Glenn Greenwald
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CLIP: Glenn Greenwald Debates Alan Dershowitz on Iran

Glenn warns against waging wars during last week’s debate against Alan Dershowitz on whether the U.S. should strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Glenn argues: “We don't go around the world attacking other countries or trying to remove their government because we want to give those people freedom and democracy. We only [attack] when we see a government that doesn't do our bidding."

We are grateful to The Soho Forum and Reason for hosting the spirited debate. You can listen to the full debate here: https://reason.com/podcast/2024/05/24/glenn-greenwald-and-alan-dershowitz-debate-bombing-iran/

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Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

For years, U.S. officials and their media allies accused Russia, China and Iran of tyranny for demanding censorship as a condition for Big Tech access. Now, the U.S. is doing the same to TikTok. Listen below.

Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted
WEEKLY WEIGH-IN: Dissent Above All

What’s happening in politics that you want to talk about? Are there any burning topics you think Glenn needs to cover? Any thoughts you’d like to share?

This post will be pinned to our profile for the remainder of this week, so comment below anytime with your questions, insights, future topic ideas/guest recommendations, etc. Let’s get a conversation going!

Glenn will respond to a few comments here — and may even address some on our next supporters-only After Show.

Thank you so much for your continued support through another week of SYSTEM UPDATE with Glenn Greenwald!

🏆Dog-of-the-Week:

Dog-of-the-Week goes to BABI! This sweet girl offered Glenn moral support as he started the After Show on Locals.

https://thecradle.co/articles/the-brics-weigh-in-on-palestine

'The problem is how to implement the “formula” when the US hegemon, Israel's unconditional ally, has a virtual stranglehold on the United Nations.'

More proof that science fiction ROCKS! 😎 Look at this passage I just read in Frank Herbert's "Children of Dune," published 2008:

"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class – whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
-- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon
Bene Gesserit Training Manual"
This is exactly what is happening right now throughout the West, as "leaders" no longer even pretend to care about those they govern

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FAUCI’S COVER-UP ON DOG EXPERIMENTS
How NIAID, with key help from the Washington Post, turned a true story into a “right-wing conspiracy theory”

By Leighton Woodhouse

On the morning of October 25, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci dashed off an email to eight of his colleagues, asking them to look into an experiment conducted in Tunisia in 2019. It was urgent. “I want this done right away,” he wrote, “since we are getting bombarded by protests.”

The experiment Fauci was referring to was the one that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene asked him about this week in a heated Congressional hearing. Holding up a photograph on poster board of two beagles with their heads locked into mesh cages, she said, “As director of the NIH, you did sign off on these so-called ‘scientific experiments,’ and as a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting, and evil.”

 

 

Greene is to liberals what Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is to conservatives: an easy target for partisans to mock. Her questioning of Fauci predictably inspired the usual derision. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, referring to Greene as “the consistent frontrunner for stupidest member of the House of Representatives in history,” sneered, “No one knew what she was talking about.”

But in fact, Fauci knew exactly what Greene was talking about. Three years ago, the experiment in question was at the center of an entire crisis communications response within NIAID (the institute within NIH run by Dr. Fauci). Fauci claimed that it had provoked so many angry calls that his assistant had to stop answering the phone for two weeks. The day before Fauci sent his email about being “bombarded by protests,” one of his colleagues had advised him, “It might be wise to hold off on TV until we have a handle on this.” The story had become a full-blown publicity crisis for Fauci and NIAID — until the Washington Post came to his rescue, turning a legitimate news story into “right-wing disinformation,” based on flimsy evidence that was literally concocted by Fauci’s team.

In 2019, under the auspices of a microbiologist at the University of Ohio, researchers in Tunisia placed the heads of sedated beagles in mesh bags filled with starved sand flies. This was the image Rep. Greene had held up at this week’s hearing. Later, the beagles were placed in outdoor cages for nine consecutive nights, in an area dense with sand flies infected with a parasite that carries the disease with which the researchers were trying to infect the dogs.

