i can't stand abby martin.

Abby Martin participating with this makes sense. For those unfamiliar, her schtick before was working for Russia Today.

The same way Russia is fond of funding the extreme ends of Antifa and Unite the right clowns. Funding popular dissent and dissatisfaction with America and capitalism is super. However many nuts listen to Zeitgeist crazies may be small, but if that group doesn't overlap with the Antifa crowd, and doesn't overlap with the KKK crowd and doesn't overlap with those outraged by the latest wikileaks 'discovery' it all adds up to a lot of people. It's pretty much public record that Russian intelligence is happily and eagerly funding as many of these organizations they can to foment dissent and dissatisfaction.

It's not some paranoid conspiracy to say this plays into the the hands of America's enemies, it's a fact that is being proven in court. That doesn't mean there aren't piles of truths out there being dug up that make America and it's systems look bad and flawed, but spinning it to make people as angry as possible, and feeding those truths along with as many lies as the target audience will swallow is 'great' propaganda.

So that's a long winded version of declaring this video as russian funded propaganda.

Your video, Empire Files: Abby Martin Exposes Steve Bannon, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

What kind of balance are you speaking of? For the sake of argument, I'll assume that you mean spending somewhat equal time and effort on different sides of an argument.

That kind of balance can be expected from a news outlet. Many of them, especially American ones, overcook is massively by refusing to make judgements on the validity of opposing arguments. If argument A is backed by empirical evidence and argument B is smoke and mirrors, argument B should receive ridicule, not the same kind of respect that A receives.

Now, applying this kind of balance to individuals strikes me as wierd. They are not obliged to give a balanced view: they are obliged, as journalists, to present facts, and offer interpretations. The issues we're talking about here are not disputes between neighbours. We are talking about the war on terror, macroeconomics, propaganda, things of the utmost importance. And the media is doing a woeful job at presenting any dissenting view.

Thing is, you can get the major consensus narrative from countless news outlets out there. Want to here about the supposed benefits of multinational trade agreements? The NYT and the WaPo have dozens upon dozens of articles with praise of TTIP and TPP. If, however, you would like to hear about the consequences of previous trade agreements, or just some hard math on the numbers they like to throw in there, you won't find any. You'll have to go to Dean Baker at the CEPR, to Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism, you'll read Rick Wolff's take on it.

These people do everything in their power to restore the balance that the media drowned in buckets of party-line puff pieces. People recognise RT for propaganda, but somehow think propaganda stops when ownership is private.

Try to find proper articles about the global assassination program (drone warfare) and its effect on sovereign people abroad -- won't find anything in the media, you'll have to go to Jeremy Scahill.

Try to find proper articles about the desolation brought to communities in the developed world by (the current form of) capitalism, the epidemic of loniliness, the breaking apart of the social fabric, the monetarisation of every aspect of life -- silence. What about the slavery-like conditions it creates through indebtedness? The absurd inequality? Nothing.

What about the massive atrocities in Jemen? There was plenty about the atrocities committed by Russia in Syria, but when Saudis use US weapons to destroy an entire country, mum's word.

There is no balance in the media. They are the gatekeepers of knowledge, and anything outside the establishment's agreed upon consensus is ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, or straight up demonized.

CJ Hopkins had a great piece at Counterpunch the other day, titled Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works. He puts it more succinctly than I ever could. Reality doesn't matter, not for the mainstream media. The narrative matters.

And that's why I listen to dissenting voices like Chris Hedges, Abby Martin or Thom Hartmann, even when they are employed by a state propaganda outlet.

*doublepromote

Superb quality, this one.

The Blame Cannons are already in firing position. It's the fault of Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota, of Abby Martin and Kevin Gosztola, of Bernie and his BernieBros, of WikiLeaks and Assange, and Putin most of all.

Anything but 40 years of fuck-the-plebs politics.

Go watch that interview he did with the vapid chick from Duke university filming porn to pay for her shit degree-He's in full-cunt form with that interview.

This upvotes for Abby Martin, may her career be long and prosperous.

May she forever have that Pilate-Body from the Isle of Lesbos
¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯\_(ツ)_/

Glenn Grenwalds thoughts on it
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/04/rt-host-abby-martin-condemns-russian-incursion-crimea-rt/

Your video, Abby Martin denounces Russian actions in Ukraine, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

"In an appalling rant, Abby Martin unapologetically proclaims that the people of Ukraine are losers."

I'd be wary of trusting Rand Paul as a so-coined-by-media, 'Libertarian'.His father has distanced himself from him, he used underhanded threat-tactics when questioned by an independent reporter for RT recently(Abby Martin), he's a bought and sold team-player being groomed for yet another puppet-regime primary.
He's seems a solid prick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osg0RYAP2cs

Tags for this video have been changed from 'How Hemp Threatens the Corporatocracy, Brainwash Update' to 'How Hemp Threatens the Corporatocracy, Brainwash Update, Abby Martin, RT' - edited by Trancecoach

Abby Martin is a friend of a friend... In addition to hosting the "Breaking the Set" show on RT, she's a hip artist, living a few miles from me in Oakland, CA.

Abby Martin=yum