Russia’s MP suggests moving UN headquarters from the U.S. [REPORT]

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A Russian MP wants to move the UN headquarters from the U.S. to a ‘neutral country’.

Speaking to the United Nations Secretary General, a member of Fair Russia party, Igor Zotov says that the U.S. is taking advantage over its position to apply pressure against other members of the UN.

“The benefits of the public discussion prompted by the initiative to move the UN headquarters are obvious. It will allow nations to get a different view of the UN’s place in the modern world and yet another time raise the question of fundamental problems in this organization and its adapting to modern realities,” Zotov explained in his letter, as quoted by Russian daily Izvestia.

Zotov insists that the decision to move the UN headquarters from the U.S. must be made with a broad agreement of all UN members’ representatives as well as a large number of politicians, political experts and activists.

The current location of the UN headquarters allows Washington to ‘manipulate’ the work of the organization through ‘selective’ access of other members’ representatives to the working meetings of the UN, according to Zotov.

The initiative was supported by deputy head of the State Duma Committee for International Relations, Leonid Kalashnikov, who said that the Russian delegation in the organization could initiate the move of the UN’s headquarters to a neutral county like Switzerland.

Russian delegation cancels its participation in UN conference

Such an idea have emerged as a response to last week’s scandal, in which the chair of the Russian upper house was delayed by U.S. authorities. Valentina Matviyenko was scheduled to attend an inter-parliamentary conference at the UN headquarters as well as have a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York City, but U.S. authorities restricted her visa.

The entire Russian delegation in the UN cancelled their participation in the conference, while the meeting between the Federation Council leader and Ban Ki-moon was postponed.

As a response, Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. tried to obstruct Matviyenko’s attendance at the conference hosted by the UN.

“The visa contains a number of unacceptable restrictions on Valentina Matviyenko’s stay in the United States,” the ministry expressed its outrage, saying that the U.S. actions “constitute a flagrant violation of universally accepted norms of international law and are contrary to the obligations of countries hosting multilateral forums on their territory.”

However, Matviyenko responded to the scandal, saying that Russia was not willing to carry on further confrontation, but noted that the Kremlin reserved the right to put into place reciprocal visa restrictions against U.S. lawmakers. She added that this kind of moves must be ‘proportionate’ and ‘reasoned’.

Media and Hollywood are two most powerful weapons of U.S. propaganda

Russia and the U.S. are two powers, whose confrontation has been around since the end of the World War II. In most cases, the confrontation between these two countries relies not on missiles or nuclear weapons, but rather on words.

The U.S. uses its media as well as its famous movies industry – Hollywood – as the weapons of propaganda.

Most popular news agencies such as CNN always have a narrative prepared, which supports and justifies all actions of the U.S. all around the world.

Meanwhile, hundreds of scripts are being written on daily basis explaining U.S. operations and are delivered straight to American and foreign societies.

Hollywood is linked to U.S. foreign policy as well. It could be clearly noticed that immediately after the military intervention of U.S. troops in the Middle East, a new hot theme appeared in the movies.

Russian propaganda at its best

However, Russian propaganda is no worse in terms of its creativity. Since the times of Joseph Stalin and his Pravda newspaper, Russia didn’t have any convincing media outlets that could influence the whole world.

After twenty years of media helplessness outside its borders, Russia finally managed to launch its propaganda machine – Russia Today, also known as RT. The Russian channel is financed straight from the government’s budget.

Russia managed to spread its influence all over the world with the help of RT. Apart from substantial investments from Russia’s budget, a key factor that made the channel so influential was its opening in English language.

RT allows to see Russia’s point of view on daily life in the U.S., U.K. and other Western countries. The main focus of the channel is to criticize the U.S. and its allies. Before RT, it was something that was not possible in the worldwide scale.

The overwhelming popularity of RT is indicated by the fact that the channel is the most popular news channel on YouTube, having over 1.5 million subscribers.

Russia vs. U.S. propaganda: Who is the winner?

Russian President Vladimir Putin probably realized why the U.S. was more successful than his country in disseminating its views around the world. That is why he made a decision to implement the same tactic based on U.S. experience in the media.

Due to large investments of Russia into its propaganda machine, it seems that the U.S., for the first time in the history, finds itself in a vulnerable position in a fight in the media field.

However, Russia substantially fails at delivering immediate breaking news filled with its anti-American narrative. RT tries its best to win a few points for Russia in this battle, but there are so many U.S.-based news outlets publishing news that this battle seems unfair to Russia.

And as the history shows, having bias in breaking news is the most effective tool of any propaganda, as people are easily influenced by something that is fresh and breaking, something that they don’t need to give much thought into.

Source: RT

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