The war in Ukraine is well into its second year, and the United States is insistent on pumping billions more into the quagmire that has already seen thousands of lives lost and millions displaced. The U.S. has already approved more than $113 billion in aid to Ukraine, most of which is weaponry. This year, President Biden has earmarked a record-breaking $842 billion on the military. Yet much of this is not even directed towards Europe but at China. Seemingly not content with turning Europe into a...
May 19, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Congress recently voted against pulling American troops out of Somalia. Officially, U.S. forces number 900 and are there in an advisory role to help the government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud combat terrorist forces such as Al-Shabab. Yet our guest today states that U.S. boots on the ground in Somalia are doing nothing but serving as a recruiting tool for jihadists, their presence provoking widespread resentment among the people of the resource-rich but war-torn African nation. Ann Garrison is a jo...
May 19, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1999, South African anti-apartheid activist and revolutionary leader Nelson Mandela visited Gaza and said, "We know too well our freedom is not complete without the freedom of the Palestinians." Since his death in 2013, Mandela’s unifying message of decolonization reverberated across the globe. The anti-colonial, anti-apartheid struggle that he led to end racial segregation and transform South Africa into a democratic nation has been lauded by Palestinians, who have drawn parallels ...
May 16, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Although corporate media inundate us with stories of Russian aggression, far fewer people are aware that the Ukrainian government itself has been using the fog of war to move against certain sectors of its own population, settle scores, and attempt to revolutionize society. These attempts have been led by President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, who, in recent months, has banned more than ten political parties (including the main opposition bloc), made trade unions illegal, outlawed Russian languag...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast After witnessing the ongoing attack from a coordinated campaign to silence him, tens of thousands of people from around the world have come out in support of hip hop artist, campaigner and host of the MintPress podcast “ The Watchdog ,” Lowkey. An online petition addressed to music giant Spotify, demanding it refuse to buckle to pressure from the Israel lobby to remove his music from its platform, has garnered over 40,000 signatures from members of the public. Joining the wave of support have be...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast In just a few short weeks, Russia’s war on Ukraine has precipitated a massive exodus of refugees. According to the United Nations , more than 4.3 million people have fled the country since February 24, the majority of them – 2.5 million – traveling west to Poland. Media across the world have closely covered the story, and shown a great deal more sympathy for the Ukrainian refugees than for others fleeing from U.S. wars in the Middle East or North Africa. But fewer people are aware of another gro...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast It is becoming increasingly hard, it seems, to have civil conversations. Amid an increasingly polarized political climate, families and friendships are being ruined by intense disagreements. According to a CBS News/YouGov poll, the majority of Americans now believe that their political adversaries pose the greatest threat to democracy and way of life. Many now dread family occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas because of the awkward or heated political topics that will be discussed at the di...
Apr 06, 2022•55 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast Ethiopia is not a country that is on many Americans’ radar. Yet, since 2020, a brutal civil war has raged, displacing an estimated 4 million people. As the conflict continues, hawks in Washington are beginning to circle, demanding the U.S. intervene militarily. When it comes to Ethiopia – said head of USAID Samantha Power, one of the architects of the U.S. intervention in Libya – “every option is on the table,” using a phrase that has long been understood to be a threat of war. Secretary of Stat...
Jan 28, 2022•52 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast World leaders have descended upon Austrian capital Vienna to participate in the ongoing nuclear deal being negotiated primarily between the United States and Iran. Today, MintPress spoke to Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran. Dr. Marandi is currently in Vienna as part of the Iranian delegation. While corporate media often portray Iran as a recalcitrant pariah and the United States as a long-suffering broker in the situation, Dr...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast 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 pr...
Nov 17, 2021•36 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Nov 04, 2021•39 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Face...
Oct 27, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Declassifi...
Oct 22, 2021•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 -- trai...
Sep 24, 2021•59 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast 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 phon...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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,”...
Sep 04, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ex...
Aug 26, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 st...
Aug 12, 2021•31 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 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 co...
Aug 06, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast 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 abus...
Jul 23, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 betwee...
Jul 19, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 30, 2021•52 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jun 28, 2021•50 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast 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 smea...
Jun 08, 2021•54 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast It is often said that a picture paints a thousand words; images have the ability to move people in ways that words alone cannot. Iconic pictures from war zones, such as those of a dead Syrian child on the beach, of Vietnamese girls covered in Napalm or American soldiers planting their flag at Iwo Jima, become anchors around which people understand conflicts, and the world more generally. Cartoons as well have the power to challenge and change people’s minds, satirizing the powerful and revealing...
Jun 04, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Amidst a decade-long war that has devastated the country, Syrians went to the polls last week in an election that gave another seven-year term to current leader Bashar al-Assad. With a turnout of over 78%, Assad achieved an overwhelming victory against his nearest opponent, Mahmoud Ahmad Marei. Supporters of the president took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands as the results were publicized, celebrating what they saw as a repudiation of violence and a step forward for the beleaguered n...
Jun 02, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Israeli state, too, has many deep connections with the social media giants. Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked boasted that she worked closely with Facebook to censor Palestinian voices, with the Silicon Valley corporation agreeing to take down around 95% of the content she asked them to. Today, former Director General of the Ministry of Justice Emi Palmor sits on Facebook’s advisory council, the board ultimately responsible for content moderation on the world’s largest news and social m...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Images from the Israeli onslaught against Palestine have dominated both news broadcasts and social media as the world expresses its outrage over the bombing of civilian targets. Much of the strongest support for the creation of Israel comes from the Evangelical Christian community in the West, who see the construction of a Jewish state in the Holy Land as the fulfillment of an ancient Biblical prophecy bringing the world one step closer to the end times where the righteous will ascend to heaven,...
May 20, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite publicly urging caution, restraint and calling for a ceasefire, the United States government continues to aid Israel, this week approving $375 million worth of arms sales to the Jewish state, even as it uses U.S.-made weaponry to attack civilian buildings and other infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Hospitals, health clinics and homes have been destroyed, with reports confirming the deaths of at least 63 children in Gaza alone. Three pregnant women have also been killed. As of Wednesday m...
May 19, 2021•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to MintCast, the official MintPress News podcast featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence. I’m your host, Mnar Adley. Even as the Biden administration calls for calm to be restored across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, on Monday it approved $735 million in new arms sales to Israel. U.S. weapons continue to be used in the onslaught against a civilian population. The death toll continues to rise and is now well above 200. Joining MintPress to discuss the latest d...
May 18, 2021•53 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast 
