Drone Strikes on Moscow Signal Dangerous New Phase of Ukraine War. Plus: One of Russia’s Most Notorious Spies—a Whale—Resurfaces | SYSTEM UPDATE #91
Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald
Become part of our Locals community: https://greenwald.locals.com/
- - -
Follow Glenn:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenn.11.greenwald/
Follow System Update:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SystemUpdate_
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemupdate__/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@systemupdate__
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/systemupdate.tv/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/systemupdate/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, We spend a lot of time on this program discussing the war in Ukraine because how could we not?
It is easily the most dangerous war for the U.S., the West, and the world in decades.
The Iraq War, which had a nuclear power only on one side of the conflict but not both, posed nowhere near the dangers that this war poses.
One of the primary participants in the war, President Joe Biden, the chief proxy sponsor of Ukraine, himself said in an unscripted moment back in October that this war has brought the planet closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, 61 years ago.
And then we just all moved on like that never happened.
This war is the single most important political story of the year and nothing is closed for that title.
How could it not be that?
This is a proxy war between the nation with the largest nuclear power on one side, Russia, and the nation with the second largest nuclear stockpile on the other, the United States.
There's this new conception that nuclear war is not really possible, that it would only happen if a suicidal psychopath had full control over their use, but that is a delusion.
A fairy tale, a belief that could arise only from the crudest and most extreme form of historical ignorance.
The US and USSR came very, very close, less than an hour away, from nuclear war on at least two occasions during the Cold War, caused not by psychotic behavior, but by rational behavior, triggered by miscommunication and misperceptions.
And the same hair-trigger archaic Cold War systems are still in place.
Washington and Moscow continue to have thousands of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at each other's large and mid-sized cities that are designed to be launched upon any belief that the other side is preparing to do so.
The option of first use nuclear weapons, namely using them without even believing that the other side intends to use them, merely as a justified offensive or defensive tactic in the face of a threat perceived to be existential, is very much still on the table for war planners in both capitals.
Indeed, during the 2017 general election in the UK, the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was lambasted by everyone for his statement that he would never consider the use of nuclear weapons as part of his nuclear national security strategy.
The reason I continue to cover this war so much is not because I wish to repeat myself.
It's because the war is not stagnant.
It is changing constantly.
And the way it is changing, more so now than ever, is that it is now ushering in very rapid and very dangerous escalations, including again just last night.
What is declared unthinkable one month becomes explicit policy the next.
The classic framework for how wars rapidly escalate out of control in history.
Biden has repeatedly declared various weapons systems off-limits to send to Ukraine because of their escalatory dangers, meaning their potential for them to expand the war beyond its current theater focused on southern and especially eastern Ukraine, only for him to repeatedly change his mind and reverse himself, with the latest reversal coming in his announcement that he will now send F-16 fighter jets, we will now send them, to Ukraine as they aggressively expand their military operations inside of Russia.
Very early this morning on Tuesday, eight kamikaze drones were flown into residential buildings in Moscow, an act which the New York Times characterized as, quote, a potent sign that the war is increasingly reaching the heart of Russia, adding, quote, Ukraine has increasingly been reaching far into Russia-held territory.
Western commentators and governments barely even bothered to pretend today to be concerned that their weapons, our weapons, American weapons, were used by Kiev to purposely target civilian targets in Russia's capital.
Now Russia has, of course, attacked targets in Kiev and other cities, and civilian targets have been hit by Russia, and Ukrainian civilians have been killed.
That is true of every war, including the ones the U.S.
and its allies fight.
But the question now is, how much dangers are you willing to put yourself in for this war?
When it comes to U.S.
involvement, what is the limiting principle?
If we give F-16s, why not give them the green light to use them to bomb targets inside Russia if we haven't already?
To bomb the Kremlin with our F-16s?
Or why not give them tactical nuclear weapons?
What's the argument against that?
Are we willing to risk a third world war over the question of who governs the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, filled with Russian-speaking ethnic Russians?
Or Crimea, about which that is even more true?
The answer, even though it is not explicit, increasingly seems to be yes, in a word that we barely bother to debate because there's unanimity in the Democratic Party in support of Joe Biden's war policy, and the GOP establishment is completely aligned with Biden, and when that kind of bipartisan, uniparty consensus emerges, debate ends and we simply proceed along without even talking about it.
Then, as our second story, we all know that the Kremlin agents are lurking everywhere, lurking on every corner, on every social media platform, under every bed.
We know that Russia, despite being at best a regional power with an economy smaller than Italy and Canada's, that spends $1.16 of what the US spends on our military, controls almost every major world event somehow, and is responsible for most of America's social and political ills.
But what you may not know, is that they have developed one of the most nefarious and terrifying weapons yet.
They have recruited and trained a deceptively adorable white beluga whale to serve as a Kremlin spy.
We will tell you the full story of this marine menace who, after years in hiding, has reportedly resurfaced this week to terrorize a Norwegian fishing boat.
As we do every Tuesday and Thursday, as soon as we're done with our one-hour live show here on Rumble, we will move to Locals for our interactive aftershow to take your questions and comment on your feedback.
To obtain access to our aftershow, which is for subscribers only, simply sign up as a member to our Locals community.
The red Join button is right below the video player.
Here on the Rumble page, we also provide daily transcripts, full transcripts for each program, as well as exclusive access to some of our written journalism.
As a reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
We are available on Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcasting platforms.
The shows post in podcast version 12 hours after we first broadcast them here live on Rumble.
To hear those shows in podcast form, simply follow us on those platforms, as well as please rate and review our programs as it helps spread the visibility of System Update.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Certain words, when they become so overused, begin to lose their meanings.
They're just like noises that no longer evoke any real sentiment or any real feeling.
They just become pure abstractions.
And I think that's the case for the word escalation when it comes to war.
You can warn about how wars have the risk of escalating and the dangers that come from that escalatory spiral.
But I think more often than not, we tend to dismiss that as an abstraction.
It just doesn't evoke very many strong sentiments any longer.
And I think that's because the United States for so long Has felt completely safe and immune from the risks of a world war.
It's been 70 years since the conclusion of the last world war.
It used to be commonplace that American students, American children, were trained how to hide in bomb shelters.
The specter of nuclear war very much was on the forefront of people's consciousness throughout all of the Cold War.
And now we seem to be at the moment where people just tacitly, blissfully assume that nuclear war is not really a possibility.
It's something that you can kind of mention or talk about, but everyone knows it will never happen.
There's very little fear over what is increasingly looking like a very direct proxy war between the two largest nuclear nations on the planet.
