As world leaders, celebrities, business moguls and activists alike descended on Scotland for the COP26 climate summit, behind the scenes powerful financial groups were and are attempting to rewrite the rules of international trade and to privatize nature under the guise of sustainability.While there has been a great deal of finger pointing, the enormous and tangible changes necessary to steer the planet away from devastation are yet to appear. The world is still on course to warm 2.4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, according to a report from Climate Action Tracker. Anything above 2°C is generally considered to be catastrophic and could lead to societal collapse across the globe.While high politics has understandably made the headlines, a cartel of international bankers is attempting to use the crisis to rewrite international capitalism for their own benefit.Our guest today, Whitney Webb, has been monitoring these developments carefully. In an article published earlier this month, she wrote:The most powerful private financial interests in the world, under the cover of COP26, have developed a plan to transform the global financial system by fusing with institutions like the World Bank and using them to further erode national sovereignty in the developing world."Webb is a writer, researcher and journalist who, between 2017 and 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for MintPress News. She currently writes at The Last American Vagabond and Unlimited Hangout. Today, she also discussed a recent article she wrote entitled “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class.” Under the guise of promoting sustainability, the global financial elite are attempting to force through more privatizations of the natural world, to the point where nature itself -- the system that sustains human life -- will have a value assigned to it (and will therefore be able to be bought and sold).Describing this as “a new way to loot,” Webb outlines how businesses could attempt to extract rents from us for the water we drink and air we breathe; a very visceral form of late-stage capitalism.Join us today for a free-flowing conversation on these important and worrying topics.MintPress NewSupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Welcome to MintCast, the official MintPress News podcast featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence. Today MintCast host Mnar Adley is joined by Vanessa Beeley, an independent investigative journalist and war correspondent based in Damascus, Syria.  While the U.S. military occupies a third of Syria -- mostly in the northeast, controlling Syria's vast oil reserves and water supplies -- Syria continues to rebuild after nearly a decade of destabilization efforts by the U.S. and its proxies, who have armed rebel groups with the intention of stoking a civil war and toppling President Bashar al-Assad. Today, the city of Daraa, which has been referred to as the cradle of the Syrian revolution, has been liberated by the Syrian Army. But, as MintPress reported nearly a decade ago, Daraa was the touchpaper lit by hardline Libyan mercenaries imported into Syria prior to 2011. These mercenaries were trained by the CIA and MI6, alongside Saudi intelligence, to hijack a small movement for economic reforms and turn it into an armed rebellion to fulfill foreign interests in the region. In this segment of MintCast, Beeley joins us to help get us up to speed with the war that was once the focus of mainstream coverage pushing a humanitarian interventionist narrative. MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The WaSupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Virtually nobody trusts what they read any more. The United States ranks dead last among 46 nations surveyed in confidence in the press. Only 29% of Americans say they broadly believe what they read, see or hear in mainstream media. And more than three quarters of the public think that big outlets knowingly publish fake news. The term “fake news” first came into common usage around the 2016 election, where Clinton claimed that Trump was being buoyed by false information shared on sites like Facebook, while Trump claimed the likes of CNN and MSNBC were themselves fake news.Joining MintPress Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod are two guests who know the long history of fake news in America. Dr. Nolan Higdon is an author and university lecturer of history and media studies at California State University East Bay. Meanwhile, Mickey Huff is professor of social science, history and journalism at Diablo Valley College in California and the director of the critical media literacy organization Project Censored.Together, the pair have written two books: “United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It)” and a forthcoming work, “Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy.”The divisiveness of social media has been in the news recently, with former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen having claimed that the social media giant had promoted inflammatory content to its users in order to generate more revenue, despite the consequences it has on society. Huff and Higdon agreed that disinformation is a major problem, but that the most pernicious examples of it come from the most established news outlets, many of whom were integral in selling America’s wars to the public.MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us bySupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Despite a number of embarrassing political events over the past number of years, Great Britain still likes to regard itself as a forward-thinking, world-leading country and a force for good. Surveys show that the United Kingdom retains a great deal of positive sentiment around the world. One historian whose work has done a great deal to shatter the myths of empire is Mark Curtis, who joins Alan MacLeod on the Mintcast today. Mark Curtis is a historian and journalist, the co-founder of Declassified UK, an investigative news website dedicated to scrutinizing the powerful. Described by veteran journalist and filmmaker John Pilger as Britain’s greatest modern historian, Curtis has published a number of groundbreaking books. Among them are “Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World,” which exposes the fallacy that Britain is a force for democracy and human rights; “Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses,” which catalogs the country’s imperial crimes up to the present; and “Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam,” which explores how the United Kingdom has supported radical and jihadist forces in the Middle East in order to topple