This is the newsletter of OptOut, a free news aggregation app for exclusively independent media that's available for iPhone and iPad. Find out more about the app at optout.news.
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Thanks in part to an OptOut feature from The Rational National today, our iOS app is currently at number 22 in the Magazines & Newspapers category on the Apple Store! That puts us ahead of LA Times and The Guardian and just behind The New Yorker and USA Today. Check out this short video about OptOut.
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I also went on Ring of Fire Radio with Farron Cousins to talk about OptOut and a recent story. Jordan Chariton of OptOut member Status Coup joined the show as well to discuss "his recent trip through Florida where he spoke with the people who are being directly, negatively impacted by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis' assaults on our rights."
Here's the story I wrote for Exposed by CMD: Nonprofit charities, which are subsidized by our tax dollars, are some of the biggest funders of climate misinformation. Read about the Dirty Dozen, which include several charitable money managers tied to mainstream investment firms.
Your Weekly Independent News Roundup
This week's roundup of the best content from OptOut's network of over 120 financially independent, trustworthy news outlets covers fake or former progressives' misinformation, among other topics, and features a number of great videos.
Fake Lefties on the Airwaves
Quite a few media personalities formerly, or even still, associated with the left became unhinged during the Trump era and are now squarely on the right. Whether it's making libertarian arguments against Covid lockdowns pushed by the political network of Charles Koch, defending Trump, or grifting off of unproven Covid remedies, these guys really know how to own themselves.
Along with "intellectual dark web" pals Joe Rogan and Brett Weinstein, shock jock and "Force the Vote" opportunist Jimmy Dore got on the ivermectin train early, pumping his viewers for Super Chat payments as Trump-loving doctors seemingly defrauded patients convinced that the Covid vaccine contains 5G tracking chips.
The Majority Report discusses a new study showing that, as many health officials have been saying for nearly two years now, the deworming drug does not in fact reduce Covid-19 patients' risk of ending up in the hospital.
Eric Draitser of Counterpunch reviews "the pernicious influence of fake anti-imperialism as it infects the left and poisons analysis of Russia's war in Ukraine."
So-called anti-imperialists have ended up cheering on war crimes, says Draitser, who covers deflection as a means of backhanded support for Russia, the claim that the Mariupol bombing as a "false flag," and the cynical manipulation of language, history, and culture. Some of these actors have denied genocides in Syria and China in the recent past.
Libertarian Glenn Greenwald, a former hero of the left who is now a favorite guest of Fox News' white nationalist-friendly Tucker Carlson, has a new book about his experience with press freedom in Brazil, where he lives and works. But, as FAIR writes, the frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy weirdly leaves out key details about U.S. involvement in an allegedly anti-corruption task force that put former president Lula behind bars.
In Other News
Speaking of the right, rightwing conspiracy theories are driving even more cuts to local election administration, reports Bolts.
And one more on the right wing: Who What Why analyzes how the war in Ukraine is complicating Hungarian President Viktor Orbán's reelection campaign.
For Prism, Alexandra Martinez reports on a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy—first introduced by Bill Clinton, replaced by Obama, reinstated by Trump, and maintained by Biden—is putting hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in limbo.
OptOut needs your help!
We truly rely on your support to run our free app and nonprofit charity. Your donations help us pay and retain our staff, which worked for months as volunteers to get this vital content in front of as many people as possible. Now it's time to make OptOut a sustainable nonprofit organization. Your donations will help us add new features to the app, create an outlet review team, and cover administration, advertising, a merch store, and a lot more.
Can you make a tax-deductible donation of $25 or more to the OptOut Media Foundation? We really appreciate your generosity.
Watch the Gravel Institute's mini-doc on the LAPD's shooting and killing Mely Corado, in the context of a pattern of other killings by the force.
TransLash Media published a three-part series called "Trans Bodies, Trans Choices." Here's one selection profiling nonbinary Californian Jack Qu’emi, whose unplanned pregnancy got worse when they encountered transphobic health professionals. The full transcript and resources are here.
Finally, check out two debates hosted by the Jacobin Show: one between New York Magazine's Eric Levitz and Jacobin contributor Branko Marcetic on how the American left should understand and respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; and another between theorists Slavoj Zizek and Vivek Chibber on the role of ideology in promoting capitalist stability.
Thanks as always for following the OptOut independent media network! See you later this week.
The OptOut Media Foundation (EIN: 85-2348079) is a nonprofit charity with a mission to educate the public about current events and help sustain a diverse media ecosystem by promoting and assisting independent news outlets and, in doing so, advance democracy and social justice.
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