 From people to a live episode of The Watchdog with me, Lowkey, as you know, at Mint Press, we provide you regularly with confrontational investigative journalism, which you find nowhere in the mainstream media. For that reason, I would encourage you all to support us now on Indiegogo, on Patreon, and other places where you can access Mint Press's vital and important work. In addition to that, I would say please like, share and subscribe with this video. Now this week we have a special episode in which we are joined by the editor-in-chief of Mint Press, Manara Adli, and also we are hoping to be joined by Joe Luria from Consortium News regarding this recent campaign against independent news websites where they have seen their services not only cut off but it seemed initially the seizure of their money taking place by the very important app PayPal. It's happened along with other organizations who have an independent line on US foreign policy and the activities of NATO around the world. It would be great to get Joe's perspective. We hope he will be joining us momentarily, but firstly, we can speak to Manara and bring her in to explain to us what exactly has happened with Mint Press's PayPal account. We will get Manara on to the screen in a second, Manara, if you can join us, fantastic. We can't actually hear you. Thank you so much, Lowkey, for hosting today's live stream. We were contacted by PayPal late last week notifying myself and Mint Press that we could no longer use PayPal permanently and that they would hold our funds for 180 days. In fact, after 180 days, there would be an investigation on our funds and they could seize that amount, any balance that we would have, they would seize that and so we were the first to announce that PayPal had banned us and then later we learned that Caleb Moppen, he's an independent journalist formerly with Artido and then also Joe Loria, who's joining us today from Consortium News, their website was banned from PayPal as well and so PayPal banning myself and Mint Press is blatant censorship of dissenting journalists and outlets and there's no question that for the past decade Mint Press has been unapologetically working as a watchdog and journalism outlet to expose the profiteers of the permanent war state going back from the wars to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, to apartheid Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestine and Saudi Arabia's genocidal war in Yemen, to the many regime change operations in Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela, where we have seen US weapons flooding these nations to plunge them into devastating civil wars and right now we've entered war time with the war in Ukraine raging on and so we have, we're living now in an intellectual no fly zone where online censorship has basically become the new norm against dissenting journalism and so what we believe has happened is that the US sanctions regime that is trying to starve Russia that's trying to starve Venezuela's and Bobway Cuba and Iran and over 25% of the world's population is now targeting its own citizens with its maximum pressure campaign so that we are forced to toe the official line in order to survive as journalists in independent media today. Yeah and two questions Manar. Firstly, as far as I understood initially, mint presses funds that were kept within PayPal were seized. What is the status of the mint press funds within PayPal now? So we received a notice from PayPal actually just two days ago notifying us that our funds can be released now we can access our own funds and that we can transfer them back to our bank account. So this obviously goes in contrast to the original message from last week that they would be they would be held for 108 days and be under investigation. So what I believe what I believe has happened is that it was from the outpouring and swell of support that we have received over the weekend. PayPal was actually trending on Twitter because of our announcement and consortium news announcement that PayPal had banned and seized our accounts and so now across the you know Twitter sphere of conversations our ban and the ban against independent journalists and media outlets was a big discussion and conversation so we really appreciate everybody who had come out to support us and to defend us. The coverage of this made it to many news outlets and we were interviewed by several you know pundits like Matt Taibi and so we got some very positive coverage about this and I just want to mention too that over the weekend there was the correspondence dinner at the White House when we were banned from PayPal and while all independent media outlets pretty much every single one of them had covered mid-press being banned not a single corporate mainstream media outlet or pundit had covered the fact that on press freedom day PayPal was seizing the funds and accounts of independent media outlets they were whining and dining at the White House talking about press freedom talking about how they are acting as watchdogs to the powers that be how they were basically engaging successfully as the fourth estate meanwhile not a single word was talked about when it came to PayPal's ban and of course they're sitting there whining and dining talking about this while on press freedom day with no mention of course of the fact that Julie Nassan just sitting behind bars for his amazing work at WikiLeaks in exposing the national security state and war crimes and of course all of these pundits and all of these journalists that were at this correspondence dinner have had no problem promoting the permanent war state and promoting a NATO agenda when it comes to the war in Ukraine they are continuously promoting a nuclear war with Russia and cheerleading that on as if it's nothing and so we really appreciate all the support that we've received from the independent media welcome Joe and we've been joined by Joe from consortium news it's worth mentioning that in several countries consortium news's website has gone down Joe what is the later thank you for joining us in this what must be a very tense time what is the latest update on the status of consortium news and its presence on the internet around the world well thank you very much a little key for having me here I apologize for coming on late and for the video quality I normally use a green screen and a studio light but we've been on and off with our web post to try to get our website back on and we have an enormous technical problems we don't really know the reason for this I cannot say that we were this was some kind of an attack at this point it could be another technical issue but we're trying to resolve that we're periodically coming on and off stream in different countries that go google chat at the moment shows two people who are online one in Brazil and one in Serbia I'd like to get in touch with those two people see what's going on why they are so privileged no I think that's all screwed up as well but as Menard pointed out we got exactly the same message as she did and the others McLeod and the others that meant press news which said for no reason whatsoever that they