Putin & China are uniting BRICS against Trump’s tariff offensive, igniting a firestorm against the US dollar that’s changing everything. Ben Norton reacts to the bold moves of BRICS leaders of Russia, China, India and Brazil that has them making moves that place the whole dollar order under threat.
DUBLIN – Bono is again in the news for his political activism. At the behest of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Irish rockstar and frontman of U2 traveled to Kiev, where he performed a few songs with Ukrainian soldiers inside the Khreshchatyk metro station to a crowd of around 100 people – most of whom were journalists. After the concert was over, Bono addressed the Ukrainian people through the media, stating, “Your president leads the world in the cause of freedom right now; …the people of Ukraine are not just fighting for your own freedom, you’re fighting for all of us who love freedom,” while also calling for regime change in Russia.
Israeli forces killed five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza this week.
They included the correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal.
Trump’s Tariff offensive against BRICS is igniting a firestorm against the US dollar, and it’s changing everything. Ben Norton reacts to the rapid unity forged between Russia, China, Brazil and India as they form a resistance bloc against US economic war.
In this exclusive MintCast episode, former CEO of African Stream Ahmed Kaballo and senior staff writer Alan McLeod dissect the US government’s campaign to silence African Stream, the pan-African media platform that reached 30-40 million monthly viewers with unfiltered reporting on Africa’s resistance to imperialism.
Greg exposes how the State Department coordinated with Big Tech platforms to shut down African Stream within hours of Antony Blinken’s public denunciation, revealing the fusion of corporate power and state security apparatus that controls global information flows.
Also in this episode:
– The Sahel revolution: Ibrahim Traore, Asimi Goita, and Abdurahman Tiani challenge neo-colonial rule
– Imperialism’s tools: IMF debt traps, CFA franc exploitation, and military intervention
– The Palestine connection: African nations lead the fight against Israeli apartheid
– The criminalization of anti-imperialist journalism and the assassination of revolutionary leaders
This episode exposes the systematic effort by the US national security state to eliminate media platforms that challenge imperial narratives. When African Stream connected the dots between US foreign policy, Israeli influence, and African liberation movements, they became an existential threat to Washington’s control over information.
🔊 Nothing changes because the system demands this outcome. Welcome back to empire.
Burkina Faso has been trapped in neocolonial underdevelopment for nearly all of its post-independence history – can the new government of Ibrahim Traoré follow in Thomas Sankara’s footsteps and change course?
Warren Sare (Burkina Faso), Ancient Fighters 2, 2014.
A recent article in the UK’s Financial Times got very excited about the rise of intangibles. The author Tek Parikh said that “50 years go, the assets held by top 500 US companies were predominantly ‘tangible’ — factories, equipment, inventory et cetera. But today, it is estimated that most of their assets are ‘intangible’ ie. intellectual property (knowledge and software), branding value and marketing networks.” In the US, spending on intangible assets surpassed tangible investments as a share of GDP in the late 1990s and the gap has widened ever since. (more…)
Anas al-Sharif, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Qreiqeh (photo credit: Al Jazeera)
Late last Sunday, a targeted Israeli attack killed prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif alongside several colleagues. They were in a tent outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. Also killed were Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, together with freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi. Al-Sharif was previously part of a Reuters team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024.
Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.
Across the world, for those who grew up in the Cold War Swingin’ Sixties, the temptation is irresistible to cast Donald Trump as Goldfinger (but who would play Oddjob? Hegseth?)
All eyes on Alaska. The Bear-Eagle face-off is part of an astonishing acceleration of history in the summer of 2025.
Two weeks after Alaska, there’s the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) annual summit in Tianjin, China. India’s Narendra Modi and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian will join, among others, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at the same table. A BRICS/SCO table.
The Hind Rajab Foundation has named Israeli Air Force commander Tomer Bar as responsible for the killing of Anas al-Sharif and four Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza.
Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran’s Nuclear Negotiation Team. Prof. Marandi outlines Iran’s concerns with the recent US-negotiated peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which includes US control over Syunik Road for 99 Years – on Iran’s border. WIll this be used for economic containment or another military strike on Iran?
• Following the arrests of over 700 people for holding signs to call on the UK government to Lift The Ban on Palestine Action and to end their complicity in Israel’s genocide, Defend Our Juries have announced a mass action in London on September 6th 2025.
• Please join an Open Call on Tuesday 19th of August at 6:30pm for full details and to make a commitment to action. The link below will go live shortly before the Open Call begins – please refresh your browser.
Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution
If you thought western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.
The date passed from one member of the author’s family to another. Asem Alnabih
It’s just a date. A single, four-centimeter piece of dried fruit. But here in Gaza, where nothing comes easily and everything holds meaning, even a date becomes a symbol of endurance, sacrifice and love.
Yvette Cooper has continually lied about Palestine Action in a panicked attempt to defend the proscription of a direct action protest group which is opposing a Genocide in which Cooper’s government is deeply complicit.
The media are legitimising the murder of journalists by Israel – and they are doing it because they are racist propagandists for a system of western colonial control in the Middle East
How is it possible for a BBC reporter to have made the following obscene observation in his segment on Israel’s murder at the weekend of Al-Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif: “There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?” (more…)
In the days when the world remembers the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan, it is important to recall another event from World War II in the Pacific theater and the U.S.-Japanese confrontation—the 1945 U.S. bombing of civilian neighborhoods in Tokyo.
The New Dark Age 