It's as though the warnings about nuclear war, or the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists putting their doomsday clock to the closest time to midnight ever, which signifies global extermination, just doesn't really seem to make any difference.
We barely even debate or discuss this war.
It's a war that Jill Biden himself said has brought the planet closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any point since 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And yet, given how central the U.S.
government is to this war, over $100 billion already authorized for it after just over a year, and increasingly sophisticated weapons being supplied to Ukraine that are then used not only against Russian soldiers inside Ukraine, but increasingly inside Russia itself,
It seems like we're in this blissful form of ignorance, fortified by the fact that there is absolute unanimity within the Democratic Party in Washington in support of this war, as well as the fact that the Republican establishment, as usual, is in full alignment with the Biden administration when it comes to the U.S.
war policy.
So everybody from Chuck Schumer to Tom Cotton and everybody from AOC to Most of the Republican House Caucus, including clearly Kevin McCarthy and Michael McFaul, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, and Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, and on and on and on are in complete agreement.
There's just no dissent.
Ilhan Omar thinks the same way as pick your Republican Senator, Marsha Blackburn.
And when that kind of bipartisan consensus happens, debate stops, even though There's a lot to debate.
This war is constantly escalating right before our eyes.
And that's the reason we keep discussing it and will continue to.
And it is quite possible that the last 24 hours have brought the most dangerous escalation yet.
And by escalation, what I mean by that is the ability of a war to start wildly and rapidly expanding, physically expanding beyond its original theater, But expanding rhetorically as well in terms of the willingness of countries to just devote themselves endlessly to not just trying to solve a conflict, but to win the conflict and vanquish one's enemies.
As well as to what the war aims are that just constantly spiral out of control.
That is absolutely, whatever your views are, and whatever your assignment of blame is, is how to understand this war.
So, what happened last night is that eight Kamikaze drones, obviously sent by Ukraine, people aren't even bothering with the pretense this time to say it was a false flag that Russia bombed itself, attacked, not military installations, not Any battalion of troops, but residential buildings in Russia's capital, in Moscow.
So just try and imagine how that would look to the United States if, say, Mexico, using Chinese-provided drones or Chinese-provided weapons, attack residential buildings in Arlington, Virginia or in the nation's capital or in Manhattan.
That is how Russia is currently looking at the world today.
So here from the New York Times, the headline is, what we know about the drone attack on Moscow.
Let's bring that up.
The headline is essentially what I just said.
Quote, Russia's defense ministry said that at least eight drones had targeted Moscow and the surrounding region.
Explosions were reported in Moscow early on Tuesday morning, with Russia's defense ministry saying that at least eight drones had targeted the capital city and the surrounding region.
All of the drones were intercepted, the ministry said in a statement, saying that electronic jamming measures forced some to deviate from intended targets and that others had been shot down outside the city limits by air defenses.
It did not specify what the targets may have been.
American officials have in the past voiced concern that Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil could provoke Mr. Putin without having a direct effect on the battlefield.
One reason that Washington has withheld from Ukraine, weapons that could be used to strike deep into Russia.
The reality of the war in Ukraine has largely been perceived as distant from much of the Russian public, but the attacks on Moscow could change that and possibly even threaten overall support for Mr. Putin's handling of what the Kremlin has called, quote, the special military operation.
Now, Seems to be a very bizarre formulation by the New York Times for a couple of reasons.
One is implicit within that account seems to be a justification for targeting residential buildings, for targeting civilians on purpose.
Which, when it's convenient, we are told is a war crime.
The implicit narrative in the New York Times article, and we're going to show you one from the Washington Post that's even More egregious, because a big part of this story is not just what Ukraine did, but how the West and the United States in particular are reacting.
Because therein lies the real dangers of what our mentality has become, collectively.
But the idea that it is now permissible to target civilians in order to make civilians be more invested in the war's outcome, So they don't see it as an abstraction is a justifying rationale for war crimes.
Targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians on purpose for strategic gain is a violation of the laws of war to the extent anyone cares about that.
But there is clearly implicit justification in there.
But the other point that I find amazing is this notion that if you start bombing Russian civilians enough, they will turn against the war.
When does that ever happen?
Every government in the world knows that the best way to unify the population behind the government is to convince them that they are under attack and being threatened by a foreign enemy, by a foreign power.
George Bush's 2000 election was one of the most disputed and contested elections in American history.
For all the talk about election denialism and the threat posed to challenging the credibility of our elections, Democrats overwhelmingly believed that that election was stolen.
That Al Gore was the rightful winner, the Supreme Court stole the election from the Democrats on behalf of George W. Bush, and for the first year of George Bush's presidency, or the first nine months, he was completely polarizing as a president.
And then came September 11th, and 90% of Americans Approved of the way George Bush was doing his job.
90% Americans unified behind their leader the minute there was a foreign attack.
That's what happens in every instance.
Right above our house.
is attacked.
If you want to find a way to unify the Russians behind Vladimir Putin, keep bombing and targeting on purpose apartment buildings filled with civilians in Moscow.
Now we have some video that will give you a sense of what this attack looked like.
Let me pull this up.
I believe it's this one here. - This is the house, brother.
It's on our house.
It's on me.
Look.
Look!
Look, brother!
Do you see?
Here, Roma!
- Look, brother.
You see?
Here's Roma.
You see? - So that's from Sky News.
There's video around as well showing certain buildings on fire, parts of buildings on fire.
They're clearly residential infrastructure.
So Ukraine clearly has the intention, because they've repeatedly done it, to not just attack Russian troops in their own soil to expel them, but to attack Russia itself inside Russian territory.
This is not the first time by far.
That this has happened.
There were units allied with the Ukrainian army, including reportedly certain actual overt Nazis who are enemies of the Putin government, who just recently engaged in cross-border attacks inside Moscow.
There have been terrorist attacks by the Ukrainians, including blowing up a cafe in St. Petersburg.
Petersburg in order to kill a Russian nationalist journalist and it not only killed him but injured 19 people attending the speech.
A car bomb that was targeting a Russian nationalist pro-war blogger who ended up instead murdering his daughter.
So it's not like this is the first time, but this is now eight kamikaze drones inside Moscow in residential buildings attacking them.
That is escalation of a war, if ever there was one.
Now I want to show you what the Washington Post said about this war, not in an editorial, not in an op-ed, but in what they purport to be their news report, because embedded within this reporting is some extraordinary, and I would submit very alarming, Conceptions about how to understand this war.
So there you see the Washington Post article from today that reports on these drone attacks.
