Does Elon Musk's Refusal to Comply with All of Ukraine's Demands Constitute Treason? PLUS: Richard Medhurst on the Recent Coups in Africa and US/French Foreign Policy | SYSTEM UPDATE #145
Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald
Become part of our Locals community: https://greenwald.locals.com/
- - -
Follow Glenn:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenn.11.greenwald/
Follow System Update:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SystemUpdate_
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemupdate__/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@systemupdate__
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/systemupdate.tv/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/systemupdate/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, what does it mean to be pro-Russian?
That was the question we examined on Wednesday night when we dissected a new report commissioned by the European Union, conducted by an Omidyar-funded group of self-proclaimed disinformation experts, which was trumpeted by the Washington Post and went super viral, as was predictable.
The central accusation against Twitter and other big tech companies was captured by the Post's headline, quote, Musk knew Twitter policies helped spread Russian propaganda, the EU says.
But when you dig into that report, as we did, one finds that pro-Russia propaganda means anything that deviates from U.S. policy and EU narratives about the wars.
So merely questioning the desirability of the NATO role in Ukraine or stating that Ukraine is losing the war qualifies as pro-Russian propaganda.
Which the EU wants to have banned.
The purpose of the study of this narrative created by the Washington Post manifestly is not just to stigmatize, but to banish all war dissent.
Concrete proof of our observation emerged almost immediately after our program aired.
A new biography of Elon Musk claims that Musk denied Starlink services to the Ukrainian military, specifically to its fleet of submarines, as they prepared to attack the Russian Navy.
Must company SpaceX controls more satellites than any company or government in the world and is used to, among other things, ensure internet connection anywhere in the world, even if the military forces of one's enemy tries to deny internet service by bombing.
Musk has provided Ukraine with billions of dollars of free Starlink services since the war began when the U.S.
government refused originally to compensate him for it.
He originally said he would have to withdraw it because they couldn't afford it, but then announced he would continue to provide it for free.
But as always with Ukraine and its supporters, nothing is never enough.
You must always give more.
Musk confirmed part of the story in this new biography and provided his motive this way, quote, there was an emergency request from government authorities, meaning in Ukraine and the United States, to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol, the obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.
If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.
He went on to point out that he didn't actually cut off existing services but just refused the request of the Ukrainian military to extend it even further so they could attack the Russians in an all-new way that he feared would lead to escalation that his company and he would ultimately be responsible for, ethically if not legally.
Now, that concession immediately led to widespread accusations that Musk was guilty of treason Or at least being pro-Russian and calls for the United States government to seize his company, his Starlink services were widespread.
But in what way is this pro-Russian?
Do private companies or for that matter foreign governments have some obligation to provide the Ukrainian military with everything and anything it demands?
Are those who refuse those demands, including out of a desire not to help escalate a already dangerous war, are they inherently guilty of wanting the Kremlin to win the war or being pro-Putin?
We'll look at the utterly unhinged reaction to these reports to understand the prevailing war climate, the one that has prevailed in the West since the very start of this war, and ask what is really meant when people are accused of being Putin apologists or Kremlin supporters or spreading pro-Russian propaganda.
Then, One of the most reliable news sources since the war began has been the independent journalist Richard Medhurst, whose YouTube shows delve deeply into the military and political aspects of the war, as well as any outlet, corporate or independent.
We've learned a lot from watching his show.
He has in-depth knowledge of the various developments in Africa, including recent coups in Niger and several other Western African nations, as well as the French and U.S.
role in those nations.
He'll join us tonight to talk about all of that and more, a topic that he's been covering in great depth and with great reliability and accuracy on his program since the start of the war.
As a few programming notes, we're encouraging our audience to download the Rumble app, which works both on your phone and your smart TV.
That will enable you to follow our program and other programs here on Rumble, which in turn allow you to be notified the minute that we or other shows that you like begin airing so you don't have to wait around.
In the very, very, very rare circumstance that we start late, as we did a couple of minutes tonight, and you don't have to try and remember what time we're on.
You simply get notified into your phone, and that can enable you to encourage others to download the app as well, which really helps Rumble and all of its programs.
As another reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
You can find every episode 12 hours after each of them first airs live here on Rumble.
You can find them across all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple.
And if you follow and rate and review the show, it really helps spread the visibility of our program.
As a last reminder, every Tuesday and Thursday night, once we're done with our live show here, we move to Locals, which is part of the Rumbles platform, where we do an aftershow that's live and interactive.
We take your questions, respond to your feedback, hear your critiques.
That show is available only for our local subscribers.
And if you join our locals community, which you can do by clicking the Join button right below the video player here on the Rumble page, that will give you access to that after show as well as the written transcripts that we provide every day of each show, as well as original journalism, including journalism we intend to produce a lot more of in the coming weeks and months.
And it helps support the independent journalism that we do here.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
It's important to understand that every single new war that the United States wants to fight in, regardless of what role it's playing in that war, going all the way back to at least the Vietnam War, but certainly since going all the way back to at least the Vietnam War, but certainly since the War on Terror, has followed the same framework, especially
And it's one that really emanates from our nation's neocons, the faction in both the Republican and the Democratic Party.
Back in the start of the war on terror, Republicans were the home for most neocons.
Democrats are now the home for most neocons, even though they never changed their foreign policy.
They just find which party is the best vehicle to fulfill their warmonger aspirations at any moment.
And their basic role in American political life is to propagandize the public into supporting American wars.
And the way they do that is by creating loyalty tests.
Either you support every proposed new neocon war that they want the United States government to pursue all the way across the world for whatever motives.
Or you stand accused of being disloyal to your country, of being unpatriotic, and their primary tactic is to accuse you of being on the side of whatever country they want to go to war again.
So back in the Vietnam War, anyone who was questioning the Vietnam War and saying that our nation lied to get us into that war, that it was unjustifiable to use conscript soldiers to go and fight a war in Vietnam, Was accused of being pro-North Vietnamese or pro-Communist.
And then into the War on Terror, anybody who stood up and opposed the invasion of Iraq was accused of being pro-Saddam Hussein, where the only choice was you either cheer for the Bush-Cheney-Neocon war, or it must mean that you're on Iraq's side, you're on the side of Saddam Hussein.
Anyone who questioned the regime change war in Libya was accused of being pro-Qadhafi.
Anyone who questioned the CIA dirty war in Syria was accused of being pro-Assad.
Anyone who wanted to leave Afghanistan was accused of being pro-Al Qaeda.
I listened to Liz Cheney join with pro-war Democrats under the Trump administration when he was negotiating a withdrawal of Afghanistan and accused people like Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard Who favored the withdrawal from Afghanistan of being on Al-Qaeda's side, something that her father pioneered the use of with his neocon colleagues.
And now, of course, from the very start of this war, anyone who has questioned the wisdom of the United States' role in Ukraine, fueling that war with no end in sight, questioning what interests we have in that war, or questioning the prevailing narratives about why that war started, about who's winning, is instantly deemed to be pro-Russian.
And as I said on Wednesday night show when we dissected this new study that came out from the EU that really illuminates how this fraudulent disinformation industry works, it matters not at all if you are neutral about Russia, if you hate the Russian government, if you hate the Russian people, if you hate Vladimir Putin, it doesn't make the slightest difference if you question or oppose in any way
Joe Biden's policy, that is also the policy of the EU and NATO, to fuel that war indefinitely, another endless war, just on the grounds that you don't think it's good for your country, that you don't think it's good for the United States, for the American people to fight.
You will instantly be accused of being pro-Russian on Putin's side, just like has been done in every single war, including all the horrific and pointless destructive wars the United States has fought based on lies and false pretenses.
Exactly the same way that neocons did in every single one of those wars, this is how it's now done in this war as well.
