Voices of reason

I’ve been under the weather with a bad cold for the past ten days or so. Today, the fog of it seems to have finally lifted, giving me the impetus to write this post.

In recent years I’ve noticed a trend: more and more people asking what and more importantly who can we trust to tell us what’s happening in the world. The answer, I think, is nobody. We must read different sources and form our own opinions. Still, the question remains, what sources to read and how to catalog them? To paraphrase Julian Assange, if we as a society don’t know where we are, how can we know where we want to go?

Why is it so diffiult to know what’s actually going on? I have a hypothesis that after the WikiLeaks revelations, people in power realized they could not completely stop the threat of truth-telling (i.e. leaks), and decided the best solution would be to have everyone so confused that nobody would know what or who to believe. Meanwhile, they would focus on finding ways to censor the information available to the masses. Censoring information for all of us is not currently possible, but it’s not really required to rule. All that’s needed is to have a majority of people thinking what you want them to think, and then excommunicate the fringe minorities as extremists, terrorists, alt-right-wing, or whatever insult de-jour you come up with.

Regardless of whether my hypothesis is correct, the symptom is there, the confusion is rampant, the legacy media march in unison for any substantive issue, the leaders of western countries don’t seem to represent their populations anymore and seem bound by supranational agendas that supersede the supposed democratic mandates they govern under.

The latest vomitive (but expected) distortion has been the attack on Israel by Hamas, which has basically generated a unison response by the 14 eyes and their neocolonial enclaves, with some important political figures even calling for ethnic cleanses (cue in former US ambassador to the United Nations and current Republican presidential candidate Nikki Heley tweeting “Finish them @Netanyahu”). The legacy media has also responded in monotone with the “leaders of the free world,” condemning the terrorists, reasserting Israel’s right to defend itself (which means, as it has always meant in every colonial situation that the colonial power has the right to indiscriminately retaliate, exponentially, to teach the colonized a lesson. The Israeli minister of defense came out saying “we are fighting human animals,” which is true from the point of view of the Israeli government, who has kept the two million people of Gaza in a cage for the past decade and a half (even measuring the minimum number of calories needed to keep the population alive but at the border of starvation).

In any case, I refuse to believe that the opinions of the legacy media and of the leaders of the “democratic” west reflect the opinions of the majority of their citizens. So, here’s a list of some of my go-to sources of geopolitical information, with brief descriptions:

Consortium News: I find the articles usually nuanced, and particularly enjoy reading Scott Ritter, Chris Hedges, John Pilger, Jeffrey Sachs, among others). Strong supporters of Julian Assange.
Moon of Alabama: Generally good commentary on international conflicts. Disagreed with the author on many COVID issues.
Craig Murray: A courageous and intelligent man. Well-read, nuanced, and always a pleasure to read. Indefatigable supporter of Julian Assange.
George Galloway: Well-spoken, witty, sincere, passionate. I agree with him on most issues. Watching his show (The MOAT) helps me feel some sense of camaraderie. Thank you, George.
Scott Ritter: Interesting political and war commentator. He tries a bit too hard to be neutral for my taste, and his military background makes me not feel the kind of camaraderie I feel with others mentioned here, but I find his commentary to be invaluable and nuanced.
The Greyzone: I don’t read it too often, but I do watch videos by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté from time to time (though I don’t really know how to find them. They’ll usually pop up through someone else’s feed on Telegram). Anya Parampil also has interesting viewpoints.
WikiLeaks: This used to be a go-to resource for anything that needed researching. Unfortunately, in the last years their archive is often inaccessible, on account of the fact that Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, has been kept in solitary confinement in a dungeon called His Majesty’s Belmarsh Prison, in London, waiting for extradition to the US on trumped-up charges relating to the 1917 Espionage Act, where he faces up to 175 years in prison for publishing the truth about US war crimes, among other things.
Martin Kulldorff: For information on COVID.
Jay Bhattacharya: For information on COVID. He doesn’t post very often on Telegram and lately (since we’ve been able to live life semi-normally again) I’m too lazy to open Twitter (plus, it’s more difficult to visit without being a member now that it was before Musk took it over. Though in Musk’s defense, what is published now at least is much less censored. Anyway, Twitter is a cesspool, so I have no interest in being a participating subscriber, whether owned by Musk or Dorsey).
Robert Malone: Inventor of mRNA technology. Started following him for his views on COVID. I find him interesting, though he leans quite right, so I find some of his political opinions somewhat abhorrent. Still, find him interesting enough to follow.
Eva Bartlett: Started following her very recently, but have come across her work here and there for years. Usually seems to be on the same side of issues as I find myself (though I don’t know her work well enough to be sure).
Alfredo Jalife: In Spanish. Interesting geopolitical analyst. I find some of his diatribe on Mexican politics abhorrent (the politics within the 4T transformation). I also always wonder if he’s antisemitic (he expresses many negative views on those he calls “Khazarian” (Jázaros, in Spanish), which rubs me the wrong way. He’s also a bit of a churl, and extremely full of himself. Nonetheless, some of his geopolitical commentary is spot-on.
Brian Berletic: Discovered him not too long ago and started following on account of his narrative on the war in Ukraine. He’s an interesting military and geopolitical analyst. His opinions on Thailand are not nuanced enough for my taste, but he lives there, so go figure.
Jimmy Dore: I don’t really watch all his shows for whatever reason, but usually find him refreshing. His views on COVID were initially at odds with mine, but he later changed his views.
Glenn Greenwald: I find him annoying but find his views generally interesting. I was extremely disappointed with him when he banded up with Omidyar to create First Look Media, but he got a good dose of his own medicine in the end and had the balls to pull away. I subscribed to his Substack for a while, but he seems to jump from platform to platform, so I don’t really follow him anymore. I still respect his views and am happy that he supports Assange (though his stint with Omidyar was a real betrayal of Assange, afaic.
Vanessa Beeley: Extremely pro-Syrian commentary. Started following her in the last few months. She’s a smart woman, on the ground in Syria, and speaks some truths that most others are scared to speak (such as that the US occupies a part of Syria, steals its oil and protects and funds terrorist groups in the country. I read what she writes with interest.
RT News: News from a Russian perspective. Some of their work is quite nuanced, while some other stuff is very one-sided. I scan their headlines and from time to time read some of their articles or listen to some of their commentators).
PressTV: Iranian news channel. Started following recently to get the other side of news in the current Palestinian uprising.
The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Fox, NYT, WP, El Pais, Le Monde, etc.: I scan their headlines from time to time, but more and more find that I cannot stand it. I suppose this reveals as much about me as it does about them. They are what I call legacy media. They mostly fall in line with each other on geopolitics, sometimes fighting on what I find to be less important (such as who the next president of the US/UK/etc. happens to be). Ideologically, I feel they are a unified wall (though some might fight with others).

That’s all for now. I’m sure there are other sources I’m forgetting, but this is an overview of how I try to keep myself informed. I’m reluctant to post anything related to politics (which includes COVID) on here, because we seem to live in a time when disagreeing with someone else is grounds for making an enemy of them. I like to think I’m nuanced enough to disagree with others on some issues and still manage to be edified by them on others. But we live in childish binary times, so revealing my political alignment is always a risk (particularly as my alignment seems to make me somewhat of a class traitor).