Useful Idiots

You may know him as the founder of Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for 9/11. Or you may know him as a man labeled by the US as a terrorist who was arrested in Iraq for attacking US soldiers.

But to Donald Trump, he’s a “young, attractive guy” with a “strong past.” And Trump thinks he has a shot with him…

We’re talking about Syrian President al-Sharaa, formerly known as Mohammed al-Jolani. This week, Trump took a tour throughout the Middle East and fawned over leaders like al-Sharaa and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. (Notably, he did not visit Israel.)

And while the things Trump said were certainly weird, with excessive praise dumped onto US-labeled terrorists, his policy announcements were notable. After the fall of Syria’s Assad government, politicians across the aisle were suddenly able to admit that US sanctions on Syria did nothing to hurt the Syrian leadership, only devastating the Syrian people. So now, disregarding the flirting, the lifting of sanctions will hopefully allow the country to rebuild.

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On the trip it was also announced that Trump was being gifted a multi-million dollar “palace in the sky” private jet from Qatar. Politicians like Hakeem Jeffries were quick to slam Trump for this act of corruption, illegally accepting huge gifts from a foreign country.

…

They never seem to care so much when those gifts come from Israel:

It’s a weird week filled with flirting, corruption, hypocrisy, and madness. Watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

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– Katie & Aaron

Join our fundraiser to support MECA, the Middle East Children’s Alliance which is organizing aid for children in Gaza. Click on the video link above and find the Donate button on the right side of the page.

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Watch our full, unpaywalled interview with Freedom Flotilla organizers Huwaida Arraf and Thiago Ávila here:

The Conscience, a civilian ship that is part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was attempting to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza when it was was attacked by drones last week. Greta Thunberg, who was scheduled to board the ship on its way to Gaza, as well as organizers of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Israeli media, blamed Israel for the attack. Israel, for its part, has not denied responsibility.

We spoke with Freedom Flotilla organizers Huwaida Arraf and Thiago Ávila who explain the mission of the Conscience, describe the attack, and their commitment to breaking the ilegal and inhumane siege on Gaza.

Useful Idiots: There were calls from the ship during the attack. Were you guys scared at this point that people were potentially going to die?

Huwaida Arraf: We lost contact with them for many hours and we knew that the ship was bombed and that it was taking on water. So we were very concerned. We organized people to take a couple of boats and sail out to them, but they were prevented from reaching them twice. The Maltese authorities prevented them from reaching the ship. We were pressuring the Maltese authorities to let them get the people off the ship. And the requests continue to be inexplicably denied.

The vessel right now is still in the place where it was bombed. We are still asking the Maltese authorities to let us in. But the crew all remains on the ship for now.

Useful Idiots: Have you confirmed that this drone attack was carried out by Israel?

Thiago Ávila: It has come to light that just hours before Israel bombed our ship, there was an Israeli military plane in Maltese airspace that flew right over the area where the ship was bombed before going back to Israel. And there are a lot of other factors that indicate that there are other countries that knew.

We have a situation where not only is the United States obviously fully on board with what Israel is doing and enabling it, but other countries are not only not living up to their obligations under international law, but they're also hampering civilian efforts to do something about it. People should ask themselves ‘why should civilians try to organize a boat and aid and try to confront the Israeli military to make their way into Gaza which is illegally besieged like this, when countries should be doing this?’ But not only are countries not putting aid on ships and insisting on getting into Gaza, they are doing Israel's work by trying to sabotage our efforts.

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Huwaida also recalls being on another ship in 2010 which suffered a lethal attack from Israel that killed nine humanitarians.

Huwaida Arraf: The reason why the flotillas exist is because the people of Gaza are suffering a genocide and they're under illegal Israeli blockade for eighteen years. And now for more than two months without a single bottle of water entering Gaza. So that's why people are not with their families here on the flotilla, because we are here for a purpose, to serve as a solidarity mission to the Palestinian people.

Watch our full, unpaywalled talk with the Freedom Flotilla organizers where we watch video of the crew during the attack, Thiago explains the role that President Lula’s Brazil has in Israel’s destruction of Gaza, and Huwaida lays out a plan for their next attempt to get aid past the siege.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Here’s What We Found Inside Harvard’s Antisemitism Report

Useful Idiots is an audience-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week Harvard released it’s final report from the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. In a video released by The Free Press, a site which once fought censorship and blasted cancel culture, the worst crimes of antisemitism are listed, given as reasons to cancel and censor students.

We will restate their list here:

• Some Jewish students reported that they have been “ghosted” by longterm friends for expressing sympathy for Israel

• One student was told by another that “Zionists are not welcome at Harvard Medical School

• A professor began a class about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by telling students that “the discourse is saturated with the Israeli narrative” and that she had decided to, “with a heavy heart, remove Israeli sources from the syllabus.”