shut us down and they were holding our funds and it was a permanent limitation which is the word they're using a permanent ban we can never use PayPal ever again and I called a customer service agent I actually got a human being and I think she gave away a little more than she actually wanted to or should have because she did say that in fact they were holding the funds they would hold it for up to 80 180 days after which they would make an assessment about whether they returned the funds to us or not and that they could award themselves damages now I looked up the the legal language and the user agreement and indeed they if they could hold on to these funds if they're somehow liable for anything that we may have done illegally that implicated them because they were involved as the as the payment system and that if you look at the things that are banned you know obviously you can't sell firearms drugs drug paraphernalia you can't promote or use the money for terror you know felonies essentially so clearly we were not involved in any of that I don't think they thought we're involved in any of that because we don't know because they didn't say what we were involved in but then if you keep looking it does say that amongst the restricted activities is providing quote a false or misleading information close quote to PayPal to other PayPal customers or to a third party which could be the public our audience our readers though we could only assume given the political climate that we're in that was the reason why we were shut down of course PayPal has this relationship with the american defamation league just as Facebook has one with Atlantic Council they should be yes a public utility they should be independent neutral just facilitating a service but no they've taken on this role of of managing information that any information that goes against them the only narrative that's allowed especially on the ukrain war that's being enforced you know you can disagree with us you could say we're full of crap that's fine and you don't have to read our website why who were these people to shut us down to try to shut us down it's because they're afraid of a little spark a spark like mint press news like consorted we have 10 000 readers a day and it went up to 40 during the once the ukrain war started there was a lot of hunger for a different point of view which we are constitutionally protected to provide it's simply a point of view again you don't have to agree with us but just leave us alone but no they're not leaving us alone they have to try to crush even the slightest little bit of dissent yet lest those sparks become a fire and this is total control of a narrative and the word total is in totalitarian so i hate to use these extreme words censorship fascism totalitarianism well i'm going to use the t word because i think this is a totalitarian uh thrust that we're uh that minara and i and others are victims of because they will not tolerate another viewpoint of this war and what is our viewpoint on this war we're not supporting either side in this war that's the problem probably we're not standing with ukraine we're not standing with russia we're trying to give the causes of the war you know we have had published many many articles on ukraine for which we've been praised as well as brownly condemned and what are those articles essentially seek is to explain the causes of this war now you have an historian all the most historians today will say that the vessai treaty was one of the call and the onerous terms on germany was one of the causes for the rise of nazis in world war two that's not excusing but nazi germany did clearly but you're not allowed to do that in real time i.e journalism where you explain what were the causes of that and what were the causes yes the unbridled NATO expansionism eastward that broke the agreement that gorbachev was given the the fact that the russia presented in 2009 and again in december of last year proposals in last december treaty proposals with the u.s and nato that would just create a new security architecture in europe that would take russia's security into account in other words take out nato troops that were deployed in the east and european new nato states not that they would leave nato but that there will be no deployment and these missiles in poland and in romania would be also removed because they have offensive potentiality and very close minutes from moscow and other russian cities they also were pushing the minstercords that was an agreement that ended the that was supposed to end the war that the coup regime and by the way we're not allowed to talk about the coup 2014 coup of which there's abundant circumstantial evidence and a smoking gun of the u.s and the secretary of assistant secretary of state victoria newland speaking with the american ambassador ukraine which they discussed who would be in a new government in ukraine maybe months before that government was violently overthrown in an unconstitutional change of government a man janikovic whatever you thought of him victor janikovic was his election was certified by the organization of security cooperation in europe the osce i even once questioned the president of the the head of the osce at that time i was based at the un for 25 years and when the ukraine thing broke out i had was able to question uh an angry yatsenok yatsenok was the guy that victor newland wanted to put in and he got put in as the prime minister so that cannot be discussed the 2014 us back coup the us involvement in that violent overthrow second of all you cannot really talk about the role of naziism in ukraine which is clearly the mainstream media reported all of that at the time there's no doubt that ukraine is probably the only state in the world that has incorporated neo-nazi battalions and a regiment into their own state military in part under the under the control of the interior ministry um and the minsk accords you can't discuss or these nato proposals and the mint what happened after the coup of course was that the coup government went to war against its own people which were russian speakers in the east of the country bordering russia in the dombas region who resisted the coup they had voted for janikovic they didn't recognize this no government they declared independence the war began went on for eight years there was this minsk accord to try to end it and germany and and france were parties to that and the us those three countries never really pressured the governments in kiev to implement those accords so that's all we're talking russia felt threatened you can't say that they felt threatened by nato expansion they felt threatened by this war against their own speakers in in the dombas region they felt threatened by the fact that ukraine had become a de facto nato state where they were being armed trained and had joint exercises with nato nations so i we do not say that the invasion i think it was a mistake because i wrote in february four this was a trap that the us was setting for russia by by instigating a new offensive against the dombas russian speakers and that was clearly happening by osce maps and statistics