Radio of the Martial Law Thirty years ago, on December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski had declared martial law in Poland, imprisoning Lech Walesa and other Solidarity Trade Union leaders. The Polish communist rulers placed the country under a complete information blockout, but thanks to radio programs in Polish from the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE)…
En ce moment, il n’y a plus de pilote dans l’avion. [At the moment, there is no longer a pilot on the plane.] — A European comment on President Obama as a leader of the Free World. TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, USA, January 03, 2011 — Who is the leader of the Free World when democracy is under threat? For a…
Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): It was thirty years’ ago, on 31 August 1980, that strikers from Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard forced the communist regime to recognize Solidarnosc as an independent trade union, release political prisoners, end media censorship and accept the right to strike. The regime later imposed martial law and Solidarity was forced underground before being…
FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, Commentary by Ted Lipien, September 8, 2008, San Francisco — A country like Russia either needs surrogate broadcasting or it doesn’t. Many countries, however, need balanced and objective news from the Voice of America that surrogate broadcasters living overseas are not trained to provide. If a country also needs a genuine surrogate broadcaster — as it is the case now with…