CNN—And Their Govt Sources—Admit Ukraine Counteroffensive “Not Meeting Expectations.” Plus: Ignorant Liberals Praise Benevolent CIA for "Securing Brazil's Election" | SYSTEM UPDATE #104
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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, American support for the U.S.
proxy war in Ukraine continues to wane.
Now almost a year and a half into this war, a year and a half, it is clearer than ever that this has become yet another endless war for the U.S.
to pour its resources and weapons into.
Somehow, just six months after the last full-scale war of the War on Terror was over, when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years, incinerating a family of 10 people, including 8 children on the way out, then lied about who they killed, then watched the Taliban waltz right back into power as if nothing had happened, The perfect avatar for U.S.
foreign policy over the last two decades.
Right after that ended, a new war magically appeared that required that U.S.
taxpayer dollars be yet again transferred to the arms industry.
The military-industrial complex, as Dwight Eisenhower so memorably called it, with no end in sight.
How can the U.S.
government and its media loyalists continue to justify to the American people that they should sacrifice and spend and risk escalation over their question of who rules provinces in eastern Ukraine, which is what this war is about?
This is the same problem the U.S.
government had in 2007 regarding the war in Iraq, one which neocons promised before it started would be won in a matter of months and yet was instead dragging into its fourth year.
The solution then was to invent a new tactic called the surge, which we were told would finally reverse American losses in Iraq and finally enable us to win, as long as we kept pouring money and arms and Americans into that war and be patient.
Fifteen years later, the very same people who created and sold The Surge as a way to convince Americans to stay in Iraq have invented a virtually identical tactic to justify staying in the war in Ukraine.
The only difference is that it now has a new title, as most sequels have to have.
The Counter Offensive, rather than The Surge.
So how is this vaunted, long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive doing?
Is this the case where neocons in the U.S.
security state finally told Americans the truth?
To ask the question is to ridicule it.
And we'll examine the latest developments and put all of it into its key historical and political context as this war drags on that is so dangerous that even the president prosecuting it, Joe Biden, has said that it has brought the world closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Then, a new report from Financial Times this week describes what it calls the quote very unusual effort efforts of the Biden CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon to involve itself heavily in Brazil's internal political affairs as the 2022 presidential election approached.
The Biden administration was openly cheering for the former two-term president Lula da Silva to win over the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro.
And Lula was declared the winner of that election by less than two points.
We know for sure that the CIA and the State Department expended extraordinary efforts to have an active presence in Brazil last year.
One liberal magazine, The American Prospect, celebrated this outcome under the headline, quote, How Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders Helped Lula Win.
But what exactly did the CIA do in Brazil and with what motives?
After this Financial Times article was released and we noted it, I was inundated all day yesterday with attacks from left liberals, both in the United States and in Brazil, insisting that the CIA did nothing untoward, that their motives were pure, not to affect the outcome of the election, but simply to protect Brazilian democracy from attacks by President Bolsonaro and even stave off a military coup.
Is that claim about the CIA's motives even one that can pass the laugh test?
Of course not.
But it illustrates a very dangerous trend that we have often reported here.
Namely, Western liberals and the mainstream strain of the left now views the CIA and the U.S.
security state as benevolent, trustworthy, and well-motivated actors.
It's not really that irrational that they think this, given that the CIA and related security state agencies have indeed proven to be political allies of American and Western liberals.
But the consequence of this newfound trust and faith in the CIA is beyond dangerous, and the premises on which it relies are beyond laughably false.
We'll examine their reaction to this story.
Finally, as you likely know, we devoted last night's system update to the numerous false statements, contradictory claims, politicized propaganda, and authoritarian decrees issued by Professor Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, over the last several years as he spent his time on MSNBC, CNN, and TMZ being treated like a heroic genius, too noble and elevated even to be questioned about his highly dubious claims.
At the urging of liberal employees and media corporations, this week, Dr. Hotez rejected the request of Joe Rogan to appear on Rogan's program, as Hofetz had done twice before, but this time to debate RFK Jr.
about the many critiques Kennedy has of Hotez's statements and conduct.
Now, by coincidence, Hotez is in Brazil this week.
We didn't know that when we did the show last night about him, but we learned it today, and so we took the opportunity to invite him onto this show We assured him he would be treated with civility and given an opportunity to speak and we'll show you the results of that invitation and whether this courageous and consequential expert is prepared to be questioned by journalists rather than simply lavished by them with praise.
As we do every Tuesday and Thursday night, as soon as we're done here with our one-hour show on Rumble, we'll move to Locals for our interactive aftershow to take your questions and comment on your feedback.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
It has been almost a year and a half since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the United States immediately announced that it would, as part of its war policy, arm and support and the United States immediately announced that it would, as part of And over the last year and a half,
We have heard constant claims that prove to be false about Russia being on the verge of collapse, of them no longer having a supply chain to feed their troops, of the Ruble about to collapse, about Russian forces deserting in mass numbers, and about basically essentially claims that Russia was on the verge of defeat.
And yet here we are a year and a half later and none of that has proven to be true.
Russia has an extremely well-fortified front line that is designed to achieve what their ultimate objective, what this war always was, which was to protect people in eastern Ukraine from what they regard and what many in eastern Ukraine regard as the repressive rule of the government in Kiev.
As you know, 10 years ago, the government in Kiev that had been democratically elected was far more inclined to be closer to Moscow and look at the EU and the United States with a degree of hostility And the United States and Western European countries worked with forces in Ukraine to overthrow that government, to remove the democratically elected president before his term expired, and then have Victoria Nuland pick the next president, which he then proceeded to do.
And ever since then, Ukraine has become far more subservient to and controlled by the United States, as evidenced by the fact that when companies like Burisma The Energy Company in Ukraine faced political problems.
They looked to obtain access, not to Ukrainian officials, but to officials like Joe Biden, who as Obama's Vice President, was essentially running Ukraine.
A year and a half into this war, as the United States has now authorized over $100 billion, as so many of the promises that were made at the start of this war have proven to be untrue or unfulfilled, polling data shows that Americans are starting to become increasingly less inclined, incrementally less inclined, to have our government continue to fuel this proxy war.
With no end in sight given the enormous amounts of resources that are required and the growing dangers presented by this war.
In March of 2023, so that's already a three-month-old poll, Pew Research found that there were many different indicators that Collapse in the support for this war was occurring much the same way as the support for the war in Iraq continued to erode each month and each year that that war was fought with those promises unfulfilled.
Here in March of 2023, Pew Research says, quote, a look back at how fear and false beliefs bolstered U.S.
public support for the war in Iraq.
Public support for the war declined further during Bush's second term.
So here you see the Pew article and it says, by January 2007, with the situation on the ground deteriorating, Bush defied growing calls from Democrats to withdraw U.S.
forces from Iraq and instead announced that he was sending more troops to the country.
What Bush called a quote, new way forward in Iraq, which became more widely known as the troop surge or the surge was a risky gambit to alter the trajectory of the war.
The new strategy in which more than 20,000 additional U.S.
forces were deployed in Iraq was broadly unpopular with the public that had grown weary of war.
By roughly 2 to 1, 61 to 31 percent of Americans opposed Bush's plan to send additional forces to Iraq.
Bush's new strategy, quote, triggered increased partisan polarization in the debate over what to do in Iraq.
The center noted in its report on the January 2007 survey, in November 2007, nearly half of Americans, 48 percent, said the war was going very well or fairly well, an 18 point percentage increase from February of that year.
So you see that that PR gambit Worked!
It got Americans to be convinced, well, we don't like this war.
Our support and our willingness to continue to fund it and continue to lose American lives in prosecuting it is eroding.
And then they came up with this PR gambit called the Surge.
Obviously, poll tested in terms of the name, designed to make Americans think it was strong and transformative.
And very quickly, public opinion began to reverse.
And people were willing to support the war in Iraq again.
Now, as we know, the surge failed.
Americans ended up being there for many years after, with virtually nothing to show for it, as more Iraqis and more Americans died.
But the PR part of that gambit worked.
And it was led by many of the exact same neocons Who now see the same public opinion trends in Iraq with support eroding and are now turning to the same tactics that worked for them the first time to keep that war going.
Here in April of 2023 is a study by the Brookings Institution warning that quote Americans show signs of impatience with the Ukraine war quote shortly after the Russian invasion Ukraine, in February 2022, we began tracking American public opinion studies toward the war.
In four polls conducted between March of 2022 and October 2022, our University of Maryland Critical Issues poll found consistently robust backing for U.S.
support for Ukraine.
Since March of 2022, we fielded four other polls tracking the public's willingness to pay a price in rising energy costs, higher inflation, and loss of American troops.
Public support had been relatively robust with very little change over the months ending in October 2022.
But the current poll shows a marked drop on all three measures, ranging from 9 to 15 points.
So you see the same trend happening, where all kinds of promises were made about the Russians being vanquished, them being on the verge of collapse.
When that started not to happen, Americans began to question, wait, why are we at war again?
Why are we devoting so much of our energy and our resources to supporting this war?
And the tactic that is now being used is the same one that was used back in 2007 to come up with a PR gambit designed to tell Americans, look, we have a new tactic that's going to fundamentally transform this war and it's being peddled by the very same people, the very same neocons and U.S.
security state officials who sold Americans the surge.
