By that definition, RT may indeed be propaganda. It does dispense information, after all.
If you're looking for news and information, as Cher once wondered in a different context, "Where do you go?"
Alex Jones is being censored and banned. We don't support that.
'Oh, but Alex is hideous and awful!'
Is he? We'll take your word for it because, guess what? We've gone our entire lives without ever listening or watching Alex Jones' program. It doesn't need to be censored or shut down. You just -- if you're not into, like we're not -- need to find something else to occupy your time. Last time we checked, there were no reports of home invasions by Alex where he held someone at gun point and forced them to watch his programming.
For free speech reasons alone, we don't support censoring or banning Alex Jones.
But there are other issues at play as well.
You don't hear about that from US media.
We like Mike Papantonio -- and not just because, immediately after the 2004 presidential election, he refused to let Rachel Maddow 'cute up' his name by shortening it (we remember everything -- we're not repeating her 'cute up' because we found it as offensive as he did). But here's Mike explaining issues beyond free speech in the Alex Jones' case:
This guy's got some issues but Alex Jones owns a piece of property, right? It is his site. His site is moving through this infrastructure that taxpayers helped pay for, right? It has a value to it, it's a property right. So all of the sudden, someone says, 'We're going to take away your property right.' And in there, if you think about it, there's also a commerce clause, isn't there? Because we have advertisers that are paying to be on Alex Jones' site. Commerce is interfered with. If they take away his right to further that commerce, you've got, I think, a legitimate commerce clause issue. You certainly got issues that are going to center around issues of equal protection and due process and even anti-trust.
Now Mike wasn't having that discussion on the radio program he and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. originated (RING OF FIRE). No, he and Farron Cousins were having the discussion on RT, on Mike's RT program AMERICA'S LAWYER.
RT -- RUSSIA TODAY AMERICA -- most will remember, was declared a foreign agent November 13, 2017 -- declared a foreign agent by the US government and forced to register with the US government to continue broadcasting in the US. What most don't remember is that Jim Rutenberg and THE NEW YORK TIMES went after RT in September of 2016 -- calling Larry King and the late Ed Schultz stooges of Putin -- smearing them. (One of us, C.I., has known Larry for years and been on his shows often -- though she has never been on his show currently broadcast on RT. You can refer to this COMMON ILLS entry for more on that.) Rutenberg has Mommy issues, a receding hairline (those bad bangs aren't fooling anyone) and teeth that needs caps or veneers. Why you'd name someone to media -- knowing they'd have to go on cable -- when they look like Rutenberg is anyone's guess.
But THE NEW YORK TIMES found their stooge -- as they always do.
And it was Gore Vidal who forever pointed out that when you wanted to know what the US State Department or US intelligence agencies wanted you to think, read THE NEW YORK TIMES. Propaganda is their natural bent. They used propaganda, please remember, to sell the Iraq War.
There is no proof that Russia interfered with the US 2016 election or that it altered the outcome of the election but damned if THE NEW YORK TIMES hasn't gone out of its way to pretend as if proof had been established.
But they're not the only fake ass con artists.
Check out MSNBC if you want to see real propaganda. And never look far from Rachel Maddow who will never be as cute as she thinks she is. And you'd think a woman who looked like Scott Baio would have long ago realized that cute just wasn't in her future.
But there was she last night offering up . . .
Well nothing of use.
JUST IN: Hillary Clinton to @maddow: "I think I was an obstacle to [Russia's] plans to undermine and disrupt our democracy. I think I was an obstacle to impose greater authoritarian control in Russia ... I think they wanted to get me out of the way."
Oh, Hillary. A lot of people wanted you out of the way -- and most of them were Americans. You don't have to look beyond this country to find so many opposed to you.
It's cute the way MSNBC, by the way, presents Hillary as our Lord and Savior when eight years ago, they were very clear that she needed to be taken out behind the barn and dealt with or when Keith Olbermann attacked Hillary in one of his many 'special comments' (such as this one). They are really good about ignoring history and facts at MSNBC.
So viewers last night were treated to more celebrity.
There's a smell that's here today and they call it -- Hillary!