Quote, drones hit Moscow, shocking Russian capital after new missile on Kiev.
Quote, a drone attack hit Moscow on Tuesday morning, damaging two residential buildings.
The first strike on a civilian area of the Russian capital since President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.
It was almost certainly a prelude to major escalation in hostility.
So This is a newspaper that has been behind this war from the beginning like they're behind every single major or minor American war of the last two decades at least.
Every single war from Iraq and Syria to Libya to Afghanistan to the bombing missions all throughout the Middle East.
And now the war in Ukraine has been supported by the Washington Post and even the Washington Post is saying, quote, this event yesterday is almost certainly a prelude to a major escalation in hostilities, a major escalation in a war involving multiple nuclear powers.
How is this not the story that all of us should be focused on today?
The drone attack, which was confirmed by Mayor Sergei Sobinin, occurred just hours after yet another barrage of Russian airstrikes on Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, which killed at least one person and injured more than a dozen.
In Moscow, there were no reports of serious injuries.
While Ukraine denied involvement in the drone attack on Moscow, the dueling strikes on the capital's cities appeared to mark a threshold moment.
As residents of Russia's capital experience direct consequences of their nation's hostilities for the first time.
I want to read this again because it's a lot of words put together that seem on their own to be the kind of technical journalistic words newspapers typically use when they're describing some kind of national security policy but the actual meaning really bears some scrutiny.
They say That the dueling strikes marked a threshold moment as residents of Russia's capital experienced direct consequences of their nation's hostilities for the first time.
Is that how we now talk about attacks on civilians?
Deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure like apartment buildings?
Oh, they're just getting the consequences of what their nation's doing.
That's how Osama Bin Laden talked about 9-11.
Oh, we're going to make sure that Americans, for the first time ever, feel, quote, direct consequences for their nation's hostility for the first time.
That was his justification for the 9-11 attacks.
That it's about time Americans don't just get to attack, but have to feel the consequences that they bring to other countries.
That's the justification being offered by the Washington Post for targeting civilian buildings in Russia, based apparently on the view That not the Russian government but the Russian people need to suffer, be injured, or even be killed.
And as we emphasized on our program last night when we were talking about the disparate treatment for Russian and Belarusian athletes who are somehow told they're responsible for their government's actions, it makes even less sense in this case because we're also constantly told that Russia is a tyranny, a totalitarian society where no citizen has any input at all into what their government does and any dissidence of any kind results in imprisonment or death.
Anyone who criticizes Vladimir Putin gets sent to the gulag.
And yet, apparently, we're now supposed to believe that the same Russian people who are oppressed, we're told by the Putin government, Need to start feeling some bombs because somehow they bear responsibility for this war.
And need to be motivated to stop Putin, even though he's a totalitarian dictator who kills all of his critics.
This is how propaganda works.
It's this insidious weaving throughout everything that we're constantly told.
About how just to implicitly understand the world and the moral frameworks that we are supposed to apply to others and to ourselves.
Quote, reports that some 200 artillery shells hit Russian towns in the Belgrade region near the Ukrainian border Tuesday offered further evidence that Kiev wants to bring the war to Russian territory before initiating its long-expected counteroffensive, which will inevitably necessitate further destruction in Ukraine.
So let me stop there as well for a minute.
We've been told forever that a counter-offensive is coming, and maybe it will, but the reality is the primary victims of the war right now is Ukraine.
It's Ukrainian buildings that's being destroyed, Ukrainian infrastructure that's being destroyed, Ukrainian lives that are being taken, in gigantic number.
And the idea that they want this war, Is a nice narrative, but it's belied by the fact, as we've shown you before, that President Zelensky has been repeatedly forced not only to do things like close oppositional media outlets and ban political parties who are his opponents, something he was doing even before the war started, banning churches, but he has severely increased the penalties for desertion.
Because Ukrainian men, many of them actually don't want to fight in this war.
They do not think this war is worth dying for over the question of who controls Donbass or whether they get Crimea back.
Ultimately, a war's merit is determined by whether people are willing to fight and die in it.
Huge numbers of Americans volunteered to fight in World War II.
Zelensky is using a conscript army.
These are people forced to fight.
And their country is being destroyed because at the beginning of the war it was clear, as many reported, that the United States' goal in this war was never to save Ukraine or protect Ukrainians.
It was to destroy Ukraine and sacrifice Ukrainians for its broader geopolitical goal of bleeding the Russians as much as possible.
That is what this war is really about.
That is why there's never even any discussion, let alone efforts toward finding a diplomatic solution to this war in Washington, because Washington does not want this war to end, it wants it to continue.
It's a gold mine for the arms industry, for the intelligence community, and for the goal of destroying Russia, which again, I believe is predominantly motivated by perception in Washington that it was Russia that was responsible for the election of Donald Trump.
That's the real reason for this increasingly vitriolic anti-Russian hatred that is driving U.S.
policy much more than any geopolitical objectives.
Quote, Mikhail Podolak, an advisor to Zelensky, said Moscow residents deserved whatever came at them.
This is one of Zelensky's primary advisors justifying the targeting of civilian infrastructures on the grounds that, quote, Moscow residents deserved whatever came at them.
Quote, I'm going to say some paradoxical things and you can then analyze them.
First, undoubtedly, gradually Moscow is starting to sink into the fog of war with a very desired sensation.
Podolak said Tuesday morning during Breakfast Show, a Ukrainian-Russian language YouTube program, quote, of course we want these people who wanted to start this big European war to feel what it is like to live in a state of danger.
And of course, all those terrible men who sat in the Parliament and threatened everyone, they are going to gradually receive all of that back.
Note that Ukraine did not bomb the Parliament, nor the Kremlin, this time.
The way they did several months ago when they sent a drone over Moscow that exploded right above the Kremlin.
They targeted apartment buildings.
How is it that on the one hand Russia is a totalitarian despotic society that imprisons every citizen who descends from the government's actions and where Russian citizens have no ability to influence at all?
The government that we're told is despotic, and yet on the other, the Ukrainians can say, the Ukrainian government can say, using our weapons, that Russian civilians deserve whatever's coming to them, because somehow they're responsible for this war.
Is that now our position?
That our proxy?
Nations that we use as pawns in war can deliberately target civilian infrastructure and kill as many civilians as possible and then explicitly justify doing that on the grounds that they're getting what's coming to them?
Again, that is the rationale of Osama bin Laden for why 9-11 happened.
When Osama bin Laden was asked to justify 9-11, he said, Americans bear responsibility for their government's aggression in the world because Because they are the ones who elected that government.
