So the privately run "family detention centers" like the one set up in Dilley, Texas, by the Obama administration were acceptable, but this is a step too far?

This shit didn't magically appear out of thin air. You can trace it throughout the entire history of the US: the separation of children from their parents during slavery, the forceful removal of children from reservations and their placement into "Indian schools", the mass incarceration of primarily minority youths for the crime of being poor, and physical removal of parents in foreign nations by incinerating them in drone strikes, etc.

This shit is despicable, but it's not a deviation from previous actions -- it's just the next step. And for Maddow to "break down" over this... There are Syrian refugees living in the apartment building across the street from me. How many Syrian, Libyan, Somali, Pakistani, Afghani and Yemeni children have been separated from their parents by US bombs and missiles? Never stopped Maddow from warmongering.

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He does a segment about it too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PL0UZePE-M

Can't seem to find the source from Maddow's show.

Bahahahaha! Okay... Now you've shown your true ignorance to what is happening. Perhaps you have been partaking a bit took much koolaid from the altar of Rachel Maddow.

Conservatives EMBRACED by Republicans? It is more like true Conservatives are hated and suppressed by Republicans. Ted Cruise is a Conservative, and Republicans tend to hate on him more than they do on the Democratic Party.

I'm still waiting to see some violent Tea Party news. I went ahead and did a Google on it cause I don't remember ANY, and sure enough there is SO little that Google couldn't even fill a single page with hits. The ones that were there were minor at worst. Just because SJW news media spouts out rubbish to rile up the ignorant masses doesn't make the rubbish any more true.

Shall we check on violence and BLM or violence and OWS?

@vil
here is the thing though,and it is something that i find very disappointing.

when maddow came over from air america radio,who worked with such hosts as thom hartman,sam seder,lawrence odonnell,al franken,laura flanders.she was fantastic.

yes,she was a tad biased and the political points she chose to cover tended to lean liberal democrat,BUT her analysis and her ability to break down complicated and complex political issues into easily digested and understood nuggets,was a talent i truly admired in her.

in my opinion,she was the best host MSNBC had on their channel,and proved time and time again just how political saavy she was,and her ability to expose political shenanigans was unmatched by any other host..again..my opinion..but then obama won his second term,and i noticed a shift in her show.

she slowly stopped being so voracious when it came to exposing the more...shall we say..venal and destructive policies obama was beginning to execute,and started making excuses for those activities.apologizing in essence.

ok..ok..she was becoming an apologist for the highest office in amercia.there..happy?

to say that watching this transition bummed me out is a understatement.for years i could always count on maddow to break down and disseminate political talking points,partisan wordplay and reveal the bullshit behind the polished turd.

then here comes the run up to the 2016 election,and i watched maddow,in real time,go from a part-time apologist for obama to a full time apologist for hillary clinton.

you can watch her actively cheerlead for clinton against sanders.even when the DNC was caught RED-HANDED fucking sanders over,maddow downplayed the entire mess,and focused on debbie wasserman shultz,while giving clinton a pass.as if debbie wasserman shultz was in no way connected to hillary..even when the evidence plainly proved that there WAS a connection.

so you are right @vil .
much of how maddow disseminates political situations is eerily similar to RT,when it comes to state sponsored cheerleading.

host:the problem we are being faced with is:apple or oranges.

viewer: but what about those bananas over there? and those cherries.

host:there are NO bananas or cherries!
there are ONLY apples and oranges!

viewer:but i am pretty sure i see bananas and cherries.

host:you are being a pinko commie,and why do hate america? are you a sympathetic terrorist? or just simply a racist?

viewer:sorry i asked.i don't want to be called an unpatriotic racist.

at least that is how i see it.
not saying my opinion amounts to anything more than screaming into a wind tunnel,but i used to really admire maddow.

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Maddow and the Hollywood Reporter have documentation and admissions from the corporate entities themselves that they hired paid actors. You have a bullshit article with a single person as a source hosted on a website with a Colombian top level domain name. Oh, and the cherry on top of this shit sundae is the name of the author of this article, Jimmy Rustling.
Well played Bobby, well played indeed.

@Fairbs
while i agree that russia is the aggressor in regards to crimea,can you provide evidence that our election was hacked by russia?

was there actually cyberspying going on?
probably,all major nation states play that game,and all deny participating.(looking at you china).

because i see a LOT of accusations,and declarations of russian hacking,but i don't see any actual..you know..evidence.so i remain skeptical of the russian hacking meme,and am even MORE skeptical that the hacking was intentionally to give trump an edge.

and you are right,maddow simply reported the troop deployment in poland.she reported that this deployment was rushed,and before schedule,,,

and then she did something very curious.
she posits the question,and implies that it will answer a previous question..that she does not actually STATE..but "after all the worry.we are actually about to find out..if...maybe..russia has something on the new president"?

this is the old "i am not saying your sister is a whore..i am just saying your sister is a whore".

she never directly speaks of russian hacks.
she never directly accuses putin of influencing our election.
she just puts it out there,that if trump withdraws troops,then maybe..possibly..he is sucking putins cock.

i'm juuuust saying.
with all due respect...
your sisters a whore.

look man,i adore maddow and i love her analysis,but can we have a moment of honesty here?
she is fairly biased,and is particular on the stories she will cover,and during the run up to the election and even during..she has engaged in some serious apologetics in regards to hillary clinton.

as for the host from secular talk.
this is just his opinion.maybe he did take some liberties,and made some assumptions but i agree with him on calling maddow out for her dog whistle tactics.

lately the democrats have been beating this drum like indians on meth,and when i see so many tv pundits all beating the same tune,without providing tangible evidence....my bullshit alarm starts to go off.

