Press TV: Diverse opinions, free speech


I caught the flu in Vancouver, had a long and uncomfortable train ride back to Wisconsin, and just returned to solid food by way of a single banana. Wish me luck.

Anyway, if I looked slightly queasy in yesterday's Press TV interview, it wasn't just a reaction to what I was hearing from Lawrence Korb, a "senior fellow and director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations" and former "holder of the Maurice Greenberg Chair."  (Maurice "Hank" Greenberg is one of the leading 9/11 suspects.)

Though I was the one with the flu, it was Korb spewing half-digested bits of sound-bite all over the screen. Korb claimed that the US has no interest in controlling the Middle East: "When the Iraqis told us to leave, we left." (So when are we evacuating those bases, and that "embassy" i.e. Occupation Command Center that covers half of Baghdad?) He hurled up the absurd non-sequitur that because the US allowed Mubarak to fall from power, it therefore must not be arming the Syrian rebels - despite all the evidence to the contrary including the latest NY Times article. And he answered my charge that 9/11 was a Zionist/militarist inside job with another non-sequitur, by saying that "Iran condemned the 9/11 attack." (In fact, Iran's president has repeatedly earned standing ovations at the United Nations by speaking out for 9/11 truth...which is the best way of condemning the attack!)

The third guest, Sukant Chandan, couldn't believe what he was hearing from Korb, and opined that Korb was either terribly naive or "a trickster." Personally, I don't see how a terribly naive person - i.e. a person whose thought processes are as discombobulated as those on display in this interview - could possibly become the Director of National Security Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Regardless of what may be going on in Korb's mysterious brain, Press TV deserves congratulations for hosting the best selection of free speech and diversity of opinion available in English-language television. Unlike Faisal al-Qassem's Opposing Viewpoints show on al-Jazeera, which is dominated by shouting matches, this Press TV episode developed slowly and dramatically into a shouting match; it was informative as well as entertaining. The discerning viewer is left to make up his or her own mind about who is providing accurate information, and who's dishing out the BS.

WATCH THIS PRESS TV "NEWS ANALYSIS" EPISODE

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