that most of the shelling was happening from the government side into the dombas region across the line of confrontation had been there for eight years and russia would have to make a choice to sacrifice those people to be slaughtered or to go in and and uh and protect them and i said as soon as they go in to protect them that's going to be the invasion that the americans were screaming about remember those weeks before evasion evasion evasion and then they would be able to institute their information war which they have and we're part of i think we're victims of that both minar and and i and uh the economic war especially which was unprecedented sanctions against russia the russian central bank against the exports of raw materials that are desperately needed not only in the developing world but in the west as well that's driving this inflation which yes was already existent but has increased and is costing western politicians a lot of anger amongst their own population whereas russia joining with india and china as well as most of africa and latin america in rejecting these sanctions and joining this economic war that russia and china are building a new uh commercial monetary and financial system separating themselves from the west is the west has cut their nose off despite their face because the globalization that america was driving is weakened because they're losing most of the world most of the world's population it's not standing with the united states on this i'll just stop by saying it's a proxy war of the u.s these are the kinds of things that everything i've just said are the articles that we are publishing that somehow people have paid pal for whatever reason and they won't explain didn't think was um uh was something that could make them liable for publishing what they call this information and that's why i believe they shut us down and probably mint press news as well and what we have is the partial victory because our funds were released and as soon as i heard about that immediately took everything out of front paypal but they have not restored us they've now asked us to take steps to get it restored whereas before we were permanently banned and there were no steps that you could take so i'm going to ask them i don't know if i'm going to get any clear answers about what the reason was i doubt they'll admit that it was because of the things that we published could i could i just add a quick point to what you were saying about this crackdown on dissenters right now there's clearly a major heavy-handed witch hunt taking place against dissenting journalists to control the narrative about the war in ukraine and i do think it is because of what you said joe that we are living in an era with a in a declining u.s empire where the united states is winning the war or losing the war excuse me overseas and so right now we have the new york times writing smear campaigns against dissenting journalists like benjamin norton and saying that it's a conspiracy theory that there was a coup in uh 2016 the made on coup it was not it was not a 14 yeah 14 it was not a coup and then now we have the daily beast that just came out with a hit piece against max blumenthal danie haypong i believe benjamin norton was in there as well and lee camp and it smeared all of those independent journalists and treated them with suspect because they reported on many of the statements that the facts that you just stated now calling the 2014 made on coup a coup reporting on the azov battalion and the fact that ukraine is one of the only countries that has literal nazis um represented in their government and then also in the military and also treating them as suspect because they're turning to their readers and their viewers for for funding but in fact the new york times or like the washington post for example which is owned by jeff basos and has this major conflict of interest that were you know has contracts with the cia and other media outlets like you know buzzfeed or vice news that work directly with the board of broadcasting governors with public which is like a legal arm of the u.s. government to publish you know propaganda that's okay but to turn to your readers and to be people funded that's not okay and so we're just really seeing this major witch hunt against independent journalists and you know it's exhausting but we have to continue to push back and that's why we really appreciate you being here and speaking up and telling us your story today oh absolutely yes absolutely um and thank you so much joe for coming you know we understand it must be a really tough time um to even be able to come and speak to us you know i think the important thing to understand about the anti-deformation league and their link with paypal is that prior to them obtaining this status with paypal they had a silicon valley command center funded for them by pp pr omija now pp omija is not only a large shareholder in paypal but he's also the founder of ebay ebay which used to own paypal um of course from using that silicon valley command center as a sort of launchpad that adl were put in place as one of youtube's trusted flaggers you also have them with serious links with google google is part of the adl's silicon valley anti-cyber hate working group so this is really significant level of integration of course the adl is the largest um nongovernmental trainer of law enforcement in this in the united states is deeply deeply entrenched um relationships with the fbi um and regarding this particular paypal relationship we know that it was announced um july 26 2021 that this partnership was to quote fight extremism and hate through the financial industry and across at-risk communities um in addition to that it said that paypal and adl have launched a research effort to address the urgent need to understand how extremists and hate movements throughout the us are attempting to leverage financial platforms to fund criminal activity the intelligence gathered through this research initiative will be shared broadly across the financial industry and with policymakers and with law enforcement you know we know that in fbi internal memos um as early as 1969 they were questioning whether the anti-defamation league were in violation of the foreign agents the registration or foreign agents law in the united states and it was said in this fbi memo and i quote directly it is incredible to assume that the adl is not furnished to an official of the israeli government so despite that from 1968 the fbi were officially cooperating with the adl the adl historically infiltrated arab student groups they infiltrated and spied on anti-apartheid organizations they spied on desmond tutu they spied on greenpeace as well so what we see is this sort of outsourcing of the state's um surveillance um pushes to an organization like the anti defamation league and of course mattaebi approached uh jonathan greenblatt the head of the adl about this and also paypal's chief risk officer asking what was going on regarding mint press and consortium news and others and he received no response um i think it would also be important to ask you you have said previously that