Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

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Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: We Can't Take the Risk of Not Going to War with Iran http://usefulidiotspodcast.com
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
We’ve got two interviews for you this week: first up we’re talking about Iran.
Trump is threatening another regime change war in the Middle East, ordering the largest US military deployment since the Iraq War. To get an understanding of what’s happening in Iran, we spoke with independent journalist Bushra Shaikh.
Bushra went viral for a video from a recent trip to Tehran in which she walked through a rally without wearing a hijab. She explains that this is a common occurrence, and that so much of what we hear about Iran in Western media turned out to not be true.
Bushra Shaikh: This picture that’s created in the West is more of a very old-school type of Iran. There is a movement in Iran that is taking shape. And it’s purposely being censored from the West.I was walking in that rally. It was such an amazing place to be because there were hundreds of thousands of people coming out in support of their government. I was there without a hijab on. And honestly, it was it was just one of those experiences that I thought I would never have. And given the propaganda in the West, I was even confused because when I got there, I was like, ‘Bushra, you’ve been propagandized.’So having that experience for myself really was an eye-opener.Useful Idiots: And what do you think is happening on the ground?Bushra Shaikh: What’s happening on the ground is you have a large community at the moment who are very worried about the prospect of a war, of being illegally attacked in their country.One of the main concerns that a lot of people spoke about were the sanctions. They told me, ‘We just want to live good lives and we want to prosper and we want to be able to enhance our economy, build good ties with other countries. And these sanctions need to be lifted.’So most of people’s real concerns were sanctions. It wasn’t changing who’s in charge of their country.For our second interview, we’re discussing the life and message of civil rights icon Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died this week at the age of 84. He worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He then ran for president in 1984 and 1988, pushing to cut the Pentagon budget while increasing domestic spending on education, housing, and healthcare.
Jackson was also active in international struggles and campaigns, ranging from the anti-apartheid movement to supporting rights for Palestinians. Jesse Jackson also visited Palestine, and of course he was criticized for defending Palestinian rights.
To hear firsthand stories of the Reverend, we spoke with Eric Easter, former press secretary to Jesse Jackson for the National Rainbow Coalition, and Albert Mokhiber, who worked on Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1984.
Watch or listen to our full, unpaywalled interview with these great guests. Thanks for supporting independent media. If you’d like to help keep us running, please consider supporting us with a subscription.
If you do, you’ll get our weekly recap, the Friday Free-For-All: We Can’t Take the Risk of Not Going to War with Iran
00:00 Intro
01:25 Jared Kushner's creepy Board of Peace
03:23 The Democrat who's on board with bombing Iran
06:38 Fmr Obama/Biden official BACKS TRUMP in trashing nuclear deal
08:30 Bushra Shaikh interview
09:02 What's Tehran actually like?
10:43 The impact of santions
12:01 Nancy Pelosi wants to inflict pain on ordinary Iranians
14:27 In Tehran without a hijab
29:21 Interview with Jesse Jackson's former comrades
47:43 Listen to this awesome Jesse Jackson speech

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Help Mohammad document settler attacks in West Bank: https://chuffed.org/project/help-mohammad-document-settler-attacks-in-west-bank
Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
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Click here for the full interview with Jose Luis Granados Ceja: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/full-interview-maga-war-marco-rubio?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: John Fetterman and Claude AI Each Just Threatened to Kill People https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/what-do-john-fetterman-and-ai-have?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.

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Help Mohammad document settler attacks in West Bank: https://chuffed.org/project/help-mohammad-document-settler-attacks-in-west-bank
Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Visit www.functionhealth.com/USEFUL and use gift code USEFUL25 for a $25 credit toward your membership.
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Click here for the full interview with Jose Luis Granados Ceja: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/full-interview-maga-war-marco-rubio?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: John Fetterman and Claude AI Each Just Threatened to Kill People https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/what-do-john-fetterman-and-ai-have?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
Israel has recently announced new measures that allow it to steal more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. Check out how this was covered in Israeli media vs US media.
Can you guess which is more honest in its coverage?
First, Israeli media writes this:

