Posted on 02/13/2004 5:55:09 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
The Today show's "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?" sweeps month ratings gimmick brought Lauer to Moscow's Red Square on Thursday where he repeatedly pressed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to trash the Bush administration's foreign policy. Lauer asked: "Was Russia right and were the Americans wrong?" on WMD in Iraq and, "Do you think the credibility of the United States and this particular administration has been damaged internationally in this last year?"
Not all have succeeded in Russia's semi-free enterprise economy, but virtually all have more personal, political and religious freedom, yet Lauer suggested many were better off under communism. "The New Russia," Lauer fretted, "how a few people are doing very well and the fear that others are being left very far behind." Lauer lamented: "Russia's rush to capitalism left the vast majority scrambling to survive. For many, life is worse than it was in Soviet times."
The MRC's Geoff Dickens caught Lauer's agenda-laden questions and points, starting with a taped segment aired during the 7am half hour in which Lauer interviewed Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov as the two sat in an ornate office.
Some of the exchanges:
-- "It was about a year ago that the United States administration went to the United Nations and, and laid out a case for going to war using military action against Iraq. The Russians were opposed to that, favoring more, more inspections. Two of the reasons that were given by the U.S. administration were stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that Iraq had and links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A year later no weapons have been found, no firm links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Was Russia right and were the Americans wrong?"
Ivanov: "Sooner or later we have to close down this issue. It is also very important for Russia. Here there is no irony and no effort to gloat on the United States' failure to find such weapons of mass destruction because we still presume that, theoretical, those weapons could have been in place during Saddam but if so where [are] they now?" Lauer: "But do you think that the U.S. credibility-" Ivanov: "Were they passed to some other country or hidden or maybe some terrorists laid their hands?" Lauer: "Do you think that's a possibility?" Ivanov: "Theoretically? Yes." Lauer: "Realistically?" Ivanov: "Realistically I'm skeptical about that." Lauer: "Do you think the credibility of the United States and this particular administration has been damaged internationally in this last year?" Ivanov: "To an extent, maybe yes. But that's not the most important issue right now. The most important issue is Iraq itself. We have to come to some sort of interim, at least interim, local government. And after that I think it will be much easier when UN is there to start an international project of aiding Iraq, helping Iraq to come from the ruins." Lauer: "Secretary of State Colin Powell was here not long ago and one of the things he talked about was the possibility of the United States creating limited use bases in places like Poland and Bulgaria and some former Soviet states. How nervous does that make you?" Ivanov: "Very nervous." Lauer: "You feel as if the United States is attempting to surround Russia?"
At the top of the 8am hour, Lauer teased from live Red Square where is was mid-afternoon, as the camera swung around to show what he was describing: "Now over here we have Lenin's Tomb. I referenced that early in the show. It is where Lenin is entombed and it is a tourist attraction. People still go in there, it's a climate-controlled building. And just across over here, kind of something that would probably make Lenin spin in his tomb. This is the Gum department store in this turn of the century arcade, three stories high. Now not all that long ago Russians probably lined up in that building on long lines waiting for the staples they needed in life. Today you will find all kinds of high end stores located in there like Estee Lauder and Bennetton and Levi's and Hugo Boss. And there are a few Russians that have a lot of rubles to drop in places like that. And as a matter of fact coming up that's one of the things we're gonna be talking about. The New Russia, how a few people are doing very well and the fear that others are being left very far behind, Katie."
Lauer soon set up a look at the split between the rich and poor: "When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 there were no Russian billionaires. Today, 13 years later, there are 17. There was a period of economic confusion following the fall of the Soviet Union and a few people did awfully well while others were unfortunately left behind. Today about half the Russian people live in poverty. One in five makes no more than $150 a month but for a few there is prosperity here. There's glamour and glitz. Pradas and Porsches. Many in Moscow have become just too rich for the rest of the country. Flaunting one's wealth is as natural as snow and winter. Take Roman Bruzenskiy. Five years ago he started his own travel company arranging conferences for big companies. Today at 34 he's on the way to making his first million."
