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May 5, 2023 - Jimmy Dore Show
58:46
20230505_TJDS_20230505_Podcast_-_5423_12.07_AM
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We're telling jokes in Los Angeles, Northampton, Massachusetts, Syracuse co-host, New York, Hartford, Connecticut, Baltimore, Chicago, Rosemont, San Diego, and more.
Go to JimmyDoor.com to see, get a link for all those tickets.
Plus, you can watch my new special, COVID Lies Are Funny.
Hey, this is Aaron Maté sitting in for Jimmy Dore.
Who is this?
Thank you.
Oh, hey, Sport, this is President Joe Biden of the United States.
Oh, hello, Mr. President.
Thanks for calling.
That's the United States of America, in case you were wondering.
Yeah, no, I figured.
I don't know about you, Aaron.
When I hear the United States of America, I picture three things.
The flag, a bald eagle that looks like it's about to start a bar fight, and the geographical shape of our nation.
I see.
That shape exists because we have borders, Aaron.
Set to find borders that we must recognize and occasionally defend.
Okay, I see where you're going with this.
Is this about you ordering 1,500 military troops to our border with Mexico?
Oh, you heard about that.
Of course, it's in the news.
Okay, well, good.
Yeah, I wanted that to get out there.
I need to be seen as tough on border security.
Many of my critics have been harping on that quite unfairly.
So hopefully this measure will let people know exactly where I stand.
Yeah, it shows you're no different on this issue than Trump or any other president for that matter.
He also tried to militarize our border.
All right, now hold on, Scrappy.
I'm not, quote, militarizing our border.
Trump did that, not me.
What else would you call the Department of Defense sending 1,500 active duty soldiers?
He will be there to assist his civilian capacity, doing paperwork and administrative duties so that the Border Patrol can get out there and handle the situation.
We recently dropped the COVID rules, so we are expecting a surge at the border.
It's too bad.
That COVID thing really helped us turn away a lot of refugees.
It was extremely convenient.
But, you know, I had to go away sometime.
You're sending 1,500 soldiers to do paperwork.
Well, who the hell else would we send?
Non-active duty soldiers?
Yeah, there's a thought.
Okay, well, if you have the number for a temp agency, I could call up and say, hey, I need 1,500 guys and gals to head down to a remote and dangerous location, and they need to know Excel.
You just feel free to email me that number.
I just feel like a huge military presence will not be helpful in dealing with a massive humanitarian crisis on our border.
Oh, come on, man.
When has the presence of the U.S. military ever made a humanitarian crisis worse?
Name one time.
Just one.
One time.
Are you serious?
See, you can't do it.
No one can.
Look, we're just going to have to cross our fingers here and hope this goes well because this is how it has to be.
But why?
Because look, man, I got no choice here.
I'm running again in 2024.
Did you hear about that?
So I have to start looking like I'm tough on the border.
And if that wasn't enough, there's another reason.
And what's that?
Aaron, another long-standing American tradition is that when the president is threatened with a personal scandal, he mobilizes troops somewhere, somehow.
It's the ultimate distraction.
Clinton did that.
Didn't work, but he did it.
The reason I can't forgive Bush for the AC war is that guy was squeaky clean.
He didn't have to do it.
You supported that war.
Yeah, but I don't now.
And I got some shit hanging over my head, so I have to move troops somewhere.
And we strain the Ukraine situation to bring a nuclear war, so the border it is.
What's the scandal you're referring to?
Ah, you know, my dumbass son, Hunter, yet again.
This kid, I tell you what, more headaches every day with his bozo.
So he supposedly has this illegitimate child.
A paternity test has confirmed he's the father, Mr. President.
He supposedly has this kid down in Arkansas that the mom is trying to get more child support for.
It's all just so embarrassing.
Who goes to Arkansas and doesn't use a condom?
Jesus Christ, smoking crack was safer than that.
I see.
Now this trumpet of a mother wants to change her daughter's last name legally to Biden.
Can you believe that shit?
Not on my watch.
Not on my Irish Roman Catholic watch.
Why won't you acknowledge this grandchild of yours?
Are you kidding me?
That's the last thing we need.
They'll did my opponents.
They'll say having an out-of-wedlock grandchild is woke or some shit.
Look, I'm running again, Jack.
I don't need that guff.
So soldiers of the border, it is.
Look at this, not that.
How very cynical.
Thank you.
I mean, come on, man.
Also, do you realize how much fucking money we already spend at Christmas on our six normal grandkids?
Half my salary goes, these little stinkers.
I'll tell you what, Aaron.
See, I haven't fucked up your name once.
Proud of myself.
Anyway, I gotta go.
My staff is hollering about this debt ceiling shit, and I have to appear as if I'm addressing a situation.
This is good.
This always sucks up media attention, too.
So it might be helpful.
Hunter, if you're listening, if you gotta fuck up now is the time to do it.
Establishment media sucks.
All gaslighting, so good luck.
Bullshit we can't afford.
Fomenting this.
Oh, oh, oh.
Watch and see as a jack-dog.
Comedium speeds and jumps comedium and hits him head-on.
It's the Jimmy Door show.
I'm Aaron Matte, sitting in for Jimmy Door here with my guest, Norman Finkelstein, author of the new book, I'll Burn That Bridge, when I get to it.
And this happened recently, where Medi Hassan, a host on MSNBC, claimed that he had caught Matt Taibbi, the reporter on the Twitter files, in what Medi called multiple unacknowledged and glaring mistakes in his Twitter files reporting.