I think Maddow's argument "We're about to find out if the new President of our country is going to do what Russia wants once he's commander in chief" is utterly moronic. Implying that withdrawing a few thousands troops will mean he's Russia's puppet is intellectually dishonest. No mention of other actions he could take like reversing sanctions or undoing Obama's punishment of specific Russians after that latest reports that would show that. Or other possible justifications he would have for withdrawing the troops. No, just a black and white yes/no based on one action.

It calls to mind the endless repetition of Republican talking points on fox news. They don't expect their viewer to think at all just absorb a few basic scraps of info and come to a firm conclusion that they can easily repeat like a mantra and block all opposing views because they are so sure they are right.

@newtboy
you were not the only one who put me on the defensive for supporting chis hedges.
so if you feel singled out,i apologize.

the point of this post is put into light an adored spokesperson for the left,and a commentator who is also left leaning (and many of his upvoted videos can be found on the sift) to make a point.

and by your comment,you are struggling to reconcile the two.
but you DID reconcile,and you did so by giving maddow a tacit pass and condemning kyle for being a "complete bombastic liar".

when the truth is:
they both are...kinda..sorta..

they both are approaching,and making their points by using biased and slanted data to influence you,and i for that matter,into adopting their viewpoint.

these are not outright and pernicious lies.they are lies that serve a purpose and i find maddows far more egregious,because it is far more subtle..and you appear to have bought it.

she did so by using the innocuous word "might",yet her inferrence cannot be mistaken.they call it the "dog whistle".this is a wink and a nod that those dirty ruskies own our new president.

wink wink...nudge nudge..know what i mean?

now kyle is not exactly lying either.
he is using russias reaction to the new deployment from putin himself.who has stated that there was an agreement that there would be no new encroachment after the GDR,but that simply reveals the cleverness and political saavy of putin.

the real truth is this:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/

or is it?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html
from 2009?

maybe this is the truth?
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal--20160530-snap-story.html
from 2016.

well,personally i am going with the LAtimes and der spiegel.
brookings is a right wing think tank with deep tentacles in the pentagon and DoD.

but CNN reports that poland LOVES the new troops:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/14/europe/poland-us-troops-nato-welcome/

look,
while i will agree that putin is a vicious thug,who murders political opponents and tortures dissidents.that he is ruthless and relentless political player.

i do not see any evidence of russian hacking influencing our elections,nor do i see a new russian empire pushing for those cold war expansionism days.

the only entity/country i see pushing for expansion and a renewal of the cold war..is us..the pentagon and the department of defense,and those juicy juicy defense contracts!

i feel my time on the sift is coming to a close.
having to defend my admiration for a pulitzer prize winning,war correspondent and author is just...weird.

at least i know i am biased,but i do my best to self-correct.

I'm not at all sure if you're referring to me in your description.
I thought I explained well why a respected reporter working for a propaganda site is both making themselves suspect and lending veracity to the propaganda machine, and that you mostly agreed.
I also mentioned Maddow specifically as being willing to fudge the news for her bias....BUT it bears mention that here she did NOT say what the narrator said she said, she said "we are about to find out if Russia MAYBE has something on our president." That's arguing that, if Trump does what Russia wants, it MIGHT be because they blackmailed him into it...or might not. If he goes against Russia on something serious like securing our allies borders from an expansionist Russia that indicates they MIGHT not be blackmailing him. This guy totally exaggerated and misstated her statement to feign outrage, he's a complete bombastic liar....sorry @enoch. That's not to say she doesn't also exaggerate and omit.

As to the troops on the border, that's what Russia did, and claimed it was just defensive until after they took Crimea and part of Ukraine proper.
As to the treaty with Russia, we also have a treaty with the Ukraine (and so did Russia) that, in return for their nuclear disarmament, we would guarantee their borders and come to their aid militarily if anyone attacked them....and we completely failed to stand up when Russia invaded TWICE. Of course now our allies want our troops ON the border, if American troops aren't killed, we don't care if Russia invades them, and they want us to keep our word, so we need our troops in harm's way to force us to live up to our responsibilities since we've horrendously failed to do so incredibly recently and now look even less likely to oppose Russian expansion.

29 comments, most of them rather long and more-or-less well reasoned, yet none about the content.

I get if you don't trust RT. It's a propaganda outlet of a foreign government, after all. But RT is not Chemical Ali style of propaganda: it is solid, well-researched reporting on many topics, subtly slanted on others, and completely balls-to-the-wall denial of reality on others again.

You want to take that as a reason to ignore it entirely? Knock yourself out.

I won't. Which isn't saying much, because I prefer text over video.