the this story sort of begins in 2010 with paypal shutting down the account of wiki leaks can you explain what you mean by that please so in 2010 paypal originally blocked wiki leaks from receiving any sort of donations and there is no question that they received that as a direct order from the state department from the u.s. government so the backlash against wiki leaks literally became the blueprint for today's censorship of dissenting voices and economic financial censorship we're seeing now that's taking place against independent journalists in 2012 an eu parliamentary resolution criticized providers including paypal against this arbitrary economic censorship and so right now with like the war in ukraine uh raging on we're seeing the switch hunt taking place against dissenting journalists and that really when when wiki leaks was targeted that really became the framework to um the kind of censorship we saw leading up you know to other online censorship and purges of online or independent uh news and journalists that led to outlets like propernot for example um ahead of the 2016 election when hillary clinton basically declared that she lost because of russia she lost because of russian bots online and russian propaganda and russian disinformation and that wiki leaks she accused wiki leaks of also being a russian disinformation outlet and so we saw the rise of propernot which stands for propaganda or not and it might as well you know represent the interests of the state department and the pentagon because if you look at propernot in the way that it targets journalists it basically says that if you criticize obama if you criticize hillary clinton if you criticize the democratic party if you are critical of nato the mainstream media or express any worry okay worry about a nuclear war with russia then you could be a russian disinformation agent and so uh how propernot got its rise was after uh wiki leaks was targeted and basically the democratic party through hillary clinton declared uh that there was a problem in america which was russian disinformation then obviously we saw you know russia gait play out for the next like basically decade um but uh uh propernot uh we saw its rise after the washington post covered propernot and covered propernot's list of websites which included mint press news it included black agenda report and other independent media outlets um kind of consortium news and consortium that's right they did add consortium news in there and also with a bunch of you know very far right wing conspiratorial websites they kind of mash us all together um and the story basically went viral from the washington post we have to remember washington post is owned by just jeff basis another billionaire and so after the story went um viral the reason why we have to really be worrisome about propernot is because after that story went viral we saw facebook purge thousands of pages um that were critical of us empire that were critical of the us police state many of those that were purged were on propernot's list so that list was taken very seriously um by uh the establishment within big tech and part of our um coverage of propernot is that we believe and we don't know 100 percent but we believe it is run by michael wise um he is a very hawkish uh he's a non hawkish uh neoliberal he's a non resident senior fellow of nato um the nato think tank uh the atlantic council and so um this also triggered google to launch its project owl which was a massive overhaul of its algorithm which ended up resulting in mint press losing 90 percent of its organic google traffic um and other websites i know consortium news lots lost a lot of traffic as well but it resulted in the purging of independent dissenting websites also far right and conspiratorial websites that happened as well but it also affected the way that big tech targeted um indie websites through its algorithm and we saw that firsthand with how we were treated idol consortium was as well yes um and you know the thing with propernot is a brilliant mint press investigation looked at the administrative dashboard of um uh found scanned propernot and found the administrative dashboard was actually belonged to interpreter mag dot com that of course is a project of the atlantic council and as you said manar michael wise is the editor in chief at the interpreter mag and also natural national security analyst for cnn um so propernot included consortium news among these 200 uh websites which were supposedly according to them russian propaganda outlets joe do you remember when this happened and what was the direct effect on consortium news's operations when that happened uh robert parry our founding editor 1995 found a consortium news one of the oldest if not the oldest independent news site in the country if not in the world we came online five days before salon dot com just to give you an idea months before the la times in new york times went online 1995 a long time ago bob of course was famous because of his uh iran contra reporting he's the one who revealed oliver nord's role the ap actually spiked that story it only went out because it was inadvertently uh translated and went out on the ap spanish wire uh which of course is read all across latin america uh and nicaragua included so the ap had to publish it that's how that story got out now he went to newsweek after i was angry and the same thing happened there that was spiking his stories that were critical of the reagan administration or the u.s farm policy in general so he quit that and started news for uh journalists that's why it's called consortium a consortium of journalists whose articles were also spiked by the corporate media because they were too critical even though they were true uh and he brought together journalists and he started uh this website that broke a lot of new stories we were consort news was in the forefront of debunking the wmd story in iraq and certainly in russia gate bob was one of the first aramate has credited him for having inspired him and led him to do his work on russia gate i wrote a lot of russia gate stories for them i started writing for consortium news in 2012 when i was still a wall street journal reporter i have a corporate media background like bob did i worked for the boston globe the sunday times of london the wall street journal based at the un in new york for 25 years um uh and i couldn't get stories in the journal and say there was a vote at the general assembly about the palestinians becoming an observance state and i kept writing stories saying that um that there were there were 130 countries in the world that recognized palestine there some of them had ambassadors in their countries and they kept cutting that out of my stories you know so i got fed up and i contacted bob perry and i said i want to write this story and he took it and so i had a contract with the journal i wasn't on the staff so i there was no prohibition for me for writing for other publications uh even though i had a monthly retainer with the journal and they never discovered that till the very end that i was writing for them that was one of the reasons they got rid of me it