And Medi claimed that he caught Matt Taibbi in these errors in an interview they did on MSNBC.
Come back in.
You also claim the EIP was partnered with the government cybersecurity and infrastructure agency, CISA, to send to Twitter, but you mix up CISA, CISA, a homeland security agency, with the Center for Internet Security, the CIS, which is a non-profit.
In fact, you added an A to CIS.
I think people can see it there in brackets to make that false claim.
It's just error off to error, Matt.
So that's Mediasan claiming he's caught Matt Taibbi in error after error.
And in that case, he caught Matt Taibi getting an acronym wrong in one tweet, but then falsely claimed that Matt Taibbi had made that same mistake before Congress, which he did not.
And someone to point all this out was Lee Fong, who reported, and we've covered this, that MSNBC's Medi Hassan gets basic facts wrong on DHS content moderation partnerships.
So the claims that Mehdi was making about Matt Taibbi's supposed mistakes, that yes, in one tweet, Matt got an acronym wrong, but on the substance of the rest, it was Mehdi that in fact got it wrong.
But that didn't stop Congress, Democrats in Congress, based on Mehdi's mistake, threatening Matt Taibbi with prison.
Here's a headline from Lee Feng: House Democrat threatens Twitter files journalist with prosecution and imprisonment.
And then Lee Feng came out with more reporting showing that while Medi Hassan is lecturing Matt Taibbi about making mistakes, that Medi Hassan actually plagiarized the column he wrote in favor of spanking.
Now, many people were quick to point out that Medi Hassan has a history of this, of positioning himself on the left only to attack other people on the left or other people who do actual adversarial journalism that hold state power accountable.
Here's Ali Abunima.
He points out it's important to understand that Mehdi's consistent game is attacking the left from the left to advance his career, like when he offered himself to the rancid, ultra-racist Daily Mail to attack labor and shit on Muslims.
And yes, this was back when Mediasan wrote the Daily Mail, which is a right-wing newspaper in the UK, and asked them to give him a column and offered in that letter, he said, quote, I could therefore write pieces for the Daily Mail critical of labor and the left from inside labor and the left.
So that's Mediassan's background.
And this, his record of attacking the left and catering to right-wing establishment talking points in service of his own career also includes catering to the smear that was waged against Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labor Party, an actual progressive, longtime champion of working people and of a humane foreign policy.
And to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party establishment, along with the pro-Israel lobby in the UK, came up with the scam that Corbyn was an anti-Semite and was presiding over this anti-Semitism crisis inside the Labour Party.
And here's Medi Hassan from the left catering to that.
He says, I gave Corbyn the benefit of the doubt on anti-Semitism.
I gave Corbyn the benefit of the doubt on anti-Semitism.
I can't anymore.
A powerful piece from this writer who, like me, has defended Corbyn up until now, but like me, struggles to defend his Zionist remarks that have emerged from 2013.
And Mediasan also wrote a column in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, ostensibly trying to tell people that the thing about Corbyn was going too far.
It was overblown.
In the process, though, he still caters to it.
So the column is called Dial Down the Hysteria on Anti-Semitism in Corbyn's Labor.
So ostensibly, he's actually arguing here that this allegation of anti-Semitism is overblown.
But here he is, if you read the column, actually catering to it, accepting all of the fake talking points that are used to advance it.
So this is what he writes.
Does Corbyn suffer from an unconscious bias on the left that doesn't take allegations of anti-Semitism as seriously as it takes allegations of, say, Islamophobia?
Probably.
So here he is saying that Jeremy Corbyn probably suffers from an unconscious bias that downplays anti-Semitism while he's ostensibly defending Corbyn.
Could Corbyn have been more forceful and proactive in denouncing left-wing anti-Semitism much earlier on?
Definitely.
But does a Corbyn-led labor government pose a threat to the very existence of British Jewry?
Don't be silly.
So yes, here he is trying to push back a little bit, but still catering to the premise in the first place, which is fake, that there is this anti-Semitism problem in the Labor Party and that Jeremy Corbyn has some personal problems, some personal blind spot with that.
And then he also says, when Jews say they're the victims of racism, believe them.
So here's Mediassan in an Israeli newspaper saying that when Jews say they're the victims of racism, believe them.
So basically, anybody who says that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite and a racist, I guess we have to believe them when they say that because they said it and because they're Jews.
And he also writes: meanwhile, whether it likes it or not, Labor, to contra paraphrase the Corbyn supporting musician and activist Billy Bragg, has much work to do in terms of rebuilding relations with Britain's Jewish community.
Corbyn's repeated apologies in recent months have so far failed to heal the wounds of the past few years.
So let's bring in our guest, Norman Thickelstein.
Norman, you've written extensively about the weaponization of anti-Semitism to undermine criticism of Israel.
And so what do you make here of Medi Hassan, ostensibly in the name of defending Jeremy Corbyn from these allegations of anti-Semitism, still pandering to those very same allegations?
If you don't mind, I want to just first comment on the first part of what you said, and I'm going to focus on the second part, namely what Mehdi Hassan did in the case of the Corbyn candidacy in the UK.
Everybody knows it's just the most standard debating trick that when you have only two pieces of evidence for your point, for example, you charge a book, it's filled with fraud, rife with lies, so on and so forth.
You say, but for reasons of time or for reasons of space, I can only discuss two of those pieces of evidence, okay?
Now, when you're a writer like myself who constantly makes claims against establishment figures, I always stay up nights, literally worrying, worrying.
If they find those two errors, I'm going to be hung.
