Watch the full episode HERE

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google

It's Thursday, September 12. 

Tonight: It seems that virtually every day brings a new escalation in online censorship from governments, ostensibly in the democratic world. That's because that's exactly what's happening, as we always emphasize when we cover the new censorship powers of a particular country. The reason to care, even if you don't live in that country, is because every government, most certainly including the American government, is looking at how far other states get away with in terms of their destruction of online free speech which, in turn, sends a signal to those other countries that they can also go there and then beyond. 

We've covered France's arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov and, not coincidentally, the decision by a Brazilian judge, just three days later, to ban X in all of Brazil and to criminalize the use of VPNs to access that platform. By the way, I sure hope nobody is breaking that law in Brazil or circumventing it by using VPNs to use X after this order. That would be terrible. 

In Australia, the government today unveiled an all-new instrument for coercing online censorship: they will fine social media companies or tech platforms up to 5% of their gross global revenue – you're talking about tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in fines – if those social media platforms fail to censor what the state considers to be disinformation or other false and harmful ideas. This is an idea taking root in many countries, not just Australia, and we'll examine its implications.

 Then: The war in Ukraine continues to get remarkably little attention inside the U.S., even though we are the country primarily funding, arming and fueling that war. Even if the debate, although it was mentioned, it was mostly done to force Donald Trump to either say that he wants Ukraine to win or be accused of being a Russian stooge but the substance of the war is barely ever discussed what we're looking for. But the strategy is, whatever the reasons for this lack of attention, it's not because nothing significant is happening in that war. To the contrary. Key parts of the Ukrainian front line continue to crumble as the Russian army takes more and more land moving westward as increasing numbers of Ukrainians are refusing to fight, risking their lives and liberty to flee instead. And as Joe Biden just today signaled his willingness to give the Ukrainians the green light to use long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia, an obviously dangerous and provocative act that Vladimir Putin previously said he would regard as a Western or NATO's attack on Russia. We’ll cover the latest developments. 

Then finally: last night, we showed you a video package of multiple interviews that Michael Tracey, along with our producer, Megan O'Rourke, conducted at the presidential debate with various Democratic members of the Senate and the House, as well as various Kamala surrogates, such as former Bush Cheney donor and Trump official Anthony Scaramucci. 

There are many revealing and highly entertaining moments there. We will have the full, unedited versions of all those interviews up on our Locals page tonight if we don't already and we will have edited segments of their equally compelling and revealing interviews with Republican lawmakers, including GOP senators such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tonight. 

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

Watch the full episode HERE

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google

It's Wednesday, September 11. 

Tonight: As we presaged last night, today is an extremely solemn day in America and in American history. It's the 23rd anniversary of the 2001 attack that happened on September 11, which resulted in the death of roughly 3000 Americans, the collapse of both of the Twin Towers that had composed the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the destruction of a small part of the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C., and the downing of a passenger jet plane over Pennsylvania. The 9/11 attacks also unleashed radical transformations of American democracy and executive power, the massive strengthening of the U.S. security state, two full-scale invasions of sovereign countries and the bombing of a dozen or so Muslim countries over the next 20 years. 

When the 9/11 attack occurred, Americans were largely united in their rage and their quest for vengeance but they also, quite understandably, had one question for which they really needed and wanted an answer, namely, why do the people who perpetrated this attack and those like them hate us enough to want to kill as many of us as possible? The U.S. government instantly recognized the need to provide an answer that would satisfy Americans to make them feel elevated and, most importantly, leave them willing to sacrifice their own rights and endorse all sorts of previously taboo acts that the U.S. government planned on doing in the name of avenging the 9/11 attacks and thus was born the narrative that the reason they hate us is because they hate our freedoms. That's why they attacked us. We were told that these are radical Muslims who are enraged by our free culture, that women were allowed to wear bathing suits on our beaches and gay clubs were permitted to exist in our cities and that we're permitted to have freedom of religion. They saw this from the other side of the world. They were so enraged by these freedoms that their religious extremism simply could not tolerate the existence of our liberties and they attacked us and wanted to kill as many of us as possible in response to their rage over our freedoms. As a result, and it stood to reason, Americans decided that literally anything and everything was justified in the name of protecting our freedom and way of life from the hordes of Islamic radicals wanting to end it.

