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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Anti-Americanism and Neo-Soviet Deception Alive and Well and Living at Pravda

You often hear Russians and Russophiles complaining to high heaven about "russophobia." But how often (ever?) do you hear them weigh in with their moral outrage against anti-Americanism? Perhaps they think it doesn't exist? Let's tool through the pages of Pravda and see. Did somebody say "we will bury you"? It turns out that, once again, America is on the verge of obliteration while Russia is on the verge of world domination. Remember, Russian people are basing their conclusions about both their own country and others on this kind of excrement:

As many people around the World continue in their amazement over the total moral and economic collapse of the American Nation, a possible new clue as to why this so was revealed this past week with the United States Department of Justice announcing the staggering rate in which their government has been jailing their own citizens, and which now stands at 7 million Americans. According to these reports, 'A record 7 million people - or one in every 32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year', and when these figures are added to the estimated 1 million prisoners of war held by the Untied States [sic] all around the World, the once great American Nation has now become the greatest jailer of human beings the World has ever known. More importantly about these numbers, however, is the debilitating effect they are having upon the American society as a whole due to the fact that these horrific numbers are a direct reflection of the Totalitarian Fascist Nation they have truly become. So draconian has life in the United States become, in fact, that their Nation's internal security police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), this past week received permission to monitor all American citizens by eavesdropping on their cell phones, and which according to these reports they are able to do even if the cell phones are turned off.
A reader writes:

Staggering indeed, but not the statistics - just Pravda's brazenness. If you are going to tell a lie make it a whopper. "They couldn't make that up, surely?" you might ask. Well, they have done. The US Dept of Justice press release reports a different story: On December 31, 2005, a total of 1,446,269 inmates were in the custody of State and Federal prison authorities, and 747,529 were in the custody of local jail authorities. In addtion to not be able to tell the truth, it appears that Pravda staff also can't count. So here are the real figures:

- Russian prison population is 864,000; National population 142.7 million; prisoner/pop ratio 0.61%

- US prison population is 2.1936m;
National population
298m; prisoner/pop ratio 0.745

It might also be argued that the Russian prison population percentage is only so low because so many people who should be behind bars in Russia are actually out and running the country. . . {LR: It might also be that Russians have spent so many years living like cattle that they no longer have the freedom of spirit necessary to open a window, much less commit a crime; in Soviet times, street crime was virtually unheard of but that didn't mean the nation was well off -- after all, it did collapse). Perhaps as Mr Putin felt so strongly about Litvinenko's last letter that he tried to lean on the British Government to stifle it in their independent press, the US Government might take a leaf of out of his book and make a complaint to the Russian Government. After all Pravda is owned by Gazprom and therefore really is under the control of the Russian Government.


Pravda continues:
Just as devastating to the American people as the total loss of their freedoms is the economic nightmare they are now entering, and as we can read as reported by Britain's The Guardian News Service in their article titled "Plunging dollar will set world markets reeling", and which says: "The slowdown in the US economy, which has sent the dollar into freefall over the past fortnight, will have devastating knock-on effects in markets around the world, analysts warn. As the US slows, and consumers in the world's biggest economy feel the buying power of the dollar in their pocket declining, global growth will be hit hard, economists say. The greenback took yet another turn for the worse on Friday, after a survey of the US manufacturing showed output declining for the first time in more than three years." It has been well said by others, that when the American War Leader Bush announced after the September 11, 2001 that the American Nation was in danger of losing its freedoms, he was more right than many of these helpless people knew, but not to any terrorist have the American people lost their freedoms, but from the actions of their own government has this been done.
So, Pravda crows about so-called American economic failure even while reporting that it "will have devastating knock-on effects in markets around the world." That's cutting of your nose to spite your face, isn't it? Or perhaps Pravda hates America so much that it really doesn't care if Russia is destroyed, just as long as America goes down too. Heard any Russophiles complaining about this "phobia" recently? No? Neither has La Russophobe. Meanwhile, Pravda ignores (because it probably doesn't understand) the fact that the falling dollar makes U.S. exports cheaper and causes a boom in American industry and employment. It ignores that the U.S. stock market is reaching stratospheric new heights, and that the U.S. adds far more value to people's incomes by posting growth of 2% than Russia does by posting growth of 10% (because the U.S. economy is more than ten times larger than Russia's). In other words, it's classic Soviet propaganda.

In another screed, Pravda states that "USA executes its citizens every ten days" and continues:
The day of November 30, 2005 will mark the execution of the 1,000th death sentence in the USA since the moment when death penalty was reinstated in the country: murderer Robin Lovitt sentenced to death penalty in Virginia back in 1999 will die by electric chair. US-based organization Death Penalty Information Center released a survey of facts regarding the state of affairs in the field of death sentences and their execution in the USA in connection with the forthcoming significant event in the nation. The report presents pure statistics and lacks any comments, which makes the document rather an objective material for further analysis. Adversaries of death penalty made US authorities pass an adequate moratorium in 1967. Death for severe crimes was substituted with lifetime imprisonment without pardon. In 1972 the US Supreme Court abolished the laws about death penalty in several states, where they were practiced, and described them as incidental and willful. However, a sudden upsurge of severe crimes in the USA made the Supreme Court retrieve the right for authorities in 1972 to apply death penalty against inmates. For the time being, death penalty is excluded from legal systems of only 12 of USA's 50 states: Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Man, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Vermont, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin. There is no death penalty in Columbia DC, where the US capital is situated, and in US-controlled Puerto Rico. Death penalty moratorium is currently in effect in the states of Illinois and New Jersey. The USA is proud of the fact that the national legal system has been searching for humane methods of executing death penalties for 120 years already. The process was initiated on 1 January 1889, when the authorities of the state of New York passed the Electrical Execution Law. The first execution with the use of electric chair took place on 6 August 1890: electric current killed a man named as William Kemmler, who hacked his lover, Matilda Ziegler, to death with an axe.
Once again, we see that facts mean nothing to the neo-Soviet propagandist. New York state, one of the nation's largest and most important, does not have capital punishment in force as the article states. It re-enacted capital punishment in 1995, but nobody has been executed in the state since that time (in fact, nobody has been executed since 1976) and after a court struck down the statute in 2004 the state legislature voted in 2005 not to reenact it. Only 18 capital trials have been held since 1995.

Moreover, as seen on this graph, executitions have been falling dramatically in the U.S. over the past decade, as has the overall crime rate. Russia, by contrast, has the fifth highest murder rate in the world. There were 60 executions in America in 2005, which is one every six days, not every ten. Pravda is so pathetic that it can't even get the facts which support its case correct.



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