Because all they have to say is Finkelstein's book is rife with errors, filled with errors.
However, for reasons of time, if it's oral or space, if it's written, for reasons of time or space, I can only discuss two.
And that's exactly what Mehdi Hassan did with Matt Taibbi.
He said, error after error after error.
And then he cites two or three so-called errors, but planting the idea that Taibbi's, all of his reportage was rife with error.
So on Glenn Greenwald's show, I made what I thought to be a fair challenge.
Present this voluminous evidence of fraud in Taibbi or acknowledge that you're a blowhard.
When I was on Democracy Now debating Alan Dershowitz, I made very severe accusations against him of fraud, falsification, etc.
The same claims that Mehdi Hassan leveled against Matt Taibbi.
But here's the difference.
I recognize That's a serious accusation.
It's a serious personal, a professional accusation, and it's a personal libel.
So when I left the Democracy Now studio, I sat down and devoted the next two years to documenting in detail the various frauds, falsifications, and lies in Alan Dershowitz's book, The Case for Israel.
And it seems to me incumbent upon Mekdi Hassan to do the exact same thing.
That was a professional slander and a personal libel against Matt Taibbi, the error after error after error.
Well, now put up or not just shut up, but issue a public apology.
Number two, you mentioned the Congress, she's not a voting congressman, non-voting congresswoman from the Virgin Islands who brought up the issue of perjury and the legal consequences of it.
I think you forgot.
I could be mistaken, but my memory is that idea was first planted by Mekdi Hassan.
And then it was taken.
Correct.
He said he tweeted, he tweeted that Matt Taibi made false statements under oath and he called for Congress to take action on that.
And by the way, after this member of Congress, Stacey Plasketta, Democrat, threatened Taibbi with prison, I've yet to see Mehdi Hassan comment on that.
He was very vocal in talking about how many mistakes he caught Matt Taibbian supposedly and erroneously, because that was not true that he caught him on mistakes.
Very vocal about getting Congress to do something.
After Congress threatened Taibbi with prison based on Mehdi's own mistake, he's gone quiet.
Well, that shows you what a sewer rat he is.
And I'll tell you why.
You're too young, obviously, to remember and probably haven't even read about it.
During the McCarthy era, when people were brought before McCarthy, ex-communists were brought before McCarthy, there was a real moral dilemma.
And here was the moral dilemma.
Many people were willing to speak on their own politics and their own participation in the Communist Party.
The problem was the rules of the game in the congressional hearings was the moment you spoke about yourself, you were legally bound to talk about others.
And a lot of the people who went before McCarthy didn't want to have to talk about others being in the Communist Party because it would have seemed like betrayal and a stab in the back.
And that was the reason why, you know, many of them pleaded the Fifth Amendment.
And the Fifth Amendment is you don't have to testify against yourself.
The problem was they were willing to testify about themselves, but they weren't willing to testify about others.
And only the low, low, low, low life, the Eliha Kazans, happily went before McCarthy to rat on others.
And this was Matt, this was Mekdi Hassan, the rat, the sewer rat, who goes, writes a column, we need to get Matt Taibbi arrested.
We need to get Matt Taibbi on a perjury charge.
It's such a low light.
He was so proud of himself because after that exchange with Matt Taibbi, he became the woke avenger.
The whole net was saturated with how Matt, how Mekdi Hassan had pummeled, destroyed Matt Taibbi.
And Mekdi got so carried away with his fame, he got so intoxicated by it, he decided to raise it to another level.
And so he says, let's lock up Matt Taibbi.
Why not burn him, Mekdi?
Why not burn him like the witches?
Don't you think that would even be better, more exciting?
You woke, you sewer rat, woke Avenger.
It was so disgusting.
The saddest part is Matt Taibbi was such a nice guy.
He was so principled and decent that he really didn't fight back hard against Mekdi and tell him to his face what a sack of shit, what a sewer rat he is.
Okay, well, Norman, let me get your response to people like Mehdi Hassan catering to the smears against Jeremy Corbyn while ostensibly criticizing them.
Okay.
First of all, you have to have the context.
You got the context right.
Jeremy Corbyn was like Bernie Sanders, except you could say at a more intense level.
Jeremy Corbyn became head of the Labor Party, my memory serves, in 2015.
And from the moment he became the head of the Labor Party, a hysteria was whipped up to try to stop him, to smear him.
There were claims that he had these ties with Moscow, which are familiar to you, I know.
Claims that he had ties with the Russians, blah, blah, blah.
And the East Germans, they tried everything.
Get something to stick in order to stop Jeremy Corbett.
And finally, they found it.
They found the charge of anti-Semitism.
Now, the British Board of Deputies, it's the main Jewish body in the UK.
It's like our Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.
They have the Jewish Board of Deputies.
They were obviously, like our Conference of Presidents of major Jewish organizations, fanatically pro-Israel.
They're basically in one aspect.
I'm not talking about the domestic aspect.
In one aspect, they're basically an Israel lobby in the UK.
And they started this campaign, beginning with accusing Corbyn of being soft on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
It gradually escalated until the claim was that Corbyn himself was an anti-Semite.
And Norman, we have one minute left to wrap.
Right.
And then along came Mekdi Hassan, who reiterated exactly the same pace.
He started out by saying the Labor Party is riddled with anti-Semites.
And then it culminated in him claiming the Labor Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, himself, was an anti-Semite.
And then he wrote the letter, he wrote the article in Haaretz, and he had that line, Which I'll just repeat for you.
