Glenn Greenwald
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France & Germany Officially BAN Pro-Palestinian Protests—As Rabid US Neocons Urge US War w/ Iran. PLUS: How Dystopian Face-Recognition Tech Will Destroy Your Privacy, w/ Kashmir Hill
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October 13, 2023
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Good evening. It's Thursday, October 12. 

Tonight: on last night's show, we reported on a spate of disturbing censorship that is emerging throughout the West, ostensibly designed to outlaw – to criminalize – dissent from the West policy toward the war in Israel and Gaza: exactly as they have spent the last 18 months doing, censoring opponents of the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine. We know, of course, that the Israel-Gaza war fosters extreme emotion and passion on both sides of the war, on both sides of the debate – and that's true among the viewers of our show as well, which have been and continues to be one of the most ideologically diverse audiences of any political show, a real source of pride for us. We have members of our audience who are strongly in favor of what Israel is doing, who oppose Israeli blockades and occupation, who are disgusted by Hamas, but want humanitarian constraints on how Israel responds. 

Whatever your views are on the war or Israel and Gaza, it should be alarming to everyone to watch European governments seize on and exploit these emotions to yet again increase their own censorship power. We reported on several such repressive acts on last night's show, including the UK Home Secretary, warning that the waving of a Palestinian flag or chanting pro-Arab slogans may be a crime under British law, while the mayor of Toronto explicitly warned that protest in support of Gaza may be illegal, exactly using the same rationale they used to try and make a trucker protest in Canada against COVID mandates illegal as well. Today, both France and Germany seriously escalated the censorship to all new and radical levels in the name of this new war. As always, the reason why one should object to censorship, even if the target is views that you may hate, in this particular case is if you acquiesce to these measures because it's your enemies who are being censored this time rather than your friends, then the precedent gets implemented, or at least fortified, and then you will lose the ability to object going forward once those censorship powers start being weaponized against your own views and your own allies, as inevitably happens. We'll tell you about the latest acts of repression. 

Then: the dystopian rise of privacy-obliterating technologies is a topic that does not get nearly enough attention on some level. The notion that we have now ceded our privacy in the digital age has become so normalized that one barely notices any longer when there are major advances in the ability of states to digitally track and monitor everything we do. That normalization is really by design. Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg had a notorious quote from 2010, namely that “privacy is no longer a social norm,” he decreed – but it was really an observation by him that the Internet is training people, training populations, that there is no need to value personal privacy any longer. There's no reason to be concerned about how corporations and governments spy on you. 

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Coleman Hughes about how Ted tried to censor his TED talk about race because he advocated colorblindness, a view that TED employees somehow insisted was racist for a black man. Coleman used to advocate colorblindness, the same thing Martin Luther King and many other anti-slavery activists throughout the history of the United States advocated. And I mentioned during that interview with him that I had done a TED Talk in 2014, and I described the process I went through when the topic was essentially one that argued why privacy matters. That was the title of the talk: Why Privacy Matters. Privacy does matter. And it's still being aggressively eroded, primarily by new and stunning surveillance technologies that get far too little attention. One of the genuinely good reporters at The New York Times – yes, there are some – is Kashmir Hill. They're not many, but there are some and she's one of them. She covers technology and privacy for that newspaper. She just published a book that is truly good and important – it's gripping at times – in which she recounts the sometimes-creepy barriers she encountered as she tried to conduct a journalistic investigation of a new company, Clearwater AI, that has developed remarkably invasive facial recognition technology. Obviously, facial recognition technology is supremely invasive. We take our faces wherever we go and if there's technology that can identify us and track us based on our face, that kind of surveillance technology is as ubiquitous as any. We sat down with her for an interview about her new book and about specifically how this technology is already being weaponized by private corporations, billionaires, and government intelligence agencies in ways that I think will amaze you. This is really just part of a rapidly emerging dystopia that relies not just on privacy, crippling technology, but also on analytics to determine who are criminals and who are terrorists and who are other undesirable people – analytics that is used to determine who gets punished, who gets excluded, even who gets droned, at once remarkably efficient, yet remarkably prone to potentially disastrous error. And that includes facial recognition technologies. Well, I think you’ll really enjoy the interview we conducted with her, as well as her new book. 

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

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I just gotta say, Glenn is really shining lately! I mean, he’s always good, but the last system update? WOW! I just saw Useful Idiots this morning. Aaron Maté had Briana Joy Gray as a cohost. (I LOVE both of them.) Aaron was skeptical of Epstein’s serious involvement with Musaad after referencing another Hero, Michael Tracy. Glenn’s show today put everything in the best, most appropriate perspective. Moreover, he ended with the principled difference between evidence and proof. Glenn did a fantastic job of saying: there’s no conclusive proof of Intelligence ties, but let’s not be naive enough to just drop it! And this after Tucker went out on a limb at Turning Point USA. I LOVE their 1-2 punch! Glenn, you’re not just principled, you are a friend with substance for Tucker.