Here in In June, this month, just a couple of weeks ago, in the Washington Post, the neocon columnist Max Boot, who has supported every single U.S.
war over the last 20 years, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Syria and Libya and beyond, and not just supported them at the outset, but continued to demand that they be prosecuted more and more aggressively, published an article Featuring David Petraeus, the general that was tapped by George W. Bush back then to lead the surge, and Max Boot was one of the leading neocon media figures selling it along with Bill Kristol and that whole group that we covered the other night when we did our show on Bill Kristol and the neocons.
And as we just showed you, they succeeded in selling the surge and changing the outcome of the American public opinion.
And they're now attempting to do the same thing, promising for months that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is coming.
And there you see the headline.
The Ukrainian offensive is beginning.
David Petraeus is optimistic.
Now, back in 2007, Max Boot was at the LA Times.
He got promoted subsequent for all the lies that he told, as so often happens in corporate media.
And there you see the article that he wrote in September of 2007, quote, the surge is working.
Do you see the exact same language, practically?
Not just the same tactics are the ones they use over and over.
June of this year, this month, the Ukrainian offensive is beginning.
David Petraeus is optimistic.
15 years earlier, in the Los Angeles time, the, quote, surge is working.
Here the article reads, quote, The surge is working.
As recently as a month ago, it appeared that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker would be running into a withering fusillade of rhetorical fire when they appeared on Capitol Hill to report on the progress of the surge in Iraq.
Now that their testimony is upon us, the political environment has become, in military argo, considerably more, quote, permissive.
It's obvious what accounts for the more cooperative mood.
Notwithstanding all the political hype and hyperbole, events on the ground do matter.
And there is no denying that events in Iraq have been moving in the right direction since the surge started.
So, you see, everything virtually tracks, identically and verbatim, what was done then to sustain public opinion and public support for the war in Iraq as it began to collapse, and people wondered why we were there.
Similarly done now with the war in Ukraine, you have the counter-offensive, it's coming, David Petraeus is optimistic, the neocons are excited, this is gonna change everything.
So, the counter-offensive is finally upon us, we heard about it for months, and even the Western press Can't dress it up as a success.
That's how disastrous it has been in this early stage.
They're trying, though, and we're going to show you how.
So here from Reuters from yesterday is the headline, Ukraine prepares, quote, the biggest blow as it claims recapture of eight villages from Russia.
Now, you're talking about A Russian front that is hundreds of miles along, highly fortified.
In order for them to have a counter-offensive that makes any difference, they need to reclaim entire cities and provinces.
And they're touting the fact that they captured a couple of tiny villages.
Even though you can see videos and photos that many of the tanks that Germany and the United States provided after swearing for more than a year that it would never provide tanks because of how escalatory that is, have been destroyed by Russian forces.
It's estimated that up to a third of the tanks that the West and Germany and the U.S.
have provided have already been destroyed in the matter of days since this counteroffensive began.
So the media now has to tout the retaking of a few small villages.
Listen to what the media is trying to say here.
Quote, Deputy Defense Minister Hannah Muller said Ukrainian forces had retaken Pyatakiv, our settlement on a heavily fortified part of the front line near the most direct route to the country's Azov seacoast.
So that seemed exciting.
They took over a village.
And yet, I believe we have this New York Times article on the fact that the name of this town in Ukrainian translates literally to, quote, five houses.
That's how tiny this village is.
That gives you a feel for how disastrous this counter-offensive is, that the only things they can point to while you're seeing pictures of huge numbers of tanks and leopard tanks and US-provided tanks destroyed and thousands upon thousands of Ukrainian soldiers killed, they have to resort to promoting the fact that they took a tiny village that literally means five houses.
So, earlier today, CNN, which needless to say is a very emphatic booster and supporter of Biden's war policy in Ukraine, has been cheerleading it from the start.
Barely includes any dissent from anybody who's opposed to it.
It's just 100% war supporters on all the time.
That's what the audience is bombarded with continuously.
Even CNN and its national security correspondent, Jim Siudu, are starting to admit that, in fact, this counteroffensive is a failure by every metric, at least thus far.
Here today is an article in CNN headline, quote, early stages of Ukrainian counteroffensive, quote, not meeting expectations, Western officials tell CNN.
In its early phases, Ukraine's counteroffensive is having less success, and Russian forces are showing more competence than Western assessments expected, two Western officials and a senior U.S.
military official tell CNN.
The counteroffensive is, quote, not meeting expectations on any front, one of the officials said.
According to the Western assessments, Russian lines of defense have been proving well-fortified, making it difficult for Ukrainian forces to breach them.
In addition, Russian forces have had success bogging down Ukrainian armor with missile attacks and mines and have been deploying air power more effectively.
Ukrainian forces are proven, quote, vulnerable to minefields and Russian forces, quote, competent in their defense, one of the Western officials said.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky admitted Wednesday that progress has been, quote, slower than desired.
Now, let's just stop here and note, if CNN is telling you That this counter-offensive is a failure by all metrics, and even Zelensky is admitting that progress has been, quote, slower than desired.
Imagine the truth of how, what a debacle this actually is.
If you look at the images of what the Russians have spent the last year doing with their fortifications and the landmass that they control, Digging like World War One style trenches that would prevent even tanks from doing anything other than just falling face down into them.
And all kinds of zig-zag trenches that make it impossible to attack with artillery.
They're very dug in.
Very, very dug in.
The Russians know how to fight these wars.
They were very much major participants both in World War I and World War II.
They know how to fight these land wars in Europe.
They very much know Ukraine.
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union for the entire 20th century.
And the ability of the Ukrainians to break through those front lines and
Be able to basically blow apart highly fortified Russian positions, if it's possible at all, is going to take months, if not years, and tens and tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands of lives, for a country, Ukraine, that has a much smaller population than Russia does, and therefore a much smaller supply of men of fighting age.
Just that impediment alone is gigantic.
And you know if the Western press is willing to tell you that this counteroffensive that they've been touting for so long is, all these phrases, basically a failure by every metric, if even Zelensky He was doing what he should be doing as a leader of a country at war, which is lying a lot and exaggerating every Ukrainian success and downplaying every Russian success, is saying that our progress has been, quote, slower than desired.
Imagine what the truth is, the carnage that is being imposed on Ukrainian forces.
And imagine how long this is going to take if the idea really is that Ukraine has to breach these, this front line.
And what Russia would do, because this front line essentially is the front line that protects Eastern Ukraine from the rest of Ukraine, which means that if Ukrainian forces backed by NATO weapons and U.S.
weapons are able to breach that front line, you're talking about American weapons and NATO weapons all the way up to the border of Russia.
And again, this is the most sensitive part of the Russian border, given that that's where Russia was twice attacked in the 20th century.
Imagine what Russia would do if this success actually happened.
Earlier today I heard Matt Gaetz, who traditionally has been one of the voices of restraint and reason when it comes to using military force, arguing that the United States government should use military force to force the Chinese bases out of Cuba, because we can't have Chinese bases too close to the United States.
Now, as we showed you last night, the United States has China completely encircled militarily But given our view of what a danger and threat a single Chinese base is in Cuba, to the point that even Matt Gaetz wants to go to war to stop it, imagine how the Russians would perceive NATO-backed forces in a very aggressive way going right up to the Russian border.
We're ready to go to war over what happened in Cuba.
We were ready to start a nuclear war in 1962 over something like this.
What do you think Russia would do?
How long is this going to take?
Now, here, as Zelensky goes on, the CNN article goes on, quote, "We would definitely like to make bigger steps," Zelensky acknowledged in a BBC interview, "but nonetheless, those who fight shall win, and to those that knock, the door shall be opened." We're like relying on fairytale proverbs in lieu of any actual success.
CNN goes on.
Well in advance of the counter offensive, Western officials cautioned that forces defending territory always maintain significant advantages, especially given the weeks Russian forces have had to dig in and to fortify their defensive lines precisely.
So, how are the Ukrainians going to do this, and what is it going to take, and how much carnage will it require, and how much time and money will the United States have to devote?
Further, as the Chinese make all kinds of success all throughout the war, including forging peace deals in the Middle East between the Saudis and the Iranians, continuing to build all kinds of infrastructure in Africa and Latin America, forging deep bonds between the governments of those countries, organizing a counter alliance called BRICS,
With Brazil and India and South Africa and China, which Saudi Arabia is now seeking to join as a counterweight to the United States because we are so focused, single-mindedly, on this war over who controls eastern provinces of Ukraine.
Because there are people benefiting who matter.
The arms industry, the CIA, and Zelensky's bank accounts and those of his comrades.
Now when I tell you that the same people who are responsible for every last American war, the people behind this one, I really mean that.
I don't mean they're from the same faction, I mean they're the same people.
The Atlantic, which was ground zero for Russiagate has become ground zero for the war in Ukraine and that's not surprising given that the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic is the Supreme Neocon Jeffrey Goldberg, who was one of the most aggressive and flagrant and prolific liars leading the Americans into the war in Iraq.
He now runs that magazine.
