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Comment by heyn05tradamu5 | Hacker News Reader

I reject the framing of The Gray Zone as anti-war. Anti-US imperialism sure, but not anti-war. They have no problem minimizing the suffering of millions at the hands of some of the most brutal regimes on the planet. Calling them anti-war is like calling Alex Jones a scientist.

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Their articles are generally really well researched and they actually call for an end to all war in Syria. Thy're consistently anti-war.

It looks as if they’re consistently anti-US: not a single word against China, but each shady remark that casts some doubt on US policy gets the floor.

They are certainly left or hard-left and are very critical of US, NATO, and Israel. If they view themselves as activist-journalists, it seems a logical choice to focus their criticism on the US, where (in theory) they have some chance of moving policy through public opinion.

There is approximately zero chance of their reporting swaying Xi, Putin, or Assad. US adversaries get plenty of unfavorable reporting in more mainstream channels.

They're a political pressure group. That's not necessarily a criticism, they can publish whatever they like, but they aren't anti war, and they aren't against a lot of things they report on. They're only against them and only report on them when their political enemies, the US and the west generally do them regardless of context or provocation or any broader circumstances. Outside that, they don't give a crap what anyone does. Pretending otherwise is I'm afraid rather naive. To be fair, they say so quite clearly, check out the editor's profile page on the site itself.

What? Here's the editor-in-chief's page that I see:

> "Mnar Adley is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups. She started her career as an independent multimedia journalist covering Midwest and national politics while focusing on civil liberties and social justice issues posting her reporting and exclusive interviews on her blog MintPress, which she later turned MintPress into the global news source it is today. In 2009, Adley also became the first American woman to wear the hijab to anchor/report the news in American media."

Nothing there so far as I can see about how "they're only against them and only report on them when their political enemies, the US and the west generally do them regardless of context or provocation or any broader circumstances"? ... Are you referring to some other page maybe?

My apologies, I was thinking of the founder:

"Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions."

I appreciate the correction.. Even so, does that description line up with what was claimed?

... Also, America is in perpetual war, which is having profound repercussions domestically, and globally also.

That other "journalism" outlets ignore the above fact so much is a very very large part of why we're in such a mess; economically, intellectually, environmentally, politically etc.

Why do you think other news outlets are not aware of this? I think they very much are. The question is, are there valid reasons for this.

TheGreyZone does not address that point at all, so they’re the ones dodging the real questions - what else should we be doing and why? What are the appropriate responses to the challenges we face? Mainstream media largely do challenge politicians on this and ask these questions.

They are against the west and the USA waging war. They are not against the Taliban, the Syrian government, Russia (in Eastern Ukraine and other places) waging war. Russia is heavily involved in Syria supplying and supporting the Syrian government, but gets zero criticism for it. They're silent on the conflict in Ethiopia because the west and the US aren't really involved. Go and check, there's a full on conflict with massacres and military intervention from Eritrea, and not a single article on The Grey Zone, they're just not intersted.

On the conflict in Yemen all of their articles are only about criticising or highlighting any US involvement. Iran is up to their eyeballs in it supplying and supporting the Houthis but they never get criticised, just the US. It's the only angle they cover. China is recklessly provoking Taiwan militarily, not a single comment against it. Only criticism of any and every US contact or relationship with Taiwan.

They have a very specific anti-West, anti-US agenda they pursue relentlessly and exclusively, completely regardless of the context.

I would prefer an "anti-war" site without a track record of making shit up. That's why Gray Zone is deprecated on Wikipedia, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...

It's funny how this level of scrutinization only applies to journalists who are critical of US/NATO foreign policy of neocolonialism and US empire expansionism & hegemony, but never to organizations like BBC, CNN, NYT who have been exposed to churn out some of the biggest lies, especially against US propaganda targets.

It's a remarkably consistent phenomenon, on WP and elsewhere. This page [0] goes some way to showing just how deeply biased Wikipedia has acted against Grayzone and others like it:

[0] https://mronline.org/2020/06/15/wikipedia-formally-censors-t...

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