was best thing ever happened to get out of the wall street journal obviously had many battles with them not everything i picked my spots but that was that is what consortium is all about so when proper not did that bob was still alive and he was the editor so i don't really know the effects of that i can't talk about that but can i ask minora question uh after proper not came something else that also went after you called news guard could you tell us about that yeah yeah so news guard came after mint press shortly after i think what proper not did was basically set up the stage for um online censorship uh through these big tech platforms and so what news guard did is they contacted me um to ask me uh you know these questions about you know why we cover why we cover iran and why we're pro Assad and really like really bizarre kind of framed questions that were pretty loaded which showed me that they had an agenda and so um i contacted our main senior staff writer at that time which was whitney web and i said hey we need to look into this organization they sent me these really shady questions and so we looked at them and we basically discovered that uh news guard is a uh a browser plugin that was being uh launched by this company called news guard that was directed by former cia director michael hayden former secretary of homeland security tom ridge and self-described chief propagandist for the obama state department richard stengel and so these are the very people that brought us the wars in iraq in afghanistan the patriot act the war on terror uh the crisis that we're seeing right now in ukraine and it was part of their so-called defending democracy initiative um that they wanted to fight fake news and what their goals are for uh news guard is to rank websites based on you know are they presenting fake news or truthful information and of course the way this organization is set up is that it's set up and founded by uh the architects of the iraq war and the you know wars in iraq and afghanistan and and the chief writers of the patriot act and so we knew that we could not trust them but what they're trying to do is trying to make this uh browser plugin uh built in to all technological devices across the united states they're already working with microsoft now to get uh news guard to be on every single microsoft device they're working with the u.s government to get news guard uh browser plugin to be in all public libraries and what this could mean for independent journalism since we were ranked by news guard we received a red check mark right or a red x i should say whereas the new york times the washington post even voice of america the the the media outlets that are directly funded by us the u.s government through the board of broadcasting governors which is basically a legal arm of u.s propaganda they all received green check marks okay so there's like a rating system based on color codes just like the war on terror you know red is dangerous green is you know safe um and and now they're going after independent media outlets and treating us as suspect and why this is so dangerous is because actually news guard partnered up with the gallop with gallop and they actually did a study and they found that if a website gets the green rating people are likely to share that website's information but if that website gets a red rating then 70% of people are likely to not share that website they're because they would be worried it would not be shared another reason why this is very worrisome is because if you get the red rating news guard will also advocate for financial institutions to block funding and advertising from your website because you're not trustworthy enough you could be a dis you know accused of being a disinformation agent or spreading disinformation for russia whatever it is so it really is a scary you know scary times for um independent journalism especially now with the new announcement of this ministry of truth that's being launched by that's being head uh and led by the department of homeland security and so i don't know what's ahead for us but it really is scary times yes absolutely and i think an important thing for people to remember about news guard is that it's uh it's funding comes from publicist group which has you know is a a massive it's the third largest global communications company um it's present in over a hundred uh countries it's got you know revenue of about 10 billion dollars um a year generally and you know it's top clients range from uh phyza to starbucks proctor and gamble mcdonald's burger king and you know governments like saudi arabia and australia um the the venture itself is you know from a partnership between steven brill and lewis gordon crovitz now crovitz worked at the wall street journal he also worked to the dow jones um but in addition to that he's a member of the council on foreign relations and was also um a a a contributor to books published by the american enterprise institute which of course was instrumental in the u.s. invasion of iraq so here we have really quite serious conflicts of interest of this organization which is claiming to defend um uh truth you know and the one of the amazing things that i saw was them applying this green rating to the voice of america using the argument that the voice of america legally within the united states is bound supposedly to um report the truth so here we have you know a sort of disfiguring of truth on an industrial scale and these organizations are the instruments through which that is able to happen i also wanted to ask you joe um how did it feel the other day to see somebody like trevor knower at the uh the winding and dining um at the white house next to joe biden talking about you know freedom of the press and how people in the united states should feel deeply privileged that they are a part of this exceptional society which allows that you know freedom of uh of the press especially while julien assange has been languishing he suffered a stroke um a few months ago this man is languishing in belmarsh in this country where we have seen the the complete state capture of the judiciary with major conflicts of interest that work throughout what has happened to him there it's been ruled in uh the british courts that he will be extradited to the united states despite the fact that a previous judge came to the conclusion that he was at a serious suicide risk if um if i should like it should i play that should i play the video for you guys do you guys want me to play it before we answer that question absolutely just because it's so ridiculous okay one second let's get this on here yeah so manard is about to play this clip of trevor noah um whining and dining with biden among others and pontificating about the freedom of the press in the united states every single one of you whether you like it or not is a bastion of democracy and if you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities if you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is look no further than what's happening in ukraine look at what's happening there journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what's really