Natasha Bertrand made a stop there on her way to going to Politico and then CNN, spreading Russiagate lies.
It went from being ground zero for Russiagate to being ground zero for the war in Ukraine.
And here's an article by someone named Tom Nichols.
Tom Nichols, needless to say, used to work at the CIA.
He used to consult with the CIA.
He is one of these people who, he wrote a book called The Death of Expertise or something, complaining that Americans no longer respect his credentials and the credentials of those like him.
That they question the things that they say and treat it skeptically as opposed to just blindly deferring to it based on their superior credentials.
And he has become first a never-Trumper and now a full-scale Democrat and liberal and he found exactly the right place at the Atlantic where he's promoting this war in Ukraine using completely deranged rationale.
Here is the title of a new article that was published this week by Tom Nichols, headline quote, Putin talks tough while Ukraine makes gains.
Ukraine's counteroffensive is on the move, but so are Putin's nuclear weapons.
Ukraine's counteroffensive is on the move?
Even Zelensky admits that's not happening.
It's on the move in eight villages, one of which is literally translated to mean five houses.
Here's what the article says, quote, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is now clearly underway and Kiev's forces are making incremental but concrete gains along the front.
The Ukrainians are, for the moment, calm and confident, the Russians less so.
Do you not find it unbelievable how much news is delivered within corporate media outlets by former officials of the U.S.
security state?
The journalist class is now basically composed of former operatives of the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and Homeland Security.
Turn on MSNBC or CNN and all you will see are operatives of the U.S.
security state.
They are embedded up and down big tech.
Just today, Big Tech promoted a former CIA operative to be head of their global elections desk, the people who control how political discourse is permitted and censored when it comes time for influencing other countries' elections.
He, too, was a former member of the CIA.
So, of course, The Atlantic has former CIA operatives now pretending to be journalists.
During the Cold War, the CIA had a program called Operation Mockingbird.
Where it would find ways to covertly influence media outlets in the United States, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS, by all sorts of covert tactics that the Church Committee uncovered when it investigated the US Intelligence Committee in the mid-1970s.
That is now totally unnecessary.
They now influence the media right out in the open.
These media outlets just hire all of these U.S.
security state liars and career propagandists to write for them, to deliver the news, and they're not embarrassed about it at all.
So now we have a CIA operative using the Atlantic to tell us how wonderful this counteroffensive is going, how they're making concrete gains, even when CNN admits that's not true.
And they use this kind of psychoanalysis to try and convince you that even though the Russians are very well fortified, the Ukrainians are calm and confident, the Russians less so.
What does that even mean?
How does he know what the psychiatric mindset of the Russians and the Ukrainians are?
And if the Ukrainians are so feisty and so devoted and so calm in their task, why does President Zelensky have to keep increasing the punishments for desertion?
Why are they using a conscript army and not a volunteer army?
Why are so many Ukrainian men perceiving the reality that they're being used as cannon fodder against a much superior Russian army over tiny little advances through villages that are called Five Houses, much like happened in World War I?
The CIA operative Tom Nichols goes on, quote, President Vladimir Putin is talking tough, which in itself is a tell, a sign of how he thinks this war is going.
Putin is trying to turn up the global temperature with some swagger about nuclear weapons.
They do actually have nuclear weapons.
In fact, they have the planet's largest stockpile.
This past March, Putin said that he would base Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus close to Ukraine.
Moscow and Minsk have signed a formal agreement, and Putin now claims that the first weapons have arrived in Belarus.
Putin, meanwhile, said at the St.
St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last week that he had no interest in returning to any conversations with the West about arms control.
Quote, we have more of these weapons than NATO countries do, he said in answer to an interviewer's question.
They know that, and they keep telling us to start negotiations on reductions.
Well, you know what?
Fuck them, as our people would say.
date.
The leader of a nuclear-armed power sounding like Tony Soprano is alarming.
But Putin is likely emphasizing Russia's nuclear deterrent because his conventional forces have been repeatedly humiliated in combat.
This is absolute fiction.
These are complete lies.
The Russians are utterly dug in in the major gains they made in eastern Ukraine, which was the goal of the Russians.
We just read you, even Zelensky and CNN and intelligence officials acknowledging how dug in the Russian forces are in areas they didn't control at the start of the war but now do.
And the Atlantic is publishing war lies and propaganda in the Atlantic about the war in Ukraine from the very same people who lie the country into the war in Iraq and so many other, so many other countries, so many other wars.
These are just unhinged lies.
The article goes on, quote, more to the point, although Russia still has a large military, Moscow has lost its best units and most highly trained officers and soldiers after a year of ghastly losses on the ground.
So what should we expect and how should we think about this new phase in the war?
First, Americans especially should put aside what they know about recent U.S.-led wars, such as the campaigns in Iraq.
Okay, I just want to read this sentence over again because it is remarkable.
Listen to what they're telling you to do.
I don't blame them.
This is what they do need you to do.
Or you would never believe them.
Americans, especially, should put aside what they know about recent U.S.-led wars such as the campaigns in Iraq.
Are you willing to do that?
Are you willing to put aside what you know about the recent US-led wars, such as the campaign in Iraq, in order to just put your blind faith in the people who you know lied to you for years about what was happening in those wars?
Why would you do that?
I don't blame him for demanding it, but why would anybody obey this decree?
Second, he says, there will be no official, quote, end to the counteroffensive either.
As for Putin's threats, by the way, Let's go back to that sentence as well.
Second, there will be no official end to the counteroffensive.
Do you know what word is used for a war that has no official end?
Endless.
That's what that word means.
We are back in another endless war.
As for Putin's threats, the Russian president seems to be venting and showing off, which is one way to know that we are not yet in a crisis.
Putin is indulging his usual vulgar sense of humor.
And though Americans, like Russians, also have some colorful local expressions, it is better for the Americans and NATO to be the resolute adults in the room, as they have been since the beginning of the criminal Russian onslaught.
We know for sure that The United States has repeatedly blocked efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution to this conflict.
One of the ways we know that is because the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Naftali Bennett, said so.
He said that he had tried to intervene and negotiate a settlement to this war between Russia and Ukraine and the people who stopped that negotiation was the United States because we know the United States does not want an end to this conflict.
Those are the adults in the room, the people who are fueling this war with no end in sight, claiming they're protecting Ukraine when in reality we're sacrificing Ukraine in order to achieve our goal of weakening Russia.
Now, speaking of the Atlantic and neocon scumbags and liars, in this month, this month, the Atlantic published a cover story by Ann Applebaum Who is the wife of a former Polish foreign minister.
When Nord Stream 2 was blown up, he went on to Twitter and said, thank you, United States, with a picture of Nord Stream 2 being exploded, even though we're all supposed to pretend that the United States had no role in it.
And Opelbaum has supported every single war that the United States has fought, as has Jeffrey Goldberg.
Their families never fight, obviously, they always send other families to do it.
But these are the people who are behind the war in Ukraine, who are trying to sell you the war in Ukraine, the same ones who have been caught lying for the last two decades, which is why they're telling you you have to forget what you know about the other wars, because otherwise you would never believe these people.
The choices between freedom and fear, and the cover story is art by Bono, who apparently drew a picture of President Zelensky.
There you see the cover of The Atlantic, this iconic blue and yellow.
And they made it this kind of like artistic script of rebels and revolutionaries, people who are kind of powerless but scrappy and fighting for freedom.
Came out of The Atlantic, a magazine funded by Steve Jobs' multi-billionaire widow.
He's run by, that's run by all the neocons that have been in power since at least the 9-11 attack and it drove the United States into a cliff, off a cliff into a ditch with endless wars that have cost trillions of dollars and untold numbers of lives and they're posing as these kind of powerless, scrappy graffiti artists crying out for freedom
With this new iconography of President Zelensky drawn by Bono, can you get any more cliche than this?
And here's what this cover story said.
It was actually from May, from last month.
Quote, uniquely, the United States has the power to determine how and how quickly the war of attrition turns into something quite different.
Over the next few months, as the Ukrainians take their best shot at winning the war, the democratic world will have to decide whether to help them do so.
Sovereignty, safety, and justice.
Shouldn't Americans want the war to end that way too?
Ukrainians aren't the only ones hoping that their success can support and sustain a civilization change.
Russia, as it is currently governed, is a source of instability not just in Ukraine but around the world.
Russian mercenaries prop up dictatorships in Africa.
Russian mercenaries prop up dictatorships in Africa.
Do you know how long the United States has been propping up dictatorships in Africa, including right through this very day, and as well as on every other continent?
Russian hackers undermine political debate and elections all across the democratic world.
The investments of Russian companies keep dictators in power in Minsk, in Karaskas, and in Tehran.
While the United States keeps dictators in Riyadh and in Cairo and all throughout the world, a Ukrainian victory would immediately inspire people fighting for the human rights and the rule of law wherever they are.
This is exactly the same rhetoric and propaganda that has been used to sell every American war for 20 years.
How does anybody read this and not immediately recognize that fact?
Quote, the fate of NATO, of America's position in Europe, indeed of America's position in the world, are all at stake.
Who knew that a war to govern, over who would govern provinces in eastern Ukraine, would place at stake the fate of NATO, America's position in Europe, and America's position in the world?
