The New Russia: Some "Partner In Peace"

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JQWorld readers know that I am loathe to quote anything that comes out of the New York Times (example here, along with their willful disclosure of national security secrets, and their seemingly congenital anti-American, jihadist-appeasing, freedom-assailing, depravity-excusing approach to determining "all the news that's fit to print," etc.).

But in this particular case, the NYT has apparently uncovered something that --- assuming it's valid --- every American should be aware of, and more (discussed below), when they consider proposals for more government regulation of speech, and our overall approach to Russia:

Russian Government Orders: Media Content Must Contain 50% "Good News," Portray United States As "Enemy"

(Hat tip: DrudgeReport)

Excerpt:

MOSCOW, April 21 — 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.” (JQWorld note: For example, militant Islamists seizing the school in Beslan, pictured right, and murdering nearly a hundred Russian children, would be "not positive" news; correlate this info with the data contained below)

In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.

The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

Read the rest, here.

THIS is what happens when a free people (or those who aspire to be free) accept the sociaist/fascist principle that government should be legally empowered to determine who can say what, where, when, how, and who may or may not support them in doing so, and to enforce these edicts by means of police power, at the end of a gun.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear Americans howling that we should bring back the "Fairness Doctrine," enact stronger "campaign finance & speech laws," etc. The underlying principles are identical --- no matter what they say.

As if this news out of Russia weren't bad enough in and of itself, consider the real implication of facts that were not mentioned in this article:

Russia Sells Modern Surface-To-Air Missiles To Iran

Majority Of Russia, Its Military, To Be Muslim Within Our Lifetimes (more)

Russian President Putin Seeks To Placate Radical Islamists

Russia In Possession Of Estimated 28,000 Nuclear Warheads

US-Russia Effort To Contain Nuclear Experts Fades

Russia Possesses Largest Stockpile Of WMDs In The World (still researching this)

Uh-huh.

Some correlation of items that only about 99.9% of Americans have no idea of, eh?

Took a guy in pajamas less than an hour to correlate them and produce this post.

Yet with the tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars that the mainstream media has in its collective asset pool, one wonders why they cannot --- or will not --- produce such a correlation.

Or is something else at play?

Have a nice day.

Original content is © Copyright 2007 by Jon Quixote. Email to jonquix@hotmail.com

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