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tv   Cross Talk  RT  November 20, 2017 11:00pm-11:31pm EST

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when. he. says that she would prefer snap elections to forming a minority government that is after coalition talks between merkel's party and the democrats break down over irreconcilable differences. but was planning to filter. out of its news feeds by artificially deal ranking their story. today the united states is designating north korea as a state sponsor of terrorists and president raises the stakes over north korea officially branding pyongyang as a backer of terrorism. news cast heading your way in about an hour's time with my colleague. it is now time though for. national but if you're in the renegade
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incorporated is up next a. low in welcome to. america was required to register as a foreign agent might have prominent media outlets and civil liberties groups been largely silent also making sense of saudi in lebanese politics and not american footprint in syria. talking some real news i'm joined by my guest mark he's an international affairs and security analyst we also. victor leverage is a political analyst as well as
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a leading expert at the center for actual politics and we have some euro con she is an r.v. international correspondent based in washington d.c. or across the uk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it's new let me go to you first because you're a international correspondent but you're based in washington d.c. what is your reaction to this whole foreign episode i would say for a farce when it comes to free speech well as you can see the conservative and liberal free speech warriors are totally silent and it's bipartisan russia hysteria in this current political climate we think that it's just liberals or spewing anti russia rhetoric but unfortunately that's not true this anti russia sentiment is deeply embedded in u.s. political discourse be it clearly because of that it's damaging free speech or i mean i think we have this this is the weaponization and normalization of censorship in the media and it's it's not the end of something it's the beginning of something
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bigger of course look at the situation in the united states right now you can go into a large bookstore and buy my income for that or you can write it off just right just you can write or read to co-exist books and you can read them freely but for some reason you can you cannot. read. and. not be you know a sympathizer of russia and now if you go and give an interview tomorrow see you're going to be put on the list of people who who give interviews to a foreign agent and now if not now has to actually register with far has to register as a foreign agent even though you know b.b.c. doesn't have to register as a foreign agent al-jazeera doesn't have to. cheney's news channel doesn't have to but that it does and you know some agencies with the split up. it's work well so do
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now show us what you will have to build on this to register eventually so why is this happening does the american government actually believe that you can then the russian news outlets are actually more dangerous than the nazi you were or are the rhetoric why there's a beauty of that because he split and you can the other russian plants provide news that the mainstream media in the united states if you wish to give to the american because you have the political elite and you know media leads to to still want they don't have they no longer have any talent or arguments to narratives that you hear on this television station for is a is an old law dates back to the one nine hundred thirty eight it was originally meant to stop fascist nazi propaganda in the united states it has been very sparsely and only very selectively applied and almost never to have brought media stations but it has always been political and this is the most political we've seen yet there are numerous state broadcasters in the united states the wahhabi despot
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of qatar that sponsors isis and al qaida they're allowed to have al-jazeera al-jazeera doesn't have a branch of the united states anymore but that hasn't stopped them from from broadcasting in the united states the british government has b.b.c. the united states has its own voice of america radio free liberty current time t.v. you know all over the world this is targeting specifically russian media and it has to be said that while our t. international does present a russian world view just as chinese t.v. presents when you see us state media presents us real r.t. america it doesn't even really it's simply gives a platform to mostly american leftist progressives and some libertarians and that's the danger russia r.t. does exactly back to to the west what its own media has long been to russia it gives alternative fringe voices a platform to crit. size their own governments that they wouldn't have in their own
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media and that's that's it we're in the. useful idiots argument i think is what's most damaging to the media environment in the united states because if you can selectively take a law that is very rarely been applied and apply it very specifically very politically motivated it says a lot about what freedom of speech is really about if you don't follow certain narratives you will be completely shut out there is no more arguments my way or the highway especially if you're critiquing u.s. imperialism and nato expansion and that's definitely what a lot of the guests who have been dubbed useful anymore. yeah absolutely like i mean libertarians like ron paul they're leftists like max blumenthal how many how many chances do they have on corporate media to speak out against especially those topics when they have preinterview as well something that our team doesn't do we don't do pre-interviews. what is the i mean this is such
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a chilling effect that is going on in the united states you know this name and shame you mentioned lists here but isn't this certain logic dictate that if you start with one media organization it can be applied everybody else eventually and then we have the tech companies on top of the tech giants who are actually getting on board with their new algorithm and disappearing people and sites in plain in plain daylight here i mean the president here is something that should be worrying everyone of course you know we it's a test that's being played out without a key and sputnik right now because the american government wants to see how it's going to shut them down you know we were correct released the tension of civil liberties organizations and if. it was or some other countries deteriorate similar things will happen with chinese or with other internet.