A different smell that thinks your way and they call it -- Hillary!
Kind sad, kinda old, Hillary!
Really bad and looks like mold, Hillary!
The kind of smell that won't go away, Hillary!
Two years after her humiliating loss, she still can't own her own defeat. She still blames so many others. And MSNBC calls this garbage 'news.'
Over on RT, you could hear Chris Hedges:
Trump was not elected because of the Podesta e-mails or because of Russian bots on FACEBOOK. Trump was elected because of the massive social inequality and the sense of entrapment, the frustration and the rage on the part of a betrayed working class. And they were betrayed primarily by the Democratic Party in this sense because the Democratic Party continued to speak as if it cared and protected their interests and yet, especially under the Clinton administration, it sold them down the river.
Rachel used her time to fawn over a failed politician and to indulge in conspiracy theories. RT used its time, during ON CONTACT WITH CHRIS HEDGES, to address real issues -- including how these never-ending wars are draining the national monies and this tends to happen in dying empires.
In fact, all week long we've seen RT address real issues -- including how few Americans even have $500 in savings, they live paycheck to paycheck. Somehow, that's not a topic that Hillary Clinton wants to discuss -- with or without Rachel panting in front of her, tongue hanging out.
We saw a woman in Mosul explain the support for ISIS when Mosul was occupied by the terrorist group. We saw discussions of the UK's role in the Iraq War from the beginning, including their role in the Niger fabrication. We saw the protests in Basra covered seriously. All the things missing from the so-called US TV news media? We found them on RT.
Richard Sackler was a major topic on this week's KEISER REPORT, for example. Where was Rachel and the MSNBC no-stars on that one? Sackler's made a ton of money selling OxyContin via his family's Purdue Pharma and now he stands to make a lot more money because, having helped created the opiod crisis in the US, he now holds the patent to a treatment medication. It's outrageous and this was made clear in the discussion.
WATCHING THE HAWKS this week reported on Hillary Clinton -- not Rachel's fan-girl erotic fiction, but actual news. They reported on her latest project to get big money further into our elections and they reported on Hillary's latest whine for THE ATLANTIC about how her loss is the end of the world as we know it. They quoted her writing, "How fragile our experiment in self-governmenbt is. And, when viewed against the sweep of human history, how fleeting."
They missed the big story there.
We didn't. We have to watch entertainment television, we cover media. Unlike Jim Rutenberg, we actually cover media. Did you watch the debut of an FX series last week? Yeah, we did too. Which is why we were aware that Hillary -- or whomever ghost wrote THE ATLANTIC piece for her -- also caught the debut of AMERICAN HORROR STORY -- specifically Kathy Bates' big speech -- and worked it into Hillary's bad essay.
We also caught Julie Chen's big moment where she ripped off A STAR IS BORN ("I'm Julie Chen Moonves," she said on BIG BROTHER trying to copy Barbra's "I'm Esther Hoffman Howard" moment at the end of A STAR IS BORN). In fact, we thought we'd be writing about that; however, two groups in a row on Monday -- speaking with college students about the war -- drove home that there was a real need for actual news. We heard and agreed that the crying 'anchors' (talk show hosts) were an embarrassment, that CNN and MSNBC could and should be ignored since they exist in a world untouched by the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, that Amy Goodman sold out long, long ago . . . We heard so very much that we agreed with. And we recommended (BLACK AGENDA RADIO, for example, THE JIMMY DORE SHOW, CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX). But we wondered what did you do if you were looking for news as it happens, where did you go? You certainly can't go to PACIFICA RADIO which has entered a shameful period in their effort to run with the flea bitten dogs and repeat the Russia hysteria. So where do you go?
And that's when we decided it was time to turn into RT and see what they were offering?
There's a propaganda on MSNBC -- one of distraction. It's a sleight of hand that attempts to distract the American people from the issues that matter.
We prefer the propaganda of RT AMERICA -- actual facts and information about issues that actually matter in our daily lives. If you're feeling let down by the American broadcast media, we feel you. As RT's Peter Lavelle observed on CROSSTALK, American 'news' media is nothing but "hours and hours of virtue signaling." We deserve so much more and so much better.