We are pleased to send you a summary of the key stories we covered last week. These are written versions of the reporting and analysis we did on last week's episodes of SYSTEM UPDATE.
—Glenn Greenwald
MONDAY, MARCH 4 - SYSTEM UPDATE 238
SCOTUS Unanimously Overturns Colorado’s Ballot Ban of Trump.
The Myth of a "Trump-Controlled" Amy Coney Barrett.
The Media’s Politicized "Experts”
The Supreme Court unanimously rejects Colorado's – and every other State's – attempt to ban Trump from the ballot, as Amy Coney Barrett disproves the widely-held notion that she is beholden to Trump.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided one of its most important cases involving the U.S. presidential election – arguably its most important such decision since its 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore ended all recounts in Florida and effectively made George W. Bush the winner over Al Gore. The Court – by a unanimous 9-0 vote – overturned the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, a court composed entirely of Democratic partisans which, in December, had banned Donald Trump from appearing on the ballot, on the ground that he was guilty of insurrection and thus ineligible to run under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
All 9 Justices today – including liberal judges Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotamayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – rejected that rationale, ruling that states have no power to ban candidates from federal elections, especially presidential ones. This ruling not only overturns Colorado's attempt to ban Trump from the ballot but presumably several other instances where Democratic state officials or judges banned Trump for similar reasons – the most recent being a low-level judge in Chicago.
On one ancillary issue – whether the banning of a candidate on 14th Amendment grounds can only be decided by Congress – the court did divide along typical ideological lines. Amy Coney Barrett joined the 3 liberal judges in dissent, who argued that – once it was determined that states are barred from banning a candidate – there was no reason to decide any other questions, including whether only Congress could do so. But as Coney Barrett pointed out in her short concurring opinion: "our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home."
We'll review today's ruling, its substance, and its implications. And we'll take a look back at how many self-described legal experts and neutral journalists were so insistent that Colorado had decided this question correctly — only for it to be completely and summarily shot down by a unanimous Supreme Court. All of this points to two of the most destructive pathologies in our media class: one is the complete lack of accountability – when journalists and their chosen experts get caught lying for partian ends, or masquerading their ideological opinions as neutral expertise – there is virtually never any accountability or even acknowledgement, making journalism and punditry among the most accountability-free professions in the country.
THEN: Speaking of accountability-free punditry, when Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to replace the secular liberal saint Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an accusatory theme instantly emerged about her in liberal discourse: it was clear, they said, that Barrett has accepted a corrupt arrangement: namely, that Trump would put her on the court in exchange for her commitment to rule in his favor in case he lost the 2020 election. Since then, Justice Coney Barrett has had more than a dozen opportunities to intervene and keep Trump in power, and refrained from doing so every time. Just today, she again sided with liberal Justices – not for the first time, and clearly on principle – to try to limit a Court ruling that would have been beneficial to conservative political aims. In other words, she has proven to be the exact opposite of what establishment media liberals casually maligned her as being. Do you think there will be a single one re-considering their accusations and retracting it? To ask the question is to answer it, and to reveal so much about why our media class deserves all the distrust and contempt they have compiled.
FINALLY: There's another more subtle yet more pernicious aspect revealed by all of this: the way in which most expertise has been sacrificed at the altar of partisan agendas and ideological fever, degrading this expertise from what it should be and could be at its best – a apolitical means of understanding complex issues – and instead turning it into yet another untrustworthy political weapon completely crippled as a useful tool. It is not just what was said about Colorado's ruling that demonstrates this but several related episodes which we will cover in full.
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TUESDAY, MARCH 5 - SYSTEM UPDATE 239
Neocon Queen Victoria Nuland Ends Her Reign: Reviewing a Catastrophic Career Fomenting Bipartisan Wars
An in-depth review of the warmongering and monstrous career of Victoria Nuland.
One of the most bloodthirsty and psychotic warmongers to occupy high office in Washington resigned March 5, evidently – and hopefully – bringing a shameful end to her long and destructive career in Washington. Victoria Nuland worked for every President from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden – with the sole exception that she was out of power only during the Trump presidency – announced today that she was resigning her position as Acting Deputy Secretary of State, a position to which she had just been promoted last July when the prior Deputy retired.