The line was, just give me one half second.
Okay.
The line was: when Jews say they're the victims of racism, believe them.
Okay, so every time Israel engages in one of its attacks on Gaza, Jews, Israel supports the attack.
And 90% of Jews, 90% of Jews say the attack was warranted.
Every single attack on Gaza, the poll showed between 90 and 95% of Jews in Israel said the attack was warranted.
So I asked Mekdi Hassan, should we trust the Jews?
Now, what do we mean by the Jews?
Is it Benjamin Netanyahu?
After all, he's the prime minister of the state of the Jews.
So, Mekdi, I'm asking you, should we trust Benjamin Netanyahu?
He's the prime minister of the state of the Jews.
Now, I have a third question.
A large number of those claiming that there was no anti-Semitism in the Labor Party, a large number were Jews.
And those Jews were expelled from the Labor Party.
Now, bear in mind, Jews, it's a very funny thing.
Under the current Labor Party head, Kier Sturmer, Jews were disproportionately, listen to that, disproportionately expelled from the Labor Party for saying all these claims of anti-Semitism are a crock.
Now, I ask Mechdi, why don't you trust those Jews?
Why do you only trust the Jews who were part and parcel of a conspiracy?
Yes, it was a conspiracy to stop Jeremy Corby, and they all coalesce.
There was one moment which Mechdi himself cites where all three, all three major Jewish newspapers in the UK, they combined.
It was the first time in their history, all three carried the same headline.
Is Jeremy Corbyn an existential threat to the Jews?
But you're not allowed to say there's any Jewish conspiracy because that's an anti-Semitic taboo.
Well, guess what?
If you read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, you know what he says?
He says, every once in a while, capitalists get together.
And you know what they do?
He says, they conspire.
Yes, people conspire.
That every conspiracy theory is crackpot.
In this case, and allow me, and I'm off and you're off.
Just read Jamie Stern Weiner's edited collection.
It's called Anti-Semitism and the Labor Party.
It's available from Verso Books, Anti-Semitism and the Labor Party.
And it goes through chapter and verse on that whole scandal, which was a complete and total fraud, but which Mechdi joined in for the same reason, for the same reason that Tana Hesi Coates, Angela Davis, Kimberly Crenshaw, they joined in the attack on Bernie Sanders.
That's their job.
That's why Mechdi ended up at MSNBC News.
That's his job.
Norman Fickelstein is the author of the new book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom.
Norman, thanks so much for joining us.
Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show is you become a premium member.
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I'm Aaron Mante sitting in for Jimmy Doerr here with Misha Pollen and Americans comedian Kurt Metzger.
Some more media news for you.
Vice, the brash digital media disruptor that has struggled to find a buyer is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two people.
So Vice, once valued at billions of dollars, is having a hard time finding a buyer and has been shedding jobs, recently canceled the show called Vice News Tonight, and is now, according to the New York Times, going to file for bankruptcy.
Here is Max Blumenthal.
He says, Vice has been a money-losing venture for years, but was valuable as an insiduous vehicle for selling urban progressives on U.S. Empire.
Billionaire George Soros, a top sponsor of Western regime change operations abroad, bought Vice a few years of life back in 2019.
So, you know, Vice, in recent years, has taken a lot of money from powerful people like George Soros.
Here it is, $250 million from him.
Rupert Murdoch also took a $70 million stake in Vice.
Disney took a stake in Vice, $400 million.
Vice also made deals with Saudi Arabia, just $20 million alone to organize a rave in a Saudi desert.
What?
This is, yeah.
So over the years, Vice has taken a lot of people.
What a jintzy rave for Saudi.
It's like a poor person, Rave.
Over the years, Vice, you know, has gotten increasingly close with the elite of this country who have taken a huge stake in it.
And accordingly, its coverage has gone more and more and more pro-state and pro-government.
Well, they have done some.
Well, we're going to see an example of that.
So basically, Vice started out as a magazine in Canada, but as it's gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as always happens in media, it increasingly became no different than the establishment on so many vital issues and even hired the establishment to work for it.
So for example, this was Vice back in 2014, hiring a top White House official as a senior executive at the company.
So we can't do a full review of all the things Vice did over the years.
And this is not to disparage the people who worked there.
And, you know, there was some Vice coverage that I thought was good.
And I myself have done some work for Vice President.
Vice used to be great when it went into HBO when it was coming out of the, the YouTubes were good.
It was a magazine and YouTube's, I used to watch them all the time.
They didn't punch angry.
Then it got really good.
HBO, they got, I remember at the ME seeing them asking, I don't want to keep tragic and what they were like, asked about my pay at the one dude.
Yeah.
But it was a show I watched all the time.
And then all of a sudden, they started publishing like nonsense.
Well, that's what we're going to go over today, just some of the greatest hits of Vice basically being no different than the establishment and basically putting an edge.
She came in, actually.
Well, it was even before that.
Even putting an edgy face on U.S. hegemony.
There's so many examples of this.
So here's one.
This was after Gaddafi was killed in Libya.
And Vice said, Today, Gaddafi is spelled D-E-A-D.
We imagine our buddies, the rebels of Libya, are celebrating pretty hard right now.
That's pretty gross.
So that's really gross.
That is October 20th, 2011.
And eight days later, check out this headline in Vice: The flag of Al-Qaeda is now flying above a courthouse in Benghazi, Libya.
So for or against that.
So here they are celebrating Gaddafi's death and thinking about their buddies, the rebels who are celebrating.