secular, independent-minded governments.Today Curtis lays out how Britain is playing a major role in the devastation in Yemen, funnelling weapons to Saudi Arabia, reloading its jets, and generally doing everything short of pulling the trigger itself. Britain is a major arms dealer around the world, and Saudi Arabia is by far its best customer, responsible for 49% of worldwide sales. The U.K. also plays a key role in propping up other Middle Eastern monarchies such as Qatar, which now operates two joint squadrons with the British Royal Air Force, making it an ever closer ally of London. Curtis also strongly condemned the imprisonment of Australian publisher Julian Assange, who continues to be held under lock and key in London. Describing the case as a prime example of “imperial arrogance,” he claimed that Assange’s case should concern every member of the British public.MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us bySupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest country, is at a political crossroads. Heading into next year’s presidential elections, the country’s 211 million people are faced with choosing between social democrat and anti-imperialist Lula Da Silva (president between 2003 and 2010) and far-right populist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.But many are worried they will not even be allowed to elect anyone. Whispers are turning into shouts about a military-backed coup before next year, as the ailing Bolsonaro -- trailing Lula by 15-20 points in the polls -- seeks to hang on to power. The 66-year-old former military officer recently stated that there are only three potential futures for him: arrested and jailed, killed, or staying on as president, only adding fuel to the fire of speculation.Bolsonaro came to power in 2018 in a deeply flawed election that saw Lula imprisoned on phony corruption charges. Still ahead in the polls, judges ordered Lula be stripped of the right to stand for office, even from his jail cell. The judge leading the “anti-corruption” crusade (known as Operation Car Wash) was quietly co-ordinating with the prosecution the whole time, and later accepted a position as Justice Minister in Bolsonaro’s cabinet.Here today to talk about Brazil’s past, present and uncertain future is Brian Mier. Brian is co-editor at Brasil Wire and Brazil correspondent for TeleSUR English. Unlike most U.S. journalists who cover the country, Brian has lived and worked in Brazil for over 25 years and speaks Portuguese. He also co-edited the book, “Year of Lead. Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil.”MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.Support the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Shocking almost everybody in positions of power, life-long socialist and anti-war activist Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the British Labour Party in 2015. There was no honeymoon period for the Londoner, however, as right away the media, the government and even senior members of his own party began attempting to oust him.Defying the critics, Corbyn held on and took Labour to arguably its greatest-ever electoral success in 2017. However, his poor handling of Brexit and an unprecedented phoney anti-Semitism smear campaign sank his chances of becoming prime minister of the United Kingdom.Our guest today on Mintcast saw the entire situation unfold from up close. Asa Winstanley is a London-based investigative journalist at The Electronic Intifada. A former member of the Labour Party, like Corbyn, he was suspended from the party, in his case after he called the Jewish Labour Movement an "Israel embassy proxy."Corbyn -- a veteran anti-imperialist who opposed nuclear weapons, proposed the United Kingdom leave NATO and supported a targeted boycott of Israel over their annexation of much of Palestine -- was immediately attacked by sources of entrenched power. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even stated that his government was “doing its best” to prevent Corbyn from being elected.Despite a near-hysterical campaign against him, Corbyn’s popularity grew and grew. His 2017 manifesto -- which included making college free for all and proposed a huge expansion of social housing, an end to government austerity measures, nationalizing key industries like railways, and providing everyone in the country with free high-speed internet access -- was immensely popular.However, by the 2019 general election, years of attacks from the media, the military and even most of the elected officials within his own party had taken their toll, and Labour lost the contest to Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. In the three months prior to the vote, there were 1,450 articles in national British newspapers linking Corbyn to anti-Semitism.Asa Winstanley joined Mintcast host Mnar Adley today to discuss his work covering this case, and also talks about the wider implications of the affair. Originally from South Wales, Winstanley focuses his workSupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

After organizing coups, overthrowing democratically-elected heads of state, and arming death squads all around the world in the 1960s and 1970s, it was clear that the CIA had an image problem. The Reagan administration, therefore, began constructing a network of outsourced private organizations that would do the dirty work of the U.S. empire, shielding the U.S. government from the prying eyes of investigators and journalists.“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” Allen Weinstein, co-founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, told The Washington Post.One of these groups is Creative Associates International, the subject of an in-depth MintPress News investigation by Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod. Alan joins MintCast host Mnar Muhawesh Adley today to discuss his findings.Creative Associates International (CAI) was founded by Bolivian ex-pat M. Charito Kruvant in 1979. Visiting the organization’s website, viewers are met with images of smiling African children being taught how to read and write, happy Latino farmers, and pictures of Asian women going to school. The image CAI projects of itself is that it is a progressive charity helping many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable groups. And it does indeed do education work in dozens of countries. But it also has a long history of being the shock troops for the U.S.’ regime-change agenda throughout the world.CAI was involved in the 1991 Haitian coup d’etat that removed populist priest Jean Bertrand Aristide from power; it has worked with Contra death squads in Nicaragua, helping to defeat the Sandinista revolution there; and it has also spearheaded a number of attempts to sow discord in Cuba, with the ultimate goal of removing the Communists from power.CAI was hired to create a Twitter-like app for Cubans called ZunZuneo. The app would, at first, provide a great service and take over the market. Slowly, however, the plan was to drip-feed Cubans anti-Communist propaganda until the time came to organize a color revolution on the island through bombarding users with messages to take to the streets. CAI also recruited rappers to serve as anti-government figureheads who would push divisions and spread discord throughout the island.With virtually all of its budget coming from the U.S. government and six of the seven members of its board former or cSupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

