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It's Tuesday, September 17. 

Tonight: Israel severely injured more than 4000 people and killed at least 12 today in the suburbs of Beirut, including an eight-year-old girl. Perhaps more notable than the casualty number itself, which is obviously quite high, is the means Israel used to gravely injure and kill so many people, namely the Mossad, somehow intercepted the supply chain used by Hezbollah and others to purchase wireless pagers. After intercepting those devices, Israel apparently installed bombs in thousands of them and then programmed the bombs so that Israel could detonate them remotely all at once, whether in people's pockets, in their hands, or wherever they might be. Earlier today, East Coast time, that is exactly what Israel did, where thousands of mobile pagers and the like instantaneously exploded as people walked in shopping areas, cafes, restaurants, shops, pedestrian-heavy streets, and anywhere else those devices happened to be. This was not on a battlefield. This was in the suburbs of Beirut. 

Israel and its loyal supporters of the U.S. claim – as they always do, no matter what the conduct in question is – that the Israeli attack was not only justified as a means of attacking Hezbollah but was also extremely calibrated to avoid civilian armies because the IDF is the most moral army in the world, they hate killing civilians. 

I suppose one could say that this attack today was, quote, “targeted” by comparing it to the utterly indiscriminate mass bombings and killings that Israel has carried out in Gaza and increasingly the West Bank over the last year, utterly destroying all civilian infrastructure in Gaza, flattening apartment buildings of entire neighborhoods and killing tens of thousands of people, but blowing things up remotely without having any idea where those devices are and knowing full well that many of them are almost certain to be used in many civilian areas is the opposite of targeted bombing. We'll explore the claim of Israel's supporters that this attack was legitimate and targeted self-defense, or whether this is more akin to terrorism, which is clearly what it would be called if carried out by any other nation.

Then: Jordan Chariton has been one of the independent journalists who most uses classic shoe leather investigative journalism and on-the-ground reporting to inform Americans of issues that few others are covering so in depth. For years – going back to the Obama years – Chariton made numerous sustained visits to Flint, Michigan, to cover the years-long poisoning of that community's water supply and the government's apparent utter indifference. He has a new book based on that reporting and titled "We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans."  We will talk about that as well as speak to him about the extensive unseen reporting he has been doing this year in Michigan, speaking to the crucial Arab and Muslim voters in that state about how the Biden-Harris administration's full-scale funding and arming of the Israeli war in Gaza may affect their voting decision and, with it, the 2024 election. 

And finally: Hillary Clinton went on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program last night and I can barely express how challenging and adversarial the interview was. I'm sure you can imagine if you haven't seen it. Hillary, almost in passing, vehemently advocated that Americans whom she believes are spreading disinformation and propaganda should not only be civilly sued by the government but also criminally prosecuted and put in prison. If that dystopic authoritarian vision were ever to be implemented in the U.S. as Hillary wants, the very first people who should be sharing a jail cell are Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow, who drowned our country and its political system in one false conspiracy theory after the next: from the Steele Dossier to the secret Alfa Bank server Trump used, to many other demented debunked lies. We'll show you what Hillary said and what the implications would be – though we may not have time because I will be on Jesse Water's Fox show live right after 8 p.m. EST, so if we run out of time, we will do that segment on our Locals platform right after that Fox appearance.

 For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 

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It's Monday, September 16. 

Tonight: For the second time in the last two months, Donald Trump was the target of an evidently serious attempted assassination. Unlike last time, the attempted assassin was not able to shoot Trump, but he came within a few hundred yards of him on the former president's golf course, packed with an AK 15 and other armaments. Unlike the first shooter, in Pennsylvania, who was strangely depicted as an utterly apolitical loner with no Internet footprint who simply acted out a mental illness, this shooter, identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, has expressed all sorts of clear political statements over the year, including increasing levels of animosity toward Donald Trump. His principal political project over the last two years has been a fanatical devotion to supporting Ukraine to the point that he went to Ukraine and tried to position himself as some sort of leading American coordinator of foreign volunteer upon foreign volunteer troops and repeatedly pledged that he would die for Ukraine against Russia if necessary. 

Just five months ago, in April, he begged Joe Biden on Twitter to please win the 2024 elections. Echoing the standard liberal pundit view that, quote, “democracy is on the ballot and Trump is a grave threat to it,” he sounded like anyone on MSNBC does. We'll examine what we know about this attempted assassin of Trump, the reality versus widespread media claims about him. 