It's just a reminder that it's the very same people Pursuing these very same tactics in support of endless war, here is an article written by David Frum, who had just left the Bush White House, where he served as the speechwriter for George W. Bush, where he authored some of the most shameful and destructive lies that ever emanated from the American White House about war, including George Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech,
Where he said the U.S.
had to go to war against an axis of evil, where he implied that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were all collaborating, where he blamed the anthrax attacks on Saddam Hussein, and, of course, claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was prepared to give to his allies in Al-Qaeda.
Which implied, strongly by design, that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the planning of 9-11.
That was the only way neocons could convince Americans To go to war.
All Americans cared about was 9-11 and they were never going to support a war against a country that was uninvolved in 9-11.
There was a lot of evidence that the Saudi government or the top Saudis were involved and they hid that evidence because they didn't want to go to war with Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia is a crucial client and partner of the United States in that region.
They decided instead they wanted to go to war against Iraq because they had already wanted to go to war against Iraq long before 9-11.
9-11 became the pretext, but it only worked as a pretext if they could convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11, which they did.
By the time that war happened, 70% of Americans, 7 out of 10, Believe the falsehood that Saddam Hussein had personally planned the 9-11 attacks and that emanated from all the people who now pretend they're so horrified by disinformation that they need to censor the internet to protect you against lies and falsehoods.
All the same liars are still in power, still leading our discourse into a path of endless war.
And back then, 20 years ago, in 2003, their tactics were no different.
It was to accuse everybody who was against the war of being unpatriotic and on the other side.
So here is David Frum's 2003 headline called Unpatriotic Conservatives.
Many of you may not recall, but there were a lot of conservatives, not just people on the liberal and left-wing side of the Democratic Party spectrum like Pat Buchanan, And Robert Novak, people who were called paleocons or who were more anti-war.
Remember, George W. Bush ran in 2000 against Al Gore, promising a more humble foreign policy, criticizing the Clinton administration and Al Gore for being too interventionist, too involved in other people's affairs.
And there were a lot of people on the right who took that seriously and who did not believe the U.S.
had any business trying to change the government of Iraq.
And David Frum took the lead in pillorying them, villainizing them, as being not just wrong, but unpatriotic.
On the side of Iraq, here's what he wrote, quote, from the very beginning of the war on terror, there has been dissent.
And as the war has proceeded to Iraq, the dissent has grown more radical and more vociferous.
Perhaps that was to be expected, but here is what never could have been.
Some of the leading figures in the anti-war movement call themselves, quote, conservatives.
So there he was being the gatekeeper for American conservatism and saying that if you want to be a real conservative, You need to support the neocon war to go to the Middle East for whatever reasons they had in mind and change the government of Iraq.
They then wanted to go and do the same to Iran and to multiple other countries including Syria.
That was always the plan.
From when on, quote, but the anti-war conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies.
They have made common cause with the left wing and Islamist anti-war movements in this country and in Europe.
They deny and excuse terror.
They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism.
They publicize wild conspiracy theories, and some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies.
Do you see how the language has not changed at all?
It's just repurposed.
They espouse conspiracy theories.
They don't believe in the crimes of the other side.
They, in fact, want the other side to win.
They want America's enemies to triumph.
He's talking here about people who very presciently and wisely knew that people like David Frum were lying.
And that we were getting into a quagmire that would have no exit, where hundreds of thousands if not millions of people would die, where we would spend trillions of dollars pursuing a goal that we had no business pursuing.
And for that, they were routinely branded by people like David Frum as being pro-Al Qaeda, pro-terrorist, pro-Iraq, pro-Saddam, spreading conspiracy theories, etc.
And if that language doesn't sound familiar to you, it should because it's exactly the language now marshaled to try and destroy the reputations of anybody who questions the U.S.
war effort in Ukraine.
Everyone who has done so, who has stood up, has been officially decreed to be pro-Russia propagandists.
I've been put on several lists, at least, official lists of the Ukrainian government, of the Ukrainian intelligence agencies, for being a pro-Russian propagandist, even though never once in my life have I uttered a positive word about Vladimir Putin or the Russian government.
It's not necessary.
The only thing necessary is any kind of questioning, any kind of resistance to, any kind of dissent from.
The prevailing media political orthodoxy on this war, that the United States government has the moral obligation and the legal obligation to deplete our own military if necessary, to go further into trillions of dollars or hundreds of billions of dollars into debt in order to feed the Ukrainians forever, to destroy Ukraine and then rebuild it.
While the arms industry and the CIA benefit along the way, while BlackRock and JP Morgan And other vultures wait in the wings for the rebuilding effort.
That's what this war has been about from the beginning and still is and the way that they try and not just stigmatize but demand the censorship of any dissenters is by claiming that they're spreading pro-Russian propaganda or even pro-Kremlin.
Now a story emerged this week which feeds into this narrative greatly, especially because they get to haul it out about somebody who has become probably enemy number one of the liberal establishment, Elon Musk.
And even though Elon Musk has provided free access to SpaceX services to Starlink's internet to the Ukrainians from the beginning of the war, He even at some point demanded the U.S.
government start to compensate for him because the U.S.
government was putting pressure on SpaceX to continue to provide it for free.
And Elon Musk at some point said, we can't afford this.
You have to either pay us or we're going to terminate the service.
And then he came back later and said, you know what?
I'm not going to terminate the service to the Ukrainians because I don't think that's right.
So we'll continue to bear the cost.
Imagine doing that and then turning around and being accused of being on the side of the Kremlin.
Or even guilty of treason against your government because you've undermined or subverted its war policies.
Obviously, Elon Musk is public enemy number one to the liberal establishment for a very obvious reason.
That he has control of an extremely powerful communication platform previously called Twitter and now called X.
That the liberal establishment can no longer control, at least not to the same effect that they could prior to his purchase of it, the way they're able to commandeer Facebook and Google and TikTok.
I know a lot of you think TikTok is pro-Chinese or whatever, but the reality is their moderation decisions are often more in line with the U.S.
security state than even these other big tech platforms because they're so galled by threats to terminate them in the United States that they censor even more.
They've even said we'll turn over all censorship decisions to the U.S.
government because they don't care about censorship, they just care about profit.
It's a for-profit company.
But in any event, every company is under the control of the liberal establishment.
That was why they succeeded in getting Facebook to suppress the reporting on the Hunter Biden story before the election.
They have them under control.
We've reported over and over, and the House Oversight Committee has done a good job of unearthing the evidence proving that Facebook has continuously succumbed to the demands of the Biden administration on what to censor about COVID, about Ukraine, about the 2020 election, and on and on and on.
The reason why Elon Musk is being targeted by the ADL as an anti-Semite and now being depicted as a traitor to his country, the United States, he is a citizen of the United States even though he also is a citizen of South Africa and I believe Canada.
It's not because necessarily they're angry about what he did in Ukraine, although they are, but more so because it's punishment for his refusal to censor on demand.
We predicted this way early, that if Elon Musk actually buys Twitter and proceeds to even partially fulfill his word to reduce censorship on the platform, there's no way they're going to permit that.
There's no way establishment centers of power in the West will permit that.
Because that is way too much of a threat to them.
The thing they fear the most is free speech on the internet.
We documented that on Wednesday when we went through the historical context of how they watched the British people defy their orders and voted for Brexit to lead the EU.
And then months later, The American people elected Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton and that scared them to their bones.
They went into panic mode.
They genuinely did.
It was traumatizing for them.
And they ended up blaming the free internet for it, saying that if we don't control the internet, there's going to be disinformation circulating on the internet and we'll deceive people into voting against the way we tell them to vote.
