Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Don’t miss our weekly recap of the craziest moments in corporate media:Watch this week’s Monday Mourning here:Useful Idiots needs your help to break the corporate media information siege 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

Watch and share our full, unpaywalled interview with Muhammad Shehada:This week, we’re joined by Useful Idiots fan-favorite Muhammad Shehada, the political analyst and writer from Gaza who has guided us through the mirk of corporate media propaganda since the first week of Israel’s genocide three years ago.On the week of the third anniversary of October 7, and as Gazans prepare for their fourth winter in these unimaginable conditions, Muhammad shares what he’s heard about the conditions on the ground from his friends and family, many of whom have been killed by the Israeli military.My late friend, Ali, my closest friend, was in a refugee camp in the center of Gaza. I asked him how it was going. And he said, ‘Well, you know what? If there’s a God, if there is a judgment day, I would ask him for one thing, one thing only.‘I would ask him to force those Israeli soldiers to go on the same adventure that I have to take every single day to find water and food. Nothing more. That is enough punishment for them. The idea of going every day, out in the open under airstrikes, under constant gunfire, and walking around desperately from one place to another, ten hours just to find water, that is enough punishment.Recently, Israeli filmmakers premiered a new film called Naza in which they interview Israeli soldiers confessing to war crimes. The Israeli government has threatened the filmmakers and there have been protests at the homes of one of the filmmakers’ parents. We asked Muhammad about the film and what he makes of the backlash.The most striking thing in that movie was how casually soldiers describe the atrocities they unleashed in Gaza, as matter-of-fact with zero remorse or contortion, nothing. And the thing that strikes you the most is that those soldiers were not providing these confessions out of guilt or shame. They were providing it out of excitement. They were very eager to brag about the formidable force that was at their disposal. I’ll give you an example. I read an article in an Israeli newspaper describing soldiers who were coming back from Gaza and falling into severe depression. They interviewed a psychiatrist in that article to provide analysis about why soldiers feel depressed when they come back. The psychiatrist didn’t say it’s because the soldiers feel guilt or shame. He said it’s because the soldiers in Gaza felt like gods. They were superhumans. They decided who lives and who dies, like they are in charge of life and death of two million people. And then that psychiatrist says that when those soldiers come back home, they feel like nothing. Nobody knows them. Nobody recognizes them. Nobody opens the door for them. There’s no prestige. And that’s what tears them down the most. That’s why a lot of people go back to serve in Gaza, because of the adrenaline, because of the excitement, because of the euphoria of feeling like a god, feeling like a superhuman. And it seems to me that those soldiers in Naza were basically craving that sensation again. They were bragging.Watch our full, extended interview with Muhammad, and please share this episode. Corporate media has ignored Gaza for most of the genocide, so we rely on voices like Muhammad’s to break the information siege.You can support our work by subscribing to us here on Substack. You’ll also get our weekly recap of the craziest moments in corporate media, the Friday Free-for-All: It Doesn’t Go Well When JD Vance Tries to Define SocialismSupport independent media and the effort to share information about Gaza 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

Don’t miss our weekly recap of the craziest moments in corporate media:Watch this week’s Monday Mourning here:Help us beat corporate 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.usefulidiotspodcast.comTo support our work and go ad-free, click here. Watch the free version here:Subscribers get Katie and Aaron’s weekly recap of the craziest moments in corporate media, the Friday Free-for-All:This week we’re speaking with former Time Person of the Year Coleen Rowley, the FBI special agent who tried to sound the alarm about 9/11 based on FBI intel about the attackers received BEFORE the attacks.Coleen Rowley: I found myself in a very weird position. The life and death type thing that people don’t expect they’ll ever be in. But after 9/11, we realized that in the Minnesota office, the agents had been working on the most suspicious flight student that had ever crossed their paths: Zacarias Moussaoui.They were called by flight instructors separately from a flight school. And this guy had said, ‘I just want to learn how to fly for a joy ride.’ There were pages detailing suspicion of him. The agents then sought emergency, not just the normal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act request to search his belongings. They actually identified that he could fly into the World Trade Center from the start. Here’s where I come in. After 9/11, FBI Director Mueller went before the cameras and said, ‘We didn’t know any of this. We could have maybe prevented 9/11 if we’d had any intelligence.’ I actually got on the phone and said, ‘That’s not a good thing to say because there was a lot of intelligence.’ Dick Cheney had fought tooth and nail against any accountability. But in the spring of 2002, I get this call: ‘Well, Colleen, you’re going to be one of the people called to talk to the investigators of the Joint Intelligence Committee.’ And when I got the call, I went, ‘oh my gosh, there’s been a cover up.’ Now you can’t say that. Cover up is a verboten word. You can’t say cover up. But you know what? That’s what it was. After 9/11, no one would admit that they had all this information.Watch our full interview with Coleen to hear how she risked her job, and possibly even her life, to break the information out of the FBI.If you like interviews like this, please consider subscribing to support our work and keep us going! You’ll also get ad-free versions of our interviews as well as our weekly recap of the craziest moments in corporate media, the Friday Free-for-All.And check out Ground News, an awesome tool we found that helps us sift through the news and compare headlines to expose media bias. For an example, watch our comparison of two stories about Ireland boycotting Eurovision in today’s episode. Go to https://groundnews.com/useful to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on the stories shaping our world.Catch the ad-free interview here: