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!

One of the most dangerous things, in Gaza, over the last 15 months has been to be a journalist. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that 166 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israeli bombing and invasion, at least some of them, if not most, were deliberately targeted due to their vital work, especially with no Western journalists being permitted to enter unless embedded with the IDF. And the people who are chosen to embed with the IDF were chosen precisely because – to put it mildly – they have no interest in reporting on Gaza, only mimicking Israeli propaganda. 

One of the journalists who has gained prominence for his courageous work over the last 15 months is Abubaker Abed, who is only 22 years old. He has used his fluent, actually quite eloquent English to become one of the most important voices telling and showing the rest of the world what is actually happening in his homeland. Originally intending to be a sports journalist covering Palestinian and global soccer, his life was upended when Gaza started to be destroyed, and he directed his journalistic skills and passion to tell that story. We spoke to him a bit earlier today in a recorded interview about life in Gaza over the past 15 months, whether they now have hope for a cessation of these attacks, re-building their society, and a return to some segment of normal life. We talked about the view of Israelis in Gaza and how they understand their broader struggle for freedom, as well as their view of the United States. All I can really say, I could summarize it further, but what I can really say is that Abubaker is an extraordinary person. It's one of the reasons why he's gained so much prominence of attention and affection. 

In the U.S., the long-time independent journalist Sam Husseini was physically dragged out of a State Department briefing yesterday for the crime of directing adversarial questions – the only kind journalists are supposed to ask – to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He did so rather than waiting for permission to raise his hand, knowing he would never be called on because he doesn't work for a large corporate media outlet. Sam is with us tonight to talk about why he found the questions he posed to Secretary Blinken about Gaza so vital and couldn't wait until he was given permission to raise his hand. He also talked to us about why he rejects this incestuous and friendly deference that most corporate journalists give to top U.S. officials like Blinken and to these pompous protocols they establish. And most of all, what all of this says about the U.S. corporate media generally and its coverage of the U.S. government's Israel and Gaza policies specifically. 

Two great interviews.

Interview: Abubaker Abed

G. Greenwald: Abubaker, it's really great to see you. It's great to speak with you. We're so thrilled to have you on. I've been really admiring your courageous and important journalism throughout these entire 15 months under the most difficult of circumstances. So, I really think there's nobody better to talk to about where we are in Gaza, what the likely future of Gaza and everything that's going on there than you. So, let me begin by asking how you're doing. I think a lot about people in Gaza, especially the people who have survived and what they've gone through over the 15 months and how it's probably impossible to imagine it. But how are you doing personally at this moment? Like, what has your life been like? 

Abubaker Abed: Well, it's been literally nightmarish every single day, really hot hell, so much pain, so much suffering, but yeah we really managed to go through all of that and survive and hopefully the cease-fire will continue until Gaza is rebuilt again. But every single day, every single day, we felt that we were alone. We felt we went to what was unimaginable, what was unbearable. We had to go through starvation many times, we had to shed tears over our loved ones, over our friends and family members even, and every day we really felt that we were stripped of our humanity. We were stripped of, you know, the human values of anybody because that is what the world accepted and tolerated to happen to us over the course of the past 15 months.

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!

Right now, CNN and its on-air personalities, including one of its star anchors, Jake Tapper, are in deep trouble in a state court in Florida precisely because of ample evidence that they not only lied on their broadcast but did so with clear, explicit malice. The lawsuit was brought by Zachary Young, a former Navy Veteran and U.S. government official who now has a private security company. Tapper in a report in which CNN accused Young of fraudulently exploiting vulnerable Afghans by running a black market in which he forced them to pay him to have any hope of leaving and re-settling in the United States. CNN's efforts to have the case dismissed have been repeatedly rejected. 

Jonathan Turley, Law Professor and prominent media analyst, was here with us to talk about all of this and what it means for the media generally.