happening you realize how amazing it is like in america you you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth even if it makes people in power uncomfortable even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable understand how amazing that is i stood here tonight and i made fun of the president of the united states and i'm going to be fine i'm going to be fine right like do you like do you really understand what a blessing it is maybe it's happened for so long that you it might slip your mind it's a blessing in fact here ask yourself this question honestly ask yourself this question if if russian journalists who are losing their livelihoods as you were talking about steve and their freedom for daring to report on what their own government is doing if they had the freedom to write any words to show any stories or to ask any questions if they had basically what you have would they be using it's in the same way that you do ask yourself that question every day because you have one of the most important roles in the world thank you so much for having me i appreciate you look at that look at that well enough of that enough of that self-satisfied self-congratulatory bullshit joe how did you feel watching that uh i just ate something before i came on here and it's about coming up in my throat right now so i have to say i don't appreciate what manard just did because on my stomach is very queasy look i haven't watched this i'm trying to be polite this where a white house correspondence dinner for years i don't watch it uh because i know what it is the last time i actually remember seeing something that i liked was steven colbert when he took the piss out of the journalists uh around the gulf war but don't forget that was when the republicans were empowered that's okay you know you mentioned a democratic party before uh okay and that is this is not the party of fdr anymore there are still democrats who think that it hasn't been the party of fdr since bill clinton moved the party to the right with his democratic leadership council honey Blair moved the labor part to the right with new labor exact same process but it's even worse now because in the 2016 election we saw the migration of the neocons which were firmly in the republican party in the george w bush administration to the democratic party to back hillary clinton so if you want to know which party does worse and they're both horrible and we are very it's a easy for us to be an armed partisan which gets what it moves is because we hate both parties so it's not a conflict for us you look at where the neocons reside and they reside in the democratic party right now so when trevano got up there in fact i didn't know about his speech because as i said i personally boycott this thing uh until an hour in my day uh tweet and it said and he quoted him and then it said accept he didn't quote him he just paraphrased what he said except if you're drilling the saunch you have this freedom so i thought wow trevano actually used his opportunity to stand up for a saunch against them so then i played the clip and well where's the saunch the way aron had written it i thought that he was mentioning a saunch and he didn't so that is a disgraceful performance by him i think um i stopped watching the daily show a long time ago uh not since john stewart was on and he was sometimes good but so i can't really pass my judge around trevano but uh i can on what that clip you just played and i'm choosing because i have to go to the to the bathroom and bar for right now so one thing joe also you know you had quite an interesting angle on the permanent war state within the us when you were covering the work of madeline all bright between 1993 and 1997 you know this is somebody who of course um said that the sanctions on iraq which some estimates have killing over a million people you know she was asked were the deaths of half a million iraqi children worth it and to which she responded that it was worth it so joe could you tell us a bit or what it was like to be personally around madeline all bright during those years well that's right her memorial service was last wednesday i believe and uh so i was thinking all right in this piece when she died if that was a news hook we also ran a couple of other pieces about her that day yeah i was uh corresponded at that time i think for the german press agency dpa and the daily telegraph in london that was before i worked for the globe in the journal but so madeline all bright is somebody who i was very closely involved in as a correspondent covering her and i had a lot of interactions with her and some of them really stuck them in these are recollections that are almost 30 years old now and yet they've never left me and yes i mentioned of course that statement about the 500 000 children dying and it was worth it and i remembered the reaction at the un it was everyone was shocked by that i mean un officials diplomats from various countries even american allies like a european diplomat i can't even name a knock i think he's still alive but i was at a background briefing with him uh with other reporters and he called her an intellectual lightweight this is a very close ally of the united states so even amongst those countries that were locked up with the u.s at the un security council they didn't like her at least this ambassador and i remember that that was supposed to stay in the room then but within a few hours i heard it circulating in the card is that uh this ambassador called alberta intellectual lightweight and uh she would have been really hurt by that because she tried to project this image of the strong woman uh who can be just as tough and smart as any male diplomat uh you know she also was trying to get the press to project that she would invite reporters like myself and two or three others with jamie rubin who was her spokesperson at the time who later became the state department spokesman um to go out to drinks at a bar near the un and so you know they know how to try to finesse the reporters but um uh she really loved going to a butchers butchers scaly egyptian secretary general who i covered also at that time and he i put him not in the same category but very close or at least on the list this short list with dag hammershaw is the only secretary secretary general in history that actually tried to stand up to all the both superpowers during the cold war that would have been the soviets and the americans as dag hammershaw did and it probably cost him his life when his plane went down in africa and with butchers scaly who stood up to the united states which at that time was the soul just became the sole superpower because the soviet union had had fallen uh just a few years before that so uh he actually had the guts to stand up to the us and she um was awful to him and tried to bring him down and did the us vetoed his second term and she was uh uh saying that she would be friendly to him but then break his legs after that and uh so he wrote a scathing portrayal of melano brian in his memoir and vanquished a us un saw that the serbs at the time also despised her but when she went uh she because she was