Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Stop The Hate UK: The Shadowy Israel-Aligned Group Targeting MintPress staff & anti-genocide organizers 

 

at 12/9/25 9:56am

In October, MintPress graphic designer and field photographer, Ibrahim Abul-Essad opened his door to find Patrick Sawer of The Daily Telegraph demanding answers. A prolific writer who has penned 28 pro-Israel articles in the past two months alone, Sawer asked the British Palestinian journalist to respond to pro-Israel pressure group Stop The Hate U.K.’s campaign for him to be prosecuted for “anti-Semitic hate crimes.” Abul-Essad’s “crime” was attending an October 2024 demonstration in London protesting an event featuring former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert speaking on the future of Gaza – a case that the Metropolitan Police have already looked into and dismissed. Sawer has previous connections to Stop The Hate U.K. A 2024 Daily Telegraph article framing pro-Palestine marchers as racists, for instance, appears to have been based largely on intelligence gathered by Stop The Hate U.K., and features multiple images of protestors taken without their knowledge. But who are Stop The Hate U.K.? And where did they come from? MintPress News explores the group’s rise, its agenda, and its scandalously close links to both the British and Israeli governments.   Israeli Front Group? Stop the Hate U.K. was founded in early 2024, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, in order to stymie and oppose the growing wave of support for Palestinian liberation across Great Britain. The group has attempted to equate support for human rights with terrorism. As their official Twitter bio reads, “We stand in opposition to the hate marches that have swamped our country since the 7.10 massacre. We shall not be cowed. Terrorist supporters off our streets!” The organization has repeatedly pressured the British government to ban demonstrations, and condemned the police for their insufficient vigor in suppressing the movement. Although it states that it is a non-profit organization, MintPress could find no registration of the group with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. The organization’s website describes it was founded “in response to the repeated failures of the Metropolitan Police to address anti-Semitic incidents at Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) marches.” This will be news to many in the U.K., where police have arrested over 2300 people under the Terrorism Act of 2000 for peacefully opposing the designation of activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist entity, putting it on a par with the likes of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. So aggressive has British authorities’ repression of free speech been, that it was officially rebuked by Amnesty International as a grave breach of human rights. Stop the Hate U.K. organizes their own demonstrations. However, they have not been successful in attracting mass participation. Unlike pro-Palestine marches that can draw in as many as one million Britons, an image posted by Stop The Hate U.K. of their recent protest in Brighton shows fewer than 40 attendees. They have, however, had more success disrupting solidarity events, filming or harassing protestors and pushing for their prosecution. In this role, The Canary notes, they serve as unofficial “police informants.” Stop The organization also sells merchandise from their website; among the most popular items are t-shirts and hoodies emblazoned with the word “Zionist” in all caps. While trying to expose the identities of pro-Palestine marchers, Stop The Hate U.K. appears to try to keep their own a secret. There is no information about their key members on their own website, only multiple egregious typos. For example, their “About Us” section offers little about their background, except that their organization is “is a call to action for a world without racism or anti-Semitism. Every voice counts in rejecting intolerance and fostering understandinWho We Are” (sic). Nevertheless, pro-Israel outlet Jewish News identified two Israelis, Itai Galmudy and Yochy Davis, as among the founders. Born in Rishon LeZion and raised in Re’ut, near Modi’in, Galmudy lived in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2008, returning to Israel to study at university and serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He participated in Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, wherein the IDF is widely accused of carrying out serious war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilians. Images from Galmudy’s social media show him proudly in uniform, serving in what appears to be a tank brigade. Yochy Davis, left, and Itai Galmudy | Photos from X and Facebook The British government formally condemned Israel for its actions; Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg describing them as “collective punishment” of a civilian population. Despite this, Galmudy himself was able to move back to London immediately after Operation Protective Edge, and works in the pub industry, where he proudly notes that he refuses to serve anyone wearing Palestinian clothing. In 2024, he co-founded Stop The Hate U.K., a group that has gained plaudits from the Israeli government itself. Earlier this year, Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely recorded a video wishing Galmudy a special happy birthday, stating that: “Your great activity for the last 12 months means so much to the State of Israel.” “It is concerning that a former Israeli soldier who represented a military which is being investigated for genocide responsible for killing 150 members of my family is part of an organization targeting me and other British citizens in the U.K. calling for a free Palestine,” Abul-Essad told MintPress. Like Galmudy, Yochy Davis is from Israel; her Facebook profile identifying her as from Kiryat Motzkin, near Haifa. Describing herself as a “passionate” adherent of Zionism, Davis first came to public attention in 2023, when she and three other pro-Israel activists disrupted Roger Waters’ London show. The rock star is a high-profile supporter of progressive causes, including Palestinian statehood. Davis shouted at Waters, unfurling an Israeli flag and calling his views “disgusting.” The incident was well-covered in the British press, who appeared keen to undermine Waters’ message. Davis has long promoted Israeli causes. In 2019, for instance, she worked with Israeli organization, My Truth, to bring a squad of IDF soldiers to Britain to visit the Houses of Parliament and carry out a series of “educational” lectures promoting Israel and its military as benevolent forces. Israeli charity website, Israel Gives, describes My Truth as “an educational organization that is comprised of Israeli Defense Force reservists that educate about the IDF operations and the moral standards it holds,” adding that: ’My Truth’ reservists speak up openly and with a firsthand perspective about their army experiences in response to those who attempt to slander Israeli soldiers in the name of so-called ‘full disclosure.’” And like Galmudy again, Davis’ activism has earned her official praise from Israeli government officials. In 2019, former Shin Bet official and then-Minister of Justice, Amir Ohana, recorded a video expressing his deep gratitude, stating: I want to tell Yochy Davis and the My Truth organization: thank you for providing justice. Thank you for providing truth to the world, and thank you for everything you are doing for the State of Israel and for the people of Israel. Thank you.” Davis recently met with Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and both she and Galmudy attended an official event at the Israeli Embassy in London last month. Earlier this year, the pair also traveled to Israel and the Golan Heights – Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel – where they liaised with and took photos with IDF soldiers. Yochy Davis and Itai Galmudy pose for a photo in front of an Israeli military vehicle during a visit to the Golan Heights, as posted on social media. (Instagram)   Stop The Plagiarism The choice to name a pro-Israel advocacy group “Stop The Hate U.K.” clearly attempts to equate support for Palestine and opposition to genocide with anti-Semitism. Yet it has also caused significant confusion, as a well-known and respected charity, “Stop Hate U.K.” (SHUK) already exists. SHUK was established in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence affair. Stephen Lawrence was a Black British teenager murdered in London in a racially motivated killing in 1993. The attack, and the subsequent inadequate response from the Metropolitan Police, made Lawrence a cause célèbre, the George Floyd of his day. An official inquiry found that the police force was “institutionally racist” and needed to be radically reformed. Since 1995, SHUK has carried out vital work challenging hatred and intolerance. Lawrence’s mother serves as its patron. Pro-Israel group Stop The Hate U.K. is frequently misidentified as the more legitimate body, including in Sawer’s aforementioned Daily Telegraph article, where it attributes the intelligence provided to SHUK. It is eminently possible that this sort of confusion was deliberate, and Stop The Hate U.K. is trying to bask in the legitimacy of an established anti-racist charity. MintPress contacted SHUK for this investigation, but did not receive a response. Gaza and the rise of Stop The Hate U.K. provokes a number of important questions. How is it that a pro-Israel pressure group, co-founded by two Israeli citizens, can have such an outsized effect on British public life? How can a former member of an army carrying out a massacre put such successful pressure on U.K. authorities to arrest journalists exposing the IDF’s crimes? And who gets to decide who and who is not a terrorist: British citizens or pressure groups allied to a foreign nation carrying out a genocide? Feature photo | Pro-Israel demonstrators gather in London during a counter-protest to a pro-Palestinian rally, part of the wider mobilization that groups like Stop The Hate UK have sought to amplify as they pressure authorities to crack down on anti-genocide activism. Martin Pope | Sipa via AP Images The post Stop The Hate UK: The Shadowy Israel-Aligned Group Targeting MintPress staff anti-genocide organizers  appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, British media bias, Daily Telegraph controversy, Gaza Genocide, Israel influence UK, Israeli lobby, MintPress investigation, pro-Palestine activists, Stop The Hate UK, surveillance of activists, UK repression]

— Sudan’s War, UAE Gold Networks, and the Rise of Anti-Imperialist Alliances

 

at 12/5/25 9:20am

Even as the U.S. empire’s gaze is turned towards Venezuela, it continues to meddle in Africa. Foreign intervention is fueling a bitter civil war in Sudan, the Trump administration is pushing a line about a genocide against Christians in Nigeria, with an eye on military intervention, and across the Sahel region, anti-imperialist forces continue to rise and organize, dreaming of a united, pan-African continent that will resist American imperialism and reject Israeli colonization. Joining MintCast host Mnar Adley today to talk about the continent is Ahmed Kaballo. Ahmed is a British-Sudanese journalist and the CEO and co-founder of African Stream, a media outlet shut down by the U.S. government for publishing inconvenient truths. Sudan is a nation gripped by a civil war. Since 2023, the country has been in the midst of a bitter conflict between rival military factions. The country’s internationally-recognized government is losing ground to the breakaway Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF is widely accused of carrying out a genocidal massacre at El Fasher in the west of the country. Since October, satellite images have hinted at the scale of the slaughter, with some estimates suggesting up to 68,000 people have already been killed. The RSF would not be such a potent force without significant financial, military, and logistical support from the United Arab Emirates. In turn, huge quantities of freshly mined Sudanese gold finds its way into the Middle Eastern nation; the jewelry stores of Dubai are awash with African gold. Under huge pressure from the United States, the government of Sudan signed a normalization deal with Israel, paving the way for more regional acceptance of Israel’s colonization of its neighbors. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the Trump administration has been promoting the idea that there is a genocide against the country’s Christian community taking place, and even floating the idea of U.S. involvement in the west African nation’s internal affairs. In this endeavor, he has found an unlikely ally in Nicki Minaj. The rapper (who has no ties to Nigeria) recently spoke at the United Nations, praising Trump for his commitment to protecting the Christian community there. Others have stated that while radical armed Islamist forces are indeed operating all over the Sahel region, their guns are pointed at everyone, and there is no specific purge against Christians. These threats against Nigeria likely come as a shock to the country’s president, Bola Tinubu, who has been among America’s most servile allies on the continent. Nigeria has played a key role as the U.S.’ enforcer in the region, is a key member of the NATO-approved ECOWAS regional bloc, and has taken steps against anti-imperialist movements developing in Western Africa. Nigeria has also maintained extremely close ties with Israel, unusual for an African nation. Tinubu spent his earlier years laundering money for heroin traffickers in Chicago, making a fortune in the process, and is widely suspected of being a U.S. national security state asset. On the opposite side of the spectrum to Tinubu is Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso. Since coming to power in 2022, the young military leader has expelled French troops, ejected Western corporations, and aligned his country with Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. Promoting pan-African unity and national self-reliance while surviving coup attempts, Traoré is positioning himself as a radical anti-imperialist and has drawn fire from Washington and Paris. Africa, then, stands at a crossroads between resistance and assistance, between struggle and servitude. What happens in the next few years could decide the fate of the continent in the 21st century. Don’t miss this exclusive interview, only at MintPress News. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Sudans War, UAE Gold Networks, and the Rise of Anti-Imperialist Alliances appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, African Stream, Ahmed Kaballo, anti-imperialism, Burkina Faso Traoré, MintCast, Nigeria politics, pan-Africanism, Sudan conflict, U.S. intervention Africa, UAE gold]

— The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons

 

at 11/25/25 12:08pm

Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison’s purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world’s second-richest individual. But Ellison is not alone. Indeed, the world’s seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion.   Media Monopoly Paramount Skydance– an Ellison-owned company– is in pole position to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery, a conglomerate that controls gigantic film and television studios, streaming services like HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and TV networks such as HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN. This lead is largely due to Ellison’s proximity to President Trump, who will ultimately have to sign off on such a deal. Ellison has already spoken to senior White House officials about axing CNN hosts and content that Trump is said to dislike, including anchors, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. It is this willingness to completely reorientate the network’s political direction that has made him the White House’s preferred purchaser of Warner Brothers Discovery. He is reportedly so wealthy that he can afford to pay in cash. Ellison, whose net worth stands at a staggering $278 billion, has been on a media spending spree of late. Earlier this year, he provided the funds for Skydance to purchase Paramount Global, another gigantic conglomerate that controls such products as CBS, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Paramount Streaming, and Showtime. Immediately upon being appointed CEO of CBS News, Larry’s son, David, began drastically reorientating the network’s political outlook, firing staff, pushing it to become pro-Trump, and appointing self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as its editor-in-chief. The Ellison family, however, is far from finished. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle. Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform’s security and operations, giving the world’s second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. Trump himself stated that he was extremely pleased that Oracle would be controlling the platform. “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” he said. The Ellison family’s sudden venture into the realm of media and communications has shocked many, with senior media figures sounding the alarm. Longtime CBS News anchor, Dan Rather, warned that “we all have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.” “It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News,” he stated, citing pressure to change coverage to be more pro-Trump. “I think if [the Ellisons] were to buy CNN, it would change CNN forever, and it might be another very serious wound to CBS News,” he concluded.   Billionaire Capture Rather is correct. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world’s seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of the United States and Israeli governments. Sitting on a fortune of over $480 billion, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in world history, and is projected to, within the next decade, become the planet’s first trillionaire. In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, in a deal worth around $44 billion. The South-African born tech magnate quickly set about turning the platform into a vehicle for advancing his own far-right politics. In 2024, for example, he was a key figure in promoting an attempt to topple Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, spreading misinformation about the country’s election, and even threatening Maduro with a future in the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison camp. He has also very publicly rewritten his generative AI chatbot, Grok, on multiple occasions, so it would produce more conservative responses to users’ questions. One result of this was that Grok began to praise Adolf Hitler. Musk overtook Jeff Bezos last year to become the world’s richest man. And like Musk, the Amazon founder and CEO has made several moves into the world of media. In 2013, he bought The Washington Post for $250 million, and quickly began exerting his influence on the newspaper, firing anti-establishment writers and hiring pro-war columnists. This came just months after he bought a minority stake in Business Insider (now rebranded to Insider). One year later, in 2014, Amazon paid nearly a billion dollars to purchase Twitch, a streaming platform which hosts around 7 million monthly broadcasters. Amazon also owns a wide range of other media ventures, including movie studio MGM, audiobook platform, Audible, and movie database website, IMDB. French billionaire, Bernard Arnault, meanwhile, has been buying up large swaths of his country’s media outlets. The chairman of luxury conglomerate, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and the world’s seventh-richest man now sits on a media empire that includes daily newspapers such as Le Parisien and Les Echoes, magazines such as Paris Match and Challenges, as well as Radio Classique. The remaining three individuals rounding out the top seven list all owe their wealth primarily to their media empires. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are collectively worth over half a trillion dollars. Google has become the dominant force in today’s hi-tech economy, and is also a major player in social media, having bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Thirty-five percent of Americans use the video platform as a primary source of news. Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, owes his $203 billion fortune to his social media and tech ventures, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Like YouTube, Zuckerberg’s companies are major players in the modern news landscape, with 38%, 20% and 5% of Americans relying on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for their news and views.   MAGA Mouthpieces Many of these wealthy individuals have joined forces with President Trump, in an effort to support Republican policies and push a conservative worldview. Chief among these is the Ellison family, who quickly announced significant changes as CBS News, promising “unbiased” coverage and more “varied ideological perspectives”– widely understood as a shift towards right-wing, pro-Trump coverage. Larry Ellison holds deeply conservative views, and became a top donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a close Trump confident. Indeed, one Trump insider, noting his influence, went so far as to call Ellison as the “shadow President of the United States.” Musk, of course, very publicly turned Twitter into a conservative-dominated platform, and was an unofficial member of Trump’s cabinet, becoming de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Zuckerberg has also taken a number of steps to align his platforms with the MAGA movement, including firing his fact-checking team (widely associated with liberal politics) and prioritizing what he calls “free speech.” Content moderation teams, the Meta CEO said, would be moved from California to Texas, “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.” Zuckerberg replaced Meta’s president of global affairs, the former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, who was George W. Bush’s chief of staff. He also appointed Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close Trump ally, to Meta’s board, despite his complete lack of relevant experience. Many of these moves were likely made in response to Trump’s threat to imprison Zuckerberg “for the rest of his life” if he did anything to “cheat” him out of a 2024 presidential election victory. Zuckerberg subsequently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and, alongside Bezos and other tech moguls, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, the new guardians of the media empire. Photo | AP Bezos, meanwhile, pursued similar measures at The Washington Post, announcing that the newspaper would no longer publish opinions skeptical of capitalism. “We are going to be writing every day in support of defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote, noting that readers wishing to see alternative viewpoints can find them on “the internet.” The decision was widely seen as a major shakeup, and provoked public opposition from Post employees. Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Posts opinion section today, said the newspaper’s lead economics journalist Jeff Stein. [It] makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.” The move was quite the reversal for Bezos, who had once called Trump a “threat to democracy.” Yet, by January 2025, he was sitting with Zuckerberg, Musk, and Arnault in prominent positions behind Trump at his inauguration. Considering his nationality, Arnault has a surprisingly close relationship with Trump. In 2019, the French billionaire opened a new Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, Texas, a move that some have suggested was an attempt to please the president. Trump attended the facility’s opening, calling Arnault an “artist” and a “visionary.” Due to their relationship with the Trumps, the Arnault family have become unofficial intermediaries between the French and U.S. governments. They were hosted by the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago in 2023, and, during an escalating trade war earlier this year, Bernard visited the White House to dampen down tensions between the U.S. and France.   Pentagon Contractors A key factor in the rise of many of the world’s top seven richest individuals is their proximity to the U.S. national security state, with many of their companies growing wealthy in part due to feeding from the trough of Pentagon contracts. Today’s wars and espionage rely as much on hi-tech computing equipment as tanks and guns, and in 2022, the Department of Defense awarded Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a $9 billion cloud computing contract. Bezos’ Amazon has long enjoyed a close relationship with the CIA, having signed a $600 million contract with the agency in 2014. Yet both Google and Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, have been intertwined with Langley since their inception. The CIA bankrolled and oversaw Brin’s PhD research at Stanford University, work which would later form the basis of Google. As one investigation noted, “senior U.S. intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.” As late as 2005, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist arm, was a major shareholder in Google. These shares were a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth. By 2007, the government was using enhanced versions of Google Earth to surveil and target enemies in Iraq and beyond, according to The Washington Post. By this time, the Post also notes, Google was partnering with Lockheed Martin to produce futuristic technology for the military. There also exists a revolving door of employment between Google and various branches of Federal government. It would be no stretch, meanwhile, to state that Elon Musk owes his largesse in no small part to his intimate relationship with the CIA. In-Q-Tel chief Mike Griffin helped birth SpaceX, providing support and advice from the beginning, and even accompanied Musk to Russia in 2002, where the pair attempted to purchase cheap intercontinental ballistic missiles to start the company. Griffin repeatedly championed Musk at the CIA, describing him as the “Henry Ford” of the space industry, and worthy of the government’s full support. Still, by 2008, SpaceX was in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and believing both SpaceX and Tesla Motors would be liquidated. But he was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract that Griffin had helped secure. Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse. But its primary customers continue to be U.S. government agencies, such as the Air Force, Space Development Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. And recently, the Pentagon has recruited him to help it win a nuclear war. A new SpaceX spinoff company, Castelion, is working on building a network of armed satellites circling North America, designed to shoot down enemy nuclear missiles. A successful operation would give the United States an impervious shield, and allow it to act as it wants around the world, without threat of retaliation, effectively ending the era of mutually assured destruction, and plunging the planet into a dangerous new epoch. Six of the seven members of Castelion’s leadership team and two of its four senior advisors are ex-Space X employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the CIA, including Griffin himself. Elon named his oldest child Griffin Musk. Another of his sons, X Æ A-12, is named after a CIA spy plane. No billionaire, however, is more intimately connected to the CIA than Larry Ellison. Ellison began his career by working with the CIA on a database system called Project Oracle. In 1977, he would co-found tech giant Oracle (named after his previous project). The CIA was Oracle’s only customer for some time, before Ellison branched out and began to win contracts with other branches of the national security state, including Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the NSA. That close partnership continues to this day. In 2020, the company won a 15-year contract with the CIA and 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies worth tens of billions of dollars. And today, its upper ranks are filled with former CIA executives. One example of this is Leon Panetta, former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, who sits on its board of directors.   Arming and Supporting Israel Another key attribute that many of the world’s richest individuals share is their passionate support for Israel and its expansionist project. Nowhere is this more evident than with Ellison, who has made it his life’s goal to advance the Jewish State’s interests, both at home and abroad. Ellison is an enthusiastic supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed with on his private island in Hawaii. So impressed was he with the embattled prime minister that he offered him a seat on Oracle’s board, replete with a yearly salary of $450,000. Ellison is the largest single donor to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In 2017 alone, he pledged $16.6 million to build a new training facility for IDF soldiers, whom he described as defending “our home.” At a fundraiser, he explained that: Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.” David Ellison is no less ardent a Zionist, and even met with a top Israeli general in order to aid a project spying on American citizens, according to an investigation by The Grayzone. The scheme was aimed at attacking American citizens participating in pro-Palestine activism in the face of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The documents also mention Brin’s name as a potential collaborator in the plan. Oracle’s Israeli CEO, Safra Catz, is also a close friend of Netanyahu’s, and describes the corporation as on a “mission” to support Israel. Together, Catz and Ellison have enforced a strict pro-Israel stance across the company. In the wake of the October 2023 violence, Catz instructed that the words “Oracle stands with Israel” must be printed on company screens across the world in more than 180 countries. Unsurprisingly, the support and collaboration with Israel has led to significant pushback among employees. Catz’s response to their concerns was blunt. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding: This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.” It has been widely reported, even in the corporate media, that the Ellison family’s foray into the world of media was triggered by their desire to help Israel in its public relations battle, something Tel Aviv is keenly aware that they are losing. As Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League said, “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” explaining that young people around the world are being exposed daily to videos of Israeli aggression, leading to a PR disaster. Former congressman Mike Gallagher, a leader in the attempts to ban TikTok, explained how his bill had failed, but, after October 7, 2023, and the worldwide outrage at Israeli actions, it found new life on Capitol Hill, and was passed into law, forcing its imminent sale to a consortium led by Oracle. This pro-Israel sea change has already occurred at CBS News, with the hiring of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Weiss first came to public attention while still at college, founding an organization that attempted to have Muslim and Arab professors fired for their pro-Palestine views. As The Financial Times noted, “Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter.” Last week, at the Jewish Leadership Conference, she stated that she sees her mission at CBS as “redraw[ing] the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in America by sidelining voices like Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson, and elevate “charismatic” leaders like Alan Dershowitz, who represents “the vast majority of Americans.” Zuckerberg’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – have displayed a no less concerted bias in favor of Israel. As far back as 2016, Facebook was collaborating with the Israeli government on matters of censorship, with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked revealing that the social media platform complied with 95% of her requests for pro-Palestine content to be removed. The Facebook/Israel partnership was deepened in 2020 when the company appointed Emi Palmor, the former Director General of the Ministry of Justice of Israel and an ex-spy with IDF intelligence group Unit 8200, to its oversight board, a 21-person committee ultimately in charge of the political direction of the site. Zuckerberg’s platforms have long shut down Palestinian voices on dubious “hate speech” grounds. However, the censorship was drastically increased after the October 7 attacks. Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the “systemic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook.” noting how they reviewed 1050 cases of censorship of Palestinian voices, including those documenting human rights abuses against themselves. 1049 of them, the study concluded, were entirely peaceful utterances of support for Palestine, and did not break any of Meta’s terms of service. In 2023, Instagram also inserted the word “terrorist” into the bios of thousands of users who mentioned they were Palestinian. When challenged on this, they claimed it was an auto-translation bug. Internally, Meta staff have complained about systematic suppression of their voices and the creation of a “hostile and unsafe work environment” for Palestinian and Muslim employees. WhatsApp, meanwhile, is a battleground in more than one sense. The Israeli military is using Palestinians’ WhatsApp data in order to track and target tens of thousands of people in Gaza. It is unclear how or whether Meta is collaborating with the Israeli military in this endeavor. However, it has been suggested that some of the dozens of former Israeli spies now working in top jobs at Meta could be producing backdoors in the software, or simply passing the data onto their former colleagues. A 2022 MintPress investigation found hundreds of former Unit 8200 operatives working at Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Zuckerberg himself is known to be a strong supporter of Israel, and has numerous familial connections to the state. After the October 2023 attacks, he released a statement denouncing Hamas and other resistance forces as “pure evil,” an action that earned him an official thank you from the State of Israel. Musk has also put himself and his vehicles in the service of Israel. In November 2023, he traveled to Israel to meet with both Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog and offer his unqualified support to their attack on Gaza. Describing Hamas as “evil” and “revel[ing] in the joy of killing civilians,” Musk attempted to publicly whitewash Israeli violence, stating unequivocally that the IDF goes out of its way “to avoid killing civilians.” At the time of his visit, Israeli strikes had killed at least 20,000 people in four weeks of bombings. During his 2023 Israel trip, Musk pledged support for the IDF’s Gaza campaign. Photo | Israel GPO Netanyahu has stated that Twitter is among Israel’s “most important weapons” in the war, and defended Musk from accusations of fascism, after he gave a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference. During his visit, Musk also signed a deal with the government of Israel, giving the latter effective control and oversight over Starlink communications portals operating in Israel and Gaza. Google and Amazon, too, are key players facilitating the hi-tech genocide in Gaza. In 2021, the pair signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and AI infrastructure to the IDF – technology that has been used to target the civilian population of the densely-populated strip. The deal has sparked a rebellion among employees, who organized sit-ins and other protests against their collaboration. Many other Google employees, however, are intimately linked with the State of Israel. There are at least 99 former Unit 8200 spies working in key positions at the Silicon Valley giant. One prominent example is Gavriel Goidel, who was a longtime commander and head of learning at Unit 8200, before being hired by Google to become the company’s head of strategy and operations. Google has also collaborated in disseminating Israeli government propaganda to tens of millions of Europeans, despite the content breaking its own terms of service. Part of this may be down to the disposition of Brin himself. Normally avoiding the limelight and refraining from making political statements, the Russian-born magnate bitterly condemned the United Nations as “transparently antisemitic” after it released a report detailing his company’s participation in the Gaza genocide. “Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” he added. Arnault has remained quiet on Gaza. He has, however, invested heavily in Israel. Diamonds and other precious stones are a mainstay of the Israeli economy, and the Frenchman’s luxury brands disseminate the stones globally. Activists have called for Israeli diamonds to be labeled conflict minerals and boycotted by ethical consumers. He also invested in Israeli tech and security firm, Wiz, a company recently purchased by Google for $32 billion. Earlier this month, LVMH signed a $55 million deal with Israeli actress and former IDF soldier, Gal Gadot, making her the the face of their brand. We are living in an era of unprecedented global inequality. Together, these seven individuals– Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Arnault– control more wealth than the bottom 50% of humanity (over 4 billion people) combined. Sitting on heretofore unimaginable fortunes, they have begun buying up assets, including media outlets, at record pace. For billionaires, the utility of capturing the press is threefold: firstly, it shields them and their class from press scrutiny and criticism. Second, it gives them a mouthpiece to push the public debate towards even more business-friendly laws and regulations. And third, they can use their outlets to champion any causes and promote any other agendas they have. We have seen all three play out here, as, collectively, our press is rapidly moving towards more conservative, pro-Trump, pro-Israel positions, shutting out any dissenting voices from their ranks. The effect on democracy, a free society, and the public’s right to a diversity of opinions has been highly deleterious. When it comes to media, we already suffered from an illusion of choice. However, the supercharged concentration of ownership of American and global media in the hands of just a handful of individuals has only exacerbated this problem. There once was a time that individuals looking for alternative viewpoints would simply go online to find them. But with censorship of dissenting opinions – particularly on Israel/Palestine – growing, this is becoming increasingly unviable. In short, then, what the planet’s mega-rich capture of our media system shows is that billionaires are not only a serious drain on resources, but an existential threat to an open society and the free flow of information. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, Top Story, billionaire media control, CIA big tech partnerships, Elon Musk Pentagon ties, global information war, Jeff Bezos Washington Post, Larry Ellison CNN deal, Mark Zuckerberg social platforms, pro Israel censorship online, tech oligarchs and news, Trump era media reshuffle]