But something even deeper is at stake as well.
As Zelensky put it, this is a war over a fundamental definition of not just democracy, but civilization.
A battle, quote, to show everybody else, including Russia, to respect sovereignty, human rights, and territorial integrity.
And to respect people, not to kill people, not to rape women, not to kill animals, not to take that which is not yours.
These are the people who advocated the invasion of Iraq.
And Syria, and Libya, and Afghanistan.
And in a cover story, they're saying, we have to show everybody else, including Russia, that they have to respect sovereignty, human rights, territorial integrity.
How can the people who led the invasion of Iraq write all of this and not be immediately laughed out of decent society forever?
How is that possible?
But the liberal corporate media lives in this closed information world.
And I really believe that for most Americans involved heavily in politics, history began in 2016 when Donald Trump descended down that escalator in 2015.
They have no idea who these neocons are and what they've done.
And so they believe all of this rhetoric, even though it has been used to destroy countries all over the world.
These people have enormous amounts of blood on their hands.
Hear from Anne Applebaum in 2016 in the Washington Post, quote, the disastrous non-intervention in Syria.
She was infuriated.
That the Obama administration had only allowed the CIA to spend a billion dollars a year trying to remove Bashar al-Assad, to fight along al-Qaeda and ISIS, in order to remove Syria and its leader from power.
It wasn't just Iraq, but Syria as well.
And now these people are telling you that this war is about teaching the world that territorial integrity and human rights matter.
Here's Jeffrey Goldberg when he was at the New Yorker in 2002.
This article won a major magazine award.
He was heralded after he published this article on NPR and every other major media outlet.
And this article was designed to disseminate one of the most toxic lies in recent American history, which was that Saddam Hussein was in an alliance with al-Qaeda.
Which is the only way that Americans would have been willing to support the war in Iraq, is that they believed that the leader we were trying to remove played a role in the 9-11 attack.
A complete lie, of course.
By September of 2003, six months after that war, 70% of Americans, 70% believed the lie that Saddam Hussein had personally participated in the planning of 9-11.
And a major reason why they believe that is because of Jeffrey Goldberg.
He used the pages of the very liberal New Yorker to tell everybody in Northern Iraq there is new evidence of Saddam Hussein's genocidal war on the Kurds and of his possible ties to Al Qaeda.
And he went all over the media talking about how Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were like this, were best friends.
In order to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9-11 attack and therefore we have to remove him from power.
The people who sit atop the leading institutions of media are pathological liars and conspiracy theorists.
And they're not conspiracy theorists in the sense that they believe in their own conspiracies and they're kind of crazy.
They know these are conspiracy theories.
They're much more nefarious than that.
They're propagandists.
They spread these lies and conspiracy theories because they look down upon the American people and believe they're too stupid to make decisions without being pushed and manipulated and deceived into making the right choices by their bettors.
It's exactly the same mentality that Peter Hotez has as well, and Tony Fauci, who know they lied repeatedly.
But thought it was justified, and still do, to get Americans to do what they thought was in their best interest.
What these leaders, these elites, think is in their best interest.
They lie on purpose because they think it's their divine right.
And these people are at the top of these corporate media pyramids, not despite the fact that they lied constantly, but because of it.
Lying on behalf of wars and the establishment and the military-industrial complex is a prerequisite to thriving and getting promoted within corporate media.
That's why the people who most aggressively spread Russiagate lies not only got promoted but won Pulitzers and other awards because that is what is most coveted and valued in corporate media is the willingness to lie.
And if you're on the fence about the war in Ukraine because your sentiments as a good person have been played on to believe that this war is about protecting Ukrainians, I can understand that.
They're good propagandists.
It's been perfected over many decades.
They know how good human beings function and think, and that's what they exploit.
But all you have to do is look at the fact that it's the same people who you know have lied to you repeatedly for the same reasons, which is to get the U.S.
involved in new wars and to keep them going for all kinds of nefarious motives that are unstated, who are the same people who are doing this in exactly the same ways when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
And all one has to do is use basic skepticism to realize that this is what's being done again.
This counteroffensive is a joke, but it is serving its purpose, which is fortifying American opinion just enough To allow the Biden administration and other European countries to continue this fuelless war with no end in sight, because the only real purpose of it is not to save Ukraine, but to destroy Ukraine as a means of undermining Russia, just like what was done in Syria and so many other places.
And these lies can only be hidden for so long.
That's why CNN is now preparing you to start to severely lower your expectations about this vaunted counteroffensive.
Because we're going to see exactly what happens.
But by then, the goal had been achieved.
They'll have deceived Americans just long enough to support this war.
And by the time you're really angry about it, they'll just wind it down anyway and then go on to the next war with the same exact people spreading exactly the same propaganda.
And realizing this, realizing the people who are doing it and how they are doing it, is the paramount goal.
Because the only way we're going to get the United States off this course of imperialism and endless militarism and draining American resources for the benefit of a tiny little elite, is to recognize the villainy of these people and to cease listening to them and to subject their propaganda and their is to recognize the villainy of these people and to cease listening to them
In 2022, Brazil held a presidential election and it pitted the right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected in 2018 against the center-left, I would certainly call him, some people would call him left or even I would certainly call him, some people would call him left or even communist, which I think is a misunderstanding as we've explained But in any event, the left-wing candidate who governed Brazil from 2002 to 2010, Lula da Silva.
Brazil is a country that matters a lot to the United States for multiple reasons.
It's the next largest country in the hemisphere.
It has enormous amounts of oil.
It has the most important environmental resource in the Amazon, which also is a region that has extraordinarily valuable natural resources that can be exploited for all kinds of profit and economic gain.
And Brazil and the United States have always had a very close integrated relationship by virtue of the fact that in 1964 the Johnson administration used the CIA to work with generals in Brazil to overthrow the center-left democratically elected government of Brazil and replace it with a military regime that was incredibly repressive.
Not as bad as others in Chile or Argentina that the United States supported, but just at the next level.
They murdered dissidents.
They imprisoned journalists, artists, and other dissidents who were exiled.
And they ruled Brazil for the next 21 years, aggressively supported by the United States and Great Britain in particular, until finally, And it was really kind of an inspiring story.
The Brazilian people rose up and demand re-democratization.
In 1989 Brazil held its first presidential election and it's been a democracy ever since.
But the United States has always regarded Brazil as extremely important.
When I was doing the Snowden reporting And I was in Brazil for a year when I couldn't leave because the Obama administration was being very threatening.
I was told by several people, including a reporter at the New York Times who was pretty old and has a lot of experience, that the CIA has a greater presence in Brazil by virtue of these Cold War ties than in any other country on the planet.
That's how important Brazil has always been and continues to be to the United States.
The Biden administration openly rooted for Lula da Silva to beat Jair Bolsonaro because the United States government and the security state, unlike in the Cold War, when they used to want as many right-wing governments as possible in power, now regard populist right-wing movements, including Donald Trump's, as the supreme danger.
They always now want any movement to undermine and disturb and defeat Right-wing populist governments, which they also put Bolsonaro in that category.
The CIA wage war on the Trump administration, both when Trump was a candidate and then when he was president for four straight years because they viewed him as the enemy.
Bolsonaro was an open ally and admirer of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump liked Bolsonaro as well.
And so the CIA and the Biden administration openly rooted for Bolsonaro to lose and for Lula to win.
They didn't make any attempt to hide that.
And what became clear was that they weren't just rooting for Lula to win from a distance.
The CIA played a very active role in Brazil.
And the question is, what exactly is it that they did and with which motive?
So let me show you first what we know.
Back in May of last year, Reuters reported in what it called an exclusive report, quote, the CIA chief told the Bolsonaro government not to mess with Brazil elections, sources say.
So this is the intelligence community going to Reuters.
The CIA going to Reuters and saying, here's what we're doing in Brazil.
This is the CIA's version of what they did in Brazil.
They're acknowledging they were very active there and this is what they claim the CIA claims was what they were doing with what motives.
Quote, the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA director, last year told senior Brazilian officials that President Jair Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on his country's voting system ahead of the October election, sources told Reuters.
Now, the context for this is that Bolsonaro had watched the U.S.
election in 2020.
He believed Trump's claims that the election was rigged, that the voting machines had been tampered with, that Trump was the real winner of the election.
Bolsonaro had already believed that in 2018 he was robbed of a victory in the first round of voting.
In order to win the first round, you have to get 50% or more.
He got, I think, 46% or 47%.
He got, I think, 46% or 47%.
He then made the runoff where he easily won over the candidate chosen by Lula de Silva as part of his party, Fernando Haddad, who's now the country's finance minister.
By, I think it was 57 to 43, he won easily.
But Bolsonaro already believed that he was defrauded out of a win in the first round.
He has been long saying that there are problems in the voting machines in Brazil.
It's purely electronic.
And he and his party wanted to pass a law requiring a paper backup.
To confirm the results of the electronic voting machine.
It didn't happen.
And according to this article, the CIA decided for some reason that Brazil's internal affairs was its business.
And again, this is the version of the CIA that flew down to Brazil, the CIA director did, and told Bolsonaro to stop making claims.
About Brazil's voting system.