I recall this judge being livid at Acosta ruling. Judge Loretta Preska: In late 2023, Judge Preska ordered the unsealing of numerous court documents related to a civil lawsuit filed against Epstein's associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. According to ABC News, these documents identify scores of Epstein's associates and were unsealed in early 2024.
Judge Esther Salas: In a separate case involving Deutsche Bank and its dealings with Epstein, Judge Salas was assigned to oversee the lawsuit just days before her son was killed and her husband was critically injured in a shooting at their home in July 2020. The motive for the shooting remains unclear, according to Fortune.

Another day, another revelation of Israeli war crimes.

"However, S. testified that aside from one person found with a knife and a single encounter with armed fighters, the scores of others killed — an average of one per day in his battalion’s combat zone — were unarmed. According to him, the drone strikes were carried out with the intent to kill, despite the majority of victims being located at such a distance from the soldiers that they could not have posed any threat.

“'It was clear that they were trying to return to their homes — there’s no question,' he explained. 'None of them were armed, and nothing was ever found near their bodies. We never fired warning shots. Not at any point.'”
https://www.972mag.com/drones-grenades-gaza-chinese-autel/

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Game of Thrones Actor Liam Cunningham on Gaza Activism and UK Censorship; Journalist Zaid Jilani on Mamdani, Epstein, the State of the Dems and More
System Update #484

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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There are times when we cannot cover everything that is going on that we think deserves attention, and one of the ways we try to rectify that is to bring on guests who we believe are highly informed, engaging and provocative. We have two guests tonight for you who are most certainly all of those things. 

The first is Liam Cunningham, who is the long-time working Irish actor likely best known for his central role as Davod Seaworth in the HBO hit series, Game of Thrones; but for our purposes he is also a very passionate political activist and analyst who has spent decades involved in political activism, in the last two years focused like many people, on the Israeli destruction of Gaza. 

Right after that, we’ll talk to the very independent, heterodox and cantankerous journalist – which I mean in the most flattering way – Zaid Jilani. He was my colleague for years at the Intercept until he left for all the right reasons. We're going to talk about a wide range of topics with him, including the fallout from the DOJ's announcement that it's closing the Epstein investigation with no further disclosures, the state of the race for New York City mayor, where Zohran Mamdani's primary win has sent a lot of people, especially the city's richest, into full meltdown mode. 

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The Interview: Liam Cunningham 

Liam Cunningham is an award-winning Irish actor, as I said, best known for his role in HBO's series Game of Thrones. Various outlets, including The Irish Times, have called him one of Ireland's greatest actors. He's been a political activist for decades, but recently he helped to organize and became a spokesperson for the "Freedom Flotilla,” in which Greta Thunberg and other colleagues were arrested and deported by the Israeli government for attempting to deliver aid to the people of Gaza when the IDF was blockading it. I've followed his work for some time, especially his political work and we are delighted to have him for his debut appearance. Hope it's not the last on the show. 

G. Greenwald: Liam, it's great to see you. I know it's so late in Dublin. I really appreciate your staying up to talk with us. 

Liam Cunningham: No, that's fine. It's way past my bedtime, but an absolute yes. For you, sir, anything. 

G. Greenwald: I appreciate that. All right. So, let's begin with what I just mentioned, which is the role that you played in kind of helping to organize and becoming a very well-known spokesperson for the boat that was intended to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as a way of circumventing the IDF's blockade of food, water, medicine and the like.

I think a lot of people didn't realize at the time what an actually dangerous and courageous mission it was. I remember in 2011, a very similar flotilla attempted essentially the same thing to deliver food to the people of Gaza when there was a blockade there and the IDF actually attacked that ship and killed 10 people on board. You had Nobel Prize winners, holocaust survivors and the IDF just didn't care. They violently attacked it. What was the impetus for your involvement in this particular action, even knowing how dangerous and provocative it might be?

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Trump Mocks Concerns About Epstein; Trump Continues Biden's Policy of Arming Ukraine; Trump and Lula Exchange Barbs Over Brazil
System Update #483

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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 Much of the MAGA world was in turmoil, confusion and anger yesterday –understandably so – after the Trump DOJ announced it was closing the Epstein files and its investigation with no further disclosures of any kind. After all this happened, some attempt was made to try and pin the blame or isolate the blame for all of this on Attorney General Pam Bondi. Yet, Donald Trump himself, today, when asked about all of this, went much further than anyone else when meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House again: President Trump actually mocked and angrily dismissed any concerns over the Epstein matter and how it was handled. 

On our second segment, one of the uniting views of Trump supporters over the last four years has been opposition to the Biden administration's policy of arming, funding, and fueling Ukraine in its war against Russia. Yesterday, however, at the same meeting with Netanyahu, Trump announced that he would continue the Biden policy that he had spent so many years criticizing by now providing defensive arms at least to Ukraine, and he did so based on the longstanding neocon/liberal view that Putin is completely untrustworthy and therefore Russia must be thought because of Putin. That's what Trump himself said. 

