MintCast by MintPress News

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 media platform. In her previous role in the Israeli government, Palmor directly oversaw the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the stripping of the Palestinians’ legal rights.

Discussing the big-tech censorship of Palestinian voices and the collusion between Israel and Silicon Valley are Mickey Huff, Suhair Nafal and Jessica Buxbaum.

Mickey Huff is Professor of Social Science and History at Diablo Valley College, California and is director of the media freedom foundation Project Censored. He hosts the Project Censored Radio Show. His latest book is “Project Censored 2021: State of the Free Press.”

Suhair Nafal is a Palestinian-American activist living in California. Earlier this year, she was taken to court by an IDF soldier who sought $6 million in damages after Nafal called her “evil” in a Facebook post. Bizarrely, the prosecution attempted to get the California judge to apply Israeli law to the post.

Jessica Buxbaum is an Israeli-American journalist based in Jerusalem and a contributor to MintPress News. Her latest article is “Facebook, Social Media Giants Admit to Silencing Palestinian Voices Online.”

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.

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, and non-believers (including Jews) will be cast into hell.

While Democrats increasingly condemn Israel’s actions, the most vociferous support comes from right-wing pastors and religious leaders. Texas televangelist Pastor John Hagee, for instance, whitewashed the Israeli massacre, stating this week that:

For years, the religious right has been undermining faith in domestic media and building information systems of their own to create tightly controlled echo chambers across the United States. Likewise, Israel is prosecuting a campaign against journalists, albeit with far more deadly consequences.

Yet even as Israel attacks the press, those very same outlets run cover for the Jewish state, sanitizing Israeli attacks on peaceful protestors as “clashes,” or both sidesing the conflict and presenting Hamas as aggressors and Israel as merely “responding” to provocations.

Here today to talk about the conflict and its origins are Chris Hedges and Alan MacLeod. Hedges is a writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent. He was Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times until the newspaper forced him out due to his stance against the Iraq War. 

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer at MintPress News. After completing his PhD in sociology and journalism studies in 2018, he published two books about the media: “Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting,” and “Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent.” He is an expert in global media.

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.

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 morning, the death toll stands at 276.

Also destroyed was the largest bookshop and publishing house in Gaza. “They not only want to shut down our voices, but our access to other works. This is an attack on knowledge, education, literature, and the exchange of narratives,” wrote Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti.

After more than one week of bombing, a reported 38,000 people have been displaced within Gaza alone, with thousands taking shelter in United Nations buildings and schools.

The Biden administration has stood firm in its support for Israel, blocking three times this week United Nations statements that condemned the Jewish state for its offensive. As the bombs rained down, President Joe Biden reiterated his belief that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” a statement that has drawn criticism from a growing number on the left. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, characterized the U.S. as an apologist for the far-right Netanyahu government. In response, Trump lawyer and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz labeled Sanders a “self-hating Jew” and accused media outlets like The New York Times of supporting Hamas.

Global opinion, however, is distinctly more hostile towards Israel’s actions. Both Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have accused Israel of “war crimes” in targeting residential buildings and media outlets. The Israeli government has also been condemned by the Arab League and a number of Asian nations.

Joining MintPress to talk about the situation in Palestine is journalist, activist and filmmaker Abby Martin. Abby began her journalistic career in 2009, founding her own citizen journalism outlet, Media Roots. She later hosted Breaking the Set on RT America and is now an independent filmmaker for Empire Files. She recently made the 2019 feature-length documentary movie Gaza Fights for Freedom, free to watch on the Empire Files YouTube channel.

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 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 developments is British-Iraqi rapper and political activist Kareem Dennis, better known as Lowkey. In a career spanning nearly two decades, and one that has taken him across the globe, Lowkey has established himself as an underground favorite of hip-hop junkies and music connoisseurs alike. Despite his acclaim, his music is rarely played on mainstream radio, precisely because of its political message, which covers war, imperialism and injustice. His track “Long Live Palestine” was released in 2009.