After 20 years of war and occupation that have caused the deaths of almost a quarter of a million people and displaced 5.9 million more, the United States appears to have finally (tacitly) admitted defeat in Afghanistan, pulling its forces and representatives out of the country.The U.S.-installed government fell within days, with President Ashraf Ghani escaping to the United Arab Emirates, reportedly with $169 million in cash stuffed in his suitcases. Ghani’s departure is illustrative of the extraordinary grift of the entire operation. Overall, the U.S. spent well over $2 trillion on the Afghanistan War, making weapons contractors and construction agencies in the Washington, D.C. suburbs extremely wealthy.Today, Mintcast host Mnar Adley is joined by an individual with first-hand knowledge of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel who was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2003 and 2005. In this role, he observed the rapid expansion of the Bush administration’s War on Terror. A military veteran of 31 years, he has since become a vocal critic of American militarism and endless wars.After leaving the Bush administration, Wilkerson became an academic, teaching on public policy and security issues at the College of William & Mary and at George Washington University. Since 2020, he is also a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank urging restraint in U.S. foreign policy.MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Support the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

It’s a story that has captivated many for over three decades. In 1987, locals in Tallahassee, Florida alerted police to a strange incident in a local park. Six dirty, hungry and poorly clothed kids — almost resembling feral children — were in the custody of two extremely sharply dressed men.Both men were questioned but later released by police, although when it transpired that the men and the children were members of an obscure cult, situated in Washington, D.C. and called “The Finders,” the story went viral, causing nationwide hysteria. The incident occurred in the middle of the “Satanic Panic:” the fear that devil-worshipping gangs across the U.S. were kidnapping or even sacrificing children.The trail would ultimately lead to allegations of a cult involved in ritual abuse, an international child-trafficking ring, evidence of child abuse confirmed and later denied, and ties with the CIA, which was alleged to have interfered in the case.Investigative journalist Elizabeth Vos has been following the story and recent updates to it closely. Based in Arkansas, Elizabeth was the editor-in-chief of Disobedient Media and also hosts the CNLive webcast on Consortium News. Today, she joined Mintcast host Mnar Muhawesh Adley to discuss her latest trilogy of articles about the case, which can be found here: part 1, part 2, part 3.Elizabeth’s series focuses on the Finders’ close connections to the CIA, which suggest they may have been more than just an obscure group of people living an alternative, communal lifestyle: Isabelle Pettie, the wife of Finders’ head Marion Pettie, was employed at the agency between 1952 and 1961, while members of The Finders also trained CIA staff in computing. And, as Vos shows in the series, there is ample official evidence of an attempted CIA coverup, emanating from police and other federal agencies.In 2019, the FBI released hundreds of documents from their investigation of The Finders into the public domain. Although many are heavily redacted, they do appear to legitimize many of the claims regarding CIA involvement made by agents.The case and the subsequent alleged CIA coverup has led to all manner of wild speculations about who and what ThSupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.

Around one quarter of the world lives in countries under unilateral United States sanctions. While American government officials insist that sanctions are targeted at officials committing human rights abuses in foreign countries, the United Nations notes that they always “disproportionately affect the poor and most vulnerable.”In Cuba, U.S. sanctions are causing shortages that led to widespread protests earlier this summer and are slowing the worldwide rollout of Cuba’s domestically produced coronavirus vaccine. U.S. government documents explicitly state that the goal of the blockade of the island is to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the] government.”U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, too, have been widely condemned, and are estimated to have caused the deaths of over 100,000 people.It is in the Middle East, however, where U.S. economic measures have arguably had the most impact. Our guest today has first-hand experience of this. Rania Khalek is a Lebanese-American journalist based in the Middle East. In addition to being a presenter on Breakthrough News, she is co-host of the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast. You may also have seen her work in ​​The Grayzone, The Intercept, Truthout, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Al-Jazeera, The Nation, Salon, AlterNet or Vice.Today, Khalek speaks about the impact of sanctions across the Middle East and the current political situation in Lebanon, Syria and beyond.In Iraq in the 1990s, U.S. sanctions are thought to have cost the lives of around 1 million people, including half a million children under five years old. Successive United Nations diplomats tasked with overseeing the sanctions regime resigned in protest, citing a breach of the GenocidSupport the showMintPress News is a fiercely independent. You can support us by becoming a member on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and by subscribing to our social media channels, including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube and subscribe to rapper Lowkey’s new video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.