Iran Protests and Inflated Death Tolls

https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/meet-the-former-fashion-blogger-and

The reporting surrounding the protests and death tolls in Iran have played a part in the media campaign justifying US action and in particular the assassination of Ali Khamenei.

Ritter, Russia, and Hersh

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/23/scott-ritter-getting-it-wrong-on-russia/

Seymour Hersh has been on my mind as of late. I was able to watch the 2025 documentary Cover-Up, directed by Laura Poitras. It traced and highlighted aspects of career and offered some interesting and candid moments.

The East Timor Genocide and Carter's Whitewashed Legacy

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide 

The American support for Indonesia's genocide in East Timor is usually associated with Ford and Kissinger. The invasion famously began the day after Air Force One left Jakarta in December 1975. The Americans were fully aware of what Suharto was planning and many would go further and point to evidence suggesting the US encouraged the invasion. East Timor like Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea were Portuguese colonies up for grabs with the collapse of the dictatorship in the so-called Carnation Revolution of 1975.

Gabbard Sells Out on FISA

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/01/15/patrick-lawrence-the-predictable-capitulation-of-tulsi-gabbard/

Gabbard was one of those interesting people that captured a lot of attention from the Left and within Alternative Media circles for her opposition to the war in Syria and her general scepticism regarding US foreign policy at the time. It was the second or late phase of the War on Terror - the fallout from the Arab Spring, the campaigns in Syria and Libya, and the war against ISIS. She was a backer of Bernie Sanders and generally speaking had become a pariah to the DNC Establishment. The GOP viewed her as something akin to a traitor.

Syria and Gaza: Creeping Authoritarianism in the UK and the War on Adversarial Journalism

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/18/police-escalate-britians-war-on-independent-journalism/

The recent Israel-Gaza War has been eye-opening. We're literally witnessing the normalizing of a genocide. I feel it's something of a watershed. This sort of butchery has taken place before - in Vietnam for example. And while everyone talks about the media's role in reporting that war and supposedly undermining it, the truth is they barely scratched the surface. The fact that their on-the-ground reporting was (and is) considered controversial by some is a testimony to how well conditioned the public was up to that point. It was not adversarial (by my estimations) but just the reporting and the footage was enough to upset the public and lead to a questioning.

Bellingcat and the NED

https://mate.substack.com/p/elon-musk-is-right-bellingcat-is

Even blind squirrels get acorns on occasion. Musk is certainly repugnant in every respect but as Aaron Mate points out – this time he was right.

Cover Up and Exposure: The Self Serving Nature of Establishment Media and the Right's Embrace of Fantasy

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/1121525125/heres-why-conspiracy-theories-about-jeffrey-epstein-keep-flourishing

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/1121648290/a-publisher-abruptly-recalled-the-2-000-mules-election-denial-book-npr-got-a-cop

And a follow-up:

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/25/1131077739/heres-what-changed-in-dinesh-dsouzas-2-000-mules-book-after-it-was-recalled

I've had these links in my backlog for a few months now. The stories appeared on the same day. The combined reporting could be described as both lies and attacking liars – covering up and exposing at the same time. It's enough to make your head spin.

The Sad Saga of Glenn Greenwald: A Tale of Abandoned Integrity

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/27/apologist-for-tucker-carlsons-racism-glenn-greenwald/

I wasn't surprised to see this article. In some respects I'm surprised more people aren't commenting on this. I was glad to see Greenwald leave The Guardian in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations. The founding of The Intercept looked promising but that too began to degenerate. And then in 2020, Greenwald went out on his own – it was real display of integrity, or at least so I thought.

Prince Under Investigation

https://theintercept.com/2021/10/30/fbi-libya-erik-prince-weapons-trafficking/

Erik Prince is once more in the news. His star has faded somewhat, especially when compared to his days of fame and notoriety during the Bush and Trump administrations. And yet he hasn't gone away.

Mike Lindell and The Family

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDq3wTYb4QU

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/lindell-jesus-christ-trump

Lindell who is closely connected to Trump and was involved in the post-election coup plotting (that culminated in the failed January 6 putsch) has been a rising star in Christian Right circles. At the same time he has alienated sponsors and been forced out of some media circles. It's been remarkable (if disconcerting) to watch how the Evangelical community has rallied around him.

