RIP Breaking the Set, Abby Martin You Will Be Missed.

by Jamie Lee;  Tabublog.com

R.I.P. Breaking the Set

September 9, 2012 – February 26, 2015

There is yet another unrepairable hole in the whole that is our cosmic fabric of a universal Truth Movement.

Few seem to understand or realize what a significant, worldwide platform for voices of sanity, truth and justice we all just lost. The end came quick and sudden. A bright, brilliantly lit flame of nightly alternative news source, the biggest and only one we had on nightly TV, has been extinguished.

All things must pass.

Those aboard the life long quest to find the truth wherever it leads owe a huge debt of gratitude and appreciation to investigative journalist and former news anchor at RT broadcasting (formerly Russia TV), Ms. Abigail Suzanne Martin and her cohorts.

It has been two weeks now that she so shocked the Alternative News and Truth Movement with her sudden and abrupt departure. For nearly three years and some 534 shows each weeknight on Breaking the Set, Ms. Martin was able to do something no other TV news broadcaster had been able to do before.

She told the truth.

And then she called out the liars, the thieves and named names to the ones who have sold our children’s future. She continually claimed she was her own editor and boss of Breaking the Set and held artistic freedom to present whomever, however and whatever she wanted. No other national news broadcaster had ever held such power.

She presented to a worldwide audience the raw and unfiltered ugly truths on subjects the puppet masters of mainstream media would never entertain, much less provid air time for….yet Truther’s among us so yearned for.

Her segments went under in your head subject headings such as “Think” and “Brainwashed” while she unabashedly bashed the very setting and outlet that gave her show life.

Her style was intellectual, passionate, feisty and with a definite edge to them, which paired well with her changing hair and wardrobe choices each night. (Although truth be told, her very first show she wore a Hillaryesque gray pantsuit!).

She did not hide behind desks or rely on imagery and canned story lines from corporate owned press releases. She did it her way. Move over Frank.

Ms. Martin stayed true to her Media Roots founding and Project Censorship board membership by delivering the most difficult of news stories artistically and without deflection as to the consequences by the powerful authorities she challenged each night.

The show was unique and attractively youthful with a decidedly non-defiant “let’s end all the b.s. right here and now” theme all the while staying both passionate and compassionate to the cause of representing and presenting honest journalism.

From the very onset she took on all centralized power of corporate, military and government. On her very first show she came out a-swinging for the fences.

The shows segments were titled, “USA-made Dictators, NY Times Propaganda and They Hate Us Because We Bomb Then”.  In just her first show she took on the world’s largest newspaper, the world’s largest spook agency and the biggest military the world has ever seen.

The woman had guts few us could ever dream of having.

What maybe was the most impressive about Breaking the Set, night after night, episode after episode, segment after segment, was how she and her staff nailed some of the most important and critical stories of our times with near flawless fact checks and research. The shows format challenged all viewers to connect dots, think critically, and to act for needed change.

She continually gave a voice to the voiceless on an international broadcast stage. She gave hip hop and beat artists a stage to perform. She discovered and promoted the seldom acknowledged do-gooder non-profits making a difference where exposure meant more desperately needed funding in many cases. She even had the temerity to reach out to the smallest of communities across the country.

When last November our County in Mendocino, CA passed a historic local law that legally elevated community rights over state and federal authority as well as providing legal representation for Nature in our courts, she gave us a voice and air time on her show. It took just one email exchange and we were then booked on her show four days later which we then received attention from around the world.  (Source).

The river flows.

Her departure came abrupt and sudden. On her last and final show she self-memorialized the legacy of Breaking The Set as “a punch in the gut to the neo-cons and the war propagandists” and that “every show had more information than a year of CNN!”

All things must pass but what caused her to leave on such short notice?

The only statement on why she left was posted on her website, Media Roots:

“Please note I’m not stopping or going anywhere. If I can’t find a network to host my new show vision with the same editorial freedom, I will turn to crowd sourcing.” (Source)

Her final show post at Media Roots was titled “Leaving the Set Broken”. That can be taken many different ways.

On a recent Facebook posting she announced, “I am planning a cross-country (and possibly continental) excursion to conduct interviews, do reporting, host collaborative art shows and speaking engagements. If anyone has any ideas for the months of April, May & June please let me know. I am trying to map out the route now. Thanks!”

Was it just a coincidence, like the assassination of Martin Luther King one year to the day he gave his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech, that she left just one year almost to the day she questioned RT based Russia and Putin’s role in the Ukraine invasions?

Here, her off show comments are insightful as to the inner conflict at RT at that time, while the world media attacked her person for stating her honest beliefs:

Or did she leave because of newly placed editorial content restrictions by superiors? All she alluded to on her final show was she was leaving because “there is only so much one can do in a studio”.  It was obvious from the way RT had to scramble to fill her time slot that her departure was not planned or expected.

Was she attempting to report on the coming mandatory vaccinations laws, 25 years of spraying like insects the people of the Earth through Geo-engineering or maybe it she was going to call out Billy for costing Hilary her assured selection as President due to his and Prince Andrew’s association with convicted child abuser, and major campaign fundraiser, Jeffrey Epstein?

The artist must always maintain freedom to create and express.