— Saudi Arabia just said NO to Israel & the US | Sharmine Narwani

 

at 11/21/25 6:59am

The United States is trying to shape the Middle East in the image it wants. From pushing through its plan for Gaza at the United Nations, to pulling Syria and Saudi Arabia closer into its orbit, President Trump may soon get the Middle East that he desires. However, he will not get it all his own way, as forces from Iran, Yemen, and across the region still oppose Trump’s plans and fight against it. All the while, Israel continues to expand its control of its neighbors. This week, it has been stepping up bombing campaigns against targets in Lebanon from its bases in the occupied south of the country. Joining host Mnar Adley today to talk about the world’s most tumultuous place is Sharmine Narwani, a journalist and political analyst who serves as the editor of The Cradle. Despite a ceasefire on paper, Israel continues to pound Palestine. On November 20 alone, Israeli strikes killed at least 32 people, including a baby girl in the town of Bani Suhalia. Gazan officials are warning that toxic materials from the continued Israeli bombardment may be seeping into the groundwater, further undermining one of the world’s most water-scarce areas. Israel has killed 280 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire was enacted. “Israel is bombing Gaza left, right, and center,” Narwani said, concluding that, “What we have learned from all this is that a negotiated ceasefire with Israel is not worth the paper it is printed on.” Nevertheless, Narwani predicted economic difficulties in Israel’s future, due to its greatly increased debts. Describing the country as possessing a “zombie economy,” she noted that it was issuing increased amounts of government bonds to pay the U.S. back for the weapons it was supplying. But there might come a time when it will not be able to pay back its debts, she warned. Israel is also striking targets in Lebanon, and extracting a heavy civilian toll. On Monday, a strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon killed at least 13 people, according to a statement from the Lebanese Health Ministry. The IDF even used widely-banned cluster munitions in its attacks on Lebanon, a new study has revealed. This has met with minimal resistance from the region’s major powers, including Saudi Arabia, who, Narwani explained, “want the resistance in Lebanon to be disarmed, dismantled, dead.” The primary source of serious resistance to Israeli aggression has come from a somewhat unlikely source: Yemen. The region’s poorest nation, and one that has been under attack for over a decade, the Ansar Allah-led movement has offered serious pushback to Israeli actions, with Yemen imposing a blockade of Israeli ships in the Red Sea, forcing the Israeli port of Eilat into bankruptcy. “One of the reasons that the Yemeni resistance has been so successful is because, by and large, they don’t speak English, and they don’t read the Western press,” Narwani told Adley, explaining that: They are untouched by the propaganda narrative that has made, in my view, many of the other members of the resistance axis too well-behaved, and too well-mannered… They don’t have colonized minds.” Western and Israeli intelligence attempts to infiltrate the country have also proven to be less fruitful than hoped, and the great majority of Yemenis support the continuation of resistance to Israeli expansionism. Don’t miss this episode, where we take a bird’s eye view of the political and economic situation across the subcontinent. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Saudi Arabia just said NO to Israel the US | Sharmine Narwani appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Ansar Allah, Gaza ceasefire, Israel attacks Lebanon, Middle East politics, regional resistance, Saudi Arabia, Sharmine Narwani, Trump Middle East plan, US foreign policy, Yemen Red Sea blockade]

— Hypersonic Missiles, Imperial Wars, and Resistance: The New US-Russia Clash in Latin America

 

at 11/7/25 8:10am

Pushback from Latin American leaders are putting a wrench in the works of Donald Trump’s imperial ambitions. The Summit of the Americas– the U.S.-backed conference of regional leaders– has had to be cancelled (or, officially, postponed until 2026) due to threats of a mass boycott of the event. Leading this revolt are Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, who both declared they would skip the event in protest of the U.S. treatment of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. With the summit promising to be a public relations disaster, the U.S. ordered it cancelled. Joining host Mnar Adley today to discuss Colombia, Mexico, and the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela are Camila Escalante and Alan MacLeod. Camila is a reporter for PressTV and the editor of independent media outlet, Kawsachun News. She covered the U.S.’ regime change attempts against Venezuela, the 2019 coup in Bolivia, and the return of President Lula da Silva in Brazil. Alan is senior staff writer and producer at MintPress News. He is the author of one book and five peer-reviewed studies on Latin American politics. The Trump administration is intent on provoking conflict with Venezuela. Moving thousands of troops to the region, the president has ordered attacks on 17 boats, killing 66 civilians in the process. He has also approved the CIA to carry out “lethal” operations inside Venezuela. Last month, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro announced that his forces had stopped a false flag operation to set off explosives at the United States Embassy in Caracas. Trump’s hand, however, is being stayed by stiff regional opposition. President Petro has condemned the assault and begun legal proceedings against Trump for his attacks on fishermen in the Caribbean. “The U.S. wants Venezuela’s oil. That’s what is behind the missile attacks,” Petro said, adding that “Trump is furious that Im not supporting the US with the Colombian Army to invade Venezuela.” In response, Trump has threatened to invade Colombia as well. Trump has tried to frame U.S. actions as a defensive maneuver, claiming that Venezuela sits at the nexus of a massive drug smuggling operation intended to flood American streets with deadly narcotics. Yet, if he wants to uncover powerful individuals with links to drug smuggling operations, he could look far closer to home. Orlando Cicilia, the brother-in-law of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, spent 12 years in a Florida prison for crimes related to the distribution of cocaine. At the time of his arrest, Rubio was living with Cicilia at his home, and later used his political position to pressure a Florida regulator to grant him a real estate license. Across much of Latin America, the new Secretary of State is known as “Narco Rubio.” Venezuela, unlike many of the U.S.’ previous targets, MacLeod told Adley today, is not defenseless. It possesses a capable and well-trained military, as well as eight million people in patriotic militias. Any direct invasion, therefore, he concluded, would likely not be a swift affair, and could end up becoming another Vietnam for the United States. Join us for an important discussion on imperialism, rebellion, and resistance. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post Hypersonic Missiles, Imperial Wars, and Resistance: The New US-Russia Clash in Latin America appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Caribbean, Colombia, hypersonic missiles, Imperialism, Latin America, Mexico, Russia, Trump, United States, Venezuela]

— How The CIA & Mossad Set Up Sudan for Genocide since the 1990s

 

at 11/7/25 7:59am

Sudan isn’t collapsing on its own — it’s being taken apart. And behind every headline about “civil war” is a story of US empire, greed, and betrayal. While headlines point to the UAE as the culprit behind Sudan’s humanitarian disaster, the truth runs far deeper and more sinister. For over two decades, it’s been Washington’s official policy to turn Sudan into the failed state we see today — part of a new Cold War against China, Russia, and Iran, and a campaign to destroy any nation that dares to stand with Palestinian liberation. What’s happening in Sudan isn’t another African tragedy — it’s an architectural design of US imperialism where starvation, displacement, and genocide are the tools of Washington’s policy. In Sudan, Entire cities have been leveled. Hospitals bombed. Women raped and executed on camera. Families starve while Sudan’s gold is stripped and flown to Dubai. Sudan once stood at the heart of the Axis of Resistance — a bridge between Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon; a logistical lifeline for weapons to Gaza and South Lebanon; and a strategic ally on the Red Sea That defiance sealed its fate. Like Libya and Iraq before it, Sudan has been targeted for destruction — punished for its independence and its solidarity with Palestine. And at the center of this assault are two of Washington’s most reliable proxies: Israel and the United Arab Emirates. They’ve been deployed by Washington to do what the empire can no longer do openly — to wage wars by proxy, seize resources, and crush the Resistance from within. Israel provides intelligence and strategy. The UAE provides money, weapons, and cover. Together, they carry out the dirty work of empire. Sudan sits on a fault line connecting the Red Sea, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa — regions central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Russia’s trade networks. Its ports could link Africa’s mineral wealth to a new, multipolar economy no longer dependent on the U.S. dollar. For Washington, this is an existential threat. China’s Belt and Road offers nations like Sudan an escape from the IMF, the World Bank, and the petrodollar system that have trapped the Global South in debt for decades. If Sudan joined that network, it could connect Africa’s gold, oil, and mineral wealth directly to Beijing — bypassing Western control entirely. That’s what Washington fears most. By collapsing Sudan, it weakens both the Axis of Resistance and the Belt and Road Initiative, blocking Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran from gaining a foothold in Africa. It’s the same Cold-War logic that destroyed Libya, Syria, and Yemen — the same imperial blueprint: If a nation rejects Western capital and seeks independence, it must be destabilized, divided, and starved into submission. And Israel and the UAE, deployed by Washington, have become the empire’s regional enforcers — controlling the Red Sea, isolating Iran, and looting Sudan’s gold and oil under the banner of “stability.” The destruction of Sudan didn’t begin yesterday. It began decades ago — with a long campaign to make Sudan ungovernable. In 2019, after years of sanctions, isolation, and CIA interference, Washington and its Gulf allies orchestrated the fall of Omar al-Bashir under the illusion of “democratic reform.” In his final years, Bashir tried to win the West’s approval — the same fatal mistake Muammar Gaddafi made. Ghaddafi famously shook the hands with Tony Blair and agreed to Disarm for an an exchange for political survival – but the Empire couldn’t allow for Libya to become an independent state where Gaddafi wanted to create an African gold currency to unite the continent and ditch the US dollar. NATO invaded and Gaddafi was disposed of within a blink of an eye. Dragged through the streets of Tripoli after being sodomized with a machete. And Omar AL-Bashir tried to negotiate with the US and turned to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, agreeing to cut ties with Iran in exchange for political survival. He did everything they asked — and they toppled him anyway. Because the empire doesn’t forgive and it does not forget. They wanted a compliant Sudan, not a sovereign one. And they wanted to ensure it would never again stand with Iran, Palestine, Yemen, or Lebanon. To justify that outcome, the empire had to make Sudan look like a monster. In the 2000s, Washington labeled it a “state sponsor of terrorism” — not for violence, but for its alliances. Then came Darfur — the perfect emotional weapon. The humanitarian theater that paved the way for NATO’s destruction of Libya was first rehearsed in Sudan. Western think tanks, NGOs, and intelligence agencies turned a regional conflict into a global spectacle. Celebrities like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie became the moral front of an imperial campaign — speaking of “genocide” and “saving Sudan,” while U.S. and Israeli intelligence quietly mapped oil fields and gold reserves. As Clooney called for intervention, the CIA armed the proxies. As Jolie pleaded for “human rights,” Western and Israeli-linked allies backed warlords. Even Jolie has since hinted that celebrity activism can be manipulated to serve Western agendas — turning compassion into consent for war. By the time Bashir fell, the world had accepted the lie that Sudan was a failed state — its people primed for foreign “salvation,” its resources already marked for extraction. With Bashir gone, the UAE rose as Washington and Tel Aviv’s new enforcer. Once known for skyscrapers and malls, Abu Dhabi became a hub for proxy wars — financing coups, arming militias, and laundering blood gold under the banner of “counter-terrorism.” Through the Abraham Accords, Israel and the UAE fused Emirati money, Israeli intelligence, and Western arms into one war machine. And Sudan became their next laboratory. As Sudan’s people starve, its resources are stripped bare. The vultures are feeding. Al Junaid Multi Activities, owned by RSF commander Hemedti’s family, seized Sudan’s gold mines — turning blood-soaked earth into its private fortune. Emiral and Alliance for Mining, backed by the UAE, took over the Kush Mine and funneled gold through Dubai, erasing its origins before it hit global markets. Western oil giant Schlumberger returned under the guise of “reconstruction,” even as famine spread and cities turned to ash. Sudan’s economy was carved up between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, who profited off war and smuggling while civilians starved. The famine isn’t a by-product — it’s a weapon. The Rapid Support Forces didn’t just appear — they were created. In 2015, during the U.S.-backed war on Yemen, the UAE recruited thousands of Sudanese fighters — many ex-Janjaweed — as mercenaries against Yemen’s Ansarallah movement. They fought with Emirati funding and Western weapons, under Washington’s quiet approval. That war gave the RSF training, funding, and global connections — turning them into a regional army for hire. They fought Yemen’s resistance yesterday. Today, they’re massacring civilians in Khartoum, Darfur, and beyond. Villages erased. Women raped. Hospitals burned. Millions displaced. Entire generations lost. These are not “tribal clashes.” This is genocide — engineered and financed by the same powers that once claimed to bring “democracy.” Since 2023, Israel and the UAE have armed and financed the RSF — ensuring their grip on Sudan’s gold and ports. Gold flows from Darfur to Dubai, refined and sold worldwide. Once melted, its origins vanish — but not its blood. That wealth cycles through banks, defense contractors, and tech supply chains in Tel Aviv, London, and New York. For Israel, Sudan’s collapse is strategic: It weakens Iran’s allies, opens African markets, and secures Red Sea routes around Yemen’s blockade. While Yemen sacrifices to blockade Israeli ships for Gaza, the UAE and its allies quietly keep Israel’s trade alive. It’s the same imperial pattern: Destabilize. Demonize. Then divide. Every time, the target is a nation that stands with Palestine, aligns with China or Iran, and refuses to bow. But make no mistake — this isn’t just a war on the Resistance. It’s a war on the future itself. Sudan’s collapse sends a message to every African and Asian nation daring to work with Beijing or Moscow: break from the dollar, and we’ll break your country. Sudan’s suffering isn’t collateral damage — it’s the cost of resistance. As famine spreads and children die, gold still moves, oil still flows, and the empire still profits. They call it “stability.” But what they’ve built is slavery — wrapped in the language of democracy. Every nation that resists — Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Lebanon, and now Sudan — faces the same fate: sanctions, proxy wars, starvation, and propaganda. This is the architecture of US imperialism. The export of so-called Western Democracy against the Global South. Sudan is not “another African tragedy.” It’s a frontline in humanity’s struggle for freedom — between the Axis of Assistance and the Axis of Resistance, between a dying Western order and a world fighting to break free. And that’s why Sudan matters: it’s where the war for a free Palestine, the war on Africa, and the war against China’s multipolar ambitions all converge. This is the face of modern day colonialism. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post How The CIA Mossad Set Up Sudan for Genocide since the 1990s appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Africa, axis of resistance, Belt and Road, Israel, Mnar Adley, Palestine, proxy war, Sudan, U.S. imperialism, UAE]