After introducing Aliona Doletskaya, who "spent 11 years teaching English in Soviet Russia before she became editor of Vogue magazine," Lauer asserted: "Some homegrown designers are even attracting buyers from abroad. But beyond the bright lights of Moscow Russia's rush to capitalism left the vast majority scrambling to survive. For many life is worse than it was in Soviet times. Still Russia is reinventing itself. The hope is in the new generation, young, hard-working high flyers willing to take risks."
From Red Square, Lauer then interviewed "two faces of the New Russia. Tutta Larsen is Russia's first MTV Veejay and Vassily Sidorov is the President and CEO of Russia's largest mobile phone operator, Mobile Telesystems."
Lauer pressed Sidorov: "Vassily there, there's two things happening here. A lot of people, or not a lot of people, a few people are doing well but unfortunately a lot of people are left behind. So how much responsibility is felt by those who are doing well to stop and pull those other people along with you?"
Lauer makes $5 million less than Couric's annual $13 million paycheck {that's about $8 million a year}. (2002)
Yes there were! They were called the Politburo's Communist Party Elite. Everyone else was living in near starvation.
If I ever meet Matt Lauer it will be my duty to puke on him.
Translation: We've been fed, led, and herded by the Nanny State for so long, we don't know how to change our own diapers anymore.
Tough shiznit.
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I'm always doing that. Seems like some of my best zingers go Zot!
This is such a load of crap. Capitalism hasn't worked in Russia because it has yet to be implemented. The USSR collapsed after it could no longer support the communist house of cards that it had been building for 70 years. In the early '90s, there was whining that the Russians were actually better off under communism than capitalism. The argument was a load of crap then because capitalism was unfairly taking a hit for not instantly turning around an empire's socialist economy that had utterly exhausted itself. The argument is garbage today because the former USSR isn't capitalist, it's a bankrupt kleptocracy that gets by on handouts and mafia rackets.
When Clinton came to power, he gave billions and billions to the former USSR to supposedly help them become a democratic commonwealth of states. The problem is, Bubba didn't give the money to the decent reform-minded people that could make it work. He funded corrupt communist party hacks that in turn funded the mafia. Klinton and the Soviets that he funded were not the slightest bit interested in reform that would do right for the Soviet people, they just looted the money to make themselves personally rich and setup mafia rackets that would keep the money coming to them. What a bunch of scumbags.
I was using that to illustrate the factor of timing.
I find it amusing that while Russia was building a capitalist society from the ground up, the American media were wailing.
Yes, there are poor people in Russia today and there has been some economic chaos(What a BIG freakin' surprise to our media!), yet I do not think I heard the voice of the media outrage when 85% of Russians could not even get more than a loaf of bread after an eight hour wait in line.
So, the media does not car about REALITY, they care about ideaology. When he whole country was starving but the idealogy was in place, everything was fine except for the "Nasty Republicans" making them starve.
Now, when things are much better, there is no utopia so obviously, we are wrong.
Never mind the fact that LESS people are suffering. It is all about the ideaology. Russia is Much better off now and its problems are natural. However, the media sees only the worst aspects of the birth of Russian Capitalism.
The fact that they did not see the horror and brutality of recent history tells me that they are extremely narrow-minded people. LOL! Isn't that what they say about us?
I must add that I am being charitable. The Soviets failed. Not only did they fail, we won the economic game. If the Soviets had WON the economic game but treated its people as slaves and murdered them indiscriminately, I would still hate the Communist system.
So, to the people of the western media, it doesn't matter that the Communists ruined the economies AND butchered the people. They could not even win the economis sphere. So, what does the Left want to brag about, their human rights record? LOL!
The reason I said I was being charitable is that people who show sympathy to Leftist ideals are just plain evil. How a sane person could endorse such madness is beyond me.
That's all. I will stop ranting now.
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