Eight days later, Vice has to report that the flag of Al-Qaeda, the flag of their rebel buddies, is now flying above a courthouse in Benghazi.
Well, who, okay, clearly not the same person wrote these, right?
Because that one, that looks like that was prepared to get for them.
You know, I mean, I don't know who there was buddies with the rebels of Libya.
Well, here's another one.
This is from Ukraine.
This is back in 2014 when shortly after a U.S.-backed coup has brought a new government into power, that new government encourages assaults on Ukraine's ethnic Russian population in the East.
A civil war breaks out.
And the fighters on the front line for the Ukraine government, because so many Ukrainian soldiers have actually defected over to the rebels, are groups, including the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.
And watch how Vice covers the neo-Nazi Azov battle.
So the host asked, I've noticed some pro-Russia locals call the Azov battalion "Nazis".
Yes, they call us Nazis and punishers.
There are lots of stories that are ridiculous.
And look, see, he's playing with a puppy.
The Nazis playing with a puppy.
He's got the black son the one he removed because it's a Nazi symbol.
He's got that on his patch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, back then, they hadn't removed it yet.
So yes, he is wearing ridiculous.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
And look, they show him playing with a puppy.
So of course it's ridiculous.
Of course it's not true.
You know who really loved playing with puppies?
Hitler.
We're just ordinary guys from all over Ukraine.
We want to secure a future for white children and for us.
Frankly, there are even pictures of me with my arm raised up, but just for fun.
So he's admitting.
He's admitting to doing the Nazi salute, but he says it's just for fun.
That's great when they don't.
I love that.
That's a thing of like, no, of course, of course, I sing high at parties.
But, because they have no concept of how American, not, you're a Nazi, you prefer like the tiniest thing that's not Nazi-ish, and he has no idea how this would be received.
It's nothing serious.
So here's a question from the vice reporter.
He says, maybe the locals don't think it's very funny that you're doing the Nazi salute.
And then the guy says, they think that fascist Germany is coming for them.
In the form of us guys with unclear intentions.
Oh.
And there it is.
Back when Vice didn't have to cover that up.
Yeah, there it is.
Here, let's show that again.
So right there, that is the Azov logo, and the Azov logo is inspired by Nazis.
That's where it comes from.
And I like that one.
That's the occult one.
That's not like the thing.
They use like the weird real society, like spooky Nazi black magic symbol.
So here's more.
This is in Venezuela, where Venezuela has been the target for years of U.S. coup attempts.
Two decades ago, the Bush administration tried to overthrow Chavez.
And then under the Trump administration, the U.S. once again tried to overthrow Chavez's successor, Maduro.
And here is Biden basically here's Vice basically acting as stenographers for now the Trump administration and trying to overthrow Maduro.
And here's what Vice says: Venezuela doesn't know how to manage their oil.
So these backward Venezuelans, they have all these problems because they don't know how to manage their own oil, which is such a condescending, false thing to say.
When really the problem with Venezuela was that the U.S. sanctions were specifically designed to destroy Venezuela's oil sector because they couldn't import the parts and supplies they needed to keep their oil going.
And they also lost their oil sector because the U.S. expropriated Sitco, which is Venezuela's oil company.
The U.S. wing of that U.S. basically took it over and gave it over to the coup plotters that the U.S. was trying to install.
So this is Vice basically.
Well, that's called managing oil.
So this is Vice just basically parroting the Trump administration.
This is when Trump was in.
Yeah.
So they agree with Trump on this point.
They absolutely do.
A classic example of this.
And here's a little headline for the story.
Venezuela's mismanagement of oil only makes the people suffer.
Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves in the world.
Which begs an obvious question.
Why is the country in such unending economic despair?
President Nicolas Maduro blames the United States and its sanctions.
Donald Trump, hands up Venezuela.
De inmediati.
Inmediati, pues.
Inmediati.
It's true that production is at a near 70-year low.
It's also true that Maduro's oversight of the oil industry is rife with corruption and mismanagement.
So nothing here about what the data actually shows.
And if you look at that chart that he showed about Venezuelan oil production, I'm going to show you in a second a chart that proves that as soon as the U.S. sanctions kick in, that's when Venezuela's oil production craters as they were designed because the sanctions made oil production impossible.
And this is Vice.
Yes, they mention what Maduro says in passing, but that's the only mention they give to it.
And they go on to say that it's really because of corruption and mismanagement inside of Venezuela.
Aren't all oil companies rife with corruption?
And sure.
Is that like a standard way to do oil?
And all the dictators of the U.S. props up around the world, of course.
All these regimes are corrupt.
But because the U.S. wants Venezuela's oil and they want to overthrow its government, you have to blame the Venezuelans and accuse them of mismanaging their own oil.
Who do we send there to go suck their dick and ask for forgiveness to give us some oil during the Biden day?
That was the thing I couldn't do.
Well, we did have to do that.
That's right.
That's right.
So this is what I said at the time.
I love how the U.S. is imposing crippling, murderous sanctions that even a top opposition economist says has cratered Venezuelan oil production.
And yet, Vice News, and yet Vice News's take is right out of the is right out of the Monroe Doctrine.
Venezuela doesn't know how to manage their oil.
It's so racist and condescending.
And look, here's the chart I was talking about.
So this is a comparison between Venezuelan and Colombian oil production.
Venezuela is blue and Colombia is orange.
And look, they're pretty much the same, although Venezuela is higher.
As soon as August 2017, under Trump, the U.S. imposes its harshest sanctions aimed specifically at Venezuela's oil industry.
