Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Writing • Culture
Prof. John Mearsheimer on Israel-Gaza, Escalation Risks, Ukraine War, & More [Part 1 of 2]
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January 08, 2024
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Good evening. It's Friday, January 5. 

Tonight: President Joe Biden delivered a fiery, impassioned, angry speech today about the sacred virtues of American democracy and the sinister menace posed to all of that by someone named Donald Trump. Biden depicted himself and his party as the sole guardians of American democracy, and even compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis explicitly. Democratic operatives oozed with emotion and inspiration upon hearing this speech. The New York Times gave it a big thumbs up in its news article, proclaiming that Biden was spirited in his speech, and they were thrilled that Biden had made this the centerpiece of his campaign, going into 2024. 

There's just one small problem with this claim: Biden and the Democrats are the very same people currently trying to ban their principal political opponent from appearing on the ballot. They're the same people trying to imprison their principal political opponent. They're the same people who were found by four separate federal judges, one district court judge and three appellate court judges, last year, to have committed one of the gravest violations of the First Amendment free speech clause in years by using the CIA, FBI, CDC and other agencies to coerce Big Tech to purge the Internet of dissent from their policies. And they're the same people who are trying to ban even members of their own political party, Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, from launching a primary challenge to Biden by refusing to even permit debate. And they're even acting to strike all those primary challengers from the ballot so that Biden is the only one people can vote for. 

We have heard it said before that it is sometimes necessary to burn the village to save it but, generally, we don't accept that logic, and I don't think we are to accept the notion that Democrats are engaging in classic authoritarian and anti-democratic measures like this, all because doing so is necessary to save democracy. We’ll look at Joe Biden's speech and these obvious absurdities.

Then: the University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer has definitely been among the most prominent scholars on issues of war and foreign policy over the last several decades, if not the single most prescient. Virtually everything he warned about what happened at the start of the U.S. role in the war in Ukraine has come to pass, even though he was, needless to say, repeatedly smeared as a Kremlin agent and Putin apologist along the way. In 2006, along with Harvard professor Stephen Walt, he wrote the definitive account of the power of the Israel lobby in the book bearing that name and was, needless to say, wildly smeared as an anti-Semite. Professor Mearsheimer has a new article this week that analyzes the formal complaint filed against Israel by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, which alleges that Israel is guilty of war crimes in Gaza. We'll talk to Mearsheimer about all matters relating to this U.S.-funded war in Gaza, including the risk of regional escalation, which we covered extensively on our show last night, as well as the latest developments in the war in Ukraine and other aspects of U.S. foreign policy.  

As we head into the 2024 election, our discussions with Professor Mearsheimer are always among our most-watched episodes, and for good reason—few people think as independently, as informatively, and it turns out as accurately as he does. 

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
System Update #388

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!


Three stories this January 13:

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. 

In our last segment: there's a bizarre yet revealing tennis in the world of women's professional tennis. I know this seems like the sort of thing that we would not normally cover – and it isn't: this is not exactly a sports show – but the whole thing is really indicative of a certain kind of liberal cultural identity-ism that ends up patronizing women and treating them like fragile children in the name of protecting them. So, I want to tell you about this scandal. It's a really fascinating one to see the dynamics at play. 


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There's a big sea change with a lot of different issues and how they're being discussed in mainstream American discourse. Now that the election is over, there's no longer a need to work so hard to try to defeat Donald Trump or to help push two lame candidates, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris, over the finish line.

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Group Tracks IDF War Criminals Around The World: Interview with Hind Rajab Foundation President Dyab Abou Jahjah
System Update #387 - Interview

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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. 

Obviously, it's pretty interesting that the person charged with war crimes was in Brazil and then fled to Argentina given that's where most Nazi war criminals went after the Nuremberg trials and after World War II – to hide. That's where all the Nazi hunters, the iconic Nazi hunters, like Simon Wiesenthal and others would find all the Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann in 1961, he was hiding in Argentina. So, that symbolism shouldn't be lost. 

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
System Update #387

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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. 

Tulsi Gabbard has generated by far the most anger with people like Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz calling her a Russian agent last month on MSNBC and Republican senators as well, indicating their widespread reluctance to vote for her. But today it is being reported - with on-the-record quotes from Republican senators – that Gabbard's nomination is in deep trouble. The only way Republican senators, many of them like Tom Cotton, have said they will even consider voting for her is if she renounces and reverses her longtime opposition to mass warrantless NSA and FBI domestic spying, and they're demanding that even to be considered, she must instead join the bipartisan consensus in favor of those long-time surveillance powers. 

Gabbard, in a last-ditch effort to win confirmation, is reportedly now reversing herself and promising to support those powers. This incident, like so many others like it, shows how Washington really works: the only way to ascend to power or to remain there is if you endorse fully and completely the U.S. Security state's agenda. 

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