— Fatema Al Harbi: The Arab Working Overtime to Defend Israel’s Genocide

 

at 11/5/25 7:40am

While its actions in Gaza and beyond have united the world against it, Israel can still rely on a small cadre of hardcore Arab Zionist supporters. Given these individuals’ race and religion, they are enthusiastically presented with platforms to passionately defend the state and its actions. One notable example of this is Fatema Al Harbi, author, activist, and former longtime civil servant with the Bahraini Ministry of Education. Al Harbi spread lurid and demonstrably false stories about the October 7 attack by Hamas, claiming that she saw with her own eyes videos of Israeli children being beheaded and women being raped in front of their families. “Shame on you,” for not believing Israel, she told her fellow Arabs, explaining their mentality: I think those people don’t want to accept anything, either it is rape, or beheaded babies or beheaded soldiers, or any other crime. They just don’t want to accept it. But, you know it is a reality, and it is happening. That’s just sad.” And while Al Harbi was quick to condemn Hamas or any Arab who did not line up to support what she described as Israel “defending itself” from “terrorism,” she was less hasty to assign any blame to Israel for their post-October 7 actions. “Unfortunately, the situation is very complicated for both sides,” she said. “I don’t think it is a genocide,” she said, adding that it was merely “the price” Palestinians have to “pay.” Bahraini author and Director of Gulf Affairs at the UAE-based organisation Sharaka, Fatema Al Harbi, denies the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, describing the “complicated situation” on “both sides”, while saying “it’s war, unfortunately”. Al Harbi became involved with the… pic.twitter.com/w0TATQoekD — PalPulse (@PulseofPal) April 8, 2025   “Partnership” With Israeli Military Intelligence Fatema Al Harbi is a director of Sharaka, an Israeli non-governmental organization established in 2020 to promote the Abraham Accords, a series of international normalization agreements between Israel and four Muslim-majority states: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco. The accords – an attempt to legitimize the State of Israel in the region – have proven extremely unpopular, and have generated widespread protests against their implementation. Although Sharaka (which means “partnership” in Arabic) is officially a non-governmental organization, anyone analyzing its key staff could be forgiven for mistaking it for an outgrowth of Israeli military intelligence. The firm’s co-chairman, Dan Feferman, is a former IDF intelligence officer. Spending more than four years in the military, Feferman rose to the rank of major and was, according to his LinkedIn resume, responsible for handling the IDF’s public relations. As of at least 2021, he was still an IDF reservist. Given the background of other key staff at Sharaka, the military intelligence unit in question is likely Unit 8200, Israel’s most elite and controversial spying organization. Lior Dabush, Sharaka’s Israel director, is a former analyst with Unit 8200. Between 2013 and 2016, she notes, she “wrote intelligence reports and experimented with collecting, processing, deciphering and researching information.” Dabush later went on to become an employee of the Bahraini Embassy in Tel Aviv, highlighting how close the relationship between those two countries has become. Alongside Dabush at Unit 8200 was Michal Amar, who went on to work for the Israeli Police Force before joining Sharaka as a project manager in 2022. Infamous around the world, Unit 8200 is the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech surveillance and targeting systems. Using big data gleaned from facial recognition cameras, spy drones, fingerprint sensors at checkpoints, and mass surveillance of Palestinians’ electronic devices, Unit 8200 created A.I.-generated kill lists of Gazans, and used drones to carry out tens of thousands of strikes on the densely-populated strip. With help from Western tech corporations such as Microsoft, it also keeps enormous files on every Palestinian, containing medical records, phone calls, and text messages which are used as kompromat for extortion, or can be referred to after an individual is killed to find some post hoc justification for their targeting. Unit 8200 agents have also been behind some of the most controversial hi-tech spying incidents, including the 2024 Lebanese pager attack, which injured thousands of civilians, and the Pegasus spyware software, used to surveil tens of thousands of prominent politicians, activists, and journalists worldwide. Other key figures with close ties to the Israeli national security state include Sharaka co-founder Lorena Khateeb, an Israeli Druze employed by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Digital Diplomacy to target Arab Muslims with pro-Israel P.R. In 2021, she was named as among the top 30 most influential pro-Israel influencers in the world. The company’s managing director, Noam Meirov, is a career soldier, serving more than seven years as an active duty officer in the IDF before being appointed to his current position. He remains a reserve officer. Sharaka co-founder and chairman, Amit Deri, however, is an active participant in the ongoing violence in Gaza, described by international organizations the world over as a “genocide.” Deri is an officer in the Israeli military, and has shared pictures of himself inside the war zone, alongside statements celebrating the destruction of civilian buildings. Sharaka serves as a key prong in Israel’s public relations strategy, and has been directly promoted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, who published a video of Sharaka agents praising and thanking him and the State of Israel.   A World of Opportunities (For Warmongers) Al Harbi was the first non-government Bahraini to visit Israel, and came back singing its praises. In an interview with PragerU, a far-right American media organization responsible for much of the worst Islamophobic content on the internet, she insisted that there was nothing close to Apartheid in Israel. On the contrary, she claimed that the country was a paragon of racial and religious harmony, where people of all creeds live together in peace. Fatema from Bahrain @Fatemaal7rbi pic.twitter.com/aSpR4uTvoD — Fat Cat (@FATCAed) January 21, 2024 Al Harbi told PragerU that she met with many Arab Israelis, and that the overriding sentiment among them is that they feel “so proud” and “privileged” to live in Israel, a land that ensures that they “have rights they had never dreamed of” before. She has since turned this experience into a children’s book, “Fatemas journey to the Land of Abraham,” which tells the story of how she realized she had been taught to hate Jews, and how Israeli kindness melted away her prejudices. Today, her social media profiles are filled with pictures of her visiting the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Knesset (parliament). Her pro-Israel advocacy has opened up a world of opportunities. In 2022, she was appointed a scholar-in-residence at Oxford University, thanks to a program sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). Like Sharaka, ISGAP is closely tied to the Israeli government. Its chairman is Natan Sharansky, the country’s former deputy prime minister and minister of internal affairs. Other key people at the organization include notorious pro-Israel lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, and Christine Maxwell, sister of international child sex offender, Ghislaine Maxwell. Moreover, as a recent MintPress News investigation documented, ISGAP is secretly funded by the Israeli government. In 2018, for instance, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs surreptitiously provided around 80% of ISGAP’s budget. The Al Harbi accolades do not stop there. Later in 2022, she was selected as a European Commission Peace Ambassador and the following year, represented Bahrain at the United Nations Global Youth Summit for Change in Geneva, Switzerland. By this point, her pro-Israel activism had caught the attention of the U.S. government. In 2024, the State Department nominated her for its prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), a project that provides political instruction to young leaders from around the world and develops long-term relationships between the U.S. government and a cadre of tens of thousands of prominent individuals. Hundreds of IVLP laureates have gone on to become heads of state in their respective countries. IVLP nominees are flown to the United States, are shown the inner workings of the U.S. government, and develop relationships with American officials. Al Harbi certainly took advantage of this opportunity. Her social media is filled with posts highlighting her frequent trips across the U.S., whether that is meeting the mayor of Beverly Hills, or visits to Harvard University, the Texas State Capitol, or the Pentagon.   Conservative Media Darling Unsurprisingly, a hijab-wearing Arab Muslim woman willing to defend Israel has proven attractive for corporate media in the U.S., particularly the conservative press. In a separate video recorded for PragerU, Al Harbi states that virtually every Arab child is brought up to hate Jews, but that Arabs in Israel “feel safe,” and “have full rights” in “the country they call home.” The video was then seized upon by Israeli media to whitewash their crimes. Yet PragerU itself also has ties to Israeli intelligence; its CEO, Marissa Streit, having also served in Unit 8200. PragerU has recently become a partner of the U.S. government, providing “educational” videos for Washington to be used nationwide, a decision that has sparked an outcry from groups citing the organization’s less than stellar reputation for accuracy. Meanwhile, in an interview with The Daily Wire, Al Harbi revealed that she was invited to the Israeli consulate in Boston to watch a 47-minute compilation of October 7 footage. “I was shocked. I couldn’t breathe,” she said, of the footage, “I cried [through] most of it.” “I thought I saw enough on social media… There were more horrific acts and barbaric acts towards civilians, people sleeping in their beds,” she added. The Daily Wire was founded in 2015 by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing. Shapiro, a pro-Israel crusader, has long attracted controversy and criticism because of his hardline views. In a 2003 article titled “transfer is not a dirty word,” he called for the genocide of the Palestinian population. And in 2019, he wrote that “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.” Boreing, meanwhile, has gone out of his way to shield Israel from criticism of its aggression in Gaza. Lauding it for “endeavor[ing] to mitigate civilian losses,” he insisted that “Israel did not bomb a refugee camp because there is no refugee camp because there are no refugees.” Surely the most influential piece of media Al Harbi has been involved with, however, is a collaboration with Israeli author Aija Mayrock and pro-Israel organization, Facts For Peace. The video describes Al Harbi has having “risked everything to bring Muslims and Jews together,” and features A.I.-generated images of Israelis welcoming her into their households. Facts for Peace was created in October 2023 by U.S. billionaire, Barry Sternlicht, and spends millions of dollars every month on pro-Israel ads on Google, YouTube, and Facebook. Sternlicht recruited several well-known billionaires to his cause, including former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, and Dell founder, Michael Dell. “Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community,” Sternlicht wrote in an email to his fellow plutocrats. “We must get ahead of the narrative,” he concluded. Perhaps this explains the virality of the video. Last year, MintPress published a full investigation into Facts For Peace, its creation, and its shadowy funding. Is Al Harbi truly as heroic as the Facts For Peace video makes out? Did she really “risk everything” for peace? Some might consider those Bahrainis protesting against their authoritarian government’s policy of collaboration with a state carrying out a genocide against Arabs as a far riskier and more noble endeavor. And while she may have lost friends and family members, who describe her as a “traitor” to her religion and her people, it is clear to see that publicly supporting Israel, its expansion, and Arab normalization efforts with it, has landed her a wide range of opportunities and prestigious appointments. Therefore, although many in her country might view her as a real life Clayton Bigsby, her willingness to vocally support Israel has quickly opened doors all the way to the highest halls of power.   A Controversial Alliance Bahrain has been one of the region’s governments most willing to openly collaborate with the State of Israel. In 2020, it was among the first to sign the Abraham Accords, despite widespread internal opposition and condemnation from Palestinian leadership, who called it a “betrayal of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa, and the Palestinian cause.” The government of Bahrain, however–a Sunni administration ruling over a Shiite-majority population– considers Iran its primary threat. Israel is facing a crisis of legitimization. Its public image has crashed since October 7, 2023, falling in 42 of 43 countries studied by polling organization, Morning Consult. To that end, in 2025, it drastically increased its spending on P.R. by over 2,000%, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs being allocated a budget of $150 million for public diplomacy. Much of that has gone into advertisements targeting Western audiences. This crisis in Israeli legitimacy is also the key driver in the forced sale of TikTok to pro-Israel billionaire, Larry Ellison. “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, explained, noting that young people who get their news from social media are far more likely to hold sympathetic views towards Palestinians than older Americans that continue to rely on legacy media. Likewise, the Ellison family’s purchase of CBS News, and its attempts to buy CNN, are also efforts to turn the tide and shore up crumbling support for Israel in the United States. Ellison’s decision to appoint Bari Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief was reportedly down to the self-described “Zionist fanatic’s” positions on Israel. Arabs have long been accustomed to seeing their governments make unpopular moves. Continued normalization efforts with Israel, however, may be a bridge too far. A poll conducted by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, for instance, found that 96% of Saudi respondents believed that Arab nations should cut ties with Israel, not fraternize with it. Thus, both Israel and its Arab allies are facing an uphill battle selling normalization efforts, while Israel continues to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank, and has bombed six of its neighbors this year alone. To that end, Fatema Al Harbi is a key asset for Tel Aviv. As a hijabi Bahraini Muslim willing to defend the indefensible, she has transformed herself into one of Israel’s most potent weapons in its public relations battle. Whether her efforts will bear fruit is another matter. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post Fatema Al Harbi: The Arab Working Overtime to Defend Israel’s Genocide appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, Abraham Accords, Alan MacLeod, Arab normalization, Arab Zionism, Bahrain, Bari Weiss, Barry Sternlicht, FACTS For PEACE, Fatema Al Harbi, ISGAP, Israel, Israeli intelligence, Middle East, MintPress News, PragerU, Propaganda, Sharaka, UNIT 8200]

— Hi-Tech Holocaust: How Microsoft Aids The Gaza Genocide

 

at 10/27/25 7:48am

Israel’s genocide is being powered by Microsoft. From creating a massive digital dragnet, aiding in the production of A.I.-generated kill lists, hiring hundreds of Israeli spies to run its internal affairs, and suppressing figures opposing the slaughter, the Seattle-based tech corporation has played a key role in the violence. MintPress has detailed the deep collaboration between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Amazon, Google, TikTok, Apple, Palantir, and Oracle, but Microsoft’s relationship with the government and armed forces of Israel is potentially the closest, leading then-CEO Steve Ballmer to state that “Microsoft is as much an Israeli company as an American company.” MintPress explores the decades-long partnership between Microsoft and Israel, and the employees trying to break that marriage from the inside.   Turning Code Into Carnage “Among U.S. tech firms,” the Associated Press wrote, “Microsoft has had an especially close relationship with the Israeli military.” That relationship, it notes, massively expanded after the October 7, 2023, attacks. In the months following October 7, the IDF’s usage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service surged more than 200-fold. The amount of data from surveillance cameras, drones, checkpoints, biometric scanners, phone calls, and intercepted Palestinian personal data stored by the IDF on Microsoft servers doubled in the next nine months, reaching 13.6 petabytes by July 2024 – equivalent to 23,000 years of audio, or seven trillion pages of text. The point of all this was to create an enormous digital dragnet, where Palestinians’ every move, word, and keystroke was recorded in monitored in the greatest and most dystopian digital dragnet ever created. In the words of Yossi Sariel, the head of Unit 8200, the IDF’s surveillance division, the plan was to “track everyone, all of the time.” Sariel argued that big data was the solution to Israel’s problems, envisaging a future where Israel intercepted and stored “a million calls an hour” from Palestine, and used A.I. to search for keywords and identify threats. There was no way, however, that Israel could do this alone, as it did not possess the expertise or anything like the storage capacity needed for such a project. To this end, Sariel travelled to Seattle in 2021 to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, to pitch him on the surveillance partnership whereby Microsoft would build Unit 8200 a customized and segregated area within its Azure platform. The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to transcribe, translate, and otherwise process intelligence garnered via mass surveillance, which is then linked to Israel’s A.I.-based weapons systems. The largest and most controversial organization within the Israeli military, Unit 8200 has long been the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech spying operation. The unit is dedicated to surveillance, cyberwarfare, and online manipulation operations. Last year, it carried out the Lebanese Pager Attack, an act that wounded thousands of civilians. Unit 8200 agents were also behind many of the most infamous international spyware and hacking cases, including the Pegasus software, that was used to surveil tens of thousands of the world’s most prominent political leaders, journalists, and human rights campaigners. Sariel’s policy of mass surveillance changed the internal attitude at Unit 8200. “Suddenly the entire public was our enemy,” said one officer. The gargantuan trove of information compiled in Microsoft Azure amounted to a vast repository on the entire Palestinian population – a giant database of kompromat that is used to extort and blackmail the region’s indigenous people. If a person was secretly gay, or cheating on their spouse, for example, that information was readily available to Unit 8200 agents, who would then use it to turn their targets into informants. One former Unit 8200 member revealed that, as part of their training, they were made to memorize different Arabic slang words for “gay”, so that they could identify them in conversations. A Palestinian man passes through a biometric gate at the Qalandia crossing near Jerusalem. Sebastian Scheiner | AP The cloud database is also used to provide after-the-fact justification for arrests of innocent peoples. Off-hand, out-of-context comments made years ago can be used to portray anyone as a member of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or another armed resistance force. “These people get entered into the system, and the data on them just keeps growing,” an Israeli intelligence official who served in the West Bank said. When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, [the Azure surveillance repository] is where they find the excuse. We’re now in a situation where almost no one in the [Occupied] Territories is ‘clean,’ in terms of what intelligence has on them.” Unit 8200 has also used big data to compile A.I.-generated kill lists featuring tens of thousands of people. One program gave every Gazan, even women and children, a score of between 1 and 100, based on a number of factors. If they live in the same building or are in group chats with known or suspected Hamas members, for instance, their score is increased. Once their score reached a certain threshold, all Gazans were automatically placed on a kill list that was minimally overseen by humans. According to multiple Unit 8200 agents, Microsoft Azure’s cloud-based storage platform allowed Israel to overcome targeting bottlenecks, using all manner of data to research and identify individuals for assassination, which led to the killing of tens of thousands of people during the first weeks of its post-October 7 onslaught. Of course, the vast majority of the deaths have been civilians – around 70% were women and children. But Israeli officials can also go back after the fact and scour their digital dragnet to justify any killing, finding connections or any other incriminating evidence. A senior Israeli military officer described the cloud technology as “a weapon in every sense of the word.” Other officials, however, have gone so far as to raise concerns that Israel’s overreliance on Microsoft as a service is a strategic vulnerability that should be corrected.   Microsoft Sees No Evil, Only Profits Throughout all this, Microsoft has protested its innocence – and ignorance – of Israeli crimes. “At no time during this engagement or since that time has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cell phone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned,” a spokesperson for the company stated, adding, “Any allegations about Microsoft leadership involvement and support of this project … are false.” But leaked documents suggest Microsoft engineers understood exactly what sort of data was being stored in Azure, and what their clients hoped to achieve. “Technically, they’re not supposed to be told exactly what it is, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out,” one engineer said. “You tell [Microsoft] we don’t have any more space on the servers, that it’s audio files. It’s pretty clear what it is.” Others felt that the idea that Microsoft did not know that one of the world’s most notorious spying organizations might be using big data to spy on people was not credible, especially given how closely the two entities had been working together for years. Microsoft says that it cant figure out if their customers are committing crimes against humanity or mass surveillance, while at the same time Microsoft employees are working alongside uniformed IDF. Absurd! Paul Biggar, the founder of Tech For Palestine, told MintPress. The corporation’s claim of innocence seems even more tenuous, given the fact that Microsoft employs hundreds of former Unit 8200 agents, and recruits directly from the organization. A 2022 MintPress investigation found at least 166 former Unit 8200 operatives who went on to work for Microsoft, including many who helped design Azure itself. One example of this is Michael Bargury, who enjoyed a long and successful career as a Unit 8200 leader and moved directly to Microsoft Azure in 2015, eventually becoming a senior architect for the platform. Another is Azure’s current partner software engineering manager, Shlomi Haba. Haba spent six years as a Unit 8200, rising to become an officer and a team leader. Since 2014, he has worked for Microsoft Azure, and is now the company’s software engineering manager, overseeing dozens of engineers designing the platform. Many of those engineers are also former Unit 8200 operatives. Hundreds more ex-spies work in key positions at Microsoft. Ayelet Steinitz, for example, was the company’s former head of global strategic alliances, and continues to occupy a senior role at the company. In short, Microsoft is filled with former Unit 8200 operatives whose jobs entail making custom software for current agents to use. According to Microsoft employees familiar with the situation, this intimate relationship between the two entities makes their collaboration “much easier,” further undermining Microsoft’s denials. Microsoft also openly works with and recruits from the ranks of the Israeli military. In April 2024, for instance, it collaborated with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to host a group from its Combatants to Hi-Tech program for a TypeScript workshop and tour. And in 2022, again in collaboration with the IDF, it launched a free cybersecurity training program for Israeli military veterans. This cooperation continues, despite the fact that Unit 8200 has attacked Microsoft before, the organization reportedly producing malware that targeted Microsoft products, such as its Windows operating system, finding loopholes in security to neutralize control panels, delete hard drives, and shut down key systems, such as Iran’s energy grid.   Corporate Zionism: Roots in Israel’s War Economy The Azure/IDF partnership is the result of a decades-long relationship between Microsoft and the State of Israel, one which has helped both entities. Microsoft established its first branch in Israel in 1989, and two years later, opened a research and development center in the city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv. The first of its kind outside the United States, the center has continued to expand, and now directly employs an estimated 2,700 workers. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Microsoft began signing deals with Israeli firms and government agencies, and, by the 2010s, was an integral part of the Israeli security state. In 2017, it inked a lucrative contract with the Israeli Prison Service, providing cloud services to the entity responsible for jailing tens of thousands of Palestinians without trial. Today, it maintains over 600 active subscriptions with the Israeli military. The company has also moved to acquire at least 21 Israeli tech firms. Among these include cybersecurity group, Hexadite, purchased for $100 million in 2017, and Oribi, a web analytics business founded by a former Israeli intelligence agent. Microsoft founder Bill Gates meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Tel Aviv during a 2005 visit highlighting Microsoft’s growing role in Israel’s tech sector. Every CEO in Microsoft’s history has flown to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including Bill Gates, who, in 2016, stated that hi-tech Israeli security was “improving the world.” In short, Microsoft is a cornerstone of Israel’s burgeoning hi-tech sector, which accounts for 20% of the country’s GDP and more than half of its total exports. Netanyahu himself has showered praise on the corporation, describing the Microsoft/Israel partnership as “a marriage made in heaven.” Others have been less enthused by this union. In June, Iran deliberately targeted a Microsoft center in Be’ersheva, carrying out a missile strike against it. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard justified their actions, citing Microsoft’s “close cooperation with the Israeli army and its being part of the system supporting aggression, and not just a civilian entity. The cyber area that was attacked also includes the residences of people from the espionage and artificial intelligence fields, who operate in direct cooperation with the enemy army and its security apparatus, it concluded.   Cracking Down on Internal Resistance A greater threat than Iran to Microsoft, however, is its own employees, hundreds of whom have organized to oppose its role in the genocide. Under the banner of No Azure for Apartheid,  workers demand that: Microsoft terminates all Azure contracts with Israel; disclose all ties to the Israeli national security state; publicly call for a ceasefire, and stop persecuting employees who speak out about the genocide. This fourth demand is particularly salient, as the corporation has shown little to no tolerance for dissent. In October 2024, it fired two workers for organizing a vigil for Palestinian refugees at its corporate headquarters near Seattle. Months later, it sacked a worker who interrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote address at the company’s annual developer conference. Joe Lopez, a firmware engineer who worked on Azure, shouted down Nadella, yelling, “Satya, how about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians. How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure? As a Microsoft worker, I refuse to be complicit in this genocide!” Video of the incident went viral, causing a public relations nightmare for the company. NEW: Microsoft Engineer Disrupts Nadella Keynote Over Genocide Complicity Joe Lopez, a member of the No Azure for Apartheid campaign and a firmware engineer in Azure’s hardware division, interrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s Build conference keynote on Monday. In a letter published… https://t.co/Xa1MqMs2R0 pic.twitter.com/PhV7g1OYPO — Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 19, 2025 By this time, Microsoft realized that it had a serious employee revolt on its hands. Just days after the Lopez incident, the firm quietly implemented a policy blocking employee emails containing keywords such as “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “genocide,” on its internal exchange servers. The policy did little to dampen organizing efforts, and caused another round of embarrassing headlines, once it was leaked to the press. Amid building pressure, in September, Microsoft announced that it had withdrawn some of its services to the Israeli military, a decision which implies reports of its complicity in the violence were indeed accurate. “Of all of the worker campaigns, No Azure for Apartheid has been the most effective and well run. It has produced the most valuable information, and it is the first that has produced actual policy change and ramifications for the company involved,” Biggar told MintPress, adding: It is pretty clear that what Microsoft says about their policies, their human rights records and more is bullshit. So they are only going to respond to external embarrassment, and the No Azure for Apartheid people have really demonstrated how effective that can be.”   Targeting Enemies Company employees are far from the only target of Microsoft’s wrath, however. In May, Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced that Microsoft had locked him out of his official ICC email account, just as he was formalizing charges against Netanyahu and other top Israeli leaders. For many, the timing was not a coincidence, but rather a message. The British lawyer joined a vast plethora of Palestinians who have complained that Microsoft has terminated their accounts without warning. A BBC investigation found dozens of Palestinians who, after attempting to use Microsoft services to contact relatives in Gaza, were banned for life. “I’ve had this Hotmail account for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I violated their terms—what terms? Tell me,” one Palestinian-American user said. IBM’s brand has forever been tarnished by its collaboration with Nazi Germany, aiding Hitler’s slaughter of millions of people. In much the same way, No Azure for Apartheid believe that Microsoft’s name will forever be linked with the destruction in Gaza. Microsoft has enjoyed a decades-long partnership with Israel, which has seen them slowly integrate themselves into the state, becoming a fundamental part of the system of oppression. From servicing the Israeli war machine, to hiring hundreds of Israeli spies to run its affairs, to cracking down on internal and external dissent against it, Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians is aided by Microsoft, whose technological prowess has helped Israel carry out the world’s first A.I.-powered genocide. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post Hi-Tech Holocaust: How Microsoft Aids The Gaza Genocide appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, AI, Azure, Gaza, genocide, IDF, Israel, Microsoft, Palestine, Surveillance, UNIT 8200]