Look at that drop.
It just totally drops off.
That's a direct result of U.S. sanctions, which of course, and this chart, by the way, comes from a top Venezuelan opposition economist who is not a fan at all of the Maduro government.
But he's honest enough to recognize that U.S. sanctions deliberately destroyed Venezuela's oil production.
So this Venezuelan opposition economist is more honest than Vice News, which is supposed to be this edgy adversarial U.S. outlet.
And here's more from Vice on Venezuela.
So there was this thing after Trump launched this coup in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government gave the keys to their embassy in Washington to a bunch of activists, people from Code Pink and other groups.
And they were inside the embassy to hold on to it, to protect it from the coup government for coming to take it over.
And that led to the siege where you had some pro-coup people outside the embassy, Venezuelans living in exile, who were against the Maduro government and supported the coup.
They surrounded the embassy and basically blockaded it and prevented food from coming in.
So there was a big struggle there.
And they put sanctions on the embassy.
Yes.
So this is how Vice News covered it.
And how Vice News covered it is they basically tried to suggest that Code Pink, which is a women-led organization led by Medea Benjamin and Jodi Evans, two women who are just lifelong peace activists.
Code Pink tries to suggest that code, sorry, Vice News tries to suggest that Code Pink is endangering the people outside who are blockading the embassy.
Look at this.
Activists fight their battles through images on social media.
The Venezuelans portrayed Code Pink as middle-aged white colonizers.
Code Pink portrayed the Venezuelans as a mob of fascists.
But Code Pink are pros.
Code Pink are pros.
Okay.
So there's a sinister thing here.
The Code Pink are pros, pros at endangering these pro-coup Venezuelans.
How did Vice, the whole time right here in America, there wasn't peaceful demonstrations like this that they turn a blind eye to, but they're worried.
Now they're racist.
That's unbelievable.
A few days ago, we started noticing these people have been getting information, private information about our lives and putting it out there as a means of, I guess, scaring us.
So you see this, like you've seen Code Pink, who they are.
They're women dressed in pink.
They hold rallies.
They disrupt public events.
These are many people who are senior citizens.
And Vice is trying to accuse them of being threats to these people outside the embassy who are harassing the embassy protectors and blockading the embassy so they couldn't get food.
And yet Vice is saying that somehow it's Code Pink that is endangering you.
Dude, Vice never was like this even packet.
Like, that's wild.
It's becoming a little, you know, sketchy.
Do you think, in a way, Code Pink might have brought more attention to the suffering of people in Venezuela?
I don't know because they've been having parties in the embassy.
I don't really think they're spending their time talking to congresspeople.
We tried to get inside, but the activists upstairs wouldn't let us in, saying we were the hipster media arm of the empire.
Of what?
Of the empire.
Whoa.
Libya Benjamin is good.
She might have built it.
So Vice tried to get in, and they were told, no, you're the hipster media arm of the empire, which is the only accurate line in that whole segment right there.
So here's more.
So we saw this before.
Vice media secretly organized a $20 million Saudi government festival and Vice made deals with the Saudi government that, along with the money from George Soros and Rupert Murdoch and Disney, deals with Saudi Arabia helped rescue Vice from some serious financial straits.
And accordingly, Vice's coverage was very pro-Saudi, including in this segment on the Saudi war on Yemen.
So here is Eric Sperling of the group Just Foreign Policy.
He says, a whole Vice News episode about Yemeni children, and it ignores the blockade that the World Food Program cites as a key factor in why 400,000 babies and toddlers could die this year.
Saudi state TV would play this uncensored.
It doesn't even feign objectivity.
Here's one of many openly biased moments.
The Houthis have said that their goal is to take over the whole of Marib City.
What would that mean if that happened?
This state of fear has set in across the country.
In the south, Houthis surround the city of Taz and have increased their attacks on civilians.
Children are some of the most vulnerable.
Okay, so this is just straight up propaganda.
Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, for years was blockading and bombing Yemen.
The Houthis are a Yemeni resistance movement that fought the Saudi invaders.
And Vice News here is trying to portray the Houthis as being the danger to Yemenis when it's Saudi Arabia that was blockading Yemen, preventing aid from getting in.
Well, why is Vice News?
Why was Saudi Arabia?
I don't know why they invaded them in the first place.
Because there was a power struggle in the capital and Saudi Arabia took the side of one faction and went to the lengths of waging a war against Yemen to impose the rulers that they wanted.
And also because they saw the Houthis as an ally of Iran.
Oh, Shia.
And this was before Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a peace deal.
But this was all so the Houthis were seen as a proxy of Iran.
So that's what, you know, it's a peace deal and we're not going to reach one with our with our Yemen.
So Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen with U.S. support, and yet Vice News is portraying the Houthis, which are the resistance movement, as they're the ones being the threat.
You want to hear something funny, Aaron?
Just a few years, probably before this, I saw the Vice thing about how in Yemen or all these bombs that Saudi Arabia uses, you know, I don't know why they do this, but they stamp raid in America so that people get blown up by Saudi Arabia and find the bombs and they're like, America did this to us.
That's right.
Yeah.
If you're going to do that, can you at least stop putting our name on it?
So here's going to another country where the U.S. has tried to foment regime change for years, Cuba living under a multi-decade blockade.
So Vice News goes to Cuba and a similar result.
Just again, pro-U.S.
propaganda.
So we move on to the Mayogon, the seaside promenade where Lu Manuelo de Olcandera rallied his followers before being arrested.
It's also one of the top tourist attractions on the island.
