RT America is no more

At various times last week Dish, Sling, and Roku all removed Russia Today America from their options.
With practically no one broadcasting them anymore, RT America has thrown in the towel.

RT America will cease productions and lay off most of its staff, according to a memo CNN obtained from T&R Productions, the production company behind the Russian state-funded network.
...
The news would mean an effective end to RT America. The network, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's main mouthpieces in the US, was dropped earlier this week by DirecTV, dealing a major financial blow to it. The satellite carrier was one of the two major television providers in the US to carry the network.

Why does this matter, and why was it done?
To answer that I'd like to go back a couple years to my favorite episode of Redacted Tonight.

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@CB
On Contact and Redacted Tonight are 99% of why I watched the station.

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CB's picture

@gjohnsit
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9sLHKKrIUE]

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Creosote.'s picture

@CB
as unspeakable times pour in.

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3 users have voted.

I have RT bookmarked and every once in a while when I've clicked on it wasn't blocked. If anyone can help me understand what's happening I'd appreciate it.
Chris Hedges' and Lee Camp's shows appear but are dated Feb. 27, however another show I like 'Cross Talk' is today's show.
I'm puzzled and considering what has been happening I wouldn't be surprised if the next few times I try it'll be blocked.
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/551339-politicized-media-coverage-ukr...

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@aliasalias

403 - Forbidden . That’s an error.

Client does not have access rights to the content so server is rejecting to give proper response. That’s all we know.

Apparently we are now on some sort of war footing with media and news messaging control, or are well on the way. Hopefully this is not a harbinger of things to come WRT Ukraine dust up.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49 I don't understand why, but I originally clicked several times on my RT bookmark getting that same notice several times, and then it worked.
Sometimes I've clicked on the RT link a bunch of times to no avail, but this time after my third attempt the link worked.
I don't understand this at all.

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1 user has voted.

@aliasalias in accessing rt.com from the US has been happening for a few weeks now, or at least since the Russians going into Ukraine. Sometimes it does take 2-3 tries, sometimes I just wait until later in the day when I get through 1st time. I can still access RT Live at YT.

My show preferences: 1) their regular news hour reporting on int'l events. More reliable, by far, than most/all major western media outlets. 2) Going Underground. The Brit host has been seen asking tough Qs that a good journalist should ask, even of Russian officials. 3) Crosstalk. Fairly good variety of views presented and debated. 4) Sophie Co. News/analysis more from the Russian perspective.

Never did take to the Lee Camp show style of raised voice and going for the yucks with the audience/laugh track. And I always have found Chris Hedges too gloom and doom, a depressing watch.

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7 users have voted.

with some people

On Saturday, Ackman said that “WWIII has likely started already, but we have been slow to recognize it,” although he added that there was “much more we can do before we enter a hot war with Russia.”

The U.S. “could stop the absurdity of buying oil from Russia and funding the war, [and] Europe could follow suit once demand for gas declines in the Spring,” Ackman said.
...
But Ackman contended that NATO’s reluctance to intervene due to the nuclear threat posed by Russia was a poor strategic move.

“What then do we do when [Putin] wants more?” Ackman asked. “The nuclear threat is no different when he takes his next country, whether it is part of NATO or not, and by then we are strategically worse off.”

It's a poor strategic move to not shoot a bunch of nuclear missiles.

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@gjohnsit
.
On reading the quote box, my obvious question was who the fuck is Ackman? So I clicked on the Comcast outlet, and discovered that this guy is a billionaire. So of course CNBC regards his military expertise as valuable to their site visitors.

Afraid of nuclear war? Then why have them in the first place? A reasonable question, it seems to me. The old answer was called Mutual Assured Destruction. This guy, who has to be smart because he is so wealthy, says the better strategy is Use Em or Lose Em.

Is this a great country or what?

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

snoopydawg's picture

@fire with fire

and thinks that nuclear war and devastating climate change won’t touch him. Like I said, D. A.

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5 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

If sanctions failed to have an impact on Putin’s actions, Ackman added, NATO should reconsider enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Ultimately, though, Ackman argued that the key to ending the crisis in Ukraine sat with China.

“The only optimistic way I can see out of this war is for China to step in and broker a real ceasefire and a settlement,” he said. “In the settlement, the Ukrainians could agree that they will never join NATO. Russia, in turn, can withdraw and the sanctions can be reversed.”

