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MintCast hosts Whitney Webb and Alan MacLeod recently interviewed investigative journalist Yasha Levine about his most recent book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet and his most recent articles on the xenophobia that lies beneath Russiagate and how this new anti-Russia fervor has impacted the Russian-American immigrant community at the national level.
In discussing his exhaustively researched book Surveillance Valley, Levine details how the growing nexus between Silicon Valley monopolies like Google and Facebook and the U.S. government as well as today’s scandals over internet surveillance and warrantless spying are actually the logical consequence of the Internet's origins as a U.S. military project aimed at predicting future insurgent behavior by means of covert spying.
Also, discussed is Levine’s controversial but invaluable work on the hidden face of the Tor Project, which is included in Surveillance Valley. Levine summarizes his research on the Tor Project, noting that -- far from being the browser that is the ultimate tool against government surveillance -- it has long been funded and continues to receive most of its funding from the U.S. government. In addition, leaders and top advocates of the Tor Project have been caught colluding with the U.S. government, particularly the government agencies funding the project, on more than one occasion, greatly undermining its carefully crafted public image as an anti-government surveillance-busting tool.
Lastly, Levine describes his most recent work on the Russiagate scandal, highlighting the often overlooked impact of the media-driven hysteria on Russian-Americans and Russian immigrants to the United States. As Levine notes, much of this rhetoric in recent years has implied that ethnic Russians have undesirable “genetic” traits or are all secretly connected to Russia’s current leader, Vladimir Putin, who is often portrayed by some mainstream media outlets as a supervillain. As a result, Levin argues that many Russian-Americans have become alienated from the Democratic Party and have either embraced Trump or complete disillusionment with both parties.
Follow Yasha Levine on Twitter and check out his latest work on
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.
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01/30/24 • 23 min
The United States and the United Kingdom recently carried out their eighth round of strikes against targets in Yemen that they claim are being used by Yemen’s Ansar Allah – known in the West as the Houthis – to threaten maritime navigation in the Red Sea.
Since Israel began its deadly incursion into Gaza on October 7 of last year, Ansar Allah has carried out a de facto campaign of targeted sanctions against Israeli economic interests, attacking ships traveling through the Red Sea that it says are tied to Israel. The operation stands out in the region, as neighboring Arab countries have largely stayed out of the fray, if not directly supported Israel’s bloody campaign.
While Ansar Allah has been much discussed (or, more accurately, denounced) in Western media, they have rarely been allowed to talk for themselves. Joining the MintCast today to discuss the blockade and Yemen’s escalating tensions with the United States is Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior political official and spokesperson for Ansar Allah. Bukhaiti has held his position since 2014, when the failed U.S.-backed Saudi campaign to dislodge Ansar Allah from power began.
The human cost of the U.S.-Saudi campaign has been enormous. More than 400,000 people are thought to have been killed, and tens of millions of people lost their access to food, shelter and medical treatment in what the United Nations consistently called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” A 2021 MintPress investigation found that the United States had supplied Saudi Arabia with at least $28.4 billion worth of weapons and provided diplomatic support for the onslaught.
Ansar Allah officials have repeatedly stated that the goal of their blockade is to pressure Israel into halting its assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, a deadly campaign that has claimed the lives of well over 25,000 people and has left over 63,000 injured, most of them women and children.
Ansar Allah says that their blockade against Israeli interests is working, and indeed, major ocean carriers have suspended Red Sea and Suez Canal transport, instead sailing around Africa, creating significant delays and supply bottlenecks and costing the Israeli economy billions.
When asked by reporters if U.S. strikes on Yemen were effective, President Biden responded by stating: “When you say ‘working,’ are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
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.
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05/19/23 • 43 min
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 war zone, Washington now has its sights set on Asia.
Joining MintCast hosts Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod to discuss Washington’s permanent drive to war is author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges.
“[War with China] is a serious threat given the mindset of the warmongers who dominate the Washington establishment,” Hedges says before naming and shaming many of the most callous hawks in the nation. “They never go away; it doesn’t matter how wrong they are. They were, of course, all cheerleaders for the war in Iraq. But they represent those interests, and they are creations of the Washington establishment. They don’t actually know war or geopolitics,” he added.
Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent across the world, including in Central America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In 2002, he was part of a New York Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the global war on terror. After publicly denouncing the Iraq War, however, he was forced out of his job. Since then, he has worked in independent media. A prolific and best-selling author, his latest book, “The Greatest Evil is War” was published last year. You can find his work at ChrisHedges.substack.com/.
America is “clearly on the decline,” Hedges told Adley and MacLeod, suggesting that:
Anyone who drives through large swathes of the United States will tell you, it is one decayed city after another. All the mechanisms of repression that were tested largely on people of color (the way the Israelis do on Gaza) have migrated back to the homeland. Militarized drones, wholesale surveillance, militarized police, we have the largest prison system in the world; [the U.S. has almost] 25% of the world’s prisoners even though we are less than 5% of the world’s population. So we are dying the same way any empire dies.”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.
06/02/21 • 47 min
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 worl
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.
09/04/21 • 37 min
“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 c
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.
