This week, the US government, as part of unilateral sanctions against Iran, censored Press TV, removing it from satellite broadcast across all of North America. The reason they gave is insane. They claim to have silenced Press TV, an Iranian based broadcast service, in order to “prevent censorship.”

Timing for this move is interesting. A week ago, Press TV aired a documentary film featuring former US National Security Advisor on Middle Eastern Affairs, Gwyneth Todd. Todd, an official during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, told audiences of quashed espionage investigations and Bush administration complicity in planning assassinations and terror attacks against US officials and military in order to blame Iran and justify a broadened war.

Todd is supported by, not only documentation, but by dozens of top counter-intelligence officials from the FBI, Pentagon and intelligence agencies who were silenced to keep this horrific story from the public.

Only weeks before, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, tried to break this story into the US media. His powerful and well-written account, confirming Todd’s allegations “died on the vine,” with a total “blackout” by all other US media outlets.

If that’s not censorship, what is?

Between the Press TV documentary and the Washington Post article, accusations of terrorism, espionage and treason could and should be made against dozens of former Bush and Pentagon officials.

These aren’t just allegations, they include a detailed narrative of suppressed investigations, of witness intimidation, of terrorism and murder.

“Watergate” was a joke in comparison and yet nothing is done, nothing reported, nothing but the censorship of Press TV and the suppression of any follow-up.

No attempt has been made to label this story as “conspiracy theory” as the facts are inexorable and overwhelming.

Instead, silencing Press TV is the answer.

Another key area of Press TV reporting has involved the nomination of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to take over as Secretary of Defense.

During the entire hearings, one GOP senator after another did everything possible to assail and humiliate Hagel, a decorated hero, a combat infantryman during the Vietnam War, the first real soldier to ever be nominated to head America’s military.

Every question involved “Israel,” over 100 carefully crafted insults and accusations, all obviously prepared in advance, all carefully coordinated with attack advertisements funded by gambling, prostitution and narcotics money, something openly admitted and easily documented.

Each question from senators clearly in the employ of the powerful Israel lobby that Hagel has criticized demanded that he admit such a lobby has never existed.

Not only have the American people reeled in the absurdity, celebrities such as Bill Maher, have finally come out as vocal critics of Israeli extremism. A year before, Maher had been the voice of the Israel lobby.

The American military has been praying for a DOD Secretary like Hagel for many years, almost too many to count. To them, Hagel “gets it,” understands the difference between serving America and serving the powerful, supporting endless war and endless waste, the nature of “revolving door” profiteering that has done so much to destroy America.

It isn’t Hagel that shamed the Republicans in the senate. They shamed themselves and America and the world saw it. It was Press TV that did the most to report it, fairly and accurately.  They shamed it more when they walked out today, leaving America with no Secretary of Defense, not until a gutless shill acceptable to Abe Foxman and Netanyahu can be found, and perhaps, cleaned up.

For that, they have to be shut down.

Speaking of propaganda, this last week I heard Terry Gross of National Public Radio interview a guest about Iran’s nuclear program.

Gross “hand fed” questions crafted to elicit lies and misinform the audience. When her guest, one of so many “nuclear experts” who never worked with nuclear weapons at any time, who don’t have the remotest idea how they work or how uranium is actually enriched, parroted typical accusations against Iran, Gross simply “lapped it up.”

She, of course, is aware that America’s National Intelligence Estimates have long proven Iran has no nuclear program. She is aware she is pushing for an unjust war.

She is aware, quite aware, she is both corrupt and dishonest. Let’s be honest, the word that describes this kind of propaganda and war mongering is “evil.”

NPR (National Public Radio), once somewhat independent though government funded, has chosen to systematically lie, propagandize and dissemble.

No one is silencing them.

For decades, Fox News has spewed conspiracy theory, bigotry, propaganda and hate to the American people. In Britain, their parent company, NewsCorp, has been cited for espionage, wiretapping, blackmail and bribery. Dozens of their top management are facing years in prison.

In the US, however, they are the voice of the Republican Party. It’s not that they don’t continually engage in blatant propaganda, war mongering, wild conspiracy theory and worse. It isn’t as though they don’t engage in espionage, bribery, treason and extortion in the US. They do.

They are above the law, defended by the Israel lobby, defended by war profiteers, defended by, to be brutally honest, organized crime.

There is no worse news organization in the world than Fox/NewsCorp.

Yet, there is no move, even in Britain, to silence them. They buy and sell politicians around the world, always have.

Why silence Press TV?

Let’s take a second to look at the “Palestinian issue.” Recently, the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to recognize Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank as a sovereign Palestinian nation.

Yet, every day we hear about Israeli military operations inside what we are told is NOT Israel, bulldozing homes, shooting “militant demonstrators” and seizing land.

But wait, didn’t the UN vote mean that Israel couldn’t do that? Actually, the Geneva Convention of 1948 clearly states that attempts to move “settlers” onto occupied land, conquered during war is a “crime against humanity” and punishable under tribunals such as those used against the Nazis at Nuremberg.

Funny thing, no American newspaper or network ever manages to put these pieces together. What could represent purer censorship and propaganda than this?

Funny thing, we haven’t even begun.

Our news tells us that Iran has to be attacked to keep them from getting nuclear weapons that our intelligence services assure us they are not making. Propaganda?

Doesn’t Israel have nuclear weapons? Ever hear a news story that describes how they got them? Uranium and plutonium was stolen from the US, pure “weapons grade” and shipped to Israel, tons of it.

Ever hear or read stories that describe Israel’s nuclear arsenal as “illegal?” It is.

This is censorship and propaganda at its purest.

The US accuses Press TV of propagandizing the Iranian people yet American actions are clearly aimed at censoring Press TV in the United States. Does the absurdity of this escape everyone? No “pop culture” media organization has managed to recognize the obvious insanity of US actions.

Nearly every constitutional right, including the most basic, habeas corpus, has been suspended in the US and remains so. The Bill of Rights, the foundation of all American freedoms, has been legislated away over the past twelve years and virtually nothing is being said about it, nothing but the self-serving blithering of the gun lobby.

America has no free press and what was once seen as a free “blogosphere” on the internet is now a sewer of “controlled opposition” and “game theory warfare,” carefully crafted censorship and propaganda.

The tools used, payoffs, smears, infiltration, hacking, threats and even murder, this is how those who have fought for truth on the internet have been dealt with.

Few survive today, very few. Many say the internet is entirely controlled, censored and staged. Are they right? America was “hijacked” well before 9/11.

As for Israel, their “opposition” is the newspaper, Haaretz.” Every other media outlet is obviously government controlled. Take a look at the editorial board of the Times of Israel.

As for Haaretz, they are the purest form of controlled opposition. They make tiny noises that almost sound like independence but, upon careful reading, are all “sizzle” and no “steak.”

By my estimation, they are the real voice of the Mossad.

As for Israel’s government, the ultra-nationalist Likudists under Netanyahu have managed to control Israel through flooding the country with Russians, all “right wing extremists,” many with no Jewish background at all.

Israel has a vibrant political system, if you accept the fact that the majority of residents are excluded on the basis of “race” or religion.

A recent study at Johns Hopkins of “racial origins” points out that the vast majority of Palestinians are Semites while fewer than 10% of Jewish Israeli’s have any “Semitic DNA” present.”

Does this make the Likudists “anti-Semites?”

Can a state that engages in apartheid and ethnic cleansing be democratic? Based on UN votes on thirty two recent resolutions, the only “denial” of this aspect of Israeli society is evidence in press censorship in Israel, Europe and the West.

This issue alone is inexorable, fully documented and proof of endemic propagandization and censorship in nations that claim to be democracies.

How does Press TV stand up next to Fox News, CNN or the Atlantic Monthly?

I find them imperfect but considerably more “fair and balanced” than Fox, CNN and much more reasonable than “the Atlantic.”

Press TV is silenced, not because of content but because of tone. It isn’t that they are censored by Iran, politically controlled as the US claims but rather that they fail to accept censorship from the powerful special interests that control most other media across the planet.

Press TV may be agenda-driven, all media is. Blocking access to their ideas is against every principle of freedom of speech, of an open marketplace for ideas.

The only reason for any censorship is to control a population by eliminating access to dangerous ideas. Dangerous ideas are considered dangerous because they have the power of truth behind them.