Useful Idiots

This weekend, a mass shooting in Australia killed at least 16 people at a Hanukkah celebration. Australian lawmakers responded to the incident rationally: they’re creating new policy to tighten gun restrictions in the country. US politicians, who responded to their own mass shooting at Brown University with the usual “thoughts and prayers,” had a much more ridiculous takeaway:

“My heart goes out to all of the Jewish citizens of America and around the world,” says Senator Jim Banks (R-IN). “In America we have to do more to deport terrorists out of the United States to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen in the homeland.” He then adds for good measure: “And our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected.”

Instead of dealing with the problem of gun violence, or assessing that the ethno-supremacist state of Israel waging a 2-year ethnic cleansing campaign is the leading cause for the rise in antisemitism, US politicians are using this atrocity to fuel Islamophobia and deport innocent people from the country, creating even more suffering in the name of Israel.

But please, when you talk about the students killed at Brown, don’t politicize it. Just say thoughts and prayers.

We cover this, and so much more, in this week’s Monday Mourning. Plus, don’t miss our limited-time offer to get 2 FREE MONTHS OF USEFUL IDIOTS.

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This week we speak with Suad Abdel Aziz, a Sudanese-American lawyer and founder of the human rights advocacy organization Decolonize Sudan. The Sudan genocide is a topic we haven’t covered extensively at Useful Idiots, so Suad educates us with a history of the region, explains what’s going on now, and reveals how the US is involved.

Useful Idiots: Can you give us a brief history of Sudan and how we got to where we are?

Suad Abdel Aziz: Despite how mainstream media frames it, there is not an internal power struggle or civil war that’s happening in Sudan. What’s happening is a foreign-backed genocide, carried out by a militia called the Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF, as part of a colonial project to completely destabilize Sudan in order to seize land within a larger imperial scheme designed to extract resources, consolidate economic control of Sudan, and control Sudan’s foreign policy.

Beginning in April of 2023, the RSF violently seized Sudan, and over the course of over two years now, destroyed and leveled the bulk of Sudan’s infrastructure and has displaced over a third of the population, which is over sixteen million people. They have waged a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing marked by mass killings, including killings of entire family lineages, sexual violence, and the deliberate starvation of entire communities.

The RSF is only able to do this through the backing of the United Arab Emirates, who provide the funds, the fighters, and the weapons for this militia. In exchange, the UAE is extracting the resources of Sudan, with the main export that it’s smuggling being gold. And the UAE’s gold exports have increased by over 25% since this siege began.

Useful Idiots: What is the connection between Sudan and Palestine?

Suad Abdel Aziz: Sudan has historically been allied with Palestine and against Israel, which is key in understanding why the US seeks to align Sudan’s foreign policy with its own in order to serve its larger interests of domination of the Middle East. It’s very clear that if elections were to happen in Sudan, that the people would elect in anti-colonial Muslim governance. And this is a threat to US control of the Middle East and of Muslim countries.

Listen to or watch our full interview with Suad Abdel Aziz, unpaywalled for all listeners. And don’t miss our limited time deal: 2 MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE. Your support of independent media means everything.

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At the Israel Hayom Summit in New York, Hillary Clinton claimed that young people, specifically her own students at Columbia University, are brainwashed by social media into believing that Israel’s genocide of Gazans is bad.

Not only is this genocide denial, as a group of genocide prevention experts deemed, but it’s also just strange for a professor to mock her own students on a global stage.

When UI’s own Aaron Maté found himself standing next to Clinton at the Doha Forum this week, he didn’t miss his opportunity:

“Secretary Clinton,” he asked. “You said that young people are brainwashed because of social media. What about young people who don’t want to see US-made bombs kill Palestinians? Any message for them?”

Her grin only widened as she walked away.

Hear Aaron’s analysis of his confrontation with the former secretary of state by subscribing to Useful Idiots. You’ll also get an examination into Chuck Schumer’s approval of Trump’s regime change war in Venezuela, our response to ADL Fraudfather Jonathon Greenblatt calling us “antisemitic Jews,” and yet another former Biden official justifying the murder of countless Ukrainians.

It’s a maddening Friday Free-For-All. Subscribe to watch the full episode here:

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This week we’re speaking to Pulitzer-Prize winner Greg Grandin about the Trump Administration’s regime-change war in Venezuela, which now is mired in controversy not just because we’re trying to overthrow a foreign government yet again, but also because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presided over a blatantly unconstitutional strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean.

Useful Idiots: Can you walk us through what Trump is doing right now in Venezuela and what is motivating him?

Greg Grandin: The big picture is the America First movement, which imagines that the United States no longer superintends a global liberal political economy in which everybody plays by the rules. That’s happened in the past, and Latin America is key to that.

But then, of course, there’s Venezuela and there’s oil. There was a split within the Trump administration between so-called moderates, who are tied to Chevron, and the war party, Miller, Rubio, and Hegseth. I think those speedboat attacks were the war party’s attempt to preempt any normalization of relationships with Venezuela.

And with Rubio, it’s a confluence of two different strands. One is he was a neocon before he became America First. But he’s also from South Florida, and he’s got deep ties to the Cuban community. And Venezuela is seen as the first step towards taking out Cuba, denying it its oil. So he’s doing it under the rubric of the War on Drugs, which of course is not Donald Trump. That’s a fifty year war.