— Nobel “Peace” Prize of Shame & the UK/Israeli Crackdown, with Tadhg Hickey

 

at 10/22/25 11:56am

Given the long list of its genocidal recipients, the Nobel Peace Prize was already considered by many as a sham award. But new laureate Maria Corina Machado outdid her peers by immediately dedicating her prize to Donald Trump and endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his attack on Gaza and beyond. Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan far-right, has previously called for a U.S. invasion of her own country and written to Netanyahu, asking him to intervene militarily in Venezuela. While many were shocked, the news about Machado made Irish comedian Tadhg Hickey laugh. “I got a perverse pleasure out of it, he told Behind the Headlines host, Mnar Adley, today. “It is just the perfect piece of evidence that you would need for any young or older activist to illustrate to them that the world is now upside down.” Hickey explained: If this kind of person wins the Nobel Peace Prize, it is almost like the logical conclusion of neoliberalism. It is the final piece of the jigsaw to convince somebody that we are fighting for the world now. The people who rule the world are laughing at us. They’re making a laughingstock out of the idea of the Nobel Peace Prize.” Tadhg Hickey is a writer, comedian, and filmmaker whose short videos satirizing Israel and Western governments have gone viral worldwide. Today, the pair discussed the Nobel Prizes, the slavish devotion to money of U2’s Bono, and the authoritarian crackdown on dissent across the United Kingdom. “Bono is the most un-Irish person I can think of,” Hickey said, noting that the pop star had “sold his soul” to his own financial interests by selling out Palestine in the way he has. Hickey explained that most Irish people see great similarities between themselves and Palestine, stating: If you don’t see the Palestinian struggle in the Irish struggle – they are so comparable in so many ways. The exact same colonial playbook that was used to dehumanize Irish people and to destroy Irish culture and Irish way of life is being meted out against the Palestinians right now, except on a scale that even the Irish can’t identify with.” This solidarity is not fully extended to the Irish government, however, which has dragged its feet behind its citizens on this issue. Hickey explained that Ireland is “completely dependent” on the United States, to the point where it is almost a “vassal state” of Washington. “We’re so scared that if we piss off the U.S. and Donald Trump, then our economy will go to pieces overnight,” he said. The Irish government’s position on Israel/Palestine, however, appears almost impressive in comparison to that of their neighbors across the Irish Sea. Today, English police arrested British-Palestinian NHS doctor Rahmeh Aladwan for the crime of “incitement” against Israel, and “implied support” of resistance forces, after she gave a speech at a pro-Palestine demonstration in London. The arrest is the latest in literally thousands that have occurred across the country, as Keir Starmer’s government attempts to quash anti-Israel sentiment under the guise of fighting racism. The problem with Rahmeh for the U.K. government, Hickey told Adley, is that she is “unrepentant”: What the British establishment and the Israel Lobby wants is repentance. They want us to say sorry for making their Zionist feelings a bit hurty. They want us to say sorry for being pro-Palestine and anti-genocide.” Hickey advised that the last thing those in the pro-Palestine movement should do is try to make peace with Zionists, as that only leads to them further attacking you, citing the relentless hounding of former U.K. Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as an example. Don’t miss this lively discussion. It can be watched in full only at MintPress News. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Nobel Peace Prize of Shame the UK/Israeli Crackdown, with Tadhg Hickey appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Bono, Irish solidarity, Israel, Maria Corina Machado, Mnar Adley, Nobel Peace Prize, Palestine, pro-Palestine activism, Tadhg Hickey, UK crackdown]

— Aaron Maté: Gaza, Gas, and the Real Estate Empire Behind Trump’s Deal

 

at 10/15/25 2:53pm

As the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas comes into effect, two million Gazans are returning to what is left of their homes. Part of the deal includes a vast prisoner swap, that sees the remaining 20 Israelis captured on October 7, 2023, going back to their homeland, and almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners being released from Israeli jails. A further 10,000 remain behind bars, including top political prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti. Israel has also stated that it will not return the remains of hundreds of Palestinians it is holding, sparking intense speculation as to what those corpses would reveal. Joining the Behind the Headlines show & MintCast Podcast to discuss the ceasefire, and the increasingly pro-Israel tone of our corporate media, is Aaron Maté. Aaron is an award-winning journalist from Canada. He hosts the shows, Pushback with Aaron Maté, and the Useful Idiots Podcast. He has previously worked for Democracy Now!, The Real News Network, Al Jazeera and The Nation. His work can be found at The Grayzone and on Substack. Both politicians and corporate media across the West have hailed the return of the Israeli prisoners as a modern miracle, while downplaying or completely ignoring the Palestinians released. Both NBC News and CNN went out of their way to present many of the Israelis as blameless victims, going so far to tell readers that one Israeli released, Matan Angrest, was “kidnapped from his tank” on October 7. Unfortunately, this sort of one-sided reporting is likely to only intensify with the news that the family of Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest individual, has purchased CBS News. Ellison, as a MintPress News investigation revealed, is the IDF’s largest international benefactor, donating a massive $16.6 million in one evening in 2017 alone. Ellison, who made his fortune as founder of CIA-cutout organization, Oracle, is one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, even offering him a position on the tech company’s board, replete with a reported salary of $450,000 per year. Now, Ellison has appointed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss, a self-described “Zionist fanatic,” first came to prominence as a student, founding a pressure group that attempted to have Arab professors fired for their lack of support for the Israeli project. She then parlayed her activism into top positions in Israeli media, and since founded the Free Press, a hardline pro-Israel publication. According to The Financial Times, it was her positions on Israel that secured her the top job with CBS. Overseeing the ceasefire is Donald Trump, who flew to Israel to speak at the Knesset. There, he hailed Republican mega-donor Miriam Adelson, noting how forcefully she and her husband Sheldon influenced American politics in a pro-Israel direction, and revealing that Adelson favors Israel over the United States. Such an assertion, if made by a critic of the Apartheid State, would fall under official laws as anti-Semitic hate speech. Today on the show, Maté and Behind the Headlines host, Mnar Adley, broke down the ceasefire, what it means for the world, and discussed the state of the American media. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Aaron Maté: Gaza, Gas, and the Real Estate Empire Behind Trump’s Deal appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Aaron Mate, Bari Weiss, CBS News, ceasefire, Gaza, Israel, Larry Ellison, Media Bias, Mnar Adley, prisoner swap]

— Social Media Spies Exposed: Profiles Vanish After MintPress Report

 

at 10/10/25 1:12pm

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After 14 years, one of our main funding lines has been cut and MintPress News could be forced to shut down without your support. Help us keep independent, antiwar journalism alive. Support the MintPress Fundraiser Learn more: Why your help matters After being exposed as former national security state agents by MintPress, large numbers of officials working in the highest levels of top social media platforms have deleted their profiles or wiped the incriminating evidence from the internet. A series of MintPress News investigations uncovered a network of hundreds of former agents of the CIA, FBI, and other three-letter agencies, as well as high State Department and NATO officials working at social media giants, such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, and Twitter. These individuals are overwhelmingly concentrated in politically sensitive departments, such as trust and safety, security, and content moderation, meaning that these ex-spies and intelligence officials are helping to influence what billions of people around the world see, read and hear (and deciding who is promoted and who is suppressed). Once this information was made public by MintPress, it caused a stir, being picked up by larger outlets, going viral online, and even being used as evidence in a Congressional hearing.   Delete Your Account Many of the individuals profiled by MintPress have deleted the accounts and pages we used to expose their pasts. Others have simply removed the incriminating evidence from their biographies. A prime example of this is Aaron Berman. Berman is Content Policy Global Lead at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In his own words, this role makes him the head of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook,” determining “what is acceptable and what is not” for the platform’s 3.1 billion users. He appears in numerous official Meta videos as the face of its global content moderation policy. Aaron Berman is a CIA agent. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his post as senior analytic manager at the agency to become senior product policy manager for misinformation at Meta. A 15-year CIA veteran, Berman rose through the ranks of the agency to become one of its highest-ranking officials, being chosen to write the Presidential Daily Brief for both Obama and Trump. Since MintPress made this information public, Berman has deleted his LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. He has since created a more anonymous LinkedIn profile, which does not feature either a picture or his surname, although it does note that among his professional skills are fluency in the Arabic language – a fact that raises even more questions about his past in the Central Intelligence Agency. Berman is far from an isolated example of a former deep state official turned social media manager wiping this information from the net. Others who have deleted their accounts include: Dawn Burton, who, in 2019, left her position as senior innovation advisor to the director at the FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal, public policy, trust and safety at Twitter. Jeff Carlton, a 14-year Marine Corps commander and a longtime intelligence analyst with both the CIA and FBI, who, in May 2021, left the government to be parachuted into Twitter, as its senior program manager for trust and safety. Hayley Chang, the former deputy general counsel of the Department of Homeland and Security and a deputy assistant director of the FBI who left the bureau to become director and associate general counsel for Meta, working on cybersecurity and investigations. Joey Chan, who, in 2021, left his position as a commander in the U.S. Army to become trust and safety program manager at Meta. Ellen Nixon, a former FBI agent turned Facebook threat investigations manager. Cherrelle Y., another former FBI agent working as a policy domain specialist for Twitter.   CIA Go Away Individuals, of course, delete their personal accounts all the time for a wide range of reasons. It could, therefore, be argued that the large number of national security state officials removing their personal information from the internet is entirely innocent and unrelated to the increased public scrutiny they received. But with others, who have only removed information about their pasts in an attempt to hide their connections to the national security state, the case is undebatable. One example of this is Greg Andersen, who, until 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked on “psychological operations” and “soldier system lethality” for NATO. He left the military alliance to become a policy specialist at Twitter, before moving to TikTok in 2021, where he is currently a product policy manager. This alarming career path was first highlighted by MintPress’ Lowkey in a 2022 tweet. After the post went viral, Andersen removed the information about “psychological operations” from his profile. And once MintPress published our investigation, “The NATO to TikTok Pipeline: Why is TikTok Employing So Many National Security Agents?”, he deleted all mention of NATO. There is now a jarring, two-year employment gap on the Irishman’s resume between his employment with the Scouts and working for Twitter. Another example of the phenomenon of quietly deleting incriminating evidence is Bryan Weisbard. Weisbard’s public profiles were used as evidence in two MintPress News investigations: “National Security Search Engine: Google’s Ranks are Filled with CIA Agents,” and, “Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy.” His LinkedIn profile boasted that, between 2006 and 2010, he was a CIA intelligence officer, leading, “global teams to conduct counter-terrorism and digital cyber investigations,” and “Identif[ying] online social media misinformation propaganda and covert influence campaigns.” He then crossed the diaphanous line into the State Department, becoming a foreign service officer. In 2015, however, he was parachuted into Twitter, where he was appointed director of online safety operations, security analysis and investigations. Weisbard stayed at Twitter for four years, and later became trust and safety director for YouTube, leading global teams designing and enforcing the platform’s content moderation policies. Between 2021 and 2025, he was director of product management for Meta. After this was publicized, however, Weisbard wiped all mention of the CIA and State Department from his profile. It now simply reads that between 2006 and 2015, he was employed by the “United States Federal Government, as an “officer,” where he held several “senior leadership positions in the U.S. government intelligence community.”   Propaganda War What this story highlights is that social media is not a neutral global town square, but rather a battleground being silently fought over. Over the past decade, the U.S. national security state has infiltrated major social media platforms, in a successful attempt to manipulate the public debate and influence what the world sees and does not see. This influence operation dwarfs any schemes of which official enemy nations are accused. The U.S. has used this power to shut out opposing opinions from the global public sphere. Hundreds of thousands of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian accounts have been deleted from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. It has also attempted to use this power to attempt regime change. The YouTube account of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was deleted by Google, while Elon Musk’s Twitter de-recognized him as the rightful president. And just days before the 2021 election in Nicaragua, Facebook removed the pages of dozens of media outlets and activists supporting the left-wing Sandinista Party, in an attempt to swing the election towards the pro-American candidate. The Facebook team that carried out the operation was full of former U.S. spies. On the domestic front, alternative media that challenges both the power of the U.S. government and the status quo has also been targeted, being de-ranked, demoted, and in some cases, even deleted from social media. A 2017 study found that Google search traffic to Consortium News fell by 47% after its new algorithm took hold. Democracy Now! lost 36% of its traffic, the World Socialist Website, 67%. MintPress News was even harder hit, losing more than 90% of our Google search traffic, and over 99% on Facebook. Our account on Instagram has been suspended multiple times. Links to MintPressNews.com on Reddit are blocked, and TikTok permanently deleted our account. Social media’s credibility rests on the idea of it being a free and open source of information and communication. But with the forced sale of TikTok to U.S. defense contractor Oracle, and Twitter being owned by a one-time de facto member of Trump’s cabinet, this facade is cracking. Further undermining this fantasy are the MintPress investigations highlighting the hundreds of national security state agents pulling the strings at top Silicon Valley platforms. No wonder, then, that they are so quick to delete their profiles and hide the evidence. Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. The post Social Media Spies Exposed: Profiles Vanish After MintPress Report appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, Censorship, CIA, Deep State, Facebook, FBI, Google, MintPress News, Social Media, TikTok, Twitter]

— Lebanon Under Siege with Ghadi Francis: Inside Israel’s Plan to Disarm Hezbollah 

 

at 10/10/25 12:43pm

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[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, News, Top Story, Ghadi Francis, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanese Army, Lebanon, MintCast, Mnar Adley, Syria, U.S. foreign policy, Yemen]

— Gaza Surgeon: Starmer “Has Blood on His Hands”

 

at 10/7/25 9:01am

The Israeli genocide against Gaza continues. And even as they officially recognize the State of Palestine, many Western countries still support the slaughter. Chief among these is the United Kingdom. While Keir Starmer’s government announced it would now formally recognize Palestine, it continues to supply Israel with weapons and intelligence support. Joining us on the MintCast today for the second time is British-Iraqi surgeon, Dr. Mohammed Tahir. Dr. Tahir spent nearly seven months working at some of the busiest hospitals in Gaza, and did not hold back when asked about his opinion on Starmer and his actions: He has presided over the genocide, continued to arm Israel with weapons, provide it with spying information. Their spy jets fly back and forth from Cyprus and reveal information for the Israelis to carry out airstrikes and kill innocent people.” “People like Keir Starmer,” Tahir said, “have nowhere to run. Reality is facing them. They know that history will be written, and they will be included in the list of those who enabled genocide.” For Tahir, the United Kingdom’s decision to recognize Palestine amounts to little more than “lip service” and “deflection.” Starmer’s government currently sits at only an 11% approval rate. Some of that is down to its continued support for Israel, a country that ten times as many Britons (39% to 4%) view highly unfavorably as favorably. For Dr. Tahir, the reaction to the violence in West Asia needs to go far further than simple support for a Palestinian state. Talking with MintCast host, Mnar Adley today, he called for the entire ruling class of Israel to be “thrown in front of a judge at the International Criminal Court.” “They all need to be tried, locked up and have the key thrown away. If it were up to me, then we would bring back capital punishment for them. And the land should be handed back to the people of Palestine,” he added. Israel has blocked Dr. Tahir from returning to Gaza, so he now works for FAJR Global, a leading medical organization working to evacuate thousands of injured Palestinians and provide them with lifesaving surgeries and other medical help. While the United Kingdom’s actions have been contemptible, others in Europe have taken more principled positions. The government of Spain has described Israel’s onslaught as genocidal, announced an arms embargo on the country, and led attempts to ban Israel from international events. Italy, meanwhile, is in the midst of a general strike, with workers across the country downing tools in support of Palestine. This includes key dockworkers, who have refused to transport European weapons to Israel. For Tahir, the peoples of those nations are showing what is possible. “Spain and Italy are putting some of the Arab leaders to shame,” he said, referencing the collaboration between many Gulf monarchies and the Netanyahu administration. More than half a year working inside a killing field has taken its toll on Tahir. “You’re not the same person once you come out,” he told Adley today. “Life is not the same,” he said, stating that the trappings of life; houses, money, cars, and simple pleasures feel totally insignificant to him now. “What is important is fighting for justice. What is important is to defend the oppressed, to be their voice.” Don’t miss this opportunity to hear a firsthand account from Gaza. Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Gaza Surgeon: Starmer Has Blood on His Hands appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, FAJR Global, Gaza, genocide, Israel, keir starmer, MintCast, Mnar Adley, Mohammed Tahir, Palestine, United Kingdom]

— Garry Kasparov, From Chess Icon to State Dept Cheerleader

 

