MintCast by MintPress News

The United States is an empire, even if its citizens don’t all realize it. That is the conclusion from historian and political scientist Aaron Good, who joins Alan MacLeod on this week’s edition of “MintCast.” Today, Good walks us through the history of how the United States came to dominate the world and the organizations it uses – especially the CIA and NATO – in order to enforce its control ove...

Last month, on his way back to Great Britain, MintPress contributor Kit Klarenberg was detained and interrogated. The investigative journalist was met at the airport by six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror officers, who seized his electronic devices, and memory cards and took his fingerprints and DNA.  Under Schedule Three, Section Four of the U.K. 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, they...

Amid an ongoing crisis in recruitment, the military has found a novel way of enticing teens to enlist: thirst traps. “MintCast” co-host Alan MacLeod joins Mnar Adley for an in-house edition of the podcast to describe how the military is using young teens’ horniness against them, utilizing an army of attractive women posting sexually suggestive content on social media – in effect, turning a generat...

You can indict Vladimir Putin over war crimes in Ukraine. But if you do, you’d better indict Joe Biden as well. That is the message that Professor Alfred de Zayas, world-renowned human rights and international law expert, gave “MintCast” host Alan MacLeod on today’s episode of the series.   A Swiss-American lawyer, academic and United Nations official with over 50 years’ experience in the field of...

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 thi...

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 widesprea...

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 transf...

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 politic...

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,...

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...

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 Thanksgiv...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 elect...

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 M...

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 ar...

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 gre...

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 i...

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, report...

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 chi...

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 p...

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 enforcemen...

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...