It was actually true in that case, that the Americans elected the government that initiated the war in Iraq, or that starved hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children with sanctions, or that put troops on Saudi soil.
But still, it didn't justify targeting civilians.
It never is justified, let alone when we're told that civilians have no political rights of any kind.
The article goes on, quote, Putin said that Ukraine was trying to, quote, intimidate Russia and Russian citizens, and that the attack aimed to provoke, quote, a mirror response from Moscow.
Quote, this, of course, is a clear sign of terrorist activity, Putin said during a visit to a cultural center.
Now, regardless of what you think, About this war, about who's to blame for this war.
If you want to assign a thousand percent of the blame to Vladimir Putin, is it true?
That deliberately targeting civilians to terrify those civilians into changing their government's policy is the very definition of terrorism.
It's the definition I've always understood terrorism to have to the extent that it's actually a term with a clear, fixed meaning as opposed to just a propaganda term.
Targeting civilians with violence on purpose in order to terrorize them into changing their behaviors and their views.
That is terrorism.
And that is what the Ukrainian government explicitly is saying was their goal here, was their purpose, was their aim.
Now, I mentioned Osama bin Laden and what he said about 9-11 on several occasions because it is exactly what we hear increasingly, not just from Ukrainians, but from the West.
about who bears responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine, that it's not just the Russian government, but Russian civilians as well.
We showed you last night in the context of professional sports how that rationale is being invoked, and I emphasize that even though that's just sports, it can seem trivial.
The underlying propagandistic framework that is being pushed on us constantly that we're being asked to ratify is an extremely dangerous one because you first ban Russian athletes and Belarusian athletes on the grounds that they somehow bear responsibility, 25-year-old athletes...
And if that's true, that civilians are responsible, then it does become justifiable morally to target them and kill them on purpose, because you've just gotten done implementing a framework that holds them morally responsible, ethically responsible, and responsible in every other way for the war that you claim is the greatest act of evil since Hitler, if not even worse than Hitler.
That's what makes this rationale so nefarious that it's coming not only from Ukraine, but from their sponsors in the West.
Let's look at what Osama Bin Laden said in September of 2007 in a transcript of a speech that he gave from a video where he was talking about 9-11 and the war on terror and U.S.
aggression.
Quote, after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes.
He's talking here to the American people, and that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Donald Rumsfeld.
And even more incredible than that is that Bush picked him as Secretary of Defense in his first term after picking Dick Cheney as his Vice President, Colin Powell as Secretary of State, Richard Armitage as Powell's deputy, despite the horrific blood history of murdering humans.
So that was a clear signal that his administration, the administration of the generals, didn't have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather was interested in bringing about new massacres.
Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you, American civilians, with your full knowledge and consent, to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Then you claim to be innocent.
This innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th, were I to claim such a thing.
But it is impossible for me to humor any of you in the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America, or for me to humor your leaders in their lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion's share of that.
These morals aren't our morals.
What I want to emphasize here is that not taking past war criminals to account led them to keep repeating that crime of killing humanity without right and waging this unjust war in Mesopotamia.
And as a result, here are the oppressed ones today continuing to take their right from you.
So that was Osama Bin Laden's argument for why American civilians were legitimate targets on September 11th and otherwise.
And it sounds a lot to me.
Like what Ukraine is saying about Russian civilians now, and what the West really has been saying since the start of this war in the way that they are talking about, not the Russian government, but Russian civilians.
And from that, it is not a big leap.
In fact, it is the inevitable outcome that Russian civilians should be targeted, which is exactly what happened within the last 24 hours.
And now with increasingly sophisticated aggressive weaponry in their hands, provided to them by the United States, With a mentality that you just got done hearing, that Russian civilians deserve what's coming to them, what do you think these weapons are gonna be used for?
And if you can just put yourself into the position of seeing the world through Russian eyes, and again, think all you want about the fact that Russia's to blame for invading Ukraine, that they can end the war at any moment by going home, That's not the way the Russians see this war.
It's the way the West sees this war.
It's not the way Russians see this war.
It's not the way most countries see this war.
As we demonstrated to you when we reported on Fiona Hill's remarkable speech, a pro, rather an anti-Russia, anti-China hawk who has been deep in the bowels of the US foreign policy establishment forever, standing up and telling the West, Western foreign policy elites,
That quote, the rest of the world, which now is not the rest of the world, but is actually the rest of the world, a huge portion of the world assembling greater and greater power and coming together in a more potent confederation than ever, does not see the war in Ukraine the way the United States and the West sees the war in Ukraine.
They see the war in Ukraine as yet another attempt, rightly or wrongly, it's how they see it, By the United States and by the West to assert their dominion and hegemonic control everywhere, including all the way up to the Russian border.
And while they don't necessarily support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they certainly believe that the US and the West provoked it.
And that's Fiona Hill talking, not me.
And there's tons of evidence to demonstrate that that's how major governments around the world see this war.
But leaving aside that question of who's to blame or who's responsible, Do you think that Russia, this country with this enormous history, filled with proud nationalists, and the largest nuclear stockpile on the planet, is just going to sit by while Ukraine takes weapons provided by the West and kills their civilians inside Moscow?
By bombing them from the air?
Does anyone think that Putin is going to just allow that to happen without reacting very, very aggressively?
And the theory of escalated wars, of wars getting out of control, of how world wars start, is they always have a very limited beginning.
That there's a border dispute between two countries, other allies side with each, suddenly there's all kinds of tension escalating, all these other new grievances are aired, and the anger and hatred and hostility that war breeds in humans.
We need hatred to be pulsating through our veins to support wars because when we engage in war and favor it, we do the most unthinkable things to one another.
That hatred just constantly increases and bubbles over, and that's how atrocities become possible.
And we are now already at the point where the Ukrainians are explicitly justifying attacks on Russian civilians deep inside Russia, into Moscow, its capital, at the same time that the United States is now providing to Ukraine F-16 fighter jets.
And at the same time that there's almost no communication at all between Moscow and Washington.
One of the rotted results of Russiagate that essentially criminalized conversations between American diplomats on the one hand and Russian diplomats on the other.
Michael Flynn almost went to jail because he reached out to the Russian ambassador shortly becoming the National Security Advisor.
Now, again, this is not the first time there have been strikes inside of Russia.
And each time that it happens, we are told some kind of just laughable propaganda about what happened.
Here from the Washington Post earlier this month in May, you may recall that Ukraine exploded a drone bomb over the Kremlin near where Vladimir Putin was.
