Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-cia-whistleblower?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web After CIA officer John Kiriakou blew the whistle on US torture, no one in the CIA was arrested for their crimes. Except, of course, John Kiriakou. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act. He served 23 months in prison as punishment for his opposition to the Bush administration’s torture program. This week, he joins Useful Idiots to speak (freely this time) about the torture and war crimes of the US Government, the sickening purpose of Guantanamo Bay and its continuing crimes against humanity, and the hardest question of all: Who’s worse – The CIA or the FBI? Don’t worry, John’s got a lot of dirt on each. It’s one of the most jarring, sickening, revealing, scary, and funny episodes of Useful Idiots, which is why you’re probably going to want to watch… …the extended interview, in which Kiriakou uncovers the CIA’s sadistic psychedelics testing, the hawks in the mainstream media who are gunning for war with China, and his last words spoken to Keith Olbermann and Alec Baldwin: “Fuck you, Olbermann.” and “Fuck you, Baldwin.” And don’t miss this week’s Thursday Throwdown on Hollywood's New "It" Couple: Volodymyr Seanpenskyy. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with Shahid Buttar: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-force-the-vote-with?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Advocate, artist, lawyer, organizer, musician, and former politician Shahid Buttar joins Useful Idiots to explain why Democrats are failing. Why is he a former politician, you ask? Well after running a campaign against Nancy Pelosi and getting buried by racist attacks from liberals, Shahid realized a sad truth about politics: “Politicians, as well as journalists and lawyers,” he told us. “Are all about careerism. People care about their careers more than the principles of their profession.” And so self-proclaimed non-racists like Pelosi use racist attacks against opponents of color, like Shahid and Nina Turner, to keep their claws sunk deep into power, shielding themselves from any review of their own anti-democratic voting records. But Shahid doesn’t put all the blame on these power-hungry, corporate vultures for choosing power over human values: “It’s impossible not to in a fascist country.” Shahid continues to explain how corporate Democrats cover up their power-hungry policy through distraction, claiming Donald Trump and January 6 are the real threats to democracy — all so that Americans are too beaten down from hearings to realize our government is busy overthrowing democracies around the world and spying on us at home. Plus, watch the full interview to hear how Shahid got arrested for confronting former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: “Why are you above the law for perjury and mass surveillance while Eric Garner lies dead in the street?” And catch yesterday’s Thursday Throwdown: Media Wants No $$ for Workers, More for FBI It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with Ukrainian Professor Ivan Katchanovski: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-ukrainian-scholar?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Ivan Katchanovski, Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist who teaches at the University of Ottawa, is exposing US media lies about the Ukraine proxy war. And, like many Useful Idiot guests, no one will report on his story. This week, Katchanovski shares his research on the Maidan Massacre, a mass killing of Ukrainians protesting the Yanukovich government in February 2014. The US and opposition leaders blamed Yanukovich, triggered a coup and the ensuing civil war that radically escalated with Russia’s invasion eight years later. But when Professor Katchanovski dug into video, witness testimony, and other evidence which reveals who really committed the massacre — including footage that CNN tried to bury — he was ignored by mainstream media for attempted disruption of the approved narrative. But now he’s joining the Useful Idiots to tell us what really happened: the massacre, he argues, was carried out by pro-Maidan snipers. Watch the full interview with Professor Katchanovski for his take on who committed the massacre, how the US media is covering it up, and that weird interview between David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “We did a survey,” Zelenskyy told Letterman. “It showed that 98% of our country’s population today would rather stay without electricity and water as long as they are free from Russia.” Ivan responds to that seemingly impossible statistic. Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown on how our “free press” is really just US-state media. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full end of year special on Ukraine, Guantanamo Bay, and Meet the Press’s cringiest moments: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-useful-idiots-2022?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web 2022 is nearly dead! Last year in our year recap with Thomas Frank, we asked “WTF will happen in 2022?” While we predicted correctly some brutal Jan 6 hearings and a nightmare midterm year, none of us thought the biggest news of the year would be a proxy war in Ukraine. So in our 2022 end of year special, Aaron and Katie deep dive on the latest in Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s Churchillian visit to Congress, Pelosi’s weird kiss, and all the insane politicians, generals, and corporate journalists who can’t seem to stop saying the quiet part out loud. And now that the year is over, we’re asking you: WTF will happen in 2023? Let us know your craziest theories in the comments. Subscribe for the full end of year special. Plus, miss our full interview with Irish members of European parliament (and Useful Idiot rockstars) Claire Daly and Mick Wallace? We’re giving everyone the full extended interview for free. It’s the Useful Idiots 2022 end of year special. Thanks for sticking with us all year, it’s been a wild ride. Let’s keep mourning and laughing into 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with Miko Peled: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-far-right-israeli?