09/19/24 • 75 min
It sometimes feels like the world is on the brink of war. Israel has just escalated the conflict in the Middle East with a massive attack on Lebanon, implanting bombs in hundreds of pagers and other electronic devices, killing many and injuring thousands.
Around the world, the action has been condemned as an act of terror.
Today’s guest, Scott Ritter, unequivocally denounced the move. “This is something that is unjustifiable under any circumstances. There is no element of the law of war that would allow this kind of indiscriminate attack,” he said. Ritter is a former United States Corps Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq. He is an author and a geopolitical analyst, whose work you can find at ScottRitter.com. He has closely followed the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The attack, he said, will have widespread implications, not least for Western corporations, who were caught unaware. “This is going to create a crisis of confidence among consumers that could end up costing Western companies billions of dollars,” he explained, adding:
Anybody with any shred of common sense will immediately throw away their Western-made electronic device and source one from a country such as China, where Israel is not going to be able to infiltrate and corrupt the integrity of the electronic device to achieve either intelligence collection goals or assassination [goals].”While the Israeli military is vastly better armed and funded than Hamas, Ritter claimed that it was actually the Palestinian force that has come out on top after 12 months of fighting, stating:
Hamas right now, in my opinion, is winning this conflict. They are winning it strategically. They are paying a horrible price for it. But on October 6, nobody was talking about the creation of a Palestinian state. Today, it is on the tip of the tongue of so many people around the world. Why? Because the world has seen the truth about Israel.”Not only that, but Israel is eating itself from within. Its military is seriously depleted; its economy has been shattered by rocket attacks, and by 12 months of war economy; and its society is beginning to fragment.
Whatever happens, it is clear that October 7 fundamentally changed the situation for Israel and Palestine forever.
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.
USAID, NATO Threaten Intervention as Ethiopia, Eritrea Unite & Form Economic Cooperation with China
MintCast
01/28/22 • 51 min
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 State Antony Blinken also refused, when directly asked, to rule out sending troops into Ethiopia.
Joining MintCast host Mnar Adley today to discuss what is going on in Ethiopia is Eugene Puryear. Eugene is a founder of and host at BreakThrough News, for which he recently traveled to Ethiopia to report from the ground. In the 2008 and 2016 U.S. elections, he was the vice-presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He is also author of the book “Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America.”
Ethiopia’s war is a conflict between the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a group that held power across the country between 1991 and 2018, and the government of Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa.
Between 1991 and 2018, the United States had a loyal partner in Ethiopia. However, in recent years, the country has begun to forge a more independent path. To this end, China has helped, and has quickly become Ethiopia’s major economic partner, much to the chagrin of Washington.
Ethiopians have taken to social media, popularizing the anti-intervention hashtag “#NoMore” to signal their opposition to Western involvement. Yet their voices, they claim, are being systematically silenced by big-tech giants, leaving critical voices harder to find. Could Ethiopia soon turn into another Libya?
MintPress News is a fiercely independent, reader-supported outlet, with no billionaire owners or backers. You can support us by bec
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.
05/19/21 • 60 min
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 b
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.
06/28/21 • 49 min
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
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.
01/12/22 • 69 min
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. Marandi notes that it was actually the Trump administration that unilaterally walked away from the agreement. Furthermore, President Barack Obama refused to live up to his promise to remove financial sanctions against Iran. “Obama, from the very beginning, was violating the deal, the most important element of the deal, because the banking sector sanctions are the most important part of the deal,” Marandi told Mnar Adley today.
Relations between the two countries fell to a new low two years ago this month, after the Trump administration carried out a successful drone strike against General and statesman Qassem Soleimani. While then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that Soleimani was on the verge of carrying out an attack on Americans, the Iranian leader was, in fact, in Iraq on the invitation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. Abdul-Mahdi specifically asked Trump for permission to invite Soleimani to his country. Trump acquiesced, then used the opportunity to kill him via a drone strike.
In response, the Iraqi parliament passed a unanimous resolution on January 5 (with many abstentions), calling for the expulsion of all U.S. troops. Instead, the U.S. announced it would build a number of new bases on the Iranian border, ramping up the tensions. Since then, Washington has continued to pile on the pressure, increasing its deadly sanctions regime against the country.
Soleimani was best known and celebrated outside of Iran for leading the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, successfully crippling their forces. The Financial Times described him as the “hero” who saved the region from Jihadists. Yet Western media largely sided with the U.S. after Trump’s decision to kill him. Suddenly, Soleimani was no longer a hero, but “the world’s no. 1 bad guy,” as CNBC put it.
The discussion also encompassed the sanctions
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.
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FAQ
How many episodes does MintCast have?
MintCast currently has 84 episodes available.
What topics does MintCast cover?
The podcast is about News, Peace, Empire, Activism, Podcasts, War and Politics.
What is the most popular episode on MintCast?
The episode title 'MintCast Interviews Yasha Levine, Author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on MintCast?
The average episode length on MintCast is 55 minutes.
How often are episodes of MintCast released?
Episodes of MintCast are typically released every 11 days, 21 hours.
When was the first episode of MintCast?
The first episode of MintCast was released on Apr 19, 2019.
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