And the Washington Post headline was, Ukraine denies Kremlin's claim of drone assassination attempt on Putin, and gave credence to this preposterous notion, even more preposterous than the insulting claim that Russia blew up its own pipeline.
Quote, Russia on Wednesday accused Ukraine of staging a drone attack intended to kill President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, an incendiary allegation that was forcefully denied by Ukrainian officials, some of whom warned it could be a pretext for Russia to escalate its war.
In the first paragraph, the Washington Post, Gave credence to this false flag theory that Russia bombed itself.
Russia said that it thwarted the attack and that Putin was not in the building at the time.
Among the mysteries surrounding Wednesday's alleged attack was how two drones could have successfully reached one of the most protected buildings in Moscow's fortified city center.
While some analysts said the incident might have been a false flag attack staged by Russia, others suggested it could be a performative gesture by Ukraine striking at a preeminent symbol of Russian state power.
Don't forget that incident.
Just weeks ago.
That the Russians perceive that Zelensky and the Ukrainians tried to murder the Russian president via a drone over Moscow.
Again, think about what we would do, the United States would do, if all of this was happening not in Moscow but in Washington.
Especially if those weapons were supplied by and the war was enabled by Russia, Iran, or China, or some combination of all those countries, which is what's happening in the war in Ukraine.
It's enabled solely by the United States principally and the rest of Western Europe and NATO.
Now, just to give you a sense for how utterly deranged the mentality has become among Western journalists, American journalists, Warren and all these people who just make a living constantly supporting U.S.
foreign policy whenever it comes to militarism and war.
I just want to show you this tweet, or series of tweets, from Tyler Rogaway.
I believe, I forgot the publication he works at.
We will get that for you.
He used to be part of the Gizmodo Media Group.
And he's worked for other media outlets as well, so he's a journalist, but listen to how he thinks and how he's speaking.
And very little opposition arose from this tweet until I pointed it out.
It's him today discussing the drone attacks on Moscow last night.
Quote, every day this word goes on, Ukraine's kinetic reach expands in magnitude and frequency.
Targeting the, taking the word of Moscow is the goal.
Little drones will turn into way more drones of increasing complexity than into cruise missiles than ballistic missiles.
They have relatively advanced indigenous ballistic missile tech.
If you don't think they are doing everything they can to get what they set aside a few years ago up operational, we are living in a different universe and they are likely getting help.
Obviously meaning help from The United States, and he cites an article entitled, Does Ukraine Have a Stash of Domestically Developed Ballistic Missiles?
Ones that he is celebrating are intended to be used to strike deep into Russia.
He then goes on, so much is focused on what NATO will give them, especially in standoff weaponry, but it's 15 months into this thing where crash programs are likely maturing, hence the flocks of drones that will be raining on Moscow.
Bad, bad news for Russia.
Is that just bad news for Russia?
Or is that bad news for the world?
If we are now going to start having constant drone attacks on civilian infrastructure in Russia, in Moscow, followed by cruise missiles, followed by ballistic missiles?
He works at this media outlet called The Drive, which Is the outlet, I've never heard of it before, that published this article about whether Ukraine has a stash of ballistic missiles.
He previously, he also has a vertical called the War Zone.
He's obviously one of these people Adam Smith warned us about back in 1776, people who stay far away from the battlefield, but who cheer wars from a distance.
Sometimes they go there and do kind of war reporting in the war zone, but they don't fight in the wars.
But you can see the excitement they get, the sense of purpose and strength.
Where he's talking about cruise missiles and ballistic missiles raining down on Russia.
If you want to have a nuclear war, this is the way to do it.
And as always, the question I will continue to pose for as long as this war goes on, Is what interest does the United States have in continuing this war?
What interest does the United States have in fighting with this level of risk and danger over who gets to govern the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine bereft of any vital interest of the United States?
Or who governs Crimea?
A region where even the harshest anti-Russian hawks will acknowledge is filled with people who far more identify as Russian than they do as Ukrainians, who would far more rather be governed by Moscow or be independent than be governed by President Zelensky in Kiev.
Ever since the United States fostered regime change in Ukraine, which we know happened, we heard Victoria Nuland talking about it secretly on a tape, There are large numbers of people in these provinces who feel like they live in a country that is not theirs.
They see Russia as far more, with far more affinity to their ethnic identity, to their historical identity than Ukraine.
And one possible way out of this war Is to hold a referendum and see what the people of Eastern Ukraine want.
To see what people in Crimea want.
A fair election, supervised by the UN.
See if they want to be part of Russia, see if they want to be independent, see if they want to remain under the thumb of Kiev.
I think the West knows what the outcome of that referendum will be.
And whatever else is true, again, whatever your position, I think the most striking thing here is how little effort there is on the part of Moscow, or rather Washington, or London, or Paris, or Berlin, to even pretend they're seeking a diplomatic solution to this war.
Where are the diplomats?
Where are the efforts to foster an outcome to finally end this war before it escalates out of control?
There are paths to diplomatic resolution, I just named one.
We have the example of Kosovo, which is in the news, we're going to cover that later this week, which is now engaged in some hostilities with Belgrade, with Serbia, over what is technically
At least in the eyes of the West, the territory of Kosovo, even though many countries don't recognize Kosovo as an independent country, but the reason there's a Kosovo and a Serbia to talk about is because the United States and the EU sided with the ethnic separatists in Kosovo that no longer wanted to be part of Serbia.
They didn't want to be ruled by Belgrade because they're Albanians, ethnic Albanians, and they wanted their independence.
And the U.S.
supported that.
Independence by arguing that the people of Kosovo deserved autonomy over who they're governed by.
And at the time, Vladimir Putin warned that that would be a very dangerous precedent to set because post-World War II Europe is filled with regions and provinces that have been shoved into countries with which they don't identify, including those two breakaway provinces in Georgia that were subject to that 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.
Where the people of South Ossetia and other provinces in Georgia that are Russian-speaking and identify as Russians did not want to be under the thumb of a country with which they felt no affinity and preferred to be under the governance of Russia.
Same with Crimea, same with people in Donbass and other parts of eastern Ukraine.
So the Kosovo model is one way out of this, which is to have a free and fair election to ask the people in those territories, in those provinces, and in those regions what they want.
Do they want independence?
Do they want to be part of Russia?
Do they want to be part of Kiev and allow them to have their own say in the outcome of that?
There is no attempt on the part of the West, you will notice.
To try and foster that diplomatic resolution, or any other, because the only people in whose interest this war is, are Western elites and the Western security state.
