MintCast by MintPress News

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, 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.

Support the show

MintPress 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 The Finders were. But there is good reason to believe that the official story that they were merely a harmless — if odd — cult is likely not the whole truth.

In a free-flowing discussion, Elizabeth shares insights into her new research on the group, discusses the media silence on the case, and fills us in on what we need to know about this mysterious, captivating story.

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

Support the show

MintPress 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 Genocide Convention. "I've been using the word 'genocide' because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view,'' said former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Dennis Halliday. When pressed on the issue, then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright did not dispute the numbers, merely assuring “60 Minutes” that “the price is worth it.”

Today, much of the region -- including Syria, Iran and Lebanon -- is under similar, crushing American sanctions. At the height of the pandemic, Iran was unable to import personal protective equipment, medicine and other medical goods, as no country wanted to risk Washington’s ire by trading with Tehran. In the end, the World Health Organization itself stepped in, directly trading with the Islamic Republic, one key factor in the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the body last year.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, the country is struggling to recover from an enormous explosion that wiped out much of central Beirut last year. Food and electricity remain in short supply.

Support the show

MintPress 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 is a product of the Israeli national security state, having been co-founded by former prime minister, Ehud Barak, and was also designed by members of Unit 8200, leading Webb to suggest that it is a front for the Israeli government.

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 show

MintPress 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 show

MintPress 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.

Support the show

MintPress 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 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.

Support the show

MintPress 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 links between Israel and Colombia go far deeper and how Israeli officials were the masterminds of political massacres carried out by the Colombian government.

Dan Cohen’s new work shows how the Colombian government’s genocidal policy of massacring its political opponents — over 4,000 members of the Patriotic Union Party, including two presidential candidates, 14 parliamentarians, 15 mayors, nine mayoral candidates, three members of the House of Representatives and three senators — was done on the suggestion of an Israeli official, Rafael ‘Rafi’ Eitan. Eitan was employed by the government to advise it on counterinsurgency strategies.

Another Israeli, Yair Klein, provided the training for many of the most notorious far-right paramilitary groups, including the AUC, thought to have been responsible for around 80% of the killings during the civil war. The leader of the AUC, Carlos Castaño, was educated in Israel and credited the apartheid state for teaching him all he knew about terrorism. “I learned an infinity of themes in Israel,” he wrote in his autobiography.

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Support the show

MintPress 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 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 hypocrisies in humorous ways that often push through people’s ideological barriers.

The powerful understand the potential of the image, so all over the world political cartoonists are censored and repressed. In 2015, Malaysian satirist Zulkiflee SM Anwar Haque — better known as Zunar — was charged with sedition and faced 43 years in jail before a change in government led to the case being dropped. Four years later, Turkey jailed artist Musa Kart after he was accused of aiding the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party. And after pushback over a cartoon critiquing the Israeli government’s relationship with the Trump administration, The New York Times decided to shut down its entire political cartoon operation, announcing that it would no longer print them.

In the days of social media supremacy, many cartoonists are completely reliant on big tech companies like Facebook and Instagram for both their audience and their income, putting them in serious danger of being both silenced and impoverished if Silicon Valley decides it does not like their message.

Today’s guest is Carlos Latuff, a Brazillian political cartoonist who has built up a following all over the world. Often compared to street artist Banksy for his style and his cutting political commentary, his art graces the pages of a host of independent media outlets, including MintPress News.

Carlos was born in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and describes himself as a “visual chronicler of barbarism.” Highly politically charged, his cartoons have won him both followers and enemies. He has been arrested multiple times due to his criticisms of the government and the police in his home country, while he is regularly tarred as anti-Semitic by defenders of the Israeli state, a charge he laughs off as “a joke worthy of a Woody Allen movie.”

Carlos became particularly well known during the Arab Spring when his cartoons helped fuel revolutions across the region. Reuters called him a “hero” of the movement while The Guardian described him as the “unlikely star” of the revolt.

Always political and edgy, Carlos frequently takes aim at major centers of world power, including governments like those of the United States, Israel and his native Brazil, as well as at a mainstream corporate media that distort reality and allow injustices to continue on unnoticed by the general public.

Support the show

MintPress 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.

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 nation.

The results were endorsed by many nations friendly towards the government, such as China, Iran and Cuba. "A decisive victory was won by the incumbent head of state," wrote the foreign ministry of Russia in a statement. "We view the elections as a sovereign affair of the Syrian Arab Republic and an important step towards strengthening its internal stability," they added.

However, opponents of the Assad administration described the contest as a sham and hopelessly rigged, claiming that his opponents were controlled stooges, that people inside Syria were forced to vote for him, while refugees were blocked from voting. “The Assad regime’s so-called presidential election is neither free nor fair. The U.S. joins France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K. in calling for the rejection of the regime’s attempts to regain legitimacy without respecting the Syrian people's human rights and freedoms,” said Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Many of the countries Blinken mentioned, including the United States, blocked Syrians from voting at diplomatic missions in their countries.

Despite the Western reaction, Assad, in power since 2000, looks set to govern for seven more years. His major task will be attempting to break armed opposition groups in Idlib and to repair a nation destroyed by 10 years of war and crippling sanctions. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that over 13 million Syrians, including 6.7 million internally displaced people, require humanitarian assistance. A further 6.6 million people have left the country since fighting began in 2011.

Joining MintPress to discuss the elections, the humanitarian situation and the future of the Syrian Arab Republic is Dan Kovalik.

Dan is a human rights lawyer and adjunct professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh. A prolific author, Dan’s work and activism has taken him around the world, including to Colombia and Venezuela. He spent a week in Syria, where he observed the elections first-hand.

Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.

Also, be sure to check out the new Behind the Headlines channel on YouTube

Support the show

MintPress 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.