Behind every single horror that Donald Trump represents exists a long train of U.S. presidents that had first put in the policies that make what Trump does today possible. And that’s nowhere clearer than in the Drug War, which started formally with Richard Nixon in 1973. So there’s many things flowing into it.

Useful Idiots: Do you think Trump will succeed with these plans in Venezuela?

Greg Grandin: The momentum to get Maduro out is quite strong and surprisingly orchestrated, which included the Nobel Peace Prize Committee giving María Corina Machado the prize, and she immediately fulfilled her role as everybody’s worst expectation of what could possibly happen. I can’t imagine any other Peace Prize winner immediately embarking on an alliance with Donald Trump to stage a coup. But that’s where we are.

I think that Trump wants Venezuela settled. That either means Maduro’s gone and some provisional government favorable to the United States is in power, or it means the Chevron faction within the Trump administration keeps Maduro and establishes some semblance of normalcy and keeps the oil pumping.

Now deportation flights have restarted after being halted for a little while. That’s where I’m a little bit dubious about whether Trump is going to go all in on Rubio’s visions. They don’t have enormous support in the United States. It doesn’t have support in the MAGA base. And obviously Hegseth is having all of these problems. The leaking of the footage of that double-tap speedboat killing suggests there’s deep discontent within the military…

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If you thought the Fox News banter between Jesse Watters and Stephen Miller couldn’t get any slimier than we’ve shown on past Useful Idiots episodes, then you’re in for, well, a lot of slime.

This week, Pete Hegseth went on Stephen Miller’s wife Katie Miller’s podcast. (Yes, we know Hegseth did other things this week, mainly war crimes that are getting him in trouble with the military and all that, and we’ll get to that, but first we’ve gotta talk about this.) She asked him which members of the Trump administration he would let babysit his kids.

His response: “Oh, I mean, not your husband or Marco.”

So when Stephen Miller was asked about this by Jesse Watters, you could see the thinly-veiled seething rage lurking in Miller’s eyes. And his response only made it creepier:

“He’s worried that if I babysat his kids, he’d come back after a couple of hours and they would say, ‘Daddy, why don’t you send the military into Minnesota to help us with the Somali refugees?’” It’s the first time we’ve seen Miller genuinely smile and it’s somehow creepier than his usual gaze.

To watch Katie and Aaron play ‘Would you rather have Stephen Miller or Pete Hegseth babysit your kids,’ subscribe to watch the full Friday Free-For-All.

You’ll also see: Hillary Clinton mocking her own students for opposing genocide, Republicans openly pushing to steal oil from Venezuela, and the new gambling site that’s turning opinions into “tradable assets.”

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Happy Thanksgiving to all Useful Idiots,

Each year in our end-of-year emails we seem to repeat the phrase, “this one’s been rough.” But what’s nice about Thanksgiving is that it’s a time to squint our eyes in some attempt to peer through the endless wars, genocides, war crimes, evictions, deportations, and class theft to see something we’re actually thankful for.

And we saw you. The listeners, the activists, the supporters, the journalists, and anyone else trying to do their part to make the world a little less insane, who support independent media, one of the few remaining strongholds against the global empire.

So to show our thanks we’re giving out two months free to new subscribers. Don’t worry there’s no catch. You don’t need to commit to a lifetime subscription for taking the offer. We just like having you in the Useful Idiots community.

Click here for the offer. You can also use it to gift a subscription for the upcoming holiday season to bring more into our fold…

Thanks for supporting independent media. Comment a song that fits the vibe for today. Here’s one to start:

Happy Thanksgiving,

– Katie, Aaron, and Wilson

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For our news of the week segment, check out our Friday Free-For-All: Fmr Obama Speechwriter: “Genocide is Bad” Is WRONG Takeaway of the Holocaust

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There’s been a lot happening in Ukraine: there is talk of a new peace proposal floated by the US and Russia, and meanwhile, Ukraine internally is in chaos over a corruption scandal touching Zelensky and his inner circle.

We spoke to two experts: returning guest Marta Havryshko, visiting assistant professor at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, and Nicolai Petro, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island and author of The Tragedy of Ukraine.

Useful Idiots: What is going on with this corruption controversy in Ukraine?

Marta Havryshko: First of all, I must say that it’s not only a corruption scandal. It’s an entire political crisis. This energy scandal is part of a bigger picture, and different security services and state agencies are all involved in these corruption schemes crafted by Zelensky’s friends.

The corruption scheme involves kickbacks with Ukraine’s energy production at a time when a lot of Ukrainians are going without power because of all the Russian attacks. So now, Ukrainians are sitting without water, electricity, and heat for twelve, fifteen hours per day in some cities.

They are outraged. And they are thinking, ‘Why is this happening? How is it possible that ordinary Ukrainians are demanded to go to the front line, to send their sons away, but at the same time our political elites are making money out of their sufferings while we sit for hours without heat, water, and electricity?’

Useful Idiots: We have word of yet another new seismic development in the Ukraine proxy war. There is talk now that Ukraine has been presented with a new sort of ultimatum from Trump. It includes ceding all of the Donbas to Russia and a reduction in the size of the Ukrainian military. What is your understanding of where things are both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table?

Nicolai Petro: The battlefield situation is getting increasingly critical for Ukraine. There are some assessments that we’re reaching a tipping point at which it is possible that the front line collapses at several points and then the situation will be dire indeed. And perhaps it is to prevent putting Ukraine and its European backers in that kind of dire situation that the current proposal has been floated…

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