And everybody else, principally the people of Ukraine, but also the people of the United States, who are transferring enormous amounts of resources, poured into that war through Raytheon, through the CIA, into this country that has long been considered the most corrupt in all of Europe.
Only to now face what Joe Biden himself, the sponsor of this war, calls the most dangerous moment since 1962 for the survival of the species.
So there is no effort to end this war diplomatically, nor is there any intention to hold that kind of referendum, because the West knows what the people in those regions want and don't care about what they want at all.
This war is not about protecting Ukraine or protecting Ukrainians.
It never was.
It's about pretty much everything else, and each day that this war escalates, the dangers intensify.
We all know that Russia has been responsible, the puppet master, for pretty much every single problem that the West has over the last 10 years.
It's not because the Western elites are corrupted.
It's not because neoliberal global institutions are malicious and are willing to squeeze entire populations just to enrich themselves and empower themselves a little further.
No, perish the thought.
It's because Vladimir Putin, despite all his problems domestically, Despite having a economy that is smaller than Canada and Italy's, despite spending one sixteenth of what the United States spends on the military, is somehow able from across the other side of the world to puppet master every last event inside the United States, inside of the United Kingdom, and even other Western European
countries and we all know how many Kremlin agents there are, how many Russian spies there are, essentially everybody who challenges or dissents from US foreign policy in any way.
So just a reminder of all the things the Russians somehow managed to do.
The New York Times through Charlie Savage in July or June of 2020 announced that Russia had placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan that We were told they had convinced the Taliban that they would pay them if they killed American troops.
Now, just beyond anything else, as a reminder, remember the outrage that the United States, or rather that Russia, would dare try and involve itself in an American war?
By encouraging our enemies to kill American troops?
This is something just ghastly that no country would ever do.
Only for two years later, us to drown Russia's bordering country, Ukraine, with every conceivable weapon we can think of in order for them to go and kill as many Russian troops and increasingly Russian civilians as they can.
But anyway, that's what Russia was doing.
They were controlling Afghanistan.
Of course, that story Turned out to be false, like most of these stories.
The Daily Beast in 2021, US Intel walks back claim that Russians put bounties on American troops.
Then we had the Havana Syndrome.
Somehow there was this new mind control device using 24th century technology that nobody had ever heard of before, much less began to understand.
That enabled them, the Russians, to go around the world, injuring the brains of American diplomats, not just in Havana, but all over Europe, using invisible, sonic weapons that nobody can even possibly explain.
And we were told over and over again that Russia was behind that as well, that they were damaging the brains of State Department officials, Turns out it was all basically hysteria.
It was psychosomatic illness created by a bunch of hysterics.
Imagine that, that those are the kinds of people working inside the State Department.
People who are just completely hysterical and create imaginary illnesses.
I wonder where they came from.
But as you see and hear in Rolling Stone, Havana syndrome noises were likely crickets, not super weapons, State Department report says, but we were told that Russia was behind that as well.
From the Washington Post in 2020, turns out that America's racial strife is not due to 250 years that involves slavery and Jim Crow laws and segregation.
Or American activist groups that need racial strife.
It turns out that racism is because of Russian bots.
They're responsible for racial strife in the United States too.
When the British people went and decided they no longer wanted to be part of the EU.
They didn't want to be ruled by Eurocrats in Brussels.
They actually wanted local rule to be able to influence their own self-governance by removing themselves from the EU.
That was not the decision of the British people.
That, too, was due to Russia.
Russia also engineered Brexit, says the New York Times, No one protected British democracy from Russia.
UK report concludes they blamed Brexit on the Russians.
And of course, 2016, the Democrats lost the presidential election, not because they ran one of the most unlikable people on the planet, one of the most historically unpopular politicians in the modern American political history.
Not because they didn't go to Wisconsin.
Not because they had no program to offer anybody other than the elites that financed Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Not because they relied on Lena Dunham and a bunch of Hollywood celebrities to tell people in the United States that they should vote for Hillary.
None of that.
It was because Moscow dictated the outcome of our election.
And I could go through the entire list of all the people who we know are Russian agents, Because of the fact that they criticized the US government.
Here from the New York Times, just a reminder, Hillary Clinton left no doubt on Thursday.
She believes Russia contributed to her defeat by interfering in the election, condemning what she called Moscow's, quote, weaponization of information.
So those are all the things and many, many more that Russia has masterminded and puppeted Through their incredible sophistication and power.
Turns out they have a new weapon.
It's not actually a new one, it's the emergence of an old one.
In 2019, The Guardian in April warned us of a frightening new weapon, a Russian spy.
In the headline, there you see it, you see, Whale with Harness Could Be a Russian Weapon, Say Norwegian Experts.
Fishermen in Norway raised alarm after white beluga whale sporting unusual strapping began harnessing their boats.
Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled.
Upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian Navy as part of a program to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.
Fishermen in waters near the small Norwegian fishing village of Inga reported last week that a white beluga whale wearing a strange harness had begun to harass their fishing boats.
Kind of like the way Russian bots do on Twitter.
The strange behavior of the whale, which was actively seeking out the vessels and trying to pull straps and ropes from the side.
Apparently, I knew that there was the claim that the Russians had used these whales to spy, like Kremlin spies, but apparently they trained them to attack Norwegian fishing boats.
The strange behavior of the whale, which was actively seeking out the vessels and trying to pull stropes, straps, and ropes from the side of the boats, as well as the fact that it was wearing a tight harness which seemed to be a camera or weapon, raised suspicions among marine experts that the animal had been given military-grade training by neighboring Russia.
Inside the harness, which has now been removed from the whale, were the words, Equipment of St.
Petersburg.
Because, of course, everybody knows that when you deploy covert agents into the field, or covert whales into the ocean, you of course have to describe where they came from.
Who they belong to.
Everybody knows that.
I mean, yes, spying is a pretty nasty business, but there are rules.
And one of the rules is, if you're going to use whales, you have to say where they came from.
So there was a harness that said, equipment from St.
Petersburg.
And apparently that's how they knew.
Now maybe that's a false flag.
Could be, except, unfortunately, you're never allowed to suggest that the West was responsible for a false flag, mislabeling the perpetrator of attack.
Only Russia does that.
Russia explodes its own industrial hardware and infrastructure, even though their future economic growth depends on it, like they blew up their own pipeline.
Russia bombs itself, as they did when they exploded a drone over the Kremlin, where Vladimir Putin was sleeping.
Russia constantly, they think it's Russia that killed its own pro-war Russian nationalist blogger in that cafe and blew up that car.