In his paper, the Ohio microbiologist, Abhay Satoskar, along with his research partner, acknowledged funding from NIAID, which added up to about $80,000, alongside the grant number. The grant application read:

“Dogs will be exposed to sand fly bites each night throughout the sand fly season to ensure transmission…Dogs will be anesthetized…and for 2 hours will be placed in a cage containing between 15 and 30 females…”

The description fits the experiments in Tunisia perfectly.

In August of 2021, White Coat Waste Project, a non-profit group that advocates against federal funding of animal experimentation, exposed NIAID’s support for the experiment in a blog post. In October, based on White Coat Waste’s revelations, a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives released a letter expressing concern about cruel NIAID-funded experiments on dogs, drawing particular attention to the fact that some of the dogs had had their vocal cords severed to keep them from barking and howling in pain and distress. The story generated a maelstrom online, leading to the angry phone calls Fauci claimed to have received.  “#ArrestFauci” trended on Twitter.

NIAID staff went into damage control mode. Within hours of Fauci asking his staff to look into the experiment, Satoskar emailed NIAID, following up on a phone call. Satoskar now claimed that the acknowledgment of NIH funding was a mistake. “This grant was mistakenly cited as a funding source in the paper,” he wrote.

Later, NIAID would claim that it only funded an experiment that involved vaccinating the dogs against Leishmaniasis, the disease carried by the parasites in the sand flies. Leishmaniasis is the disease with which Satoskar infected his subject beagles in Tunisia.

There is no way to know what was said on the phone call with Satoskar, but released emails show that this is exactly what NIAID wanted to hear. “Will you forward this to Dr. Fauci or let me know if I should directly forward to him?”, the recipient of the email at NIAID wrote to a colleague (the names in the emails, which were obtained by a FOIA request from White Coat Waste Project, are redacted).

Email obtained by a FOIA request from White Coat Waste Project.Email obtained by a FOIA request from White Coat Waste Project.

Satoskar then hurried to delink the paper from NIAID funding. Less than ten minutes after sending his email to NIAID, Satoskar emailed Shaden Kamhawi, editor of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the journal that had published the paper on the experiment. “We would like to request correction of this error,” Satoskar wrote.

He might as well have been asking himself. Kamhawi is a colleague of Satoskar. She is an expert on precisely the subject that Satoskar was studying. “Dr. Kamhawi is a world expert on phlebotomine sand flies,” her curriculum vitae reads, “vectors of the neglected tropical disease leishmaniasis.” Like Satoskar, Kamhawi has conducted research in which she used sand flies to infect beagles with the disease. She has even co-published with him. Indeed, Kamhawi’s own research has been the subject of White Coat Waste Project exposé. On top of that, she is an employee of NIAID: meaning that Anthony Fauci is her boss.

Kamhawi was aware of at least the last of these potential conflicts of interest. “BTW,” she emailed her colleagues at PLOS NTD, “as I am an NIAID employee, “I am not sure if there is a COI [Conflict of Interest] here so please let me know.”

It’s unclear whether the journal took that conflict seriously. In any case, the correction went forward. The journal now read:

“There are errors in the Funding statement. The correct Funding statement is as follows: the authors received no specific funding for this work. The US National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust did not provide any funding for this research and any such claim was made in error.”

This was the exonerating evidence that went out to reporters. On October 27th, a NIAID employee wrote to colleagues that “we can at least share with reporters that the journal has made the correction.” Another NIAID staffer emailed colleagues for help fielding a query from an Associated Press “fact checker,” who asked how NIAID could be sure that their funds weren’t used for the Tunisian beagle experiment. “Our evidence is simply the statement of the PI [Principal Investigator], Dr. Satoskar,” came the reply.

In fact, NIAID had no way to be certain that its funds were not used on the Tunisia experiment. Michael Fenton, Director of NIAID’s Division of Extramural Activities, wrote in an email, “It seems to me that the only way to prove that the grant funds weren’t used for other projects is to do an audit of those grant expenditures and invoices. This would not be something that could be done quickly.”  

