The Grayzone's Oscar Leon spoke with close colleagues and friends of Ecuadorian activist Monika Silva, whose killing has shocked the nation, and deepened questions about the government's ties to narco cartels.Monika Silva was one of Ecuador’s most tireless anti-corruption and environmental activists. On June 8, she was found dead in her home in Montañita, Ecuador. The government claims she was depressed, and had committed suicide. This was misleading at best. A recent postmortem investigation revealed that Silva had been killed by a blunt trauma to the head, and strangulation.In the months leading up to her death, Silva had repeatedly warned that her life was in danger. She also revealed that she had presented evidence to the US Embassy in Quito of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s links to the international drug trade. Noboa happens to be a key Trump ally, a billionaire son of Miami, who is rapidly transforming Ecuador into a militarized bulwark of US control.Silva's killing, and the government’s deceptive statements about it, demonstrate the harsh reality that forced so many Ecuadorians into silence. It is not safe to investigate corruption in this country.

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After news emerged that the US and Iran had finally reached an agreement to cease hostilities, thousands of civilians raced to return to their homes in Southern Lebanon.Days later, Israel responded to the elimination of its occupying soldiers by carrying out some of the worst massacres in its war on Lebanon, forcing civilians back to an uncertain future in the north — and forcing Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz again.In this on-the-ground report for The Grayzone, Wyatt Reed traveled to Southern Lebanon to speak to the families in the line of fire, and see the destruction wrought by Israel firsthand.

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Max Blumenthal joins Mario Nawfal to discuss the fallout from Trump's MOU with Iran

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The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal breaks down recent reports emanating from US intelligence warning that Israeli spying has reached "critical" levels since President Donald Trump initiated negotiations with Iran.Blumenthal explains who Israel is reportedly targeting, and how the NY Times confirmed his own reporting about Israeli spying on the White House from one year ago.

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In his latest on the ground report for The Grayzone, Wyatt Reed travelled to the ancient city of Tyre to document the aftermath of a brutal wave of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and local businesses.Despite Israel’s claims that their attacks target Hezbollah, he found no evidence of militant activity. Instead, he only encountered civilians attempting to rebuild their lives — and, in many cases, refusing to obey a forced evacuation notice imposed by Israeli forces seeking to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon.

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Cerie Bulivant, a passenger on the Gaza Sumud Flotilla, joins The Grayzone to share his testimony of experiencing heinous abuses and torture by Israeli soldiers after the aid boats were intercepted. Max Blumenthal is then joined by Wyatt Reed from Beirut, who will discuss his coverage of the war in southern Lebanon between invading Israeli forces and Hezbollah. Aaron Mate also joins to cover Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and the latest in the US.

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The Grayzone's Wyatt Reed interviews Wafiq Safa, a senior Hezbollah official and former head of Hezbollah's Liaison and Coordination Unit.In a candid exchange about Hezbollah's conflict with Israel in Southern Lebanon, Safa provides new details on resistance operations, its intelligence capacity, and how he believes it has forced Israel into a costly stalemate that exposes the limits of Israeli military power. Safa argues that any US-backed attempt to disarm Hezbollah would be illegitimate and could trigger civil war, because Hezbollah sees itself as part of a broader regional front that includes Iran and other anti-Israel forces. Regarding Lebanon’s future, he argues that Israel’s talk of permanent settlement in the south is realistic only if resistance collapses, and he insists that the movement still stands by its decision to open the front after October 7 because it views the war as a defense of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a response to Israel’s wider regional project.Safa also offers his assessment of Israeli influence on the US government, and whether Israeli is advancing US national security interests, or undermining them.

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The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reacts to the Department of Justice’s indictment of former Cuban President Raul Castro for shooting down a pair of planes from a CIA-backed network of Miami Cubans, Brothers to the Rescue, who deliberately and repeatedly violated Cuban airspace in 1996.Blumenthal explains how the Clinton administration warned that the planes were “taunting” the Cuban government, and would provoke it to shoot them down. He then breaks down the network behind Brothers to the Rescue: CIA-backed terrorists who downed a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, and carried out a series of bombings on Cuban shipping and hotels under the supervision of US intelligence.

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For years, the Imam Khomayni mosque and medical center provided free treatment and medicine to the people of Maachouq in South Lebanon.

That all ended yesterday morning, when Israeli forces decimated the building, and the adjacent civil defense headquarters, with two massive rocket strikes. Wyatt Reed reports from the scene.

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Max explains how the campaign to defeat Rep Thomas Massie reveals how Israel’s lobby network is shamelessly buying U.S. politics, laundering influence through Trump-world, and pushing war and censorship. But the public is finally breaking through the propaganda, and a backlash is building.

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