Amazingly, that simple-minded narrative continues to be the predominant narrative 23 years later. Every year on this date, we are subject to seemingly earnest and moving commemorations of that time in September 2001 when we were attacked because we are free and that everything that ensued thereafter was by definition, nothing more and nothing less than simply a war against the terrorists, the War on Terror, the people who sought to destroy us and our way of life simply because they could not abide other people are free. That has been the dominant narrative today as well, not merely because of its importance as historical lore and national mythology, but also because of the continuous need to embrace these beliefs to justify what we still do today. That is why it is so worth revisiting and reexamining what actually caused the 9/11 attack to see maybe whether other things besides our precious freedoms caused it. So that's what we're going to do. 

And then: Brendan Carr is a former communications lawyer and now serves as a Trump-appointed commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, which is the federal agency charged with regulating media and communications. Quite unusually, for an FCC commissioner, he has been quite outspoken about his opposition to things like Big Tech censorship. This censorship imposed specifically around the COVID debate and, most recently, he has spoken out against Brazil's banning of X as a result of the social media companies' failure to comply with a mountain of censorship orders. He also, however, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the U.S. banning of TikTok. We want to explore with him his worldview, how those things can be reconciled and the role that the FCC played in it. If nothing else, he's a very thoughtful commentator on these issues where he actually plays a direct role in regulating. 

And then finally: Our intrepid, ruggedly independent on-the-road reporter Michael Tracey along with our show's producer, Megan O'Rourke, were in the so-called Spin Room after last night's presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. They were able to interview numerous Democratic and Republican members of Congress as well as various operative and pundit types who populate these events. We have edited many of the most entertaining and illuminating highlights that we will show you.

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

Watch the full episode HERE

Podcast: Apple - Spotify 

Rumble App: Apple - Google

Interview: Brendan Carr

Brendan Carr is a former communications lawyer. He now serves as a Trump-appointed commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, which is the federal agency charged with regulating media and communications. Unusually for an FCC commissioner, he has been quite outspoken about several matters of public debate, including his opposition to Big Tech's censorship, which he has been very steadfast on. The censorship specifically imposed around the COVID-19 discourse and, most recently, in opposition to the decision by one judge in Brazil to ban X in the entire country due to its failures to comply with a variety of unjust censorship orders. He has also, at the same time, been one of the leaders urging the banning of TikTok on national security grounds. And he played a very important role in all these issues. He's not a pundit, he's an actual commissioner of the FCC, and for that reason, we are excited to speak with him tonight. 

G. Greenwald: Mr. Carr, welcome to our show. It's great to speak with you. Thanks for coming on. 

Brendan Carr: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me and thanks for all your work over the years. Really appreciate your insights and perspectives. 

G. Greenwald: Yeah, I feel very much the same way. So, let me start by asking you, what is it that motivated you? Usually, FCC commissioners are pretty obscure. They're regulators. They're people who work in behind-the-scenes agencies. You've decided to kind of use this platform to speak out principally in defense of free speech and in opposition to Big Tech censorship, online censorship from wherever it comes from. What motivated you to do that and what is it that the FCC can do about that? 

Brendan Carr: Yeah, it's a good question. At the FCC, there are five of us that are commissioners. Three are of the president's party. So, anyway, three are Democrats. You have two that are Republicans. As you noted, I was originally nominated by President Trump, back in 2017, and was actually renominated by President Biden last year. You have to have Republicans on the commission. And so, every commissioner is independent, we are outside of the administration. That gives us a lot of freedom and leeway to pick and choose the issues that we focus on and one of them that I've been very focused on over the years is this really sort of recent or last couple of years surge in censorship. We see it domestically in the U.S. and we see it abroad as well. 

I think one of the first times I think you and I crossed paths was when a number of Democrats in Congress were writing letters to cable companies urging them to drop Fox News and Newsmax based on the political perspectives of the newsrooms there, we saw other efforts where there was a license transfer of a radio station in South Florida going to perceived conservative buyers, and Democrats wrote the FCC and suggest that we should block it on that basis. And so, I've tried to sort of speak out where I see that taking place. Recently, in Brazil, it fits that we can unpack it, it's part of this global surge in censorship but also I think it's a really concerning authoritarian trend in Brazil that should give businesses across the board a lot of concern. This isn't just about Elon Musk. It's not just about failing to have a registered agent. There's something happening here that we can impact that I think, as Bill Ackman said, is putting Brazil on the path to becoming uninvestable. 

