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This week on CounterSpin: A Texas court has told Alex Jones to pay some $49 million dollars in damages for his perverse, accusatory talk about the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre being a “big hoax”—the jury evidently not believing Jones’ tale that he was suffering a weird and weirdly profitable “psychosis” when he told his followers that no one died at Sandy Hook because none of the victims ever existed, nor were they evidently moved by his subsequent claim that he did it all “from a pure place.”
Jones, as the Hearst Connecticut Media editorial board noted in a strong statement, is trying to keep any mention of his “white supremacy and right-wing extremism” out of the Sandy Hook case he’s facing in New Hampshire—because, his lawyer says, that discussion would be “unfairly prejudicial and inflammatory,” an “attack on [Jones’] character” that would “play to the emotions of the jury and distract from the main issues.”
What should be the “main issues” when our vaunted elite press corps engage a figure like Alex Jones? We talk with Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters.
Transcript: ‘What Alex Jones Has Peddled Is Now Nearly Indistinguishable from Right-Wing Talking Points’
Also on the show: In 1991, on the fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune concluded: “Despite Chernobyl, nuclear energy is the green alternative.” The Houston Post enjoined readers: “Let’s not learn the wrong lesson from Chernobyl and rule nukes out of our future.” Corporate media have been rehabilitating nuclear power for as long as the public has been terrified by its dangers—sometimes as heavy-handedly as NBC in 1987 running a documentary, Nuclear Power: In France It Works, that failed to mention that NBC’s then-owner, General Electric, was the country’s second-largest nuclear power entity—and third-largest producer of nuclear weapons.
Now in Russia’s war on Ukraine, we’re seeing news media toss the possibility of nuclear war into the news you’re meant to read over your breakfast. Has something changed to make the unleashing of nuclear weaponry war less horrific? And if not, what can we be doing to push it back off the table and out of media’s parlor game chat? We hear from author and journalism professor Karl Grossman.
Transcript: ‘This Treaty Could Put the Nuclear Weapons Genie Back in the Bottle’
https://www.goyimtv.tv/v/2568226823/Sandy-Hook-Hoax-ULTIMATE—Case-Closed-2–Directors-Cut-
Why haven’t the families sued the producer of this 5 hour documentary video?
Because lawyers don’t work for free and because the people behind a bullshit YouTube-level documentary have no money to be sued for.
What’s it matter to you who they sue and don’t sue?
john
You have obviously not bothered to watch the contents of the video, huh?try
Maybe Janine might even invest 20 minutes in the process… before a verdict.
I don’t need to watch it to answer your bullshit question. And you still haven’t answered mine: WTF does it matter to you who they sue and don’t sue?
john,
Habitual use of obscenity indicates limited vocabulary and self-control.
Anti-Russian propaganda piece. Putin has not threatened to use nuclear weapons in a first strike. The Unites States has threatened to use nuclear weapons in a first strike. The Russia “Special Military Operation” is a humanitarian intervention. Please have some integrity by referring to Putin’s statement immediately preceding the SMO when talking about the conflict in Ukraine. The immediate genesis of the conflict was Obama’s 2010 decision to overthrow the popularly elected government of Ukraine and replace it with one that would engage in the ethnic cleansing of Russian speakers from the country. The U.S. staged the overthrow of the elected government in February 2014 which was just one month before the next presidential election in Ukraine because the U.S. was going to lose the election. How about interviewing Eric Zeusse about the history? The American puppet government engaged in 8 years of genocide in eastern Ukraine. And Russians reached the end of their tolerance. Putin tried repeatedly to stop the American genocide of Russian Ukrainians by negotiations. The U.S. refused to negotiate with Russia. By the time Russia intervened to stop the genocide over 13000 Russian Ukrainians, men, women, and children had been murdered, by Ukrainian Nazis as they were trained and guided in doing by American military.
Jack:
Which of the following is an abstraction and which is not?
(a) The Russian/Ukrainian Nation.
(b) The Russian/Ukrainian Border.
(c) The Russian/Ukrainian People.
Which one of the following uses the rhetoric of reason but is unreasonable?
(a) Only tough people can stare the truth in the face.
(b) Ignorance begets confidence, when common sense is uncommon..
(c) Some knowledge is not the same as the sum total of all knowability.
I KNOW THIS ONE!
The first answer is (c) and the second is (b).
Please tell me how I did. Thanks
Hello Bradley Grower,
For the first question –
(a) and (b) are abstractions, while answer (c) – the Russian/Ukrainian people – are not abstractions.
For the second question –
(a) was meant to be the most rhetorical and unreasonable since “truth” in that short statement wasn’t really contextualized. Ex: it could have been true that a bulb was out in the shop, and even the weakest amongst us can stare that truth in its ‘face’, no?
(b) was rhetorically stated but was not unreasonable to imagine (a trick answer.)
(c) was for the absolutist or literalist thinkers out there, it’d be nice if they’d stop pretending to have access to the whole truth based only on abstract claims grounded in the rhetoric of reason.
2022 (08) Aug 28 Sun 09 39 31 AM this doesn’t download and only half of it plays.