian soldiers are not so worried about Georgian atrocities since they like to commit their own (and I am not even talking about Chechnya). Here is the link:http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/09/19/georgi19858.htm. Here is also a time line of event I got from the BBC to help explain some of the point I made:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1102575.stm. Like I said, I am not condoning the violence of either side and I do not believe we will know any time soon who started the war. But, I do know that the Russians had much more to gain and they bombed many cities in Georgia, like Gori, on tape. I know this is an opinion piece, but the evidence points at the Russians. Thank you for reading.
Hello, I just read this article and I am looking into it, but it talks about how the Russian government is playing 9/11 conspiracy movies on national television in a response to the West not believing what happened in the start of the war in Georgia. It specifically mentions the video in question and there are some allegations going around that the video was "doctored" and put out by the Russians the way they want it to seem. I am trying to find the raw video to see if it was doctored. Anyway, here are some parts of the article that I thought were interesting.
From : The Weekly Standard, The Truthers' New Friends:
The Russian government warms up to 9/11 conspiracy theories.
by Cathy Young
10/13/2008, Volume 014, Issue 05
"Several speakers bemoaned "the dearth of information" and "manipulation" in the media--the Western media, of course, not Russian television with its blacklists of opposition figures and its airing of a video doctored to suggest that a Fox News anchor tried to silence an Ossetian girl with pro-Russian views. Indeed, Western coverage of the Georgia war was predictably cited as an example of rampant bias and disinformation--the media repeating the lie of Russian aggression just as they had colluded in the 9/11 cover-up.....Besides stoking anti-Americanism in the Russian population, the purpose may have been retaliation: You won't buy our version of the war in Georgia? Fine, we won't buy your version of 9/11. But the demented circus on Channel One is a more serious matter than the political equivalent of a playground taunt. Aside from the effect inside Russia, it is likely to help spread the poison of 9/11 conspiracy theories around the world by lending them a patina of legitimacy."
Thank you for reading and have a good day. -Steve
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