Obviously it's the CIA telling this to Reuters.
to comments by CIA Director William Burns came in an intimate closed-door meeting in July, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Obviously, it's the CIA telling this to Reuters.
Who else would know this and who else would tell them?
Burns was and remains the most senior U.S.
official to meet in Brasilia with Bolsonaro's right-wing government since the election of U.S.
President Joe Biden.
A third person in Washington familiar with the matter confirmed that a delegation led by Burns had told Bolsonaro aides the president should stop undermining confidence in Brazil's voting system.
That source was not certain whether the CIA director himself had voiced the message.
The CIA declined to comment.
And by the way, there's an extremely dishonest tactic that the corporate media uses.
The CIA goes to Reuters.
Off the record, or for no attribution, and leaks to Reuters top secret information.
Which is a crime that nobody ever bothers to investigate, about what the CIA is doing, and then Reuters tries to get the CIA to go on the record for an official comment, so the CIA says, we're not going to comment on your story, and Reuters prints, the CIA declined to comment, even though, so often, I presume in this case as well, but so often, it's the CIA that fed them the story, but did so not for attribution.
There's really a falsehood when that happens.
The CIA declined to comment.
Reuters goes on, quote, Brazil's Institutional Security Cabinet, GCI, which is part of the president's office and led by National Security Advisor Augusto Heleno, said in a statement that the Burns meeting had been publicly announced.
So, almost a year ago, Reuters reported, in the middle of the 2022 election, that the CIA director flew down to Brazil, met with Bolsonaro, and ordered him To stop raising questions or casting doubts on the integrity of Brazil's voting system.
Why does the CIA have the power to do that, the right to do that?
What business is it of the United States or the CIA whether Brazil's president believes in the integrity of the voting system and raises questions about it publicly?
Why is that something for the CIA to even do at all?
And why weren't people in Brazil angry about this?
There were a few leftists in Brazil Who said, you know what, even though they seem to be rooting for our party in this case, we don't actually want the CIA's help.
We don't want the CIA involved in our country's politics.
We remember the military dictatorship that the CIA imposed on our country for 21 years.
But most Brazilians were happy about this on the left because they were the beneficiaries.
But the question nonetheless remains, what role, what rightful role does the U.S.
government have in interfering in Brazil's internal politics this way?
Weren't we supposed to be all so shocked and scandalized that the Russians tried to play a role in the U.S.
election in 2016?
We're constantly told that's something the CIA used to do.
The CIA is involved in the internal affairs of almost every country on the planet.
And they were proud of this.
They went and announced it to the world, but that was their version of events.
All we're doing is telling Bolsonaro that he is to cease raising doubts, sowing doubts about Brazil's, the integrity of Brazilians voting system.
This week, the Financial Times published a article with a lot more detail That described the CIA role and the role of the Biden State Department and the Pentagon and the Biden White House as much more aggressive and widespread and devoted than was previously known.
I want to read to you part of this report to give you a sense of just how involved the CA was in Brazil's internal affairs throughout 2022, the 2022 leading up to the 2022 election, where again, the Biden administration was openly cheering for Lula da Silva to beat Jair Bolsonaro.
Now again, this is the US government's version of events, so they're obviously depicting it in as positive and benign light as possible.
And of course, when it comes to the CIA's own claims about what the CIA itself did in another country, we take that with a gigantic grain of salt.
Every single time the CIA is involved in the internal affairs of other countries, including when they're engineering coups, they always claim the same thing, which is what they're claiming here.
Oh, our only goal was to protect democracy in those countries.
That's all we were trying to do.
We don't care about the outcome of the election, we just want to make sure that democracy reigns supreme.
Because of course, everybody knows that the CIA is world famous for preserving democracy in other countries.
In 1964, when the CIA engineered the coup that removed Brazil's democratically elected government, at first for years they denied they had any role.
When documents were declassified proving they did, they made the same exact claims that they're making now.
Our only attempt was to save Brazilian democracy from communist tyranny.
So we removed the communist government and in its place put freedom-loving people.
The communist tyranny they removed was a democratically elected government that was far from communist, and the democracy-loving people they installed were military rulers who destroyed every last civil liberty and ruled the country with an iron fist for the next 21 years.
You see that over and over and over again.
In 2014, in Ukraine, the position of the Obama administration was, we're helping to spread democracy.
The funding that the United States gave to Ukrainian groups working to overthrow their democratically elected leader were done through groups that call themselves pro-democracy organizations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the group that funds Bellingcat.
That's always the claim.
Oh, we're just trying to save democracy.
That's all we're doing by being involved in these countries' internal affairs.
The difference is, the only difference, is that liberals, and especially the left, used to know that that was a lie.
And now liberals and the left believe this about the CIA.
As I said, after I pointed out this Financial Times article yesterday, I was bombarded with angry liberals and even leftists, both in the United States and Brazil, telling me that there was nothing wrong with this.
That the CIA was just trying to help.
That they were just trying to protect Brazil from attacks on its democracy because the CIA cares so much about the rights of the Brazilian people to vote.
They're like poll watchers, just doing their civic duty, but for the world.
That's what the CIA is in the eyes of many leftists now.
So let's look at what the Financial Times reported.
Quote, the discreet U.S.
campaign to defend Brazil's election.
Amid widespread speculation about a coup attempt, the Biden administration pressured politicians and generals to respect the result.
As Brazil prepared to hold the presidential election last October, many governments around the world viewed the vote with a mounting sense of foreboding.
The far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro was openly flirting with subverting the country's democracy.
He attacked the electoral process, claiming that the electronic voting machines used by Brazilian authorities were unreliable, and was calling for a paper ballot instead.
He was actually calling for a paper ballot backup.
He constantly hinted at the risk of the election being stolen, echoing claims made by Donald Trump and the US.
But in the end, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's win in October was accepted without serious challenge by Bolsonaro, and the veteran left-wing politician was inaugurated on January 1st.
The fact that the election was not seriously challenged is a testament to the strength of Brazil's institutions, but it was also in part the result of a quiet year-long pressure campaign by the U.S.
government to urge the country's political and military leaders to respect and safeguard democracy, which has not been widely reported.
Okay, so this is the claim.
Explicitly, they're saying that the goal of CIA interference And the campaign by the State Department was not to help Lula win the election, even though the Biden administration was openly cheering for Lula to win.
That was not what they were trying to do.
Perish the thought.
What they were trying to do instead was, quote, safeguard democracy.
How unbelievably gullible do you have to be to believe that the reason the CIA interferes in other countries' internal politics And the State Department and the Pentagon do it along with them is because they care about democracy.
They want to safeguard democracy.
They don't care who wins or loses.
They don't have any preferences.
They're apolitical.
All they want is to make sure that democracy is respected.
That's the claim.
And I cannot tell you how many liberals and leftists yesterday were telling me that that really is what the CIA was trying to do.
It is unbelievable to watch that.
Now the Financial Times goes on, quote, the aim was to drum home two consistent messages to restive generals in Brazil and Bolsonaro's close allies.
Washington was neutral on the election result.
That is an absolute lie.
Washington was not neutral on the election result.
Washington is never neutral on the election result.
Of course Washington wants the leaders they perceive will most serve their interests to win the election.
Like every country does when they get involved in other countries' internal affairs.
And yet, here's the Financial Times telling you with a straight face, Washington was neutral on the election result, but would not stand for any attempt to question the voting process or the result.
Why is that even something the United States government believes it has the right to do?
What does that mean?
The United States would not stand for any attempt to question the voting process or the result.
What right does the United States have to say to Brazil, we won't stand for any attempt to question the voting process?
This is something that Brazilians, like most countries around the world, used to object to when the CIA did.
And yet now it seems to be welcomed.
The Financial Time has spoken to six former or current U.S.
officials involved in the effort, as well as to several key Brazilian institutional figures, to piece together the story of how the Biden administration engaged in what one former top State Department official calls a, quote, very unusual messaging campaign, using both public and private channels.
I would say it's very unusual for so many different agencies of the U.S.
security state to involve itself in the internal affairs of Brazil throughout the campaign to this extent, and then they go to the Financial Times to prettify and glorify what it is that they did and the motives with which they did it, and then have the left, the international left, believe the CIA's version of events about why they did it, simply because they happen to be the beneficiary here.
The Financial Times goes on, quote, The U.S. had a clear geopolitical incentive to want to demonstrate a capacity to shape events in the region.
Long the dominant outside power in Latin America, the United States has seen its influence eroded in recent years by a growing Chinese presence.
The administration also had a more direct motivation.
After the January 6th insurrection by Trump supporters at the Capitol in Washington, attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, President Joe Biden felt very strongly about any attack by Bolsonaro to question the outcome of a free and fair election.
officials say.
The campaign was not without risk.
The U.S.
has been frequently criticized in the region for interfering in its internal affairs.
In 1964, Washington backed a military coup in Brazil that overthrew the government of leftist President Joao Goulart and ushered in a 21-year dictatorship.
Those events fueled longstanding skepticism of the U.S.
among the Brazilian left, including Lula, who in 2020 said Washington was, quote, always behind efforts to undermine democracy in the region.
Okay.
Because of the history of the CIA, in 2020, the Brazilian left, including Lula, said that Washington was, quote, always behind efforts to undermine democracy in the region.