Ms. “thirty-something” Martin directly took on the CIA with her segment titled “CIA Doctors”. She challenged the FBI and their disingenuous investigation of the domestic production of the Anthrax used directly after 9/11. She took on the largest private mercenary army in the world on her segment, “Blackwater’s Most Guilty”. She called out the 25 years of training dictators in torture for Latin America at what was formerly known as the School of the America’s aka School of the Assassins, at Fort Bennings, Georgia.

The lady was fearless.

She held studio interviews with former NSA Veterans disclosing the agencies history of illegal spying on all U.S. citizens. She called out Congress for their amoral and  immoral insider stock trading on bills they were about to pass and the secret societal gatherings at Bohemian Grove as well as her heartfelt outrage that President Obama, on his orders alone, assassinated Americans overseas by drone attacks.

Additionally she covered topics no other corporate sponsored TV media would touch, including episodes on animal cruelty and torture by corporations for product testing and the deafening silence of nuclear death from Fukushima and the worlds ever-growing nuclear waste problems.

She went after the Drug Pushers of Big Pharma with shows “Bayer Infects Thousands With HIV” and “Drugging the Elderly”. And who can forget the instant classic calling out of Nestle’s stealing of water from the aquifers of Vancouver, B.C. on a show entitled, “Wet Greed”, where she orally expropriated her distaste for Nestle’s malfeasance by puking its bottled water onto the studio floor.

She bluntly called out the GMO king with “How Monsanto Runs Washington”. She labeled Walmart an “Economic Deathstar”. She and her team produced well researched gross misconduct exposure pieces on McDonald’s and Chiquita Brands as well as calling out the corporate greed behemoth banksters with names of Goldman Sachs, Citibank and HSBC.

Boldly, she reported on Israeli’s continued huge influence and overt bias in American domestic and foreign policies as well as their continued annihilation of the defenseless Palestinians. And what other TV anchor could, and did, report about the mysterious death of fellow investigative journalist, Michael Hastings, and speculate about whether or not a private contractor could have been involved?

Courage personified.

On more than one show she wore a black dress while giving credibility and voice to the 9/11 truth movement. Many of us who have impatiently waited some 13 years for any news organization to even mention conspiracy and 9/11 in the same breath were impressed.

Once you hear, you cannot unhear.

On her shows were many of the rock stars of the Truth Movement today: John Perkins, Chris Hedges, Naomi Wolf, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Medea Benjamin, Jeremy Scahill, Greg Palast, Glen Greenwald, Joe Rogan, Adam Kokesh as well as on one of her last interviews with CIA whistleblower, John Kiriakou in a sobering aptly titled show, “Wake Up, You’re Next!”.

Her tearing up on TV while reporting on the unexpected loss of a great truth warrior last year, Michael Ruppert, was powerful, heartfelt and genuine. Many, including myself, cried right along with her.

She also invited on guests speaking freely on other forms of group organizing other than a capitalist government system with presenters who were Anarchists, Liberalists, Socialists and Communists.

She gave voice to, as well as ably represented, the Gen-Xer’s and Millennial generations. Equally, she gave hope and fresh air to my gen, the Baby Doomer’s, who cynically never thought we would live to see the day that such consciousness raising, truth-telling would ever be broadcast in our lifetimes.

Breaking the Set went to Guantanamo Bay and kept alive, as well as reminding us all, the real-time, ongoing confinement of uncharged men still being senselessly tortured today by our government, even though President Obama promised to close it down several years back while the mainstream media feigns amnesia once again.

She physically went to Detroit to show the tragedy and plight of the growing lower classes. Onto the Pine Wood Indian Reservation she traveled to highlight the continued decades long injustice to our Native Americans in her two-part series, “Bringing Hope to Despair”.

 

 

One of my favorite of all her segments was when she called out all the most recent Presidents of the United States in her segment entitled, “Five Ways To Spot a Liar”, where she brilliantly used their own words to show that when their lips moved, they were usually lying to us all.

Another personal favorite was when she proclaimed and directly exclaimed what many of us have wanted to say in our personal “mad as hell not going to take it anymore” moments when she opined on air to “F*** the media, f*** the candidates, f*** the corporatocracy!” before the presidential election last November. Then added, “I can’t wait for this f***ing election to be over!”

You had me at F***, Abby!

 

Abby Martin and the team from Breaking the Set say goodbye during the final episode last week.

It is more than likely that we will never be allowed by network TV to see a show like Breaking the Set on world-wide television again. Whether it be broadcast from bosses in Moscow, Russia or Moscow, Idaho. Maybe RT (formerly Russia Today) decided enough was enough. Maybe it was just time for the brave, courageous lioness herself to leave.

The artists paints and then moves on.

Her final sign off on her last show was a “don’t cry for me Argentina” message that also transcended her own private moment of ending time and space when she closed with:

Remember that nations are invented, borders are invisible, prejudice is learned. We’re all human beings who bleed the same blood and shed the same tears. Every time a person suffers, from Detroit to Gaza, that’s our brother. That’s our sister. That’s our family…To truly appreciate the good, we first must free ourselves from the prisons of our own minds and the dogmas society ingrains in us. Our empathy needs to extend toward every corner of the Earth, to every living thing. I struggle with all of this on a daily basis as I’ve delved into the utter destruction wrought on this precious planet. But I also know that every issue I’ve ever covered is so much bigger than me and my tiny existence. I have only been a vessel for the truth. And now, you all need to be too. So, empower yourself. And please know you’re not alone. Because together, we’ll never, ever stop breaking the set!”