They'll end up voting for Brexit, they'll end up voting for Trump, not for the candidates that we want.
And ever since then, they've been imposing a regime of censorship that has been growing by the year, and now targeting one of the only people in technology who's standing up to that, which is Elon Musk.
The few times Mark Zuckerberg has, you've seen headlines all over the place that he has blood on his hands.
Rumble is despised.
Almost every liberal media article about it is disparaging, precisely because they refuse even more than Twitter or Facebook to succumb to these pressures, to the point that they're now unavailable in France as a result of that refusal.
But they're not as big yet, or as influential yet, as Twitter.
The elites care more about Twitter than Rumble, simply because Rumble is not as big yet as Twitter.
But already Rumble is big enough that it's threatening but Twitter and Elon Musk in particular are their number one target and so there's a new Biography of him, out by Walter Isaacson, who used to be the top editor of Time Magazine.
He's just a standard establishment figure.
He's written other biographies on Steve Jobs and several other very influential entrepreneurs and tech tycoons and the like.
And now he has one out on Elon Musk, knowing of course that Elon Musk is the most hated figure, probably in the world, from the liberal establishment.
And one of the stories at this book Proports to reveal is summarized in this Politico headline from today.
Quote, Elon Musk sabotaged Ukrainian attack on Russian fleet in Crimea by turning off Starlink, a new book says.
Quote, top Russian official praises Musk's move to shut down Starlink during Ukraine strike attempt.
So there you have it.
He's being depicted as sabotaging the Ukrainian military operations and being praised by Russia.
You see the framing right away.
Quote, Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to disable Starlink satellite communications near the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea last year to sabotage a planned Ukrainian drone strike.
Musk was worried the drone submarine attack, which was targeting the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol, would escalate tensions and potentially lead to a nuclear war.
According to an extract from historian Walter Isaacson's upcoming biography, quote, Elon Musk, - Okay.
Musk on Thursday evening painted a slightly different picture to the one described by Isaacson.
He said satellites in those regions were never turned on in the first place, and he simply chose not to activate them.
Isaacson writes that Musk reportedly panicked when he heard about the planned Ukrainian attack, which was using Starlink satellites to guide six drones packed with explosives towards the Crimean coast.
After speaking to the Russian ambassador to the United States, who reportedly told him an attack on Crimea would trigger a nuclear response, Musk took matters into his own hands and ordered his engineers to turn off Starlink coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast.
This caused the drones to lose connectivity and wash ashore harmlessly, effectively sabotaging the offensive mission.
Ukraine's reaction was immediate.
Officials frantically called Musk and asked him to turn the service back on, telling him that the drone subs were crucial to their fight for freedom, but Musk was unwavering.
He argued that Ukraine was, quote, going too far and inviting strategic defeat, and that he did not want his satellites used for offensive purposes.
Now, according to the book, U.S.
officials then called Musk, got a hold of him several hours later, and he agreed to restore services or to activate the services, as he had been doing since the start of the war.
But you can see the flamboyant attempt to depict Elon Musk as actively sabotaging a war being fought by Ukraine and supported by the United States and NATO, which is designed to essentially depict him as a traitor, subverting the war policies of the United States government.
Even though what he really did, he didn't actively subvert or sabotage anything, he just refused to have his company assist in the escalation of war when the Russians were telling him that it very likely could lead to a nuclear exchange.
In other words, the subtext, the pretense here is that you have no right to resist the Ukrainian military's demands if you're a citizen of the West.
You are duty-bound to give them everything they demand.
And if you don't, that's considered sabotage.
Now, early on in the war, President Zelensky issued a plea to Westerners who support the Ukrainian cause, who are of fighting age, to go to Ukraine and pick up arms and help them fight the Russian army.
Because Zelensky knew, and it's turned out to be true, that the Ukrainians had a huge disadvantage, many disadvantages, but one of the biggest was simply population size.
In a ground war of attrition like this, the ability to just keep sending men to the front, men to the front, men to the front, is crucial.
It sounds harsh, it sounds primitive, but that's the nature of this war.
And Russia is many times larger than Ukraine and therefore has a much larger population to dip into to send as soldiers to go and fight than Ukraine.
They can just outlast Ukraine for that reason alone.
So Zelensky sent out repeated pleas saying, look, if you're in the West and you support our cause, don't just sit on Twitter or Facebook posting Ukrainian flag emojis.
Come to Ukraine.
We'll give you arms for free and you can help fight the Russians.
But a lot of people chose not to, for whatever reasons.
Maybe they were scared.
Maybe they thought the war was important, but not important enough to go fight in, meaning they were willing to have other people die in the war, but didn't want to die themselves in it.
Maybe they were too busy, maybe, whatever.
But they made the choice, every single person in the West, to go or not go.
And overwhelmingly, almost everybody, very few exceptions, chose not to go and fight with Ukraine in that war.
A few people went, but very few.
By this reasoning, Those people can be said to have sabotaged the war, the Ukrainian military effort, and the U.S.
war policy in Ukraine by not going and giving Zelensky what he demanded.
That's all Elon Musk did.
Here's his response yesterday to the emergence of this story.
He said, quote, the Starlink regions in question were not activated.
SpaceX did not deactivate anything.
So the story was that he turned off the systems deliberately to sabotage the Ukrainians.
He's saying, no, that wasn't the case.
Starlink wasn't providing service in that area near Crimea, and they just simply rejected a request from the Ukrainians that they provided because they didn't want to be actively aiding Ukrainian escalation against the Russians in Crimea in a way that not just the Russians were threatening, but obviously could risk a severe escalation of the war, including a nuclear exchange.
He didn't want that on his conscience, he says.
He then went on in a separate tweet to clarify further, quote, there was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.
The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.
If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.
And yet, automatically and predictably, the warmongers in the United States, including the people who didn't go to fight to help the Russians, are unleashing the most unhinged accusatory rhetoric toward Elon Musk.
Again, the real reason because they hate Elon Musk for resisting, at least more than the prior regime did at Twitter, the Western establishment censorship orders.
They're allowing voices that the ADL and the Democratic Party and the U.S.
security state don't want heard.
Here is the former Republican Congressman, now of course turned CNN analyst, Adam Kinzinger, earlier today, quote, Why is the House Republicans not investigating Elon Musk denying Ukraine the use of Starlinks and siding with war criminals?
Why is Elon Musk still a U.S.
military contractor?
In other words, they want the U.S.
government to go and seize his private property to take away Starlink from him.
Take it from SpaceX, even though his company developed it, because apparently he's supposed to be treated as a traitor, even though he's not been charged with any crimes.
And we're going to close the segment with the neocon cretin with whom we began, David Frum, who led the Twitter mob last night against Elon Musk, and he said, quote, Musk has confirmed the story that he turned off Starlink to thwart a Ukrainian military operation in the fall of 2022.
Now, you'll be shocked to learn that what David Frum is saying here is a demonstrable and obvious lie.
Elon Musk did not confirm that he turned off Starlink to thwart a Ukrainian military operation.
He said exactly the opposite.
He said he didn't turn anything off.
He simply refused to extend the service closer to Crimea.
Do you see what a pathological ire David Frum is?
I don't know what the truth is here.
I don't know if Starlink was already in effect there and they actually turned it off or whether it wasn't in effect and he simply rejected a request to extend it.
But David Frum is reporting what Elon Musk admitted to, what he confirmed.
And what David Frum says Elon Musk confirmed is the exact opposite of what Elon Musk actually said.
But this is all part of the effort that David Frum has been engaged in for decades to demonize anybody who opposes the neocon policy of endless war as a traitor.
He's implying that Elon Musk is on the other side.
Now, Elon Musk is not a citizen of Ukraine.
And the United States is not in a war with Russia.