But we know in this case that this whale is definitely a Kremlin agent because it says right on the harness equipment of St.
Petersburg.
Quote, if this whale comes from Russia and there is great reason to believe it, then it is not Russian scientists but rather the Navy that has done this.
Said Martin Blue of the Institute of Marine Research in Norway.
Alden Rickardson, professor of the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology at the Arctic University of Norway, told NRK, quote, we know that in Russia they have domestic whales in captivity, and also that some of these have been apparently released.
Then they often seek out boats.
I guess the claim here is that whales are generally gentle and humanitarian mammals that ordinarily are very peaceful when they see boats, but the Russians have trained them to identify Western boats, boats that are controlled by Westerners or by Western navies, and to attack these boats.
On behalf of the Kremlin, very, very alarming once you start weaponizing marine life this way.
He said he had contacted Russian researchers who said the harnessed whale had nothing to do with them.
Of course the Russians are going to say that.
Quote, they tell me that most likely it is the Russian Navy in Murmansk, said Rickerson.
In 1980s Soviet Russia, a program saw dolphins recruited for military training.
Their razor-sharp vision, stealth, and good memory making them effective underwater tools for detecting weapons.
This mammal program closed in the 1990s.
However, a 2017 report by TV's Vedva, a station owned by the Defense Ministry, revealed that the Russian Navy has again begun training beluga whales, seals, and bottlenose dolphins for military purposes in polar waters.
In the past three years, President Vladimir Putin has reopened three former Soviet military bases along its vast Arctic coastline.
The recent research and training was done by Murmansk Sea Biology Research Institute in northern Russia.
On behalf of the Navy, the Sea of Beluga Whales could be used to, quote, guard entrances to naval bases and Arctic regions, assist deep water divers, and if necessary, kill any strangers who enter their territory.
Now, I don't doubt, in fact I affirmatively believe, that many countries probably do train dolphins to try and engage in certain behavior that could be a benefit to that government.
But the idea that this is some kind of nefarious, scary army of whales that the Kremlins have trained to be spies and to attack Norwegian boats is lunacy, lunacy.
Especially given what they're claiming is the evidence for it, that they had a harness that said, basically like, hello, I'm a Russian spy.
And the tone that's used to suggest that this is supposed to frighten us, that this is something that only very evil, insidious countries would do, like this sonic weapon that came from the 24th century, that instead turned out just to be the psychosomatic neuroses of
People who just got out of Swarthmore and joined the State Department and convinced themselves that their brains were being melted by Russian sonic weapons because they've been watching Rachel Maddow too much when in fact all along it was crickets they were hearing and they had invented this mental health disease and then given themselves it.
Sounds like a lot like that.
Now, as it turns out, this whale, this scary Russian Kremlin Not just apparently spy, but also attacker, had disappeared from 2019, only to resurface in the last two days, the last 48 hours.
So, here from The Guardian, we find he has returned.
Suspected Russia-trained spy whale reappears off Sweden's coast.
This time he's attacking not Norwegians, but Swedes.
Where has this whale been for the last four years?
Beluga whale was first spotted in Norway wearing a harness marked Equipment St.
Petersburg in 2019.
A beluga whale that turned up in Norway wearing a harness in 2019, prompting speculation it was a spy trained by the Russian Navy, has reappeared off Sweden's coast.
First discovered in Norway's far northern region of Finnmark, the whale spent more than three years slowly moving down the top half of the Norwegian coastline before suddenly speeding up in recent months to cover the second half and move on to Sweden.
So the marine mission for which he had been trained apparently involved a four-year timeline where he would kind of chill out In the Arctic waters, excuse the pun, I promise it was unintended, for four years and then in 2023, maybe to the date that they programmed, would start suddenly speeding up and start attacking Swedes.
The harness had a mount suited for an action camera and the words Equipment St.
Petersburg printed on the plastic clasps.
Directorate officials said Vladimir, I guess that's the name of the whale, Oh, it's a pun on Vladimir and then the word for whale and Norwegian.
Very clever.
Vladimir may have escaped an enclosure and may have been trained by the Russian Navy as he appeared to be accustomed to humans.
Moscow never issued any official reaction to Norwegian speculation that he could be a Russian spy.
They probably couldn't stop laughing.
So here from 2019.
Here's another AP report, is an AP report rather, another report on this whale from AP.
And there you see the headline, even has a picture of him.
He looks quite adorable.
Beluga whale with Russian harness raises alarm in Norway.
A beluga whale found with a tight harness that appeared to be Russian made has raised the alarm of Norwegian officials and prompted speculation that the animal may have come from a Russian military facility, just more of the same.
Now, we do have video.
of this nefarious Kremlin spy.
And like I said, I want to warn you, I think it's important before you watch this video to be on guard because he's incredibly cute.
He's very playful.
He clearly likes humans or at least pretends to like humans.
I think that's part of the danger, is that he lures people in to this sense of safety by attracting them into his web.
He's like a honeypot.
We all know Russians use honeypots, like very beautiful women, to entice Politicians like Eric Swalwell and the person who turned out to be a Chinese spy who developed a very good relationship that's been a Cold War tactic for a long time.
But instead of using women to lure men in to get their secrets, they use adorable animals.
People love animals.
A lot of people use love of animals as a way of getting greater connection in our harsh modern life.
And they found this incredibly adorable whale, but he's a spy for the Kremlin.
Who not only learns your secrets but attacks you if you're Norwegian or Swedish.
So let's look at him.
I think it's important in case you're out in the waters and you see him to identify him and remain very cautious in what you tell him and in your interactions with him.
I should say this is from NBC News just to...
I assure you that this is all coming from the most mainstream outlets.
Warning, there you see the caption.
Marine experts think this whale may be a Russian trained spy.
Let's watch him.
Let's watch him.
Hey!
Hey, yam.
Hey, what's up? what's up?
Do you see how malicious the Russians are?
They play on our best instincts and they weaponize the cuteness of beluga whales for military purposes.
I don't know if you noticed in that swirl of propaganda I read you, one paragraph said the reason we know he's a Russian spy is because he's unusually aggressive and hostile.
He attacks only Norwegian boats, fishing boats, out of the blue with no provocation.
And then we also heard That the reason we know he's a spy is because he's so accustomed to being around humans.
Did you see any hostility there at all?
I saw nothing but very polite behavior.
But again, that's the point.
That's the way they keep this a secret.
Now, let me show you one other report, which I believe is from CBS News, because I think you cannot be on guard enough.
Here is the report.