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Miko Peled, author of “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” is the son of an Israeli general and former family-friend of Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, he’s an anti-Zionist fighting for Palestinian rights. He joins Useful Idiots to warn about Israel’s new far-right government, headed by Netanyahu and far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose positions give them newfound power over occupied Palestinians. “The lives of Palestinians are going to be governed by two men who are dedicated more than anyone to the expulsion and terrorizing of all Palestinians,” Peled says. “Palestinians are going to be looking back at the years leading up to this government as the good old days. This year has been a record year in terms of killing of Palestinians. But they’re going to be looking back at this year as the good old days. What is coming up is the worst that Palestinians have ever suffered.” Subscribe to hear the full interview with Miko Peled on Israeli apartheid, US hypocrisy, and why we ignore Palestinians while funding billions in weapons for Ukraine. Plus, watch our Thursday Throwdown where we say goodbye to CNN’s Barbara Starr, the Pentagon’s most aggressive cheerleader, and join the holiday Absurd Arena to give presents to this year’s suckiest politicians. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with Luhansk Deputy Foreign Minister Anna Soroka: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/how-do-pro-russian-ukrainians-see?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web War in Ukraine did not start with Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Ukraine has been at civil war since 2014, when the US backed a coup to overthrow President Viktor Yanukovych. When the new post-coup government cracked down on ethnic-Russian Ukrainians and their Russian culture, Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas region rose up in rebellion, leading to the creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Anna Soroka, joining the Useful Idiots from Ukraine, is the former Deputy Foreign Minister of the Luhansk People's Republic. She joins Useful Idiots to share what it’s like being on the other side of a civil war that has now escalated into a full-blown proxy war with Russia. Sometimes discussions about war can become abstract, but it’s important to go “behind enemy lines” and hear from real people on the other side. It’s a perspective that you don’t get to hear at all in the NATO states. Unless you follow shows like Useful Idiots. Plus, watch our Thursday Throwdown where Biden completes his transformation into Trump as he kills Bernie's bid to stop the Saudi war on Yemen. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with Matt Kennard on the crimes against Julian Assange and the right to free speech: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-why-is-establishment?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web “It’s a complete stitch up,” Matt Kennard, author and co-founder of Declassified UK, tells Useful Idiots about Julian Assange’s extradition case. “None of the rules of the game apply.” Assange, who has been jailed and tortured for nearly a decade for releasing documents which shed light on the crimes of the US government, now faces an extradition trial teeming with corruption. But after a crucial witness admitted to lying, the US government was caught plotting an assassination, and UK judges were revealed to have major conflicts of interest, the case is somehow still continuing on. “It doesn’t seem like anything can come out that will stop it.” Kennard says. “That for me is the scariest thing. If certain powerful forces within the deep structure of our country want to get you, they can, and none of the principles we’re taught at school apply. They will get you and you will be ruined and the message will be sent that you can’t play at this level again.” Subscribe to hear the full interview with Matt Kennard on the crimes against Julian Assange and the right to free speech, and why corporate media like the New York Times is suddenly backtracking its stance against the journalist. Plus, Katie and Aaron deep dive into the Twitter Files and mainstream media’s vitriolic reactions to Matt Taibbi in this week’s Thursday Throwdown. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview with locomotive engineer Michael Paul Lindsey and host of Working People Maximillian Alvarez: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-union-joe-biden?