AS THE world draws closer to nuclear war, led by the US and cheered on by the vassal countries of the Nato alliance, even as those countries face the prospect of de-industrialisation and a frozen winter, it may be time to update Winston Churchill’s announcement of the Cold War in describing the role of Western media: “From Barcelona on the Mediterranean to Philadelphia on the Atlantic, an Iron Curtain has descended across The West.”

Because of the impenetrability of the present mediatic “Iron Curtain,” there is almost no anti-war movement to speak of in the West. To question the war is simply forbidden. Do it and you will end up censored and ostracised, even as it draws us all closer to Armageddon.

As the European economy tanks — as in France — even bakeries close because electricity is too expensive to keep them open; as the environmental crisis worsens, to which can now be added the massive leaks from the sabotaging of the Russian pipeline, weirdly blamed on the Russians themselves.

As the developing world braces for a lack of food, energy and fertiliser, all the result of US sanctions which, according to the alternative media site Multipolarista, 87 per cent of the world’s population do not support.
 
Here are five sites that continue the battle in these bleak times and that have not surrendered their values for whatever institutional funding, scraps from the imperial table, might be available.

The Mother of All Talk Shows (MOATS) is presented by George Galloway, the former MP who is now the dean of actual Alternative Media assembling with his array of guests and with his stentorian opening monologue, a nearly Shakespearian rendering of the ignominies of the week on a programme that is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise captured media.

Listen to Arms Regulator Scott Ritter or Ukraine correspondent on the ground Gonzalo Lira and compare their versions of what is actually happening in the war, both of which concentrate on the needless slaughtering of the Ukrainians in an unwinnable situation, with that of the bright cheery “resistance” stories from Le Monde and The New York Times.

The difference is eye-opening and the gap needs to be accounted for. Galloway continues to be the doyen of current actually resistant media.

The Socialist Programme with Brian Becker offers analysis, crisp and on-target, of both the wider implications of this new global war and his historical understanding of the successes and failures of the Russian and Chinese revolutions is extraordinary.

His thoughtful recapping of the history of the current Ukrainian conflict, its origin the US-sanctioned coup in 2014 and the subsequent killing of over 14,000 Russian speaking inhabitants of the Donbass as well as his, and frequent guest Eugene Puryear’s, accounting of the broken promises concerning Nato advancement to the east constantly give the lie to the “rules-based” order.

Nothing short of miraculous is Becker’s six-part series with Chinese history scholar Ken Hammond on the twists and turns of that revolutionary government’s foreign policy now updated with the analysis of Dong Sheng News’ Tings Chak’s recounting of how China has gone from one of the poorest countries on Earth to now having a life expectancy for its citizens that exceeds that of the US.

Multipolarista, with Ben Norton’s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG5XLThOpQY, analysis is underlaid by the economic wisdom of frequent guest Michael Hudson who on a recent show explained that what we are seeing is not the end of the “greed is good” neoliberal order but rather an acceleration of that order — and who also pointed out that it was never a peaceful order, relying for its wealth on a host of military incursions in the Middle East and Africa.

Norton’s multipart series with political scientist and historian Aaron Good is a thoroughgoing examination of the dark undemocratic forces that have always vied for contention within US “democracy” and which are now in ascendence. Multipolarista is where to go to get a different perspective on the global challenges to US hegemony.

The Jimmy Dore Show has Dore — a comedian operating out of his basement in LA — the funniest and wickedest commentator on US politics and especially on the corruption of the Democratic Party.

With the aid of his frequent journalist guests Aaron Mate, Glen Greenwald and Max Blumenthal, he has also made himself an astute truthteller on the global situation as the US draws ever nearer to a simultaneous confrontation with Russia and China.

A special part of the show are the “calls” from impressionist Mike MacRae whose spot-on renderings of Hollywood illuminati such as Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Vince Vaughn and Brad Pitt hilariously call attention to the vacuousness and promotional self-serving behind entertainment business trendsetters and do-gooders.

Means Morning News with Sam Sacks — the place to go for union and working-class news and updates, even featuring a section titled This week in Working-Class History.

More appropriate than ever in these times when US oligarchs are lionised while those from around the world are demonised is the segment naming the Rich Dick of the Week, an honour recently won by landlords in general as rents become unaffordable and the former American dream of owning a house unthinkable.

These media outlets, often lone wolves crying in the wilderness, are ever more essential today as the media propaganda mill and iron curtain props up an empire that with its economic power fading attempts to instead compete in its last remaining area of clear dominance, weapons and war, and may not mind taking the rest of the world down with it as it goes.