at 10/7/25 8:36am

After retiring from the world of chess, Garry Kasparov has found a new calling: promoting U.S. foreign policy goals. From his hawkish foreign policy positions, including supporting American invasions and the use of nuclear weapons against its enemies, his full-throated defense of Israeli genocide, and his bizarre belief that the Middle Ages never happened, MintPress examines the career arc of the former World Chess Champion turned U.S. State Department flatterer-in-chief.   Dubious Definitions of Democracy Garry Kasparov has become a star of the Western human rights industry. In addition to appearing regularly in print and on cable news, the former chess star is the founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), the vice president of the World Liberty Congress, and the former chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), three U.S.-based human rights organizations. Together, these groups claim to fight for a better world, free of authoritarianism and political prisoners. Closer inspection, however, reveals that they are deeply embedded with the State Department’s agenda. The RDI describes its mission as to “unmask and confront the alliance of dictators threatening freedom around the world.” “By doing so,” they state, “we inspire those in the United States and in other free countries to value and protect their own democracies.” Yet its board of directors reads more like a weapons corporation or a neoconservative think tank than a human rights group. Sitting alongside Kasparov are a host of American military leaders, including: General Mark Miley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and chief of staff of the Army; General Stanley A. McChrystal, former commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the leader of U.S. forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq; Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, ex-Commanding General of the U.S. Army Europe and NATO’s current Senior Mentor for Logistics; Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the one time Director of European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council. In addition to the military leaders, senior figures from the U.S. government are also present, including the RDI’s vice chair, Linda Chavez, who was the Director of Public Liaison under President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor. While the RDI couches itself in the language of democracy promotion, the countries they appear particularly focused on, such as China, Russia, Cuba, and Nicaragua, directly line up with U.S. strategic ambitions. In 2019, the RDI’s first conference, “Reawakening the Spirit of Democracy,” was headlined by neoconservative figures such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Dana White, Bret Stephens, Anne Applebaum, and Paul Wolfowitz. Kasparov speaks about Russian propaganda at the re:publica internet conference in Berlin, May 8, 2017. Britta Pedersen | AP Kasparov is also vice president of the World Liberty Congress, an organization that describes itself as “the world’s largest action-oriented movement of political activists” working together to take down authoritarian governments across the planet. Those governments specifically named include Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and China. The World Liberty Congress is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a front group set up by the CIA to carry out many of the organization’s most controversial projects. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” NED founding president Carl Gershman said, explaining its creation. A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” the organization’s co-founder, Allen Weinstein, told The Washington Post. Recent NED projects have included funding and training far-right Venezuelan forces attempting to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro, fomenting anti-government demonstrations in Iran, and channeling money to the leaders of the 2019 Hong Kong Protest movement. The World Liberty Congress’ executive council is a who’s who of these regime change projects. The organization’s general secretary, Leopoldo López, was a leader in an NED-sponsored coup in 2002 that briefly deposed President Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, from power. Twelve years later, he led a wave of political violence in Venezuela in 2014 killed at least 43 people and caused an estimated $15 billion worth of property damage. A major figure on the Venezuelan far-right, López told journalists that he wants the United States to formally govern his country after Maduro is overthrown. He was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He later escaped and fled to Spain. Joining López on the World Liberty Congress’ board is the organization’s president, Masih Alinejad. Alinejad is a presenter at Voice of America Persian News Network, a U.S. government-funded outlet described by the New York Times as “a worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA.” In 2022, Alinejad’s speculation about the death of Iranian activist Mahsa Amini helped spark nationwide protests in the country of her birth – protests that the U.S. government attempted to turn into a regime change effort. Data from the tracking website GovTribe reveals that Alinejad has received over $834,000 in federal contracts from the U.S. government. After an apparent attempt on her life, she lives in an FBI building in New York City. Also on the World Liberty Congress board is Joey Siu, one of the leaders of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. After failing to overthrow the government in her homeland, Siu fled to the United States, where she was given a job at the National Democratic Institute, a semi-governmental organization funded largely by the NED. She is also a Freedom Fellow at the Human Rights Foundation. Until last year, Kasparov was also the chairman of the HRF, a similar organization headquartered in New York’s Empire State Building and founded and headed by Venezuelan activist, Thor Halvorssen. Halvorssen – Leopoldo López’s cousin and close confident – is the son of a former Venezuelan government official widely accused of being a CIA informant and a gunrunner for the agency’s dirty wars in Central America in the 1980s. Like the other two “pro-democracy” organizations, the Human Rights Foundation extols the virtues of the American system, condemns official enemy nations such as Venezuela, Russia and China, and works closely with U.S.-backed celebrity activists, such as Yeonmi Park and Enes Kanter. Kasparov stood down as HRF chairman in 2024, and was replaced by Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of U.S.-supported Russian politician, Alexey Navalny.   The Gaza Litmus Test Together, these three organizations present themselves as moral leaders on the world stage, spearheading a crusade for freedom, justice and human rights everywhere. Their response to the Gaza crisis, however, has been notable. Leading organizations around the world, including the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have stated that Israeli actions unquestionably constitute a genocide. This conclusion is even shared by many inside Israel, including the country’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, and retired Israeli general and deputy head of the Mossad, Amiram Levin. As the most prominent human rights issue of our time–one where the case is so clear-cut–it is obvious what position a minimally credible institution must take. And yet, Israeli actions have been fully supported by the United States government, who see the region as crucial to their geopolitical goals. Gaza, therefore, becomes a useful litmus test to ascertain what organizations’ true priorities are. The entirety of the World Liberty Congress’ output on Israel/Palestine consists of a boilerplate, six-sentence statement vaguely calling for peace, released six months after the October 7 attack. The Human Rights Foundation, meanwhile, condemned Hamas’ actions, spread falsehoods about Hamas using civilians as human shields, and merely cautioned Israel to protect civilian lives while “pursuing legitimate Hamas targets.” In addition, it platformed Palestinian-American analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an employee of the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council, who MintPress News profiled in an article entitled “Meet The Palestinians Paid To Promote Israel’s Genocide.” The Renew Democracy Initiative, however, that has taken the most hardline stance of all, the organization offering nothing except full-throated support of Israel and denunciations of any group failing to sufficiently support their actions. The RDI demanded Hamas lay down their arms and surrender, claiming it was the Palestinian group itself that is the barrier to peace in the region. It also attacked pro-Palestine activists in the West, suggesting that the upsurge in negative sentiment towards Israel is largely the result of a foreign conspiracy to manipulate the public. As it noted: Mere hours after the attack, Russia, China, and Iran began planting the seeds for a coordinated disinformation campaign, setting up accounts across online networks to profess support for Hamas and deepen divisions in the democratic world. Meanwhile, rallies decrying Israel filled the streets of open societies before Israel even had a chance to muster a response.” Kasparov himself described Israel as a “frontline democracy” that isn’t “fighting only for themselves,” but to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of anti-democratic nations. Israel’s recent “achievements” in the Middle East, he noted, have been “impressive.” Unfortunately, he stated, victory could already have been secured if the forces for good had not had to “fight with one hand behind their back.” The 62-year-old grandmaster denounced the United Nations as a broken institution that has been hijacked by authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia and Iran, who have “fostered a purgatory of false equivalency” and turned the world against Israel. He also bitterly condemned the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring the move a “disgrace,” and “the last nail in the coffin of the international order.” “Politicizing and criminalizing self-defense against terrorism also discredits previous judgments against real war criminals like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” he explained.   Political Pretensions Kasparov was born in Soviet Azerbaijan in 1963. He came from a politically conservative family; his parents named him after U.S. president Harry Truman, impressed by his strong anti-communist stances, and his decision to invade Korea. American bombing of the peninsula killed an estimated ¼ of the North Korean population. (Kasparov, however, describes the U.S.’ actions as “saving millions of Koreans.”) As my namesake Harry Truman said while saving millions of Koreans, we fight small battles in order to prevent big ones. Cold War containment was based on this concept and, as dark as those times were, it worked. — Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 25, 2022 He has used his Soviet background to attack any actor proposing even the most modest of left-wing reforms in the United States, including Bernie Sanders. “Hey Bernie, don’t lecture me about socialism. I lived through it,” he wrote, as a rebuttal to the senator’s ideas about Medicare for all and taxing the rich. During the 1990s, Kasparov supported the rule of Boris Yeltsin, an autocrat who came to power thanks to a massive interference and disinformation campaign organized by the U.S. government. A vocal opponent of Putin, in 2005 Kasparov quit chess for politics, attempting to become president of Russia himself, leading the Other Russia coalition. Although given significant media coverage in the West, the movement failed to gain traction inside of Russia, partially because of the significant official pushback and repression they received.  His political opponents also point to the fact that he often communicate in English rather than Russian as an explanatory factor. Giving up on his domestic political ambitions, he moved to New York City in 2013. Almost immediately, he became a prominent figure on the media circuit. He very publicly chastised President Obama for “negotiating with a dictator” (Putin) during the 2014 Ukraine crisis, and was among the earliest proponents of the RussiaGate conspiracy. Even before the 2016 election, he was warning that the Kremlin would hack into American election systems in order to secure a Trump victory. “Putin has a unique opportunity that was never thought of by any KGB or Politburo boss before to influence the results of these elections. And I think that [he] will use every opportunity that is given to him from hacking,” he said, adding: “I’m afraid it’s just the beginning.” Kasparov has been one of President Trump’s loudest critics, regularly insinuating that Trump and Putin share a special bond. In 2018, when the pair decided to meet for showdown talks over Ukraine, Kasparov was disgusted. “Im ready to call this the darkest hour in the history of the American presidency. Let me know if you can think of any competition,” he stated on Twitter, leading to more than 2,800 comments suggesting other moments in U.S. history. In stark contrast to his position on Gaza, Kasparov was immediately ready to label the Russian invasion of Ukraine a genocide. “We are witnessing, literally watching live, Putin commit genocide on an industrial scale in Ukraine,” he wrote, barely a week after the invasion. He also called for an immediate NATO response, demanding that NATO bomb and sanction his homeland “back to the Stone Age.” “I hope [the] Americans will revise their strategy and will show their strength,” he said, castigating President Biden for his lack of spine. Kasparov predicted the destruction of the country he had attempted to lead only 14 years previously, stating, I dont think the war will go beyond next summer for a simple reason: Ukraine will win. And after this win, the Russian economy will collapse. I dont think the war will go beyond next summer for a simple reason: Ukraine will win. And after this win, the Russian economy will collapse. -Gary Kasparov, 11/15/22 pic.twitter.com/CDKRG1Sqde — Matt Orfalea (@0rf) February 20, 2024 But it is not just with Russia that Kasparov dreams of war. The chess star has also suggested that the West attack China. Last month, he published an op-ed in Politico, explaining that, “The age of the peace dividend is over. A new era must begin — an era in which Europe stands up for itself and its allies.” “There will be no peaceful coexistence with Putin’s Russia… such coexistence with Xi’s China is also impossible,” he pronounced, stating that Europe must “transform from a peace-loving commune” into a continent “capable of responding to threats of real violence, able to stand firm against those who wish its demise.”   Regime Change Operative Given his advocacy for a potential Third World War against Russia and China, it is perhaps unsurprising that Kasparov enthusiastically backed the U.S.’ invasion of Iraq. Indeed, supporting American wars has been one of the few constants in his tumultuous life. In 2002, he confidently predicted a swift and decisive victory in Iraq, and stated that it should be used as a stepping stone to invade a host of nations. “Offense comes first. Baghdad remains the next stop but not the last. We must also have plans for Tehran and Damascus, not to mention Riyadh,” he wrote in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Once Iraq is defeated, he predicted, “the pressure will be strong to then declare the war won and the offensive stage over. That would be disastrous.” Instead, he wished to pursue a global campaign of war to ensure U.S. hegemony – a position similar to the most hawkish faction of neoconservative thinkers in Washington, D.C. He also supported the first invasion of Iraq in 1991, calling for the United States to drop an atomic bomb on Baghdad. As for Iraq’s neighbor, Iran, Kasparov has supported regime change with actions and words. In 2021, he participated in the Free Iran Conference, where he claimed that the Iranian government “has no authority from the people. Instead, it fears its people, it oppresses and tortures them.” The Free Iran Conference is closely associated with the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) a radical group known to have carried out terrorist attacks inside Iran. Until 2012, the MEK was officially designated a terrorist group by the United States government, and is still considered as such in much of the world. Kasparov is also alleged to have participated in a recent attempted coup détat in South Sudan. The chess grandmaster is accused of having facilitated the sale and smuggling of millions of dollars of weapons, including rifles, grenade launchers and missile systems, to South Sudanese “peace activist” Peter Ajak. Ajak has a close relationship with Kasparov. He is a senior fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative, and sits on the leadership council of the World Liberty Congress. He is also the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. Despite these credentials, the U.S. Department of Justice has charged him with three counts relating to attempting gunrunning and attempting to topple the government of South Sudan. Kasparov is widely reported to have introduced Ajak to Wall Street executive Robert Granieri, who allegedly put up the money to finance the operation. Kasparov certainly has intimate ties to Granieri, who donated at least $1 million to the Renew Democracy Initiative. But both Granieri and Kasparov have vigorously denied any wrongdoing.   The Peter Thiel Connection Another American oligarch with a questionable moral record financing Kasparov’s career is Peter Thiel. Thiel’s corporation, Palantir, is aiding the Israeli military target Palestinians in Gaza, providing the brains for their hi-tech slaughter. Palantir software is also used by the FBI, ICE, and other U.S. enforcement agencies to undermine privacy and attack whistleblowers. Thiel has a direct line to the White House through Vice President J.D. Vance. He met Vance while the latter was still in college, offering him his first job, financing his venture capitalist firm, and bankrolling his run for the Senate. Thiel also funded Kasparov’s ambitions, donating more than half a million dollars to the HRF between 2007 and 2011. The pair enjoy a close personal friendship. Kasparov was the inaugural headline speaker at Palantir Night Live, a series of events dedicated to exploring cutting edge issues in the world of technology. In 2012, they appeared at the Oxford Union together as debate partners, and wrote an op-ed in The Financial Times about the need to step up the pace of technological development. Four years later, they would again come together, this time at the conservative think tank, the Hudson Institute, for an event promoting Kasparov’s book, “Winter is Coming: Why Putin and Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped.” For more on the German-born tech billionaire, read the MintPress investigation, “Peter Thiel: From Gaza AI War Criminal To White House Puppet Master.”   Conspiracy Theorist Kasparov is often presented as a disinformation expert. From the pages of The New York Times, he decried the “onslaught of misinformation” Americans are exposed to. In the Soviet Union, it was the government spreading lies, he states, but, thanks to the power of the internet anyone can “become a propaganda minister from the comfort of home.” Hostile foreign state actors, like his native Russia, he adds, are fomenting political tribalism and conspiracy theories across the West. Yet despite this self-appointed position, Kasparov has been prone to promoting a number of conspiracy theories himself. In 2017, for example, he suggested that the St. Petersburg Metro bombing was a false flag attack by the Russian government, “perfectly timed to serve Putin’s political agenda.” Tragedy in St. Petersburg. Once again unknown terrorists perfectly timed to serve Putins political agenda. Forget protests, back to fear. — Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) April 3, 2017 Surely the most bizarre conspiracy theory he subscribes to, though, is that of the New Chronology. Believers in the New Chronology attest that the Middle Ages are a conspiracy and did not happen, that Jesus lived in the 12th century, that the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome ended only a few hundred years ago, and that Western nations have conspired to hide the true history of the world, one that is actually centered around a powerful global empire called the Russian Horde. A highly obscure idea, the New Chronology is known largely only because Kasparov has spent decades promoting it to his bemused fans. The chess grandmaster first encountered the idea in the 1990s. As he wrote: I came across several books written by two mathematicians from Moscow State University… Using modern mathematical and statistical methods, as well as precise astronomical computations, they discovered that ancient history was artificially extended by more than 1 000 years. For reasons beyond my understanding, historians are still ignoring their work.” His attempts to popularize the theory met with near-universal negative pushback. Yet, given ample opportunity to distance himself from the pseudoscience, he has refused to do so. When directly asked in a 2021 Reddit “Ask Me Anything” if he still believes in the New Chronology, he replied: I believe in questioning everything and in evidence, and agreed with some of the New Chronology’s critiques of how thin the evidence is in some areas of the standard chronology of ancient civilizations and the Middle Ages, which are often based on a singular disputed account or object.” “History belongs to the present, so we must question,” he concluded. It is these sorts of bizarre beliefs that have earned him comparisons to another controversial chess grandmaster: Bobby Fischer. After his famous 1972 World Chess Championship win, Fischer experienced significant mental decline, becoming a recluse and developing paranoid tendencies. After reading the book, “The Secret World Government,” he began to believe that every mishap that befell him was the result of an international Jewish conspiracy, despite being Jewish himself. Fischer’s increasingly anti-Semitic views and outbursts eventually led to him becoming an outcast. He died alone in Iceland in 2008. Kasparov’s beliefs are arguably no less bizarre. Yet his political positions align with the U.S. government. Therefore, far from being shunned by polite society, Kasparov has been welcomed into the halls of power. Even as commentators describe him as “clearly deranged,” and having descended into becoming nothing more than a “liberal shitposter for the U.S. empire,” he is treated as an expert, and invited onto cable news and to elite gatherings such as Bilderberg and the Munich Security Conference to share his opinions about Russia, China, war and peace. Ultimately, then, Kasparov is a man of contrasts: a humanitarian supporting the Gaza genocide; a democracy activist who advocates for regime change; a Russian politician who calls for his own country to be attacked; and a chess genius who appears to believe that the Middle Ages were faked. His career arc has seen him move from World Chess Champion to a key member of the think tank industrial complex – an impressive and fascinating journey, whether one sees him as an inspirational voice for democracy, or as Washington’s favorite crackpot. Feature photo | Garry Kasparov attends the 59th Munich Security Conference in Germany on Feb. 18, 2023. Alexi Witwicki | AP Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post Garry Kasparov, From Chess Icon to State Dept Cheerleader appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Investigations, National, Top Story, Garry Kasparov, Gaza, Human Rights Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy, neoconservatism, Palantir, Peter Thiel, Regime Change, Renew Democracy Initiative, World Liberty Congress]

— From WMDs to “Narco-States”: How the US Sells Wars the Intelligence Doesn’t Support

 

