{"id":881,"date":"2007-06-01T14:57:44","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T20:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/06\/01\/dictatorship-abhors-a-vacuum\/"},"modified":"2007-06-01T14:59:12","modified_gmt":"2007-06-01T20:59:12","slug":"dictatorship-abhors-a-vacuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=881","title":{"rendered":"Dictatorship Abhors a Vacuum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed, on the road with the Romney campaign in Iowa, writes regarding the Venezuelan peoples’ dissatisfaction with Chavez’ imposition of his version of the Fairness Doctrine<\/strike> shutting down of the opposition press:<\/p>\n

Dictatorships and oppression will afflict mankind for ages to come, and we have to be prepared to fight against it, using the most effective weapons in our arsenal. Fred [Thompson, in an interview today]\u00a0reminds us that simple communication of truth, and the establishment of our credibility from that effort, is perhaps the most powerful and effective weapon against tyranny that we possess. It’s high time that we start using it again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This has been one of the worst effects of not only the Clinton Administration, but of both Bushes; Papa George, eager to claim the “peace dividend” at the end of the Cold War, began the process of shutting down America’s information efforts around the world; Clinton and Bush Junior continued the trend.<\/p>\n

And yet throughout history, especially during the broadcast era, “propaganda” has been an essential part of getting the truth to oppressed people around the world.\u00a0 Throughout the Cold War, Radio Free Europe broadcast news to Eastern Europe; Radio Marti to Cuba.\u00a0 During World War II, occupied Europe relied on the BBC for news (as well as coded broadcasts to resistance units – the Beeb was the\u00a0fastest way to get information to <\/em>guerillas in Nazi territory).\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, today, as we fight a war in the Middle East, and continue fighting a three-decade-long undeclared war against a theocracy that is as deeply-unpopular with its own people as were Poland’s, Hungary’s and Czechoslovakia’s among theirs, we have…<\/p>\n

…nothing.\u00a0 No US information service, no “Radio Free Persia” broadcasting to Iran; virtually nothing broadcasting to the Middle East outside of Iraq itself.\u00a0 No US broadcast outlet serving the Venezuelan that might be looking for something not vetted by Hugo Chavez…<\/p>\n

…except the American mainstream media’s foreign outlets.\u00a0 Which is, of course, the problem…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed, on the road with the Romney campaign in Iowa, writes regarding the Venezuelan peoples’ dissatisfaction with Chavez’ imposition of his version of the Fairness Doctrine shutting down of the opposition press: Dictatorships and oppression will afflict mankind for ages to come, and we have to be prepared to fight against it, using the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}