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broadcasting stations so they will apply for first to see sputnik then they will go . further and as far as the tech giants you know the tech giants are saudi lions on u.s. government help and sometimes it's funding some of their projects sometimes it's using military bases to conduct. experiments and. other technological feats sometimes it's using the u.s. government transportation and other perks there saudi lying to the u.s. government there really cannot stand as an independent voice and they cannot say no they are being told to do this in they do it. but this and this at some point in time affect their bottom line i mean this is one of the great things about the internet is that people can choose i've said many times on this program and i will say it again no one is forced to watch the program that we're sitting in right now . the government now decides what your choices are going to be i can't see how in
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the longer run well that's a good idea look at twitter did with the protests to people during the election yeah i mean this is gross interference you need to censorship because social media let's be clear about what the government and these tech giants are now doing they are now deciding what is journalism right and they are not only that the truth with a capital particularly twitter and facebook but also the government they're dictating ideology they're now in the ideology business they're deciding what views can and can't be shown and twitter has started mass removing people that a lot of them i'm not particular fans of but it never stops there and where where will it go next we saw with fora when it was there was testimony and support the people driving this think tanks like the atlantic council write this european values think tank the useless idiots with this list of useful idiots i'm glad that at least useful i think they did actually put your name down as some kinds of
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supporter of let's talk about i mean you know he's stuck up i don't think these are jimmy carter testified that the purpose of this is not so much to affect the viewers they're not going to stop you from watching because we're labeled a foreign agent in fact it might increase our popularity might increase our street cred as critique of the u.s. but it's meant to stop credible guests from appearing on it's meant to scare them to threaten potential journalists saying you will never have a career if you work for r.t. or analysts and politicians saying you'll be blacklisted we'll name and shilling you feeling it will make adverts against your that a chilling effect and what these tech giants are are doing is is they're being pushed and now they're moving eagerly to you know cover their own interests are pursuing this along the same line and it has to be said. media rather than raising their voice in opposition to this they're cheerleading along there are some of the
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people like an owl and others driving this because it threatens their narrative it starts with r t and then we'll have other russian and other state broadcasters but the next target and they've already been identified by the same think tanks as useful idiots all to media. counterpart and. their own anti-war one of the interest the saddest thing to take away from all this is that i would say one of the foundations of western culture that it provides the world is a marketplace of ideas in that what you have is the west doing that during the soviet union the soviet government didn't want for news to be heard by soviet citizens but that's exactly what's happening in the united states right now and i would say in the western world they want to shut out the outside and alternatives and civil liberties groups i mean the mainstream media they're all silent on that
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as well as the oh yeah exactly where's the something we. can be i solve it right away and for it to tell on use this is a play and for enjoyment on free speech free speech the first amendment based on what the idea that russia supposedly hacked the election that's the foundation of all of this which we have no evidence that it's you know here and a half later no evidence but you know mark said earlier is this not simply right i mean if you look at our team america where you work in washington there isn't all that much coverage of russia it is really a critique of narratives about the west that it has about itself their own liberal progressive viewpoint and this is this is what's most dangerous to them they're going after liberals and progressives but liberals and progressives. well come to defense of the station not many you know the radio in danger of the close and closing of the american mind is that those of you who was there and other stations
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provided to the american audience they're going to be shut down and instead of being able to to express them these people are going to get more and more angry at being shut down but their views are not going to go we are not being we're not going to go away either you go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on some real news stay with. welcome to max kaiser. looking forward to your. yanks this is what happens to pensions in britain. you watch kaiser report.