at 9/18/25 10:14am

The United States is building up its military assets, sparking fears of another regime change attempt against Venezuela—and this one could be far more deadly than the others. Citing an influx of Venezuelan drugs into the U.S., the Trump administration is rapidly building up its military forces, encircling the South American nation, one which has been in Washington’s crosshairs for over a quarter of a century. MintPress News explores Trump’s extraordinary claims and assesses the history of U.S. efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government.   Military Buildup The Trump administration is once again setting its sights on Venezuela. In recent weeks, President Trump deployed additional naval and air assets to the Caribbean, including seven warships, a submarine, and an amphibious assault ship, designed for maritime invasions. A squadron of advanced F-35 fighter jets has also been relocated to Puerto Rico, bringing them within striking distance of Caracas. In total, around 4,500 personnel (including 2,500 combat-ready Marines) have been repositioned to the area. In what could be the opening salvo of a major war, the military has already begun to flex its muscles. Earlier this month, it destroyed a small Venezuelan vessel, carrying out multiple attacks on the boat to ensure there were no survivors. Trump celebrated the action in a post on Truth Social, claiming that the boat was carrying illicit drugs to the United States, and that its crew were member of the Tren de Aragua cartel (TDA), a group, he said, is “operating under the control of [Venezuelan president] Nicolás Maduro” himself; one that is “responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States.” Donald Trump Truth Social Post 05:22 PM EST 09/02/25 Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist… pic.twitter.com/1I5vBpSowG — Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) September 3, 2025 The provocations increased last week, as the Navy entered Venezuelan waters, raiding a Venezuelan fishing boat and detaining its crew. And on Tuesday, the U.S. carried out a strike on another small vessel, killing at least three people. Trump justified the attack, claiming that after the attack, “big bags of cocaine and fentanyl” were “spattered all over the ocean.” Tren de Aragua has become something of an obsession for the Trump administration. On his first day in office in January, Trump designated the Venezuelan gang a “foreign terrorist organization,” claiming that they have sown “violence and terror” throughout the Western hemisphere, and “flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.” In March, he invoked the 1789 Alien Enemies Act to declare that the United States had been “invaded” by Tren de Aragua. And in August, he put a $50 million bounty on the head of President Maduro, claiming that he directed both Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles (the Cartel of the Suns). This, the announcement stated, made Maduro “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world.” While this is officially a counter-narcotics operation, few in Washington bother to hide their true intentions. “Dear Foreign Terrorist Leader Maduro, Your days are seriously numbered,” Former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn stated publicly, advising Maduro to “take a vacation with your Syrian buddy Assad and get a one-way ticket to Moscow.”   Claims vs Evidence The Trump administration’s extraordinary claims about Maduro and Venezuela have convinced few experts. Professor Julia Buxton of Liverpool John Moores University, a specialist in both global drug policy and Venezuelan politics, told MintPress: The claim that Venezuela is a major drugs producer has been an ongoing theme of the U.S. campaign against Venezuela dating back to the early 2000s. This kind of anti-drug messaging is really common in U.S. foreign policy and strategy for at least 100 years. What we have got here is essentially just recycled Ronald Reagan [talking points] … It is unsubstantiated and absurd, and it is really not backed by any official data.” The data does indeed jar wildly with the administration’s accusations. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2025 explains that cocaine—the drug most associated with South America—is primarily produced in Colombia, Peru, or Bolivia, and transported via ports in Ecuador to the United States. Venezuela is not mentioned at all in the 98-page document, which catalogs producers, consumers, suppliers, and supply lines of drugs. The vast majority of lethal drugs produced in South America travel via the Pacific coastline from Ecuador. In terms of supply routes, a small amount of Colombian cocaine is trafficked through the country’s long and porous rainforest border with Venezuela, and then transported via the Caribbean. But this is minuscule in comparison to that transported via Pacific ships, over the land route through Central America and Mexico, or simply flown directly to the U.S. from the cocaine producing states. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s own 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment report essentially agrees with the U.N. Indeed, the 90-page document touches on Venezuela in only two paragraphs on a single page—a clear indicator of the threat posed by the Caribbean nation to the U.S. The section addresses Tren de Aragua’s criminal activities, but does not attempt to link them to the Venezuelan government. In fact, a declassified U.S. National Intelligence Council report from April 2025 concedes that: The Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States. The IC [intelligence community] bases this judgment on Venezuelan law enforcement actions demonstrating the regime treats TDA as a threat.” It goes on to note that Venezuelan intelligence, military, and police services have been “engaged in armed confrontations” with Tren de Aragua, and that it “has not observed the regime directing TDA, including to push migrants to the United States, which probably would require extensive [REDACTED] coordination.” “FBI analysts agree with the above assessment,” the document concludes. The National Intelligence Council, an official government body, serves to deliver data gathered by intelligence services to lawmakers and the private sector. Moreover, both Tren de Aragua’s size and scope have been vastly overstated by Trump and the media. The gang was born in a Venezuelan prison and is known to carry out smuggling and run extortion rackets. However, it was never on the scale of other criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel or MS-13. Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan investigative journalist (and fierce critic of Maduro) who wrote the first book on the cartel, estimated its peak size at just 3,000 members. “It’s not a group that has the capacity to be an enemy, not just of the United States, but of any country,” she said. Colombian anti-extortion police present three captured Tren de Aragua members at a press conference in Bogota on Oct. 16, 2024. Sebastian Barros | AP Buxton agreed, characterizing the group as “small, minor, and urban” and thriving in the disorder of Venezuela’s sanctions-hit economic malaise. “Tren de Aragua is a very nasty organization,” she said, but added that, The notion that the Tren de Aragua has a hemispheric reach, capacity, penetration, and presence in the United States is something of a myth. The U.S. really is facing far more significant challenges from transnationally organized gangs than anything presented from Venezuela.” Furthermore, for the best part of a decade, the Maduro administration has been suppressing Tren de Aragua, leading to the gang’s destruction inside Venezuela, forcing remaining members to leave the country. Its founder and leader, Niño Guerrero, is widely suspected to reside in Chile. And although some groups continue to use the Tren de Aragua moniker outside of Venezuela, it is far from clear the extent of the connections they have to both the original organization and to one another. While Tren de Aragua might be far less powerful than it is often depicted, it at least exists, something which cannot be said for the Cartel of the Suns, the drug-running syndicate supposedly headed by Maduro himself. Experts largely agree that the group is fictional. “The idea of the Cartel de los Soles is nonsense,” Buxton said, adding that, The notion that somehow the Maduro government and the military are surviving on cocaine revenues is nonsense, because the value of cocaine is really low in Latin America. It is only when it has gone through the supply routes and the value added of cross border movements that cocaine becomes of any value.” Buxton’s latest book, “What Is Drug Policy For?,” is published later this month. President Trump’s claim that the Venezuelan boats his administration targeted were packed with fentanyl is also inconsistent with DEA reporting, which does not list Venezuela as a producer or principal vector for fentanyl. In fact, neither the DEA’s “Fentanyl Flow to the United States,” intelligence report, nor the recent Congressional investigation into fentanyl trafficking mentions Venezuela at all.   The US and Drugs: a Dirty History The illicit drug market in the U.S. is worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The U.S. is the largest consumer of illegal drugs, as well as a major supplier of the chemicals and fertilizers needed to produce them in the first place. In a recent interview, President Maduro claimed that most of the profits from the trade stay in the U.S. “Eighty-five percent of the billions from international drug trafficking each year are in banks in the United States. That is where the cartel is; let them investigate and uncover it,” he said, adding: There is $500 billion in the U.S. banking system, in reputable banks. If they want to investigate a cartel, let them investigate the one up north. It is from the United States that all drug trafficking is directed towards South America and the rest of the world. They also control the opium trade, and more. It is in the United States where the mafias are, where the real cartels operate.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded during a visit to Ecuador, telling reporters, “I don’t care what the U.N. says. The U.N. doesn’t know what they are talking about.” In his explanation, he implied that local U.S. laws supersede international law, stating that: Maduro has been indicted by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York. That means that the Southern District of New York presented the evidence to a grand jury, and a grand jury indicted him … Let there be no doubt, Nicolás Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, and he is a fugitive of American justice.” Rubio’s comments were particularly noteworthy, as he made them while in Ecuador, where he was meeting with President Daniel Noboa. As previously noted, the vast majority of South American drugs enter the U.S. via ships from Ecuador. Even more pertinent is that Noboa himself is directly implicated in the process. The son of the country’s wealthiest billionaire, the young Noboa built his political career on the largesse of his family’s gigantic banana-exporting business. A recent investigation from Colombian magazine, Revista Raya, found that Noboa banana boats were being used to transport vast quantities of cocaine around the world. At just one port in Ecuador, police seized 700 kilograms of cocaine from Noboa family ships. Yet, unlike Maduro, Noboa is a key U.S. ally and has ensured, when governing, to prioritize Washington’s interests above all. These connections are unlikely to trouble Rubio, whose own family is deeply intertwined with the world of drug smuggling. Rubio’s brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, is a former drug runner who served 12 years in a Florida prison for crimes related to the smuggling and distribution of cocaine. Rubio maintains a close relationship with Cicilia; after the latter’s release from prison, he used his political position to pressure a Florida regulator to grant him a real estate license. Across much of Latin America, the Secretary of State has long been known by critics as “Narco Rubio.” The history of drugs and U.S. regime change operations is well documented, with Washington using the illicit drug trade to topple governments it does not approve of, and turning a blind eye to the actions of those under its control. In 2014, Juan Orlando Hernández came to power in Honduras following a U.S.-backed coup that removed the democratically elected leftist president, Manuel Zelaya, from power. Hernández quickly began using his position to enrich himself, allying with the infamous Sinaloa Cartel. Last year, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for distributing more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. Throughout his crimes, the U.S. government supported his administration, working to ensure the left did not return to power. Going further back, the Reagan administration funded, trained and armed the Contra death squads in Nicaragua, in an attempt to overthrow the leftist Sandinista Party. Allegations reported by journalists and later examined in official inquiries linked Contra-related networks to cocaine flows into the United States during the 1980s, contributing to the crack epidemic. The Contras used this money to terrorize the country, and eventually ousted the Sandinistas in 1990. At the same time as it was supporting the Contras, the U.S. was arming and training the mujahideen to overthrow the left-wing, Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. In order to help fund its $2 billion program, the CIA encouraged its allies to grow and traffic opium, leading to a massive spike in consumption around the world. Professor Alfred McCoy, author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” explained to MintPress the staggering transformation the country went through: Afghanistan had about 100 tons of opium produced every year in the 1970s. By 1989-1990, at the end of that 10-year CIA operation, that minimal amount of opium–100 tons per annum–had turned into a major amount, 2,000 tons a year, and was already about 75% of the world’s illicit opium trade.” Thus, across the world, a template emerges; the United States frequently uses drugs and its supposed war against them as a way of supporting its allies and ousting anti-imperial governments. Rarely does failure to cooperate with U.S. authorities lead to increased levels of drug production. Indeed, the three governments in the region—Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua—which the first Trump administration labeled a “troika of tyranny” (a deliberate allusion to Bush’s “Axis of Evil” designation) are notable as islands of sobriety in a region notorious for its drug production. Additionally, in 2008, Bolivia, then led by socialist president Evo Morales, expelled the DEA from the country, leading to a significant drop in the production of cocaine. “U.S. allegations are not only laughable but look like projection,” said Joe Emersberger, co-author of “Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela,” adding: “The CIA fuelled the drug trade in the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s to fund the Contras, who were U.S.-backed terrorists it used to attack Nicaragua. And in Afghanistan, under direct U.S. military occupation, opium production exploded after having been eradicated by the Taliban.” Emesberger was highly skeptical of the U.S.’s stated intentions against Venezuela, telling MintPress that: Quite simply, step one for Maduro’s government to become a player in the illegal drug trade would be to sell out to Washington. Marco Rubio just travelled to Ecuador, which has become a playground for drug lords, and where President Noboa’s family has been shown to be linked to the drug trade, in order to repeat his allegations against Maduro.”   Venezuela in the Crosshairs The U.S.’s intentions for Venezuela appear even more dubious, given its quarter-century-long history of regime change attempts against the government. The election of socialist, anti-imperialist president Hugo Chávez in 1998 immediately put Venezuela on Washington’s radar, and the United States soon began preparing for a coup d’état attempt against him. Right-wing leaders were flown back and forth from Caracas to Washington, D.C. for meetings with top American officials. The U.S., through the NED and USAID, began funding anti-Chávez forces who would spearhead an April 2002 coup. On the day of the putsch, U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro was present at the coup headquarters in Caracas, and an American warship entered Venezuelan waters. The Bush administration immediately recognized the right-wing government, only for it to fall to a counter-insurrection two days later. Undeterred, the U.S. ramped up its financial support to the Venezuelan opposition. In December 2002, it backed an opposition attempt to shut down the country’s oil industry, hoping that the government would fall. It has consistently rejected the validity of Venezuelan elections, even when all relevant bodies (often including the local opposition itself) accepted the results. In 2013, for example, it refused to recognize the electoral contest that brought Nicolás Maduro to power—the only country in the world to do so. These rejections of the popular vote set the stage for violent actions from U.S.-backed organizations. In 2014, for example, far-right groups carried out waves of attacks against food stores, hospitals, ambulances, kindergartens, and the Caracas Metro system, killing 43 people and causing an estimated $15 billion worth of property damage. They also shut down major highways with barricades, attacking anyone who attempted to pass through. The U.S. government strongly supported the events. Then-Vice-President Joe Biden described those involved as “peaceful protestors” who were being “demonized” by the Maduro “regime”—one that was trying to “distract” Venezuelans from internal issues by “concocting totally false and outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States.” When these actions did not produce the desired outcome, the United States turned to a new tactic: economic warfare. In 2015, President Obama declared an official State of National Emergency due to the “extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.” This was a legal necessity for his administration to impose a wide range of unilateral coercive measures. U.S. sanctions, the State Department freely admits, are designed to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Studies and U.N. rapporteurs describe the sanctions’ effects as severe, citing shortages and economic collapse. Without spare parts and supplies, the country’s oil industry collapsed, resulting in a 99% decline in foreign revenues. Shortages of food, medicines, and other critical commodities became widespread. A report released by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimated that the sanctions caused the deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelans in a 12-month period between 2017 and 2018. Millions of Venezuelans simply left the country. The United Nations formally condemned the sanctions, urged all member states to break them, and even discussed reparations the U.S. should pay to Venezuela. One (American) U.N. rapporteur visited the country and compared the U.S.’s actions to a “medieval siege” and called for Washington to be investigated for possible “crimes against humanity.” Outside of small independent media websites, this was not reported anywhere in the American press. Once in office, Trump ramped up the economic warfare, sensing his chance to, in his own words, “take all that oil.” Trump, according to those in the White House at the time, was fixated on an all-out invasion, declaring that it would be “cool” to do so, as Venezuela is “really part of the United States.” Some, such as National Security Advisor John Bolton, were in favor of the plan, but more “moderate” voices won the day, arguing that merely organizing waves of terrorist attacks inside the country would bring Venezuela back into American hands. Carlos Latuff | MintPress News In 2018, Maduro narrowly survived an assassination attempt. The Venezuelan president accused the United States of being behind the plot. Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” strongly insinuates that Maduro had reason to suspect the White House was indeed involved. Throughout the period, the Trump administration instructed the Venezuelan opposition to boycott elections, preferring to attempt to unseat Maduro through force. In 2019, it supported a bizarre attempt by Juan Guaidó, a relatively unknown leader of a smaller, far-right party, to declare himself the true president of Venezuela on a technicality. Trump immediately recognized Guaidó and pressured dozens of Western countries to do the same. Members of Trump’s inner team piled the pressure on Maduro. Bolton allowed himself to be seen with a notepad reading “5000 troops to Colombia,” while Marco Rubio tweeted images of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s mutilated corpse to Maduro, a clear threat of what the U.S. had planned for him. Three times throughout 2019, U.S. officials released statements telling Venezuelans that today was the day they would win their liberty, urging them to get out on the streets, and instructing Venezuelan military officers to rebel and march on the presidential palace. Venezuelans, however, rejected these calls, and Guaidó was unable to go anywhere inside the country without being accosted, jeered, and attacked. Fewer than 0.1% of the armed forces defected, leading to the movement’s collapse. Unable to spark a popular revolt or a military rebellion, Washington resorted to a more direct approach. In May 2020, an amphibious mercenary invasion force, led by ex-U.S. Green Berets, attempted to shoot their way to the presidential palace and install Guaidó as dictator. The operation—planned in the U.S. and greenlit by the White House after meetings at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., and the Trump Doral Resort in Florida—ended in complete failure, with the ringleaders surrendering upon encountering the first signs of resistance. Critics dubbed the failed operation Trump’s “Bay of Piglets.” Eventually, the U.S. gave up on Guaidó, withdrawing its recognition of him in 2023. Today, he resides in Miami, where he has been appointed to a role at Florida Atlantic University. A few months after the 2020 maritime incursion, Matthew Heath, a former Marine Corps veteran, CIA operative, and counter-narcotics official for the State Department in Afghanistan, was arrested outside Venezuela’s largest oil refinery, carrying a submachine gun, a grenade launcher, four blocks of C4 explosives, a satellite phone, and stacks of U.S. dollars. Authorities accused him of planning to sabotage the country’s petroleum industry. In recent years, the U.S. turned to other extralegal methods to destabilize Venezuela. It seized Iranian tankers traveling to Venezuela, attempting to break the U.S.-imposed blockade. It expropriated the Venezuelan state-owned CITGO chain of gas stations across the U.S. It impounded a Venezuelan government plane after it landed in the Dominican Republic. It arrested Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, while he was flying back from an official meeting in Iran, boarding his aircraft after it stopped off in Cabo Verde. Saab was held for over three years in American prisons. Today, he is Venezuela’s Minister of Industry and National Production. The U.S. government also leaned heavily on the United Kingdom, which confiscated $2 billion worth of Venezuelan gold reserves in the Bank of England. Summing up America’s actions in Venezuela, Emersberger stated: Since 2001, when the U.S. decided Chávez could not be bought, it has sought to overthrow him or, by imposing hardships through economic warfare, to at least make sure Venezuela’s socialist government could never be seen as a model for others in the region. U.S. impunity gives it all the time in the world to pursue both those objectives at once. And U.S. impunity stems from the lack of any significant organized political opposition at home.” Despite all this, however, Maduro has managed to survive. Last year, he won re-election, beating American-backed candidate Edmundo Gonzalez by seven points. The U.S. refused to recognize the results. The government’s continued support is based in part on what it has been able to achieve for its people. Hugo Chávez, in power from 1999 until 2013, renationalized the country’s oil industry and used the proceeds to fund massive social welfare programs, including free healthcare, education, and subsidized transportation. Under his rule, poverty and extreme poverty were reduced by half and three-quarters, respectively. Illiteracy was eradicated, and the student population grew to become the fourth largest in the world. Previously marginalized groups also saw a marked rise in political participation. Chávez promoted the vision of an anti-imperialist, independent future for Global South nations, spearheading initiatives aimed at Latin American unity. He used the country’s oil wealth to fund medical surgeries for people across the region, and even to heat the homes of hundreds of thousands of underprivileged or marginalized families in the United States. On the issue of Palestine, he was particularly vocal, declaring Israel to be a “terrorist state,” and breaking ties with the nation over its 2008-2009 attack on Gaza. Today, Palestinian murals can be seen all over Caracas, and solidarity with the oppressed is a key facet of the government’s ideology. As Nicolas Maduro cast his vote in the 2024 election, he announced, “Long live a free Palestine!” Maduro has undoubtedly presided over extremely tough times in Venezuela, in no small part due to U.S. actions against his country. Yet even as the economy cratered, a significant section of the public continued to support the socialist project. Today, Venezuela appears to have weathered the worst of the storm. Stores are full again, and the country now produces a large percentage of the food it eats. Maduro’s signature social housing policy, Misión Gran Vivienda Venezuela, has delivered more than 5.2 million homes to citizens, greatly improving the country’s problem with slum housing. Another factor that kept Maduro in power is the military. The large majority of the Army has stayed loyal and rejected calls for a coup d’état. Venezuela counts hundreds of thousands of men in uniform, as well as millions more in armed left-wing militias. Facing the threat of an American attack, the government has deployed 4.5 million people to defensive positions, making an imminent U.S. invasion less likely. The 1,200 missiles the U.S. task force has on hand, however, could easily destroy much of the country. Moreover, the Trump administration has clearly made Venezuela a top priority. And the news that the U.S. is planning to withdraw its forces from Asia to prioritize control over the homeland and its Latin American “backyard” makes some sort of action against Maduro and Venezuela all the more possible. The military buildup along Venezuela’s coastline, the increased reward for the arrest of Maduro, and the claim that he is a major drug kingpin all serve as ominous harbingers of coming conflict. The accusations about Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles may be fictional, but so were the lies about weapons of mass destruction. And with the U.S. eager to find any casus belli, they may serve as the justification for an Iraq War 2.0. Feature photo | Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch speaks during Homeland Security Investigation announcement of the arrest of alleged Tren De Aragua gang members and seizure of 33 guns at New York office on April 22, 2025. Lev Radin | AP Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. /* Scoped to this CTA only */ .mpn-cta{border:2px solid #cc0000;background:#fff5f5;border-radius:10px; padding:20px;margin:22px 0;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif} .mpn-cta__inner{max-width:720px;margin:0 auto;text-align:center} .mpn-cta__title{color:#cc0000;font-weight:800;font-size:22px;line-height:1.2;margin:2px 0 10px} .mpn-cta__text{color:#222;font-size:16px;line-height:1.55;margin:0 0 18px} .mpn-cta__btn{display:inline-block;background:#b80000;color:#fff;text-decoration:none; font-weight:800;font-size:16px;letter-spacing:.2px;padding:14px 28px;border-radius:9999px; box-shadow:0 6px 18px rgba(204,0,0,.18);transition:transform .06s ease, box-shadow .2s ease, background .2s ease} .mpn-cta__btn:hover,.mpn-cta__btn:focus{background:#990000;transform:translateY(-1px); box-shadow:0 10px 24px rgba(153,0,0,.22)} .mpn-cta__meta{font-size:13px;color:#555;margin-top:14px} .mpn-cta__link{color:#cc0000;font-weight:700;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid rgba(204,0,0,.25)} .mpn-cta__link:hover{border-bottom-color:#cc0000} @media (max-width:480px){ .mpn-cta{padding:16px} .mpn-cta__title{font-size:20px} .mpn-cta__text{font-size:15px} .mpn-cta__btn{width:100%;padding:14px 18px} } Truth Under Siege: MintPress News Needs You This is an urgent call to action. After 14 years, one of our main funding lines has been cut and MintPress News could be forced to shut down without your support. Help us keep independent, antiwar journalism alive. Support the MintPress Fundraiser Learn more: Why your help matters The post From WMDs to Narco-States: How the US Sells Wars the Intelligence Doesn’t Support appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, Cartel de los Soles, CIA drug trade, Marco Rubio, Nicolas Maduro, Regime Change, Tren de Aragua, Trump Administration, U.S. foreign policy, U.S. sanctions, Venezuela]

— Infiltration: A Cardinal Function of the Zionist Movement

 