• In a Harvard-run privilege training, Jewish students were deemed to be privileged not only for being identified as white, but also because they were Jewish

• When Jewish students reported concerns about bias, they were asked “Who is more marginalized, Jews or Palestinians?”

• A student was asked: “Do you believe in decolonization in theory or in practice?”

None of these top examples are antisemitic, and certainly aren’t considered illegal speech on a college campus. But cancel culture grifters like Bari Weiss and CNN’s Dana Bash are using them to justify President Trump’s draconian crackdown on free speech, and are part of the larger cause of dehumanizing Palestinians to justify the US-funded genocide of children in Gaza.

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Also in this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Trump makes a strange deal with the Houthis, Fox News mocks the dolls of poor children, and a former-marine-turned-GOP Congressman pretends to get assaulted.

It’s a funny week filled with the most ridiculous people in the world – watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

Useful Idiots is an audience-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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

The new podcast Dystopia Now, hosted by comedian Kate Willett and philosopher Émile Torres, has been unveiling a disturbing new story from the tech world that comes straight out of The Matrix. It involves transhumanism, a tech-bro update to eugenics, in which billionaires can digitize their minds with AI, transcending humanity and achieving immortality.

If this sounds disturbing, just wait until you hear our full chat with Kate and Émile.

Useful Idiots: Can you define transhumanism?

Émile Torres: The key idea is this techno-utopian vision. And transhumanism is this ideology that says we ought to develop advanced technologies to radically re-engineer the human organism, ultimately creating a new and supposedly superior post-human species. Elon Musk is a transhumanist. His company Neuralink is all about merging our brains with AI. Mark Zuckerberg is a transhumanist. Peter Thiel has invested millions and millions of dollars into radical longevity research. The goal then would be to attain immortality.

Useful Idiots: Can you talk about network states?

Kate Willett: They wanted to have these little anarcho-capitalist communities. It was all about getting out of the United States to do this. But what seems to have changed recently is that a lot of these billionaire dudes seem to have decided that maybe the best way for them to realize their illiberal, anti-democratic vision of running the government more like a business is making the United States that versus leaving.

Curtis Yarvin talks about this idea he calls RAGE: Retire All Government Employees. And now we have DOGE, which is also a four-letter acronym for getting rid of the administrative state. It just seems like these dudes are making a lot of progress. Their previous vision was leaving somewhere and having these little tech utopias, network states. Now they're trying to do it here.

Émile Torres: DOGE seems to be RAGE in action.

Useful Idiots: What are some of the craziest, scariest ideologies, that come out of this movement?

Émile Torres: The one thing I would want people to know is that part of what it means for us to bring about utopia, to transition from our current human era to this paradisiacal post-human era, is for our species to be disempowered, marginalized, or eliminated. I think that at the heart of this ideology is a pro-extinctionist view.

They say once we create post-humans, our digital successors, then we should bow out. Because we're just going to be inferior beings that are using up valuable resources on Earth. So really, at the heart of this idea is this eschatological end times vision that we're going to transition from a biological world to a digital world. And our species is going to disappear.

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Subscribe for the full interview with Kate and Émile where we discuss the pseudo-utopian autocratic book Abundance by the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, how older billionaires are cryogenically freezing themselves to be revived once the immortality AI is ready, why that tech may be ready a lot sooner than we think, and what the relationship is between transhumanism and Zionism.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Morning Joe Comes Out as a Bernie Bro

Thanks for supporting independent media. Subscribe for the full episode here:

After years of fighting against progressives like Bernie Sanders for messages like Medicare For All and taxing billionaires, corporate Democrats are suddenly rewriting history as Bernie’s “Fight the Oligarchy” tour grows viral nationwide.

That’s right: Joe Scarborough and James Carville always wanted to fight the billionaire class. It was only their words and actions that thought otherwise. So to not be left behind as Bernie’s movement gains momentum, here’s how they’re justifying their change:

Morning Joe gave one of his famous rants about how he wishes he could have always fought for working people, but since he didn’t want to call himself a socialist, Bernie and other progressives wouldn’t let him. If that sounds bogus, wait until you hear Carville’s excuse.

Democratic spin doctor James Carville claims that he’d also have been supportive of Bernie’s mission… if not for the name. Fight the Oligarchy? According to Carville, Americans are too stupid to know such a big word. If it was instead called something cool like “Fight the Fat Cats,” of course he would care about working class people.

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Also in this week’s Thursday Throwdown: State Dept Spokesperson Tammy Bruce has some funny jokes about Gazans starving to death, and, for perhaps the first time in Useful Idiots history, we have some good news to share.

It’s a jam-packed Throwdown, watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe for the full episode here:

Useful Idiots is an audience-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.