Russian Journalists

Many, many years ago when USSR was more vibrant, still a super power, and helping India develop its Steel Plants like those of Bokaro and Bhilai, numerous Russian Engineers and Journalists were posted in India for long periods of time. My late father-in-law, a judge in a court of law in Dhanbad, close to Bokaro Steel Plant in Bihar, came into contact with numerous Russians. The Russians, will repeatedly remind him, that as Communists they did not believe in God, and were atheists. But they have turned into Believers, during their stay in India. These Russians were convinced that the God existed,
If nowhere else, then definitely in India. The proof they provided for the existence of God was that there was so much of rampant corruption in all spheres of the society, people did not work, just passed time at their jobs, got paid for doing nothing, but the country (India) was doing fairly well. This could be attributed only to God running India through its invisible powers, hence he must exist. I wonder, in what ways can we extend this theory to explain, ‘India Shining’ now.
During the same 1960s, a group if Russian Journalists were invited to USA and were taken around the country, for explaining them the freedom of the press, democracy and journalistic power in the USA. After a stay of several weeks in this country, and watching various television shows, especially the news and views provided by journalists, listening to comments on the radio, reading numerous premier newspapers from various parts of the country, they were astonished to see that reporting of the news and journalistic comments were very similar all over the country and in the various media.
All the papers, radio stations, television programs had the same kind of news and similar views. There was no voice of dissent, and all media propagated the views of the Government. Hence they naturally asked, ‘what is the secret ?’. They said, in our country, the USSR, when you want journalists to reflect the viewpoints of the Government, you have to put them in Gulag, pull their nails off, torture them, and scare them with serious/fatal consequences. Only then they toe the lines of the Government. How can this be done in the USA, so easily, without any of such threats ? The Russians left us to conclude, that the so called ‘free press’ in USA is a propaganda, and is more subservient to the views of the Government and large Corporations than in most other places of the world.
Few months ago, a Russian Journalist has been accused to poison and kill another Russian Journalist by visiting the latter in a London hotel room. The US press is mad about this and wants to hang President Putin for his alleged involvement in the matter.
The expulsion of diplomats between UK and Russia, for not extraditing the accused Journalist from Moscow to London for a trial, makes us to believe that we value truth and justice much, and we are bent upon protecting the voice of dissent.
But the same USA and UK, which is fighting for a dead Russian Journalist, so vehemently, will not care when its own Journalist (Brad Will, on Oct 27, 2006) is killed by the rogue regime/police in a south American country, just south of our border, for filming/photographing the atrocities of the government officials and police against its innocent citizens demonstrating for their civil rights in a little known city, oxaaca in El Salvador.
Both incidents happened almost in the same weeks, and how much did we hear from our ‘free press’ on the death of our own slain, brave American Journalist working in the trenches, compared to the Russian Journalist enjoying the hospitality of the British Government in a posh, luxurious hotel room in London ?
And why every defector, be he/she a Sikh trying to propagate terrorist activities in Panjab
for the creation of Khalistan, a Naga leader from north eastern part of India agitating for
a separate Nagaland to break away from India, Italians and Danes stealing funds from the coffers of Indian Government through shady arms deals, and a host of similar people, who start trouble in their homelands, find refuse so easily in London, and the British protecting them so fiercely.
No wonder, John Pilger, British filmmaker/author, had to proclaim lately in Chicago, about our ‘brilliant and free press’, ‘ More you watch (our TV shows), and read (our newspapers), the less you know’, which Vandana Shiva has named, long back, ‘Subjugated Knowledge’