by
Phillip
Todd
Our guest is
Jack Hanick recently completed the development of a state of the art
television network in Moscow, built without government funding. Its
evening news program broadcasts to 65 million homes in Russia across
eight time zones. Previously Jack was a TV director, where he won the
New York Emmy in 1994 for best director. His biography of Desmond
Tutu also won a New York Emmy. He is considered an American expert on
Russia. (Additional comments by John Pilger.)
PT
- Tell our readers about your recent experiences in Russia.
JH
-
I
moved to
Moscow two and a half years ago. I went to Russia to build a
non-government funded news channel with editorial views consistent
with the Russian Orthodox Church. I have completed that task and
returned to the west.
PT
- Everyday we hear in our news media stories of Russian aggression,
what is going on there?
JH
- America is heading for war with Russia.
JP
- The world is facing the prospect of
major war, perhaps nuclear war, with
the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia
and eventually China.
PT
– We are being told that Russia is doing this.
JH
- There are two sides to this story. I
believe that American and western journalists from all political
persuasions are not offering critical analysis.
PT
– Is that a polite way of saying we are not being told the truth?
JP
- This truth is being turned upside down
and inside out by journalists. We have war by media; censorship by
media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media
- a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.
PT
– The Russian people, aren't they also are as dis-informed as we are in
the west? We are told that they have no free press at all.
JH
- Americans believe that Russians are
fed propaganda by the state-controlled media. If Russians only could
hear the truth, the thinking goes, they would welcome the US
position. This is not so. There are more than 300 TV stations
available in Moscow. Only 6 are state-controlled. The truth is that
Russians prefer hearing the news from the state rather than the
Internet or other sources. This is
different from almost any other country. It is not North Korea where
the news is censored. Each night during the Crimea crisis, anyone
could watch CNN or the BBC bash Russia.
JP
- Why has so much western journalism
succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard
practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious pow York
Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers? These
are urgent questions.
PT
– What is your view on the situation in Ukraine?
JH
- With regard to Ukraine, Russia has
drawn a red line: It will never allow Ukraine to
be part of NATO. Russia sees the US as the aggressor, surrounding
Russia with military bases in Eastern Europe at every opportunity
since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US sees Russia as the
aggressor against its neighbors. Any small misstep could lead to war.
I see both sides of this escalating conflict and unless there is a
change in thinking, the result will be catastrophic.
JP
- The suppression of the truth about
Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember.
The biggest Western military build-up in the Caucasus and eastern
Europe since world war two is blacked out. Washington's secret aid to
Kiev and its neo-Nazi brigades responsible for war crimes against the
population of eastern Ukraine is blacked out.
PT
– How
did we reach this critical point in such a short time?
JH
- When I first arrived, the relationship between the US and Russia
seemed normal. As an American, my ideas were welcomed, even sought
after. Then Russia passed a law that
prevented sexual propaganda to minors. This was the start of
tensions. The LGBT lobby in the West saw this law as anti-gay. I
did not. The law was a direct copy of English law and was intended to
prevent pedophilia, not consenting relationships between adults. Gay
relations in Russia are not illegal (although not accepted by the
majority of the public). Regarding gay protests, they were restricted
from view of children. I saw this in the same way that we in America
restrict children from seeing “R” rated films. The punishment for
breaking this law is a fine of less than $100. Double-parking a car
in Moscow carries a heavier fine of $150. Nonetheless the reaction
was overwhelming against Russia.
PT
– The commentary most in the west heard was very different. One could hear that statement and make the assumption that the
gay community is the west, particularly in the United States, could
be the spark that drives us to WWIII? It only took a spark and
mis-information to ignite the first world war.
JH -The
(gay inspired) boycott of the Sochi Olympics was the West’s way of discrediting
Russia. Russia saw this boycott as an aggressive act by the
West to interfere with its internal politics and to embarrass Russia.
Sochi was for Russians a great source of national pride and had
nothing to do with politics. For the West, this was the first step in
creating the narrative that Russia was the old repressive Soviet
Union and Russia must be stopped.
PT - But Russia today is not the old Soviet Union.
JH - This is
the mistake that will cost America dearly and it is the assumption that Russia
has the same ambitions as the Soviet Union. The cold war strategy
used against the Soviet Union cannot be repeated with the same
result. The Soviet Union was communist and atheistic. Modern Russia
has returned to its Christian roots. There is a revival in Russian
Orthodoxy with over 25,000 new churches built in Russia after the
fall of Communism. On any Sunday, the churches are packed. Over 70%
of the population identifies themselves as Orthodox Christians.
Combine this religious revival with renewed Nationalism and Russia is
growing in self-confidence. The
Marxist ideology followed by the Soviet Union was evangelistic. Only
when the whole world became communist will Marxist principles be realized. For this reason, the Soviet Union needed to dominate the
whole world. For modern Russia, world domination is not its goal.
Russia wants to keep its Russian identity and not lose it to outside
forces.
JP - We
need to look in the mirror. We need to call to
account an unaccountable media that services power and a psychosis
that threatens world war.