We don't have a declared war with Russia.
We are fighting a proxy war against Russia, but there's no legal war with Russia.
The Russians are not an enemy of the United States under the constitutional provisions for treason.
But that's what they're trying to imply.
They went on, quote, this is David Frum speaking.
20 years after he first accused anti-war opponents of the war in Iraq of being, quote, unpatriotic, he says, quote, an American citizen and U.S. government contractor acknowledges that he personally sabotaged a military operation of a U.S. ally.
Musk thwarted what might have been a decisive military operation to shorten the Russian war against Ukraine, save who knows how many lives, and put an end to the Russian food blockade of poor countries in Africa and Asia, all while a U.S.
government contractor.
So apparently these few drones were going to bring down the entire Russian military.
The few drones that the Russians were planning on launching on this one specific day.
But what's really going on here is that they are simply fortifying a climate in which it is the moral obligation of everybody to pay homage to Ukraine and to every other US ally, as he put it.
If you question the war in Ukraine, if you are opposed to the war in Ukraine, if you don't want your tax money going there, if you're not willing to go and fight, even though David Frum and his family aren't, of course.
Apparently you are of bad moral character, you're unpatriotic, you don't deserve to be a U.S.
military contractor, and you probably should be investigated by the Congress, which is what his last tweet called for.
Do you see how consistent the rhetoric is?
Do you see what the framework here is?
For what the Washington establishment does to anybody who dissents from them, and again, if it were just about unjust reputational destruction the way it was back in the War on Terror, when people were accused of being on the side of Al-Qaeda, that would be one thing I would still object, but not as strenuously.
What is actually going on here is an attempt To legally ban any dissent, take away Elon Musk's right to be a military contractor, haul him before a congressional committee, require Twitter to ban what they're calling pro-Russia propaganda, which is really nothing other than people questioning or opposing their war policy of their government, which is absolutely the right of every American citizen or the citizen of any country to do.
And sometimes I think it's important to step back and look at things that reveal what's really going on.
That's why we dissected that EU study.
That's why this incident is so important.
Not because it's important to defending UNMUST, but because it's important to preserve the right they're trying to eliminate and have been trying to eliminate for many decades in the United States, which is the right to oppose their policies of endless war.
We are excited.
Hey everyone, as most of you know, System Update is a part of independent media, which means we chose not to connect ourselves to any corporation or be part of any corporate structure that can control our editorial output.
And what that means is independence is we need ways to support the program.
One way is we rely on our viewers to become members of our locals community, but another way is through sponsors.
And I've been very lucky because I was able to negotiate that the only sponsors I will ever have for this show are ones who really want to support our program and be a part of it.
And that is true for Field of Greens, which is our first sponsor, but also a product that really does align with my actual values, the way I live my life, so that when I look in front of the camera and talk about it, I never feel like a mercenary, meaning someone talking about a product because I'm paid to.
I would only allow endorsements and sponsors of products that I take, and that I take because it really does align with the way I live my life.
And that is true of Field of Greens, which is a fruit and vegetable supplement I'm a vegan, so fruit and vegetables are crucial to my diet, but it's crucial for the health of everybody whether you're vegan, vegetarian, or a consumer of meat.
And what distinguishes it from other supplements with fruit and vegetables is they've very carefully selected over the course of many months with medical consultation, they gave me the full long explanation.
That each fruit and vegetable is specifically selected to target and strengthen a specific part of your biological system, your cardiovascular health, your liver and kidney functioning, your immune system, your metabolism.
That's the reason I take it is to stay healthy in those specific ways and healthy overall.
And what I really like about it is it works fast.
I'm not a very patient person.
If you're like me, you don't want to take a product that has benefits 12 months from now, right away you will feel healthier, you'll have more energy, it'll be visible, people will comment that your skin and hair look healthier, and it can also help you lose weight if that's one of your goals.
And the thing that impresses me the most in terms of the product's integrity and why I feel comfortable is they give this better health promise, which is you take Field of Greens Not for very long.
If you go to your next doctor visit and your doctor doesn't say something like, wow, whatever you're doing, keep it up, or your friends don't say, you look much better, you can return it for a refund.
That is product integrity.
I was able to negotiate as part of the sponsorship to help you get started that if you order your first order, you get 15% off, another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders.
And obviously, patronizing any of our sponsors helps our show, especially if you use the promo code we've arranged, which is to visit fieldofgreens.com and use the promo code Glenn.
That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Glenn.
I would not endorse any product I don't feel good about, and that is absolutely true for Field of Greens, our first sponsor.
Richard Medhurst is an independent journalist and a political commentator born in Damascus, Syria.
He hosts regular live broadcasts discussing history, U.S.
politics, international relations in the Middle East, all rooted in an anti-militarist or anti-imperialist viewpoint.
He has really become one of the most knowledgeable journalists on the growing multipolarity and the global balance of power.
In fact, there was a Wall Street Journal article from two weeks ago or so that was very detailed in explaining and documenting The multi-level nature of the Russian defenses in Ukraine why it's so difficult to breach their defenses their use of things like dragon teeth and barbed wire and trenches and how difficult it is for any tanks to be able to penetrate them and
And it was a great article, except for the fact that I had already known every last detail of what the Wall Street Journal was conveying.
And the reason I knew that is because I had listened to a video from Richie Medhurst probably three months earlier, if not longer, that explained why all this optimism about the counteroffensive That was coming, that David Petraeus, Max Boot, and the standard roster of neocons were claiming would transform the war, would finally enable the Ukrainians to expel the Russians, was very dubious at best.
And he went into great detail for 20 minutes or so, several times, describing exactly how the Russian defenses were constructed.
And I read about it in the Wall Street Journal four months later, and it really illustrates The importance of independent media.
If it weren't for independent media, I would be so much less informed about so many things.
And obviously you have to be careful about who you listen to.
You have to make certain that they're not only reliable, but that they're letting you see the evidence to assess for yourself their reliability.
That's, I think, the number one obligation of journalists is to show the work to the audience.
They don't have to take your word for it.
And he does that with great skill, and that's what instilled in me this confidence.
And the more I've listened, the more I've come to trust his work, the more I've seen it vindicated over and over.
So we have been wanting to get him on the show for a while.
He's also an expert in French foreign policy, in Western Africa and U.S.
foreign policy, including the places where there have been several coups, including in Niger over the last several months.
So we want to welcome him to his System Update debut.
Richie, great to see you.
Good evening.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Hi, Glenn.
Thanks for having me and the grand overture.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's really true.
I'm just describing my own personal experience in watching your show.
Let me ask you about that topic.
Let me begin there with Ukraine and what I just explained that you've been saying, I think, as persuasively as anybody, which is that all this talk about the F-16s that the West was wanting to send and the tanks that they got from the US and Germany.
Even the cluster bombs, to some extent, didn't really matter all that much, weren't going to be decisive for the Ukrainians, because what matters in this war is the population differential between Ukraine and Russia and the supply of artillery, which the Russians have in great amplitude, because what matters in this war is the population differential between Ukraine and Russia and the supply
Talk a little bit about the reason why you have been so and continue to be so pessimistic about Ukrainian prospects for expelling all the Russian troops from their soil.
Yeah, that Wall Street Journal article was really funny.
I mean, it was behind a paywall as well, so they want you to pay them to read old news, which is really gimmicky.
Yeah, I don't know if they listen to your show or not, but all I know is that that article tracked everything you had said four months earlier, and they presented it like they were very excited to reveal the truth to readers that you couldn't find anywhere else, like this exclusive behind a paywall Graphs and all these charts that I had already seen and heard explained on your program, your free YouTube show on YouTube.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I think this is what they have to resort to because no one is really interested in corporate media anymore.