They explain that the Cabinet intends to further their annexation, or theft, of Palestinian land, which is at least honest in its intention.
In contrast, here’s the New York Times:

Israel gives itself more control over occupied West Bank?? We’ve never seen this euphemism for theft before. It seems the subservient New York Times has become more creative than ever in its linguistic gymnastics to avoid any legitimate coverage of Israeli crimes.
Reminds us of the classic from 2014 when a missile, seemingly shot by no one, ‘found’ Gazan civilians watching the World Cup:

To check in on how things are going for the Palestinians who live in the land that Israel is giving itself more control over, we’re speaking with Mohammad Hesham Huraini, an independent journalist from Masafer Yatta, the same West Bank community depicted in the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
We ask Mohammad: did winning the Oscar have any benefit for your community? With one of the directors already murdered by settlers and the rest facing constant threats of terror, his answer is depressing.
Please share this interview to get Mohammad’s reporting out to the world. Thanks for supporting independent media.

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Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Visit www.functionhealth.com/USEFUL and use gift code USEFUL25 for a $25 credit toward your membership.
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Click here for the full interview with Jose Luis Granados Ceja: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/full-interview-maga-war-marco-rubio?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: John Fetterman and Claude AI Each Just Threatened to Kill People https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/what-do-john-fetterman-and-ai-have?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
This week we’re looking at the intensification of the decades-old US blockade of Cuba. Trump has imposed an even harsher blockade, blocking fuel to the country, leading to an even more dire humanitarian crisis.
Just this week, a report showed that US sanctions are now reportedly killing children with cancer: “Amid worsening shortages, Cuba's rate of childhood cancer survival has fallen by 15% — from roughly 80% to 65% — according to data from Cuba’s Health Ministry.”
And this isn’t just collateral damage of US policy: kids with cancer are the targets of the murderous US sanctions, which are aimed to harm the most vulnerable in a society.
Joining us to talk about these sanctions and the history of US-Cuba relations is journalist José Luis Granados Ceja.
Useful Idiots: For DropSite News, you cowrote the article: Marco Rubio Is Deliberately Blocking Trump From Cuba Talks. Can you tell us what you discovered?José Luis Granados Ceja: What we found was that these claims that Trump was making loudly to media outlets: that they are in talks with Cuba and that they’re thinking about a deal, don’t line up with what we were hearing from people both in the U.S. and in Cuba.We were able to ascertain that these claims of secret negotiations happening in Mexico were also not true. And a source was able to confirm that the official in Mexico City from the Secretary of Foreign Relations was not actually involved at all.So when you put all those pieces together, it very much looks like Marco Rubio is deliberately lying to Trump, that the State Department is not being forthcoming about what’s actually happening in terms of high-level negotiations between Cuba and the United States.And our hypothesis here is that it’s about trying to lay the groundwork for more radical action.Useful Idiots: Can you tell us how Marco Rubio’s history with Cuba might be driving this?José Luis Granados Ceja: We have to remember, Marco Rubio is obsessed with overthrowing the Cuban revolution. Apparently in his own autobiography when he was positioning himself to be a candidate for president, he wrote that he used to dream about leading an army of exiles and installing himself as president of Cuba. He’s obsessed with this idea.Obviously, he already had to concede when it comes to Venezuela. But I’m not sure that he’s willing to accept anything similar when it comes to Cuba. So he may be deliberately misleading Trump in order to say, ‘well, talks didn’t work, right? We were at the table. Nothing happened. Guess we’re going to have to invade or bomb or do something similar to what we did in Venezuela, or possibly more drastic.’Subscribe for the full interview with José Luis where he reveals the new mafia state that Rubio wants to impose on Cuba (with himself as don), how a pan-American coalition could take on the US in Latin America, and whether recent US aggression in Cuba will push China to enter the conflict.

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Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
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Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy: Bari Weiss' CBS Brings Back Russiagate https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/jeff-epstein-the-russian-spy-bari?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
For our recap of the week, including the new Russiagate conspiracy that Epstein was a Russian agent, subscribe to watch our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.

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