Monday, February 04, 2008

I rarely watch TV now, but today I've spent about half an hour glued to Vesti Nedeli on RTR (Rossiya TV Channel). It's a gorgeous show, a great example of how perverted journalism has become here. Too bad I can't find any video to support my claim. They've got partial transcripts of all their items on their website, of course, but you really have to hear and see it, not just read it. If I, God forbid, ran this country, I'd introduce a feature similar to sign language translation that would accompany every show, with a tiny Victor Shenderovich sitting in the corner, translating everything as he sees fit: this way, everyone - not just the majority - would be satisfied.

Here are the main highlights of today's show (all links in Russian):

- OSCE is acting up, "once again threatening not to show up" for the election. Russia's foreign affairs ministry "has called this demarche 'sabotage'." In the same piece, that clown Andrei Bogdanov, presented as Russia's pro-European presidential candidate. The message: take a look at him, people, take a look at his hair - and you'll know right away what piece of crap this whole "eurointegration" thing is.

- Foreign spies pose a threat to the democratic nature of the upcoming election.

- In Serbia, things are more complex than we may lead you to believe - but: "If democrat Boris Tadic wins, Serbia loses Kosovo, but joins the EU - a humiliating peace in exchange for economic benefits. If radical Nikolic wins, Serbia will give them a good fight for Kosovo. Serbs will most likely lose the EU, but instead they'll keep their national dignity." But hey, it is, of course, more complex than this.

- Ukraine: "Proud to betray." The piece is about Mazepa and how we are re-writing history. And about our government's Russophobia: "The famine suffered by the Soviet peoples is now known as holodomor - a genocide against Ukrainians only, committed by Russians."

- Detroit: "Forgotten, barely alive." An incredibly apocalyptic piece. A masterpiece of idiocy. I really hope someone will upload it on YouTube. One thing that's not in the transcript is the mention of Eight Mile - as a "once flourishing neighborhood."

- Those dirty, sick, deceitful Central Asian migrant workers, eating all from one pan, not washing their hands after taking a leak - Russia's true enemy within. Says Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Russian Federal Center for AIDS Prevention: "A whole army is needed to track down which ones of them are HIV-positive, and who's got syphilis, and where they are now. We should be working harder to educate these people. They bring in HIV infection, and they should be taught to use condoms, so that they don't infect Russian citizens."

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the trip to the Brezhnev era:)! The way the Kremlin rocks sovok around the clock is totally unf***ingbelievable!

    I’m stunned by the cliché picture of the “rotting West” that I get from the Detroit piece. It reads like a propaganda ploy fresh out of Pravda and Izvestia. It’s a shame the author forgot to quote from The City of the Yellow Devil by Gorky.

    RTR’s Ukrainian coverage falls into the same category.

    What’s wrong with Mazepa pursuing a different future for his country, given the escalating encroachments on Ukraine’s autonomy?

    During the Holodomor, thousands of Ukrainians were dying every day, their villages cordoned off by NKVD troops. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik regime was exporting shiploads of grain out of the country. Is this the kind of famine they had in Povolzhye?

    What’s wrong with western Ukrainians resisting the two oppressive regimes that slaughtered and deported millions of Ukrainians, having signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

    The USSR was always on the lookout for oppressed third-world countries, ready to pump them with communism and armaments at short notice. Meanwhile, the folks in the kolkhoz had to work like serfs, with no internal passports issued to them until the mid 70s.

    And after all this hell, the Kremlin can’t even come to terms with the idea that its “younger brothers” may have a history of their own?

    Good-neighbor relations don’t work that way.

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  2. Great post. I so much share your view... state TV channels are even worse than local ones which are all day long buttering up local authorities.

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