At least I think that trend is developing.
You mentioned the artillery shells.
I mean, these are figures that come from the Ukrainians themselves.
The Russians saying, oh, we fire 40,000 to 60,000 artillery shells a day, which is ridiculous.
I mean, you haven't had that since, you know, World War I, World War II, really, you know, especially in World War I when you had trench warfare and so on.
And, you know, we're not going to say that it's as bad as, you know, the Verdun or the Somme right now, but it is really going in that direction.
And when you're in a war of attrition, It's not about having the flashiest fighter jet or tank that matters.
And this is actually a mistake the Germans made in World War II.
They were focused on building things like the Tiger tank and it took a long time to train the crews to drive it.
It's a formidable machine, but like I said, it takes a long time to train the crews.
This is the same with with the F-16s and the Bradleys and the Abrams and the Challengers that we're seeing right now.
It takes a long time to train these crews.
And the idea that you're going to take a Ukrainian who's used to Russian-Soviet systems and, you know, pop him into an F-16 simulator.
I mean, this is it's like they have to unlearn all of these, you know, physical responses, instincts, the reaction time that has to be instantaneous.
they have to unlearn that and then relearn it for a Western system.
It's just, it doesn't matter, you know?
The Russians in World War II, they just built T-34s.
They were cheap, they built them fast.
If you put them next to a Tiger tank, they're much smaller, but they won.
You know, they won because it's a war of attrition.
And we're seeing that right now with Ukraine because the lines are not really moving.
It's fallen into sort of a stalemate.
And so, you know, the Ukrainians themselves, they're saying Russia is firing 40 to 60,000 artillery shells.
You know, there are 50 nations supplying Ukraine and none of them can produce anything even close to that.
The main plant that produces these 153 millimeter shells in Pennsylvania, which is the largest one in the U.S., they just got, you know, billions, of course, from the government to upgrade it.
And even in 10 years, it won't be able to produce what Russia has already produced and is producing.
So I think that's really ominous and a scary thing to think about.
Let me just interject there, because I think for a lot of people, and I would say put myself in this category, at least at the start of the war, knowing how much the U.S. spends on its military.
We all know the figures, at least $800 billion approaching a trillion dollars every year.
It's...
We know all these other figures, and it's more than the next 10 or 12 nations combined, and has been for many, many years.
You would assume that every instrument of war that the United States needs, or might need, or even potentially could dream about needing, they would have in great supply.
And yet, here you have this most basic weapon of war, which is artillery shells.
Why are the Russians able to produce so much of it and all of these sophisticated Western nations can't?
Well, it's just simply that they've geared their economy, and this is something that started back in World War II, you know, that German intelligence failed to understand, is that the Russians are able to move, you know, and basically make their economy molded.
towards war effort, towards aiding the war effort.
And so this is something that Russians have built, these artillery shells, they didn't just build them today.
They've had these in stock for years and years and years.
And I remember last year they were making fun of the Russians.
They were joking and saying in the New York Times and so on that the Russians have to go to North Korea to get artillery shells.
That's how bad, you know, their state is.
They have no new weapons.
They have to resort to buying from a pariah such as North Korea.
Yeah, well, guess what?
Those artillery shells are winning them the war right now, at least for the moment.
And then when it comes to the drones, they were making fun of Russia, also saying that, you know, the Russians are unable to produce anything with a chip in it.
They have to import microwaves and Game Boys and try to take the chips out of there, or dishwashers to use them in weapons.
And look how stupid they are, and they have to go buy drones from Iran.
And then, you know, next minute we're hearing that these drones from Iran are actually extremely lethal, like the Shaheed.
So which one is it?
You know, do the Russian weapons suck or do they matter?
You know, it can't be both at the same time.
But, you know, if you would read all this stuff from last year and look at how it's turned out, it's really funny.
And I think it's actually kind of incredible that countries that are under such economic pressure, like Iran and Russia, are able to actually gear their economy Not entirely, of course, but at least in part to accommodate, you know, the development of such weapons.
Because, you know, with Iran, it's the same thing.
Like, every minute you hear, oh my God, there's such a threat.
They have ballistic missiles.
They're going to make nuclear weapons.
So, obviously, they're very capable.
And these things are winning them the war, even though they're very simple.
And the Russians learned this a long, long, long time ago, that they have to have these things in store, particularly artillery shells.
You know, I still want to just push that a little bit because I understand that the U.S.
is geared toward fighting more sophisticated wars.
We've obviously proven repeatedly that we can't win wars that aren't fought on those grounds.
That's what happened in Iraq.
That's what happened in Afghanistan.
We took our tails and went back home and essentially accomplished those objectives after years and years and years of brutal fighting.
None of these shiny aircraft carriers or fighter jets proved to really make a difference.
Nonetheless, in this war, let's say that you do get the F-16s there and get Ukrainian pilots sufficiently trained.
A lot of them can't even speak English and that's become part of the problem as well.
But let's assume you solve that problem, you get them trained and you get the tanks deployed into the battlefield with people sufficiently trained on how to use them.
Why can't those, why can't F-16s just carpet bomb the Russian front line, the built-in trenches, and destroy them enough that way using a combination of F-16s and these very modernized tanks from Germany and the United States to break through those front lines?
And if those don't work for that, what are those good for?
Well, Glenn, honestly, if they wanted to, you know, of course they could deploy a fleet of B-52s and really just, like, carpet bomb the crap out of the lines.
But the problem with doing that is you would instigate a nuclear war.
You know, the Russians have said that if they see a single F-16 being flown by the Ukrainians, They will just, you know, automatically assume that that's a nuclear threat because, you know, nowadays and for a long time now, you've been able to put a nuclear weapon on board, you know, a wide array of devices that you can deploy through many, many ways.
An F-16 can drop a nuclear weapon.
So the Russians have said they're not gonna wait and just kind of like find out, wait and see of whether this particular F-16 or that one has or doesn't have a nuclear weapon.
They will just treat it as a threat and act accordingly, which means they will also, you know, either raise their level of readiness or actually, you know, deploy a nuclear weapon in return.
So yeah, that is the problem, is that the United States always tries to kind of, and Britain, of course, you know, try to get what they want, But the problem is that in today's day and age with nuclear weapons, you know, if you go too far, and this is something that's really bothering me and a lot of people is that, you know, Why do we keep crossing these red lines that the Russians talk about?
The people in Whitehall and in the Pentagon, they're so bloodthirsty.
It's like they just don't understand that this is a real, real problem.
I've talked to many people who were actually in the Cold War working in intelligence, like in the CIA.
The threat of nuclear war with Russia, is it worse now than it was in the Cold War?
And they say yes, and I can't even wrap my mind around that.
And so the thing is that you also have to consider that why this doesn't work is that the Russians are too well dug in.
They have multiple layers of defenses.
I mean, it's just a massacre to even try to break through.
We saw these videos, these drones filming all these Ukrainian men lying around.
I mean, it's so gut-wrenching, honestly.
And the thing is that you need to have the will to also fight it.
I've seen many videos of Ukrainian men just being snatched off the street and drafted.
And I don't blame them for not wanting to fight that because it's just horrendous.
You were talking about David Frum earlier.
I don't see him or his family rushing to fight in Ukraine.
The Home Secretary in the UK was saying last year that she doesn't have a problem with people from the UK going to Ukraine and fighting there.
You know, and you have to keep in mind that this is like jihadi tourism that was happening in Syria and other places where you had tons of terrorists just like streaming through Europe on their way to fight in Syria, which, you know, coincidentally benefits UK and US foreign policy.
They just let them go.
And then, you know, they would come back and then say, well, you're a terrorist and you're not a terrorist.
With Ukraine, it's no problem.