There is much speculation about why Nuland may have resigned now. Perhaps, it was due to her anger that the administration is not doing more to fuel the war in Ukraine against Russia, one of her pet projects for decades. Perhaps, it is anger of Biden's tepid criticism of Israel, a country which she supports as fanatically as anyone in Washington. Or perhaps – and most likely – it was due to the fact that she was just passed over to permanently become Deputy Secretary of State, the position second-in-line to ascend to her life-long ambition of becoming Secretary of State.
Whatever the reasons, and despite the horror show that will replace her, there is still much to celebrate from news of the end – at least for now – of Victoria Nuland's career in government. She served as Dick Cheney's top advisor for his disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. She then served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO when the Bush Administration, led by Condaleeza Rice and Nuland, began their attempt to expand NATO right up to the Russian border, including Ukraine – one can draw a direct line between that expansionist mentality and the decade-long war in Ukraine. She then ran Ukraine for the Obama administrations under Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, where she became one of the most extremist voices in Washington for placing the U.S. on a confrontational, provocative course with Russia.
In 2014, a conversation she had with the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine was tape recorded and leaked – allegedly by Russia – in which they were caught plotting who should be chosen to rule Ukraine in the wake of the U.S.-supported coup that removed Ukraine's democratically elected President.
While Nuland, in one sense, is merely one of the most extremist representations of the bipartisan machine of endless war that has ruled DC for decades at the expense of ordinary Americans, she is also a singular menace. Nuland's pedigree is itself revealing: she married into the largest and most toxic neocon dynastic families. In the 1990s, she married Robert Kagan, who for decades was the principal partner of supreme neocon Bill Kristol, having worked with him in the 1990s to create the leading neocon group Americans for a New Century and having spent years before 9/11 urging the U.S. to invade Iraq and remove its government.
According to Politico – who named the couple among the TOP 50 Most Powerful People in Washington in 2014 – the couple "fell in love ‘talking about democracy and the role of America in the world’ on one of their first dates."
That is neocon-speak for invading foreign countries and changing their governments. Kagan's father, brother, and sister-in-law are all leading neocons in Washington, sending other people's families to fight in one war after the next that they architect and sell to the American public.
Nuland's status as both a singular force for war and destruction – and her status as one of the most vivid symbols of how bipartisan and insulated from elections is her warmongering ideology – makes her particularly worthy of examination. Particularly upon her glorious resignation, understanding her trajectory is vital to understanding how Washington functions. Last August, we produced a comprehensive look at the rotted life, bloodthirsty value system, and warmongering obsessions that Nuland has pursued and implemented for decades under the rule of both parties. Given that we have an audience composed of many people who are recent arrivals, and given that her departure is a momentous occasion to take a look at what she did, we’d like to re-share that episode in full.
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THURSDAY, MARCH 7 - SYSTEM UPDATE 240
INTERVIEW: Newly-Elected, Anti-Establishment Member of UK Parliament—George Galloway—on the New Politics of the West
George Galloway has been a staunch voice in defense of common people against the rotten British establishment for years. We hear from him a few days after his resounding electoral victory to UK parliament.
George Galloway was elected to be a member of the British Parliament last week. He did not just win, but rather crushed both major political parties: the Conservative Tory party currently in power, and the Labour Party widely expected to win the Prime Ministership later this year under the tepid, vapid, and principle-free establishment symbol named Sir Keir Starmer. Galloway, running as part of a hard-to-characterize new party, received more votes than all other candidates combined.
Galloway, whatever else one might say about him, is a fascinating figure. He first came to prominence in the United States in 2003, when he voluntarily went to the American Congress – which at the time vehemently supported the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq on a widespread bipartisan basis – and he humiliated his interrogators in Congress on live national television. For those of you who never saw it, or who have not seen it in awhile, I highly recommend watching it: it was one of the most eloquent, articulate, and scathing displays of oratory I had ever seen, and he was unflinching in expressing his contempt for war-hungary Washington over its invasion of Iraq and the broader War on Terror.
At the time, Galloway was a member of the Labour Party, and had long been regarded as a man of the left. But the Labour Party in the UK – like the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden – was fully on board with the war in Iraq: its then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was internationally mocked for being George Bush's puppy dog, often offering a more vibrant and eager defense for the invasion of Iraq than Bush could ever muster. As a result of his outspoken denunciations of Blair and his role in the Iraq War, Galloway was expelled from his own party.
Since then, Galloway has twice returned to Parliament, representing three different parties and four different districts – or constituencies as they are known over there. He's like an anti-establishment zombie they think they keep killing, only for him to haunt them with his return.
