Russia's claim of Georgia genocide in South Ossetia hard to verify

The LA TImes ^ | August 18, 2008 | Megan K. Stack

[RightFighter]

We also got into it this weekend about stem cells. She is very adamant that there should be massive federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. No amount of discussion could even begin to sway her that the science in this field has actually moved beyond embryonic stem cells since they can now reproduce pluripotent cells from skin cells without having to destroy embryos. She thinks (as many Americans do, I’m sure) that since all these babies are being aborted anyway, they ought to be able to harvest their stem cells for research.

On nearly every other issue, she’s a true-blue conservative, but on this one, she’s thrown me for a loop.

[Izord]

My mother in law lives about an hour and a half from Moscow. We set her up a satellite tv system last year. Two dishes. The installation was about $300. And the service is basically free for about 400-600 channels. There are a lot of Russian channels, about 20 stations from the U.S. as well as as the channels from the satellites in that hemisphere. From England, Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy Spain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, all the way to Hong Kong. They are uncensored.

Here in the US, I have Cox Cable and two dishes from Direct TV. I get a few hundred channels. Other than 3 Russian channels I pay extra to Direct TV, I can tell you 99% of my feeds here originate in North America.

It’s simply a geographic thing. That side of the world sees different satellites than we do, and the feeds are not linked.

When is the last time you watched Russian or even German or Italian TV? I’m willing to bet that it is extremely rare for most Americans to see anything other than feeds originated here in the U.S.

I don’t have to spell it out for you if you can read between the lines which group is easier to feed censored stories with lots of bias. The group getting feeds from the rest of the world? Or the group who sees American satellites? Which group are you in?

I do not mean to be in the least antagonist, but I spend several months a year travelling in different countries, so I see firsthand the information presented to people in various places. Good day.