Glenn Greenwald
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Mass Famine in Gaza as 100 Die at Aid Convoy. Biden Reaffirms Israel Support. Oct. 7 Propaganda Collapses. PLUS: Bari Weiss & TIME Reveal Neocons’ New Self-Victimhood Narrative
Video Transcript
March 01, 2024
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Good evening. It's Thursday, February 29th, which is Leap Day. 

 Tonight, a mountain of new data proves that a significant portion of the population of Gaza is now at immediate risk of dying of mass famine. One out of every six children in northern Gaza is classified as acute malnutrition and wasting, meaning their bodies have already entered the state of being emaciated. There are now proven reports of children actually dying, of starvation and dehydration, and as aid and hunger groups have been warning that this will happen for weeks, there are now all kinds of very strident warnings coming from aid organizations and nurses who are working in Gaza that they have never seen anything on the scale of a humanitarian disaster this extreme.  

There's no mystery, nor is there any reasonable debate about why this is happening. Israel's Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, vowed in the first week of the war back in October that Israel intended to impose a full blockade on Gaza. That would, in his words, mean, “no food, no water, no fuel, no electricity.” Well, there has been a minimal amount of humanitarian aid let into Gaza, after that, it is nowhere near close to giving the population of 2.2 million people any chance to survive. Israelis have been physically blocking the entrance of aid convoys for weeks. A scene of extreme desperation unfolded before the world's eyes earlier today, as hungry and desperate Gazans swarmed aid trucks carrying food and other humanitarian necessities. Moments later, dozens were dead and hundreds were seriously injured. While there are conflicting accounts about how many of them actually died and how they died, either through a stampede or by opening fire from the Israeli Defense Forces, some facts are agreed to by both sides, as the New York Times summarized: “Israeli forces opened fire while a crowd was gathered on Thursday near a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed aid to Gaza City, part of a chaotic scene in which scores of people were killed and injured, according to Gazan health officials and the Israeli military." (February 29, 2024)

Whatever your views are on Israel or on the wisdom of Biden's policy of supporting and arming the Israelis without conditions, we are witnessing mass famine of the kind that is rarely seen in the modern world. That is just a fact. On top of that, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified in Congress today where he said that 25,000 Gazan women and children have been killed by Israel since October 7. That's 25,000 women and children killed in and in Gaza. 

Even if you want to assume that every adult male who was killed was a Hamas operative—and that's obviously an absurd assumption—that would still mean that roughly 80% of those Palestinians killed in Gaza by airstrikes and the Israeli ground invasion since October 7, 80% of those killed are innocent civilians. Roughly 70% of the civilian infrastructure in Gaza is permanently destroyed. And for those who believe it is important to note such things, Israel claims that the indiscriminate and widespread famine and killing now heading into its sixth full month—not between two militaries, but between one military that's among the most sophisticated in the world, backed by the world's largest and most powerful superpower in world history, the United States, against a basically defenseless population composed almost overwhelmingly of women and children—Israel argues that it is all justified by the October 7 attack, in which Hamas militants killed 700 Israeli civilians, and that is the number that they killed, 700. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration remains absolutely steadfast in its support for Israel, repeatedly isolating our country on the world stage in order to block resolutions at the U.N., resolutions that are supported by most countries on the planet that call for a cease-fire. Biden, who has spent his career as one of Washington's most unyielding and vocal supporters of Israel, has vowed that the U.S. will continue to fund and arm Israel's military and its war without conditions until the very end. Biden remains adamant in his view, even though by all accounts, his own reelection in 2024 is threatened by growing anger over this policy among key Democratic voting blocs. On Tuesday, a campaign led by Arab Muslims and young voters in Michigan succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. More than 100,000 Democratic Party voters went to the polls to vote “uncommitted” rather than for Joe Biden, as a signal of their willingness to abstain in November over Biden's support for this Israeli war. 

As all of this unfolds, the true extent of the war propaganda that sustains American support for this war is finally being revealed. Some of the most horrific stories that circulated in the weeks and months, even about what happened in Israel on October 7—things like 40 Israeli babies being beheaded, babies murdered by being baked in ovens, obviously recalling the Holocaust, babies cut out of their pregnant mother's wombs—have been affirmatively debunked. Those things did not happen. They've been proven as lies, as so often happens when we are fed stories designed to view the newest enemy as subhuman savages whose death we should not mourn but rather celebrate. 