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Congress and Joe Biden are pushing through a contract backed by the rail companies and rejected by workers. Michael Paul Lindsey, a locomotive engineer for Union Pacific, and Maximillian Alvarez, editor in chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, join us to explain why this standoff is a dangerous step backward for all working people. “The rail carriers are going to take it as a sign that they can keep doing what they’re doing and we are all going to be worse off for it.” For the rail workers, this has included denying even a single sick day. “Gradually over the years they got tighter and tighter and stingier until it became you’re straight up asking for permission. They believe that they own a right to your life 24/7.” And ‘Union Joe’ Biden, who calls himself a pro-labor president, continues to side with the companies. “This is what happens when the reigning philosophy is to eliminate the cost of treating your workers like human beings. If you treat workers like faceless meatbags and no one stops you, you can exploit the shit out of them.” And corporate media, doing what it does best, all but blames the workers, warning viewers that a rail strike could mean economic catastrophe and cripple the economy — ignoring the crippling conditions the workers face. During the interview, news broke that a Congressional proposal for seven sick days, a meek bill that would do the bare minimum to help workers, would fail. Michael Paul, who’s worked 17 years for the rail industry, laments: “Anyone who works for a living just lost ground on better pay and benefits. You lost today.” So how do we fight for workers’ rights? “This is such a systemic problem for working people and we cannot rely on politicians to just bequeath us some sort of solution to this. Working people need to band together and assert their needs as an independent working class.” Subscribe for the full interview with Michael Paul and Max. Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown on how the US decides to censor itself (but only when it accidentally tells the truth). It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Click here for Part 2 with Norm Finkelstein: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/norm-finkelstein-part-2-ill-burn?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Head to our homepage for the brand new part 2 of our 2-hour interview with Norman Finkelstein. If you heard the free version of Part 1 on Nov 11, the interview continues at 28:50. In Part 2 of the interview, Norman X Finkelstein previews his new book, "I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It," which unleashes his fiery analysis on identity politics and President Obama. To write it, he first had to do some mandatory reading from the experts in those fields. “I felt in order to write [the book],” Norm tells us, already exasperated, “I should sit down and read this new leftist cancel culture. So I sat down, I read Ta-Nehisi Coates, I read Kimberley Crenshaw, I read Ibram X Kendi, I read Robin DiAngelo, and it’s impossible not to conclude that this stuff is intellectually vacuous and worthless.” But it isn’t meaningless in today’s politics. Far from it: “My conclusion was that identity politics is fundamentally a weapon of the Democratic party to derail, deflect, and diffuse a radical class-based politics.” Norm, a classical scholar who understands Left history like the back of his hand, shares proof of his analysis when he quotes Leon Trotsky, who “talked about all these people who pretend to be radical, but when a moment of truth comes, you see their real colors.” “I felt that moment of truth came with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Crenshaw, Coates, Angela Davis, all these people went out and started to attack Bernie Sanders. They all, in the moment of truth, backed the Democratic party establishment and sought to derail and discredit the Bernie Sanders candidacy.” He goes on, even more fired up here, to take down the one politician who is so brazen to flaunt that he won an election by standing for nothing, the “hollow vessel” known as Barack Obama. Norm’s taking no prisoners, and you’re not going to want to miss it. It’s Part 2 of Norm Finkelstein on Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com For $5 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and a chance to have your comment read on the show in the Absurd Arena at http://usefulidiots.substack.com Click here for the full interview: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/extended-episode-inside-the-ukraine?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Journalist Kit Klarenberg’s latest article at the Grayzone, “FTX partnership with Ukraine is latest chapter in shady Western aid saga,” sheds new light on the money-grabbing schemes emerging from the Ukraine proxy war. The report details how Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, the crypto exchange that saw its valuation implode from $32B to $0 in a single day, used a Ukraine fundraiser to raise $60 million from donors. This was followed by the mass selloff of FTX currency and a declaration of bankruptcy from the scam company. This raises the question: where did the money for Ukraine go? Kit Klarenberg joins the Useful Idiots with the scoop. He, along with his fellow Grayzone writers, has been the subject of multiple attacks for uncovering stories like this and his other new piece: “Leaked documents: British spies constructing secret terror army in Ukraine.” It seems that when government officials and the corporate media don’t want the truth uncovered, they don’t argue against the story but make personal attacks against the writer as character assassination. And sadly, it works all too often. One such corporate official, Useful-Idiot-favorite of Scary Poppins fame Nina Jankowicz, went after Klarenberg on Twitter. Kit describes the online beef in the extended episode. (turns out we can’t see those tweets because…) Subscribe to hear the full interview, where Klarenberg reveals plots from UK operatives to blow up Ukrainian bridges, more Western destruction of peace talks, and how the US uses Britain to spread propaganda. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Plus, catch our Thursday Throwdown on the near-nuclear Armageddon, Trump’s big announcement, and Aaron getting canceled by Olena Zelenska. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy