Useful Idiots
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Intelligence Expert: Trump Would TAKE OVER the CIA if US was Attacked
Watch a free preview of our episode and subscribe for the full chat with Tim Weiner on how the CIA got CAUGHT spying on the Senate
23 hours ago
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For nearly 40 years, journalist Tim Weiner has closely covered the CIA, finding his way inside crucial meetings, 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

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Sanctions Are a Form of Warfare

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

00:01:17
"Shameful" New York Times Changes Headline to Protect Sanctions

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

00:01:24
Free preview: Matt Taibbi Exposes Russiagate Bots

With Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files and Jeff Gerth’s new in-depth reporting for CJR exposing the years of lies spread by Russiagaters, bitter attacks from outed journalists are rolling in.

Gerth and Taibbi, who come from the old style of journalism where you fact check your work and don’t accept government officials’ claims on faith, have each shown clear, indisputable evidence of disinformation campaigns pushed by corporate reporters. And since the so-called journalists can’t argue the facts, they dig themselves a deeper hole with more lies and name-calling.

Jeff Gerth has been working as a reporter for decades and published, in the very mainstream Columbia Journalism Review, a 20,000-word report on his findings, only to be called a liar and misdirecting magician in the most self-important article by Mother Jones’ David Corn (“The true media failure is that Trump got away with it and that articles like this one that you are now reading are still necessary.”) And possibly worse ...

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Emphasized "Dancing with 88

I have altered space here—   to

a rupture in the silent fabric,

where every atom reclaims its song.

A change, seen on my 90° angle,

becomes the pivot of a daring ballet,

the precise intersection where fate unspools.

In that crisp right-angle lie the secrets

of all absorbed twilight and reborn dawns,

a moment where geometry becomes prophecy,

transmuting static lines into dynamic rhythms,

inviting the cosmos to twirl in unexpected arcs.

And then—

I find myself dancing with 88,

a numeral of resonance, a muse of mystery.

It whispers in binary beats,

each pulse a portal leading into

symphonies scribbled on the canvas of space-time.

This is no choreographed routine,

but a wild, liberated waltz

where dimensions bend and merge—

where the old order crumbles

under the heat of relentless transformation

and every step unearths a layer of being.

At that 90° juncture,

the universe unfolds like a secret map,

revealing uncharted realms in every fracture,

while 88 becomes the score for a cosmic ballet,

...

Has the Gaza Pier Been Beached? | Army Watercraft come ashore off Gaza and Israel

March 26, 2024

Good to be part of the community. I think that Aaron and Katie do a brilliant job in these hellish times when such great in - depth research and reporting are essential.

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Bill Maher Goes FULL PROPAGANDA Bot For Israel
In his latest lies about Hamas, Bill Maher just revealed an awkward new truth

The sleaziest man in media is back! It’s Bill Maher, the man who got his name as the anti-woke, anti-religion, anti-cancel-culture warrior, who mocks anyone weak enough to complain that their feelings were hurt over mere words.

UNLESS: those words are against Israel. In which case you should be swiftly censored and all complaining is fair game.

This week, Maher stepped up his game, shilling out for Israel with such immense propaganda that it exposed a dirty secret he does not want getting out:

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BOMBSHELL: Trump Hid Israeli Killer Settler’s Murderous Past
Subscribe to hear our extended chat with Jasper Nathaniel debunking the lies of Shai Davidai

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

This week continued the mass tumult in Palestine, with IDF soldiers killing and kidnapping hundreds more Gazans, and terrorist Israeli settlers raiding the West Bank, all while bought-out media like The New York Times stays silent.

We spoke with three guests to break through the propaganda and find out what’s really going on behind the Israeli siege: Jasper Nathaniel, a journalist who has traveled in and out of the West Bank during the genocide, and Freedom Flotilla activists Huwaida Arraf and Bob Suberi, who were captured and imprisoned by Israel as they tried to sail food and aid into Gaza.

Jasper tells us about Yinon Levi, a violent serial killer settler in the West Bank who was personally sanctioned by the Biden administration for his repeated violence against civilians. Trump, in a move that has become now characteristically subservient to Israel, lifted the sanctions, setting Levi loose on the West Bank once again.

This week Yinon Levi murdered Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and teacher who helped create the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

And after a short house arrest, Jasper tells us, Levi was let free. Bob Suberi, who has been living with Hathaleen’s community in the West Bank, said that while Hathaleen’s friends and family gathered to mourn his death, Yinon Levi returned with more settlers to attack them, throwing concussion grenades and kidnapping mourners.

Once again, he faces no repercussions.

We then change focus to the unhinged Zionists in the US, specifically disgraced former Columbia Professor Shai Davidai, who left the school after harassing and doxxing pro-Palestinian students, and is now suing

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Fox News Accidentally Reveals Anti-Mamdani Blackmail Plot Live on Air
What might have been leaked audio in a more-just world is said straight-to-camera in this one

Remember a time when mafia politics were a backroom secret, making headlines only when an informant leaked audio to a scandal-hungry public?

Those days are dead.

On Fox News this week, a plot was hatched straight-to-camera, detailing how, in order to kneecap “socialist” NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, they would blackmail current Mayor Eric Adams out of the race.

“It has to be a head-to-head of Cuomo vs Mamdani,” schemes the Fox panel. “And it has to be Eric Adams who drops out. Frankly, I think it’s great that business leaders are pouring money into this race, our city really depends on getting rid of this person.”

Then they begin to hatch their plan: “Why don’t they sit down with Eric Adams and say, ‘either we’re going to provide you with a wonderful sinecure job and you happily get out of the race, or we’re going to make your life absolute sheer hell.

And all the while during these live-to-the-nation backroom dealings, a banner hangs over the panel’s heads that says:

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