You can just go and kill people and come back.
And people from Germany have done this, from the UK, and they go give interviews about how cool it was.
You know, it's just war propaganda.
They want people to go and enlist and get their legs blown off so Victoria Nuland and David Frum can feel good about themselves.
You know what's amazing about it, too, is that before the Russian invasion in February 2022, we were hearing a lot about how dangerous it was that there was this kind of foothold of neo-Nazi extremism in Ukraine with the Azov Battalion and other elements that kind of were adjacent to the Ukrainian military, not necessarily integrated totally within it.
And they were very concerned about right-wing extremists from all over the world, white supremacists and neo-Nazis going to Ukraine and getting paramilitary training in Ukraine or getting inspired by the Azov Battalion.
There's evidence that the mass murderer in New Zealand who shot up that mosque was.
There's evidence that the Buffalo white supremacist murderer was as well.
This is a major concern for a long time in the West about having money or weapons get anywhere near these right-wing extremists in Ukraine.
And now suddenly...
Not only is that not a concern there, just flooding Ukraine and these exact people with the most sophisticated weaponry and all kinds of unaccounted for money.
I mean, I guess there is a parallel to Syria and I wanted to ask you about that in just a second, but what do you think is the calculation here in terms of what they really envision as the ultimate outcome?
Yeah, I mean, we, you know, this started back in the 80s, you know, already with Afghanistan.
We know all of us today how that turned out with the CIA giving all these weapons and training and money and resources to the Mujahideen, you know.
They splintered into Al-Qaeda and then they act like they had nothing to do with that and it's just a bunch of people running around who are extremists but have no connection to the United States.
No, there is a connection here.
There is a very real connection.
and a very real concern.
When you give all these weapons, I mean, you know, Ukraine has received more money now than Israel does, and Israel is the top recipient of U.S. military aid.
So just think about how many weapons they have that are, like you said, you know, at least in part, if it's not all the Ukrainian military, we know that at least in part you had the Azov that was integrated into the armed forces that are Nazis, that are, you know, far right.
These weapons are now in their hands.
I even saw a video of someone who was very, very clearly, you know, he had a Belfast accent.
He's from Northern Ireland.
So, you know, basically a British colony in Ireland, teaching Ukrainians how to make improvised explosive devices, you know, bombs.
So basically a bomb making class.
And this was on CNN.
They just filmed it and and they tried to like pitch his voice down but you could tell he's from Belfast and I just like I don't know for for people from Ireland and from Britain that connotation that we have.
We know that the British state was helping paramilitaries.
In Northern Ireland, to go and attack Catholics, to fight against the IRA.
This is, you know, state-sponsored, state-backed.
And now again we see this in Ukraine.
There's this, you know, the British state teaching Ukrainians how to make bombs.
Do you, you know, do you want to wait and find out whether one of the people or, you know, two of the people in that classroom are actually right-wing?
What are they going to do after the war with Russia if there is You know, if there is no nuclear war, where will all these weapons go and where will the people go with these weapons that we've given them?
I think this is a huge, huge concern.
Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
You have to be worried about this, you know.
And we saw also in Syria how the United States was giving, you know, non-lethal aid, which very quickly turned into lethal aid.
And then they would say, well, we dropped this package in the wrong zone by accident and now it's fallen into the hands of ISIS.
I mean, you remember how the Taliban were parading around during the withdrawal with American equipment, and you saw even when ISIS took over in Iraq and Syria, they were parading around with American equipment.
Now, whether that equipment was given directly or indirectly, I mean, it really doesn't matter because people die as a result.
So I think this is really a huge concern.
And, you know, you're gonna have, I really hope I'm wrong, but you're gonna have a lot of right-wing terrorism and people that you mentioned, for example, that are inspired by it, you know, going on further rampages because they will have access and be in possession of these weapons.
And be highly trained and funded.
You know, this is the thing that I think is alarming the most.
I don't think I've ever quite lived through this before, not even in the propagandistic tsunami that accompanied the invasion of Iraq, which is, you had all these policies in the West.
Where there were congressional amendments banning any money or weapons that got near the Azov battalion and other neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine.
You had op-eds in the New York Times being written by members of both establishment party wings that warned about how dangerous this element was.
You had a policy on Facebook that prohibited hate speech in the form of praising hate groups, which Azov was explicitly included in.
The media completely changed its tune.
They ran heroic hagiographies about Azov.
Facebook reversed its policy and said, just for now, we're going to allow praise of the Azov battalion.
Maybe we'll go back.
I think I first became familiar with your work when it came to the war in Syria, which was a CIA secret operation, clandestine operation, nominally to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.
It ended up, I think it's fair to say, there were a lot of frustration in Washington that Obama wouldn't authorize more.
They ended up doing just enough.
To keep the war going, to destroy the entire country.
It never actually removed Assad from power.
And it seemed like, in retrospect, at least the policy was, operationally, if not by design, keep the war going long enough, even if we don't ever give them enough to actually win the war.
Now, as you were saying, if the West really wanted to, of course it could enable Ukraine to just bomb, carpet bomb the Russians or do whatever else.
Do you think that the real goal of the West, and of course there's probably different factions with different goals, but at least a major influential goal, is to prolong the war as long as possible because it weakens Russia?
Yeah, I mean, if they can't get their way, they will do exactly as you mentioned, like in Syria, that, you know, if you can't win, then at least, you know, go with a scorched earth policy, which is kind of like what Pompeo and Trump did with Syria, right?
They realized that this is an untenable, unwinnable situation that you, you know, At least in a military fashion, they're not going to be able to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.
So at least they're going to turn up the heat with the sanctions.
And then Trump and Pompeo came up with the Caesar Act sanctions.
So, you know, now you have 90 percent, so basically, you know, all of Syria living under the poverty level, living with complete food insecurity.
You know, and then you have these sanctions that are banned dual-use products like toothpaste.
Apparently, it could be a weapon or something.
You know, I mean, this is really, really, really – it really makes people suffer.
And you can see that everywhere that these sanctions have been put in place, like the embargo in Cuba or in Iran.
You know, people who have cancer can't get medication.
Someone, you know, like needs dialysis, but the parts – the replacement parts for the dialysis machine cannot be obtained.
It's really, really horrible.
So that's what they're going to pursue in terms of Russia if they can.
But the funny thing is that all of this backfired.
I mean, the ruble was the best performing currency last year, whereas the pound and the euro went down against the dollar.
It's like this is the first time that we're feeling, getting a small taste of our own sanctions in the West.
And, you know, it's really, like, turbo boosted the creation of a second world, if you will, or a multipolar world.
And I was covering the BRICS summit, you know, just two weeks ago.
And now you have Iran that succeeded to it.
You know, instead of five, they've gone now to 11 members.
Brazil, of course, at the helm of it.
Russia, China.
And even though Putin was not able to attend, I mean, this was really a historic summit and it's really just the worst backfiring of sanctions that you could possibly imagine.
So, yeah, they're going to keep trying to, you know, put Russia to, you know, keep Russia down, keep Syria down.
But it's really backfiring because there's this creation of a multipolar world and it's with the biggest emerging economies.
They're creating even alternatives to Swift.
So, you know, basically Visa and MasterCard said all Russian people with our product can't use it outside of Russia.
So what happened is the Russians went and linked it to the Chinese union pay.
And then Turkey expanded the use of Mir.
So it's really just backfiring on us.
And we're looking really, really stupid as all of these countries just go off without us with the Belt and Road Initiative with BRICS and build an alternative world.
So I don't know if, you know, they're going to keep sanctions on Russia and Syria for decades to come.
They probably will.
But it's not going to matter in the long run.
It won't.
Yeah, just a couple of things about that.