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welcome back across the uk where all things are considered i'm peter bell to remind you we're discussing some real news. ok let's move on to the mysteries and paradoxes of lebanese and saudi politics i mean for me it's just fascinating because it's so much multifaceted in the end there is there's so much to look at depending on what issue do you want to focus in on but one thing is for sure there is something going on in the middle east right
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now and it's not the birth pangs of democracy if we remember congolese rice markets some bullet points at least it's a big topic yeah saudi arabia is involved in so many problems and conspiracies from their invasion and starvation mass starvation or yemen right now with western and other gulf cooperation backing their for their failed regime change operations in syria the mess they've helped create in libya now they're going a step further and they've stepped further into lebanese politics by many even western mainstream accounts supposedly the lebanese prime minister. who is a pro u. s. lebanese prime minister pro so to you and pro so he has essentially been kidnapped by the new crown prince of saudi arabia and his has been held this far as i want to tell you his friends by now he could. he was on his way to france we'll see what the verdict is out of that what once he is allowed to speak freely in france but
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it's it's presumed that that saudi arabia having failed in syria and elsewhere is trying to confront iran in lebanon and they want to take on hezbollah a militant group that. they fought the israeli army and armed with the same you were asked to write to a standstill and saudi arabia does not have the professional capable military that israel does so i'm not sure that hezbollah is a pick that they want to do it but when i look at it if i could just use a different analogy here i mean if we go through with the according to the saudi position that the task of being in iraq is have to see in syria catastrophe in yemen and they're going to have to get the saudis it was going to get i was going to get there ok and they want to throw the dice one more time you know one of the fascinating things looking at western media coverage of this is that the crown prince he's. really seen if it looks it looks like one of the most
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amazing incredible shakedown operations in history give me seventy percent of your wealth mr billionaire all dark and i'll let you free i think those that have been killed that that's extortion here but this is you know there are those voices in western media that are saying dismantle reform are ok as i saw on another channel but you know what saudi arabia is surrounded by problems problems it created for itself go ahead well the western media thing always fail to acknowledge that saudi arabia is not a monolithic entity and that's how they portrayed us that this is a basically a dual dictatorship with countervailing interests between the hobby clergy and the monarchy and that's important to understand before determining its foreign policy and predicting its foreign policy that's you know it's you know i heard this term moderate islam coming out of a kind of shook me in my boots there ok that's something that i don't see anywhere
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of showing oh no no no no but i mean but but then you know with that big something i mean it's not what western ears and i want to hear and see because what i saw that i was not convinced to say the least picture. i think it will come out more like a geopolitical we will have had them in the middle east and essentially west of mutation the obama administration wanted to position saudi arabia and iran against each other but and control the middle east if we have a type of mutation has a different take on it they want to empower saudi arabia more they want to go back to the traditional american foreign policy of supporting the gulf monarchies against against iran and of course saudi arabia doesn't have an army that doesn't even care when i'm in the table to fight yemen successfully much less iran the poor country or exactly so what does and even though he has some allies in the game and
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even with that it can't it can't win them all you need like right so. and so any allies is this so what they want to do is they want to use their regional allies like israel even though they don't want to see it plowed and they want to use the united states to get us help to to pressure iran and to get iran so we get this straight here it is because of this pathological view of iran held by the american political elites is that the they simply basically give the new crown prince soon to be king a complete blank check as long as he goes after iran that is just terrific lee childish and dangerous but. this new crown prince so he's conducting this bloody purge at this point he's arrested and killed some of them dozen members of the royal family disciplined. his ascension to the throne after his father of some
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fifty ministers previous ministers he's had under house arrest at least a couple of them have been killed in the the arrest process and if you were in the ritz yeah if your mattress was literally ripped across the ritz has been turned in riyadh has been turned into a royal residence a prison i guess if you've got to be in prison by a monarch but there's worse places than that than the ritz but. this alliance between saudi and israel they're trying to draw the us back to enforce direct military had gemini over the middle east that was interrupted when the us invaded iraq in two thousand and three and upset the balance that existed allowed iran to influence. or influence over an increasingly shia. iraq their failed intervention in syria has only strengthened. iranian influence in syria and lebanon with hezbollah and they've they've created this shia or that they were so
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petrified about by their own attempt it's the worst case of we go from us playing back to saudi but i think it's a little bit of course it's russia's fault is it was really kind of going to the reason why the us is so against iran the main reason for its so of conference confrontation with iran is that iran is a power that does not is not subdued by u.s. interests corporate interests and. you know national interests and it's a fight with the nose it's on a national interest and pursues them with everything it's got and it's not scared of the united states and that's what scares the you know if they don't think what i think is very interesting is that you know iran is the world's greatest exporter of terrorism which you can see now because you know what the reality reality is of course it has interests in the region but the reality is compared to saudi arabia the less does the better for it because it watches its its enemies in the gulf