at 9/16/25 8:13am

What is the function of the Zionist movement? Let’s start with four statements that together define what the Zionist movement does by adding its functions cumulatively. The Zionist movement creates and sustains the “Israel lobby” to extend its ideological and political reach, shaping both foreign and domestic policy in the countries where it operates. It provides material support for ethnic cleansing and genocide, funneling millions each year through charities that aid in land theft and war crimes. It grooms children and youth into ideological loyalists through a vast network of schools, synagogues, youth groups and settler recruitment programs, including Birthright tours, the Masa journey and the Lone Soldier Program. Beyond all this, the movement systematically dispatches its adherents into broader society as lifelong agents of Zionist ideology. This is not a metaphor. It is infiltration. This concept of infiltration extends beyond the traditional intelligence model of recruiting agents for covert missions—though that, too, remains part of it. It also involves utilizing individuals who are, in a sense, sleeper agents, ready to be activated. But it is more than that in the sense that, in many cases, the sleepers don’t need an actual tap on the shoulder to partake in a particular mission. They are already primed to act when the interests of the so-called Jewish state are threatened, or even merely imagined to be. They are primed by their often decades-long experience of radicalization and grooming to become believing ideological Zionists. In other words, this is a multifaceted and profound level of infiltration cultivated from childhood and reinforced throughout every stage of life. To understand how such a system came into being, we must examine the origins and evolution of the Zionist movement itself.   The Zionist movement Even the most hardline Zionists and the most revolutionary socialists agree on one point: before 1948, the Zionist movement functioned as a coordinated political force. It organized and executed the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of Palestinians—in order to establish what it called the state of Israel. Zionists, of course, reject this terminology, but the historical record is clear. With its primary objective achieved in 1948, the movement briefly considered dissolving. However, at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem in 1951, delegates chose to continue and redefine new goals for the future. This led to the creation of the “Jerusalem Program,” which formally codified the movement’s new objectives. Alongside it, the Israeli parliament enacted the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency (Status) Law to govern the relationship between the “state of Israel” and the Zionist movement. That law remains in effect today, shaping the global Zionist movement’s operations and responsibilities.   1951 Congress At the World Zionist Congress held in Jerusalem on Sept. 24, 1951, the movement faced a crossroads. With the founding of the state of Israel three years earlier, delegates debated whether the Zionist movement had fulfilled its purpose and should dissolve or reconstitute itself with new goals. In practice, by a vote of 286 to 0, with the remaining 438 delegates abstaining, the Congress resolved to continue its proceedings. David Ben Gurion speaks at the 1951 World Zionist Congress, 13 August 1951. Source | Wikimedia Commons It adopted a new set of objectives to reorient the movement. These were defined as: the strengthening of the state of Israel, the ingathering of the exiles in Eretz Yisrael, and the fostering of the unity of the Jewish people. This moment marked the transformation of Zionism from a settler-colonial movement into a global ideological infrastructure. It was no longer just about building a state; it was about embedding that state into the hearts, minds, and institutions of Jews worldwide.   The status of the Zionist movement The law passed by the Knesset to formalize the relationship between the Zionist movement and the state of Israel spelled out the obligations of both parties. It designated the World Zionist Organization as the authorized body responsible for developing and settling the land, absorbing immigrants from the diaspora, and coordinating the work of Jewish institutions operating within Israel. Crucially, the law affirmed that the state of Israel “expects the cooperation of all Jews, as individuals and groups, in building up the State.” It further stipulated that the World Zionist Organization “requires full cooperation and coordination on its part with the state of Israel and its Government, in accordance with the laws of the State.” To that end, the law mandated the creation of a formal committee to coordinate activities between the Israeli government and the Zionist movement’s executive leadership. In other words, the state of Israel and the World Zionist Organization, as a matter of law, are required to work together, and,  also as expressed in law, both bodies expect the cooperation of “all Jews.” The extent to which this expectation is met remains an empirical question. First established at the 1951 Zionist Congress and enacted in 1953, the Jerusalem Program laid out the operational aims of the World Zionist Organization. This foundational document was later revised in 1968 and again in 2004 to reflect the movements evolving priorities. These revisions formalized a series of ideological commitments still in effect today, collectively referred to as the “foundations of Zionism.” Among these are the preservation of Jewish unity and its enduring bond to Eretz Yisrael, as well as the centrality of the state of Israel, specifically Jerusalem, in Jewish national life. The program affirms support for mass aliyah from all countries and the absorption of Jewish immigrants into Israeli society. It calls for strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist, and democratic state; promoting Jewish, Hebrew, and Zionist education to preserve the distinctiveness of the Jewish people; and defending the rights of Jews globally while combating antisemitism. Most revealingly, it asserts that “settling the country” remains a core expression of practical Zionism. These principles are intended to guide Zionist activity both within Israel and throughout the world. To make the role of individual Zionists abroad absolutely clear, the movement later published a separate guide detailing their personal responsibilities outside of occupied Palestine.   Duties of the individual Zionist The duties of the individual Zionist were first codified in a 1972 policy document “approved at the 28th Zionist Congress.” They were later adopted as an integral part of the resolutions of the 29th Congress in 1978. The resolution outlined personal obligations derived from the Jerusalem Program and from formal membership in a Zionist organization. Among these duties was the call to make aliyah—that is, to become a settler colonist in occupied Palestine. Others included joining local Zionist federations or affiliated groups, actively promoting the movement’s ideological program, and ensuring children received Zionist, Hebrew and Jewish education designed to reinforce loyalty to Israel. Zionists were also expected to donate financially through established channels such as Keren Hayesod, the Jewish National Fund or their local branches, in order to consolidate Israel’s economy and fund its expansionist aims. With the exception of physically becoming a settler colonist, all of these duties amount to an explicit call for infiltration of host societies. Perhaps the most direct duty, however, is “to strengthen Zionist influence within the community.” This likely refers to the “Jewish community” rather than broader society. Even so, it is still a call to expand the influence of Zionism on society as a whole. One might reasonably ask how much attention ordinary Zionists pay to such calls. Are these dry, dead words, left to gather dust in the Central Zionist Archives in Al Quds? Or do they still animate the central activities of the movement today? Let us take a look. Here is a 1961 report from the Jewish Chronicle about a Zionist meeting in Glasgow, which came to hand as I was writing this. I present it as an example of the movement’s thinking and practical activities. The meeting was specifically designed as an educational Zionist event and expounded a particular set of ideas. A Zionist Federation meeting in Glasgow, reported in the Jewish Chronicle, Oct. 20, 1961, p. 14 The measures which would have to be taken if children in the Diaspora were to remain Jews were discussed by Professor Ernst Simon, of the Hebrew University, when he gave an address at a meeting held in the Central Hotel last week in connection with the Zionist Federations Education Fortnight. Mr. Edward Woolfson, President of the Glasgow Zionist Federation, was in the chair. Outlining a practical programme for bringing up children as Jews, Dr. Simon declared that this would have to start with the education of expectant Jewish mothers and fathers at child guidance clinics. As a result, children from their earliest years would be reared in an atmosphere where they would see all the symbols and customs of Jewish life observed. This would then be followed by the children being sent to a Jewish or Hebrew Kindergarten, and then to a Jewish day school. Another important part in the programme, Dr. Simon went on, would be the creation of a Jewish resurgence… In this view, Zionist education required that children remain Jewish, making “Jewish education” crucial for the movement. A 1961 report reflected this, the year before the British Zionist Federation founded Scotland’s first and only Jewish school, Calderwood Lodge. Is that commitment to inculcating Zionism still present today?   A lifelong commitment to the genocidal ideology It certainly is. Although Calderwood Lodge was taken over by the local authority in 1982, it remains a Zionist school today. It collaborates with the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), Maccabi, Mitzvah Day, the Scottish Jewish Youth Alliance (SJYA) and other Zionist groups. (The SJYA is itself a collaboration between Glasgow Maccabi and UJIA Scotland, both Zionist organizations.) The school also marks Israeli Independence Day (Yom Haatzmaut) and the “liberation” of Jerusalem (Yom Yerushalayim)—their term for the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. Celebrating the creation of the Zionist entity in Calderwood Primary School, 2025, with Shayna Conn (right) of the Scottish Jewish Youth Alliance. Source | Facebook | Jewish Telegraph The UJIA is the U.K. outpost of one of Israel’s four “national institutions,” established to create and sustain the state of Israel. It serves as the U.K. affiliate of Keren Hayesod, which raises funds to finance settlement in Palestine. In its 2018–19 annual report, UJIA described its mission as developing a “lifelong connection” between Israel and the “diaspora” community, beginning with children as young as four. Of 12 school programs run by UJIA, nine are in primary schools, reaching thousands of pupils. From A Lifetime of Connection: UJIA Annual Report 2018-19. Source | United Jewish Israel Appeal “Strong British Jewry with a lifelong commitment to Israel.” Source | United Jewish Israel Appeal   Does it work? Varying statistics suggest that between 60% and 90% of British Jews—or perhaps more—identify as some form of Zionist. Research by Pew in the United States in 2021 found that “eight in ten U.S. Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Nearly six in ten say they personally feel an emotional attachment to Israel.” In the United Kingdom, a 2024 study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research reported that “73% say they feel very or somewhat attached to the country. However, the proportion identifying as ‘Zionists’ has fallen from 72% to 63% over the past decade.” Ultra-Zionists often claim that even more Jews identify as Zionist. For example, the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism conducted a survey in late 2023 that produced even higher figures. It reportedly “revealed that 97% of British Jews feel ‘personally connected’ to events happening in Israel 80% of respondents considered themselves to be a Zionist.” It appears that the activities of the UJIA and the wider Zionist movement are proving effective. Yet after two years of livestreamed genocide, there is also growing unrest and dissent within the Jewish community, particularly among the young. A recent poll cited in the Jewish Chronicle found that “only” 57% of Jews in their twenties “identified with Zionism.” Nevertheless, the extent of Zionist adherence is still far too large. This means there are Zionists throughout the social structure of most advanced nations, even when the Jewish population is very small, as in the United Kingdom, where it has fallen to 0.4%. In the United States, Jews make up about 2.4% of the population. The uncomfortable truth is that the Zionist movement urges its adherents to infiltrate the societies where they live and to display their commitment to its racist ideology at every possible turn. As the UJIA examples above show, they encourage a lifelong commitment to Israel. But is that the so-called dual loyalty “trope”—the allegedly racist claim that Jews are more loyal to the state of Israel than to the countries in which they reside? Only if we say it, if they say it, it’s fine—nothing to see here. As Pat Buchanan once remarked in a debate with Ralph Nader, “dual loyalty would be an improvement.” The fact remains that the Zionist movement promotes commitment to both the ideology and the practice of Zionism, even when this runs counter to the interests of the host nation. In the case of the state, this is true in most instances. In the case of the citizenry, it is true in all.   Meet the Zionist Infiltrators Some within the movement consider the term “infiltration” outdated, arguing that it implies a deliberate Zionist strategy. Yet this article has shown that such a strategy does exist. The question, however, is how conscious or deliberate it is. The evidence suggests there are different types of infiltration and different kinds of infiltrators. We can begin with those directly or indirectly engaged in specific forms of infiltration on behalf of agencies of the Zionist entity. Their activities align more closely with the traditional sense of the term. From there, we turn to those with looser ties to the movement as a whole. In what follows, I outline six types of infiltration. Direct Service to the Zionist Entity The most obvious form of infiltration is direct service to the Zionist entity through collaboration with its intelligence agencies. One example is the Ofer family, which breached U.S. sanctions to deliver Mossad agents and weapons for subversion and assassination operations in Iran. Another involves activities linked to Jeffrey Epstein, who gathered sexual kompromat for Israeli intelligence. Mossad also relies on Sayanim, its informal helpers abroad, most famously Robert Maxwell. Beyond this, thousands of Zionists work with the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and its predecessor, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Their operations range from propaganda and lobbying to trolling, doxxing and lawfare. One such network is the Combat Antisemitism Movement, which has nearly 1,000 members and operates in a “joint venture” with Voices of Israel, a company run by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. In total, many thousands of Zionist groups are engaged in this form of activity. Tech Start-ups as a Zionist Strategy Service is also given directly to the Zionist entity through the creation of tech start-ups founded by former intelligence personnel. This has long been a strategy of Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency. Today, there are hundreds of such firms in the tech industry. Some have become widely and controversially known, including  Cellebrite, NICE, Toka, and the NSO Group, maker of the Pegasus surveillance product. One online listing of 28 such firms records a combined value of $208 billion. The covert use of this vast surveillance apparatus by the Zionist regime has been widely noted. Investigative reports also show that significant numbers of Zionist infiltrators—including former occupation forces members, intelligence operatives and others—have secured senior positions across mainstream media and Big Tech. These include Google, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and more. Emissaries of the Zionist Project There is also a civilian equivalent of the Sayanim, known as Shlichim, or emissaries. The Jewish Agency—one of the four pillars of the formal Zionist movement—sends Shlichim from occupied Palestine to build what it calls “living bridges to Israel.” These emissaries are placed in schools, synagogues, JCCs, camps, universities, youth movements and Federations across the globe. In 2021, the Union of Jewish Students, the Zionist student group in the U.K., reported hosting two Shlichim from the Jewish Agency. The recently revealed diary of Israel’s ambassador to the U.K. even records a “goodbye breakfast” she hosted in July 2024 for Shlichim returning to the Zionist entity after completing their tours of duty. Other Zionist groups also send emissaries. The World Mizrachi Movement, for example, sent about 300 last year. The Haredi sect Chabad—described by critics as a genocidal cult—uses the same term for its global network of emissaries. According to Chabad itself, “Today, 4,900 Chabad-Lubavitch emissary families, or shluchim, operate 3,500 institutions in 100 countries and territories, with activities in many more. Zionist Family Networks Another form of service to the genocide comes through Zionist family networks in the West, particularly via philanthropic giving. Family foundations funnel money to Zionist organizations, all of which effectively encourage genocide. One example is the many millions donated by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson to pro-Zionist political candidates. “Im a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” Adelson said in 2017. In the U.K., millions are given by the Lewis family, which owns River Island, and the Wolfson family, which owns Next, to support the genocide. Their contributions directly fund the occupation forces as well as settlement construction and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Millions more are spent by Zionist family foundations to spread Islamophobia—through the Policy Exchange and the Henry Jackson Society in the U.K., and through the so-called Islamophobia network in the U.S. Additional funds go toward indoctrinating Jewish children through nurseries, schools, youth groups, student groups and “Birthright” tours, which promote the racist belief that Jews have a birthright to steal Palestinian land and kill Palestinian children. Zionist billionaire families dominate this giving, but many thousands of others also contribute through large and small Zionist charities and causes. In the U.K., there are an estimated 3,000 such organizations, and in the U.S., there are likely more than 10,000. A preliminary compilation of data on U.S. Zionist groups is available here. Defending Zionism Over the Life Course The final form of infiltration is tied directly to the Zionist strategy of ensuring that all Jews make an enduring, lifelong commitment to Israel. As this article has shown, this has been central to the Zionist movement since at least 1951 and remains so today. Zionists expect all Jews to act on behalf of Israel whenever called upon—or whenever they perceive Zionist interests to be under threat. Practically, this means service to Zionism through daily professional, political and social activities, wherever Zionists find themselves: in the media, political parties, business, finance, schools, universities and civil society, including left-wing and so-called “anti-racist” organizations. In other words, Zionists throughout the social structure are engaged in subversion and infiltration. One example is the Jewish network within the U.K. civil service. Although set up by the civil service itself, it is in practice run by and for Zionists rather than Jews. Similar patterns exist in universities, the media, the legal profession, finance, industry and other institutions across society. When the time comes for the proverbial tap on the shoulder, how many who have passed through Zionist indoctrination will fail to respond “appropriately”? To ask the question is almost to invite disbelief. In many cases, no tap on the shoulder is even required. Across the BBC, the media, the entertainment world, the civil service, politics, finance and other commanding heights of society, there are Zionists who are ideologically committed. For them, it makes perfect sense to “do the right thing” when the moment arrives. The fact remains that the Zionist movement encourages loyalty to its ideology and its program of action even when these run counter to the interests of the host state—or, in all cases, to the interests of its citizenry.   Can we trust Zionists? In the end, no Zionist can be trusted. Do we imagine that they are not also infiltrating the left? The Palestine solidarity movement? The anti-war movement? Zionism is, at its core, a racist ideology. No matter how hard “liberal,” “socialist,” or “leftist” Zionists try to disguise it, that racism always reveals itself—whether in adopting Zionist positions in their professional lives or in subverting and sabotaging pro-Palestine activism in political life. This has historically meant that the anti-racist movement and the Palestine solidarity movement have been weak on the question of Zionism. It was a major mistake for the “left” in the U.K. and elsewhere not to confront Zionism head-on earlier. Today, we face a significant struggle to cleanse the left and the anti-imperialist movement of both Zionists and Zionist assumptions—ideas that have seeped out of the movement and into the consciousness of many non-Zionist, or even anti-Zionist, socialist activists. This process has been underway for many decades. However, this is not the place for a detailed analysis of the Jewish left or of Zionist penetration of the non-Jewish left. A fuller exposition will be needed in another article. For now, it is enough to point to the need for a material and maximalist anti-Zionism.   Infiltration today The traditional forms of infiltration used by intelligence services continue—covert spies, informers and, in the case of the Zionists, the widespread penetration of the tech industry by alumni of Unit 8200. In addition, the Zionist movement makes extensive use of emissaries, both through the mainstream movement and through more marginal elements such as the Chabad-Lubavitch cult, as we have seen. But in addition to this—as this article has argued—there is an effort to recruit all Jews into a “lifelong connection” to “Israel.” In practical terms, the movement treats all Jews as potential resources. This is why so much effort is devoted to grooming and radicalization through nurseries, schools, synagogues, youth and student groups, and the wide array of Zionist lobby groups and charities. They attempt to radicalize Jews such that they will put Israel first wherever they end up in the social structure. And given that Jews are systematically advantaged in the social structure across the West, this has the potential to be a very powerful set of relations. I submit that infiltration is a cardinal principle of the Zionist movement, and it helps to explain how Zionist individuals and ideas are so heavily embedded in political, civil, economic and cultural life in Western nations. Knowing your enemy is the first step toward defeating them—and toward dislodging Zionism from its entrenched status and role in society. Feature photo | Protestors against the judicial overhaul carry a sign with Theodor Herzl during a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Apr 22, 2023. Matan Golan | AP Professor David Miller is a non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University and a former Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol. He is a broadcaster, writer and investigative researcher; the producer of the weekly show Palestine Declassified on PressTV; and the co-director of Public Interest Investigations, of which spinwatch.org and powerbase.info are projects. He tweets @Tracking_Power. The post Infiltration: A Cardinal Function of the Zionist Movement appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Opinion & Analysis, Top Story, David Miller, diaspora politics, Israel influence, Israel Lobby, Jewish Agency, pro-Palestine, UNIT 8200, World Zionist Organization, Zionism critique, Zionist infiltration]

— Is Israel Behind the Assassination of Charlie Kirk? The Internet Thinks So

 

at 9/15/25 12:10pm

/* Scoped to this CTA only */ .mpn-cta{border:2px solid #cc0000;background:#fff5f5;border-radius:10px; padding:20px;margin:22px 0;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif} .mpn-cta__inner{max-width:720px;margin:0 auto;text-align:center} .mpn-cta__title{color:#cc0000;font-weight:800;font-size:22px;line-height:1.2;margin:2px 0 10px} .mpn-cta__text{color:#222;font-size:16px;line-height:1.55;margin:0 0 18px} .mpn-cta__btn{display:inline-block;background:#b80000;color:#fff;text-decoration:none; font-weight:800;font-size:16px;letter-spacing:.2px;padding:14px 28px;border-radius:9999px; box-shadow:0 6px 18px rgba(204,0,0,.18);transition:transform .06s ease, box-shadow .2s ease, background .2s ease} .mpn-cta__btn:hover,.mpn-cta__btn:focus{background:#990000;transform:translateY(-1px); box-shadow:0 10px 24px rgba(153,0,0,.22)} .mpn-cta__meta{font-size:13px;color:#555;margin-top:14px} .mpn-cta__link{color:#cc0000;font-weight:700;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid rgba(204,0,0,.25)} .mpn-cta__link:hover{border-bottom-color:#cc0000} @media (max-width:480px){ .mpn-cta{padding:16px} .mpn-cta__title{font-size:20px} .mpn-cta__text{font-size:15px} .mpn-cta__btn{width:100%;padding:14px 18px} } Truth Under Siege: MintPress News Needs You This is an urgent call to action. After 14 years, one of our main funding lines has been cut and MintPress News could be forced to shut down without your support. Help us keep independent, antiwar journalism alive. Support the MintPress Fundraiser Learn more: Why your help matters The internet doesn’t believe the official narrative about who killed Charlie Kirk and instead points its finger at Israel. It’s not unthinkable, and it’s certainly not antisemitic. Here’s why. Over the last 50 years, no other nation has carried out more targeted assassinations around the world — including inside Western countries — than Israel. This week alone, Israel eliminated nearly half of Yemen’s government. But here’s why Charlie Kirk mattered: For most of the last two years, he loudly defended Israel’s genocide in Gaza, dismissed famine reports, and spread Islamophobia to his massive base. His group, Turning Point USA, wasn’t just another conservative nonprofit; it was one of Israel’s most potent assets in America. Turning Point USA shaped millions of young conservatives into loyal Christian Zionists. Without that movement, Israel’s U.S. lifeline would collapse — and Turning Point USA had become Israel’s beating heart in this country. That’s why, according to The Grayzone, Netanyahu’s government and pro-Israel billionaires tried to buy Kirk off with a “massive new infusion of Zionist money.” Kirk rejected it. He called Netanyahu a bully. He warned Trump not to bomb Iran on Israel’s behalf. And according to a Trump administration source, even Donald Trump admitted he was afraid of Netanyahu’s power. If Trump was afraid, what chance did Charlie have? The pushback was immediate. Zionist donors bombarded Kirk with angry calls and texts, trying to dictate what he could say. At Turning Point USA’s 2025 Student Action Summit, Kirk gave a platform to speakers critical of Israel and its billionaire backers. Speakers included Jewish comedian Dave Smith and Tucker Carlson. The summit even hosted conversations probing whether Jeffrey Epstein was operating as an Israeli asset. For Israel’s defenders, that crossed another red line — because Epstein’s network has long been treated as untouchable. But Epstein’s ties to Israel and Mossad are no secret to those who read MintPress, which was among the first to cover this extensively. Meanwhile, Candace Owens revealed on X that in his final months, Charlie was undergoing a “spiritual awakening.” And he wasn’t alone. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even Nick Fuentes—other Christian Right figures with massive followings and influence—are also turning against Israel because of the genocide in Gaza. It’s part of a larger trend: only 24% of young Republicans now side with Israel over Palestinians. Even the American Jewish Committee — one of the oldest and most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organizations in Washington, with deep influence over U.S. foreign policy — publicly blasted Kirk in July after he began to question Israel. For an establishment group that has long relied on Christian Zionist allies like him, that was a major signal: Charlie was no longer considered reliable. Add to this the climate of intimidation. The Grayzone cites a Trump-era insider who described Israeli operatives planting electronic surveillance devices on U.S. emergency vehicles — feeding the sense that even the White House itself was bullied and watched by Netanyahu’s machine. So when a sniper in Utah gunned down Kirk, the question wasn’t just who pulled the trigger; it was who had the motive, and it was clear that a highly skilled person took Charlie out. Israel has killed for far less. And Kirk’s betrayal, after years of loyal service, threatened one of its most essential pipelines to America’s future and its dedication to propping up the apartheid state. If Israel was behind this assassination, it exposes something far bigger: an out-of-control proxy state we’ve unleashed — one that bullies our leaders, surveils our government, and silences even its allies the moment they step out of line. This is classic divide and conquer. Israel thrives by sowing chaos, turning allies against one another, and keeping us distracted while it commits genocide with U.S. backing. We can’t let that tactic succeed. We need to stay focused. Because if Israel can eliminate the man who built one of its strongest youth movements the moment he broke with them, then what does that say about the monster we’ve let loose? The motive is undeniable. The only question left is whether we’ll ever be allowed to know the truth. Feature photo | A vigil to Charlie Kirk is displayed during a ptorest in Berlins Brandenburg Gate on Saturday, September 13, 2025, against Israels war in Gaza. Michael Kuenne | AP Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Is Israel Behind the Assassination of Charlie Kirk? The Internet Thinks So appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, National, Top Story, assassination, Charlie Kirk, Gaza Genocide, Israel, Mossad, Netanyahu, political violence, Turning Point USA, U.S. politics, zionism]

— Why The Media Obsesses Over Kirk While Israel Assassinates a Prime Minister

 

at 9/15/25 9:20am

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After 14 years, one of our main funding lines has been cut and MintPress News could be forced to shut down without your support. Help us keep independent, antiwar journalism alive. Support the MintPress Fundraiser Learn more: Why your help matters News of Charlie Kirk’s killing has dominated front pages and cable news, with politicians lining up to condemn the attack. At the same time, Israeli forces quietly assassinated Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi. That killing of a foreign head of state barely registered in the Western press, treated almost as a footnote. To understand why Yemen finds itself in Israel’s crosshairs, MintPress spoke with Abdellatif Al Washali, an independent journalist in Sanaa. He described a nation stunned by the loss of its leader but determined to press on, and said Yemenis see their struggle as bound up with the fight of Palestinians. Coverage of Kirk’s death eclipsed al-Rahawi’s by orders of magnitude. This is no accident. For years, outlets like MSNBC went entire years without mentioning Yemen, even as the United Nations called it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. When Yemen does appear in corporate media, it is usually framed through a sectarian lens, as “Iran-backed Houthis.” The effect is to delegitimize the movement and erase Yemeni agency. Since November 2023, Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement has enforced a humanitarian blockade of the Red Sea, stopping Israeli and allied ships until Israel halts its war on Gaza. The campaign has been devastatingly effective. Eilat Port revenues have collapsed by more than 80%, with shipping giants rerouting around Africa. One of the first ships seized was the Galaxy Leader, owned by Israeli billionaire Abraham Ungar, a Likud ally. By striking at Israel’s financial elite, Yemen has done what no Arab government has dared. It has forced Tel Aviv to pay an economic price for its actions in Gaza. Israel has responded with wave after wave of bombings. Dozens of civilians have been killed in recent days, including at least 20 journalists. The assassination of al-Rahawi was the clearest sign that Israel seeks to decapitate Yemen’s leadership. Al Washali told MintPress that the killing “shocked Yemenis deeply,” but far from weakening the movement, it “has strengthened unity.” Even factions once aligned with the Saudi coalition are now backing Ansar Allah, driven by outrage over Gaza. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or the UAE, all of whom help Israel bypass the blockade, Yemen has refused to normalize relations. Millions regularly march in solidarity with Palestine, with one demonstration in Sanaa drawing more than a million people. The near-total blackout on Yemen’s story underscores why independent media is essential. For 14 years, MintPress News has challenged empire and exposed war crimes. But today, we face an existential crisis. We have been banned from PayPal, censored across Big Tech, and cut off from funding. If you value fearless reporting that tells the stories corporate media bury, please support our Indiegogo campaign: MintPress News Faces Shutdown Amid Unprecedented Attacks on Truth Feature photo | Honor guards carry the coffin of Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, left, and the coffins of other politicians killed in Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, during a funeral ceremony at the Shaab Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 1, 2025. Osamah Abdulrahmam | AP Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. The post Why The Media Obsesses Over Kirk While Israel Assassinates a Prime Minister appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Ansar Allah, Charlie Kirk, Eilat Port, Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, Middle East, political assassination, Red Sea blockade, Yemen]