One is, you know, we've covered that speech, I don't know if you saw it, by Fiona Hill, who's, you know, a longtime hawk when it comes both to Russia and China.
She's a protege of John Bolton.
She is beloved by the D.C.
bipartisan war crowd, and she gave that speech a couple of months ago warning That while we're so monomaniacally focused on Ukraine, the rest of the world, as she called it, which is what we like to refer to them as, even though it's, you're talking about billions of people, probably the majority of the planet, are aligning against the United States and the narrative that this is what we do.
We go and cause wars for our own benefit, like we're doing in Ukraine.
That's the perception, that's the narrative that is being successfully exploited to grow the kind of oppositional force to the United States in the form of Brexit.
Look, you know, every day he says he wakes up every day dreaming of de-dollarization.
And you have all these groups while we're so focused on Ukraine for whatever reason and who's going to rule the Donbass and Crimea.
You know, the whole world is changing while we're doing that in large part because of it.
And as you mentioned, if you saw the leading officials in South Africa so enraged by the fact that they couldn't allow Putin to enter South African soil because they were forced by these international conventions to arrest him, even though Dick Cheney's free to travel there if he wants to, or George Bush, or Condoleezza Rice, or whomever.
Or Barack Obama.
You see the rage, this resentment about these double standards that the entire world sees.
I think people who live in the United States and who are subsumed by Western media propaganda, even the people who are trying to think critically, don't really understand it to the extent that they should.
I think Republicans thought, in nominating Trump, they were nominating somebody who would be opposed to a lot of these policies.
Because remember, in 2016, one of the major planks of his foreign policy was, why are we going to remove Bashar al-Assad?
We should work with Bashar al-Assad to fight our common enemies in ISIS and al-Qaeda.
And instead, you get Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley and a bunch of people who either did it without his realization or persuaded him or whatever to do the opposite.
All right, let's just move a little bit to Western Africa.
It's very difficult to keep track.
There has been a lot of coups in that region.
There has been a lot of attention paid to Niger and the coup there.
Victoria Nuland went there and got a huge slap in the face.
But there has been another coup since then.
I think it's like seven or eight in that region in the last four years.
So let's focus first of all on Niger because you have spent a lot of time on that.
Talk about what the U.S.
interest is, what's kind of happening there, what happened with Victoria Nuland, and what you see make of this whole situation in Niger specifically.
Right.
So, I mean, this is a super interesting topic.
I'm really fascinated by it.
And, you know, because I, my whole secondary education was in French.
So, you know, I understand their culture.
I was immersed in it.
I'm fluent in French and I've been observing what's happening.
And this is the eighth coup that you've had in three years in Africa in former French colonies.
You know, so it's like it's such a massive, massive slap in the face to French neocolonialism.
Because what happened after World War II is that Charles de Gaulle, you know, he massive, of course, French figure of the resistance during World War II.
But what he did afterwards is that he orchestrated something called France Afrique, which is like basically Franco Africa or Frank Africa.
And he meant it or, you know, ostensibly it was supposed to mean that even though France will let these countries become independent, there will still be a cultural tie to these countries through language and culture.
What it really was is basically keeping African colonies under France's boot or France's heel.
And that's that's effectively what's happened.
So, you know, France Afrique is basically dead.
This this neocolonial system is dead.
I mean, just to give you the count.
Let me let me before you go on about how it's dead.
Let's just talk about what it is for a second.
in.
Part of why France, talk a little bit about how France has benefited from exploiting their resources, from using the franc and the system that they forced on these countries to kind of impoverish them and extract wealth out of these countries and to the French economy and to the French oligarchical class.
Just talk about some of the imbalances in this relationship that have created this enormous resentment that finally is finding expression.
All right.
So I think we lost Richie.
We're going to have him back just for a second.
Oh, are you there, Richie?
I'm still there, yeah.
Okay, so I don't think we heard, I don't know if you heard my full question, I think you heard at least all of it, most of it, if not all of it, but go ahead and start from wherever you started because we didn't really hear any of your answer.
Yeah, so, I mean, Niger is one of the top exporters of uranium to the European Union.
I mean, one in three French light bulbs are lit by uranium that comes from Niger.
The uranium there is crucial.
It's absolutely crucial to France's nuclear weapons program, right?
So, you basically have these companies that are owned by the French state that mines the uranium.
You have the main mine near Arly and the other one is near Akuta.
These are mining towns that were founded just for this purpose.
So, you know, the company that mines this, which is called Société des Mines de l'Air, or SOMER, 63% of it is owned by the French state.
And, you know, they reap all the benefits of this valuable resource, and they give pennies to Niger.
I mean, these towns, the mining towns, don't even have an electricity grid.
Any electricity grid, never mind one that is nuclear.
So, you know, they boast about how they give Niger security and aid, but Niger is the poorest country on earth, you know, by any standard.
Look at the Human Development Index.
They're right at the bottom.
So, you know, Niger had never benefited from these resources.
And now this is basically, you know, what they like to call the junta taking back their country.
And Gabon also had a coup.
And you mentioned Victoria Newland.
I just wanted to put in a word about our favorite.
We did a whole show on her a couple of weeks ago.
So we're always happy whenever anyone wants to talk about Victoria Newland in the various roles she plays in pretty much all corners of the globe.
She flew in there to Niamh thinking, you know, that they're going to put out the red carpet for her.
And they did not.
Listen, they didn't even let her speak.
Neither to Bazoo, who's the deposed president, nor to the leader of the presidential guard.
So she had to.
She had to speak to three, you know, military officials that are really, they're part of the top brass, but they're not the top.
And they insulted her by doing this.
This was very, very, you know, in diplomacy.
I mean, she's not a diplomat, but she does work for the State Department.
So let's just, you know, look at it through the lens of diplomacy.
It's just a huge, huge slap in the face and a beautiful one at that.
You know, I think we can do nothing but congratulate them for doing that.
And just on that, they have this kind of, you know, they've been cultivating, the U.S.
security state has their kind of little puppets, their partners or whatever they call them, in each of these countries who get a lot of rewards and benefits from serving the interests of the United States in their countries.
And they have several of these in Niger, including their favorite, who they've been grooming for a long time.
And even he, when asked by the Wall Street Journal, When asked, you know, what about the US government demands that the democratically elected government be reinstated and Victoria Nuland's trip where she, you know, got thwarted in her demands, he basically said our sovereignty is not for sale by anybody.
So it seems from a distance, and you tell me if this is true, and now there's another coup in Gabon and there's been several others in this region, that These, the people in these countries have just had enough and feel emboldened to finally take action.
What is that that's enabling them to believe that they now have alternatives, they don't need the United States anymore?
It's the emergence of a multipolar world.
I really, really believe, and I am certain, I know this for a fact, that this is a factor that plays into the mentality.
On top of the poverty, right?
So, I mean, they're so desperate because they've been kept down by France and, you know, their growth, their economic growth stagnated, their resources stolen from them, that they just had enough.
They have nothing to lose at this point.
They really have nothing to lose.
It's so funny because they even expelled the French ambassador.
They are emboldened and they don't care because they know that China and Russia, for example, are alternative partners.
I only bring this up because No, it doesn't have to be.
France 24, for example, or CNN or whatever, when they talk about Niger, they make it sound like, oh my God, this is, you know, it's basically opening the door to let in the Chinese and the Russians.
They make it sound like it's always, you know, a battle for who's gonna control it.
No, it doesn't have to be.
We can just look at this, you know, for what it is, and appreciate it that it's just basically an act of, a legitimate act of independence.
It's a country saying goodbye, we don't want you to control us anymore.
And, you know, they have told the French troops to leave, so they've cancelled all five military agreements with France.
