Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Writing • Culture
Congress Exploits Fear of China in Seeking More Power Over Big Tech
Video Transcript
February 05, 2024
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Good evening. It's Thursday, February 1. 

Tonight: the U.S. Congress, as it so often does, summoned executives of leading social media platforms to be interrogated and grilled publicly about the content they allow to be posted on their platforms. This time, it was the Senate Judiciary Committee's turn. And, among other lowlights in the hearing, Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas, repeatedly demanded to know whether TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, seemingly without realizing that Shou, whose wife and children are American citizens, is and always has been a citizen of only one country, Singapore, which is a separate country from China and not only separate but is a close U.S. military and financial partner of the United States. Then, there was the attempt by members of both parties to demand that CEO Mark Zuckerberg accept responsibility for harm that was allegedly caused by content that Facebook allowed to be posted, including having Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, demand that Zuckerberg stand in the middle of the hearing, turn around and look at the families of various people who have died and apologize to them, which Zuckerberg obediently proceeded to do. 

I know that many people, including many in our audience, view China the way that Democrats view Russia: as a grave threat that we must constantly combat as they try to undermine and subvert our precious democracy. But even if you think that—and I know many of you do—it is vital—and we'll attempt to demonstrate this—that it is precisely this fear of China that the Biden White House and both parties in Congress are attempting to exploit with the real goal, not of fighting China, but of gaining more power to control what can and cannot be said on social media, all under the guise of fighting the “evil influence” of TikTok. 

I know that the Biden White House, Republican senators and most media outlets have convinced many Americans that TikTok is a sinister tool of the Chinese Communist Party that censors at their behest and that is here to corrupt our nation's youth. So much of what is claimed about TikTok, as we'll show you, is demonstrably untrue. But even if you're not convinced of that, whenever state officials start trying to increase the fear that the population has about some threat, foreign or domestic, it's always in the way of insisting that they need more power to protect you from that threat that they've gotten you to fear. That is precisely when skepticism should be at its highest point since that's always the tactic that states use to gain more authoritarian power—putting the population in fear of some threat and then telling them that only greater powers in the part of the state can protect you from that threat. That is precisely what is happening here. With TikTok performing the role of Iraqi WMDs or Kremlin disinformation, or Trump's insurrection. And so, no matter your views on China, the same skepticism we've all come to realize we should have applied to those other fear-mongering campaigns are needed here as well. 

Then: with the U.S. Congress albeit refusing to approve Joe Biden's requested aid package of $60 billion more for Ukraine, the EU is attempting to do something they so rarely do: step up and actually pay themselves for the things and the wars that they claim are important, rather than letting the U.S. and American taxpayers pay for it. For months, Hungary, under its president Viktor Orban, has been blocking new EU aid packages to Ukraine. He simply does not believe that Ukraine has a chance to win that war nor does he believe that Russia poses an actual threat to Europe more broadly. Over the last several weeks, the EU elites in Brussels have been explicitly threatening to sabotage Hungary's economy unless Orban relents and agrees to this package. And yesterday, Hungary did precisely that, which means that $50 billion in EU funding is now on its way to Kiev. Who knows where that's going? But the ostensible goal is to keep this war flowing and fueled for at least a while longer. We'll examine the implications of all of this. 

And then finally: three American soldiers were killed last week when a drone attacked an American military base in Jordan. On Tuesday, we examined what happened, and again, we asked, why we have so many military bases throughout the Middle East still and how much harm cost and attacks is the United States willing to incur as a price for arming and supporting Israel's destruction of Gaza. That's exactly what these attacks are. In retaliation against the U.S. funding and support for Israel and its attack on Gaza. It is a cost of that policy. Earlier today, President Biden called the family members of one of the troops who lost her life. And it was a very bizarre conversation in many ways. We will show you exactly how and why. 

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

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With Biden Out, U.S. Finally Admits Harms of His Israel / Gaza Policy | Biden Pays Homage To George W. Bush | Insane Women’s Tennis Scandal: An “Abusive” Coach
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The following is an abridged transcript of a segment from System Update’s most recent episode, lightly edited for clarity and readability. 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 that is 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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First of all: now that the 2024 election is over and Joe Biden is on his way out, it's becoming acceptable in previously silent sectors of the media to document what a complete disaster Biden's Israel-Gaza policy really has been not just for Gaza but for the United States. “60 Minutes” – which has been solidly pro-Israel for many years – presented a decent segment on Sunday night detailing just how disastrous this has been and how it's an open secret in Washington that the Israelis are acting both criminally and adversarial to the United States and its interests. We’ll show you this important sea change.