— Trump’s Phony “Cartel” Plot to Invade Venezuela

 

at 9/12/25 8:24am

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After 14 years, one of our main funding lines has been cut and MintPress News could be forced to shut down without your support. Help us keep independent, antiwar journalism alive. Support the MintPress Fundraiser Learn more: Why your help matters The Trump administration is drumming up a new war in Latin America. In a bid to topple Venezuela’s government, Washington placed a $50 million bounty on President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of running a cocaine empire called the Cartel of the Suns. At the same time, it dispatched a fleet of warships and blew up a Venezuelan vessel — without offering a shred of proof for its claims. Joining MintCast hosts Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod to break down these latest moves are Diego Sequera and Leonardo Flores. Sequera is a Caracas-based journalist and writer with local outlet Misión Verdad. Flores is the co-founder of the Venezuela Solidarity Network and a former analyst with the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington. Flores rejected the U.S. narrative, calling the cartel a fiction designed to justify intervention. In reality, Venezuela produces a negligible amount of cocaine. The top producers are Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. And according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s 2025 World Drug Report, most cocaine enters the United States through Ecuadorian ports or overland via Central America. Likewise, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, a 90-page report, mentions Venezuela only twice and makes no reference to the Cartel of the Suns. Washington has pursued regime change in Caracas for decades. In 2002, it supported a far-right coup against Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez. Afterward, it bankrolled opposition groups and launched economic warfare to strangle Venezuela’s economy. Under Trump, the aggression escalated. He backed a series of coup attempts to install opposition figure Juan Guaidó as leader. In 2018, Maduro survived an assassination attempt that former National Security Advisor John Bolton strongly hinted Washington supported. The U.S. also seized Venezuelan ships and sold off their cargo — acts of modern piracy. During his first term, Trump said it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela, calling the country “really part of the United States.” But the 4,500 troops Washington has sent to the region are far from a true invasion force. Our guests suggest the deployments are meant to ratchet up pressure, fracture Venezuela’s leadership, and test how far Washington can push without sparking a wider war. Escalation, however, remains a real possibility. Since 1998, Venezuela has been at the forefront of anti-imperialist struggle. First Chávez, then Maduro, preached Latin American unity and called for global resistance to U.S. domination. Both leaders also championed the Palestinian cause. Under Chávez, Venezuela nationalized its mineral resources, using the profits to build schools, roads, and hospitals. Poverty was cut in half, and extreme poverty fell by nearly three-quarters, transforming Venezuela from South America’s most unequal country to its most equal. Now, Washington is recycling the oldest trick in its playbook: inventing a drug cartel as a pretext for invasion. From the Contras in Nicaragua to Plan Colombia, the U.S. has long hidden its imperial designs behind the so-called “war on drugs.” This latest stunt is no different — a smokescreen to topple a government that refuses to kneel. The question is not whether the Cartel of the Suns exists — it doesn’t. The question is whether Americans will allow another war, built on lies, to be launched in their name. Find the full conversation on the MintCast podcast, only at MintPress News. Feature photo | Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivers remarks during a troop engagement with Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines at Muñiz Air National Guard Base, Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sept. 8, 2025. Hegseth spoke about the U.S. mission to combat drug smuggling, framing the effort as a defense of the American people. Katelynn Jackson | DVIDS Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh. Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post Trumps Phony “Cartel” Plot to Invade Venezuela appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Behind The Headlines, Foreign Affairs, Top Story, Cartel of the Suns, Drug war, Juan Guaido, Latin America, MintCast, Nicolas Maduro, Trump, U.S. foreign policy, U.S. regime change, Venezuela]

— MintPress News Faces Shutdown Amid Unprecedented Attacks on Truth

 

at 9/9/25 11:37am

This is an urgent call to action. After 14 years of operations, MintPress News is in danger of being silenced. One of our main lines of funding has been cut, and if we don’t act now, MintPress could be forced to shut down. So we’re turning to you—our readers and viewers—for support. For the past two years, the world has watched in horror as a genocide in Gaza unfolded in real time—livestreamed in 4K—while Western corporate media outlets ran cover, pushing lies and atrocity propaganda. During this genocide, it became clear that the greatest threat to Israel in Gaza was the truth. More than 200 journalists in Gaza were deliberately targeted and killed for daring to tell their people’s story. We must continue to be their voice. The fallen journalists, mercilessly taken by Israel, and those who continue—against all odds—to broadcast the horrors of life under constant bombardment, taught us what courage looks like. They put Western corporate media to shame. At MintPress, we are committed to upholding their legacy and amplifying their voices in the West. For over 14 years, we have confronted the system of lies perpetuating not only Israel’s crimes but also those of the U.S. empire. We’ve challenged governments and their lapdog media for supporting policies that drive my people’s destruction. If wars can be ignited by deceit, then let us rally for peace through unwavering truth by carrying their torch. This is why, as a Palestinian American who once lived under Israeli occupation and apartheid, I founded MintPress. MintPress has been on the front lines of the information war, popping the propaganda bubbles the media and military class use to justify this war—and every war that fuels the military-industrial complex. We’ve been at the forefront of exposing how Israel’s intelligence networks infiltrate our political system, newsrooms, and even social media platforms to manufacture consent for war. We have uncovered Unit 8200 spies working inside TikTok, Meta, the BBC, American newsrooms, and even at Columbia University. This is systemic—not isolated. In the past year alone, MintPress has identified hundreds of Israeli spies infiltrating platforms that control the free flow of information and manipulate public perception. And it goes far beyond Big Tech. MintPress exposed the largest Mossad-CIA spy network in Yemen, which operated through so-called pro-democracy NGOs to sabotage a nation determined to free itself from modern-day colonialism. All of this sits within a larger context: Israel’s crimes and sabotage are extensions of U.S. empire objectives—objectives we have proudly exposed for 14 years. MintPress is one of the last remaining investigative media outlets in the United States willing to expose the individuals, think tanks, lobby groups, and foreign governments driving wars, expanding the police state, exploiting resources, and waging economic warfare at home and abroad. Our investigations have revealed the deep ties between Israel’s intelligence apparatus, NATO, the arms industry, Western intelligence agencies, and lobby groups embedded in Big Tech—working to control information and target antiwar dissent, including support for Palestinian liberation. We’ve exposed U.S. regime change operations and how the empire targets countries and movements that resist imperialism, especially in the Global South. If Israel’s war on Gaza—and every so-called humanitarian war before it—taught us anything, it’s this: the greatest threat to their agenda is the camera, the pen, the journalist. This is why MintPress matters. Without independent watchdog journalism that names names and goes behind the headlines, war criminals get away with murder—and people lose their voices. Right now, our future depends on you. Please donate today—$5, $25, or whatever you can afford—to support our reporters and keep our investigations public. Join us today on IndieGogo. Help us keep this legacy alive. Mnar Adley Founder & Director MintPress News The post MintPress News Faces Shutdown Amid Unprecedented Attacks on Truth appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Top Story, Censorship, Free Press, Gaza Genocide, independent journalism, indie media, Israel war crimes, media propaganda, MintPress News, US empire, watchdog journalism]

— From Revolution to Revival: Russell Brand Embraces Trump and Israel

 

at 8/29/25 11:26am

Not so long ago, Russell Brand was a socialist icon, preaching global revolution and the redistribution of wealth and power to the masses. Today, he is a born-again Christian who endorses Donald Trump and has headlined events at the Republican National Convention and Turning Point USA.. Where once he preached eco-socialism, anti-racism, and described Israel as a terrorist state, he now attacks Greta Thunberg, Bob Vylan, and other prominent Israel critics, all while hobnobbing with the same racist politicians he once warned the public not to follow. What explains Brand’s dramatic shift? MintPress explores the political evolution of the comedian, host, and self-appointed thought leader.   From Commie Scum to GOP Star Russell Brand is a conservative star. Last month, the English comedian headlined the annual conference of the pro-Trump pressure group, Turning Point USA. There, he led the young crowd in prayer and told them that: A lot of good is being done here. I hope you are turning away from the values of a culture that does not value you. That sees you as a cog, as a consumer, as a recipient of the vaccines and bad food and bad agriculture, little more than a cog in the machine to serve elites.” With his populist right-wing rhetoric, Brand is firmly aboard the Trump train, endorsing the president as “hands down” better than any Democrat. “People are tired of polished politicians, and were starting to see why: many are blackmailed, compromised, and controlled,” he explained. He also described Vice-President J.D. Vance as a “pretty spectacular guy” who it was “difficult not to get excited about.” Generally speaking, I think youre better off with President Trump than anyone whos gonna emerge out of the Democrat party, hands down. People are tired of polished politicians, and were starting to see why: many are blackmailed, compromised, and controlled. pic.twitter.com/NPVEUobyrW — Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) July 16, 2025 Brand’s podcast platform is a who’s who of conservative influencers. Among those appearing on his shows are Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Steve Bannon. Last year, he spent an entire week at the Republican National Convention, promoting right-wing politics and glad-handing with the likes of Charlie Kirk, Dan Bongino, and Nigel Farage. For many people who have only recently begun to follow politics or know him only as Katy Perry’s ex-husband, little of this information will be shocking. Yet less a decade ago, Brand was one of the most vocal and recognizable figures on the global revolutionary left. In 2013, he edited a special edition of the New Statesman magazine, entitled “Revolution.” The following year, he authored a non-fiction book with the same name, taking inspiration from leftist figures such as Noam Chomsky, David Graeber, and Che Guevara. At the height of his fame, he used his platform to urge the public to rebel, to boycott the electoral system, and to call for a communist-style revolution. “The planet is being destroyed. We are creating an underclass. We’re exploiting poor people all over the world. And the genuine, legitimate problems of the people are not being addressed by our political class,” he told the BBC. When asked what his solution was, he responded: A socialist egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth, heavy taxation of corporations and massive responsibility for energy companies and any companies exploiting the environment. The very concept of profit should be hugely reduced. [U.K. Prime Minister] David Cameron says profit isn’t a dirty word. I say profit is a filthy word.” Brand hosted a regular media criticism show on YouTube called “The Trews,” a portmanteau of “true news.” There, he would critically analyze and dissect propaganda from corporate media, highlighting their pro-war and pro-business agendas, as well as conflicts of interest. On one episode, he described Fox News as a “terrorist” network promoting pro-war fake news, an utterance that led network host Greg Gutfeld to label the comedian “left-wing commie scum.” By 2023, however, Gutfeld was gushing with pride and “super excited” to host Brand on his Fox News show—a marker of just how far Brand had travelled. Lee Camp, another left-wing political comedian, was dismayed at his metamorphosis, telling MintPress that: Russell Brands arc is truly pathetic and sad. These days, much of the time, his stances (if he has any) arent even coherent. I remember when he was anti-war and pro-Occupy Wall Street. It was never his main thrust, but it was nice to have someone with his platform occasionally talking about those issues. Now hes moved on to having cozy interviews with neo-Nazis like Steve Bannon.”   From Climate Crusader to Skeptic The climate emergency was once a driving force behind Brand’s politics. In the same 2013 BBC interview, he stated that our political system “shouldn’t destroy the planet,” and that “The measures that are currently being taken around climate change are indifferent, will not solve the problem.” Yet, on this issue as well, his position has undergone a transformation. Climate change denialists were a favored target on “The Trews.” But by 2023, Brand was hosting controversial climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg on his podcast. And earlier this year, he attacked Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. The British actor described Thunberg as a “puppet” of “the system.” I respect Greta Thunberg’s conviction—but let’s not pretend she isn’t being used. She’s a cultural symbol, deployed to serve an agenda masked as virtue,” he said, adding: Climate change is being exploited to legitimize new measures of control, and Greta Thunberg is being promoted by the culture because she somehow perfectly represents the pagan idea of Cassandra—a hysterical figure at the edge of the culture.” I respect Greta Thunberg’s conviction—but let’s not pretend she isn’t being used. She’s a cultural symbol, deployed to serve an agenda masked as virtue. Just like I once was, paraded as a poster boy for decadence. The system loves its puppets—until they wake up. pic.twitter.com/L4hOuc99Bs — Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) June 10, 2025 Brand was reacting to the news that Thunberg had been captured and abducted by the Israeli military. She had been sailing to Gaza in an attempt to break the blockade and alleviate the man-made famine. In reality, as a MintPress News study found, far from being promoted, she has been widely ignored by corporate media, precisely because of the anti-capitalist, pro-Palestine positions she has taken. In 2019, 460 articles mentioning Thunberg were published by The New York Times and The Washington Post. By 2024, however, that number had dwindled to just 34. Thunberg’s Israel-Palestine positions are not even as radical as Brand’s once were. In 2014, he hinted that Israel might be considered a terrorist state, and even compared Hamas to Nelson Mandela and America’s founding fathers. Palestine was clearly a fundamental driving issue for Brand, who attempted to organize the mass boycott and divestment from banks, pension funds and other big businesses that, he said, “facilitate the oppression of people in Gaza”. Throughout the years, though, his tone changed markedly. By 2021, he was refusing to take a stance on the issue and even claimed that people who want to take sides are “part of the problem.” And by February, after nearly 18 months of genocide, Brand was reiterating his unshakable support for Israel’s right to exist. “As a Christian, when you read the Old Testament, you have to acknowledge that there is a unique, particular and sacred relationship between the Jewish people and that land,” he said on his show, “Stay Free.” He also went out of his way to attack Palestine supporters at the Glastonbury music festival. Reacting to the video of punk rap duo Bob Vylan, leading a crowd in chanting “Death to the IDF,” Brand denounced those in attendance. He claimed that neither Vylan nor the crowd were “examining the complex religious, political, economic, resource based history of Israel,” and that few in attendance understood the significance of the Palestinian flag. Palestine, to them, he said, is a meaningless marker of general anti-establishment sentiment. Going even further, the comedian appeared to endorse Presi dent Trump’s plans to annex Gaza and turn it into a Dubai-style playground for the ultra-wealthy. In response to an AI-generated video of Trump in Gaza, Brand commented that this was “another example of Trump’s unique brilliance.” This is a far cry from the days when Brand used to mock and excoriate Trump as “mad,” a “wanton baby,” an “absurd and ludicrous character,” a “joke,” a “narcissist,” a “grotesque” and an “idiotic” person who “pollutes their air with toxic thinking.” Today, however, he can be spotted enjoying time with Trump’s son, Don Jr.   From Fighting Racists to Backing Them Brand was once a pillar of British politics, sounding the alarm about the rise of the far-right. As far back as 2002, he made the documentary, Naziboy, in which he trailed Mark Collett, the leader of the youth wing of the fascist British National Party (BNP). The documentary culminates in Brand standing up to and embarrassing Collett so badly that he flees the scene, almost in tears. This was not the only time Brand dismantled a far-right leader on camera. In 2014, on the BBC’s flagship politics show, Question Time, he deconstructed Nigel Farage’s ideology so succinctly that the clip went viral. Addressing the far-right politician’s downwardly mobile base of white supporters, he said: I know a lot of people are frightened in our country. I know a lot of people are feeling afraid and frustrated. And there is a sense that there is a corrupt group in our country, using our resources, taking away our jobs, taking away our housing, not paying taxes, exploiting us. And there is. There is an economic elite that this man [Farage’s] party is funded by.” Explaining the effects of the economic crisis, he stated that Farage’s “friends” in the financial district of London farted, and that he held his nose and pointed at immigrants and the disabled, as if they were the culprits. Brand finished with a warning, featuring some of his signature cockney flourishes: As much as any of us, I enjoy seeing Nigel Farage in a boozer with a pint and a fag, laughing off his latest scandals about breastfeeding or whatever. I enjoy it. But this man is not a cartoon character. He ain’t [beloved sitcom character] Del Boy. He ain’t [actor] Arthur Daley. He’s a pound shop Enoch Powell. And we’ve got to watch him.” The phrase “pound shop Enoch Powell,” the British equivalent of “dollar store Barry Goldwater,” went so viral that it entered the common lexicon, and is still regularly used today to mock the racist right-wing. Ironically, though, Brand has come full circle, embracing Farage and other far-right figures. On his show last year, he described him as “a man who has certainly captured the hearts of many people in our country and whom the establishment and mainstream media loathe.” Shortly afterward, he shared a stage with Farage at the Republican National Convention, where Farage gave a similar nativist speech to the one he gave on Question Time, scaremongering about imposing on Western communities “young men, who come from totally different cultures, who are not assimilating, who are not treating women in a way we would think to be fair and reasonable. And in many cases, coming from organized crime groups and going straight into drug farms.” This time, however, Brand did not call out Farage for racism. In fact, he noted, referencing their 2014 encounter,  “Last time we [met], it was in a similar panel environment. Barbed remarks were flung around wildly. But since then, it appears that via the discourse around anti-establishmentism, Nigel and I have found common ground,” he explained, adding that: We have been talking about how the Republican Party now is truly the anti-war party…[and how] a Vance-Trump partnership in the White House will mean an end to the Middle Eastern war, an end to Ukraine-Russia war.” His predictions for peace, needless to say, have not come to pass. Worse still, Brand has also openly endorsed fascist agitator Tommy Robinson as “pretty good,” and an “authentic, working-class voice, that I believe ought to be supported.” On his show, he euphemistically described Robinson’s antics to his audience, stating: He’s under attack. This is someone who has been under attack most of his life, as he has tried to work out how to express that where he is from, in Luton, there is a hostility between working-class white people and, as he always says, Sikhs and Black folk, and the Muslim population.” A former member of the BNP, Robinson has a long history of fomenting racial violence in the U.K., and has spent much of the last 20 years in and out of prison. Although now a marginalized figure, Collett endorsed Farage for prime minister at the 2024 General Elections, claiming that he has “adopted” the BNP’s positions and noting that the BNP’s old policies “were actually markedly tamer than Farage’s current rhetoric.” Farage’s current platform, Collett said, is more explicitly about demographics (i.e., race) than his was. Thus, in just two decades, Brand has gone from mocking the far-right as racist grotesques to joining them, becoming one of their most visible public defenders. MintPress contacted Collett and his party for their opinion on Brand’s transformation, but has not received a response. Russell Brand is probably like the tutorial level for the Mossad guys whose job is setting up public figures for sexual blackmail https://t.co/VBuE8GgPch — George Sears 2028 Voter (@ByYourLogic) February 7, 2025   Allies, Accusations, and a Trial Ahead What explains this significant shift in Brand’s political outlook? For some, the answer is obvious. Facing mounting allegations of sexual assault and rape, Brand realized his existing leftist following would reject him, so he chose to move to the United States, embrace Trump and religion, and cultivate a reactionary fan base that would have little problem with his alleged sex crimes. If this is indeed the case, Brand would be far from the first to do so. Indeed, scholars and commentators have named this well-trodden path the right-wing “grift drift.” From 2023 onwards, Brand has faced waves of accusations of sexual misconduct, as hosts of women (including one girl aged only 16 at the time) have come forward, alleging rape and sexual assault. Only four of these allegations have so far resulted in charges. Earlier this year, the comedian and film star was charged with the rape, oral rape, sexual assault and indecent assault of four women between the years of 1999 and 2005. Brand has vigorously denied all the allegations, insisting that his relationships were “always consensual.” “I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord. I was a drug addict, a sex addict and an imbecile, but what I never was was a rapist,” he said in a video posted on his social media channels. My response. pic.twitter.com/wJMGxlwBh0 — Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) April 4, 2025 He also suggested that he was being persecuted for his political activism. “We are very fortunate, in a way, to live in a time when theres so little trust in the British government,” he said, “We know the law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people, institutions and sometimes entire nations that will not accept and tolerate levels of corruption that are unprecedented.” Brand’s new conservative allies overwhelmingly came to his defense, claiming that a political witch-hunt against him was taking place. “I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil,” wrote Elon Musk. “Criticize the drug companies, question the war in Ukraine, and you can be pretty sure this is going to happen,” said Tucker Carlson. Alex Jones agreed, posting a video stating that. “Because he comes out against Big Pharma, he comes out against the globalists, he comes out against the New World Order, suddenly the allegations are happening to him.” Donald Trump Jr. compared him to imprisoned publisher Julian Assange. In May, Brand pleaded not guilty to all charges. His trial is scheduled to begin in June 2026. At the same time as the new wave of allegations surfaced, Brand became a born-again Christian, being baptized by celebrity survivalist Bear Grylls, in London’s River Thames. Christianity has become a central part of his life and his character; the comedian regularly discusses his journey on stage, or even performing the Lord’s Prayer on stage with Jordan Peterson in front of 25,000 people. Another explanatory factor, for some, is the COVID-19 pandemic. Brand increasingly voiced his opposition to government measures and to vaccines, leading him down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking. He was far from the only YouTube star to traverse this path, and like many others, for Brand, it was a lucrative one. His videos on COVID performed vastly better than his other content, netting 10-20 times the audience and unlocking advertising deals with products as diverse as coffee, VPNs and anti-radiation amulets. Analysts note a distinct change in subject, tone, and style of his videos from that point, towards a more conspiratorial, right-wing angle. For Camp, the financial allure of joining the right-wing media sphere is the most salient factor in Brand’s realignment. “Its just a pure money grab,” he said, adding: According to Media Matters, 82% of online media and commentary is right-wing or right-leaning. So thats where the biggest audience is. And yes, weve seen a similar shift (not always as severe though) with other comedian commentators. Joe Rogan being one of the best known. In his earlier days, he supported Bernie Sanders and had on guests like me occasionally. Now hes endorsing Trump and having guests like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Interviewing bigger, more sociopathic celebrities is where the golden clicks are.” Whatever the reason—be it conviction, a religious awakening, a money grab, or a calculated attempt to find new allies amid multiple sexual assault and rape scandals—it is clear that Russell Brand has undergone a dramatic political shift. While he may have lost an entire audience on the left, his pivot to the right, which has seen him embrace Trump, Fox News stars, and the Republican Party, has netted him many friends in high places. Whether they can protect him in the future remains to be seen. Feature photo | Russell Brand leaves Southwark Crown Court where he is charged with rape and sexual assault in London, May 30, 2025. Alastair Grant | AP Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod. The post From Revolution to Revival: Russell Brand Embraces Trump and Israel appeared first on MintPress News.

[Category: Foreign Affairs, Investigations, Top Story, Christian right, Donald Trump, GOP, Greta Thunberg, Nigel Farage, Political realignment, Pro-Israel politics, Russell Brand, Tommy Robinson, Turning Point USA]

As of 12/14/25 2:59am. Last new 12/9/25 11:29am.