Posted on 03/15/2014 1:52:26 PM PDT by McGruff
This is Ukraine today, at least as seen by most Russian news media: the government is run by anti-Semitic fascists, people killed in protests were shot by opposition snipers and the West is behind it all.
With Crimea set to hold a referendum Sunday on whether to merge with Russia, the push to demonize Ukraine's leadership has reached fever pitch. Authorities in Ukraine have responded by blocking Russian TV channels.
Lev Gudkov, head of a respected independent Moscow-based polling agency, says the propagandist tone of Russian state television has reached new levels.
"For intensity, comprehensiveness and aggressiveness, this is like nothing I have ever seen over the whole post-Soviet period," Gudkov said.
News bulletins on top network Channel 1 carry extensive reports detailing purported rampant lawlessness to vague threats of reprisals against ethnic Russians and Jews, as well as showing interviews with talking heads alleging foreign-engineered plots.
NTV, owned by gas giant Gazprom's media arm, on Thursday aired a report about purportedly hacked email correspondence between U.S. and Ukrainian officials on plans for staging an attack on military jets. The piece goes on to claim that the incident was to serve as an excuse for the United States to take military action against Russia.
It is steadily becoming conventional wisdom in the most widely watched news shows that those shot dead during protests in Kiev last month were victims of shadowy figures possibly hired by opposition forces.
Right Sector, a radical ultranationalist group that spearheaded the most violent assaults against riot police, is a subject of scaremongering daily exposes. For all the attention it has received, the group has not been granted any posts in the new government and observers say it has little actual clout.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
In Russia, the propagandist work for the government, and there are not divergent views. Bias is part of human nature. Beliefs cannot be avoided, but lying, as Putin’s media does, is not the function of a normal news media. Putin still denies that Russia has soldiers in Crimea, for example. They’re just local militia, he claims.
Interestingly, they still get MSNBC in Russia....
Ukraine and Crimea are just a resurgence of Russian Nationalism. In 1783 Catherine the Great annexed Crimea. The czars and aristrocracy vacationed there for many years. In 1945 FDR was at Yalta (which is in the Crimea).
The Russian Southern Fleet has been in the Black Sea Sevastopol since 1783.
Lets say the US is to give up San Diego, CA. What would happen, the US would fight for it. What about Hawaii?
Keep in mind the Russian Elites will not give up there southern vacation spot. During the Olympics in Sochi, people were surprised to find out that Stalin had a residence there and i still existed.
Yup. Surprising a memorial still existed to one of the 20th century's greatest killers. Sure it opened more than few eyes.
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