Lowkey has long been involved with activism in the Middle East and is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. A fierce critic of the Israeli government, he recently stated that “Zionism is not about your feelings; it is about the material reality of ethnic cleansing that has continued...till this day.”

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.

Welcome to MintCast, the official MintPress podcast featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence. I’m your host, Mnar Adley.

Israel’s latest attack on Palestine has captured the world’s attention. On Saturday, the Israeli military attacked the Shati Refugee Camp in Gaza, killing 10 people, including eight children. The same day, Israeli missiles hit a highrise building housing the headquarters of Al-Jazeera and the Associated Press. On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people, bringing the death toll to over 200, including 50 children. All of these actions account to war crimes.

Here to discuss what is going on is a star panel of guests.

Malak Mattar is an artist from the Gaza Strip known worldwide for expressionist paintings and abstract designs and her work has been displayed across the world.

Dan Cohen is a Jewish-American journalist. He produced and released the documentary “Killing Gaza,” about the 2014 Israeli attack on the densely populated strip.

Miko Peled is an author, journalist, and human rights activist from Jerusalem. His latest article, “Israel’s Pogroms in Jerusalem Could Spark the Destruction of al-Aqsa,” can be found at MintPress News.

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 MintCast -- an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence. I’m your host Mnar Muhawesh Adley. 

Within just three months in office amid a global pandemic, the Joe Biden administration recently ordered an airstrike that dropped 1.75 tons of explosives on a town in Syria near the Iraq border. The move is re-inflaming tensions between Washington and Damascus as the war enters its 10th year.

Joining me today to discuss the latest on the ground in Syria is Vanessa Beeley. 

Vanessa is an independent British journalist based in Damascus and specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. She is perhaps best known for her coverage of the Syrian Civil War and the Western media propaganda machine drawing up support for a so-called humanitarian war against Syria. 

This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page. 

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud. Please leave us a review and share this segment.

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 MintCast -- an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence -- I’m your host, Mnar Adley.

Today we’re joined by Raul Diego, a MintPress staff writer, filmmaker and photojournalist who will discuss the anti-Chinese lockdown propaganda and how the COVID economic disaster is paving the way for surveillance, digital currency and human capital markets based on a series of articles he wrote for MintPress News. 

A recent letter addressed to the FBI, entitled “The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud,” has been gaining considerable traction. The letter -- signed by a number of prominent individuals, including military commanders and government advisers -- essentially suggests that China, and Xi Jinping in particular, tricked the world into pursuing authoritarian responses to the pandemic.

However, the anti-Chinese lockdown narrative is obscuring a much broader effort by the financial and tech sector to create state-backed digital currency that will turn humanity into data assets. The world’s most powerful hedge funds and transnational corporations can use this data to create more profits for themselves and their clients, while rendering the poor poorer. 

This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page. 

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud. Please leave us a review and share this segment.

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 MintCast -- an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence -- with host Mnar Muhawesh Adley.

Joe Biden may have won the presidential election, but his victory masks a deeper rot within the American political system, one where both parties have become servants to increasingly powerful corporations, Wall Street, and the military industrial complex. The Democratic Party, in particular, presents itself to the public as a symbol of social justice and peace, yet is increasingly beholden to powerful interests.

Our guest today, Chris Hedges -- has for years argued that the Democratic Party sold its soul  long ago and turned its back on the American people and that we Americans have been living through what he calls a “corporate coup d’etat in slow motion.” 

Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Balkans, and the Middle East, where he saw the bloody realities of the U.S. empire first hand. He hosts the show “On Contact” on RT and is the author of over a dozen books, the latest of which is “America: The Farewell Tour,” about the terminal decline of the United States. 

This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page. 

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud. Please leave us a review and share this segment.

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 MintCast -- an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence-- I’m your host Mnar Muhawesh Adley.

President Nicolas Maduro is celebrating this week after a clear victory in the National Assembly elections that took place on December 6. Boosted by a partial opposition boycott, the ruling socialist coalition led by Maduro received over 69% of the votes cast and won a massive 253 of the 277 seats in the National Assembly, the only branch of government not under its control.