Then, we’ll comment on Trump’s lengthy tweet attacking Brazil for its ongoing prosecution of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, during the BRICS Summit being held in Rio de Janeiro. This was something we were going to cover last night and didn't have time to, but we will tonight. Brazil's President Lula da Silva quickly responded, very defiantly, by basically telling Trump to mind his own business. 

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Last night, we covered quite extensively the decision by the Trump Justice Department, not even six months into the administration, to completely shut down and close and stop all investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, as well as announcing that there will be no further disclosures of any documents of any kind, that whatever they've released so far, which has basically been nothing – not basically, has been nothing – is all you're going to get. 

This is a blatant betrayal of multiple promises made by key Trump officials over the last four years, before they were in the White House, but was also a complete 180 in terms of what key Trump influencers and pundits had been saying, including several pundits who are now running the FBI, such as Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, as well as the Justice Department, including Pam Bondi. 

We even showed you an interview that Alina Habba, the Trump attorney who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, appointed by Donald Trump, did with Pierce Morgan while she was in the government, just in February, where she claimed they have a whole bunch of very incriminating lists with shocking names. She said there's video and there are all kinds of documents that are shocking, in her words, and she said they're going to be released over time because we've gone long enough where people who do these sorts of things, including are involved in the Epstein scandal, have no accountability. She said that is ending with the Trump administration. There's going to be accountability. 

Yesterday, the Trump Justice Department said, “No, there's nothing here. We looked. There's no such thing as a client list.” We know we've been promising and that JD Vance repeatedly said, “Where's the client list?” Donald Trump Jr. said, “Anyone hiding the client lists is a scumbag.” Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi accused Biden officials of basically covering up predatory pedophilia by refusing to release the Jeffrey Epstein client list. Now, they're saying there's no client list, that thing we've been talking about and accusing Biden officials of hiding and promising to disclose, that doesn't exist. 

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Trump DOJ: There's Nothing to the Epstein Story; State Dept: Syria's Al-Qaeda are No Longer "Terrorists"
System Update #482

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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One of the most significant scandals among MAGA pundits and operatives within pro-Trump discourse generally over the last four years has been the one involving Jeffrey Epstein. 

Now, in less than five months, the DOJ announced today, the one under Pam Bondi, that they are closing the investigation, given the certainty that they say they have that Epstein had no client list. There's no such thing as an Epstein client list, he never tried to blackmail anyone and no powerful people were involved whatsoever with his sexual abuse of minors. They also say that he undoubtedly killed himself: there's no question about that. 

All of this is such a blatant betrayal of what was promised all of these years, such that all but the most blindly loyal Trump followers – like the real cult numbers, a lot of them almost certainly paid to be that – are reacting with understandable confusion and anger over what happened today and over the last several months. We'll delve into all of this and what this means. 

Then, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the group that al-Golani once led, long known as al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, is no longer officially a designated terrorist group. This is al-Qaeda. We'll explore what all of this shows about the utterly vacant and manipulated propaganda terms, terrorist and terrorism. 

As a note, we did not have enough time, so we’ll talk about President Trump’s tweet attacking Brazil and its government, on the day of the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, some other time soon.

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Earlier today, the Justice Department issued a statement, essentially announcing that they no longer consider any of the questions surrounding what had long been the Epstein scandal to be worthwhile investigation; that essentially all of these questions have been answered, that there's really nothing to look into. 

You can read the Justice Department's statement here.

They're saying this client list that most Trump supporters, I would say, have been accusing the U.S. government, of hiding to protect all the powerful people on this list, now, that they're in power – people like Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, now they're in charge – they're saying, no, actually there is no client list at all. There's at least no incriminating client list, whatever that means. 

I don't know if there is a client list or not, but according to them, there's no incriminating client list. I don't know how you can have a client list that's not incriminating: to be a client of Jeffrey Epstein seems inherently incriminating. They seem to have said what the White House briefing said today when asked about this, because as we'll show you, Pam Bondi went on Fox News and was asked, “Are you going to release the client list?” And she said, “It's sitting on my desk for review.” 

Trump had strongly suggested he would order it released. Now they're saying, “You know what? There is no client list.” 

So, all these claims that Jeffrey Epstein had recordings of prominent individuals who he invited to his island, who had sex with minors, evidently, there's no incriminating material of any kind that would implicate any powerful person. Just not there, they checked. They checked the storage closets, they looked under the beds, just couldn't find anything. All the stuff they had been claiming was there for years, screaming and pounding the table on podcasts, making a lot of money over it, too, accusing Biden officials of hiding this all for corrupt ends, just not there. They looked, couldn't find it. 

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