The next day, NIAID was still putting out fires. “We are still getting clobbered on this,” one wrote in an email. But three days before, NIAID had scored a huge coup: On October 25, the same day Fauci wrote his “bombarded by protests” note, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote a column facetiously entitled, “Why is Anthony Fauci trying to kill my puppy?” The article maligned the story as a product of “the right wing disinformation machine and its crusade against Fauci,” and cited the correction in PLOS NTD as evidence that it was all just an innocent mistake.

In an email to a NIAID employee the next day, Milbank offered further assistance. He wrote, “I might do a follow-up column on the reaction, and the imperviousness to facts. Do you have any more info that could further prove that you didn't fund the Tunisia study involving feeding the anesthetized dogs to sand flies?” Forwarding Milbank’s story to colleagues, the NIAID staffer wrote approvingly, “Dana is being extremely helpful.”

From Milbank’s story came a cascade of “fact checks”: from Politifact, Snopes, FactCheck.org, MediaMatters, Mic, and USA Today. Then came a big story in the Washington Post about the “viral and false claim” that NIAID had funded the Tunisia experiment. The reporters who wrote the story had evidently already reached their conclusion before they began reporting on it. Their email to Satoskar and others asking for comment opened, “I am working on a story about a massive disinformation campaign that is being waged against Anthony Fauci.”

The media re-framing of the story had its intended effect. Three years later, following Marjorie Taylor Greene’s questioning, reporters are once again citing PLOS NTD’s correction as the definitive debunking of the beagle experiment story. The Washington Post effectively banished it from mainstream public debate, though today, the paper published a fact check that contradicts much of the Post’s previous reporting.

After the story came out, Beth Reinhard, one of the reporters on the Post story, emailed Satoskar the link. “Thanks Beth. This is a great article clearing up all misinformation and falsehood,” he wrote.

“Thanks!” she replied.

 

 


Leighton Woodhouse is freelance journalist and a documentary filmmaker currently based in Oakland, California. You can support his work at https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com

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SYSTEM UPDATE RECAP: June 10-14
Weekly Recap

Welcome to the SYSTEM UPDATE recap: your weekend digest featuring everything we’ve covered throughout the previous week. 

Prefer to listen to your daily news analysis? Reminder that FULL episodes of SYSTEM UPDATE are available anywhere you listen to podcasts🎙️


MONDAY, JUNE 10 - EPISODE 280

E.U. Politics Scholar Sheri Berman Explains Populism's Surge in Europe as Western Media Warns of Threats to Democracy

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

 

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (10:07)

Unpacking EU Elections: Populist Gains, Neoliberal Losses (18:29) 

Prof. Sheri Berman on European Populist Movements (34:50)

Outro (1:14:33)

 

TUESDAY, JUNE 11 - EPISODE 281

Hunter Biden's Conviction Proves Media’s 2020 "Disinfo" Campaign; Joe Biden's Approval Ratings at Record Low After Trump Verdict; Liberals Embrace Prison Fantasies to Warn of Trump’s Dangers

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

 

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (9:36)

Hunter Biden Conviction (18:58)

Record Low Approval (46:35)

Media Fantasies (1:06:55)

David Talbot Update and Review (1:19:27)

Outro (1:27:06)

 

Supporters-Only After Show for Tuesday, June 11

We moved to Locals for our supporters-only, interactive after-show where Glenn shared his thoughts on some audience questions and comments:

 

Glenn gives an update on Noah Chomsky’s stroke and talks about his influential work. 

 

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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12 - EPISODE 282

New U.N. Report is Just the Latest to Debunk Many Key Israeli Claims About Oct. 7 Repeated by Biden and U.S. Media; PLUS: Calls to Capture Moscow as Western Derangement About Russia Grows

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

 

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (9:28)

Questioning Official Narratives (15:55)

Russia Derangement (1:12:39)

Outro (1:32:08)

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 13 - EPISODE 283

U.S./Russia Conflict Escalates with Subs in Cuba as U.S. Lifts Assistance Restrictions on Azov Brigade; PLUS: Right-Wing TikTok Star John McEntee on Ban

Full transcript available for paid supporters: HERE

 

WATCH THE EPISODE

Intro (9:32)

U.S. Funding Azov Brigade (16:07)

Interview with Lev Golinkin (31:02)

Interview with John McEntee (52:45)

Outro (1:22:58)

 

Supporters-Only After Show for Thursday, June 13

We moved to Locals for our supporters-only, interactive after-show where Glenn shared his thoughts on some audience questions and comments:

 

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U.S./Russia Conflict Escalates with Subs in Cuba as U.S. Lifts Assistance Restrictions on Azov Brigade; PLUS: Right-Wing TikTok Star John McEntee on Ban
Video Transcript

Watch the full episode HERE

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

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Good evening. It's Thursday, June 13. 

Tonight: Serious escalation of the conflict between the U.S. and Russia in Ukraine – remember, that has again taken place in response to Joe Biden's permission for U.S. missiles and other weapons to be used by Ukraine to attack targets inside of Russia. Moscow has deployed several of its most sophisticated submarine weapons NATO has long bragged about off the coast of Cuba to lurk right near the southeastern coast of the United States. In response, the U.S. has deployed its submarines near its military base in Guantanamo, which many of you will recall is also located in Cuba. All of this comes as the U.S. today announced it was signing a ten-year security guarantee with Ukraine that President Zelenskyy said puts Ukraine on the path to NATO membership. 

While would be a clear exaggeration to equate what is already happening now with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where let's remember the world and the human species came very close to nuclear annihilation, there's obviously a tense and potentially dangerous confrontation, especially given the utter lack of communication between Moscow and Washington, as well as the sustained and serious tensions between those two nations arising out of a NATO-backed war right up to Russia's border. The question that will never disappear and cannot be rationally answered is why is this level of risk and danger worth it? Why is it wise and justifiable to put Americans, and ultimately all of humanity, in such obvious danger all over the question of who rules various provinces in eastern Ukraine, many of which prefer Moscow and Putin to Kiev and Zelenskyy? 

Meanwhile, yesterday, the U.S. government's official Twitter account responded to obviously accurate accusations from the foreign policy activist group Just Foreign Policy. The group pointed out that the United States, now, by law, has lifted restrictions on arming and funding the exact Ukrainian militia group – the Azov battalion – which the U.S. government itself, as well as most of the Western press, had spent a full decade denouncing as a monstrous neo-Nazi group. That's why there was a ban in place on the U.S. arming them. The U.S. government's justification for this, for why they're not actually arming a neo-Nazi group, is so transparently false and so easily provable that one has to see it to believe it, and to help us examine that, we will speak to the Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin, who has been on our show before and writes frequently about U.S. policy in Ukraine and the war that has been raging in it for two and a half years now. 

Then: there is this fascinating aspect of the media ecosystem that many of the people who have the largest audiences to speak about politics, people who speak to millions of other Americans, are often completely unknown to people who work within corporate media, including those with far less of an audience size. That's because they are listened to by millions of people who are not on traditional media channels but instead places like TikTok, YouTube and Rumble. One such person, who has become a TikTok star and one on Instagram as well, is John McEntee, a former Trump White House adviser who has millions of followers on TikTok. They daily listen to his relentlessly conservative and right-wing perspectives about news and culture but what he says on many issues is not what one would expect if listening to prominent conservative pundits and analysts on more traditional media platforms. Among other things, he vehemently opposes the bipartisan bill to either force the sale of TikTok or ban it altogether, often attacks the GOP establishment as much as he does the Democrats, has extreme doubts about very standard features of U.S. foreign policy, including the wars that we are currently helping to wage and is an ardent advocate of free speech as well – in fact, he has become one of the leading voices on the right against the TikTok ban – and he's a free speech advocate not in the way that many Republicans are, where they immediately justify censorship the minute it comes to the views they hate most, but seems to be a principled and consistent advocate for it. We will speak to him about this ecosystem that has become incredibly influential, and the ways in which it is different from more standard and traditional means of communicating. 

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

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