Anyway, they regularly offer a valuably "Korrektiv" with regards to reporting in the mainstream media. Of course I would prefer if I could get that from a less-dubious outlet like, maybe, the Indepedant, or the NZZ, but I can't.

Let's talk about the content of this clip, shall we.

Hedges references the Prop-or-Not pieces run by the WaPo. Does anyone here disagree that those were a total and utter smear job? Painting Truthout, Truthdig, Counterpunch, Alternet, BlackAgendaReport, NakedCapitalism and others as stooges of the Kremlin is such an obvious attempt to discredit dissenting voices that it's, quite frankly, rather offensive. Yves Smith and Glen Ford as mouthpieces of the Kremlin... my ass cheeks.

On the other hand, quite a lot of journalists in the US seem to have embraced the Red Scare with open arms, seeing as it gives an excuse as to why their previous HRC lost against the orange-skinned buffoon. Kyle illustrated it nicely with Rachel Maddow.

Second point: they had James Clapper present the report. Seriously? The fucker was caught lying under oath during the initial stages of the NSA revelations. Wasn't the fuckface also in charge of the satellite reconnaisence prior to the Iraq war, who could have presented imagery that debunked the claims of WMD "factories", and decided not to? He is just as trustworthy as Chemical Ali, but less entertaining.

Third: half the report was about RT. Why? I thought it was meant to outline how they "hacked" the election? What does their propaganda outlet have to do with that? And the critique they presented... has anyone read the passage about the "alleged Wall Street greed"? They are having a laugh, and people take it seriously.

Fourth: it distracts from the aspects of HRC's loss they don't want to be a subject of public discussion: class issues. They offered nothing for the working class, who got a shoddy deal over the last decades, and tried to focus entirely on identity politics, completely denying even the existence of class issues. Which is also why it's now the "white, male worker" who is to blame. Nevermind that >50% of white, female workers also voted Trump. Nevermind that significant portions of non-white working class folks also voted Trump. Can't be. According to the narrative, these people are minorities first, working-class second, and identity politics always trumps class politics. Except it didn't.

All this rage at the "deplorables", the "less educated"... it just reeks massively of class bigotry. Those plebs decided to vote for someone other than our beloved Queen HRC? How dare they...

And finally, RT's own part of this segment, about the credibility of the intelligence community's claims. Any disagreement on this? Anyone? Anyone think the torturers at the CIA are trustworthy enough to take their word without hard evidence?

Here's the rub....
Shep Smith on Fox does some good work, and also some awful work for his propagandist bosses either spreading their lies or remaining silent in their face.
Maddow on MSNBC also does some good work, and also is incredibly biased and slanted and gladly omits or glosses over important facts if they don't fit her narrative.
CNN-I honestly don't know, I don't watch them either, but I gather they are also quite biased and guilty of lies by omission.

Hedges had other options. He was not relegated to RT, he chose to work there. Granted, they may be his most profitable option, they are not his only option.

Is RT a Russian propaganda channel, yes, absolutely. Does that mean Hedges is a Russian propagandist...yes, yes it does. He doesn't have to spread their lies and tow their line to be one, just his presence as an attempt to give their propaganda machine validity means he's a valuable tool they are using to spread lies. Let's see him do a story that accuses Putin or Russia of malfeasance....won't happen. That makes him a tool, even if he never lies for them.

@bcglorf

think we are talking about two separate issues,with a only a subtle overlap.

i totally agree that when it comes to russian politics,and/or state sanctioned military operations,RT tends to lean in favor of the russian state.

but in my opinion this does not detract from the works of hedges,or hartman or even abbey martin.who used to have a show "breaking the set" and "empire files".

we can view american corporate media through the same lens.

FOX=republican message of the day
MSNBC=democrat message of the day
CNN=the american state message of the day.

taken in aggregate,these corporate media outlets are all propaganda/misinformation machines.

but..taken singularly...

shep smith on FOX does some good work.
while personalities such as o'reilly,cavuto and carlson are simply demagogues.

or rachel maddow on MSNBC.
who does an excellent job of disseminating the politics behind a lot of republican shenanigans.sadly her show is incredibly biased and partisan.so while i LOVE her analysis..i realize that it is a tad bit biased and slanted.

i do not watch CNN.except when i want to know what bullshit excuse the american government may be focused on.

so i get where you are coming from,and i agree for the most part.
i simply refuse to outright ignore someone like hedges,with his credentials,because of the venue he has been relegated to in order to express his criticism.

is/does RT sometimes promote russian propaganda?
yes..of course.
does this equate to chris hedges being a russian propagandist?
no..it does not.

and i am also not necessarily disregarding your discernment and discrimination towards hedges.
we all have a metric we use when discriminating.
yours is simply different than mine.
this does not equate a moral right nor wrong,just different.

but you and i may disagree on some things,but i would like to think we have both earned each others respect.

so when you post a comment.i read it with that respect dictating the lens with which i view your words.i know that you consider your words carefully,and i think it polite to give those words the same consideration that you gave them when writing.

we can disagree,and have,but i always walk away with at least understanding WHY you may feel a certain way.