But today, it was empty.
The litoral of Manacop, you can sit and sit.
We can't be here.
Outside.
Okay.
A Cuban police guard just told me to get out of the Managon.
Locals warn us why we're told to leave.
The malecón is not alone.
The police have care because the police don't lie to the city.
Concentrate.
They won't point you.
Because they have revolt inside the city.
Oh, I wonder why it wasn't littered with homeless people.
We play tourists to be sure no one is following us before visiting Carolina Barrero, a young art historian who uses public platforms to criticize the state.
It's our duty as citizens to be respected, because we respect those rights.
That's why we've come here today.
Who's been under house arrest for over 200 days?
Her friend, Alfredo Martinez, agrees to help escort us into her apartment for an interview.
The plan now, to see Carolina, what is?
Well, first of all, we have to go through a process of approval of the state's authority.
They determine who comes and who comes.
But on our walk over, Alfredo receives a phone call from a government official who asks about us.
They know we're trying to see Carolina.
What did you just say?
No, you're here.
You're here to kill yourself.
Exactly.
What are we afraid of?
They don't want to ask.
But why do you think we're going to start with this?
Oh, we're going to start with this.
If you want to call it Claudio.
You have to call it Claudio.
Hello, how are you?
We're going to call it Claudio.
All right, so this is classic vice.
So basically, this is a government that's been targeted for years for regime change by the U.S. rather than folks focusing on criticizing their own government, they go inside Cuba to try to find voices that will promote the U.S. narrative that Cuba is this irredeemable authoritarian state.
Where if you have a problem with Cuba's system, why not advocate for lifting the murderous sanctions that keep Cuba isolated and impoverished, which, of course, Vice will never do and possibly not even mention in their reporting.
So this is Max Vilenthal.
This piece by ex-Hillary Clinton campaign staffer and finding Latinx author Paula Ramos was a central piece of the U.S. regime's coordinated info war against Cuba.
Her father, Jorge Ramos, told me he sought the blessing of Mike Pence and Rubio for a 2019 regime change stunt in Venezuela.
This is her father, is a famous journalist who went and interviewed Nicolas Maduro, and they had that very famous exchange where Maduro said to him that you're not a journalist.
And her father also has promoted regime change inside Venezuela.
Finding late inks.
Was that why she was in Cuba to find Leytanks?
Here's Queer Lamond.
This journalist worked in the Obama administration before serving as deputy director of Hispanic media for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.
Her dad is the famous right-wing talking head Jorge Ramos, who spent his career smearing socialist movements across Latin America.
I've seen Vice's good work where they went to scary places before, way back when.
Yeah, which is why that was the least impressive.
They're wearing masks.
Did you get a phone call?
Yeah, they said, don't look for that person.
It looked better than LA.
It looked better than LA.
The communist hellhole was not wall-to-wall people sleeping on the street with makeshift tents outside the buildings.
How is that possible?
Don't even show Cuba.
And they have free health care.
Yep.
Here's Vice News in Syria.
Assad is not stupid.
I think he took a calculation.
That's the former defense secretary and director of the CIA Leon Panetta.
And I think in part it was based on the fact that it was pretty clear that the president did not want to militarily engage in Syria the way he had engaged in Bolivia.
I mean, he's won the war.
He has won the war.
He is a war criminal.
And he's at the top of a regime that has committed unbelievable war crimes.
Wow.
I think Assad is likely to remain the leader of Syria for some time to come.
It's not as if I had a great alternative strategy in that period, but I do think we missed some opportunities early on that might have given us wild watch.
So that is the message from Vice News: that this is how we can criticize our own government: we didn't go far enough in pursuing regime change in Syria.
And had we acted earlier, we might have had more leverage to overthrow Syria's government.
So we didn't do enough in destroying the country.
We should have gone further.
Did you hear how sad they were that he's a war criminal and he won?
Like, wouldn't it be great if our war criminals maybe won a war once in a while?
This is a classic from Vice News' coverage of Syria.
Chatting about Game of Thrones with Syria's most feared Islamic militants.
So this is Al-Qaeda they're talking about.
So this is the project.
Whenever you have insurgents or militants in a country that the U.S. is involved in a proxy war in, you have to whitewash them.
So, for example, in Ukraine, the Azov battalion.
Say it's just for fun, you say, Kyle.
It's just a party trick.
You know, people get nervous.
So the Azov Battalion, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the Contras in Nicaragua, there's always this effort to portray them as these misunderstood freedom fighters, nice guys.
And here's one way to do it.
Talk to Al-Qaeda about Game of Thrones.
Okay.
And this is what Vice wrote: Jabbed al-Nusra, that's Al-Qaeda, has emerged as arguably the most formidable rebel fighting force in Syria.
The fighters are battle-hardened, fearless, and disciplined.
They've already struck significant blows against the regime in battle and continue to work hard to win the hearts and minds of civilians and rebel fighters.
They're talking about Al-Qaeda here.
Oh my God, we do spread democracy.
Now, here's how Syria's how Al-Nusra, aka Al-Qaeda, which you know, Vice is talking to about Game of Thrones.
Here's how they're winning hearts and minds.
Okay, Syria, massacre reports emerged from Assad's Alawite heartland.
Syria, abductions, torture, and summary killings at the hands of armed groups.
They only watched season eight.
They were in full Khaleesi on a period, huh?
So, what Nusra and other death squads were doing in Syria was massacring minorities like the Alawites, like in Latakia here.