The New York Times, in particular, faces a real and serious journalistic scandal surrounding its highly influential December 28 article that purported to confirm the use of mass rape by Hamas on October 7. Wars are so horrific, and the attack on core humanity so severe, that governments know that the only way their populations will tolerate them for as long as those governments want, is that people become convinced that the targets of the war are people who deserve suffering, largely because they are something less than human: hey're subhuman, or savages, or so singularly primitive that not only them but their children and culture and population deserve to be destroyed. All war propaganda at its core is designed to provoke that belief in us and a lot of that propaganda typically ends up being debunked as the war proceeds. That is most definitely the case for a lot of the propaganda surrounding October 7. 

Then: speaking of war propaganda, there were two major journalistic events this week in the U.S. designed to fortify a narrative that we've been covering from the start, namely, that American Jews, once safe in the United States, are now a uniquely endangered and vulnerable victim group. Time Magazine, which is now owned by a fanatical supporter of Israel who is a billionaire, published an article by Harvard law professor and longtime Israel supporter, Noah Feldman, arguing that the United States is now subsumed in what it calls “the new antisemitism.” Meanwhile, another fanatical and very prominent, wealthy and influential Israel supporter, Bari Weiss, was invited to give a speech on the State of World Jewry at the 92nd Street Y, in Manhattan, just weeks after they canceled another scheduled speech by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen due to his criticism of Israel. In that speech, Weiss also announced a new victimhood narrative for American Jews, while also advocating the classic neocon worldview that demands that the United States either fight or finance multiple foreign wars, knowing that is a mentality that, of course, will lead to injustice by having the U.S. continue to finance and arm Israel's military and all of its wars. 

This mentality has become more dominant than ever, despite its self-victimizing claims that those who believe this are relegated to the dangerous fringes of society and somehow silence, yet we hear from them continuously and all in the most influential venues and because of how dominant this worldview has become, we think it is highly worth considering. We know this topic is polarizing and divisive to a lot of people, but there's just no question that the war in Gaza has become something unlike what we really have seen, certainly in the 21st century, and it's just not something it can be avoided because some people prefer that we do, or some people disagree with us on our perspective. We do our best to show you the truth, our sources for them, the documentation for it, in the hopes that you will evaluate it objectively regardless of your view, and then decide for yourself that, ultimately, it is our job not to tell you what you want to hear or to flatter all your views, but to cover the things that we think most need coverage.

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

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Trump and Rubio Apply Panama Regime Change Playbook to Venezuela; Michael Tracey is Kicked-Out of Epstein Press Conference
System Update #508

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!

 

 The Trump administration proudly announced yesterday that it blew up a small speedboat out of the water near Venezuela. It claimed that – without presenting even a shred of evidence – that the boat carried 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and that the boat was filled with drugs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio – whose lifelong dream has been engineering coups and regime changes in Latin American countries like Venezuela and Cuba – claimed at first that the boat was headed toward the nearby island nation of Trinidad. But after President Trump claimed that the boat was actually headed to the United States, where it intended to drop all sorts of drugs into the country, Secretary of State Rubio changed his story to align with Trump's and claimed that the boat was, in fact, headed to the United States. 

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Minnesota Shooting Exploited to Impose AI Mass Surveillance; Taylor Lorenz on Dark Money Group Paying Dem Influencers, and the Online Safety Act
System Update #507

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The ramifications of yesterday's Minneapolis school shooting – and the exploitations of it – continue to grow. On last night's program, we reviewed the transparently opportunistic efforts by people across the political spectrum to immediately proclaim that they knew exactly what caused this murderer to shoot people. As it turned out, the murderer was motivated by whatever party or ideology, religion, or social belief that they hate most. Always a huge coincidence and a great gift for those who claim that. 