And now two years later, we're supposed to believe that the CIA suddenly had a gigantic change of heart and decided instead that it is now dedicating itself to safeguarding democracy?
So selflessly?
Not because it wants to influence the outcome of the election to ensure a more malleable leader is elected, but because it just has a benevolent motive?
And it's now the Brazilian left and the American left that believes that about the CIA?
It's laughable on its face to hear this.
The article goes on, quote, The Biden administration had to find a way to get its message across without the U.S.
becoming a political football in a fiercely contested election.
The solution was a concerted but unannounced campaign across multiple branches of the U.S.
government, including the military, the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House.
Quote, This was a very unusual engagement, said Michael McKinney, a former top State Department official and ex-ambassador to Brazil.
It was almost a calendar year of strategy being carried out with a very specific objective in mind, not to support one Brazilian candidate over another, perish the thought, but instead heavily focus on the electoral process and making sure the process worked.
This is what we're being told about the CIA, that all they want is for the process to work, for democracy to thrive.
And it's now American and Brazilian liberals and the left that believe this about the CIA, who are willing to stand up and say, not only don't we object to the CIA's involvement in our country, we're grateful for it.
Because they just wanted to help.
They love democracy, and we love democracy.
And we're really happy that the CIA is now a different, new organization, one that's so benevolent and kind and magnanimous and democratic.
The effort began, according to former top State Department official Tom Shannon, with the visit of Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to Brazil in August of 2021.
An embassy statement said the visit, quote, reaffirmed the longstanding strategic relationship between the United States and Brazil, but Sullivan left his meeting with Bolsonaro worried, according to Shannon, quote, Sullivan and the team that went with him came away thinking that Bolsonaro was entirely capable of attempting to manipulate election results or deny them as Trump had done.
So there was a lot of thought put into how the United States could be supportive, supportive of the electoral process, just wanting to help without appearing to be interfering.
And that's how it starts, end quote.
A week later, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin used a visit to a regional defense ministers meeting in Brasilia to send a clear message.
Military and security forces needed to be, quote, under strong civilian control, he said in a speech.
In private, Austin and other officials spelt out to Brazil's military the consequences of supporting any unconstitutional action such as a coup.
Quote, there would be significant negative ramifications for the bilateral military-to-military relationship if they were to do something and they needed to respect the outcome of the election, a senior administration official says.
So they're threatening Brazil that they will suffer punishment and consequences if they Don't respect the certified outcome of the election and if they don't protect democracy.
This is the CIA's version.
Look at how much effort there was and involvement in the U.S.
government in Brazil throughout this year.
Quote, further reinforcement of the message to Brazil's top brass came from General Laura Richardson, head of U.S.
Southern Command, which covers Latin America, during visits last September and in November 2021, officials said.
CIA Chief William Burns also came and told the Bolsonaro administration not to mess with the election.
Quote, the Secretary of Defense, The head of the CIA, the National Security Advisor, all visited in an election year, says McKinney.
Is this unusual?
No, it's not.
The U.S.
also provided some practical help to the election process, helping to overcome supply chain difficulties to obtain components, especially semiconductors, needed to manufacture new machines.
Oh, that's so helpful of the CIA.
They got new machines, including semiconductors, to help Brazil in their election process.
Totally neutral, no interest at all in the outcome of the election, just wanting to help.
The former U.S.
Ambassador to Brazil, Anthony Harrington, was able to leverage connections inside chipmaker Texas Instruments to, he says, quote, distinguish semiconductor needs and give priority to the impact on democratic elections.
This is a remarkable amount of attention being paid to the Brazilian election by the entire senior apparatus of the U.S.
security state.
The U.S.
State Department and some senior Brazilian officials also asked Tiwanese authorities to give priority to Brazil's need for semiconductors made by Nuvotan, a Tiwanese company, which are used in the voting machines, according to two sources.
So they weren't just sending all kinds of messages.
They were very involved, the CIA was, in acquiring the infrastructure and the voting machines that would be used to count the votes and certify the winner, with no paper backup.
At the same time as the U.S.
was conducting its own messaging campaign, key figures in Brazil's institutions were holding their own private message meetings with military chiefs to try to persuade them to stay within the bounds of the Constitution and raising the alarm abroad about the risk of a coup.
Some of those involved have spoken to the Financial Times requesting the anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
Many still prefer to avoid any mention of their roles.
Luis Roberto Barroso, a Supreme Court judge who at the time headed Brazil's electoral court, said he also played a part in soliciting this statement from the U.S.
State Department.
Quote, I asked Douglas Kenoff, then acting U.S.
Ambassador to Brazil, a couple times for declarations about the integrity and credibility of our voting system and the importance of our democracy, Barroso recalls.
He did make a statement, and more than that, he got the State Department to make a statement supporting democracy in Brazil and the integrity of the system.
Now, shortly after Brazil's election and Lula's victory, I was asked many times what I thought of the possibility of fraud in the election outcome, and I did a segment here on the show in January in which I said that I haven't seen any conclusive or dispositive evidence suggesting that there was fraud in the Brazilian voting process.
And if you asked me that now, I would still say the same thing.
Nonetheless, It has to be disturbing, especially if you are a liberal or a leftist steeped in the history of the CIA, to now learn of just how much involvement the CIA had in Brazil's internal affairs and in the election, including up to acquiring the physical infrastructure that was used to count the votes.
Why is the CIA playing such a major role In the outcome of Brazil's elections and in the outcome of Brazil's political system.
Their argument is they just want to help.
They just want to preserve democracy.
But they were openly rooting for Lula.
They had a very vested stake in the outcome of this election.
And it takes immense historical ignorance and a deliberate willingness to blind yourself To come forward and say that you are very confident that the CIA played nothing more than a neutral, apolitical, and benevolent role in simply trying to preserve democracy, given that the entire history of the CIA has been to wage war on democracy, to destroy democracy in any countries where doing so would serve its best interests.
Now, just to underscore the point about how explicit it was that the Biden administration was trying to help Wu win, Here is the American Prospect Magazine, which is a liberal journal that publishes articles to advance liberal policy objectives.
And for whatever reason, even though they have been sometimes independent of the Democratic Party, they ended up hiring in 2022, the person who, if you ask me, I would say is the single Blindest, most loyal devotee to the Democratic Party.
The single most steadfast propagandist on behalf of Democratic Party power.
Someone who will say or do anything to help Democrats get elected.
Someone who is willing to glorify the Democratic Party and its leaders with no shame of any kind.
And his name is Ryan Cooper.
He's not really worth talking about.
He doesn't have much of an influence, but if you know his work, I don't think there's any more shameless partisan I've ever seen in the media than Ryan Cooper.
There are other people who compete for that title.
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post and Joan Walsh of The Nation.
There are a lot of people in media who have no identity other than just being drooling, tongue-wagging loyalists and propagandists for the Democratic Party, willing to do and say anything to help the Democrats win.
But Ryan Cooper is the most shameless.
He will just degrade himself to say things to glorify the Democratic Party in a way that has to be seen to be believed.
And he did it in this article.
To basically say that it was the Biden administration that played a major role in helping Lula win, and they did it with the best of motives.
He even concludes by saying the CIA's involvement in Brazil was due to, quote, human decency.
This is how the liberals in the United States, and apparently a lot of leftists in Brazil from what I could see yesterday in responding to this story, now see the CIA.
The title of this article was, How Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders Helped L-win.
This is somebody, needless to say, who was a hardcore Russiagate fanatic, who feigned anger over the fact that the Russians tried to get involved in the 2016 election to affect the outcome.
And then he turns around without even realizing that he's contradicting himself because he's nothing but a partisan.
He's willing to say, let's celebrate how Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders helped Lula win.
Why should Joe Biden be helping any foreign leader win an election?
But here he is celebrating this, and here's his argument, quote, a democratic America So what he's already saying right in the first sentence is that America is now, under Joe Biden, democratic.
It loves democracy again.
It's a sub-headline.
A democratic America took the air out of the Brazilian far right.
So that's the framing.
Joe Biden met with Mohammed bin Salam.
He sends huge amounts of weapons to the Egyptian and Saudi despots, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, on and on.
But the United States now is freedom-loving again.
It loves democracy because Joe Biden is president.
That's the framing of the story.
And here's how he describes U.S.
involvement.
Now I have to say, I would be shocked if Ryan Cooper can even place Brazil on a map.
His knowledge of Brazil is inch deep.
All he knows is that Bolsonaro liked Trump, and therefore Bolsonaro is the bad man, and Biden wanted Lula to win, and therefore Lula is the good man.
That's literally all he knows about Brazilian politics, even though he espouses all kinds of claims about it, in paragraph after paragraph, that if you know anything about Brazilian politics, is almost literally painful to read.
But let's focus on what he claims is the motive of the CIA's involvement.
Quote, in July 2021, Biden's pick for the CIA director, William Burns, unusually a career diplomat with decades of experience in the State Department.
So he's not one of those bad guys who does the torture and the black site and the coups.
He's a diplomat who loves peace.
He met with Bolsonaro face to face along with his top staff and told him to knock it off.
He's also a tough guy.