G. Greenwald: I definitely want to delve a little bit more into the Brazil case. Obviously, as I'm sure you know, we are based in Brazil. It's kind of amazing that if we want to watch our own show or transmit our own show on Rumble, which is no longer available in Brazil for similar reasons, we have to use a VPN to do it, obviously have to use a VPN to everyone to access apps, even though somehow this judge invented a law that is now a criminal offense to do so and you have to pay $9,000 a day if you are caught doing so. But, you know, for those of us who have lived with the Internet for a long time, who remember its emergence in our lives in sort of the incipient stages, the key attribute of the Internet that made it so exciting and innovative as technology was that it was free, meaning you could speak anonymously, or under your own name, you could have privacy on it, no one could surveil you or find you or trace you and most importantly, no centralized corporate or state power could regulate the kinds of things that you could say it was that the innovation was this was going to be an instrument to enable citizens around the world to trade information, to talk to each other, to organize, to transmit information without having to rely on big media corporations and without having to be subject to government approval. I think the Internet was that for quite a long time. In your mind, when did this censorship ethos or system begin to emerge as a system, and what is it that you think caused it? 

Brendan Carr: I think you're exactly right. I think if you go back to 2012, there was a real rise in free speech on the Internet. In fact, President Obama went to Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters back in 2012 and gave a speech where he said the free flow of information on the Internet is key to, in his words, “a healthy democracy.” Then, flash forward 10 years, and a few short miles down the road, President Obama gave a speech, in 2022, at Stanford, and he talked about the threats that come from the free flow of information and talked about it as being a potential threat to democracy. So, if you look at the bookends of 2012 to 2022, something very fundamental, as you noted, has changed. We used to view free speech on the Internet – in fact, America itself, whether it was free speech over any modern means of communication, Radio Free Asia – we embraced free speech during a lot of the sort of 2010 and 2012 global unrest and we viewed it as a tool to take down authoritarians. And then I think something happened in 2016, right around Brexit, right around the election of President Trump, there's a very clear shift that people said, you know what? Maybe this free speech on the Internet thing is not compatible with the outcomes that we want to see at the ballot box. And so, something has changed fundamentally. All of those powers that were applied to promote free speech, to undermine authoritarian regimes have sort of turned those jets into reverse. I think you're seeing globally the lack of control over free speech and, again, going back even further, the modern-day op-ed launched on the pages of The New York Times, in the 1970s, and there was an editor at the time, John Oakes, and he said “Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of democracy; the moment we insist that everybody think the same way we do, our democratic way of life is in jeopardy,” of course, flash forward now 50 years and your Times op-ed page, you know, had people fired over running a free speech piece, the Tom Cotton op-ed. So, I think you put your finger on it. There was a first generation of free speech, of empowerment on the Internet and these established gatekeepers now are working hard to get control of it, Brazil is the latest example. 

G. Greenwald: Yeah. Another thing The New York Times does, by the way, is they play a very agitating activist role in demanding and then punishing Big Tech companies if they don't censor enough, they'll publish stories – “Facebook allows neo-Nazis” – and this is all designed to demand that either you censor more the types of opinions that we want or we think is disinformation, or we're going to accuse you of having “blood on your hands” or are allowing all this “hate speech” to flourish. 

One of the controversies over the last couple of years, and this is most certainly central to your critique of the censorship around COVID-19 has been this continuous communication from the government under the Biden administration to the Big Tech platforms, encouraging, coercing, demanding, hectoring, threatening that certain types of dissent, certain types of information that the government, in its judgment, has decreed to be false or harmful or hateful or whatever, be censored. And obviously, the U.S. government has a lot of leverage over these Big Tech companies to force that to happen. It's not just an option or a suggestion, it's something far greater than that. As two courts have ruled before the Supreme Court threw it out on standing grounds. But the people who will defend that will say, look, the U.S. government does have a legitimate role in conveying to Big Tech companies information that they think is false or harmful, information that they think is coming from a foreign government that's disinformation designed to destabilize our government. What's your view on the legitimate role, if any, of the U.S. government to communicate their concerns to Big Tech companies about certain kinds of speech that's being permitted?