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There've been a lot of revelations over the last 25 years, since the 9/11 attack, of all sorts of secretive programs that were implemented in the dark that many people I think correctly view as un-American in the sense that they run a foul and constitute a direct assault on the rights, protections and guarantees that we all think define what it means to be an American. And a lot of that happened. In fact, much of it, one could say most of it, happened because of the fears and emotions that were generated quite predictably by the 9/11 attack in 2001 and also the anthrax attack, which followed along just about a month later, six weeks later. We've done an entire show on it because of its importance in escalating the fear level in the United States in the wake of 9/11, even though it's extremely mysterious – the whole thing, how it happened, how it was resolved. But the point is that the fear levels increased, the anger increased, the sadness over the victims increased and into that breach, into that highly emotional state, stepped both the government and their partners in the media, which essentially included all major media outlets at the time, to tell people they essentially have to give up their rights if they want to be safe from future terrorist attacks. 

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Glenn Takes Your Questions on the Minneapolis School Shooting, MTG & Thomas Massie VS AIPAC, and More
System Update #506

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!

 

We are going to devote the show tonight to more questions that have come from our Locals members over the week. It continues to be some really interesting ones, raising all sorts of topics. 

We do have a question that we want to begin with that deals with what I think is the at least most discussed and talked about story of the day, if not the most important one, which is the school shooting that took place in a Catholic church in Minneapolis earlier today when a former student who attended that school went to the church, opened fire and shot 19 people, two of whom, young students between eight and ten, were killed. The other 17 were wounded, and amazingly, it’s expected that all of them are to survive. The carnage could have been much worse; the tragedy is manifest, however, and there is a lot of, as always, political commentary surrounding the mass shooting attempts to identify the ideology of the shooter in a way that is designed to promote a lot of people's political agenda. So, let's get to the first question.

 It is from @ZellFive, who's a member of our Locals community. He offers this question, but also a viewpoint that I think really ought to be considered by a lot more people. They write:

 

So, I'm really glad that this is one of the questions that we got today because this is a point I've been arguing for so long. So, let me just try to give you as many facts as I possibly can, facts that seem to be confirmed by law rather than just circulating on the internet. 

So, the suspected killer is somebody named Robin Westman, who is 23 years old. After they shot 19 people inside this church, killing two young children, they then committed suicide with a weapon. The person's birth name is Robert Westman, and around 16 or 17 years old, he decided that he identified as a woman, went to court, changed the legal name from Robert to Robin, and began identifying as a trans woman, so that obviously is going to provoke a lot of commentary, and there's been a lot of commentary provoked around that. We will definitely get to that. 

 

The suspected killer also left a very lengthy manifesto, a written manifesto which they filmed and uploaded on a video to YouTube, along with showing a huge arsenal of guns, including rifles and pistols and some automatic weapons. I believe various automatic rifles as well. I don't think they used any of those weapons at school. I believe they just used a rifle and a pistol, if I'm not mistaken. But we'll see about that. 

It was essentially a manifesto both in written terms, but then they also wrote various slogans on each of these weapons and various parts of the weapons. And we're going to go over a lot of what they put there because there's an obvious and instantaneous attempt, as there always is, to instantly exploit any of these shootings before the corpses are even removed from the ground. And I mean that literally. The effort already begins to inject partisan agenda, partisan ideology, ideological agendas to immediately try to depict the shooter as being representative of whatever faction the person offering this theory most hates or to claim that they're motivated by or an adherent of whatever ideology the person offering the theory most hates. And it happens in every single case. 

Oftentimes, there's an immediate attempt to squeeze some unrelated or perhaps even related agenda in and out of it instantly. Liberals almost always insist that whenever there's a mass shooting, it proves the need for a greater gun control without bothering to demonstrate whether the gun control they favor would have actually stopped the person from acquiring these weapons in the first place, whether they were legally acquired, whether they could have been legally acquired, even with gun control measures, it doesn't matter, instantaneously exploiting the emotions surrounding a shooting like this to try to increase support for gun control. Whereas people on the right often do the opposite. 

On the right, they typically will argue that more guns would have enabled somebody to neutralize the shooter more rapidly, that perhaps churches and schools need greater security. We need more police. So, there's that kind of an almost automatic and reflexive exploitation again, almost before anything is known, but there is an even more pernicious attempt to instantly declare that everyone knows the motives of the shooter, that they know the political outlook and perspective of the shooter. They know their partisan ideology and their ideological beliefs in an attempt to demonize whatever group a person hates most. 

