The best of RT English language programming: “Cross Talk,” 10 February 2023 edition
In my last essay, I remarked on the pleasure of once again being invited onto Russian language state media yesterday addressing the domestic audience of the Russian Federation. That said, I remain highly appreciative of several programs in English that RT produces for the world audience to which I have been invited from time to time. The defining moment in each case is the high journalistic professionalism of the presenters and the high quality of fellow panelists, all of which result in output that deserves the attention of news and analysis connoisseurs everywhere.
At the end of November 2022, I wrote about and provided links to the premier interview program on RT hosted by Oksana Boyko, Worlds Apart. My experience as interviewee was very positive and I am hopeful that the audience was similarly delighted with the results of this Russian counter point to the BBC’s Hard Talk.
Today I turn attention to Peter Lavelle’s Cross Talk, a program on which I have been a panelist periodically over the course of more than 7 years. Television shows come and go, but Lavelle has established a valuable place of encounter for an extensive pool of interesting and informed panelists, and this injects freshness into each broadcast.
The show which RT put online earlier today opened with discussion of Seymour Hersh’s widely heralded article explaining how the Biden administration pulled off the most brazen industrial sabotage and war crime in recent decades when it blew up the Nord Stream pipelines with the connivance of the Danes and other NATO members. Discussion then moved on to the featured topic, the so-called “Korean Solution” that some foreign policy analysts in the United States have been promoting as a potential way to end the war in Ukraine without ceding victory or defeat to either side.
I was particularly pleased to be joined on this panel by my friend in the Greater Washington area, Ray McGovern, former CIA daily intelligence briefer to American presidents. Ray is a widely known activist for peace. I say here publicly what I have long said privately: in his standing up to the hypocrisy and lies of successive American administrations in the domains of foreign policy and defense, Ray is the bravest man I know. Our third panel member, from Tampa, added another complementary perspective on the present situation in the war zone and prospects for Russian victory drawing on his experience and analytical skills from work in that same Agency in Langley.
Here are the links to the recording:
https://rumble.com/v28z0rw-crosstalk-korea-solution.html
https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/CT1002:e
I trust that viewers will profit from following this discussion.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023