MintCast

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.

Edward Snowden has called it “the story of the year.” An Israeli spying company has been caught selling software to authoritarian regimes that have used it to surveil more than 50,000 people worldwide.That company is NSO, founded in 2010 by former members of Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s notorious intelligence squad. Their product is called Pegasus, and it was sold to military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies in 40 countries, among them some of the world’s worst human rights abusing governments.On this “MintCast,” investigative journalist Whitney Webb joins Mnar Adley today to discuss Pegasus, Toka, and the global Israeli cyberspying network. Whitney Webb is a writer and researcher for the outlets Unlimited Hangout and The Last American Vagabond. She principally covers intelligence, technology, surveillance, and civil liberties. Between 2017 and 2020, she was also a senior investigative reporter for MintPress. Her latest article, “Meet Toka, the Most Dangerous Israeli Spyware Firm You’ve Never Heard Of,” was published by MintPress earlier this week.Pegasus is able to attack the cellphones of targeted individuals without them realizing it, monitoring and recording their calls, texts and accessing other information stored on their devices. Dozens of human rights activists, nearly 200 journalists, several Arab royals, and more than 600 politicians are known to have had their communications spied on and compromised. Among those include French President Emmanuel Macron, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and president of Iraq, Barham Salih.Yet a new MintPress News investigation asserts that Pegasus is merely the tip of the Israeli cyber spying iceberg and that another piece of software, Toka, is far more dangerous and outrageous. Toka markets itself as “a one-stop hacking shop for governments that require extra capability to fight terrorists and other threats to national security in the digital domain.” The company’s software is designed to infiltrate any device connected to the internet, not just smartphones.Toka isSupport 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 the MintCast Podcast — an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence. I’m your host Mnar Adley.A string of spontaneous protests in Cuba became the unlikely focus of worldwide media attention earlier this week, the story dominating headlines for two straight days. Political and media figures across the spectrum weighed in, including the President of the United States.Joining me to discuss the protests, their causes, and the relationship between Cuba and the United States are Ben Norton and Alan MacLeod.Ben Norton is a Nicaragua-based journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of investigative news outlet The Grayzone and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal.Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer at MintPress News. An expert in the media and Latin America, his first book, entitled “Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting,” was published in 2018. Alan has lectured on Latin American politics at a number of universities.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.

Despite the official ceasefire, Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem continues to be a flashpoint of violence. Last week, Israeli forces fired stun grenades and sprayed skunk water on worshippers and protesters gathering near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Evidently, new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is willing to be as aggressive and provocative as his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.While the attacks on the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood are new, the tactics and the violence against Palestinians is not. Upon Israel’s creation in 1948, between 750,000 and 1 million Arabs were ethnically cleansed off their land, with Israeli forces razing 500 towns and villages in order to make way for the construction of a Jewish state on top of an existing one. Year on year, Israel has progressively annexed more Palestinian land, leaving the indigenous population trapped in increasingly small pockets, often without the ability to leave.Much has been made about the unshakeable U.S. support for Israel; the world’s only superpower plying the Apartheid State with aid and arms, as well as defending it from diplomatic censure. Yet Israel also has powerful backers in Europe. Chief among those is Great Britain. The British military has designated Israel as a “strategic partner” and has sold it over half a billion dollars worth of arms since 2015. U.K. forces also help train the IDF, with a small number of British soldiers stationed inside the country as well.After the latest round of violence, which left more than 250 dead, Netanyahu personally thanked Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his “unwavering” support for his state’s actions.Yet even as the Conservative government supports Israeli atrocities, a growing movement inside the U.K. is challenging their policies. Chief among these is the group Palestine Action. Still not even one year old, Palestine Action has made headlines for its forceful commitment to shutting down the arms trade between the two countries, trying to do with direct action what anti-war organizations have lSupport 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.

In recent years, the big networks have hired a wide range of “former” agency veterans and officers, supposedly to give independent and expert commentary and analysis on all matters national security. These have included former CIA Directors John Brennan (NBC, MSNBC) and Michael Hayden (CNN), ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (CNN), and former Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend (CBS). News for so many Americans comes delivered through ex-CIA interns like Anderson Cooper (CNN), CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson (Fox), or by the daughter of a powerful national security advisor, Mika Brzezinski (MSNBC). Forty-four years ago, acclaimed journalist Carl Bernstein exposed how the CIA had planted more than 400 operatives into newsrooms across America, where they posed as journalists but were actually laundering national security state talking points. Today, there are increasing signs that the so-called “deep state” is attempting to do the same thing to social media.In 2017, popular social media site Reddit made a particularly eyebrow-raising decision to hire Jessica Ashooh, a hawkish foreign-policy expert from the Atlantic Council, NATO’s semi-official think tank, as its director of policy, though Ashooh had no relevant experience running a social media company. Yet the hire was completely ignored by corporate media. Also ignored was the unmasking of a senior Twitter executive as an active duty member of the British Army’s 77th Brigade, its unit dedicated to online warfare and psychological operations. Our guest today has been cataloging these worrying connections in a series of articles for MintPress. Today we discuss Ashooh’s past and why it should trouble anyone who uses social media, as well as exploring the notorious intelligence service-linked and military-funded university department that is pumping out many of the world’s top journalists. 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.

Colombia is regularly described as the Israel of Latin America. Although on opposite sides of the world from each other, the two countries share many similarities. They are both key outposts of U.S. power in their regions, helping make their neighborhood safe for American businesses and American profits. Both governments are carrying out wars against indigenous populations. Both talk of a “peace process” with their enemies but neither seems to get any closer to a lasting agreement. And both smear those enemies as terrorists.Violence in both nations has made worldwide headlines of late. In Colombia, President Ivan Duque’s attempts to push through an economic shock therapy package consisting of privatizing the country’s pension and healthcare systems, reducing the minimum wage, and increasing taxes on basic necessities sent millions into the streets in a nationwide general strike.Duque has responded with an iron fist, sending first armed police and then the military into the streets to quell the protests. According to local human rights group Indepaz, 71 people have been killed, as armored cars fill the streets and drones and helicopters terrorize strikers from above.Meanwhile, in Israel, security forces attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as worshippers were celebrating Ramadan at the third holiest site in Islam. The attack drew a response from Hamas, which began firing rockets into Israel, which, in turn, led to a massive Israeli reaction, with the IDF pounding much of Gaza into rubble. Hundreds of people were killed, thousands injured, and tens of thousands fled their homes. Among the buildings targeted were schools, a COVID-19 test center, and the headquarters of international media organizations.Unusually, Israeli actions drew criticism from the centers of power in the United States, with senior politicians and media figures alike condemning the attack and using words like “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” — a signal that perhaps a change in attitude is beginning to take place and real change could be around the corner.Last week, MintPress also revealed how Israel is helping Colombia repress its citizens, providing arms and training to security services.Yet a new investigation from our guest today has highlighted how the lSupport 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.