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commit one blunder if you if this is. an official alliance between israel and saudi arabia those are if you look at the track records of both countries in the region i wouldn't put my marker on that relationship so well if you look at going off of what he said from one thousand fifteenth. up until one nine hundred seventy nine the us wasn't anti iraq was it the shah was essentially a us puppet so you want to say it's amazing how things can change here mark i can't see anything good coming out of this i mean you know what i trained as a historian you know when the french before the revolution started trying to reform they had a revolution when russia was reforming it had a real revolution when the soviet union was reforming it had essential you know revolution and now we have saudi arabia i don't have much competence for the region
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considering the constellation of forty i don't even have much confidence for the house of saud because they see i mean you are everything to ensure that they themselves collapse at this point and. you know what is the argument of the arguments i came across this in western media is that the crown prince is we are demonstrating that saudi arabia is going to be a good foreigner yes maybe. things are you so you take money you take tens of billions of dollars away from people illegally without any law and you want to invest your money it is really that's exactly what they want because the reason they herald this guy is a reformer or a. bloody coup or to purge it's portrayed in the western media as courageous liberal sure how if you are starting to see some want to shamelessly what they're really demonstrating is that next week there's going to be a new king in saudi arabia and then you king needs to suppress those who are in possible opposition to him and that's what he did and everything else is
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nice for him. not just at the behest of the saudis but also the because of i mean. that's one of the most amazing things he's marks the nail on the head here is that all of this is going on we have a press we have executions we have property being seized and this is being painted as liberalism in the arab going to drive by the way as far as the condition isn't over it's. now there is another prison that used to have similar footing in the hague it was called the fair the hilton well if you have nice p.r. people like milosevic and others died there and there are quite. mysterious circumstances before there are times where you and fish i won't overestimate the niceness that's right one of the interesting things here is that something i think western media has overlooked is that this is rather rare of the the house of saud going after its own because they usually have protections you'll never go to prison you'll never be under read. or consent and you could be kind of pushed aside you
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know you know and another thing i was very interesting if you look at the people who've been dispossessed or in the process of being dispossessed they own media assets and in the middle east and in the western world the crown prince wants to grab those for him so to be able to control the narrative i suppose a crown prince is learning a lot from american media ok you know when you have concentrated being able to control the narrative here mark last minute yeah when they were why they were harold him as a reformer there's so much excitement about him is because he and he listens to neo liberals and they hope that he is going to privatized a lot of state saudi assets at least partially of it like a ram go because they need to establish oil company they want to buy into saudi control of oil and other natural resources the middle east that's why they're so excited about him is because he's a neo liberal and he listens to neo liberals and aside from that on the foreign policy angle the neo cons in the us are all too eager to do what he wants and bring
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the us back directly into these wars in the middle east in syria going to finally be finally targeted rand paul or and his follow through to finally create so much imperial overstretch that the u.s. military empire overseas collapses under its own weight blowback that's the way they look at it here of russia anyway mark you. always and on a very interesting point that's all the time we have here many thanks my guests here in moscow and thanks to our viewers for watching us here markie see you next time and remember.
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she'll be. still the president miles from absolute. depends on those just for that day and with. that one up but we will meet today. with mr sort of my love and respect to let him get me or be here now with jamie as a hunk was the only. now at the five. but because hillary got money for that matter. i see let him to make the point i mean for the on the medal have gave up because of me as you said when i when i looked at.
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that image was quite controversial some people sore as irresponsible some people sort of dangerous threatening whereas other people including use or as a symbol of something very different was it. powerful. protecting. as my friend of. the people who criticize you what the base. are right wing lunatic.
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eighteen years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with the gun i witnessed the grim results of these weapons in hospital emergency rooms morgues and the confused of the mass of mass shooting sprees after each new massacre the newspaper headlines were always the side why did it happen here. since my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by firearms in the usa five hundred twenty seven thousand people dead and many more injured i decided to return to the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photographed those years ago to understand why despite this death toll there is such fierce resistance to even moderate gun control laws in the usa.
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is there was inger on the trigger that's not what the picture is about he's not trying to harm me. he's trying to protect me. i'm looking out for myself my family. my neighbors. zand. relaxing.

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