And, you know, they have a similar agreement with the United States to help them fight, you know, the jihadists.
I mean, this is funny, right, because Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda and ISIS, Of course they had a presence but they never ballooned to such a size and had so much power and posed such a threat until we destroyed Libya with NATO and particularly France.
France and the US were concerned about Africa having its own currency backed by gold and Gaddafi was going to use his gold reserves for that and that's independence and they just wouldn't tolerate it because 14 African countries ...have a money that is printed in France.
It's a neo-colonial money.
It's called the CFA franc.
And it's funny because they tried to change the name to the West African franc or something in eight of the countries, but it's still controlled by France.
So, you know, it's like these half measures that are just ridiculous.
That's why people have had enough.
Because they see de-dollarization happening.
They see BRICS growing.
They see the emergence of a multipolar world and they say, you know what, we also want to be treated with respect.
Whether, you know, Brazil wants to buy our uranium, or, you know, China, Russia, who cares?
It doesn't matter.
We're gonna find someone who puts us on equal footing, and, you know, doesn't steal our resources.
The agreements between France and Niger have always been kept secret, so people don't know what is actually being paid to Niger, which is of course pennies, for that uranium.
Right now, the resources taken back, Uh, the French forces have been told to leave, and even the French ambassador expelled.
I mean, that is such a slap in the face.
And I have to say, the French brought this upon themselves.
Not only through their behavior, but this ambassador in particular, you know.
They asked him to come to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs just to talk to him.
He ignores them, right?
He completely ignores them, which is outrageous because he is a guest in their country.
You know, he is on mission.
He can't just like decide not to go to the foreign ministry.
They were obviously gonna, you know, dress him down.
It was a dimash.
He knew what was coming.
And then when he, you know, he wouldn't talk to them.
Then they said, okay, you know what?
We want you to leave.
You have 48 hours to pack your bags and leave the country.
He still ignores them.
And then they said, okay, we're, you know, we're done with you.
We're canceling your visa, your family's visas.
You have no right to be in the country and we're cancelling your diplomatic cards and credentials.
You no longer have diplomatic immunity.
So he's probably hiding somewhere in the French embassy.
Didn't they have at one point started to cut off their electricity and their access to water?
No, I didn't hear that.
I just know that they said you have no more immunity and the police have orders to arrest you, which is fair enough.
Let me just be clear.
Niger don't need a reason to even expel the French ambassador.
Any country can expel any ambassador on their soil.
The U.S.
does it all the time.
We expel diplomats all the time for whatever reasons we want.
But let me ask you, just as this final question, and we're definitely going to harass you to come back on our show because I have a lot more to talk to you about actually, but just while we have this limited time that we do, I guess what I want to understand from your perspective is there have been explicit threats for there to be a regional war over these coups.
In fact, there are other countries, powerful, important countries in Africa, like Nigeria, that still maintain positive relations with the West and with the United States.
And there is regional alliance, military alliance in Africa that is now explicitly threatening war against Niger and these other countries unless they reinstall their pro-Western governments that have now been deposed.
Obviously, that is U.S. backed in Western backed, and that's the only way that this regional alliance would actually do that.
What do you think is the prospect for that kind of a regional war if these countries, as they seem to be very steadfast in doing, continue to refuse to reinstall these governments that Victoria Nuland and Emmanuel Macron want to govern those countries?
Well, I can't predict the future, but I will say that, you know, ECOWAS, this regional alliance that is kind of, well, officially headed by Nigeria, at least during this term, they're really just a vehicle for the West and particularly France, you know.
It's another way of...
You know, doing neo-colonialism.
It's like you make them look like they're independent, but they're actually being driven and backed and controlled by France.
You know, so yeah, there is a very, very real threat of a war breaking out.
You know, when it comes to Burkina Faso and Mali, when they had their coups, you know, they weren't treated so badly by ECOWAS and, you know, to the point that Niger is.
Niger has been sanctioned now, so basically, you know, Like I said, this is the poorest country on earth.
So can you imagine how much worse this makes things for them?
You know, they can't bring in any trucks.
You had like 300 trucks stuck at the border just coming in from one country.
I believe it was Mali.
And then, you know, it took them days and days and days to even get to the capital because of the security concern.
It is an absolute nightmare even to bring in supplies from their allies, right, which are Burkina Faso and Mali and the other countries or Gavon, if you will, that are part of Equus maybe that, you know, used to be French colonies.
But are now gaining their independence.
And, you know, the thing is, the Americans right now have repositioned their troops from Air Base 101, which is in Niamey, to Agadez Air Base 201, which I should say is the biggest American drone base in the world.
So if you want to understand why this prospect of war is real, you just need to look at the facts.
France needs Niger's uranium for its nuclear program and the Americans have their largest drone base on Earth, which costs over $100 million in Niger.
So they have really, really, really big, big incentives.
to maintain control of Niger.
And I really hope it doesn't break out into a regional war.
But we've seen and we discussed these proxy wars in Syria, the proxy war right now that's happening in Ukraine against Russia.
Anything is possible at this point.
I wouldn't be surprised if they use, and it looks like they are, they're using Nigeria to attack Niger and put it back in its place.
So yeah, this is a very, very real problem.
But the junta, as the State Department likes to call them, the new government in Niger, They've said that they made all the preparations necessary, and they are ready in case anyone tries to come in.
I think this is why it's so important that they treat Bazoum well, because they have him basically as a hostage.
Like, let's, you know, call it out for what it is.
They are keeping him as a hostage, or shall we say as a, you know, a guarantee that ECOWAS doesn't attack them.
The thing is, though, it's good that he's in the presidential palace, you know, where he lives, because they're not treating him harshly.
He has access to doctors.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, calls him every day.
So, you know, he's still treated like a president, or should we say he looks like a president.
but obviously without any rule.
And that's an important thing, and it's the same in Gabon.
They're putting them under guard in the presidential palace to make sure that no one attacks them, and we'll see if that tactic works.
But I really fear for a regional war breaking out, and the sanctions are doing a lot of damage.
You know, it's so striking.
It is very surprising, just as somebody who's watched foreign relations for so long, to watch these countries be so resolute in their defiance.
And I do think it is connected to everything we've been discussing in the war in Ukraine.
It really is transforming the world in a way that doesn't seem beneficial from the perspective of Washington and yet they are all in on I know this is cringy.
I hate when people ask me to do it, but I'm nonetheless going to ask you because I'm encouraging everybody to follow your work.
So tell everybody how they can do that and where to find you.
Oh, well basically I publish most of my work on YouTube.com slash RichardMethurst and you can support my work on Patreon.com slash RichardMethurst.
That's really the gist of it.
Yeah, well so we'll put the links in the show notes at the bottom underneath the video and I just want to kind of give my pitch for independent media which is it is absolutely true that people like Richie don't work for the New York Times.
They don't work for The Economist.
They don't work for NBC or CNN, which is why you're able to hear this alternative perspective that obviously you never hear within those media outlets.
And the only way independent media works is if people who appreciate the work they're doing Support them.
I know you can't support every independent journalist that you like, but just go watch that channel.
Go watch Richie's videos and make up your own mind.
But I really encourage you to do so and to support independent media in general.
Richie, it's fantastic to speak to you this way.
I'm so accustomed to hearing you by watching your videos.
So I appreciate you coming on the show.
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you.
I appreciate it very much.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Bye.
That concludes our show for this evening.
As a reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
Each episode posts to all the major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple, 12 hours after they first are broadcast live here on Rumble.
As another reminder, every Tuesday and Thursday, we have our live interactive aftershow on Locals, which is part of this Rumble platform.
It's for subscribers only to become a member of our Locals community, which enables you to have access to that show and to the daily transcripts we post, to the exclusive journalism we