Greenwald Rapidly Destroying His Credibility

Glenn Greenwald formerly of The Guardian and The Intercept, the latter of which he helped to found in the aftermath of the Edward Snowden revelations – has gone out on his own. One of the lone voices within anti-Establishment (Left-wing) journalism, he has made enemies by questioning the Russiagate narrative and has at times questioned some of the Left's narratives surrounding Donald Trump.

Greenwald Quits The Intercept

Greenwald's departure wasn't all that surprising apart from the fact that he was the key name associated with The Intercept's founding in 2014. The online magazine arose in the wake of the Snowden revelations and yet within a few years it began to decline.

The Twin Disasters of American Evangelicalism: Dominionism and Dispensationalism

https://www.mintpressnews.com/christian-nationalists-christian-zionists-secure-another-four-years-for-trump/270259/

The Mint Press News article wades into confusing waters as there is some truth in the assertions of racism at work in the narratives of Christian Nationalism but these realities are vigorously denied by most in that sector – as is the reality of American imperialism.

There is so much dishonesty at work, the revising and romanticisation of history and imposed metanarrative that it's very difficult to get through to the adherents of Christian Nationalism (a variant of Dominionism) that they have in fact departed from historical truth and certainly New Testament Christianity.

Blackwater and Wagner

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/13/erik-prince-russia-mercenary-wagner-libya-mozambique/

Prince, a hero to many American Evangelicals is an evil figure to some and certainly a living scandal to Christians who root their faith in the New Testament. Regardless of what one thinks of him, he remains an important if controversial figure.

A Coronavirus Miscellany: Statistics, Science and the Libertarian Sceptics

We're now in the midst of a week that was predicted to be Pearl Harbor and 9/11 all rolled into one. Deaths hit nearly 2,000 as of yesterday (7 April) but thus far the claims haven't quite matched reality. The media continues to argue that combined deaths in New York and New Jersey have now passed 9/11, a sobering statistic which is true but the cataclysm that was forecast, just hasn't quite panned out.

This is not to make light of the deaths that have occurred nor do I mean to give any credence to those dismissing Covid-19 as an overblown hoax.

The Intercept's Mockery of Evangelicals: Deceitful but Deserved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7Efb_lWiw

This video both angered and saddened me. The Intercept, a once respectable adversarial journalistic outlet has become a mouthpiece for the Left-wing of the Democratic Party and has embraced the rot of Identity Politics. Instead of opposing the system as a whole the outlet has aligned itself with a faction and now promotes its variety of decadent faux-Leftism.

CNN: Not Left-wing but Establishment Safe

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/06/embassy-insider-exposes-cnn-lies-about-julian-assange/#more-14399

The fact that CNN is once again exposed as a propaganda outlet for the US Establishment should come as a surprise to no one. I suppose when the outlet first appeared in the 1980's, around-the-clock news and the level of international reporting was novel and thus we were all fascinated. That said, even the mainstream outlets had extensive international bureaus at that time and while the coverage was certainly slanted, nothing compares to what's happening today.

The Syria Blacklist

https://www.mintpressnews.com/using-forged-emails-progressive-journalists-smear-challenging-syria-groupthink/261972/

This article provides a good summary for the case that Syria coverage has been manipulated and often fabricated. Given the longevity and complexity of the conflict the number of articles dealing with these questions is voluminous, even daunting for someone who hasn't been following things closely.

And thus this article plays a helpful role in providing the 'big picture' in terms of this question.

Facial Recognition and the March Toward Dystopia

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/07/fbi-ice-find-state-drivers-license-photos-are-gold-mine-facial-recognition-searches/

Law enforcement is just helping itself to our personal data. And they're not collecting it and sifting it because they suspected you did something. They're just running your data through their filters and algorithms... because they can.

Sloppy Religious Reporting From The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/2019/03/30/domestic-terrorism-donald-trump/

The Intercept has at times produced praiseworthy work but overall the news magazine continues to exhibit would I would consider a downward slide. What was once insightful and somewhat adversarial journalism has (with a few exceptions) slipped into the mainstream of the American Left and at times all but echoes the narratives of the less-than-left wing Democratic Party.