Knock it off.
Reuters reported, quote, Burns was making it clear that elections were not an issue that they should mess with, and that was what widely understood to be a message carried from the White House.
Democratic members of Congress backed him up.
Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine, and several other Senate Democrats sponsored a resolution supporting Brazilian democracy, which eventually sailed through the House and the Senate.
That said, one shouldn't underestimate the amount of hard and soft power wielded by the United States and its allies, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
He's celebrating the fact that the United States uses its influence in the region under the Monroe Doctrine to dictate the internal affairs of countries in the region, including Brazil.
He's happy about this.
He's celebrating it.
This is the new Democratic Party.
Quote, the U.S.
controls the plumbing of the global financial system, the world reserve currency, and by far the largest military.
And anyone who defies it risks sanctions, trade disruptions, espionage, or worse.
There's a reason why almost every country heavily prioritizes good relations with the U.S.
Do you see what he's saying there?
This is like the mentality of a deeply inadequate person.
He has no sense of strength or self-esteem in his psychological profile or in the actual behavior in his life.
And so he goes to his magazine column and he beats his chest talking about how powerful the United States is.
What does he say?
He says, it controls the plumbing of the global financial system, the world reserve currency, and by far the largest military in any country knows that if you defy us, We're the tough ones.
We're the ones with the power.
You risk sanctions, trade disruptions, espionage, or worse.
And that's the reason why almost every country heavily prioritizes good relations with the United States.
He thinks it's a good thing that the United States rules the world with its superior power.
Even though, by the way, this is absurdly false.
The entire rest of the world, other than Western Europe and Eastern Europe, is rebelling against United States hegemony.
That was the speech we showed you by Fiona Hill, which I'll constantly refer to.
And if you haven't seen that show, I encourage you to go watch it, where even though she's a Russia hawk, she's warning that exactly this kind of mentality, we're the strongest ones, you'll do what we say, and if you don't, you will suffer, has alienated virtually the entire world in a confederation against the United States.
But he's a liberal.
He's a Democrat.
He thinks that the United States, under the Democratic Party, wields this world hegemonic power for good and he's celebrating that fact in general and the way they used it in Brazil.
Now he does say, quote, it almost goes without saying that there were some cynical motivations for the Biden administration here.
It's probably the case that Bolsonaro's widely erratic behavior and efforts to burn the Amazon rainforest to the ground as part of a lunatic culture war crusade prompted Biden's team as much as respect for international democracy.
So he's saying this is his criticism of Biden.
It wasn't just that Biden loves democracy and wanted to protect it in Brazil.
He also wanted to stop a lunatic fascist from turning down the Amazon.
He says, quote, recent studies have found the Amazon has become a net carbon source thanks to land use changes.
Should the whole region turn into grassland for cattle, it would be a catastrophe for the climate.
Lula, by contrast, is a much more appealing prospect for both American empire and global capitalism.
His previous term in office showed him to be basically a moderate social democrat who won't rock the boat much.
Someone who will expand welfare programs, raise taxation on the rich, and regulate business somewhat, but not conduct massive expropriations.
He's a guy who named Geraldo Altman, a center-right former opponent, as his running mate.
One of Lula's few actually radical proposals is to rapidly decarbonize Brazilian energy and use it to protect the Amazon, both of which are heartily welcomed in Biden's Washington as obviously in America's interest as well.
No, we don't have the last paragraph, which is the one that I wanted to show you, where he essentially says that this is one time in foreign policy where, unlike in the past when the CIA has occasionally done bad things, sometimes human decency is what actually drives U.S.
foreign policy.
And this is a case of the CIA just being decent, just basic human decency, wanting to protect Brazil and just preserve their democracy.
This is what liberals now actually believe about the CIA.
That headline, under which that article was written, was very similar, the headline was, how Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders helped Lula win the election, was very similar to the way in which Time Magazine in 1996 notoriously celebrated the fact that it was Clinton administration operatives who helped Boris Yeltsin win the Russian election.
I remember talking about this cover all the time when I was hearing in 2016 how shocking it is that the Russians would dare involve themselves in our sacred democracy when Time Magazine explicitly celebrated the fact that Boris Yeltsin won because, quote, yanks to the rescue.
The secret story of how American advisors helped Yeltsin win.
And there you see Yeltsin, who devastated Russia by privatizing all the industry and selling it off to corrupt oligarchs.
Waving an American flag because he was basically American property.
It's very similar to that American Prospect article celebrating the fact that the United States helped a little win.
So this entire mentality, this entire narrative that has to admit the CIA and the State Department played a very aggressive and extensive role in Brazilian internal politics in 2022 because they admit that they did so, The only thing that they can do, they can't deny that it happened, they have to try and say that there was nothing wrong with it because it was well motivated.
The CAA cares so much about Brazilian democracy that they selflessly reached out and tried to save it from the attacks by Jair Bolsonaro.
Now, as I referenced earlier, When the CIA engineered the coup in Brazil in 1964, it spent years denying it did so.
Obviously, there were many people in Brazil who strongly suspected the CIA was behind that coup.
But if you were to ask Brazilians back in 1964, 1965, and 1966, The same question that I got asked yesterday, where's your evidence that the CIA actually did anything to change the results of who rules our country?
People would have had to admit, well, I don't have any because the CIA does what it does in secret.
And it takes a long time for that evidence to emerge.
It took six years for evidence starting to emerge that the CIA actually was responsible for the coup in Brazil.
Here from the National Security Archive in 2004, it was the 40th anniversary of the military coup in Brazil, and there you see the title, Declassified Documents, Shed Light on the U.S.
Role.
It starts off by quoting then President Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, quote, I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do.
President Johnson instructed his aides regarding preparations for a coup in Brazil on March 31st, 1964.
On the 40th anniversary of the military pooch, the National Security Archive today posted recently declassified documents on U.S.
policy deliberations and operations leading up to the overthrow of the Brazilian government on April 1st, 1964.
The documents reveal new details of U.S.
readiness to back the coup forces.
If you were to ask me, do you have proof that the CIA didn't only do what it said, which is try and protect American democracy, or Brazilian democracy, but went beyond that and tried to Effect the outcome of the election, I can't show you that proof, and I'm willing to acknowledge that, because the CIA hides everything that it does behind a very impenetrable wall of top secret activities.
It's a crime to reveal what the CIA does.
So the only thing we know about the CIA until that documentary evidence gets leaked, or is revealed through declassification, is what the CIA tells us, what they want us to know.
And what we know for sure is that the CIA and the Biden State Department and Pentagon played an extraordinarily active role in the internal affairs of Brazil's politics leading up to the 2022 election, including about the election itself.
And the CIA only wants us to believe that the only motive that drove them and the only activity in which they engaged was a totally apolitical attempt to preserve Brazilian democracy without any regard to who won.
And there are apparently a lot of people willing to believe that.
A lot of people are willing to believe that because the view of the CIA is now very favorable among American leftists and liberals and increasingly international leftists and liberals because, as I said earlier, while the CIA used to always favor the installation of right-wing governments, it now regards the populist right as its enemy.
And therefore, American liberals perceive very correctly that the CIA, Homeland Security, the FBI are their political allies.
That's where Russiagate came from.
That's where almost every attempt to destroy President Trump came from.
It's where the two impeachments came from.
From the bowels of the U.S.
security state.
And liberals are now looking at the CIA and saying, wow, you know what?
They seem to be on our side.
And they have now increasingly viewed the CIA much more favorably.
And of course, Brazilian left is hearing.
That the CIA acted in Brazil against Bolsonaro are now also welcoming CIA involvement in their country to the point where they're willing to say we have no problems with what the CIA did because all they were trying to do is protect our democracy.
Here are a few tweets from Bernie Sanders who was the leader of the effort on the part of the Democratic Party to enact laws and resolutions authorizing and justifying everything the United States government did in Brazil.
He made no qualms about the fact that he wanted Lula to win the election.
He wasn't pretending to be outcome neutral.
Here in May of 2021, there was a tweet by Bernie Sanders after Lula's conviction got annulled that says, quote, as president, Lula did incredible work to lower poverty in Brazil and to stand up for workers.
That says, quote, as president, Lula did incredible work to lower poverty in Brazil and to stand up for workers.
It is great news that his highly suspect conviction has been annulled.
It is great news that his highly suspect conviction has been annulled.
This is an important victory for democracy and justice in Brazil.
This is an important victory for democracy and justice in Brazil.
Now, as many of you know, it was my reporting and the reporting of my colleagues here in Brazil that led to those revelations that suggested strongly that corruption was a major part of what led to Lula's convictions and rendered him ineligible in 2017 when all polls showed that he was leading to become the it was my reporting and the reporting of my colleagues here in
Exactly, exactly like all polls show now that Donald Trump is likely to win the 2024 presidential campaign and there are multiple attempts to render him ineligible.
And as there is now an attempt likely to succeed in Brazil to render Bolsonaro ineligible so that he can't run again in 2017.
That has become the pattern.
So I certainly agree that the conviction of Lula da Silva was highly suspect, as Bernie Sanders said.
It was my reporting and the reporting of my colleagues that proved that.
The Brazilian government tried to imprison me for that reporting.