It's entitled Russian Spy Whale, and it's from 2019 when he first appeared.
So apparently he's like a dissident, it turns out.
He was trained as a Russian spy.
to a boat to see the town's most iconic resident, Valdemir the Beluga.
The gentle giant is not from Norway.
The townspeople believe he once worked as a Russian spy whale and then fled. - I always say it sounds like something that like a comic book artist. - So apparently he's like a dissident, it turns out.
He was trained as a Russian spy.
I think he developed some kind of misgivings about the nature of the work that he was doing And he escaped bravely.
And he sought asylum in Norway, off the coast of Norway.
So, I mean, I guess, according to this version, at least, he's heroic that we did reappear in 2023.
Maybe the Russians captured him again, debriefed him, retrained him, and then gave him a new marine mission, kind of reoriented him, indoctrinated him.
out of his dissidence and now he's back under Russian control?
But this is what they thought in 2019 about him.
Voldemir the Beluga.
The gentle giant is not from Norway.
The townspeople believe he once worked as a Russian spy whale and then fled.
I always say it sounds like something that like a comic book artist ran out of ideas or something in the 50s and created this.
He was trained to do military spy work.
You can send a whale a lot further and a lot longer and a lot deeper than you can a human, first of all.
And second of all, that whale can go undetected.
Voldemort likely had cameras strapped to him.
He boldly left his old life behind, showing up on the coast alone and in need of help.
Oh my God.
I mean, okay, let me say again, this is CBS News.
And they've turned him into like a victim of Russian repression.
But like a heroic victim.
Somebody who like really did not appreciate being forced to work for the Russian government.
Or maybe at some point he had kind of like had an epiphany.
Kind of like Edward Snowden.
He was a very young man, joined the US military, believing the war in Iraq was just.
He broke both of his legs in basic training, then he went to work for the CIA and the NSA, until he had an epiphany and began realizing that the mythology that he had been fed about the US government, the role that it played in the world, was false.
And therefore he wanted to act against it.
This seems to be the case for this whale.
At some point, we don't know why, he had kind of like an epiphany, like a sort of awakening about the true nature of the Russian government and decided he no longer wanted to work for them and he made a breakaway.
To the coast of Norway where he anticipated correctly, it turns out, that he would be well received.
Now, this is 2019, so I want to point out that it's possible this is all a cover, a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the West to make us think That he had an awakening and was no longer willing to do the work of the Russian government, when in reality it was just his way of luring us in, that was part of his training, to think that he was actually on our side and to trust him.
And now it turns out he resurfaced as swimming faster than ever and attacking the Swedes.
So it's a very complex story, that's for sure.
So here's what the rest of this report from 2019.
Started pulling at fishermen's boats and buoys and equipment and getting their attention.
One of the fishermen in Norway really realized something's wrong with this picture.
There's a whale wearing a harness.
He got in the water himself and was able to undo the harness and take Valdemir out of the harness.
Which I think is really important, an important thing to have happen for Valdemir because I don't think he probably could have lived his whole life in that too comfortably.
Can you believe this?
I mean, you know, obviously there's lots of ways to mock this.
I have refrained from doing so because of the gravity of the story, but if I wanted to I could.
I think the point here though is All of this is what is this any of this based on this whole story that emerged in 2019 about this Kremlin spy who's a whale and then like escaped as a kind of like a fleeing a repressive regime and heroically making it to the West where he could be free and he like asked for help and the the Norwegians gave it to him But now it turns out he really might have been a spy along, or maybe he went back and got... What is any of this based on?
It's like this woman just, like, telling a story with music in the background designed to pull on your heartstrings to make you think this whale is, like, benevolent and heroic, except now he's being depicted once again as nefarious.
This is the never-ending, incessant bullshit.
That these corporate media outlets, and under the guise of news, this is news, that Washington Post article that I read you before about how Russians, civilians are finally getting what they deserve, and this is gonna make them rise up, that was also presented as news.
This is what we are constantly bombarded with.
And it is not even, there's no even pretense to have an evidentiary basis for it.
It's almost like, The more egregious they can be, the more flagrant they can be in how they propagandize us, the better it is because it shows their power.
If they can make you affirm things that you know are false, or if they don't even have to pretend to care whether or not you believe them.
They just shove narrative constructions down your throat without the slightest regard for whether it even makes the most basic sense.
That's real power.
That's essentially saying to you, we don't fear you at all.
We don't even need to have enough respect for you to bother caring about whether or not you're convinced.
And that is really the posture of the U.S.
government and the corporate media outlets that serve them.
And I think it's no wonder that it's one of the most optimistic and encouraging facts that we have that faith and trust in these media outlets have completely collapsed because eventually people see through this stuff.
They know, people know when they're being scorned and treated with contempt.
And while you can mock this and talk about the absurdity of it, it does in fact have very dangerous outcomes.
We're basically now at war with a country that the Democratic Party decided to blame for what for them was the most traumatic event in recent political history, which was the loss of Hillary Clinton in the election of Donald Trump.
They fed their followers with the most severe form of anti-Russian animus.
They basically made it a crime to even talk to Russians or a cause for suspicion about your loyalties and your patriotism if you got caught talking to Russians.
And now we're in the middle of this incredibly dangerous, rapidly escalating war that has no geostrategic aim other than its continuation for its own sake.
There's no efforts to resolve it diplomatically.
And in its stead, all we ever get is this constant narrative that we should hate Russia and Russians in lieu of any rationale for why these resources should continuously be expended and why these risks should be incurred in pursuit of this war.
These institutions cannot collapse fast enough.
They cannot collapse fast enough.
There is no way to describe how fundamentally and irretrievably corrupted they are.
And that's why I always say, and I will continue to say, that however much you hate the corporate media and the U.S.
security state, it is nowhere near enough.
the willingness that they have to drag you into lies and then create dangers all around those lies is essentially limitless.
That concludes our show for this evening.
Because it's Tuesday night, we will now move to our Locals platform where we have our live interactive show where we take your questions, comment on your critiques and feedback, hear your suggestions for the kinds of stories we should cover and who we should interview, and just generally have a conversation with our audience, which I always find to be a very important form of journalistic accountability, to have access to that.
Live after show, simply join our Locals community by clicking the Join button underneath the video player.
That also helps support the journalism we do here.
As a reminder, System Update is available in podcast forms.
You can follow us on Spotify, Apple, and every other major podcasting platform.
Or you can also rate and review the show.
That helps spread its visibility.
For now, thank you so much for watching.
We hope to see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 p.m.