Also, an interview with Arnaud Bertrand, a French entrepreneur who has lived for nearly a decade in China, where he has, in our view, become one of the most reliable and informed experts on that country as well as international relations in general. We have had him on the show before and always found it very illuminating and tonight we will speak with him about a wide range of topics, including the possibly imminent – or not – TikTok ban in the United States, the large-scale migration of American users on that platform to an explicitly and proudly Chinese platform, the visit of a high-ranking Chinese official to Trump's inauguration and the cease-fire deal negotiated for Israel and Gaza that does now look poised to take effect. 

There's a really interesting and I think important trial currently underway in a court, a state court in Florida, in which CNN is being sued for defamation by an individual who it appears was the subject of a false and reputationally damaging story. This plaintiff has not only succeeded in getting to a trial, but the trial is also underway. But he's also seeking punitive damages because he was able to present evidence that CNN didn't just lie about him but did so with malice. 

Professor Jonathan Turley is a Law Professor at George Washington University. He is one of the most prominent and I think one of the most informed media voices when it comes to telling us about legal cases and legal issues. He has a whole variety of credentials that we have gone through many times before. He's the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” and he joins us to discuss this CNN case as it struggles through a $1-billion defamation lawsuit and what it might mean for the media more broadly. 

Interview: Jonathan Turley

G. Greenwald: First, Turley, always great to see you. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. 

Jonathan Turley: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be with you, Glenn. 

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!

After 15 continuous months of truly heinous and incomprehensible carnage in Gaza at the hands of Israel and their patrons in Washington, a cease-fire deal has finally been announced that, at least nominally, is intended to end all hostilities between the two sides. The deal is to take formal effect on January 19 — one day before Trump will be inaugurated, which is exactly the date by which he demanded that Israel agree to a deal — and while much is clear in terms of what the future entails, what remains is in doubt, much of it, including whether the violence will, in fact, end. Whatever else is true about any of this, this is an inarguably and comprehensively positive event. 

The people who have been most brutalized since October 2023 — namely the people of Gaza — are out in the streets celebrating it as such for understandable reasons. Anything that puts an end to the constant bombardment, famine, arbitrary detention, torture and constant loss of innocent lives that they have endured for 15 months must be seen as an event to celebrate, whatever else is true about it and whatever the future might entail. 

For days now, anyone with any basis for knowing about what this process has entailed has said that the only reason this deal is finally happening is because Donald Trump not only insisted on it but applied exactly the kind of pressure on Israel and Netanyahu that Joe Biden simply was unwilling and/or unable to apply. This is the consensus of anyone with knowledge of the negotiations, including many of the Israelis on Netanyahu's right, who are enraged that this deal is being done and are blaming Trump for doing it, a betrayal of Israel. Nonetheless, Joe Biden – the very same person with the melting brain who has unconditionally funded and armed the Israeli destruction of Gaza for the last 15 months, incapable of imposing even a single limitation or having his word honored at all – had the audacity to stand in Qatar today and aggressively take credit for this deal as his own diplomatic success. That's nothing short of laughable. 

But it does raise two important questions that we want to examine. The first is: what does all of this signal about a Trump presidency and his foreign policy? And also raises the question of what this deal will actually lead to: will it really finally restrain Israeli aggression against Palestinians, or were the Israelis promised things like the right to annex both the West Bank and Gaza in return for agreeing to a deal right before Trump assumes the presidency? We will examine, question and cover all of that. 

And then: two of Trump's key national security cabinet choices – Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State nominee, Marco Rubio –testified at their confirmation hearings. Both of them made some notable statements about wars and foreign policy – in the case of Rubio, ones that are clear deviations from what he has long maintained, particularly about the war in Ukraine – and those also provide some substantive insights into what a second Trump presidency may look like.

For reasons I think ought to be obvious, there are few topics, if there are any, that we have covered more frequently and more extensively over the last 15 months than the Israeli destruction of all civilian infrastructure and much of civilian life in Gaza as a response to the October 7 attack inside Israel.