But the case of George Galloway is fascinating not only because of the unique rage and contempt he induces in the political and media establishment – although it's really something to behold. He also clearly represents a new kind of politics – someone who, during the Iraq War, was universally regarded as a man of the left, only for him to adopt a series of views that put him directly at odds with left-liberal orthodoxy in the West: he vehemently opposed the U.S./NATO regime change wars in Syria and Libya; loudly opposed the U.S./UK fueling of the war in Ukraine from the start; heaps contempt on elite left-wing culture war pieties that alienate the exact working class that the left claims to represent; he defended BREXIT and resisted many COVID orthodoxies; and he opposes mass and uncontrolled immigration into Europe and the UK for the same reasons he opposes their wars: it's a boon to elite classes while the working class and ordinary people suffer.
George Galloway has changed none of his views from that era when he was expelled from the Labour party for opposing George Bush and Tony Blair's war in Iraq. But neoliberal foreign policy, centrist economics, and left-liberal culture war views have changed dramatically around him. More than anything else, George Galloway – like so many people these days – is driven by an ideology best described as anti-establishment. The reason his victory sparked such intense contempt is because that is the ideology and growing movement they fear more than any other.
We sat down with Galloway and discussed a wide range of issues. We talked about his radical and “changed” views, as well as his victory – which was very worth paying attention to. We are excited to show our conversation.
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FRIDAY, MARCH 8 - SYSTEM UPDATE 241
Biden & Trump Split on New TikTok Ban.
PLUS: Briahna Joy Gray on Israel-Gaza, Dems 2024, and More
As the security state maintains its goal of banning TikTok in the U.S., Biden and Trump find themselves on opposite sides of this establishment flash point. PLUS: Friend of the show Briahna Joy Gray returns to talk about Biden's SOTU address.
For years now, Joe Biden and his White House have been advocating that the social media app TikTok be banned in the U.S., arguing that it is a tool of the Chinese government to spy on and propagandize American citizens, especially our youth. This push to ban TikTok originated with the U.S. Security State agencies – led by the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon – and now has the support of a majority of both political parties.
This week, a bill unanimously passed a House Committee that would require TikTok to separate itself from any Chinese ownership in a set period of time or be banned – a measure the company and experts say amount to a full-on ban since it would be close to impossible to spin it off within the allotted time period. When earlier today he was asked if he supports and would sign the bill if it passed Congress, Biden — consistent with his long-standing opposition to TikTok – unequivocally said he would sign it.
Meanwhile, the almost-certain Republican nominee Donald Trump has warned of the dangers of this bill. On his Truth Social site, Trump warned that banning TikTok will, by design, drive millions of Americans into using Facebook and Google, the former of whom he blames for having "cheated in the last election." We have frequently reviewed why the arguments in favor of banning TikTok are largely fraudulent.
The last time we covered this issue was back in November, when we examined and deconstructed every claim made by advocates of banning TikTok, and we won't repeat them here. Suffice to say, tens of millions of Americans voluntarily choose to use the social media app as their primary means of expression. It is the only major app among the Big Tech behemoths whose censorship decisions are not fully captured by the U.S. Government, meaning a ban would result in tens of millions of Americans being forced onto platforms such as Google and Facebook, platforms which – as we know from ample reporting – the U.S. Security State can coerce into censoring for them.
In many ways, China is to conservative politics what Russia is to liberal politics: an all-purpose bogeyman that can be used to explain away everything, scapegoat everything onto, and justify every new assertion of government power. We know many of you think that when Biden signs into law a ban on TikTok, it will constitute some major blow against the interests of Beijing. But as we have tried to argue previously, whenever the U.S. Government and Washington's ruling class seeks to dictate what platforms Americans can use, how they can use them, and who must control them, ample amounts of skepticism, at the very least, are required in response. That is most certainly true for this latest Biden-supported bill, and we will review the key aspects of it.
PLUS: Briahna Joy Gray is the former Press Secretary of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign; she's my former colleague at the Intercept; she's the co-host of Hill TV's news program Rising; the host of her podcast Bad Faith, and one of the sharpest and most incisive critics of the Biden administration. She will join us tonight to talk about last night's State of the Union speech by Joe Biden, his recent moves on Israel and Gaza, the likelihood that left-wing voters will abstain in significant numbers from supporting him in 2024, and much more. Briahna is always one of our favorite people to talk to – she is unfailingly honest and independent-minded – and we are excited to hear from her tonight.
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