While the government is celebrating, the low turnout of 31% has many worried its support is decreasing, although the vote was held in the middle of a pandemic. The U.S. government, who has long considered Venezuela an official enemy, decried the process as fraudulent before it began, instructing opposition parties to boycott it and sanctioning those that disobeyed their orders.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took to Twitter to call Venezuela’s elections illegitimate, describing Maduro as a dictator and strongman, despite the fact that it was overseen by 1,500 election observers and 300 representatives from 34 countries.

Joining  MintCast are four guests who know the country well, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Adrienne Pine, and Alan MacLeod.

Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and author and editor of The Grayzone. He has been reporting from Venezuela this week and observed the elections himself. His latest book is “The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump.” He is also the co-host of the Moderate Rebels podcast.

Parampil is a former producer and host at RT America’s “In Question.” She now hosts her own show, Red Lines, which you can find at The Grayzone and on YouTube.

Pine is an associate professor of anthropology at the American University in Washington DC. In 2019, she occupied the Venezuelan embassy in DC to prevent it from falling into the hands of U.S.-backed self-declared president Juan Guaidó. Along with Blumenthal and Parampil, Pine observed the recent elections close up, traveling to Venezuela to serve as an election observer.

Our third guest is MintPress’s own senior Staff Writer, Alan Macleod. Macleod is an expert on Western media coverage of South America. After completing his Ph.D. on the topic in 2017, he published five peer-reviewed articles on how media distorts the image of Venezuela. He is also the author of the book “Bad News from Venezuela: 20 years of fake news and misreporting.”

This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page.

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud. Please leave us a review and share this segment.

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 MintCast -- an interview series featuring dissenting voices the establishment would rather silence-- I’m your host Mnar Muhawesh Adley.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of Iran’s most senior nuclear scientists, was assassinated in his car last week on the outskirts of Tehran. State sources in the Islamic Republic are claiming he was killed with a remote-controlled machine gun.

While no party has taken responsibility, the Iranian government has already pointed the finger at a number of suspects, chiefly Israel, the United States, and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (commonly known as the MEK) a Washington-funded organization with the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Yet no party has claimed responsibility for the attack. At Fakhrizadeh’s funeral, Defense Minister Amir Hatami vowed that no crime as great as this would go unpunished and that the killing would not hinder Iran’s nuclear program.

Joining us today to discuss the assassination, its geopolitical context, and consequences, and what it means going forward for the U.S. and Iran, is Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian-American academic and political analyst. Seyed is a Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran and a frequent guest on a wide range of news and political channels.

Dr. Marandi argues that not only was this assassination an act of war, but a direct attack against Iran’s COVID-19 vaccine program. Fakhrezadeh was not only Iran’s top nuclear scientist, he was also leading the research program for the Islamic Republic’s COVID vaccine. Because of crippling U.S. sanctions, Iran has been barred from importing masks, ventilators, and medical supplies to support the country in its fight against the virus.

COVID-19, Marandi argues, has been weaponized against Iran’s nearly 90 million citizens to destabilize the country to a degree that no other sanctions could have accomplished.

Both the US and Israel have a history of interfering in Iranian affairs. Ten months ago, Donald Trump personally gave the order to assassinate Iranian military leader and statesman, Qassem Soleimani while he was in Iraq for regional peace talks. Trump has also increased and expanded existing sanctions against the Islamic Republic and pulled the United States out of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

With only weeks until Joe Biden is set to take up office in the White House, analysts are predicting that the assassination of Fakhrezadeh put the nail in the coffin for any worthwhile agreement between the two nations.

Fakhrizadeh’s death may have shocked Iranians, but it is unlikely to have surprised them, as his killing is the latest in a long line of political assassinations of high-ranking atomic scientists, at least five of whom have been murdered in the previous ten years. Some of them, like Masoud Ali Mohammadi and Majid Shahriar - both killed in separate car bombings in 2010- were Fakhrizadeh’s peers and coworkers.

This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page. 

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.