This is unbelievably ignorant, deceitful and ill-advised for so many reasons. The first of which is that every single political action, every single ideological movement, produces evil mass shooters. For every far-leftist mass shooter that you want to show or white supremacist mass shooters that you want to show, you can show people who have murdered in defense of all kinds of causes. And so even if you can pinpoint the ideology of the shooter on the same day the shooting happened, I mean, you can develop a clear, reliable, concise and specific understanding of the shooter that you never even heard of until four hours ago, but you're so insightful, your investigative skills are so profound, that you're able to discern exactly what the motive of this person was in doing something so intrinsically insane and evil as shooting up a church filled with young school children. 

The idea that anyone can do that is preposterous on its face. I mean, the police always say, because they're actual investigators, actual law enforcement officers who want to collect evidence that stands up for public scrutiny and also in court, “We don't know yet what the motive is; we're collecting clues.” But almost nobody on Twitter or social media or in the commentariat is willing to say that. Everybody insists immediately, no, the killer was motivated by the other party, the opposite party of the one I'm a member of, or this ideology that's not mine, or in this religion that is the one I like the most to demonize. It's just so transparent and so blatant what is being done here. And yet it's so prevalent. 

I mean, you could go on to social media and principally the social media platform where the most journalists and political pundits, influencers and the like congregate, which is X, and I could show you probably 40 different theories offered definitively with an authoritative voice. Not like, hey, this might be possibly the case, but saying clearly, we know that the killer was motivated by this particular ideology, this particular set of beliefs. And I'm not talking about random X users, I'm talking about people with significant platforms, people who are well-known. 

I could probably show you 40 different theories like that, where every person is purporting to know definitively exactly what the motive of the shooter was and by huge coincidence they all have latched on to whatever ideology or faction or motive most serves their own political worldview to demonize the people with whom they most disagree, or whatever ideology or group of people they most hate. That's always what is done. And I guess in some cases, if a shooter leaves a particularly clear and coherent manifesto, and we have had those sometimes, we have had Anders Breivik in Norway, who made it very clear that his motive was hatred for Muslim immigrants who shot up a summer camp in Norway. We had the Christchurch, New Zealand killer who attacked two mosques and mass murdered dozens of Muslims at a mosque and made clear he was doing so because it was viewed that Islam is a danger. We had the mass shooter in a Buffalo supermarket, who made manifest their white supremacist views. We've had mass shooters who are motivated by hatred of Christianity, as happened in the Nashville shooter attack on a Christian school there, I mean, I could go on and on. 

As I said, every single political faction produces mass shooters, mass killers, evil, crazy people who use violence indiscriminately against innocents in advance of their beliefs. But most of the time, and you might even be able to say all of the times – I mean, maybe I don't like the phrase all of the times because you can conceive of exceptions, but close to all the time, most of the time, people who go and just randomly shoot at innocent people whom they don't know are above all else driven by mental illness and spiritual decay, not by political ideology or adherence to a political cause. That often is the pretext for what they're doing; that may be how they convince themselves that what they are doing is justified. But far more often than not, the principle overriding factor is the fact that the person is just mentally ill or spiritually broken, by which I mean just a completely nihilistic person who has given up on life and wants to just inflict suffering on other people because of the suffering that they feel or their suffering from delusions. 

And this isn't something I invented today. This is something I've long been saying. And I just want to make one more point, which is, even though there are sometimes manifestos that are extremely clear and say, “I am murdering people in a supermarket that is African-American because I hate Black people and I don't think they belong in the United States,” or “I believe that white people are the sole proper citizens of the United States and I want to murder and kill inspired by those other mass murderers” that I mentioned, even then, it may not be the case that the person's representation of what they're is the actual motive because it could be driven by a whole variety of other factors, including mental illness, or all kinds of other issues to be able to conclude in six hours, even with a crystal-clear manifesto that the person did it for reasons that you're ready to definitively assert are the reasons is so irresponsible. It's just so intellectually bankrupt. 

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