Also: today Joe Biden announced that he was christening a new American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier as the George W. Bush aircraft carrier, an aircraft carrier George W. Bush gave his notorious speech in which he declared “mission accomplished” about a month into the Iraq war. These are all the same people George Bush, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, whom Democrats just a couple of decades ago, really even just a decade ago, were calling all the things they now call Trump: a fascist, a Nazi, a war criminal, etc., etc. This is not just morally twisted but very illuminating about the character and ideology of the modern-day Democrats. 

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Group Tracks IDF War Criminals Around The World: Interview with Hind Rajab Foundation President Dyab Abou Jahjah
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We speak today to the president of the Hind Rajab Foundation, Dyab Abou Jahjah, about the work of the group in tracking IDF admissions of war crimes, the legal proceedings this group is bringing against them around the world and the very serious and credible threats of violence and murder that they are predictably enduring from Israelis as a result. 

There was a fascinating case in Brazil last week where a federal judge, unbeknownst to anybody, had a case before the court that urged the court to detain and criminally investigate a soldier from the Israeli Defense Forces, an Israeli citizen who had traveled to Brazil in December to vacation in Brazil. The court accepted that request and ordered that soldier be criminally investigated. As it turned out, though, before the court could issue that order, either the police or the prosecutor or someone inside the court leaked to the Israeli government that this was about to happen, and they were able to smuggle the soldier out in the middle of the night to Argentina. 

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The reason this is happening is that Israeli soldiers have been endlessly posting on social media –they even got criticized by Donald Trump for doing it – incredibly sadistic and obviously criminal and illegal actions that they're proud of and that they feel when they post on their social media and celebrate with music and dance and jokes and fun. 

The Hind Rajab Foundation was created in the wake of the absolutely horrific murder of a six-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza that you're about to hear about. That was her name Hind Rajab. 

This foundation was created to track down and create dossiers on the war criminals in the IDF who are publicly boasting about their war crimes and then use the force of the law – nothing else – to go around the world in order to make sure that countries that are signatories to the International Criminal Court, the Rome Statute, and therefore duty bound to investigate war criminals on their soil actually do so. And that's what just happened in Brazil and that brought the attention to the work of this group. 

We spoke to the president of this group, Dyab Abou Jahjah, about the group's work in tracking these IDF admissions of war crimes, the legal proceedings the group is bringing against them around the world, including the one they just brought in Brazil. There are many others, and also the very serious and credible threats of violence, or terrorism that they are getting, not from anonymous Israelis, but from top-level Israeli officials, in public, all as a result of the success that they are now having in scaring Israelis about whether or not they're going to be able to travel freely if they participated in war crimes and publicly documented them. 

I find this work that he's doing very noble not just because of the obvious need to enforce laws about war criminality, but because of the obvious dangers that he's knowingly incurring and that he knew, obviously before he did it, he would incur. These threats are very real, given the complete sociopathic willingness of the Israeli government to cross any line, which they've demonstrated over and over. I found the interview very affecting and very enlightening and I strongly believe that you will, too. Here is our conversation with Mr. Jahjah. 

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The interview: Dyab Abou Jahjah 

G. Greenwald: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It's great to see you and I appreciate your coming on. 

Dyab Abou Jahjah: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

G. Greenwald: Absolutely. So, the organization of which you're a part is the Hind Rajab Foundation. And it made a lot of big news over the last couple of weeks, in large part because of a success that you had in Brazil, where you were able to convince a federal court that the presence of an IDF soldier on Brazilian soil obligated the Brazilian government to investigate that person for war crimes, he was able to end up escaping Brazil, fleeing Brazil but it caused a lot of concern in Israel, a lot of anger in Israel. And I want to get into the details of that. But before we do, can you talk to me a little bit about the Hind Rajab Foundation and how it got that name? 

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GOP Senators Demand Tulsi Support Domestic Surveillance To Be Confirmed
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 One of the most notable aspects of Donald Trump's array of nominees to serve in his key cabinet positions is that most of them have provoked zero opposition from Democratic members of Congress or their allies in the corporate media. Indeed, Democrats like Liz Warren and various CNN personalities have heaped praise on many of Trump's choices, such as Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, Elise Stefanik, for Ambassador to the U.N., and Scott Benson for Treasury Secretary. That's because those are all people who have long-standing loyalties to bipartisan D.C. establishment dogma and thus, Democrats are not just accepting but are happy about those choices. 

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