'Russia Today', broadcast in English, is programmed into my cable TV remote as a favorite program. So every time I complete one surfing circumnavigation of the many cable channels, I hit RT at least three times. It's delivered on that many channels.

RT has a very western programming format of news, magazine pieces, documentary, sports, and interviews. By now it's really a universal format seen in Asia, the Arab middle east, and South America.

I find it interesting, not so much for hard news, but for a slice of Russian life and perspective. The cultural and travelogue programs help me keep my history and geography brains cells alive and humming.

A friend asked me, after learning that I watched RT, if I could trust the content. She assumed it was mostly state-serving propaganda and wanted to know it I was discerning enough in my choice of TV programming. I said it was fine, as far as it went. Of course, it was clearly pro-Serbia in opposition to an independent Herzegovina. That was to be expected.

I suppose it was to be expected when RT assumed the hardest of hard lines in the recent military confrontation of Russia with Georgia over Ossetia and Abkhazia. So much for any pretense at independent news coverage and reporting.

I had become complacent so that I could forget I was watching a foreign news program. This fact was brought home to me while listening to a report about the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by the Warsaw Pact. This past week was the 40th anniversary of the breaking of the 'Prague Spring.' A veteran photographer was discussing his pictures of the event, some of which were published at the time. He was saying that the only violence that he recorded was perpetrated by some protesters who set fire to a Warsaw Pact tank. Otherwise, it was no big deal for most of the population.

That got my attention. However, I wasn't yet attending to the fact that this was RT. Then the narrator of the report went on to say that Russia hardly had a hand in the matter. In fact, Czechoslovakia's neighbors were the ones who interceded to help a friend. In any event, almost no one in current day Prague remembers anything bad about the military intervention and occupation. In fact, for all intents and purposes, nobody cares (I overstate slightly to make a point.)

At that point I realized I was not listening some stupid story by a U.S. reporter who knew nothing about recent world history. (After all, the current White House press secretary was totally ignorant of the 1963 Cuban missile crisis.) Rather, I was listening to RT.

I won't beat a dead horse, but suffice it to say, "Le plus ca change le plus ca le meme chose."

There is a renewed Russia flexing its imperialistic muscles, again. It's a newly financed Russia - enriched by incredible income from oil exports and other commodities.

No. We are not on the brink of another cold war or hot wars by proxy. There is a need, however, for the American people and the politicians who will lead us to do at least two things: 1. End our excessive dependence on foreign oil and concomitant transfer of our wealth; 2. Resurrect the influence of the United States as a moral force in the world.

These are herculean tasks, I know.