The United States is a vast, sprawling global empire with a network of around 800 military bases worldwide. Drawing on research by Professor David Vine of the American University, MintPress breaks down the 10 countries with the most U.S. military bases.

Few Americans realize the extent to which the Central Intelligence Agency is involved in producing pop culture movies and TV shows. In this showcase, MintPress highlights 7 actors with close relationships with the CIA. Tom Hanks has starred in several movies with direct CIA backing and CFR member Angelina Jolie has cosied up to both US and British intelligence agencies.

TikTok employs dozens of veterans of the U.S. State Department and the CIA. TikTok’s campaign to recruit people close to the U.S. government began as a response to the Trump administration's attempt to force the company to sell its product into American hands.

- @AlanRMacLeod investigates

FULL: mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese…

Iran will reconstruct and renovate Venezuela’s national oil refineries to maximize output.

The project is part of an agreement between the countries signed on April 16. In 2022, Venezuela and Iran signed a 20-year cooperation agreement in the fields of science, technology, agriculture, oil and gas, petrochemicals, tourism, and culture.

Israeli drones killed at least 2,146 Palestinians and damaged 3,332 homes between 2000 and 2022, according to human rights group Al Mezan. In recent years, the use of autonomous weapons has seen a dramatic increase on modern battlefields - and the proliferation has increased international concern over the ethics governing their use.

INVESTIGATION: Israel's surveillance technology industry is flooding Latin American governments with its products and facilitating the persecution of journalists, activists, and opposition figures. Mexican security analyst Paloma Mendoza-Cortés told @jess_buxbaum that the largest markets for offensive cyber weapons are in Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Central America.

FULL: mintpressnews.com/israeli-cyber-…

Elite Afghan commandos the United States spent billions of dollars training and arming are now fighting alongside Russians in Ukraine reports the New York Times. Blocked from escaping to the United States and unwanted by the Taliban administration, many of these well-armed, highly-trained fighters have found a new employer: private Russian military firm Wagner Group.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and people around the world are remembering his legacy. Chávez became a strategic target for the forces of imperialism. Under the Bill Clinton administration, the US government tried to overthrow him but failed.

INVESTIGATION: The Israel Lobby has weaponized identity to silence criticisms of Israel and they have two politicians to thank for the success of this strategy — Canadian politician Irwin Cotler and Israeli MK Natan Sharansky. In 2022, the Israel Lobby got multimedia journalist Laith Marouf kicked off of social media.

Journalist David Miller (@Tracking_Power) breaks down the incident and the growing power of Zionist-led censorship.
mintpressnews.com/canadia-partne…

Thousands of protesters for peace in Ukraine marched through Washington, D.C., over the weekend at the Rage Against the War Machine protests.
Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) tells the crowd what the US could've done with the $100+ billion it has already sent to keep this war going.

Last Thursday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power released a video from outside the US Embassy in Budapest, Hungary, where she announced the relaunch of programs supporting independent media to "take on corruption and increase civic engagement."
The National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA regime change cutout embedded in USAID, uses programs like these to support programs that destabilize countries that are outside of the US Empire's sphere of influence.

The CIA and its allies have allegedly activated cells of industrial saboteurs according to anonymous Intelligence community and military sources who recently spoke with Jack Murphy, a U.S. Special Forces veteran turned journalist. In a Christmas Eve blog post, Murphy claims, "Years in the planning, the campaign is responsible for many of the unexplained explosions and other mishaps that have befallen the Russian military industrial complex since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February..."

Was Mintpress infiltrated by an Israeli spy? Catherine Perez-Shakdam worked for the private Israeli intelligence company Wikistrat.

Itamar Ben Gvir is set to assume the role of Israeli National Security Minister.

Here is a selection of his most outrageous moments (THREAD) VIDEO: Ben-Gvir expresses his wish to expel Palestinians from their homeland.

His intention is to "promote the Deportation Law, which will deport anyone who acts against the State of Israel or IDF soldiers.”

Source: @QudsNen

“Impact Investing” is supposed to help Big Finance reward socially responsible ventures.

But the Israel Lobby has worked out how to silence the industry’s ability to hold Israel accountable for the violence of its settler colonialism. In this investigation, @jess_buxbaum shows how a collaboration between the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish investor network JLens has subverted impact investment to create an “Israel exception” in the rating system of how socially responsible certain investments are.

In the latest tranche from the Twitter Files (#7), it was revealed that the FBI had paid Twitter almost $3.5M for its staff time since October 2019.

This happened in the context of a campaign to discredit reporting on Hunter Biden’s corruption while his father ran for president. This is a shocking revelation, right?

Well, not if you’ve been reading MPN Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod’s reporting on the intelligence community infiltrating the social media giants.

READ: mintpressnews.com/twitter-hiring…

Prolific academic Vijay Prashad explains the U.S. Empire's goals in Latin America, how they've changed since the Monroe Doctrine was announced 200 years ago, and the resistance blocking it from completely dominating the region. "Hilariously, they still say Guaido is the president of Venezuela, but they're talking to Maduro about getting the oil."

@LeeCamp and @vijayprashad discuss how the Ukraine war forced Biden to negotiate with Nicolas Maduro after the U.S. tried to remove him from power in 2019.

As a Thanksgiving treat from London, MintPress News Senior Staff Writer Alan MacLeod highlights 10 recent events that prove that the US's grip on hegemonic power is weakening. In October, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations ignored a US request to increase oil production.

Ukraine is the latest victim of disaster capitalism. Ukrainian officials have been promising to sell Ukrainian assets off to international capitalists at an accelerating rate.

They claim it's to "fix the economy," but that hasn't been the experience of other countries that have tried this method.

An exclusive MintPress investigation has exposed the videogame Call of Duty as a US military psyop. Virtual games like Call of Duty, the NSA wrote, were an “opportunity” and a “target-rich communication network”.

The collapse of FTX is, at this point, a ubiquitous story.

The angle that isn't receiving as much attention is that Ukraine made a high-level fundraising agreement with the DNC-connected cryptocurrency exchange. Kit Klarenberg's latest investigation explores the details of how FTX collapsed and what that could mean for the $60 million raised for Ukraine, the DNC's fundraising efforts, and the cryptocurrency market in general.