one of the uh as the un ambassador advised the us to allow the ethnic serbs ethnic cleansing of 200 000 serbs from croatia during those days of the balkan wars and when she went to uh that area of carina in croatia after which it was stoned by remaining her car was stoned by remaining serbs so this was the portrait i played of this woman and i also ended it with the fact that she i she came back to the un many years later around 2014 and i went to this small conference room with her and she had a young female aide there and she just treated her abominably you know just was basically glaring at her and pointing at her water glass saying you know fill it without saying any words and this is the woman who said that it's a special place in hell for any woman who doesn't support hillard clinton for president the champion feminist mistreating a young uh wrong over aid there uh she wasn't a pleasant person i waited a month till she died to say rude things about her so i thought that was sufficient time uh i mean absolutely you know yours is a vital and seasoned perspective you know and as someone that has observed u.s politics you have an example several months ago i was looking into abby martin's confrontation with nancy polosi and asking her about the leaving out of alms carbon emissions from the negotiations at the the cop negotiations and what i found was that both nancy polosi and the other congressman on the stage who attempted to answer abby martin's questions both had packs that were funded by rathion by lockheed martin by arms companies and what i also found was that across these these packs that dominate u.s politics the arms companies put loads of money everywhere so in a system like this can we really say that the united states is far from being the ideal democracy which it must import to the rest of the world when you have this sort of system of legalized bribery when you have what sheldon wallin called inverted totalitarianism meaning we have no choice of voting against the interests of rathion or lockheed martin you know with your experience joe would you say the united states has any claim to call itself a democracy well the short answer is no but it is more complicated than that there is a system of representative government there are elections but even the elections have been so tainted now since the 2001 in florida really since then there hasn't been one that wasn't contested that wasn't controversial that didn't have a lot of allegations around including the john carrey george bush one whether there was some tampering with the computer there you know so even that part of it and that's just a one small part of a democracy you have to have an independent judiciary you need to have separation between the military and civilians we still more or less have that in the u.s so there are still elements of that but when it comes and by the way i thank the pentagon for saving our lives so far because they're the ones who are tamping down all this madness from the press and from some democrats and other members of congress and republicans included who who are trying to push a war against russia a no fly zone sending polish planes in there now pouring so much so many guns in there and this a this kinsinger's bill where they could be triggered war with russia and this absolute blasé attitude towards nuclear war which is scaring the hell out of any sentient being uh so the u.s system is corrupted by money you gave some examples there of which there are many the whole political system is absolutely corrupt both parties are bought and sold there's very very few really independent voices in congress and if you get one more or less like a bernie sanders who was very disappointing for a lot of people but he was still he was what i would call fdr democrat which given what we've got at the democratic part today is huge progress but he was crushed the first time as we know from wiki leaks by the the machinations of the dnc and the second time when obama called the others and said drop out because we gotta we gotta have a centrist by the way if you go back till november of the previous year of the election 20 2019 all these democratic operatives will wheeled out on the on msnbc and seen and saying no joban doesn't have it anymore it looks like there's some mental debilitation there so they were trying to push harris or butte jag or then clube char became the flavor of the month of new york times kind of pushing none of them got traction bernie was killing them he won the first two primaries usually that when you win ohamshir and i or that's like you ticket to the nomination and yet they had to find some centrist so apparent obama got on the phone to him all would you accept elizabeth warren by the way because she would siphon some votes from bernie and then guess who became the nominee the guy that they had previously said didn't have it anymore and you could see uh his mental condition right now it's kind of sad to see a guy up there like that and it's also dangerous because of the what i just discussed about nuclear war etc so it's not a uh a functioning democracy and the wider sense certainly it's not a direct democracy but even as a representative democracy it's corrupted by money uh so that real independent voices are shut out and you're co-opted and when you i wrote a book senator microvel who died last year and he gave me many many insights into how the congress works and uh and even in those days in the 1970s the pressure but there was a lot more vocal and independent kind of congress then you had real independent voices there uh that's gone i mean that congress is was a dream compared to what we've got now so america is not spreading democracy around the world anyone who believes that needs to go back to kindergarten and learn the alphabet again they are spreading a geostrategic and economic interests uh spreading a neoliberal let me call chilean liberal i mean economic system neoliberal is not political because the republicans are neoliberal it just means you don't want government inside it's laissez-faire what used to be called laissez-faire there's a lot of confusion america about neoliberal means they're not talking about political liberals we're talking about economic liberalism and that is what is being spread and instituted everywhere and then you've got the neocons are particularly disastrous everywhere they've gone they've left behind a trail of destruction and huge margins for the defense contractors and others absolutely that's not the only motive they want to bring down governments that are standing in the way of the united states unilateral power that's written in their founding document project for new american century the president of which was robert kagan whose wife is victoria newland who was the motivating force behind the ukraine coup in 2014 and has a hand in this war again as she is obama she has an opposition obama state department now is well by the way her grandfather is from ukraine from the besarabia region of ukraine bordering now on romania moldova and this her grandfather was kicked out by a tsarist program against jews horrible he went to settle in the