By Stephen Lendman
So-called US legislation until about the last seven years supposedly prevented the US propaganda services, that is Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Martí where US propaganda go into Cuba. Cuba can easily block and I believe usually does.
This stuff was not supposed to be legally broadcast to… either on radio TV or in print to a US audience, only before audiences abroad worldwide, every other country in the world except the US legally, but the law was meaningless.
It was repealed I believe in 2013, but it was meaningless when it was enacted because the US private media; prints, radio, television, stuff online, owned by private corporations, they basically operate the same way. This Voice of America and all the others. They report state-approved propaganda with all of US actions that are lawless. They support all US wars against countries threatening nobody. They are basically of the US propaganda system. And I'm talking about cable channels, the broadcast channels, CNN, ABC, NBC, ABC, online Facebook, Twitter.
I mean people could put stuff on those sites, but I have been banned from Facebook, and then reinstated because they wanted me to take down an article that I posted. And I refused to do it. So they shut down my page for about a month, and then surprisingly they open it up again. I won't kowtow to them. I want to tell the truth on the issues I report on.
And I certainly will go another way because there are anybody else who wants me to, but same thing with print US media, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, my own Chicago Tribune. They operate the same way in feature stories on major geopolitical and administrative issues is basically the same stuff you will get on the Voice in America, Radio Liberty, and all the others. So the law was meaningless.
US elections - another meaningless exercise on November 3, there'll be federal ones, state and local ones to big deal… so It's gonna be a presidential election, congressional elections. And there are two major parties that I call a one-party with two right wings, which is what they are because they're basically the same with all the big issues. They only differ in some lesser issues. They don't sound that way when they are campaigning but they are the same.
When America goes to war they support them the same way. They support corporate empowerment. They support police state laws, the crackdown on resistance, and they'll get around some lesser issues. All issues are important, but some are more important than others. Certainly war on peace and corporate predation, these are big, big issues and police state laws. They're writing the same on these things. As far as alternative parties are sitting around, alternative bodies in the US - the Green Party the Libertarian Party, some others, great that there are some new ones but they have no influence no power they do anything.
They can put up candidates. They get minuscule amounts of votes because they get no publicity. And they're not allowed to participate in any public event with the Republicans and what I call the undemocratic Dems and I don’t call them Democrats because they're not democratic.
The US is not a democracy. So I call it a fantasy democracy. Elections are fantasies. There's nothing legitimate about them. Each time the US election is held dirty businesses’ usual continuity wins - every single time.
I don’t call that a democracy and independent parties have no say whatsoever what was going on and no chance in the world. There is a greater chance that the sun would in the east, that an independent candidate would become president of the United States. That's how bad the US system is.
Stephen Lendman, born in 1934 in Boston, started writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.
Lendman recorded this article for Press TV website.