And Vice News was saying that they're working hard to win hearts and minds because these death squads were on the side of the U.S. in this regime change war.
That's why Jake Sullivan wrote to Hillary Clinton: Al-Qaeda is on our side.
We have paid $1,000 for a heart, $2,000 for a mind.
And so, because Al-Qaeda was on the U.S. side in Syria, that's why Vice News is going over there and talking to them about Game of Thrones and whitewashing them in pieces like this.
So, here's what Max Blue.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
So, here's what Max Blumenthal wrote: Hard times for Brooklyn-based hipster imperialists looking to place their idlib travel log or on playing Dungeons of Dragons with Al-Qaeda.
No more opportunities.
Well, Al-Qaeda, didn't they go to strip clubs where they blew up the World Trade Center?
They love American stuff.
They really do love it.
They don't hate it.
Here's more.
Vice photo spreads.
Vice photo spreads present girly teenage side of Israeli occupation.
And like they did these photo spreads of female Israeli soldiers, the defiant femininity of Israel's female soldiers, photos from the everyday lives of young female Israeli soldiers.
So this occupying army, brutalizing Palestinians, Vice found a way to find out, to find their defiant femininity.
This is, I had no idea how early, I didn't notice it until well into doing it, how early the feminist propaganda was U.S. empire propaganda.
I didn't realize how way back that started.
I thought that was like, I don't know, like fairly recent, but they must have been pushing this for these kind of things for like a while.
Sure.
Yeah, sure.
Here's more.
This is a documentary that Vice did called A World in Disarray, Syria, Ukraine, China, North Korea.
A Vice Special Report.
Somebody clean up this mess.
Hey.
Well, that's what the message is arrayed.
That's what the message is.
And what's amazing is, so this is supposed to be an edgy anti-establishment outlet.
This documentary, they did a world in disarray.
It's based on a book called A World in Disarray.
And the author of that book is Richard Haas, who was then the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most establishment.
The most punk rock.
Here's the trailer.
The world order has been upended.
Weak states threaten global stability as easily as strong ones.
You see, that's Syria and North Korea.
They're just as much a threat to global stability as the strong ones.
So everything, you know, the world's in disarray.
Who's going to save it?
Who's fighting his global stability?
I guess is my question.
You're a threat to our stability.
And America's role in determining the future is far from certain.
I think there's now a certain loss of respect for the United States.
That's Richard Haas, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who is speaking in a documentary that is based on his book produced by Vice complaining that the U.S. respect for the U.S. is waning around the world.
Just now.
Oh, begun to awaken.
We sit down with the people whose policy.
Condi Rice.
Are you joking?
Condy Rice.
Yep.
These have shaped the most.
I'm that old that Condi Rice could be on a cool thing.
Samantha Power.
Tony Blinken.
Samantha Power looks like the desiccated ghost of Samantha B. So right there, we've already seen two Iraq war criminals, Condi Rice and Tony Blair, right there.
But these are the talking head experts.
Defend its position and its values.
and take you to the flashpoints of a world in disarray.
The one thing that keeps me up at night is North Korea.
What happens in the fur could affect the quality of life here?
The idea that if America's first, the world is second.
That's a false set of choices.
We can do both.
We'll need to do both.
This is just straight up neocon propaganda, except with like, you know, edgy filmmaking techniques and like that like frenzied soundtrack that you wouldn't get in like in like a standard news outlet.
Otherwise, it's the exact same message.
Man, I remember back when Vice first came out, the idea of you would see like Tony Blair's dumb face on a thing like when Vice first came out, they had a cartoon called Little Bush that actually just made me laugh, where it was like George Bush and Dick Cheney and Tony Blair's kids.
That's the kind of healthy disrespect that was crazy, man.
So look, again, so the title of the documentary was A World in Disarray.
So literally, it's based on Richard Haas's book.
And again, he was the president, longtime president of the Council on Foreign Relations, big time supporter of every single U.S. military adventure abroad, including the Iraq War.
So here's some examples of his views.
And again, Vice News is basing a documentary off of his work.
He says the international order for four centuries has been based on non-interference in the internal affairs of others and respect for sovereignty.
Russia has violated this norm by seizing Crimea, by interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.
We must deal with Putin's Russia as the rogue state it is.
So Vice News is taking instructions from people like this guy.
Well, Richard Hawk, look, we can't be sure that we did that because when the guy from the CIA got asked, he went, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
Remember that?
And she goes, do we interfere?
Here's the Babylon beat.
They say with Vice News closing, White House will have to lie to public directly.
Not bad.
Now, look, so a lot of people who invested in Vice have lost a lot of money, but one person who made out pretty well is one of the co-founders, Shane Smith.
According to Semaphore, he's made more than $100 million from Vice.
And here he is a few years ago posing in a Santa Monica mansion.
Living large.
First of all, let's just look at Shane's amazing tattoo.
What is that?
A tribal garter?
So a lot of people actually lost money, but he did well.
And to do so, he had to preside over turning his outlet from starting off anti-establishment to being on these vital foreign policy issues, a complete establishment mouthpiece.
Hey, that is the cycle of life is you're supposed to become.
You're supposed to start out like Punk Red and become like a real piece of shit.
That's the classic 80s MAGA.
America Great Again, living.
America Great Again, living.
Hey, become a premium member.
Go to JimmyDoorComedy.com.
Sign up.
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Oh, All the voices performed today are by the one and only the inimitable Mike McRae.
He can be found at mikemcray.com.
That's it for this week.
You be the best you can be and I'll keep being me.
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