And then beyond that: it is very common for Trump supporters to be accused of having incited violence through their political rhetoric. I still remember when Tucker Carlson was widely blamed by consensus for the white nationalist shooter in Buffalo who killed ten African Americans, despite literally no evidence that the shooter even knew who Tucker Carlson was, let alone that he was inspired by anything he said. Moreover, even if he had listened to Tucker Carlson, this theory that that would make somebody expressing political views responsible for the violent acts of those who hear them is extremely dubious, I'd argue even dangerous. 

And yet every time someone acts in the name of a common, identifiable liberal ideology with the goal of attempting violence against someone on the right, the whole dynamic reverses: not only can liberals never stand accused of so-called stochastic terrorism – the theory the protected speech can incite violence, rendering the speaker responsible for the acts of others – but somehow, at least in this case, there is a widespread media narrative that Trump and his rhetoric are to blame for having incited two murder attempts against himself in the last two months and that the only way to solve it is for Trump to lower the temperature and change his rhetoric. We'll examine all of this. When there are two political attempted assassinations of a leading political candidate, and a former president, within the scope of two months, there are a lot of important things to analyze. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now. 

Watch the full episode HERE

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It's Friday, September 13. Friday the 13th, for those of you who care.

Tonight: Hysteria over Russia and the supposed threat it poses to our way of life – the script Democrats invented in 2016 and then thereafter to explain their loss to Donald Trump –continues to fuel assaults on core civil liberties inside the United States. Ironically, it's not Russia, but the fear of it that is destroying our way of life. 

We have frequently covered the case of the U.S.-based African People's Socialist Party, a very small party of leftists led by Black radicals, pretty standard ones, whose leaders are now in their 80s and have spent decades opposing American wars and imperialism and naturally therefore also oppose the NATO war in Ukraine. In late 2023, they were indicted on felony counts of acting as Russian agents, largely for the crime of speaking out and engaging in activism against U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine because the FBI was able to find trivial, very trivial financial connections to Moscow a few thousand dollars over many years, they allege in an indictment that these Black leftists were acting as agents of Russia when opposing the war in Ukraine and criminally failed to disclose it. A jury in Tampa just yesterday acquitted all four of those defendants on the most serious count, namely that they acted as agents of the Russian government to spread propaganda inside the U.S. but it did convict them on four of the lesser charge of conspiring against the United States with Russia. So, it's a little bit of a confusing verdict, but we'll tell you all about the verdict and its implications. 

Meanwhile, the State Department boasted today of its intense efforts to have RT, the state media outlet of Russia, banned in as many countries as they can, arguing that RT’s mere existence has had the effect of convincing people around the world to question and then oppose the need of the war in Ukraine – can't have that, can't have any information being disseminated that undercuts American and Western policy. 

As always these days, whenever people start reaching conclusions the U.S. government dislikes, they immediately turn to the sources of that dissent and try to silence it. That's become the very normalized way of life now. Even during the Cold War, Americans frequently heard from Soviet leaders and Soviet news media such as Pravda. But in today's world, where values of free access to information and free speech are eroding, not even those minimal rights are guaranteed. The same ones we had during the Cold War. 

Finally: last night, we covered the Biden administration's imminent decision to radically escalate the war in Ukraine by allowing long-range missiles provided to Ukraine by the U.S., by the UK and the EU, to be used to strike deep inside Russia. The Russian government's reaction was clear and predictable and swift because those missiles can only be fired, with native military officials guiding them by satellite, something the Ukrainians cannot do and because the missiles are coming from the UK, in the EU, with the specific intent of using them to strike inside Russia, Russia will regard any such usage as marking the entry of the U.S. and NATO's into this war as direct belligerence against Russia and will treat all of those countries as such. 

My former Intercept colleague, Lee Fang, easily, in my view, one of the best and most intrepid investigative journalists in our country has been examining the very serious risks posed by such escalation in Ukraine. He just published on his Substack, earlier today, a new article entitled “New York Times’ Previous Reporting Undermines its War Escalation Journalism” - warnings about major escalation of war – and potential nuclear war – take a backseat to think tank experts from the defense industry.” We'll speak to Lee about all of that, about the general refusal of the West to even take seriously the threat of nuclear war, about another investigation he did last month on the much greater degree of Israeli influence inside the United States, people being paid by the Israeli government to spread Israeli propaganda and then various issues related to the 2024 election as well. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.