TV News from Eastern Europe
For many years, I have been using a Linux set top
box and two IPTV services for which I pay 60 euros per year each, to receive TV
broadcasts from all over the world, including U.S. and British premium channels
and Pay Per View. I subscribe to Spectrum
for normal paid service with DVR, et al, and use the IPTV box as an experimental
setup.
Long story short, in times of international crisis,
like Russia’s recent attack on Ukraine, I can access TV news directly from the
country(s) affected. I still understand
a fair bit of Polish, and can follow Russian and Ukrainian spoken context from
similarity of these Slavic languages to Polish.
The Polish news chyrons are in normal Latin script, but Russian and
Ukrainian chyrons are in Cyrillic script, which I have pretty much learned, but
to which I have to sound out the words like a first-grader.
I’ve been watching TV in the original languages of
all three countries. The Russian news, of
course, supports Putin and his aggression. I receive one news channel from Ukraine, and
you can imagine its focus. The Polish
news concentrates on the humanitarian crisis that has developed on the border
of Poland and Ukraine in Southeastern Poland, where my Polish ancestors are originally
from, and where I’m sure that I have many relatives that I have never met.
There is an outpouring of support for Ukraine and condemnation of Putin and
Russia by the Poles. Blue and yellow Ukrainian
flag pins are everywhere on Polish lapels.
Since Putin did not stop with Eastern Ukraine, and
chose to invade the whole, massive country of Ukraine, with 45 million people,
there is a real fear in Poland, and particularly in the three Baltic states, that
Putin may invade them next, NATO or no NATO.
Putin is pissed off that his vaunted Russian military is having such a
difficult time with the Ukrainian Cossacks, and he still considers the idiot in
chief in Washington, and the west in general, as extremely weak. Also, the strong real sanctions being imposed
against Putin by most of the countries in the world have made him a pariah and
isolated him even further than his paranoic self-imposed isolation.
Ray Gruszecki
March 1, 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment