Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté (private feed for Mazurg@hotmail.com)

Fascist Israeli Minister Taunts Palestine’s Mandela

This episode is free to all. Please help us share Marwan Barghouti’s story:This week, we’re looking at the case of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political prisoner widely regarded as the most popular Palestinian leader alive. And for this reason, Israel has kept him imprisoned for more than two decades.Useful Idiots is proud to be joined by his son, Arab Barghouti.Throughout an unimaginable 23 years in prison, Marwan Barghouti has been subjected to brutal abuse. In a recent video, fascist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went out of his way to visit Marwan Barghouti in his prison cell and film himself threatening Barghouti and the Palestinian people.Ben Gvir tells Barghouti that Israel is going to “wipe out” the Palestinian people.This is the first image that we've seen of Marwan Barghouti in many years, looking visibly gaunt from years of Israeli abuse and torture. This was a provocative move by Ben Gvir designed to further humiliate Palestinians at a time when they're enduring a genocide in Gaza and routine pogroms and terror in the occupied West Bank.Everyone in the world should know the name of Marwan Barghouti. He cuts through so many of the caricatures that we get of Palestinian resistance in the West: he's a longtime advocate of a Palestinian state, thereby accepting the fact that Israel stole Palestine, but he's willing to compromise and accept 22% of Palestine’s historic homeland. And even though he supports the Palestinian right to armed resistance against military occupation, Barghouti has advocated nonviolence as a tactic and opposes attacks that target Israeli civilians. The fact that Israel has made such a dogged effort to silence him, to keep him behind bars, and recently humiliate him, speaks to the power he has and the fear in the heart of the Israeli government of the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Check out the documentary Tomorrow's Freedom about Marwan Barghouti, and please share our interview with his son Arab Barghouti.Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Fox News Somehow Hits New Low on Israeli Hospital Strike Justification This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe

Russia's Sergey Lavrov VERSUS Meet the Press's Kristen Welker

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Trump’s Plan: Genocide in Gaza, Peace with Putin?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comSubscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:Useful Idiots has another Double Header this week as we look at Gaza and Ukraine.First up we speak with Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, founder of Health Workers 4 Palestine, about the State Department’s heartless decision to pause all visitor visas for people from Gaza. This policy shift came after Jewish-supremacist, right-wing-conspiracy-theorist, and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer took to Twitter (and tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio) to expose the fact that “Islamic invaders” were infiltrating the U.S. from Gaza. Of course, what was really happening is that children injured in Gaza with weapons from (and/or paid for by) the U.S. were coming to the states for medical treatment (at no expense to U.S. taxpayers) thanks to the non-profit HEAL Palestine.Dr. Omar knows how important it is to provide children from Gaza with medical treatment in England, where he lives. He himself has worked tirelessly to bring children wounded in Gaza by UK weapons, into the UK.He also reacts to propagandist outlets like Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which engages in the most disgusting whitewashing of Israel’s crimes: starving children to death isn’t that bad because most of the ones dying have pre-existing conditions. Phew! What a relief.Plus, we ask Dr. Omar: is Palantir selling your health data to Israel?Next we speak with Professor Richard Sakwa to discuss the latest in Russia-Ukraine after Trump’s controversial summit with Putin.We ask Sakwa: what are Putin’s true motives? Does he see Ukraine as a real country? Does he want revenge on the US and UK after Biden and Boris Johnson colluded to push Ukraine out of peace talks? And is Trump treating Putin as his equal, conning him into taking a worse deal, or bowing down to him just like he does with Netanyahu?

Marco Rubio SHAMED for Russia-Ukraine War Hypocrisy | Useful Idiots Monday Mourning

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UNPAYWALLED: CIA GETS CAUGHT Spying on the Senate During Torture Investigation | Useful Idiots

For nearly 40 years, journalist Tim Weiner has closely covered the CIA, speaking with retired officials and gaining the trust of people with classified information. And his latest book, The Mission, does something we’ve never seen before:It gives an in-depth history of the CIA without any anonymous sources. Everyone’s on the record. We don’t know how Tim did it, but he joins Useful Idiots to share what he’s learned from 40 years of digging.Useful Idiots: You spoke to former CIA Director Richard Helms, and you wrote: “He wanted me to understand that the agency hadn't dreamed up the idea of overthrowing Iran or killing Fidel Castro. Every president since Truman had commanded the CIA to intervene with guns and money to control the fate of nations when sending in the Marines was not an option.” Did you get the sense that the CIA was always just unquestioningly following orders?Tim Weiner: It took me a while to understand this simple but important point: the CIA is an executor of American foreign policy. It doesn't dream up coups and plots and other nefarious covert activities. With rare exceptions, it does what the president tells it to do.It's not like a couple of CI officers were sitting around drinking martinis in 1960 saying, ‘Hey, I got a good idea. Let's go kill Fidel Castro.’ Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and President Kennedy's brother, Bobby, wanted Castro gone.When it came time to investigate the first twenty five years of the CIA, the Church Committee in the 1970s dove deep into this: Frank Church, the senator who ran them, wondered aloud if “the CIA has become a rogue elephant trampling people and nations.”But, we later find out, after the hearings, Church amended his statement: “When the elephant tramples people and nations, it's not the elephant's fault. It is the fault of the mahout, the elephant driver.” And that was the President of the United States.The Church Committee, and even the torture report about CIA secret prisons that the Senate finally released ten years ago, really tiptoes around this question of presidential authority for violations of the laws of God and man and the Geneva Convention by the CIA. It's the president's outfit. And it is a unique expression of presidential power to order the CIA to go and kill people or torture them or throw them in secret prisons for the rest of their lives, never to see the light of day.Useful Idiots: Your book tells the story of the great lengths to which the CIA went to cover up for torture. You have this controversy over an attempt to destroy videotapes of torture at a CIA secret prison in Thailand. And then you also have the CIA spying on the Senate as the Senate is investigating the CIA's torture program.Tim Weiner: Two unhappy stories. The first is rather dramatic.The CIA set up this base in Thailand where two of its first so-called high value prisoners were taken and tortured. Present at the base for one of those prisoner tortures was Gina Haspel, who later became the CIA Director in the first Trump Administration.An order is written. Haspel transmits the orders. The videotapes are destroyed.And they are actually under a judge's subpoena to preserve all evidence concerning these matters. When Gina Haspel becomes the CIA Director ten years later under Trump, all anything anybody knows about Gina Haspel is that she was at the CIA base when the torture was conducted and she transmitted an order from her boss to destroy the tapes.Well, it turns out Gina Haspel, when she became the CIA director for the last three years of Trump, was pretty effective at defending the CIA from Trump. Trump hates and fears the CIA. He sees it as the capital of the deep state.Your second question about the torture report. It is a fact that the CIA launched a counterintelligence investigation into the Senate staff during the final year of the publication, before the publication of the torture report.Useful Idiots: Let me stop you there. Is that legal for the CIA to launch an investigation of Americans, especially American politicians?Listen to or watch the episode for our full chat with Tim Weiner. Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Bill Maher Goes FULL PROPAGANDA Bot For IsraelThank you for supporting Useful Idiots and independent media! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/subscribe