So I certainly agree with that.
I understand that argument very well.
But Bernie Sanders clearly is A supporter of Lula da Silva, as you would expect him to be.
He's not pretending that in all of his attempts to get the CIA involved in Brazil, that he's indifferent to the outcome of the election.
Here's another tweet from Bernie in August of 2022, where he says, the United States should stand for democracy and support free and fair elections.
To that end, we must make it absolutely clear that it will not support any government that comes to power in Brazil through undemocratic means.
So we support undemocratic governments all over the world.
But Bernie Sanders is saying, in Brazil, we need to strongly get involved to make sure that doesn't happen there.
And Bernie, of course, was the Lula supporter.
That was the context for all of this, that they were cheering for Lula to win.
Now, we have on the screen polling data, which we showed you many times before.
That the Democratic Party now views the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security very favorably, whereas Republicans harbor a great deal of distrust and doubt about those agencies.
So this does not surprise me at all to read people like Ryan Cooper, the most loyal lapdog of the Democratic Party, and Brazilian liberals all day yesterday telling me that the CIA acted nobly And with great intentions in Brazil because this is now how they see the U.S.
security state.
The Democratic Party is the party of the U.S.
security state.
When R.F.K.
Jr.
was asked by Joe Rogan why he's running for president, R.F.K.
Jr.
said in a video we showed you yesterday, my party has become the party of endless war, of neocons, of the CIA, of censorship, and that's exactly the case.
And so to watch Democrats and Liberals tell me all day yesterday that they're happy with what the CIA did and to hear their magazines lauding the CIA for their involvement in Brazil was completely unsurprising to me.
But I have to say, it was kind of a shock to watch Brazilian leftists telling me that yesterday, even though I understand why.
They don't want any hint that Lula's victory was helped in any way by the U.S.
government, let alone by the CIA.
And yet they're in a bad position because they can't deny that the CIA played a very active role in Brazil's internal affairs because the CIA said so.
Admit it did.
So their only option is to do what they did yesterday, which is to say, yes, the CIA played a very active role in Brazil's politics.
And we welcome that because the CIA was acting with great motives.
They protected us.
They're pro-democracy now.
They just wanted our votes to count.
What's wrong with that?
That is how dangerous the CIA's successful propaganda effort has been to transform the people who had been their greatest critics into their greatest cheerleaders, supporters, and allies.
And I can't think of anything more dangerous than teaching this new generation of people who are very unfamiliar with the history of the CIA, just like the people who are very unfamiliar with the history of neocons, That their salvation now lies in neocons, neocon propagandists, and the CIA.
But that is exactly the situation that we now face.
Now, just to conclude our show, by following up on our episode last night, which we devoted to the multiple lies and propaganda and shockingly authoritarian decrees of Professor Peter Hotez, PhD, MD, we spent 45 minutes going through each of those claims, With video and written text.
And unfortunately, there was a great opportunity for him to defend those claims by going on Joe Rogan's program, which he had gone on twice before, and debate someone highly capable of debating him, RFK Jr., but at the prodding of people like Mehdi Hassan at MSNBC and People Advice.
And throughout the liberal media, including Vox, they badgered Hotez to reject Any suggestion that he should have to debate RFK Jr.
or anybody else on Rogan's program, even though there was a million dollars or more on the table to donate to a charity of his choice if he did it, they know that this person is a pathological liar and a despot and cannot be subject to critical scrutiny.
And so they succeeded in getting him to reject this invitation to debate on what would have been the best platform, the most people who would have listened in unlimited amounts of time, And so last night, as I said, we weren't aware of this, but today we learned that Dr. Hotez is visiting Brazil.
He's in Sao Paulo.
But either way, even if he weren't, we wanted him to appear on this show to be interviewed.
I would have interviewed him and we assured him it would have been done in a very civil way.
And That he would have had all the time to defend himself.
So here's the tweet from Dr. Hotez today, Professor Peter Hotez MD, PhD, as he calls himself, saying, Thanks, Dr. Weinstein.
I'm in Sao Paulo.
This is Eric Weinstein saying, Professor Peter Hotez, this is now many days old.
Haven't heard from you.
My offer to help you negotiate this stands.
You lose nothing by saying what reasonable assurances you would want for a time unlimited clash of ideas and claims, even if all you wanted was to drive a stake.
So I think Eric Weinstein is trying to work with Hotez to negotiate conditions where he would feel comfortable to engage in the debate.
And Hotez replies, thanks, Dr. Weinstein.
I'm in Sao Paulo, Brazil for our global vaccine program and can't And can't your issue much attention?
I guess he left out a word.
It probably was can't devote much attention to your issue.
I've already engaged Bobby Kennedy a lot over the years and presented my views on out front CNN last night.
I don't really have issues with him beyond vaccines.
Oh, so he's like, I went on CNN, which constantly lavishes him as a hero and a genius.
So I'm done.
I'm good.
I don't need to actually debate RFK Jr.
So a colleague of mine who works on this program, Harrison Berger, wrote an email to Dr. Hotez today at my request.
And there you see it on the screen.
And this is what it says, quote, Hi, Dr. Hotez, and we sent it to the email listed on his website.
My name is Harrison.
I'm the producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald.
We've been following the latest controversy involving you and Joe Rogan, and we'd like to invite you on our program for a full-length interview to respond.
Our show is different from cable news in that we have unlimited time and guests are not limited to quick sound bites.
For that reason, we can guarantee a civil discussion without any interruption.
We are curious to hear your thoughts and welcome you onto our program anytime.
And this is the email that we got back today.
Hi, Harrison.
Thank you for reaching out and thinking of Dr. Hotez.
Unfortunately, he will not be able to accommodate this interview.
Best, Ginny.
So no, there was no pretense that it was a question or a problem with time.
He wasn't saying, I'm busy now, but maybe in a few days.
He's just afraid to be interviewed or to appear with anyone who will subject his claims to critical scrutiny rather than somebody who lavishes it with him praise.
This is a person who has gone on repeatedly with the lowliest people on cable news, Joy Reading, Chris Hayes.
He went on TMZ for an interview.
He'll go anywhere as long as he's revered and not questioned critically.
Now, not only did he reject our request, And I'm sure he will reject the request of anyone who he even suspects intends to ask him about any of the claims we laid out last night, proving that he's a liar, that he politicized his statements, and that he engaged in extraordinarily tyrannical views.
But he also ended up blocking me on Twitter.
There you can see it on the screen.
And for good measure, he blocked the System Update account as well.
There you see that.
Even though that account had never talked directly to him, all it did was post excerpts of our show, which is what this Twitter account exists to do.
So that is how unwilling these people are to be held accountable in any way.
These people went on television and turned themselves into social media stars with the specific intent of manipulating public opinion.
They ushered in some of the most repressive measures In decades, forcing people to stay at home, threatening them with termination if they didn't take experimental vaccines, constantly changing their views based on whatever political needs they had at the moment.
They impacted the lives of millions and millions of people.
They continue to make all sorts of claims.
And they have so much contempt for the people over whose lives they rule that they don't even pretend to be willing To engage in civil discourse if it means they have to be held accountable or questioned critically about what it is that they did.
You've seen how I conduct interviews.
Even when I'm conducting interviews critically, I ask people questions and I give them all the time they want to respond.
I don't yell at them, I don't call them names, I don't talk over them, I don't scream at them.
It's unfailingly civil, just like Joe Rogan conducts his interviews.
That's not the concern that they have.
The concern that they have is they do not believe they should ever be held accountable because they know the publication distrusts them and if they're forced to account for what they did, presented with the contradictions in their claims, they know their credibility would fall apart even further and the establishment just continues to get more and more insular.
And to rely more and more on the sole tactic they have of suppressing dissent, of ignoring it, of trying to silence it, and when that doesn't work, of just pretending it doesn't exist.
This is what breeds a corrupt establishment.
One that talks only to itself.
That increases the separation between it and the people whose lives they influence and who convince themselves more and more and more that the only ones who have credibility to speak as themselves and all of their critics are inherently worthless.
And that is exactly what people like Peter Hotez and Tony Fauci and all of the media figures who run cover for them and who shield them and protect them believe and the public more and more knows that that is a real crisis.
When the establishment gets rotted and corrupted and hated, and as its only solution, decides to try and clamp down even more on the people who are turning against them.
And that's what this exchange illustrates more than any other.
Thank you.
As a reminder, tonight is Thursday at night.
Every Tuesday and Thursday after the show concludes, we move to Locals for our live interactive program where we take your questions, respond to your feedback, hear your suggestions about who we should interview and what topics we should cover.
In other words, we are held accountable with our audience in exactly the way that Peter Hotez and most people And the establishment media refuse to do.
I regard that kind of accountability and interactivity as a crucial part of journalism.
It's for subscribers only.
If you want to have access to that program as well as to many other features, simply join our locals community with the join button right below the Rumble screen.
And that also helps support the independent journalism that we do here.
As another reminder, a system update is available in podcast form.
You can follow us on Spotify, Apple, and every other major podcasting platform.
Each episode posts in podcast form 12 hours after we first broadcast it here live on Rumble.
For those of you who've been watching, we really appreciate it.
We hope to see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 p.m.