bronx in new york where i grew up and her grandfather was you know psychologically abused by the grandfather and one could argue that maybe newland's you know animosity towards russia goes back to those what happened in ukraine uh that doesn't all that doesn't completely explain her but the neocons are in the democratic party they're driving a disastrous and dangerous foreign policy that could lead to a nuclear annihilation right now and i don't say that lightly on barbary wrote a piece back in 2015 about that the ukraine situation and the russian us tension and russia gate which is really the beginning of this the beginning of what we're talking about what this whole program is about about the suppression of an independent voice in the media goes started really in a big way in russia gate and then also the pressure and tensions leading to russia began there in a big way and then with the coup first the coup and then russia gate and barb wrote at that time this could you want to have a nuclear war over ukraine and i thought he was going over the top but that's articles unbelievable prescient that that's what we're talking about uh when she was here to see that he was right about well i'm he would be horrified as we all are uh but it's not a democracy in a sense that we would want it to be and they're not spreading democracy they're spreading their system of a repressive system a political um neoconservativism and economic neoliberalism and trying to stop any powers that get in their way and that would be russia and china primarily and they're putting you on noise pressure on india too because they're not joining in with the american side the non-aligned movement which is having a kind of resurgence now is another target as it was in the first cold war of the united states and so they want no obstacles and i think sometimes they act like this is the china of 30 years ago or the rusher of the yeltsin age is what they want to reconstitute biden has made it clear regime change in moscow is the purpose of this he not only blurted it out in poland set it directly and they try to walk it back but he said it in the february 24 press conference the day of the russian invasion he was asked why do you think the sanctions would work now and they didn't prevent the invasion he said the sanctions were never meant to to uh prevent the invasion it's to show the russian people cause pain show them what he has done to them that's what this is all about so he being Putin this is to get the russian people to rise up again this is the whole idea of why they wanted russia to invade in my opinion because they would not been able to unleash this economic war and information war to bring down the government of russia this is what the end game is and they're using ukrainians to die and fight for them as a proxy war and they're not going to give up they're not going to go into negotiations ukraine could have perhaps gotten out of this if they agreed to give up Crimea and the dumb best and to put in their constitution that they're a neutral country that will never join NATO that's what the terms that russia offered but and i think there were maybe Zelensky wanted to do that he said so but then five minutes later said he didn't and then five minutes later he changed his mind again so what pressure was he under from virus johnson from the state department from maybe neo-nazis inside ukraine not to give in to the russian said fight to the death and and risk nuclear war this is where we're at and in the meantime shut up voices like mint press news and the sort of news that are trying to explain this that's all we're trying to do i'll explain this not promoting or taking a side of the government you know we're not allowed to do that but we are still doing it but they don't want us to and and manara you wanted to make a comment about this wall street journal uh peace about nuclear war yeah so uh at mint press we conducted a study about uh the authors of the many uh pro nato um articles that have that are you know um that are taking a foot in the mainstream corporate media and one of those outlets that we studied was the wall street journal and as joe pointed out uh these outlets are openly you know promoting the idea of nuclear war with russia and this is a perfect example of how uh an article written by seth krobsi who is a lobbyist right he's a lobbyist for the hudston institute one of the most hawkish and most dangerous lobby think tanks actually in the united states that promotes a cold war with russia he has written this article here the us should show it can win a nuclear war and part of our coverage or study of these authors um that have written these opinion pieces in the wall street journal in the new york times in the washington post is that 90 of these authors that are promoting a cold war with russia who are promoting nato who are basically uh painting pootland as hitler incarnate are tied to lobbyist groups um that are funded uh by uh nato themselves so this guy i mean i i his uh background his he served as an assistant to the secretary of defense in the reagan administration and as deputy uh under secretary of the navy for policy in 1984 where he was responsible for maritime strategy strategic education defense reorganization and special operations capabilities he was commissioned as an officer in the naval reserve and during the george bush um administration krobsi served as principal deputy assistant secretary of gen defense for special operations and low intensity conflicts um he also worked as a propagandist within the u.s government in 2005 he served as a director of international broadcasting for the u.s government and now he's currently a senior fellow at the hudson institute and director of hudson center for american seapower and so when it comes to a functioning democracy we cannot have a functioning democracy with a mainstream corporate media that represents the interests of the permanent war state that is funded uh that are people that are funded uh directly by nato funded think tanks and uh receiving money from weapons manufacturers the whole point of having a free press is to act as a watchdog to those in power to represent the interests of uh the people that's what having a fourth estate is not the way that trevor noah thinks um that the free press should act as so um and that's why there's such a heavy-handed crackdown on dissent is to control this kind of narrative and to ensure that any sort of alternative narrative to the war machine completely disappears and of course the hudson institute is also funded by the world's second largest arms company raytheon so there we have it um you know people do what a coincidence all over the place are trying to essentially push us into a nuclear confrontation which would serve absolutely no one uh manar and joe thank you so much for joining us um it's been a really great session with you both i would urge all the viewers online now to support mint press through patreon through the other means which exist and also to support consortium news and joe as much as you can it's a rough ride but we are here till the end thank you very much for joining us