Saturday, August 08, 2009

Ouch! You’re THINKING Something!

In Europe, words must hurt more than they do anywhere in the world. Especially if they actually mean something.

Former KGB man, Vladimir “Vladimir” Putin and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s widow try to minimize the horror of the Gulags for, well, “social reasons” of hurt feelings.

Language, however, can be a sensitive matter. In Soviet Russia communist rulers saw 'propaganda' as a healthy weapon to be used against enemies of the state. To enemies of the state such as Solzhenitsyn it was an evil to be combated.

"In just few days we will mark a year since Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn passed away," Putin began, in welcoming Natalya Solzhenitsyna to his office. "Remembering this, I would like to return today to the issue we have discussed with Alexander Isayevich - the propaganda of his work, studying..."
un-hunh. Oddly enough, we see no evidence of disagreement by the Reuters hack over the subject of propaganda either.

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