Zelensky can do that right gd now and Biden can tell Putin that Ukraine will never join NATO. In fact Biden should have done that when Putin gave him his ultimatum that admitting Ukraine would cross his red line. As for Georgia and Crimea let’s all forget our roll in those actions. I swear Americans are very uneducated about what its own country is doing and has done.

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

from here in Japan.

Hounding/banning dissident/alternative sites to promote war and the corporate agenda has got to go, though. Enough of this sh*t.

Keep in mind that this deplatforming, de-banking etc. has been going on for a few years now - targeting domestic dissent, mostly that of the populist sort - to the approval of much of what passes for the Left and mostly passivity on the part of RINO 'conservatives'...

This from Andrew Torba - founder and head of Gab - alternative to Twitter (and now Pay Pal and perhaps E-Bay...)

The Deplatforming of A Nation State
MARCH 4, 2022
The entire nation state of Russia is getting the “Gab treatment” by Big Tech and the globalist regime.

By that I mean they are being systematically purged from the internet all within the span of about a week.

Google is blocking their apps.

Apple is blocking their apps.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram have banned or limited access to their accounts.

Twitter has started “fact-checking” and reducing the reach of their links.

YouTube has demonetized their videos.

Reddit has “quarantined” the /r/russia community.

Namecheap, a domain registrar, has cut off ALL Russian customers.

American right wing dissidents are no strangers to any of these things. All of these tools of war have been used against us as American citizens for six years now. In Gab’s case we have been banned from both app stores, domain registrars, and big tech platforms for years. Now these same tools and tactics of war that have been developed and used against us as dissidents are being used against all of Russia. Other nation states should be paying attention to this. Are you going to continue to allow your citizens to be controlled entirely by a handful of companies in Silicon Valley, or is now perhaps the time to start building your own sovereign technology and infrastructure?

Unlike our spineless Republican “leaders” in America, who had total and complete control over government from 2016-2018 and did absolutely nothing to stop Big Tech tyranny, Russia is fighting back. Russia has shut down Facebook and Twitter completely and this is honestly a smart play. Why give the globalist regime insight into what your citizens are talking about?

Data isn’t just the “new oil,” data in a time of war is priceless. Especially the data of your own people!

Yesterday Gab engineers discovered a massive anti-Russian botnet on our platform, which we immediately banned. There were hundreds of newly created accounts all sharing the same dozen or so IP addresses. They were reposting, commenting, and liking anti-Russian fake news to the Gab Explore page. Our bot detection systems caught them quickly and we removed them from the platform.

This type of activity is eerily similar to CENTCOM’s Operation Earnest Voice. We have no proof who was behind this activity, all we know is what their agenda was: promoting anti-Putin and anti-Russian propaganda. Gab is not a platform for state-backed PSYOP campaigns. We’re not going to allow this coordinated inauthentic activity to take place in our community, not from foreign state actors and not from our own government.

We also aren’t going to ban a foreign news outlet or Russian citizens for no reason. RT News has been on Gab for over a year now and has never once even come close to violating our terms of service. Gab is now the one place on the internet where you can find RT News and you can do so by clicking here.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com

source (with links)

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Pricknick's picture

@Blue Republic
saying that any country as a whole is better off without much of what the internet has turned into: A gossip factory where most everyone uploads their tedious lives to feel somewhat important in an uncaring world.
Social internet media killed the conversation.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

RT: "America is no more."

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Pricknick's picture

@wouldsman
Smile

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

lotlizard's picture

The old East German “socialist unity party” regime had to work really hard to discourage people from watching West German broadcast TV.

Now, thanks to digitalization, Internet 2.0, and misguided liberal & progressive propagation of acceptance of cancel culture, it’s trivial to achieve total blackout — only takes a few clicks by corporate censors somewhere, egged on by a faceless government ministry-of-truth.

Me to the former East Germans all around me: That’s progress, kids! Aren’t you glad you’re part of the “free world” now?

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gulfgal98's picture

Our access to information is being systematically shut down. Apparently our government and the oligarchy that owns it are very afraid of the American people. Otherwise, there would be no legal reason for the imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange or the continuing shutting down of voices critical of the American war machine.

These are very frightening times. We are living in a highly propagandized and increasingly totalitarian system here in the United States.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy